The Golden Season (26 page)

She would have been surprised had he told her he loved her with or without her fortune. She would certainly have doubted him and ascribed his declaration to good manners. If he’d read correctly her comments (and judging from her confidence that he would be well content with friendship, he had) she had decided his “passionate sentiments” were modest at best.

A grim smile tensed his lips as he glanced down. To keep from hauling Lydia into his arms and treating her to a too graphic example of those same tepid desires, he’d gripped the damn beech bough so tightly the thing had snapped, gouging his palm. He’d barely noticed it at the time.

His tight smile softened. She had looked so lovely in the maze with her thick brown hair falling around her shoulders, leaves caught in the tendrils, her purple eyes dancing. He thought she might never have been more beautiful than when she cared about it least. She would not have believed that either.

It had been a small enough thing to ask and an excruciating thing to contemplate, being Lydia’s friend and never more. But he could no more deny her his friendship than he could order his heart not to beat. So he had stayed to keep her company, as would a friend, and listened in amazement as she presented him with a token of her alleged amity by proposing to find him a rich bride.

His shock had been followed by anger that she thought him so insipid he would let her find him a wife. Had his kiss told her nothing? Had she not recognized the restraint he had exercised in order to keep his passion in check? What sort of man did she think he was to kiss her one moment, then to agree to let her find him a mate the next?

But then, when he had been about to respond with harsh and damning words, he’d looked into her dark violet eyes and seen some fleeting shadow of what her voice and manner and expression were trying so desperately to hide. And it was at that moment that he had realized that Lady Lydia Eastlake would never have made so insensitive an offer to begin with unless some emotion had overwhelmed her innate kindness and for that to be overwhelmed, it would have to be a powerful emotion indeed. It inspired him with a fragile hope that she might return his feelings.

But now what?

If he asked for her hand, she would only say no. She had made it quite clear that she required a husband who could keep her in the same manner in which she’d always lived. And even if he could convince her to say yes . . . should he?
Could
she be happy as the wife of an impecunious retired sea captain?

An image appeared in his mind’s eye to confound him further: Lydia shimmering in silk, diamonds glittering around her throat and wrists, her eyes the brightest gems of all as she danced a waltz or traded sallies. Lydia, that is, being admired, imitated, sought after. Had he even the right to ask her to leave her world and intimates for an unknown life with him?

He ran a hand through his hair. And to a lesser degree there still remained the question of his own responsibilities and obligations. Josten Hall, his home, the home of generations of Locktons. What would the Locktons be without Josten Hall?

“Captain?” The footman’s voice startled him from his thoughts.

“Come.”

The footman backed into the room bearing a tray with the requested coffee. He set it down, lit the lamps, then returned to Ned with an envelope, which he handed to him, bowing slightly.

“Beggin’ pardon, sir, but this arrived for you yesterday afternoon after you’d left the house. The messenger waited until midnight for an answer before leaving.”

“Yes, thank you,” Ned said, picking up the letter and slitting open the seal. “That will be all.”

“Yes, sir,” he heard the footman say as the door softly clicked shut.

He read the letter, his expression going from weariness to exasperation:

Ned crushed the paper in his hand, flung it into the fire, and snatched up his coat. Shoving his arms through the sleeves, he glanced at the mantel clock. A quarter past four. If he rode like the devil he ought to make it.

He swept his cravat from the back of the chair and headed for the stables.

 

In the faint light beginning to seep like a wine stain down its eastern slope, Primrose Hill belied its pretty name, looking very much a fitting scene for tragedy, being barren, fog-clotted, and wind-smacked. The turf was rough and the slopes devoid of trees, resident only to low shrubs and a few sheep, their home invaded this morning by the stately progress of a carriage following several men on horseback.

Ned reined in the winded bay where the road crested, looking down at the carriage pulling to a halt. His fear vanished, replaced by crossness. The fools. Should anything happen to either, Nadine and Beatrice would never recover from the loss.

He kneed his horse forward as Harry, obvious even at this distance by dint of his gleaming gold hair, dismounted and disappeared on the other side of the parked carriage. Tweed also dismounted and, tossing his coat to one of his companions, stalked off some distance, shaking off the delaying hands of friends better than he probably deserved. By now, Pip had been joined by another young man and they were bent over a box that Pip had taken from the carriage interior. Borton hovered anxiously by the carriage door talking to someone inside.

Ned arrived just as Pip and Tweed’s second finished loading the pistols. They looked up anxiously at his approach, and damned if he didn’t think both would have been relieved to discover he was a magistrate come to arrest them all.

“Good morning, Pip,” he said politely, swinging down out of the saddle and tossing the reins to the coachman standing by. He shed his leather riding gloves, slapping them against his thigh before tucking them into his belt. “You’ve certainly been industrious of late. First the Morrow Maze and now this.”

Phillip gaped fishlike at him. Not a look Ned imagined Jenny Pickler would fancy.

“Good day, Borton,” he said, acknowledging Josten’s neighbor. “Where’s Harry?”

“What are you doing here?” Pip finally managed to gulp out.

“I’ve come for the duel, of course.”

He looked around for Harry, who had not yet reappeared, and glimpsed a hoary old head poking out of the side of the carriage. The surgeon, no doubt.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Ned said and went round to the carriage’s other side. There, as expected, he found Harry bent at the waist, tossing up his accounts on the grass. Harry had a notoriously delicate stomach. Even the mention of blood could upset it.

“ ’Allo, Harry,” he said mildly.

Harry’s head shot up, his eyes bulged in his face, and he promptly doubled up and spewed forth more of his supper. He pressed a handkerchief to his lips and straightened, a little shaky but plucky to the end. Wretched sot.

“Damn it, Ned,” he said angrily. “Now look what you’ve done.” He pointed at his boots. “I can’t duel with me boots covered in vomit. Find me a handkerchief, for the love of God, that I might clean them.”

Ned’s eyes widened. Harry had always shown him a healthy deference, but this sounded very much like his father’s autocratic tones, which indicated, if this was a trait he’d inherited from Josten, great distress.

Ned reached up and yanked his cravat from around his neck and tossed it to Harry, who fell to one knee and began scrubbing assiduously at his boot.

“What are you doing here, Ned?” he asked resentfully.

“Exercising my familial right to be concerned,” Ned answered. “I might ask you the same. What are
you
doing here, Harry?”

Harry glanced up. His light blue eyes were dark with emotion. “Defending the family’s honor. Something to which you seem indifferent.”

Ah. The boy was blaming him for this contretemps.

“I see. And what offense did Tweed offer?”

In answer to his question, Harry turned brick red and his gaze fell. He mumbled something.

“Pardon me. Cannon fire has robbed me of some hearing. What did you say?”

He looked up, eyes flashing. “He said me dog was a hermaphrodite.”

It wasn’t often Ned was taken by surprise, but Harry had done it. For a second, Ned wasn’t even sure the boy wasn’t gammoning him, but one look at Harry’s petulant face and he realized he was, indeed, serious.

He cleared his throat. “Thick-witted of me, I’m sure, but in that case, wouldn’t it be the
dog’s
honor you were defending?”

Harry finished cleaning the vomit off his boot and stood up, flinging the soiled cravat to the ground. “The dog was a metaphor Tweed used to offend our family’s honor.”

“A metaphor?” Ned was more impressed by the fact his nephew knew what a metaphor was than the metaphor itself. Especially since he doubted Tweed was capable of making use of one.

“Yes!” snapped Harry. “I don’t even have a dog.”

“Oh.” Apparently he was wrong.

“And he called the dog
Captain
.”

Ned burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it, even though Harry was turning from red to purple, his lips so compressed they’d all but disappeared.

“I am glad you find being called a hermaphrodite so amusing,” Harry pronounced coldly.

Manfully, Ned choked back his laughter. “Oh, I . . . I am sorry. It’s just so ludicrous, Harry. Why ever would you allow yourself to be manipulated so easily and with such scant effort?”

He’d meant to shake the boy into realizing how unworthy this duel was of him. But looking now at his nephew, he realized he’d only managed to insult him.

“You are not part of this, Ned,” Harry said stiffly. “And I will appreciate it if you would leave before the duel commences.”

“I am afraid I cannot do that, Harry. Your mother would have my head on a platter if I stood by and watched so much as a hair on the head of her blue-eyed boy be harmed.”

“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it. I am going to shoot—” The words brought on another bout of sickness. “Damn!”

Ned didn’t bother staying to argue. He inclined his head and withdrew, leaving Harry to clean up his other boot. His exasperation had begun to give way to a very real anger. He was beginning to think it would do the boy a world of good to piss himself as he stared down the barrel of a dueling pistol. Perhaps then he might not be in such a hurry to let a scab like Tweed maneuver him into such situations.

Tweed
. Ned’s eyes narrowed. Harry wasn’t the target of Tweed’s enmity, he was. Tweed only thought to injure him through his nephew, which in Ned’s lexicon was a far worse offense than naming him a dog or suggesting that he’d cheated at cards.

Pip and Tweed’s second studied him with round-eyed wariness. He ignored both seconds, motioning for Borton to accompany him. Tweed’s man fell in line behind them and Pip started after them. Ned turned and stopped him in his tracks with a glance.

“If you value your hide, Pip, you will stay here and keep your cousin occupied on the other side of that carriage for as long as you possibly can,” he ground out, his anger finally surfacing. “I suggest you describe the gory details of wounds you have never seen.”

“Wha—oh,” Pip said, flushing with understanding.

Ned headed to where Tweed stood, one fist resting negligently on his hip, his back arched slightly, and his chest puffed out. “ ’Morning, Tweed,” he acknowledged the burly man.

“Lockton,” he replied, his nostril flaring in a sneer.

Ned smiled. “I anticipate another cold day. Hard to imagine it’s nearly July, what with the frost and all.”

“So Lockton has decided to withdraw his challenge, eh? Can’t say I’m surprised. Though Hickston-Tubbs should have been his emissary—”

“Oh, no,” Ned said, quite gently. “Harry ain’t withdrawing anything, I’m afraid. Perhaps
you
would like to broker an apology? No. I didn’t think so.” He sighed and began shrugging out of his coat.

“What are you doing?” Tweed said, startled out of his insolent sneer.

“Preparing for our duel,” Ned replied, removing his coat and rolling his shoulders experimentally. He handed it to Tweed’s astonished cohort. “Would you mind holding this? It binds a bit across the back.”

“I’m not dueling you,” Tweed said.

“Well, unless you care to offer your apologies, I’m afraid you have no choice,” Ned said calmly. “I am only doing this as a favor to you, mind.”

“A favor? To me? What the bloody hell are you talking about, Lockton?”

“Harry,” Ned replied, rolling back the sleeves of his shirt. “The lad’s not yet twenty-one and it is against the law to challenge anyone who has not yet come of age to a duel. Truth is, he isn’t even twenty yet.”

“It is against the law to duel at all,” one of Tweed’s men said.

“Ah, yes,” Ned agreed. “But we all know that the law is likely to turn a blind eye to the affairs of gentlemen. However, if a fellow were to prove himself not of that rank, by, say, dueling with a boy, the law would be most demonstrably displeased. A trial, I believe.”

Tweed stared at him, hunting for some way to save face.

“Really, how could it be otherwise?” he asked, turning to Tweed’s companions. “Why, Eton and Harrow and Rugby would be littered with schoolboys’ bodies if we allowed them to settle their grievances with bullets.”