Chapter Four
Present
It had been years since Benjamin had felt such grudging respect for a man he met on a duelling pitch.
Usually, a man foolish enough to demand satisfaction in the form of a duel was a certain breed of popinjay.
The toffs liked to play at danger and valour, though anyone with a true sense of honour and dignity would respect the value of life and limb and seek to resolve their conflicts in a more civilised manner—despite the archaic standards of gentlemanly conduct.
Of course, pot and kettle and all that, considering the fact that he was also on the duelling pitch. But Benjamin Scarsdale did not issue duels. He merely respected the summons, however asinine he might believe it to be. He knew the value of his life and never sought to take another. Not again.
That is how he knew he had only clipped the lad in the shoulder. The lad who, surprisingly, had done the truly noble thing and shot in the air when another man had aimed directly at him.
Thinking back through the haze of scotch to his encounter with the boy the night before, he could not reconcile the arrogant, entitled young man with the stoic figure that had stood across from him moments earlier.
He would never in a million years have guessed that the whelp would raise his pistol to the sky.
Why even call a duel in the first place if he would not try to extract his pound of flesh?
Had Benjamin misjudged him? He had always had such a keen eye for a person’s true character. Hence why he had so few friends.
Benjamin mulled over this thought as he and Wells stood by their horses, waiting for the surgeon to announce that the boy was still living.
Normally, Benjamin made a point of hightailing it out of the site of a duel.
It did not do to risk further trouble by being caught in the illegal activity, and, in his experience, his challengers were usually willing to let the matter rest after realising how close to death they had actually come.
However, the surgeon did not wave the customary all-clear. Instead, instructing the scrawny young man who had acted as the boy’s second to kneel in his place, the surgeon stood and hailed Benjamin and Wells over.
How eminently strange, Benjamin thought to himself.
In all his duelling experience, he had never seen the good doctor do this.
Even if someone got hurt—never fatally at his hands, of course—he bandaged them up or arranged for them to be taken home to be tended to properly.
Now, the doctor’s severe face contorted in an odd mix of confusion, censure, and—was that discomfort?
“What is it, Doctor Price?” Wells always insisted on enlisting his own personal physician, citing a disinclination to lose his best friend and, more importantly, business partner to a quack’s malpractice.
“Um, Your Grace.” Price’s hands fluttered from his bag to the prone patient beneath them.
“Is he dead?” Benjamin felt a flutter of panic, followed by a familiar wave of nausea. Cold cobblestones. The stench of the streets. Blood.
“No. Not dead, sir.”
“Well, out with it, Price. My bollocks are going to shrivel up and fall off if I have to stand out here in this soup much longer.” Wells shook his coat, sending a shower of dew droplets down on the patient below as if to emphasise his waning patience.
“If he is not dead, and is not likely to be soon, then I say our business is done here.”
The good doctor glanced back down at the prone figure and the boy kneeling beside him, holding a cloth down on his compatriot’s shoulder to staunch the wound. He looked like he could have been the one shot. The pallor of his face was alarming.
“Yes, Your Grace, of course. He is not dead. But he is a she.”
Benjamin felt like his eyes must be bulging out of his head as he stared at the doctor.
He must have heard him wrong. He looked back down at the figure below them.
The boy was dressed in the usual trappings of a country gentleman.
The breeches, boots, and riding coat all spoke of a young man of means dressed for a morning ride.
But looking closer, with the doctor’s proclamation ringing in his ears, Benjamin could see the truth unveiling itself before him.
The legs in the trousers were shapely and long, longer than a typical lady.
The glimpse of hips that showed between the flaps of the long riding coat were rounded and tapered in a surprisingly elegant and enticing way.
Benjamin snapped his gaze up further, unable to believe his eyes.
The coat and tunic obscured most of her torso, but where the young boy held his hands at her shoulder, Benjamin could see a delicate collarbone and smooth expanse of neck.
Then the doctor pushed the injured lady’s crushed bicorn hat aside.
What truly arrested him was the young woman’s face. It was shockingly lovely, and he found himself implausibly enthralled.
Her nose was long and sharp in a wholly unfashionable way. However, combined with the upwards tilt of her wide eyes, though currently closed, and her high-arched, almost invisibly light eyebrows, they created a strange elfin effect that made his chest squeeze.
Before he could fully examine her features or his reaction to them, the boy kneeling beside her let out a strangled cry. Benjamin’s eyes snapped back to the boy’s hands, and he jolted in alarm to see rivulets of thick, red blood seeping from under the cloth pressed to the wound.
Snapping his eyes back up to the elfin queen’s face, he noted the pallor that invariably indicated a serious loss of blood.
“Doctor Price, I believe it is your job to keep the injured duellist alive no matter their gender.” Benjamin did not like the unwelcome feeling of panic that beat in his chest, and he strove to quash it with his ever-useful armour of brutal efficiency.
Not wasting another moment on Doctor Price’s uncertainty, Benjamin swept the young woman into his arms and began marching back through the field toward his horse.
“Follow me to my townhouse. Doctor Price, I expect you to be ready to operate the moment we arrive. You!” He nodded to the boy over his head. “Bring her mount and yourself to Hanover Square. You have some explaining to do.”
∞∞∞
After a brief yet informative interrogation of the pitiful boy that he now knew to be Rowley Calthorpe, the heir of the Marquess of Ashley, Benjamin returned to check on his guest. His still unconscious guest.
“Why has she not awakened yet, Doctor?”
Price was washing his hands in a bowl of already pink water that sent a twinge of anxiety through Benjamin.
The doctor had clearly fished out the bullet and sutured the wound while Benjamin was downstairs with the future Marquess, but he had hoped that after the short procedure, Charlotte would have come to again.
Charlotte. Charlotte Aston, daughter of the late Earl of Elford and sister to the current. Disconcerting that he had already taken to calling her by her Christian name in the privacy of his own thoughts.
They had met once before. It was at some ton function the likes of which he rarely, if ever, attended.
As the not-so-secret bastard son of the Marquess of Winden and the notoriously cutthroat owner of a number of pubs, hells, and warehouses, he was not exactly a society hostess’ ideal guest. Still, his close connection with two ducal titles and the most eligible bachelors of London society, Wells and Elkington, had earned him entrée into the ranks of high society, if only grudgingly.
Where had he met her? A ball? A musicale? He could not recall. Honestly, he could hardly recall Charlotte.
The only vague impression of her he could conjure was of a disinterested wallflower who, when they were introduced, seemed so distracted searching the crowd for her kid brother that she had hardly given him a second glance.
Not one lacking in female attention, despite his disreputable birth and more disreputable dealings, he had dismissed her as quickly as she had him.
Now, however, looking down at her pale face and bandaged shoulder, tunic cut away to reveal both slender shoulders, Benjamin could not imagine having ever pried his eyes from such an otherworldly beauty.
Even now, wounded and rain-dampened, she looked regal. Her high forehead looked pinched even in sleep, as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her hands clasped over her chest could have been holding the hilt of a sword over her prone form. A warrior ready for battle.
Even her hair, braided around her head—likely to hide under her cap—looked like a crown of gold against the pillow.
His pillow. When they had arrived, he had carried her up to his own chambers and laid her on his own bed.
Why had he done that? There was a surplus of unused rooms in this house.
Why had he unthinkingly brought her there?
His surprise was feigned. He was lying to himself. This had been intentional. A part of him—a base and delinquent part—was desperate to see her laid out in his bed, even if it was only for a moment.
He stood still now, while Price fished through his bag of medical debris behind him. He could not lift his eyes from her lovely, angular face.
And if ye dare to kiss my lips. / Sure of your bodie I will be.