Beauty in Black

by Nicole Byrd

The girl nodded and headed for the hallway.

  The effort seemed to take the last of his sister-in-law’s energy. She shut her eyes, and her face was as white as the linen sheets she rested on. John worried that she had swooned. The maid glanced at him, and he became aware that this was no place for a man, even one slightly related.

  “I will leave you,” he said.

  The maid nodded, then looked past him. John found that Marianne Hughes had come into the room behind them.

  “I am a friend of Lady Gabriel’s,” she said quietly to the servant. “And I have been in attendance when my sister-in-law had her babies. I think I should stay until the doctor arrives.”

  Simpson showed a flicker of relief. “Thank you, ma’am. I admit, I have no experience in birthing. Or with this—”

  It was much too soon to deliver a living child, but John had the sinking feeling that his sister-in-law had begun her labor in earnest, and not even London’s most esteemed physician would be able to stop it.

  It was an ill day for his brother, John thought, feeling an unaccustomed flash of sympathy.

  He retreated downstairs, and, when the butler stared at him, announced, “I will wait in the drawing room. The doctor should be here presently. I hope.”

  The servant gaped, but he showed him into the elegant chamber. Then the man retreated to the hallway, perhaps to listen for the door.

  John was listening, too. He sat down on the edge of a rose-cushioned settee and wished for a glass of brandy, or at least wine, but was in no mood to summon another servant and witness more distress. Lady Gabriel seemed sincerely liked by her staff.

  He thought of his own household, where his servants were most likely taking an unauthorized holiday while their master was away. His absence was such a rare occurrence that he suspected the hearths were going unswept and the beds unaired, and he only hoped his cook was not drinking up all the best wine. John had no heart to summon up any anger at the suspicion. He had no idea what his servants really thought of him, although at least he did not toss bottles at the footmen when he was annoyed, as his late father used to do.

  It suddenly occurred to him to wonder what had happened to Louisa. As if his thought had summoned her, she appeared in the doorway, looking unhappy.

  “I tried to help, but Aunt Marianne sent me away,” she explained. “I only wanted to be of assistance.”

  He nodded. “That was good of you,” he said gently, aware that she had been ignored by all of them. “Perhaps you could go up the schoolroom.”

  She frowned. “My lord!”

  “I meant, to keep the child, Circe, company. She should be there, or perhaps in the attic. Ask one of the servants. The girl is most anxious about her sister, and I fear she has reason. Perhaps she would welcome some company.”

  Louisa sighed, releasing her indignation. “Of course, you are quite right. And she seems to be all alone. I will see if I can find her.”

  She left the room again, and John found that he could not sit still. He jumped to his feet and paced up and down. What was happening in the room a floor above him? And how could he leave Marianne Hughes to face such a trying crisis alone, with only the servants to help her tend to a woman so gravely ill? Yet what did he know of such matters? He could do nothing to help, and he knew she would send him away if he tried to rejoin them.

  When the knock came at the front door, John hurried to the doorway of the drawing room. He heard the butler murmur a few words, and the answering sound of the physician’s voice, then saw the man, bag in hand, hurry up the steps behind the servant. Thank God for that.

  Presently, a footman appeared with a bottle of wine and a glass.

  “Would you care for a glass of port, my lord?”

  John nodded and accepted a glass, throwing back the wine in one gulp. He was not usually much of a drinking man, but if ever there was a fitting occasion for strong drink, it was today. The footman showed no surprise but refilled his glass, then John dismissed him.

  “You may go, but leave the doors open, if you please.”

  After his first moment of relief it seemed as if something should happen now that the physician was here, but whatever actions were occurring upstairs could not be heard below. Silence reigned in the house, and the tension could be felt, hovering in the air like a rainstorm on the horizon.

  John wiped his brow with his handkerchief and found himself pacing again. There was little hope for the unborn child, but pray God the mother would not be lost, as well.

  After a time the door downstairs slammed open, and he heard a heavy tread as someone ran up the stairs. A male voice spoke, its tone angry and alarmed, and then came a murmur in answer, but though John strained to hear, he could not distinguish the words.

  John was not surprised to see his brother soon appear in the doorway of the drawing room.

  He had seldom seen the normally debonair Gabriel so disheveled. His neck cloth was loosened, and his dark hair awry as if he had run his fingers through it. His deep blue eyes held a fierce light in their depths; he looked drunk, but John sensed he was only very afraid, and thus very angry, and so just as dangerous.

  Gabriel glared at his older brother. Was his thank-you sticking in his craw, John wondered, feeling his moment of pity ebb. It was hardly a surprise.

  But Gabriel said nothing at all. Instead, he charged across the room and, before John could react, grabbed him by the throat.

  Gasping for breath, John tried to push the slimmer man off, but his brother seemed almost mad and thus stronger than any mortal had a right to be. For several long moments they struggled mutely, wavering, pushing each other back and forth and sending chairs and tables sliding and crashing all about them.

  Gabriel seemed truly crazed, and his grip implacable. Within moments John found the room going dark around him. Stars glittered at the edges of his vision, and he could not see. One last time, he tried to pry off his brother’s choking fingers, but his strength was fading. . . .

  “No, Gabriel!” someone called from what seemed a long way away. “He came to our aid. I asked him to help, Gabriel, stop!”

  It was the child, Circe. For just an instant Gabriel’s grip loosened, and with one last burst of desperate energy, John was able to push the other man back. John gasped for breath. The room whirled, then settled into place.

  Looking alarmed, Circe stood in the doorway, and beside her, Louisa, eyes wide as she gazed at the two men and the shattered tables and shards of broken glass that littered the carpet. The decanter of wine had overturned, and the dark liquid puddled on the floor. A waste of a tolerable wine, John thought in some corner of his mind.

  But his attention was focused on the immediate threat. His brother’s hands were still outstretched, as if he regretted letting go of his victim’s throat. Gabriel’s lips were drawn back, and he almost snarled. “One of my acquaintances sought me out in White’s and told me my wife had been accosted in the park, carried off in that gawdy barouche you’ve been renting. I knew at once it had to be you. And a woman in the park told him that Psyche appeared to be injured. I did not think even you would stoop so low!”

  “Gabriel,” Circe tried to interrupt. “It’s not like that at all—”

  “Be silent!” John shouted, one hand to his bruised neck. Or at least he tried to shout; with his throat aching from the assault, the sound came out more like a wheeze.

  He had been brutally attacked by a man who owed him gratitude, and now a child had done what he had not had the power to do. His own father would have said that children should be seen and not heard, certainly not a girl child. His father would have caned her for such forward manners. John had felt the lash of his father’s stick often enough. He pushed aside the dark memories; he had never lifted his hand to a child, and he had no wish to do so now. But neither had he any desire to be rescued by a slip of a girl. Perhaps his pride was as sore as his throat.

  “Do not speak so to my sister!” Gabriel shot back. “You have no right to speak at all—you wi
ll not open your mouth in my house while my wife lies above us, fighting for her life. The doctor would not even permit me to stand by her bedside and hold her hand. He had barely time to speak to me. And you—you have cost me my child—you deserve to die for that, alone. If I lose Psyche, too—” Gabriel swallowed hard. “Losing my birthright was nothing, compared to this.”

  Perhaps he might have felt compassion again, if his throat did not throb from his brother’s agonizing grip. But John was done with pity.

  “Gabriel, please listen,” Circe pleaded.

  But the two men were too intent upon each other.

  It hardly mattered that he was innocent of the charge, John thought. This anger had been building between them for years. Childhood quarrels aside, the real seed of enmity had been planted when Gabriel had been disowned by his father—by his whole family. He had left England to roam like a gypsy, earning a precarious living as a gamester, his name dishonored, his relatives aloof. Since that day, the animosity between the brothers had grown apace. Meeting Gabriel’s enraged gaze, he knew his brother understood, too.

  “Just for the record, I am not responsible for your wife’s situation,” he said, trying to pull up some shreds of dignity. He was the eldest; he could show his maturity, even if Gabriel was still bitter over his family’s rejection. “But you have attacked me, and I demand satisfaction.”

  “My lord,” Louisa protested from the doorway, though her tone sounded uncertain. “No, indeed, please do not. Dueling is illegal, and this cannot serve to help the situation.”

  Neither of them heeded her. Gabriel smiled, a chilling lift of the lips that was more grimace than good humor.

  “Nothing could please me more,” he agreed. “Although my only regret is that we cannot finish this matter here and now.”

  “Now, I agree,” John snapped. “Here is perhaps not the best or most appropriate place.” He gestured toward the two females watching, their expressions appalled and apprehensive, and to the shattered mess the brothers had already made of the carefully furnished chamber.

  “Then we will repair to the park in the middle of the square,” Gabriel suggested, pulling off his coat. “Mason,” he called to the butler, who had appeared behind the women. “Bring me the set of dueling swords that are on the wall of my study. They are antiques, but in good order, I think you will find, and no doubt hungry for blood after all these years of vain display.”

  “But you have no seconds,” Louisa tried to argue. “Even if you must fight, this is not proper conduct at all.”

  “We need none,” John put in, for the first time in accord with his younger sibling. “There will be no reconciliation for them to attempt, and the meeting place is set. And as for other formalities, there is a doctor at hand.”

  “Not that we will interrupt him from his more essential duties,” Gabriel shot back.

  “No, indeed. I suspect that when we are done, he will have little left to do,” John concurred, his tone a grim promise.

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “I could not agree more.”

  The butler, his usual impassive demeanor still showing signs of distress, reappeared with two slender blades in his hands.

  Gabriel nodded to his brother to take the first choice.

  John loosened his neck cloth and tossed it aside. He walked across and selected one of the swords at random, lifting it to feel the weight, carving an s in the air to judge its balance. One of the women gasped. Perhaps this was indeed a very old sword, but it was finely crafted and had not suffered for its long inactivity. “It will do,” he said.

  Gabriel picked up the other and motioned toward the door. “We will go out,” he said, “and not disturb the ladies. Mason, if you hear any news about Lady Gabriel, inform me at once. The doctor said it would be some time before he knew—” Gabriel’s voice faltered, and his eyes shut for an instant. He had to clear his throat before he finished, his voice husky, “Before he could judge the outcome.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the servant agreed.

  Both of the females tried to protest, but they drowned out each other, and John walked past them as if they were not there. If Louisa tried to catch his eye, he ignored her effort. Instead he strode down the wide staircase and out the front door, across the avenue to the fenced park and the greenery within, aware that his brother followed a pace or two behind him, his step just as eager. For how many years had they waited to resolve old scores?

  At least the heat of midday had driven any children and their nursemaids back into their respective homes; the park appeared almost deserted. One elderly woman sat on a bench beneath a tree, book in hand, and gazed at the two men in surprise.

  “You may wish to go inside, Miss Strickland,” Gabriel told her. “My brother’s death will not be a pleasant sight.”

  She closed her book and stood, retreating to the gate, but hesitated there, her curiosity palpable. A servant from one of the neighboring houses had come out to the street to see what was happening, and a passerby hesitated just outside the fence. So be it. It was impossible to be totally private in the middle of the city.

  John didn’t care. He lifted his sword and made the customary salute.

  Gabriel followed suit. “En garde,” he breathed, meeting John’s hard gaze with an icy glare of his own.

  Then Gabriel’s sword swung through the air with a speed that made it almost invisible. John raised his weapon to meet the attack, and metal rang against metal. The force of the impact made his blade vibrate in his hand, and he kept his hold only with effort.

  He heard the older woman gasp, but could pay her no mind. She had been warned. Anyhow, he needed all his attention for the conflict.

  He feinted, but his brother was not deceived; he was ready to meet John’s thrust when it came.

  Gabriel followed his block with a slashing attack, coming down hard against John’s sword. Although John stopped the thrust, his brother’s weapon managed to slide off his blade and slit his shirtsleeve.

  A woman shrieked.

  John felt the slight prick, but ignored it. Gabriel might have picked up some tricks during his time abroad, but if he became too confident, John would have him. His attack just now was so wild and frenzied that it was hard to predict, but he was bound to slow, eventually.

  John set himself to meeting each slash, each driving blow, and biding his time for the best opportunity, the moment when Gabriel would drop his guard, when there would be an instant of weakness, and a killing blow could be delivered.

  He had a dim awareness that Louisa and Circe and several of the servants had flocked out to observe the fight, joining other onlookers along the park’s edge. But he was beyond caring, beyond even his earlier concern for the life-and-death struggle going on inside the big house. He had his own life-and-death conflict here, and it demanded all of his attention.

  Gabriel was fighting to kill, and John would meet him with equal determination.

  For long minutes they thrust and blocked and slashed, moving lightly across the grassy sward, with nothing here to hinder their movements. A bird flew away from a bush, alarmed by the tumult, but neither man gave it so much as a glance. The swords swept through the air, met and clattered and rang, steel against steel, and their forging held true.

  The swords endured, but John found that he had to pace himself if he was to outlast his younger brother. He knew that his own physical condition had to be just as good; he had not paced the length of his property so many times for nothing. But he had not had his hand on a sword in years, and it took all his concentration to match his brother’s frenetic attacks and to give back as good as he got.

  In truth, some part of his mind acknowledged, they were well matched. But mostly he had no time to think of anything at all, only the thrust, the parry, the lethal dance of the swords as the two weapons met and circled and struck again and again.

  Gabriel had settled down now into a more controlled fight. John made several attempts to break through his guard, each blow potentially lethal
, but his sibling blocked each one. Gabriel’s own thrusts were just as deadly, but John pushed them aside. Only once, when Gabriel slipped on the grass, did John have the chance to push his sword to his brother’s throat, and, to his chagrin, he found himself hesitate, just briefly.

  He would not win this match through an accidental weakness, he told himself. It must be a clear victory, a win due to greater strength and greater skill; nothing else would satisfy him for the years of humiliation, the countless slights and wounds known only to himself that he had endured because of his brother.

  No, this would be the final accounting, and it must be clean and decisive, with nothing later to reproach himself about.

  So he allowed Gabriel to regain his footing, lifting his sword until his brother’s weapon was back into play. Then the swords clashed again.

  He had no idea how long they had fought, but presently he thought that the sun had shifted the slant of its rays, and he could feel the fatigue dogging his arms, his shoulders, his whole body. But there would be no halt, no apologies. He had waited his whole life for this, and he would have his revenge upon the upstart boy who had so troubled his life . . .

  The blades met again, rang again, and again, neither man could hit his target.

  Then at last, John saw his chance. Gabriel lifted his blade a little too high, and the vital area of the chest was exposed. All it would take would be one clean, swift thrust—

  John began his move, but a clap of thunder threw off his aim, and he felt a sting, as of a bee, but harder, knocking him a little off center.

  Someone screamed.

  Expecting Gabriel to take quick advantage of his loss of focus, John cursed and tried to lift his sword again, but his arm did not seem to work properly.

  Instead of moving forward, Gabriel stood and stared at him, his expression perplexed and his own weapon lowering.

  What?

  John dared to take his eyes off his brother and glance down; his shirt was damp with a widening scarlet stain, and now he felt the pain spreading through his arm and shoulder. His fingers were going numb. Although he tried to keep his grip, he felt his sword slide out of his grasp, and he groaned with frustration.