by Clare Darcy
“Tell Mr. Addison,” said Rossiter tersely, “that he has a visitor,” and, coming up the steps, he attempted to enter the house.
The large man in the green coat solidly barred his way.
“Now, just a minute, guv‘nor—” the large man began, and was on the instant thrust aside by a powerful shoulder.
Rossiter walked into the hall, only to find himself confronting another villainous-looking rascal, almost as large and intimidating as the first.
“Kindly inform Mr. Addison that he has a visitor,” Rossiter repeated, with a negligent air that took both the men completely off guard, for as the second villain waited complacently for the first to come up behind this unexpected and unwanted caller and seize him, the caller himself suddenly turned and, with a single stunning blow, sent the green-coated man staggering back against the wall, his hands grasping at empty air.
The second villain, recovering from his surprise at this unanticipated manoeuvre, at once bored in upon Rossiter, only to find himself the recipient of an equally punishing blow that sent him crashing into a pier table that stood beside him, overturning it with considerable noise.
The sound and confusion of these proceedings naturally penetrated into the dining room where Cressida, still racking her brains for some means to extricate herself from the extremely unpleasant situation into which she had fallen, sat at the table with Addison, distastefully eating cold chicken and fruit as slowly as possible in order to prolong to its utmost length the period before Addison might begin pressing far more unwelcome attentions upon her. She had had little hope of rescue from any source beyond her own wits, for she was aware that even if Lady Constance, upon consideration, had taken sufficient alarm over the matter to send someone after her, he, or they, would have no idea where to find her; and her heart leapt up with the joy of unanticipated hope as the melee continued in the hall outside.
She had glanced at Addison as it had begun, and had noted the startled frown upon his face which indicated that his surprise was quite as great as her own. Now she saw him rise from his chair, his eyes going quickly about the room, apparently in search of some weapon, for he strode over at once to the fireplace and took down one of the pair of duelling rapiers that hung crossed over it.
The next moment the door to the hall had opened, and Rossiter, in a state of slight dishevelment, and with a trickle of blood coming from a cut beside one eye, came rapidly into the room. His eyes briefly raked the scene before him—Addison standing beside the fireplace with the rapier in his hand, Cressida seated at the table, her hand, still holding a fork carrying a morsel of chicken, suspended in midair as it had halted at the sound of the altercation beyond the door. Then, as a rush of footsteps sounded in the hall, he turned swiftly, closed and locked the door behind him, and dropped the key into his pocket.
“And now,” he said scathingly, ignoring the heavy pounding that immediately began upon the door behind him, “now, if you please, Addison, I’ll have the reason why, since you are apparently merely enjoying an agreeable supper tête-à-tête with Miss Calverton, you find it necessary to employ a pair of hired bravos to prevent your being interrupted—”
Cressida jumped up from the table, preventing herself with difficulty from flinging her arms about Rossiter’s neck in her joy at seeing him walk into the room.
“But it isn’t an agreeable supper!” she said earnestly. “He made me stay, with those two horrid men outside the door, just as he had one of them practically kidnap me in Welwyn and bring me here—” She broke off, suddenly becoming aware of the tense, wary, furious faces of the two men and the rapier gleaming in Addison’s hand. “Oh, Dev, do let us go at once!” she said. “Do take me back to London! I’ve been such a fool—!” “That—yes!” Rossiter said, in the same scathing tone in which he had previously spoken; but his eyes did not leave Addison’s face. “It in no way excuses Mr. Addison’s part in this affair, however—”
“Would you like satisfaction, Rossiter?—is that it?” Addison asked silkily.
“To call you out? I should like it very much!” Rossiter said grimly. “But not over this matter!”
“Yes—you would cut a rather poor figure, wouldn’t you?’’ Addison said tauntingly. “The jilted lover is never an admired part, I believe, and duels attract such a disagreeable amount of notoriety these days. ” The pounding on the door continued unabated. “Good God, what noisy fellows!” he drawled. “I am afraid they may have used you a bit roughly in their zeal to protect my privacy. That cut upon your face—”
“—will not prevent me from serving you some of the same fare I gave them,” Rossiter said, advancing purposefully upon him. “One against one this time, Addison—fairer odds, don’t you think?”
He was within a few feet of Addison when the rapier flashed out suddenly, the point touching the cloth of his coat and holding him pinned there.
“Oh, no, my dear fellow—not so fast!” Addison said, with an unpleasant smile. “I have no taste, I fear, for fisticuffs, and you, I understand from the habitues of Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, are quite a nonpareil at that sort of thing. Now if you were as familiar at Angelo’s” (naming the establishment where a famous fencing-master taught his art) “I might gratify your desire to match skills with me—”
Rossiter, without a change of countenance, stepped back a pace, disengaging himself from the rapier’s point, and, moving to the fireplace, took down the remaining rapier.
“Dev—no!” cried Cressida, feeling suddenly quite sick with a horrid kind of alarm, for she was well aware that Addison was held to be one of the best swordsmen in a London which had at present little interest in this art, affairs of honour now being settled exclusively with pistols, so that Manton’s Shooting Gallery was the place where gentlemen practised their more lethal skills. She sprang to Rossiter’s side and laid her hand urgently upon his arm. “You mustn’t!” she said. “Kitty and I—we’ve both been fools; but couldn’t you leave it at that and come away?”
Rossiter glanced down at her impatiently. “Don’t compound your folly by acting the fool a second time!” he commanded curtly. “I shan’t kill him; you may be assured of that!”
“No, I think not!’ said Addison, taking off his coat and pulling off his boots in such a coolly efficient way that Cressida s fears were instantly intensified.
She had been brought up on romantic novels, her great-aunt Estella having been unexpectedly addicted to this type of reading and having a large library of such works, but she had never been the kind of girl to enjoy imagining herself looking on in a candlelit room while two men fought with rapiers, if not precisely over her, at least over their pent-up wrath and dislike of each other because of a horrid little drama in which she had certainly played her part; and she suddenly felt so furious with both of them for putting her in a position where, if something happened to either of them, she would have to feel responsible for it, that if she had been able to, she would simply have walked out of the room and washed her hands of the whole affair.
But the door was locked and the key in Rossiter’s pocket, so she had to content herself with closing her eyes very tightly together as the two men hastily pushed the heavy table and chairs out of their way and she heard the first harsh clash of steel upon steel.
She then remembered a three-volume novel in her great-aunt’s library, that had contained an episode in which the heroine had rushed between the combatants in a duel, thus effectually putting a halt to it but receiving in the process a mortal wound herself, from which she had subsequently succumbed in an affecting death scene; but, being far too sensible not to realise that any interruption of the combatants’ concentration upon their work was just as likely to result in a mortal wound to one of them as to herself, she put this self-sacrificial idea aside. Presently, unable to bear any longer the suspense of hearing only the scuffle of stockinged feet upon the floor, the quick, panting breathing of the two men, and the ring of steel on steel, without having the least notion of how the b
attle was going, she opened her eyes again.
There was a slit, she immediately noted, in Rossiter’s left sleeve, from which a red stain was slowly spreading, but he himself seemed quite unaware of this. It was Addison, she saw, who was pushing the attack, displaying the brilliant foil-work that had made him one of Angelo’s favourite pupils; but, try as he might, he was having no success in penetrating Rossiter’s guard. Rossiter’s own style was serviceable, stubborn, and of an iron endurance; and she realised after a time the strategy that lay behind it—to anticipate Addison’s every move, to hold him off until he began to tire and, in a moment of fatigue or lost concentration, left himself open to Rossiter’s own attack.
The pounding upon the door, she was aware, had ceased now; the two rogues, evidently wanting no part of the deadly battle they could hear going forward on its other side, had apparently taken themselves off. She thought, in desperation, of overturning the candelabrum upon the table, which was the room’s only illumination, since the curtains had been drawn against the dusk outside; but in this case, too, she could not be certain that in the confusion of the moment in which she did so a fatal hit might not be made. She saw hopefully that, in spite of the fact that it was Rossiter’s shirt that bore that spreading stain, it was Addison who was now obviously tiring; he was breathing in short, harsh gasps, and the speed and daring of his attack had lessened. Rossiter’s own face was grim, wary, and implacable, as he parried that attack with a wrist and arm that seemed as flexible and tireless as the steel with which he fought.
And then, suddenly, his rapier flashed in a lightning lunge in high carte; a long, reddening slash appeared in Addison’s right sleeve near the shoulder; and the blades disengaged. Addison’s dropped to the floor with a clatter as he stood, gasping, his face as white as his shirt, clutching his sword arm in his left hand.
‘Enough?” panted Rossiter, his face still grim and unforgiving. He strode forward quickly, dropping his own rapier, and, seizing Addison’s arm, ripped the sleeve up quickly and examined the wound. “I told you I shouldn’t kill you,” he said then coolly, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket and binding it over the wound. “I admire your skill, by the way—but you lack staying power. We always found it so with the French—”
“Damn you, don’t patronise me!” said Addison thickly. He sank down into a chair, his face colourless. “Can’t stand the sight of blood—never could,” he said, shuddering. “Give—brandy—”
“Your own blood, you mean,” Rossiter said unsympathetically. “The sight of mine didn’t appear to trouble you particularly.”
He strode over to the sideboard, poured brandy from a decanter into a glass, and brought it over to his vanquished foe. At the same moment Cressida, who was in a state of such relief over Addison’s defeat, anxiety concerning the wound that Rossiter had himself received, and fury with both of them for having frightened her almost out of her wits with their obstinate male insistence upon settling their differences at sword’s point, that she had not yet recovered herself sufficiently to say a word, became aware of a renewed disturbance of some sort in the hall outside the locked door. Apprehension that Addison’s disreputable henchmen had returned sent her eyes flying to Rossiter’s. He glanced up.
“What the devil—!” he exclaimed. “Women’s voices? Is that Lady Con?”
He walked over to the door, took the key from his pocket, unlocked it, and flung it open.
The next moment Lady Constance and Kitty, both talking at once, and followed by Captain Harries, who appeared to be attempting to restrain them, tumbled pell-mell into the room.
CHAPTER 18
All three of the newcomers checked in astonishment at the tableau presented to them as they entered the room —the disarranged furniture, the rapiers lying discarded upon the floor, and Addison, very pale, seated beside the table with a glass of brandy in his shaking left hand and his right arm bound with a blood-soaked handkerchief, while Rossiter, also displaying the stains of combat, and Cressida, most unwontedly discomposed, stood staring at them in disbelief.
It was Lady Constance who first, majestically, gave voice to her own thoughts.
“You see, ” she said to Captain Harries, as if putting a definite end to an argument that had been going on between them for some time, “I was quite right to come with you. I had a premonition I should be needed, and it was far more agreeable than remaining at home, with Kitty having the vapours because you would not agree to take her. Cressy, my dear,” she went on, stepping firmly into the room, “I do not know what has been happening here, but I can see that it has all been very distressing for you. In my day,” she said, directing a disapproving glance at Rossiter, “gentlemen did not settle their disagreements in the presence of ladies. ”
“In your day,” Rossiter retorted, with some heat and a disapproving glance of his own towards Cressida, “ladies did not thrust themselves into affairs that did not concern them.”
But Kitty, who obviously found this academic discussion of the proprieties quite beside the point, here drew everyone’s attention upon herself by flying across the room to Addison’s side and dropping to her knees beside his chair.
“You are hurt!” she exclaimed rather redundantly, as he was already quite aware of the fact, as was everyone else in the room.
Addison made a gesture of distaste, which—as the glass of brandy was still in his hand—had the unlucky effect of splashing some of its contents upon her frock. As she recoiled, he said savagely, “My apologies, ma’am!— though perhaps, more correctly, you should be offering me yours, since it is through your curst poor management that I find myself in this case! Perhaps on the next occasion you plan to elope you will manage to keep the matter to yourself, instead of allowing it to become the property of meddling outsiders!”
“But I didn’t—!” Kitty began, looking shocked at the violence of this attack from the ordinarily urbane Addison. “Indeed, it was not my fault, and I am quite ready to m-marry you tomorrow, no matter what Lady Constance may say—”
Addison gave a disagreeable laugh. “Charming of you—but, as your very astute guardians have long since guessed, marriage was never in the picture, my dear,” he said.
Kitty looked at him incredulously. “But you can’t mean—!” she faltered.
“On the contrary,” said Lady Constance briskly, “it is exactly what he has meant all along, you foolish, foolish girl. But now, if you please,” she when on, advancing upon Addison as Kitty, bursting into tears, jumped up and would have run from the room if she had not been restrained by Captain Harries, against whose broad shoulder she was able to sob out her disappointment and disillusionment very comfortably, “now, Addison, I shall have a look at your wound. You are looking very green, and that horrid, clumsy bandage you are wearing is obviously not stopping the bleeding. ”
As the rest of the company gazed respectfully, she untied the rough bandage Rossiter had made from his handkerchief and clicked her tongue disapprovingly over the deep wound in the flesh of the upper arm that was thus revealed.
“You will no doubt, ” she pronounced judicially, “be in a high fever by morning; it is bed for you at once, sir. Are there any servants in the house?”
“None,” articulated Addison with some difficulty, for he was looking decidedly faint at the renewed sight of the wound.
“Very well, then; Captain Rossiter and Captain Harries will help you upstairs to your bedchamber,” Lady Constance said decisively, as she replaced the bandage.
Cressida, recovering her voice for the first time, said indignantly that Rossiter was wounded, too.
“A mere scratch, it would seem,” declared Lady Constance, dismissing the unimpressive stain upon Rossiter’s shirt-sleeve with a glance. “You may, however, bathe it and put some Basilicum Powder on it, if there is any to be found in the house, as soon as he has helped Addison to bed. ”
She gestured imperatively to Captain Harries, who, obediently putting the weeping Kitty aside, came over and, with Ro
ssiter’s aid, assisted Addison to his feet.
Addison stumbled off between them, with Lady Constance leading the way up the stairs and Cressida and Kitty following rather uncertainly behind.
In a bedchamber at the head of the stairs candlelight glowed softly over a scene of sybaritic luxury that reminded Cressida forcibly of some of the more colourful descriptions of Eastern seraglios in Lord Byron’s much admired poems. There were silken hangings and tasselled cushions, even a purple velvet robe flung with ostentatious carelessness across the bed; and Cressida, regarding this evidence of a totally unexpected romanticism in the astringent Addison, suddenly found herself on the verge of giving way to a fit of the giggles, like a schoolgirl.
No doubt, she told herself severely, it was the disordered state of her nerves that was causing this unseemly reaction to the sight of the scene prepared for Kitty’s—and then, by default, her own—seduction; but then her eyes caught Rossiter’s; she saw her own amusement mirrored in his; and her heart suddenly lightened in a most extraordinary fashion, as if all the terrors of the past hour had melted away like a summer morning mist.
Lady Constance, meanwhile, after glancing about the room with obvious distaste, ordered Rossiter and Harries to help Addison to bed, and herself departed, with Cressida and Kitty in tow, in search of bandages and medicaments. Having ruthlessly dismembered a fine linen sheet for the former purpose and resigned herself to nothing more restorative than hartshorn and Basilicum Powder for the latter, she returned to her patient, who was by this time propped up on the pillows in his gorgeous bed, looking more ghastly than ever.
“We shall have to fetch a surgeon to him, of course,” she said, briskly taking command once more. “Captain Harries, will you be good enough to drive back to Welwyn at once and fetch the local man? Captain Rossiter will remain here and have his own wound—which I apprehend is not at all serious and therefore does not require my attention—tended to by you, my dear Cressy. Kitty, you will remain here with me. I shall require your assistance in dealing with Mr. Addison.’