Duty Before Desire (2 page)

It didn't look like much. The stock was fashioned of dark wood, with a brass cap on the end of the handle he supposed would be good for coshing one's opponent over the head, should one's shot go astray. The barrel, he believed it was called, was simple and unadorned.

“You get the lucky one,” Harrison said. “This is the same pistol Brandon used to put an end to the scoundrel who abducted Mrs. Dewhurst.”

That had been last fall, back when Mrs. Dewhurst was still Miss Robbins. Sheri had a particular fondness for Mrs. Dewhurst. Maybe the gun that had defended her life would, indeed, serve him well. He would take all the help he could get right now.

Gingerly, he took the thing in his hand. It was heavier than he'd expected. “I just depress this lever here, do I?”

Harrison snorted. When Sheri didn't respond in kind, the man's eyes widened. “Tell me you know how to shoot a gun, Zouche.”

“Never touched one before in my life.”

“What?” Harrison blurted. “How … ?” He cut himself off with a sharp gesture. “Never mind. Doesn't matter.” Turning in a tight circle, he blew his lips out in exasperation before leaning in to hiss, “Why the devil did you choose pistols if you've never fired one? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Raising a russet brow, Sheri ticked off items on his fingers. “My other option was fencing, which: One, takes too damned long. Two, I do not engage in exercise resulting in effusive perspiration before three o'clock. Three, I've a distaste for practicing fancy footwork with another man—I prefer my dancing partners to be female. Four, it's piratical and uncivilized in these modern times. And five, I plan to delope, in any event. I tupped the man's wife, which he and I and everyone else knows. Drawing his blood would only further humiliate the poor bastard. Let Tyrrel have his tantrum, and then we can all tell him what a fine, brave boy he is and return to our own beds.”

Harrison tipped his head into his hand. A heavy sigh poured from him. “Yes, Sheridan, you just depress the little lever. Be sure to point the gun well away from your own foot.”

The seconds cleared the field. Norman stood between the combatants and to the side. He rattled off the rules of the duel. Then he raised his arm, holding aloft a white handkerchief.

Tyrrel turned to the side, his right foot leading. Sheri imitated the stance.

Norman released the scrap of material. It seemed to be a long time in falling.

Lord Tyrrel lifted his arm, gun pointed skyward.

Sheri's abdomen released a knot of anxiety he hadn't known he'd been holding. He pointed his own weapon to the ground, at a forty-five-degree angle away from Tyrrel.

The handkerchief alighted on the dew-silvered grass.

With the lightest squeeze of Sheri's finger, his pistol erupted. The noise slammed into his ear with the force of a pugilist's fist. A gout of turf spurted into the air much closer to Sheri's feet than he'd intended, startling the hell out of him. Bluish-white smoke snaked from the gun to mingle with the thinning morning fog.

“Oh, my god!” screeched a feminine voice. “I'm come too late!”

All heads swung to the woman bearing down upon them, one hand anchoring her fashionable hat in place, the other lifting the skirts of her perfectly
en mode
dress free of the damp grass.

“Tyrrel,” Sybil cried, “did you kill him? I'll never forgive you if you did.” This dramatic declaration despite Sheridan standing not ten feet away from her, whole and unharmed.

The pretty woman stopped at his side, chest heaving in a manner calculated to draw attention to her generous bosom. “My love, you're all right!” Looping her arm through Sheri's, she cast a scornful look on her husband. “I'm leaving you, Tyrrel. Lord Sheridan and I are eloping.”

This was news to Sheridan.

“Is that so?” came the aggrieved reply from down the field.

“My lady,” Sheri murmured, “might we discuss this at a more convenient time? Perhaps when your husband and I are not locked in a contest of honor?”

Her pale brows drew together; she tightened her grip on him. “But, Chère, I love you so. No man has ever made me feel like you do.” She shouted down the field, “Do you hear that, Tyrrel? Lord Sheridan satisfies me in ways your dull, little brain could never imagine! And as for your—”

“Sybil,” Sheri hissed. He shook her once, trying to silence her goading. “Stop it. Now.”

“—no larger than my thumb and veers to the right, but Chère's endowed perfectly.” She laughed, loud and jeering. “Why, our infant son has more in his clout than you've in your drawers.”

A choked sound pulled Sheri's attention back down the field, to the man who had not yet taken his shot. Twelve paces away, Tyrrel's mouth twisted in a bitter sneer. He lowered his arm, training his pistol on the adulterous pair.

Instinctively moving to shield the woman, Lord Sheridan Zouche perceived the flash of Tyrrel's shot an instant before the bullet hit him.

• • •

That night, Sheri lay on his stomach, lengthwise, across an ottoman bench in the bedchamber of his rooms in Upper Brook Street. His arms dangled to either side. The fingers of his left hand curled lightly around the club foot at the bottom of a walnut cabriole leg, while the fingers of the other grazed the page of the book open on the floor beneath him. He read with his chin propped on the generous cushioning, but the entertainment did little to distract him. His manservant, French, had set a snifter and bottle of brandy on a silver tray on the floor, in easy reach of his wounded employer. The air was lightly perfumed by the handful of bouquets he'd received—along with a veritable hillock of notes—from various women of his acquaintance, expressing shock and dismay at the news of his injury and wishes for a speedy recovery.

Beneath a bandage Brandon had wound about his hips, the stitched gunshot wound throbbed—even the silk of his dressing gown felt heavy on his sensitive skin. Thank God Sheri had only been grazed, but the gash burned like the very devil. He reached for his glass and propped up on an elbow, wincing at the sudden, sharp pain that darted down his leg.

He returned his beverage to the tray and closed his eyes, his cheek resting on the cushion. Sheri couldn't remember ever hurting so much. Not that he'd imagined being shot would be a lark, but neither had he anticipated the painful throbbing that enveloped most of the right side of his body.

Brandon had left him some laudanum, but Sheri didn't want to take it unless the pain became unbearable. So far, his discomfort fell somewhere between terrible and beastly. Nothing he couldn't live through.

He wished he had some company—female, preferably. Idly, he wondered what his friend Elsa, Lady Fay, was doing this evening. The beautiful young widow never failed to liven his spirits.

As if in answer to his wish, his door slammed against the wall—but it wasn't Elsa come to minister to his wounds. Sheri's eyes popped open in time to see his older brother striding into the room, with French trotting just behind him.

“The Marquess of Lothgard,” called the harried servant.

“Thank you, French,” Sheri drawled. “If you'd be so good, perhaps a preparation of the medication Mr. Dewhurst recommended? I sense the imminent approach of a rather large pain.”

French nodded and backed out of the room.

The marquess stopped several feet short of the ottoman. Sheri lazily pulled his gaze up his brother's form, noting, with a touch of envy, the fine breeches gracing his lordship's limbs. Sheri's new pantaloons had been a casualty of the morning's carnage—a senseless death.

He craned his neck to meet his sibling's thunderous expression. Eli's brown hair was a shade darker than Sheridan's, and his eyes almost black to Sheri's coffee-hued irises. The elder Zouche folded his arms across his broad chest, straining the shoulder seams of his evening coat. Every line of his noble form bristled with a sense of umbrage.

“Evening, Lothgard,” Sheri said. “Kind of you to blow in for a visit.”

His brother tapped a manicured finger against the opposite elbow. “It's all over Town that you were shot in the arse this morning.”

“I did suffer an indignity to my fundament, it's true. However, the injury is not life-threatening, so you may put away your smelling salts.”

Eli scoffed. “More's the pity. They say you deloped.”

Sheri, silent, returned his gaze to his book.

“
And
that Lady Tyrrel made quite the memorable entrance.”

When Sheri still made no response, his brother's toes appeared in his line of sight. Eli kicked Sheri's book, sending it skittering across the rug. “Blast it, Sheridan, look at me when I'm speaking to you.”

Propping on his elbows, Sheri lifted a brow. “Shades of Pater,” he remarked. “How many times did I hear just those words before the strap landed on my backside?”

Eli's face—much like Sheri's, but fuller, the skin slightly loose about the jaw, now that he was approaching forty—reddened. “Perhaps you should have better heeded our father's lessons. Not only did you bed a man's wife, you once more insulted his honor by refusing him a proper duel, and then making a scene with his wife! You may as well have spit in his face.” The marquess's hands clenched and released at his sides. The heavy gold signet ring adorning the fourth finger of his right hand caught the light of a nearby candelabrum, flashing a rich yellow. “You're thirty years old, Sheridan. When will you behave like a grown man?”

Slowly, and with no small degree of discomfort, Sheri rolled onto his side and rose. He stood an inch shy of Eli's six feet, and he felt the disadvantage of being in a state of undress while the marquess was exquisitely garbed. Still, Sheridan was younger than his brother by nearly a decade, and for all his lackadaisical airs, he kept his body in prime condition with an hour of vigorous exercise each day—his preferred activities of dancing and bedding women depended upon physical stamina, after all. If Eli thought to intimidate him with paternalistic chiding, he would soon find Sheri was not so easily cowed.

“What masculine accomplishments do I lack, brother? Should I have cut Tyrrel down, as our sire would have done? Pray, enlighten me.”

The hard lines around Eli's mouth softened a fraction. “Dammit, Sheridan,” he muttered. With a heavy sigh, he retrieved the book he'd abused and idly flipped through the pages.

When Eli spoke again, his voice sounded altered, as though he parted with the words unwillingly. “When I heard about the duel,” he said, “my first thought was how you'd always refused to touch a gun, and I wondered if you hadn't managed to shoot yourself in the rump.”

“I had a quick course in handling the thing.”

Eli snapped the book shut and met his younger brother's eyes. “You've become an embarrassment, Sheridan.”

“The gossip will blow over in a few days, Lothgard.”

“Not just the duel.” Lothgard grimaced. “Deborah”—his wife—“tells me the ladies all call you Chère …”

Sheri couldn't suppress a smile at the mention of his French nickname amongst many of the
ton
's ladies. “It's just a silly little—”

“While I've heard the men,” Lothgard continued, “call you
Share
. Share Zouche.”

Sheri shifted his weight to his left foot. The right side of his body throbbed. “Honestly, that one is undeserved. There was only the one time.” He frowned. “No, twice. But everyone involved had a fine time … Oh, I suppose there was a third occasion, but there was a great deal of drinking involved that particular night …”

His glib recitation tapered off as Lothgard's face grew more and more pained with every word. He didn't look angry anymore, just … disappointed.

A ripple of defensiveness coursed through Sheri. How dare Lothgard come in here and moralize at him?

“Your reputation is abysmal,” Lothgard said. “You are known only for your sexual exploits, rather than for anything of worth.”

Sheri crossed his arms. “I contribute a great deal of worth, Lothgard. In fact, had Tyrrel walked into that room an hour earlier and witnessed the act his wife begged me to perform with a cucumber, he'd have thanked me for sparing him the task.” He lifted his chin. “I should receive the Royal Guelphic Order for keeping Lady Tyrrel contained to her own boudoir while his lordship was away, rather than letting her menace an unsuspecting male populace.”

Lothgard drew back. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his third finger between his brows, as though suffering the headache.

Feeling the beginnings of victory, Sheri stooped over for his glass of brandy. Offering his brother a silent toast, Sheri brought the glass to his mouth.

“I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

Pausing with the snifter at his lips, Sheri raised a brow.

His brother opened the door. “French, please bring her ladyship here.”

Sheri stiffened. “You didn't.”

His brother smiled evilly. “I did.”

“Elijah?” said a gentle, uncertain voice.

Sheri groaned. Just like that, he was defeated.

“Here, darling.” Hopping into action like a footman, the marquess held the door wide to admit French escorting a petite woman. When she saw Sheri, her big brown eyes instantly filled.

“Oh, Sheridan!” She approached him in a rustle of evening silks, one gloved hand pressed to her cheek.

Delicate of health and guileless as a calf, his sister-in-law, Deborah, had always been a great favorite of his. Eleven years ago, when Sheri couldn't tell Eli's infant twins apart and suggested, in all seriousness, that they tattoo the boys' names onto the bottoms of their feet, Lothgard had erupted and called him a buffoon. Deborah had merely laughed her tinkling fairy laugh and tied different-colored ribbons about the babies' ankles until their uncle could distinguish them. Ever since, Sheri had doted on the woman.