It Takes Two to Tangle

Twenty-Three

The blackness just before dawn was a beautiful time of day.

This in-between time lingered only a sliver of an hour, yet Henry knew it well from his years in the army, from early rising to ready for battle or siege, or simply preparing for another long slogging march. It was a time of exhaustion, when it seemed the night would never end. But it was a time of promise too, just before everything changed, before the sun washed away the darkness and made the impossible seem possible. This darkness felt different from that of the grimy night.

Chalk Farm was stark and silent in the dim. Henry was unfamiliar with the field at the edge of Town, but Jem had assured him that Wadsworth chose the location well. More isolated than Hyde Park, it was deserted at this hour. Not even animals lowed. Only a breeze whispered through the chilly damp.

As Henry stepped out of Jem’s carriage, he could vaguely make out the shapes of trees studding the field, of men with covered lanterns milling around. He’d been sure he would beat Wadsworth to the dueling ground, but he had underestimated the viscount’s courage.

He wouldn’t do so again.

His boots rustled through the grass, eating up distance with great speed. He was ready. More than ready. A little too ready. A cool head was a necessary asset during battle, but Henry had too little sleep and too much to prove to feel cool-headed right now.

A hand seized his arm, jerking him to a halt in midstep.

Jem, of course. Henry squinted at his brother in the faint light cast by Jem’s carriage lanterns. “What? Let’s get started. Everyone else is already here.”

Jem’s head turned in the direction of the shadowy figures beneath the trees, but there was not enough light for Henry to see his expression. “Hal. Please think again. Reconsider this duel. If you would only apologize to Wadsworth, we could settle this whole affair and neither one of you need risk your life.”

Henry shook his arm free. “I’m not going to apologize.”

Jem sighed. “Hal, you must see reason. You could be killed. Wadsworth will shoot you—or even if he doesn’t, you won’t be able to fire back at him without your right hand.”

“You should have more faith in your own brother, Jem. Perhaps I’ll shoot him instead.” A jittery bubble of mirth rose up in his chest and tried to force its way out.

“No. No, you mustn’t do that. I don’t much like the man, Hal. But please, think of the scandal of it. The coroner. I might be tried along with you, you know, if he dies. For my sake, reconsider, if not for your own.” Jem’s voice grew quieter as he spoke. “For my sake, Hal. Don’t do this. Please. Don’t do this to yourself.”

Jem turned his face back to Henry, and the glow from the carriage lanterns etched deep lines in his face. He looked as though he had lost all hope.

Henry was breaking his unbreakable brother. The look on Jem’s face, more than anything else Henry had seen or thought in the last twenty-four hours, shamed him.

And that was a day that included a failed attempt to seduce Frances, a botched proposal, his public argument with Wadsworth, his challenge to a duel, and the revelation about the letters. Frances’s trickery. The betrayal of his trust. The betrayal of… himself, really.

It was a day that had unmade Henry in every way, but not until this moment had he felt himself crumble.

He and Jem were separated by nearly a decade, by a title, by years apart. By temperament. By certainty. Jem was certain Henry was going to die or be disgraced, and he was certain there was nothing he could do about it. And he could not bear it.

It was a brother’s love, pure and simple, and as painful and fruitless as any other type of love.

Henry could not please his brother now. He had meant what he had said to Jem the day before; he was doing this for himself. If he backed down now, he would know that he had failed himself: that he could not let the war end, and that the French would never stop defeating him, and he would never truly come home. He could not let that happen.

It was fitting, somehow, that one last battle would allow him to begin a life of peace.

Besides, he had weapons Jem knew not of. He had stayed awake for long hours after leaving Frances the night before. He had taken a full inventory of himself. He knew exactly what was in his possession now and what was not.

“Trust me, Jem.” He offered his brother a smile, but he did not know if the faint sun-red beginning to creep over the horizon revealed his face to his brother.

Trust me. It was all he wanted. All he asked of those he loved.

He suppressed the thought. Time enough to think of that later. Of Frances. Caro. The snarl of his life. He would comb it out smooth this morning or simply cut the Gordian knot.

“Very well,” Jem said after a long pause. Abruptly, he strode toward the trees and the waiting opponents, and Henry followed, falling into step at his side.

As they walked, Jem recited the procedure in a flat voice. “Lord Carlson is serving as Wadsworth’s second, and he and I have worked out the terms. You will duel with pistols, as you know. Carlson is bringing a set. You will step out twenty paces, turn, and fire. Because you issued the challenge, Wadsworth will fire first. I was able to persuade him down to one shot for each of you. Carlson has arranged for a surgeon to be present.” Jem halted once more. “It will all be done as quickly as possible. I thought that might be easiest.”

For most of them, it might. But to Henry it mattered not at all. He was beginning to feel quite calm. His jumpiness, his too-eagerness, was smothered under sharp awareness as the moment for action drew near. It was as if the slowly brightening sky was sinking into him, burning off everything but the present moment as surely as it sipped the dew from the grass.

“Don’t worry about me, Jem,” Henry said as they began to walk again. “Wadsworth might not find this as easy as he expects. Which makes it all the easier for me.”

He could see the grass beneath his feet now, still shadowed black under the faintly red light of the peeping sun. Dark as atramentum, ruddy as dragon’s blood. All the beauty of art was before him again this morning. Henry did not know whether it would turn still lovelier or if it would all turn ugly.

It was time for something to turn, either way.

It seemed only a second before his feet brought him to the three men who stood beneath the sheltering trees in the field. Wadsworth, pale but composed. Carlson, a stout young lord whom Henry knew only slightly, held a rectangular walnut pistol case with all the pomp of a man proud of what has been entrusted to him. The thin man standing to one side, clutching his hat in one hand and a leather instrument bag in the other, was surely the surgeon.

“Good morning,” said Henry in the most jovial tone he could manage.

“Save your greetings, Middlebrook,” said Wadsworth. “The only thing I want from you is an apology.”

“You shan’t get it,” said Henry. “Even if you offer one first.” He smiled beatifically. “Lord Carlson. Always a pleasure.”

Wadsworth swung an arm in a sharp gesture of impatience and turned away, pacing in a line of five steps, back and forth.

“There is no reasoning with my brother,” Jem said with exasperated apology. “I assure you I’ve tried. Let’s get this done quickly. May I see the pistols, Carlson?”

The lord nodded and opened the case. “As you see, Tallant. There are seconds’ pistols as well.”

Jem blinked. “Ah… I’m sure we won’t be needing those, Carlson. Hal? Care to take a look?”

Henry peered into the case. They were lovely weapons. Gentlemen’s toys, all glossy walnut stock and smooth steel bore, with engraved trigger guards.

“They’ll do. See to their loading, please, Jem.” Henry noted how Carlson’s eyes narrowed and swept over his right arm. Henry could not hold the pistol, pour in powder from a horn, and add shot. That took two hands. But loading the pistol was not the object of the duel.

Henry watched Wadsworth pace back and forth, back and forth, as Carlson and Jem prepared the small guns. By now, Wadsworth had surely paced off a furlong. He probably wanted to walk away; only his pride was holding him here.

Damned pride. Henry felt a flash of unwilling affinity.

He walked over to Wadsworth and stood in his path. The viscount immediately stopped stalking back and forth. His foxy face went up, as if he’d scented something that startled him.

“It’s difficult, isn’t it?” Henry offered.

“What?” Wadsworth looked suspicious.

“The waiting.”

Wadsworth’s mouth tightened. “I can handle it. See to yourself if you’re so worried. I don’t know how you’ll shoot without the use of your right arm.”

A cornered animal again. “Your concern is most edifying. I, however, am more concerned for you.”

Wadsworth turned on his heel and resumed pacing his path. Five steps away from the trees, five steps back. His shoulders were held too high, almost hunched, and he avoided looking at Henry.

“I’m no pheasant, you know, Wadsworth. No partridge. No fox. Have you ever pointed a gun at a human being before?”

A slight hitch in the viscount’s stride, but he made no reply.

Henry continued in a conversational tone. “War hands glory to few but gives almost everyone the chance to handle a weapon. I’ve pointed a gun at many a man before, though never on the dueling field. I imagine it’s much the same, though, don’t you think? The weapons may be prettier, but the act is not.”

Wadsworth was pacing back to the tree now. His gray eyes flicked to Henry’s. In the slow red light, his face looked flushed. “How do you mean, Middlebrook?”

Henry shrugged. “No matter how many statements of honor you wrap it in, it’s still life and death. It’s an ugly thing to risk.”

“Yet you are determined to risk it.” Wadsworth’s chin tilted down and to the side. His eyes roved over Henry’s face. Hunting. Always hunting. Looking for weaknesses.

“I have nothing else to risk. It’s time.” Henry drew a breath. “I am not sorry for my challenge. But I’m sorry that it was necessary. For both our sakes.”

There, Jem. It was almost an apology. That was the best he could do.

Wadsworth narrowed his eyes. “You’re a cur, Middlebrook.”

Henry turned away, took a pistol from his brother. “Then you must do your best to shoot me down like a dog.”

He faced Wadsworth one more time, holding the pistol lightly in his left hand. “It’s not as easy as you think, Wadsworth. To shoot a man or lance him or bayonet him. To see his blood pour out and know you’re the one who stole his life away.”

He raised his eyebrows as the viscount’s mouth grew taut. “But I suppose you have your own version of such an injury,” he said in a voice as low as a lullaby. “You know how to bleed someone dry with words as surely as a bullet could. It just takes a bit longer. Less so, of course, if you choose only the weak. But perhaps you do not always know who the weak truly are.”

Henry turned his head to the lanky surgeon, who stood nearby. Hat discarded on the ground, he gripped his bag of instruments in white-knuckled hands. “Do you know how to remove a bullet, Dr.—?”

“Smythe. Yes, sir, I do, should that be necessary.” Henry had expected the tall man’s voice to be reedy and quavering, but he spoke with quiet dignity. A good choice for a duel.

“Would you say a bullet wound is more painful than a dislocation, or less so? I have suffered one but not the other.”

“I’m told a bullet wound is very painful, sir, though the severity of the wound depends on the location. A dislocation can be just as painful, though as you know, it is not fatal.”

“Not usually,” Henry said. “Well, I suppose it does not matter. Wadsworth, you look a bit overset. Are you taking ill?”

The viscount had been passing his pistol gingerly from hand to hand. He stilled, scowled. “I’m fine. Are you finished with your stalling?”

Henry bobbed his head. “Take your weapon to hand, Wadsworth. I am ready when you are.”

With a nod from the seconds, they saluted, turned, and paced off the distance. Twenty steps each, a matter of only fifteen seconds or so.

Henry pivoted and waited for Wadsworth to take the first shot.

He could see no more than a silhouette in the reddish light. The man had decent form; Henry granted him that. He turned sideways; his right arm and hand rose in a straight line, disappearing against the shadow of his body. Hidden within that shadow was a gun. Wadsworth could fire it at the ground or send a bullet into Henry’s heart. All Henry could do was stand there, a target, waiting.

This is stupid. The idea flashed suddenly into Henry’s head. Stupid, stupid.

Not stupid to stand up for himself; that was one of the brightest things he’d done lately. No, he’d been stupid to let it escalate to the point of life and death. Stupid to think he needed to win over all of London when winning one worthy heart was enough.

How stupid of Wadsworth too, to fight when he did not need to.

The shadow-Wadsworth was taking forever to fire. Henry saw the silhouette of his arm waggle, shake free from the line of his body. At last he pulled the trigger, and the shot went staggeringly wide, the bullet burying itself in the trunk of a tree ten yards away from Henry.

Done, then. It was done.

Henry wanted to jump, cry out, shake Jem’s hand.

But he still had his part to get through. There was only one performance of this show, and it must be quite theatrical if it was to have the desired effect.

He took his stance, pivoted to the side. His left arm stretched out straight and true. His arm, the gun, the form of the shadow-Wadsworth, were all in a perfect line. His hand did not shake as he aimed.

And then he wheeled, and in one swift motion he took sight and fired at the same tree Wadsworth had hit.

Smoke rose like a faint morning mist, and a flutter of applause signaled that the seconds considered the duel at an end. The surgeon would not be needed; nor would the seconds’ pistols.

Henry tramped the forty paces to Wadsworth and stood at his side. “That was not a bad shot,” he said. “We ought to be within a few inches of one another. Unfortunate for the tree, but I’m sure it’ll survive this morning’s work.”

The viscount gaped, quick breaths hitching his chest. “How…”

“If you are satisfied this morning, I am,” Henry added calmly.

“You… your arm…” Wadsworth reached for Henry’s coat sleeve, then drew his hand back as if singed.

“You see, Wadsworth, that I can defend myself. I always will. But I would much rather sleep in of a morning than come back to Chalk Farm. Wouldn’t you?”

The man looked at the gun in his own hand, then in Henry’s. His cool eyes narrowed, and his mouth twitched. “Indeed.”

With a curt nod, Henry walked away. He heard grass rustling a few seconds later and knew Wadsworth was trailing a few yards behind him.

His ears were open to every sound—the high buzzing call of a starling, the crackle of a breeze blowing the drying green leaves of late summer. The sky was the color of mosaic gold and ruby-clear realgar.

The air smelled faintly of powder, but the scent did not tighten his chest, pull him back in talons to the Bossu Wood. It was just a smell. Less pleasant than, say, vanilla. More pleasant than the filthy streets of Whitechapel. It was… fine.

But the world was more than that. It was fine. Not in the sense of acceptable. In the sense of excellent. It was a fine morning.

He met Jem under the tree he and Wadsworth had shot. Poor tree. It had performed a good service.

Jem poked his forefinger into a hole in the bark. “Not three inches between your bullets,” he said in a wondering voice.

Henry handed him the pistol. “Thank you for being my second, Jem. It means more to me than I can ever tell you.”

“You could try to tell me a few things,” Jem said. “For one, how did you make that shot? Was it luck?”

“No.”

Jem darted a sideways glance at him. “How’d you do it, Hal? I was sure you’d be killed.”

Henry couldn’t blame his brother for his lack of confidence. He’d never told Jem the truth, though it was simple. “I may not have known how to write or paint with my left hand when I came back to London, but I knew how to shoot with it.”

Jem was still staring at him, agog, as if Henry had asked him for help trimming a bonnet.

Henry grinned. “There’s no call to practice art or penmanship during war, but a man never knows when he’ll be in a tight corner and will need to fire well with both hands. I simply practiced. I practiced a long time ago.”

He patted Jem on the shoulder, prodding him into a march toward Carlson and the waiting pistol case. Jem’s blue eyes were narrowed for once, not wide, and he seemed to be searching Henry’s countenance in the brightening dawn.

“Well done, Hal,” he said. “Well done. If you had to have a duel, this was the way to do it. I oughtn’t to say I’m proud of you, of course. Not for dueling.”

“Of course.”

Jem sighed. “Oh, Hal. It was hell, wasn’t it? The war, I mean. I hated seeing you with a gun in your hand this morning, but you must have had one in your hand every morning for years. I just didn’t see it happen. I didn’t realize what it meant.”

“It’s all right, Jem.”

“No, it’s not.” Jem shook his head, squinting into the distance. “If I’d been a better brother to you, it would never have come to this point.”

Henry put his hand on his brother’s arm, stopped him. “Jem. It was never your fault I had a gun in my hand.”

Jem twisted away, shaking his head. Henry tried again. “Jem. Listen to me. I know you think you control the world, but you don’t.”

Jem’s eyes flew wide and startled. He stared at Henry. Uncertain.

And then he laughed.

Shakily at first, then strong enough to bring a smile to Henry’s face and allow him to continue. “None of it was ever your fault, Jem. I did what I thought best, and you were the best brother imaginable for letting me go against your will. You could have prevented me, you know. You’re wealthy and influential. Instead, you let me make my own way.”

It had taken Henry a while, but he’d finally done it. The whole of his experience as a soldier could not, should not, be reduced to one day, one arm, one failure. For three years, he had done his best to be a good soldier, a good leader. He’d tried all his life to be a good man.

Quatre Bras had been a disaster. But he would not allow anyone to blame him for it again. He had already blamed himself enough.

It was done.

He chuckled, the sound surprising him. “I suppose that’s worth an arm, after all.”

“What will you do now?” Jem asked. “Are you going to leave London for Winter Cottage?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said.

That was fact: he didn’t know. He had finished one battle this morning. He’d conquered many demons. Hell, he’d even reassured his brother, who had never been in need of reassurance in Henry’s memory.

But he’d left carnage behind him last night—a brutal fight with Frances—and he did not know if the wounds they’d inflicted could be healed.

For now, though, the sun was up, and the air was sweet in his lungs.

For now, it was enough.