Flowers From The Storm (5 page)

“Rather like a good milk cow!” Maddy exclaimed.

“And there goes the chin up,” Jervaulx said. “She’s perhaps a little more the color of a light claret, now that I’ve provoked her. All the way from her throat to her cheeks— even a little lower than her throat, but she’s perfectly pale and soft below that, as far as I can see.”

Maddy clapped her hand over the V neck of her gown, suddenly feeling that it must be entirely too low-cut. “Papa—” She looked to her father, but he had his face turned downward and a peculiar smile on his lips.

“Her hair,” Jervaulx said, “is tarnished gold where the candlelight touches it, and where it doesn’t…

richer— more like the light through a dark ale as you pour it. She has it braided and coiled around her head. I believe she thinks that it’s a plain style, but she doesn’t realize the effect. It shows the curve of her neck and her throat, and makes a man think of taking it down and letting it spread out over his hands.”

“Thou art unseemly,” her father chided in a mild tone.

“My apologies, Mr. Timms. I can hardly help myself. Shall we proceed to her nose? That, we shall call a nose of— character. I don’t think we can call it perfect; it’s a little too aquiline for that. A decided nose.

A maiden lady’s nose. It goes with the tilt of the chin. But her eyes… I’m afraid her eyes ruin the spinster effect again, most emphatically. And her mouth. She has a pensive, a very pretty mouth, that doesn’t smile overly often.” He took a sip of wine. “But then again—let’s be fair. I’ve definitely seen her smile at you, but she hasn’t favored me at all. This serious mouth might have been insipid, but instead it goes with the wonderful long lashes that haven’t got that silly debutante curl. They’re straight, but they’re so long and angled down that they shadow her eyes and turn the hazel to gold, and she seems as if she’s looking out through them at me. No…” He shook his head sadly. “Miss Timms, I regret to tell you that it isn’t a spinster effect at all. I’ve never had a spinster look out beneath her lashes at me the way you do.”

In his house, at his table, she felt that she could not say precisely what she thought of him and his spinsters. Besides that, her father appeared enraptured. “Maddy,” he whispered. “Thou hast thy mother’s look.”

“Of course, Papa,” she said helplessly. “Has no one ever told thee?”

“No. No one ever did.”

He said it without any particular emotion. But by the candlelight, she could see that his eyes had tears in them. “Papa,” she said, reaching for his hand. He only brushed it, and then lifted his fingers, touching her face. He explored her slowly, intently, over her cheeks and across her eyelashes. She held her hands locked tight, embarrassed and suddenly close to foolish tears herself.

She had never thought of it: she could have sat and let her father envision her with his touch in this way any time. He looked so happy. It was just that life went on, an everyday thing, and one never considered that Papa had not seen her face for eighteen years, or might wish to.

“I thank thee, Friend,” her father said, turning his face toward the duke. “I thank thee. For one of the finest days of my life.”

Jervaulx didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to have heard, but sat gazing into the shadowed folds of the tablecloth, his dark blue eyes meditative and his pirate mouth turned grim.

No pink tinged the dawn fog in the way he’d described last night. Rather poetic of him, Christian had thought, but in reality everything was only whitish-gray, the grass wet and dark, voices uncanny and sharp in the early silence. He could hear his own even breathing as he took the pistol from the case Durham offered and sighted down the slender barrel.

He didn’t think he was going to die this morning. He wasn’t going to kill anyone, that was certain. Being guilty as the devil in this affair, his only honorable course was to stand fire and then delope. He’d shoot into the air. So— Sutherland might hit him. Likely would. But Christian didn’t think he was going to die.

He found it distantly amusing that he was so sure of that. He was old enough to know better. A decade and a half ago, the first time he’d stood up at the fire-eating age of seventeen, he might have been excused for believing himself invincible. But now… he looked around at the brightening sky and the new leaves—and still his heart said it was impossible that this was the last moment.

Wounding was nothing to look forward to. He chose not to think ahead about it. He could feel his heart’s rhythm rising as he walked out onto the ground without looking at Sutherland beside him.

They stood up and paced off. Christian held the pistol in his right hand, there being no need for accuracy. It gave a better appearance; those who knew him would see that he’d had no intention of firing on Sutherland from the start.

Durham’s languid voice called halt and turn.

Christian turned.

Sutherland had his pistol raised already. Christian realized that there was murder in his opponent’s face.

The man intended execution; he had the skill to do it. Christian’s pulse increased suddenly, a fierce thud in his ears.

“Gentlemen,” Durham said, lifting his handkerchief.

Pain burst through Christian’s skull, agony and strangeness. He stared at Sutherland, blinking twice, wondering why he hadn’t heard the shot that hit him.

Durham spoke again. Christian couldn’t understand the words. Sutherland’s face contorted; he was shouting something at Christian, and Christian couldn’t understand that either, but Sutherland was holding his gun at level ready still.

Christian tried to lift his right arm. He squinted at Sutherland, trying to see through the way his vision seemed clear and blurred at once, turning his face to the side to find his opponent. Durham spoke one word. From his fingers, the pale cloth dropped to the ground.

Christian heard the shot and whistle, saw the drift of white from Sutherland’s pistol and knew the man had missed, but Christian was falling while he was still standing up. His pistol dropped out of his hand. It went off with a blast as it struck the ground.

Christian stood swaying, staring down, trying to see it.

He’d been hit. Had he been hit?

Durham and Fane came striding toward him. He felt that he was falling, over and over, but he never reached the ground. Their words babbled around him, meaningless. He tried to put out his right hand to lean on Fane’s shoulder, but he couldn’t lift it. When he looked down, it didn’t even seem part of him.

He could barely see. He tried to find the blood, couldn’t find it, and gazed in bewilderment at his friends.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

It came out,
no
.

No, no, no, no.

Fane shook his head and grinned, thumping Christian on the back with a look of triumph. Durham was smiling.

Christian grabbed the colonel’s arm with his left hand. “Fane,” he said. “What happened?”

No, no, no, no, no.

He heard himself. He closed his mouth in horror, tried to form the right words, breathing hard through his teeth.

“Fane!” he yelled.

And they stared at him, because he still hadn’t said it right. He gripped Fane’s arm. Half of the other man’s face seemed hazy to Christian, blurring off into the gray fog. His heart was a huge drum pounding in his ears. He wanted to let go of Fane, to press his hands over his eyes, but he couldn’t command the move. He couldn’t say anything at all. He could only pull himself close enough to put his weight on his friend’s shoulder, with the world tipping and sliding away from him, the darkness rising up over his brain, coming in from the edges of his vision, taking it all; taking everything…

The fineness of the morning could only add to the pleasure Maddy felt in the day. She strolled briskly along the King’s Road and past the new construction in Eaton Square, even finding it in herself to admire the architecture of the mansions under construction, designed as they were in the style of the duke’s house in Belgrave Square.

This morning, over breakfast, she and Papa had talked of nothing but the chair at the university-to-be.

Jervaulx had said it was to open its doors next year, under the admirable name of the University of London, but the professorships and preparations must begin much sooner, possibly as early as Ninth Month. A premises had already been taken in Gower Street, and Maddy thought that after she called in Belgrave Square, she might go on to Bloomsbury and look into any houses available there.

For this call, she carried no sheets of figures, only a letter that she and her father had composed together, thanking Jervaulx for their supper and his kind attentions, and expressing unqualified praise for his excellent address before the Society last night. After some debate, they had agreed on the proper degree of gratitude and enthusiasm to convey about the mathematics chair—Maddy being inclined to somewhat less effusion than her father, but well aware that an apparent lack of delight in the offer would be fatal.

She turned the corner into the square and paused. Normally there were a few ragged persons loitering about the luxurious houses in hopes of stray coins, but just now a regular crowd of bystanders, very mixed in their appearance, milled around a green curricle in front of the duke’s house.

Maddy pressed her lips together. There was straw strewn in the street and the curricle, with its neat pair of grays, had much the look of a physician’s rig. As she stood hesitating at the corner, a large coach, drawn by a team of blacks and emblazoned with a raised medallion sporting the full heraldic bearings and crest of the family, motto and all, came dashing round the far side of the square. The cluster of onlookers scattered, and the boy holding the curricle hurried the pair forward to make room as the coach rumbled to a halt before the door.

Even before the footman had jumped down off his perch to lower the steps, the carriage door was being pushed open from inside. An elderly lady groped for the footman’s hand and came swiftly down, lifting up her black skirts and advancing with an agitated thrust of her cane. Maddy saw Calvin rush down the stairs to her side; he held her arm up the stairs, as a younger woman descended from the carriage. The footman supported her to the top of the stairs, where this second lady appeared to lose her strength entirely: she faltered and seemed to wilt against the servant. His arm came around her, bracing her into the house. The door slammed shut behind them.

The little crowd stood about, murmuring. Maddy could not seem to think what to do. Her feet took her slowly forward, step by step, as if her mind had relegated the decision to her body.

At the edge of the group, leaning against the wrought iron rail that flanked the house, the crossing boy who usually swept the corner looked up at Maddy and gave her a nod of recognition. She stood uncertainly, and after a moment, he came up to her.

“ ”Mornin‘, Miss. Has you heard?“

She glanced up. The windows were all shaded ominously. And straw was spread in the street to muffle carriage wheels, as if there were serious illness in the house…

“No. I haven’t heard.”

“It’s His Grace, Miss. Shot.”

“Shot?” Maddy whispered.

The boy nodded toward the coach. “Family’s been called,” he said succinctly. “Too late, Tom says.

Tom’s in the stables, saw ”em go out before first light; saw his grace brung back on a hurdle. Duel, Miss.

Gone and kilt him, Tom says. Dead when they carried him in.“ He shrugged. ”Still— there’s the medical man here yet. Waitin‘ for the family, I expect.“

Maddy stared up at the house, beyond words. The murmur of gossip subsided suddenly. They all stood listening to what had stifled it: the distant sound of a woman’s shriek—a tearing, rising note—the high-pitched keening moan of denial, cascading down to anguish. Maddy’s throat went dry and closed.

The wail broke off abruptly as if someone else had hushed it, and the people outside gave one another knowing looks.

She gripped her hands together. She couldn’t think. She didn’t believe it. Last night, just last night—she had never seen anyone more fully alive, more vibrant with spirit and substance.

A duel. A senseless, futile exchange of shots. An instant, and all that life was gone.

How could that be? Her mind balked at it. She had known him to be what he was: a rake, a reprobate—before yesterday she would have said, yes, I believe it, the Duke of Jervaulx was shot and killed in a duel this morning. But now it shocked her into suspension, so that when she turned away, she didn’t know where to go or what to do.

She walked along blindly, clutching her hands together.

He’d known last night, of course. He’d sat there smiling at them, talking of geometry, describing her to her father. All the time, he’d known he was to go out and face this in a few hours.

It was beyond the capability of her mind to grasp. She’d lost her mother, and some friends, all to illness, all much older—not this sudden dizzying turn in reality.

And his own mother—dear God, what she must feel! She was the second of the two ladies, Maddy was sure in her heart, remembering that faltering collapse at the door. Oh, she had perceived it already, had known before they told her, had given that terrible cry when she was sure. The other—in black, the elderly one who had gone in as if to a battle—it would be she who would show nothing, stand stiff and proud, grieving silently.