The Duke's Bedeviled Bride (Royal Pains Book 2) (23 page)

“Thank you for the warning,” the duke said with a nod. “I shall remain on my guard.”

Chapter Fourteen

The sun was low in the sky but still hot when Robert, accompanied by his priest and physician, escorted Hugh to the field at the appointed hour. Maggie had pleaded with him to bring her along, but he refused. Sword fights were brutal, bloody things, and she had suffered trauma enough to last a lifetime.

Upon arriving at the appointed site, they found their seconds awaiting them. Separating without words, the brothers made their preparations without undue hurriedness or outward signs of nervousness on either side.
 

Hugh seemed a tad overconfident given his level of skill when last they’d crossed swords. Robert fixed his brother with an incinerating glare. If only he could reduce that conniving weasel to ash on the spot. But, alas, he could not. Thus, grievous as he found the prospect, he must shed his own brother’s blood. No lesser outcome would avenge Maggie’s honor.
 

Robert strove for focus and detachment as he stripped off his coat, waistcoat, shoes, and stockings, and rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbow. With grim determination, he approached his opponent.

“I should warn you,” he said in the interest of fairness when but a few paces away, “I lost our youthful skirmishes by choice.”

“And I should warn you,” Hugh returned with an imperious smirk. “I studied with a sword master during my months at Versailles.”

Alarm chimed inside the case surrounding Robert’s heart. He’d recovered most of his strength and all of his memories during the two-week carriage ride from London to Dunwoody, but he was by no means in top form. The ribs he’d cracked were still sore, his head still ached most of the time, and he continued to suffer random bouts of crippling fatigue. If instruction had significantly improved Hugh’s technique, besting his brother would be more challenging than expected.

Squinting against the sun, Robert stared his opponent down. How wrong he’d been all these years to believe Hugh a better man than himself. He had his weaknesses, to be sure, but unscrupulousness was not one of them.

“
En garde
,” the Duke of York shouted from the sidelines.

The brothers faced off and assumed their stances, hands gripping the basket-encased hilts of their broadswords.

“Prêts.”

They drew their weapons with brilliant flashes of sunlight on steel.

“Allez!"
 

As Robert advanced, Hugh leapt forward and lunged. Reacting swiftly, Robert blocked the bold attack with a well-executed parry. Rather than retreat, Hugh redoubled, striking a second time with a horizontal cut aimed straight at Robert’s wounded ribs. Robert jumped out of harm’s way in the nick of time before answering with an attack of his own. Their blades crossed with a resounding clang, and, after a momentary glissade, they engaged in a blistering back and forth.
 

Robert became aware very quickly he was dealing with a swordsman of a much higher caliber than the one with whom he’d last sparred. Instruction and practice had definitely added speed and polish to Hugh’s natural agility and long reach, making him a formidable opponent indeed.

Would Robert be equal to the lofty goal he’d set for himself?

Simply killing Hugh would not accomplish his aims. Oh, nay. Hugh must be made to drink from the same cup of cruelty he’d served to poor Maggie. Nothing less would settle the account.

Remaining level-headed was the key. Cool, calculating, fearless, and purposeful. If he let his passions get the best of him, he would get in his own way.
 

Hugh lunged admirably. With a breaking sweep, Robert parried, then stomped his foot—a false advance designed to throw his brother off his game. As intended, his
appel
discomposed his brother, who’d been unnerved already by his failed attack.
 

They settled down again.
 

Both retreated and advanced again. Hugh lunged with an upward cut meant for Robert’s face. Robert evaded the blow with a quarter turn to the inside whilst holding the oncoming sword at bay with his own.

Hugh came at him in similar fashion again and again, aiming variously at Robert’s head, belly, ribs, or wrist. Each time Robert repelled the attack with the appropriate guard, Hugh answered with the perfect counter move.

Robert would have been grossly outmatched if not for Maggie’s well-deserved ill-treatment of his brother. Being confined, beaten, and underfed for almost a fortnight had brought Hugh much nearer his level of handicap.
 

To reserve his stamina, Robert let Hugh do most of the work, hoping he’d spend himself and deplete some of his strength and aplomb.

When Hugh attacked again, Robert kept himself covered with an artful forte on forte. His brother answered with a redoublement, lunging again. Expecting the feint this time, Robert parried with no more than a deflecting touch of steel on steel. At the same moment, he stepped forward into Hugh’s guard.

An ashen pallor spread over Hugh’s face when he realized his vulnerable position.

“Are you beginning to realize what my poor wife must have suffered in your brutal thrall?" Robert, teeth gritted, glowered at his brother. “I desired you should first do so. That now accomplished, there is naught left to do but run you through.”

Robert thrust his sword with the speed of a striking snake.

Hugh parried the stroke, though a moment too late. The blade missed his torso, but tore through the sleeve of his sword-arm.

Hugh retaliated with an upward lunge, piercing Robert’s right arm just below the shoulder. As pain tore through the injured limb, the sword slipped from his grip. He now stood disarmed, lip in his teeth, face sweating, chest heaving.

The Duke of York rushed in between them to keep Hugh from finishing him off. Snatching up the fallen weapon, Robert’s second returned the sword to its owner with a look of deep concern.

“Are you badly injured, son?”

“Nay,” Robert said, ignoring the pain. “’Tis a mere scratch.” A glance at the arm showed the ruined sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was a vast deal more crimson than white.
 

When the duke put up his hands to stop the bout, the physician hurried over with a piece of linen, which he tore quickly into strips. As he tied the bandage around Robert’s arm, he shot an anxious glance at Hugh.

“First blood has been drawn, my lord, which by the rules of sportsmanship should end the match.”

“Stand aside.” Robert tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. “This is to be a fight to the death.”

“But you are injured,” Dr. Cockburn protested.
 

“You heard him.” Hugh sneered at the well-meaning physician. “Only one of us shall leave this field alive."

Both doctor and duke begrudgingly left the field and the brothers once again faced off.
 

“You were always such a momma’s boy,” Hugh jeered as they circled each other. “It sickened me to see how you worshipped that whore. Yes, our mother was a whore, brother. Or did you not know you and I were sired by different men? Most people were fooled because we both resembled her, but I knew. Knew I was different. Knew I did not belong. Knew I was inferior to you in her eyes. And father knew it, too. I could see it every day in the subtle ways he showed his preference for you—his real son—to the unwanted spawn of the gamekeeper.”
 

Memories popped like gunfire inside Robert’s mind. The gamekeeper had been a cruel man who tortured animals for sport. Robert had been glad when his father sacked the brute, but had never known the reason.

Then, with a laugh, Hugh added, “Perhaps all the duchesses of Dunwoody are destined to be doxies.”

Robert, seeing red, charged. Hugh, caught off guard, made no move to cover himself. The blade pierced flesh and bone. With a look of surprise, the marquess dropped his sword and staggered backward, clutching his chest. Blood soaked his shirt and poured through his fingers.
 

When Hugh landed on his back on the grass, Robert moved in for the kill. Setting his foot atop his brother’s chest, he pressed the tip of his blade against Hugh’s throat.

“Loving does not make a man weak.” Robert stared into his brother’s fading eyes. “Giving his heart completely to a woman—whether she is his mother or his wife—is the bravest thing a man can do. Now, make your peace with God, so I can finish you off.”

When the priest came over and knelt beside Hugh, Robert backed off.
 

“Do you wish to receive the Last Rites, my son?” As the priest asked the question, he withdrew a small silver container of holy oil from his cassock.

“I do not, as I am neither Catholic nor dying.” Shifting his gaze to Robert, Hugh added, “If you had it in you to kill me, you’d have done so already.”

In the red glow of rage overlying his reason, Robert saw Maggie in a series of vignettes reminiscent of the Stations of the Cross.

Maggie being stripped.

Maggie being hung by her hands.

Maggie being whipped.

Maggie on her knees being forced to fellate his brother.

Maggie falling down the stairs.

As the priest walked away, Robert took a step forward and pressed the tip of his sword against Hugh’s neck. “That goes to show how little you know me.”

He said a quick, silent prayer asking God’s forgiveness for what he was about to do. Then, he cut his brother’s throat. A gunshot broke the harrowing silence. Surging with alarm, Robert spun round to find Alec Watt with a flintlock pistol pointed directly at his chest. Before Robert could think what to do, another shot rang out from behind him.
 

The baillie screamed, dropped his weapon, and clutched his chest before falling over backward.

Turning, Robert met the determined dark gaze of the Duke of York. As His Royal Highness blew the smoke from the barrel of his pistol, he said with a nod, “Consider your duchess now rightly avenged.”
 

* * * *

A deluge of relief washed away Maggie’s dread when Robert came through the garden gate, supported by her father and the doctor. The right sleeve of his green velvet coat hung empty at his side. The front of the coat itself was turned back from the point near his throat to reveal the slung arm beneath in its blood-sodden sleeve.

He’d clearly been injured, but was still alive, thank all the saints in heaven.

She’d been watching the fight from an upstairs window overlooking the garden, but betwixt the distance and the wavering glass, she’d seen next to nothing. She’d heard gunshots, though, which had infused her with mortal fear. Who’d fired at whom? Now, spying Robert, she could only hope he’d dealt his adversary a deadlier wound than he’d received.

Turning from the window, she lifted her skirts and hastened toward the staircase. The instant she reached the top, the door from the garden creaked open. Being careful of her backless slippers, she descended the stairs as swiftly as she could. She met them coming through the morning room.
 

Robert’s fine gray-green eyes somberly yet intently met her anguished gaze.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Aye. Or soon will be. ’Tis only a flesh wound.”

“He’ll need sutures,” the doctor put in. “And plenty of rest.”

Maggie’s heart sank a small degree. Together with a happy outcome for the duel, she’d been hoping to cap their reunion with a joining of their bodies.

The duke and Dr. Cockburn helped Robert upstairs, cut off his shirt, and put him to bed. Maggie grimaced as the doctor stitched the wound, her heart beating fast. The cut was deep, but mercifully clean.

After dressing his handiwork, the doctor packed his bag and made to leave the room. In the doorway, he turned back, caught Maggie’s gaze, and said, “Give him whisky for the pain and try to refrain from over-exciting him.”

Hot blood leapt to her face. Had the doctor somehow guessed her thoughts?

“I’ll fetch the whisky.” Her father excused himself, shutting the door to give them privacy as he left the room.

Happy to finally be alone with Robert, she sat on the bed, being careful not to jostle her injured husband overmuch. “How do you feel, dear heart?”

He gave her a weak smile. “Physically or mentally?”

“Both.”

“Physically, I feel well enough,” he told her. “My arm is sore, but not intolerably so. As for my state of mind, I deeply regret the need to kill my brother, but not having done the deed.” He touched her with the hand of his good arm and gave her another tepid smile. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“Overwhelmingly relieved,” she told him. “Relieved you are alive. Relieved he is dead. Thank you for having the courage to do what I could not.” Leaning over him, careful not to bump his bad arm, she stroked his cheek and jaw with a tenderness mirroring her own heart. “But why, if I may ask, did you do it the way you did? Why did you put yourself at risk? Why did you not kill him whilst your triumph was assured?”

“For the simple reason premeditated fratricide was not a sin I wished to have upon my soul.”