“Lower your voice,” Darien said, arranging his cravat. “Your clabbering will wake Rufie.”
“You didn’t tell him?” Charley said in a stage whisper. “Don’t you think you ought’ve?”
Darien shook his head. “I don’t want him caught up in this mess. He’s to be married.”
“Well, so are you, from the sounds of things,” Charley grouched.
They stood in Darien’s library, which held the only mirror in the house, since his sorry excuse for a valet had still not installed a looking glass in Darien’s dressing room. Charley poured another glass from the sideboard and threw it back in one swift gulp.
It was not yet daybreak, but Darien guessed that the young baronet had not wasted a night that could be spent gaming, drinking, and lingering in the arms of his mistress with activity as pedestrian as sleep. He would furthermore bet that more thanonce in the night, Sir Charleton had cursed the misfortune that made him the only man who’d stepped forward when a drunk, furious Freddy Highcastle stormed into the Bicclesfield card room demanding Daring produce a second.
Morning stubble shadowed Charley’s jaw, and his eyes were bloodshot with weariness. Brash he might be, but he clearly had never before had the solemn duty of escorting a man to the field of honor.
Charley held up his coat and Darien squeezed into it. The younger man cleared his throat as Darien saw to the intricate row of buttons, then pulled the lace of his shirt sleeves free of the wide cuffs. “Did you leave letters?”
Darien suspected he, too, looked the worse for wear. He had at least lain down to rest, though sleep eluded him, not due to thoughts of pistols at dawn but to wondering how soon he might call on Henrietta. She’d gone stiff and cold after the discovery of their kiss in the British Museum, without a word to him thereafter.
All the maids Lord Daring had rejected, and Miss Wardley-Hines marched up the stairs of her father’s house without even acknowledging his offer, much less swooning with acceptance. He would get through this part of the morning, and then he would address her.
“I left them in my study.”
Atop his designs for a drainage pump for Henrietta’s estate lay two vellum envelopes imprinted with his seal, one inscribed with his father’s full titles and one that simply read “Henry.” What a terrible and liberating exercise it was to tell someone you loved everything you most longed to tell them but for very good reasons would never utter without the threat of loss of life.
Not that he had any expectation of giving up his life in this venture. It was an annoyance, but it would be only an hour, maybe two, and then it would be over. He could close the chapteron Celeste and every bitter memory associated with her, and he would call upon his intended.
He wanted to marry Henrietta Wardley-Hines. Quite the surprise, that.
“I wish you would have let me tell her about the duel,” Charley said.
Darien shook his head. “There’s no reason she needs to know until after, if she needs to know at all. Did you find a sawbones?”
“He’s outside. We picked him up on the way.”
“We? You brought another witness?”
Darien saw for himself as they stepped out the door. In Charley’s phaeton sat the surgeon who had attended his last duel with Havering. And, lounging against the tying post, James chewed a pie wrapped in grease-soaked paper. He scowled at Darien. Darien scowled back.
“He won’t cry rope on us, but that’s all I can say about him,” Darien said.
“Did ye only offer for her as you meant to get yerself killed the next morn?” James barked.
“Stand down, halfling,” Darien said. “No one is getting killed today.”
“Wish ye’d brung the toledo instead o’ the pops,” James said, eying the pistol case Charley carried. “Swords is better.”
“And the injuries potentially more lethal,” Darien replied. “It was Freddy’s challenge, so my choice of weapons. Freddy faints at the sight of blood. Has ever since Eton.”
“Cove oughtn’t be tilting if ’e can’t stomach the claret,” James scoffed. He held the horses while the men mounted, then tossed the ribbons to Darien with an agile flick. “Meself, I’d pink ’im, just to show ’im what’s what.”
“You will hold your peace,” Darien said. “I’ll delope, Freddy will miss, and we’ll all go to the pub and have a pint. Saving forCharley, who will continue with whisky, or cast up his accounts all over his spanking new vehicle.”
Two shadows stood in Hyde Park in the spot known as the Nursery. Above them draped a great willow that had witnessed many a senseless wounding and death in its long life, among various other follies of men. Freddy came first out of the mist.
“I thought Perry’d be with you.”
“I thought he was with you,” Darien answered. “You seemed rather thick a few months ago.”
Freddy scowled. “Ain’t seen him in days, and now Celeste is gone too.”
