Her smile died. “It is to first blood only, is it not?”
He nodded. “And you’re as certain as that I’ll lose?”
She looked away rather than answer. Ouch; she was certain indeed.
“It’s not as if I’ve never taken a fencing lesson in my life.”
“Send to me tomorrow, after it’s done. A thousand times, good night.” Coralie paused at the balcony door, turned back with a long, deep stare. The candlelight within flickered, and she was gone.
Parting was such sweet sorrow. If he’d been her falcon, now, she could call him back, a lover’s silver voice in the moonlight. But unlike Juliet on her balcony, Coralie had too much self-possession to go, to return, to go again. No matter how much he yearned for her already.
The mist was already rising, curling around the buildings, drifting through the common. Haunting. Dreamlike. Rainier walked home, wading through it.
Would that he was her bird.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday, October 30, 1813
The dream stretched into waking and the grey, foggy light before dawn. Silver birches the same hue as the mist loomed about Hyde Park like silent sentinels. Distant hooves clopped past; a nightjar chirred its last and fell silent. The dampness weighed on Rainier, slicking his greatcoat and tailcoat as he stripped down, making his fingers clumsy. He handed his apparel off to Anson and glared before the buffoon could toss it across a handy, wet railing. Instead Anson passed them on to one of the liveried footmen. For a supposedly secret duel, there were certainly enough servants hanging about. At least they were the only audience, his nightmare of half the ton dropping in not coming true.
Across the grove Cumberland limbered up, lungeing and parrying with his heavy cavalry saber held perfectly level, perfectly steady. In the reigning mist, his white shirt plastered to his chest and arms, flowing with his movements, outlining his musculature and emphasizing his controlled strength. The steel glinted blue-grey in the pre-dawn light, the wicked edge flashing brighter sparks. Rainier caught himself wondering how it would feel sliding through his flesh and forced himself to turn away.
In a generous offering — and exactly as Rainier had expected — Cumberland had brought a second cavalry saber. But Rainier’s first lunge with the massive curved monstrosity felt like swinging a fence post. It dragged him forward, strong as a horse, and he pinwheeled frantically, skidding in the wet grass. Only luck kept him from thumping to the ground in disgrace.
A strong hand beneath his elbow helped him straighten. “All right there?”
Rainier swallowed. The face inches from his, middle aged, puffy with rowdy living, had sandy hair curling back from a high, sloping forehead and rather protuberant blue eyes. The weathered skin of a soldier, the roughened hands of a swordsman — and the face of the House of Hanover. Cumberland’s second, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, second son of Good King George and the Prince Regent’s younger brother, muscled him erect.
Anson had tried to warn him.
“Th-thank you, Your Highness.” Rainier hefted the saber. Not a fence post; a tree trunk. “Perhaps I should stick with the weapon I know.”
Prince Frederick nodded at the saber. “Those do take some getting used to, but—” He broke off, glancing at the lighter, slimmer fencing saber Anson held ready. A grimace creased the prince’s face.
What a choice: use the lighter weapon and risk it being smashed by his opponent’s tree trunk, or use the heavier one and risk losing his balance and therefore the fight. The prince’s glance was pitying — Either way, you’re screwed, me lad — and he stepped back without offering any advice.
The duel was already going wrong. Thankfully it couldn’t get any worse.
* * * *
Cloak flaring, Coralie ducked into the scullery, pulling Lissie in behind her. Without glancing at them, Mrs. Lacey continued past their hiding place to the butler’s pantry, calling ahead as she went.
“Mr. Severidge, could you carry the breakfast tray to Miss Busche’s room? I simply cannot manage on my own and the footmen are all otherwise engaged.”
“Of course, Mrs. Lacey. You’ve only to ask.” Severidge’s voice swelled into fruity melodrama whenever someone’s request made him seem important. Coralie rolled her eyes, pressing her ear to the door beside Lissie’s. Footsteps faded in the opposite direction, diminished up the back staircase, and finally fell silent.
“Come on.” Lissie grabbed her hand and darted toward the servants’ entrance, unguarded with Severidge out of the way. Mrs. Lacey had said she’d tell the butler Coralie was in the bath should he pry, with a good dose of shame-on-you in the process, but honestly, who cared what Severidge thought once they were gone?
They drew up their hoods as they raced outside.
Together they ran through the mist, past the shops on Hill Street, and scrambled into the park. No need for talk; they’d made their plans, giggling and terrified, as they’d kept each other awake all night. More than once Lissie’s face had twisted, and each time it happened, she’d then asked, “Are you certain about this? Are you certain this is what you want?” Finally, Coralie had told her the truth.
“I can still feel his voice on my skin, Lissie, I can feel the moonlight. He came here in the night, hoping to see me, not knowing how I’d receive him, and he told me he loved me. No, I’m not yet certain this is what I want. But I know I must be there.”
Dark giants loomed in the mist and in front of them shadows moved, forming two clusters. Light flashed from something, something metal, and Coralie clutched at Lissie’s hand as they crept closer, sneaking in through the looming birches’ shelter. Their footsteps whispered through the grass, but Coralie couldn’t quieten her frightened breathing nor her thumping heart.
There, a glow of white — His Grace, his fine shirt sticking to his chest and powerful shoulders. He swung a sword back and forth, experimentally, as if it felt strange to his hand, and his mouth grimaced. Suddenly he glanced up, directly at her, those keen eyes piercing the thinning mist, and Lissie clutched back. But he looked aside without acknowledging them, without giving their presence away, and Coralie breathed easier as they settled behind the birches’ cover.
Lissie freed one hand and pointed. On the second group’s far side, Mr. Rainier lunged, sword flashing in the brightening grey gloom. If only she knew something of fencing — but he radiated expertise, blade flicking back and forth against an invisible enemy, his body never still long enough for the enemy to connect. Like an ancient knight, he defended her honor, and again the magic he’d conjured between the moonlight and his voice stroked across her arms. Coralie shivered.
“I’ve never seen a dead person,” Lissie said. Her voice sounded strangled.
It shattered the moment and cold horror turned the delicious shiver to an all-out shudder. What a horrid thing to say. Coralie swallowed. “I have. My mother first, when I was small, then my father, five years after.”
Lissie wrapped an arm about her shoulders and drew her close. “I hope we won’t repeat that unhappy event today.”
“I think I understand now.” But Lissie’s glance was confused, so Coralie tried to form her half-felt, nebulous thoughts into words. “What His Grace tried to tell me at the Foresters’ ball, I mean. He said that good breeding isn’t what a person wears or quotes, but what a person does. I think he was trying to say that love is the same. Love isn’t an emotion, or not just an emotion, because that might or might not be transient, and the one point regarding love that all the poets agree upon is that it never changes.” She took a deep breath. “If that’s true, if love is a fixed element, then in love, emotions aren’t the most important part. What matters most is what a person does.”
Then the men gathered together, the two groups of shadowy figures merging into one, and the sordid implications of her own evasive behavior were swept from her thoughts.
* * * *
Rainier raised his fencing saber in salute. Cumberland raised its twin; he’d chan
ged down from his heavy cavalry saber after warming up, scorning an advantage in weapons, insisting the fight be equal. High gallantry, that gesture — Prince Frederick famously had not taken his shot in a duel when his opponent, firing first, had missed — and Rainier’s soul warmed in appreciation.
But behind the cold blade, Cumberland’s face froze in still, pitiless lines, all generous humanity locked away. Strangely, his eyes seemed paler, his face, his shirt, as if the combative setting or perhaps the mist washed the color from him and left behind a white anger. The blade’s fuller paralleled the saber’s glinting edge, a dark line unsurrendered to the brightening dawn, and the elegant silver-and-gilt guard curving about Cumberland’s white-gloved hand provided the only color in the mist’s grey world.
Prince Frederick dropped a handkerchief.
His heart and competitive drive surged. He’d not be backward in the challenge. Saber up, Rainier danced in for a parry.
But Cumberland’s saber swept his aside with contempt, smashing through his hasty defense. Steel clanged on steel and the vibration jarred up his arm. In the same motion Cumberland slashed toward his wrist. If he connected, the fight was already over. Startled, Rainier leapt back, took the slash on his blade, tried to turn it aside — and jumped back again before a threatening jab. Another jab, and another, a fourth, and he’d no choice but to give ground, fighting for balance across the slippery turf. His pulse roared; the fight had escalated to savage with the first swing.
Another jab, right where he’d stood less than a second ago, and he couldn’t possibly turn all of them, sooner or later one would hit home—
Something dark in his eye’s corner, something black in the otherwise colorless world. He risked a glance. Two graceful forms in hooded cloaks stood beneath the birches’ shadows, as still as if painted there. Their faces, their details, were lost in the damp foggy void, but one held her hand to her mouth; the other gripped her companion’s arm.
It just got worse.
Quicker than a snake, Cumberland slashed, low and inside, his blade’s edge suddenly rising. Steel flashed. Rainier retreated again. Pressure on his sleeve, a whisper of cloth, then the white shirt gaped open. The vicious attacks paused. But no red stain spread. He’d paid for his inattention with his shirt, but not with defeat.
He just needed to concentrate, to organize his defense — to remember his lessons. Rainier blocked the next slash, letting the stroke vibrate up his arm and jar his teeth. But when he turned the block to an attack, Cumberland’s saber had moved, twisted, jabbed at his side. His following parry was again swept aside, and again that cobra-like saber wasn’t where he’d anticipated as the jab turned to a swipe.
Nothing he tried had the intended effect; nothing hit home nor even close to it. He fenced his best and he’d tried every pretty move he knew, everything his French fencing master had drilled into him. But Cumberland fought in some other manner, some way he’d never seen, at an incredible speed and with a ferocity that had to hark back to some Peninsular battlefield. Behind the flashing, everywhere-at-once saber, Cumberland’s face remained frozen and pitiless. His unfocused eyes didn’t follow Rainier’s inadequate weapon, but his chest.
A slow, gripping coldness seized Rainier’s soul, squeezing him, refusing to let go.
Anson had sized up the situation perfectly. A man could die, fighting this duke. Whoever would have thought Anson would have the right of it?
And Cumberland spoke.
“You want her. You and I both know this is truth. Do you think you’re going to win her by giving ground?”
Cold words, in a low, cold voice; words as edged as the weapons.
He should never duel again. For that matter, he should quit fencing at all, clearly he’d proven useless at the sport—
And for a sudden, inexplicable moment the world stilled around him, clear, sharp, distinct, unsmeared by his assumptions, his desires and pretensions. Each microscopic drop of mist stood out, each forming edge of the birches’ shadows, each wild strand of Cumberland’s dark hair, each rustle of turf as the park awakened. The frustrated ferocity in his soul; the very underpinnings of his heart. With violent death staring back at him, his feet moving inexorably in reverse, the saber weighting his arm — in that moment, Rainier saw himself more clearly than ever before.
Yes, he only pretended to be elegant and superior; he knew it and possibly everyone else did, too. But he’d so positioned himself not by demonstrating superiority, but by quitting whenever he couldn’t.
He’d quit drawing. He’d quit painting. Debating. Writing poetry. He’d quit any enterprise where he didn’t excel. Was it Hortense’s fault, Lucia’s? or his own?
The only competition he’d ever won was collecting, his indifferent statues, his unsatisfying books. But collecting would not win him the woman he loved.
Cumberland was right. He had to fight to win her. He had to fight.
Anger surged through him, driving out the posing, the pretending, the fencing lessons — everything except the Continental warrior at sword’s reach. Another jarring block, steel to steel, and that time, half the energy came from Rainier’s attack, sending the vibration as well as feeling it in his own aching arm. Slick grass — Rainier dug in his heels, found solid footing beneath the wet. He’d back no further. The pretty moves, the pitiful attacks, the deliberate defenses — what use were they, not even holding their own? He’d prided himself on elegance all those years. But was it truly elegance when it was so studied? Was it anything when it proved useless?
Ferocity. Cumberland had shown him that from the beginning. Ferocity was the key.
Cumberland’s next swipe slid past. Rainier lunged in, saber glinting. Steel clanged, pushing his aside. He surged up with an underhand slash. Clang. He twisted the saber in a feral jab. Clang. He shouted and smashed in with brute force. Clang, then clang again, the accelerating, repeating beats merging into a continuous silvery echo. Despite the mounting ache in his battered arm, the screaming muscles in his legs, Rainier couldn’t penetrate Cumberland’s defense.
But nor did he take another step in reverse.
Sweat dripped into his eye. Rainier shook his head, shook it off, twisted, swung, blocked the expected thrust. Clang, the echo shimmering more quietly. He jabbed, meeting Cumberland’s attack halfway. Less of a rousing clang, more like the mournful tolling of a small church bell. Rainier heaved in a breath, refused to let his saber droop as he swung yet again. Cumberland’s blade swept his aside — and didn’t withdraw. It sliced forward, past his tiring counterstroke, and slid into the meaty part of his left shoulder.
No pain. One expected pain when steel hit home. But he felt nothing. The blade’s curving point vanished into his body, held motionless, not cutting deeper, Cumberland still with excellent control. He could’ve thrust the saber in to the hilt, or aimed for a more vital spot, his heart, his throat. There’d been every chance when his own defense had gone aside.
Cumberland yanked the blade free. Red stained the tip, barely an inch, not coming close to the fuller, a smear of gore like a painted stripe on the steel’s flat edge.
First blood.
Over. It was over.
Chest heaving, saber sinking, Rainier dragged his gaze from the red smear. Sweat darkened Cumberland’s shirt and plastered his dark curls to his skull. His pitiless face eased, some feeling returning to his focusing eyes. He raised the saber in salute, and added a reluctant, respectful nod.
Chapter Seventeen
Saturday, October 30, 1813 (continued)
As the strange man approached, two footmen trailing behind him, Coralie tried to understand what had just happened. So fast — it had been so fast, so furious, then so suddenly finished. For three heartbeats no one moved, His Grace holding his salute. Then Mr. Rainier slumped, swayed, His Grace dropped the saber — and the stranger stopped in the way, blocking the view, Lissie yanking at her arm. Curtseying, for some inexplicable reason, and deeply, not a casual bob. The stranger bowed—
No, not a stranger. She’d seen a small oil painting in Franklin’s study, a copy of a royal portrait, someone with the same eyes, sandy hair, receding hairline. The same kind eyes.
Strange. Everything seemed so strange. But she obeyed the insistent tug on her arm and dropped into a curtsey, even as she remembered the man’s name and tried to peer around him.
“Your young man will be fine,” Prince Frederick said. “He’s barely scratched. Now, let me see you two home. That’s Berkeley Square, am I right?”
And he offered them each an arm.
From the grass to the pavement, back across Park Lane and along Hill Street, past the awakening stores, shopkeepers stirring and rattling behind their brightening windows. A shapeless dog wagged and stretched, and a staring groom led two harnessed bay horses toward a grand house’s mews. Doubtless a carriage awaited. Lissie said something and Prince Frederick answered, but she couldn’t hear their words through the clamor still ringing in her head.
A kind hand patted her arm. “He’s your young man, then?”
Coralie glanced up. The prince examined her face, not rudely, but like a physician or apothecary might study a patient. Funny that her distant, distracted behavior worried the man third in line to the throne.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I’m not certain.”
Prince Frederick grunted. “Perhaps he should be.”
“Did he fight well, do you think?”
A pause. Then he glanced away, and her heart grew tight and cold in her chest. This scion of Hanover had remade the British Army, created a war college at Sandhurst, prevented Napoleon from invading a decade ago. His opinion mattered.
“There at the end,” the prince finally said, “he fought like a trooper. Wouldn’t have disgraced a crack regiment.” He met her eyes again, honest, steady. “S’truth.”
Shenanigans in Berkeley Square Page 13