Page 111 of The Work of Art

“Yet you mean to shoot me with that pistol?”

“Not at all. I mean to strangle you and throw you in that pond.” He took a decisive step toward her.

“Stop!” she cried. “Don’t move another inch.”

Mr. Forsythe hesitated at her tone, but only for a moment.

“No, please,” she begged when he advanced once more. “My dog has followed us. He’s even now in the woods. If you attempt to touch me, I won’t be able to stop him.”

Mr. Forsythe looked at her in blatant disbelief only to have his disbelief arrested by something inexplicable that he saw in her face. He jerked his head around the clearing, scanning the trees for some sign that a dog did, indeed, lurk within them. He kept the small pistol trained on Philly, his hand unwavering. “Stop him from doing what?”

Philly’s eyes were on the pistol, her mouth dry with fear. “From ripping your throat out.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “Ripping my throat out? You jest, Mrs. Heywood. I know full well there’s no vicious dog lurking hereabouts. Indeed, I see nothing of any danger to me in these woods.”

“I suggest you look again, Forsythe.”

“Arthur!” A wave of unimaginable relief tore through Philly at the sound of Arthur Heywood’s deep voice.

She turned, expecting to find her husband standing at the entrance to the clearing. Instead, her eyes fell upon someone else entirely. A man she’d often heard about but never seen.

It was undeniably Arthur. But it wasn’t her Arthur. It wasn’t the husband who kissed her and called her his sweetheart. No. This was a different man. A dangerous man. This was Captain Arthur Heywood. This was the soldier who had crushed a man’s throat with one bare hand.

Arthur surveyed the scene before him with seemingly dispassionate coldness.

“It didn’t look right, Captain Heywood,” Sara had said to him. “Mr. Forsythe taking the mistress off like that. And making her leave her dogs! ’Tis not something she’d have done on her own, sir. He must’ve made her do it. I wonder what he can be up to?”

Arthur had needed to hear no more. Indeed, from the first moment Sara had stopped him in the hall and informed him of what she’d seen from Philly’s bedroom window, everything had become clear. He could only wonder how he’d ever been so blind as to not see it to begin with.

There had been no time to reflect.

Arthur had fetched his pistol from the library with a single-minded purpose, and as his fingers closed around the polished wooden handle, he’d felt an all too familiar sensation. It was a sensation he’d experienced countless times during the war. All of his senses sharpened. All of his muscles tensed for combat. His emotions went numb.

In this state, he’d taken the field with his regiment dozens of times. He’d strategized and given orders.

He’d killed more men than he could number.

But never before, not even on the battlefield at Albuera, had his heart pounded so erratically. And never, not in his entire history as a soldier, had he tasted the bite of what was, undoubtedly, fear.

Forsythe was holding a pistol straight at Philly’s heart.

“Heywood,” he said. “What an unexpected surprise.”

Arthur briefly met Philly’s eyes. She was pale and frightened, her bosom rising and falling rapidly beneath the bodice of her muslin gown. “Are you all right? Has he hurt you?”

“He hasn’t touched me,” she said.

Forsythe took in the whole of Arthur’s appearance with one disdainful glance. “I see you’ve come armed.”

Philly’s breath caught as she, too, lowered her gaze to the pistol in Arthur’s hand. When she lifted her eyes back to his face, her expression was one of disbelief.

“What did you intend to do with that pistol, Heywood?” Forsythe’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Frighten me?”

“I intend to kill you,” Arthur said.

A flash of anxiety briefly shadowed Forsythe’s face. And then his eyes dropped to Arthur’s cane. The sight of it seemed to hearten him. “With a pistol? Don’t make me laugh! Everyone knows you can’t shoot any longer.”

Arthur took a decisive step into the clearing. “Let’s find out, shall we?”