One Moonlit Night (Moonlight Square: A Prequel Novella) Page 5

  It was a hell of a thing, he reflected. Nice girls like Katrina Glendon out there, and I’m about to die over a harlot. He shook his head. Bloody ridiculous.

  Well, Father had always warned him it would end like this…

  The pink blush of the dawn sky glowed behind the screen of the black trees, reminding him of Katrina’s cheeks last night while they were dancing.

  He hoped Society would be kind to her. He regretted that he might not be there to see her triumph in her own eccentric way.

  Netherford came stomping over to him, disturbing his thoughts.

  “This is damned unfair,” the duke growled as he joined them. Their friend Viscount Sidney followed a step behind. “We’ve all been with the woman. Why did he suddenly focus in on you?”

  Gable shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Jason.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” the duke exploded. For all his faults, Netherford was terribly loyal, at least to his male friends.

  But Gable really did not wish to spend what might be his final moments on Earth soothing the duke’s fiery temper. Instead, he grasped for his usual dry humor. “So how does the club’s betting book rate my odds?”

  Sidney flashed one of his famous sunny grins, even now, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Fifty-fifty, ol’ boy. Myself, I have total faith in you. But don’t worry. If he shoots you, I have plans to do the old man a vile treachery of some kind. I’m considering all sorts of nasty options.”

  “Oh, I rather think vile treachery is what got me here in the first place,” Gable muttered. “But thanks anyway. You’re a mate.”

  Then Netherford was summoned to hear the instructions from the worried-looking gent acting as the neutral party.

  As if they did not already know how the movements of this grim ritual played out.

  “I cannot think what must’ve got into Lord Hayworth to start caring about his wife’s indiscretions at this late date,” Sidney mused aloud in a tight voice, continuing Netherford’s conversation of a moment ago in an effort, Gable suspected, to distract him from thoughts of his imminent doom.

  “No idea,” Gable said quietly. “But I do know what got into Lady Hayworth.”

  Sidney snorted at his jest and offered him a flask.

  “Bit early for whiskey, inn’t it?” Gable said, but took it anyway. He swallowed a mouthful and handed the flask back to his friend. “Give me a moment, would you?” he murmured.

  Sid nodded with a pensive smile and walked away.

  Apologize… Gable found himself brooding on Katrina’s advice. After all, she had taken his. Maybe you’re the one who should listen this time, his brain suggested. But what was the point?

  He blew out a restless exhalation and stared down at the grass, then gave in to the pacing in spite of himself.

  What do I do, what do I do?

  He knew he was in the wrong. And if you knew something was wrong, you ought not to do it in the first place, he reasoned, but if you did it anyway, then you had no right to try to weasel out of the consequences afterward by saying you were sorry. You took your just comeuppance like a man. That much was clear.

  But was his refusal to apologize really down to honor, or was this just his pride talking?

  He looked over at Lord Hayworth, who was likewise pacing back and forth on the other side of the field, a middle-aged man with his gray-haired, paunch-bellied friends around him. The lot of them could be found chasing skirts on any given night, as though they were still Gable’s age—under thirty, instead of over sixty.

  Is that how we end up, too? he wondered. Netherford and Sidney and me and all the rest?

  Because if that was his fate, Gable wasn’t sure he really cared about surviving today. It all seemed so petty and pointless.

  “Nothing new to report,” Netherford said as he returned, his dark, fiery eyes looking even blacker than usual. “Twenty paces, fire at the same time, as you requested, rather than by turns. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

  Gable looked at his friend for a moment.

  “Tell Hayworth I want to talk to him first,” he said abruptly.

  Both his fellow rakehells turned to him in surprise, but Netherford nodded and went to convey his request to the enemy.

  Gable drummed his fingers on his arm as he waited for another moment, and then walked through the wet grass to the center of the field for a brief parlay with the old man he had callously wronged.

  Sid and Netherford followed. The marquess’s friends trailed him as well.

  And so, with their seconds hovering nearby, Gable met Lord Hayworth in the middle of the field.

  As he scanned the marquess’s hard, lined face, he noted the scruff of the man’s salt-and-pepper beard. Hayworth looked a bit more sober than he had last night in the ballroom, but his eyes were still bloodshot.

  He’s the one who should be worried, Gable thought. I’m younger, I’m stronger, I’ve got excellent eyesight. My hands are much steadier than his, and I’m a damned good shot. Besides, his wife was the one who wanted me. The whole damned thing was her idea. I just went along with it.

  Then a startling thought slid through his mind out of nowhere. Maybe he’s trying to kill himself.

  I might, too, if I were in his shoes. Made a laughingstock like that…

  “Well? What do you want?” Hayworth demanded in a gruff tone.

  Gable dropped his gaze as a wave of pity washed through him. He cleared his throat. “My lord: I wish to offer you my deepest apologies for what took place,” he said in a clipped, formal tone.

  Hayworth’s eyebrow arched high.

  “It was, er, a moment of weakness for which I am truly sorry.”

  The still-intoxicated marquess studied him with wary disdain. “Well, that’s new. But it changes nothing. I’m still goin’ to kill you.”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Sid exclaimed from a few feet behind him. “He just apologized, damn you! Don’t be daft. Call it off! There is no need for bloodshed here!”

  “Take the chance you’ve been given,” Netherford chimed in. “Besides, it isn’t as though you never did the same when you were our age!”

  “Aye, he still does!” Sid agreed.

  But their contributions only made the marquess angrier. “You two can keep your damned opinions to yourselves! I know you’ve all been with her—and I’m sick of it. I’ve had enough.”

  “At least we don’t go around groping virgins like you do,” Netherford said under his breath.

  “Well,” Sidney amended, glancing wryly at the duke.

  His little jest was well timed.

  Indeed, it was said Lord Sidney could charm the very birds from the trees, and he offered Hayworth a penitent smile, looking like a choirboy.

  “I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around here, my lord. But come, sir,” the golden-haired viscount cajoled the old man, “Roland said he was sorry. We will all stay away from her in future—you have our word. You don’t really want to do this. What will you say to the lad’s father?”

  Hayworth turned his bleary stare from Sidney to Gable once more. He narrowed his eyes, sizing him up, but then he shook his head. “Roland brought this on himself. It’s time that one of you sons o’ bitches got what you deserve,” he grumbled, and walked toward his side of the field.

  “Bloody hell,” Netherford muttered.

  “Your neck aside, Roland, I must say I’m a bit worried about his wife,” Sidney said as they all retreated to their respective areas. “She could be in real danger.”

  “Or already dead,” Netherford added in a low tone.

  Sidney nodded. “We’ll go there after this to check on her.”

  “Provided all goes well.” Netherford gazed at Gable for a moment. “Is there anything else you need?”

  Gable wanted to ask his friends to tell his father he was sorry if he fell, but his voice had left him. He just shook his head.

  “Well, good luck, then,” the duke said.

  Sid clapped Gable on th
e shoulder, then the two retreated from the field.

  Time began to move with dreamlike fluidity with the nearness of death. The moments smeared together while the morning’s birdsong thundered in his ears, a deafening cacophony.

  Gun in hand, Gable went to stand in the center of the field back to back with the aging rakehell. He could smell the sour liquor fumes pouring off the old man.

  “Can I just ask you one question?” he inquired without looking over his shoulder.

  “Go ahead,” Hayworth grunted.

  “Why me? Why now?”

  He paused. “Because she promised me last month that she would stop. And I believed her.”

  Gable winced, sinking even deeper into guilty self-recrimination. “I didn’t know you were trying to make it better between the two of you.”

  “Would it have mattered?” Hayworth asked in bitter quiet.

  “Of course it would’ve mattered!” Gable whispered. “I thought it was…business as usual!”

  Hayworth’s only answer was a low, disgusted growl.

  “Gentlemen! Proceed,” came the order.

  They parted.

  Pistol upright in his grasp, his heart hammering with sickening force, his mates staring from the sides of the field in dismay—and Lady Katrina Glendon probably off praying for him somewhere—Gable walked, counting off the paces.

  Nine, ten, eleven…

  I can’t die now. Not for this. I’ve never even been in love.

  A ray of light broke through the forest and sliced a golden line down the middle of the field. He walked through it.

  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…

  His senses sharpened to a fine point.

  So be it. If this was to be his fate, he had no one else to blame.

  His finger curled around the trigger, every impulse in him screaming with the instinct for self-defense, but Gable wouldn’t do it.

  Nineteen…

  Twenty.

  He stopped, pivoted, and fired at the sky, not even taking aim. The shot roared, the flash leaped, the smoke puffed from the barrel of his pistol. He shut his eyes and braced for the bullet, but instead of slamming into his body, it tore across the fleshy muscle of his arm.

  It burned like hell. His body jerked away from the pain automatically, and a curse escaped him. But when he flicked his eyes open, he saw Hayworth standing in the morning light with a look of satisfied reproach.

  The medic came running, as did his friends. Gable returned the old man’s stare with gratitude—and pity—well aware that he had just been intentionally spared.

  But only because he had apologized.

  With blood pouring out of his arm, he was dazed to realize that Katrina’s advice had just saved his life.

  # # #

  Gable was not surprised in the least to receive his father’s summons later that morning.

  After the medic had bandaged his arm, he had gone home to his terrace house in Moonlight Square while his friends went to make sure Lady Hayworth hadn’t been murdered.

  He ate a slice of toast and drank some tea, which was all his knotted stomach could handle after that ordeal, but the light breakfast helped restore a sense of normality. After this, he went up to his chamber to strip off his bloodied shirt, clean himself up, and get some much-needed sleep.

  At that point, he had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. He could have fallen asleep immediately, but the moment he closed his eyes, his brain offered up the image of Lady Katrina Glendon staring up at him in wide-eyed worry, just as she had looked when they had last parted in the ballroom.

  He had to let her know he was still alive, since, for whatever reason, she seemed to care. Arm throbbing, he heaved himself out of bed, his whole body feeling leaden now that his heightened state of alert from the duel was wearing off. He ambled across to his dressing table, which also served as an informal writing desk. There, he dipped his quill pen in the inkpot and penned her a short note.

  Dear Lady Katrina, he started, then stopped with a frown.

  No. That felt too stodgy, he thought, considering how familiar she already felt to him, even though he had only twice been in her company. Somehow, she had already taken on the halo of a closer sort of friend to him than that.

  He crumpled up the first piece of paper and threw it aside. Sliding another toward himself, he tried again, this time opting for his own blunt style of simplicity.

  Alive. Huzzah.

  He drew a funny little face of some sort at the bottom and signed off, Roland.

  Postscript: Thanks for your concern.

  He sent the message off with his footman, then tumbled into bed and could’ve slept all day, but, alas, his servants woke him only two hours later, and there was only one motive that could cause them to do such a thing: a message from his sire.

  He would really have preferred a note in answer from Lady Katrina. But the Earl of Sefton’s terse wording—Your presence is requested at your earliest convenience—was better translated from Fatherese as: Get your arse over here now, you worthless wastrel.

  There were some forces of nature that not even a duel-fighting rakehell dared defy. Not when his sire controlled the family purse strings.

  Gable breathed a curse, wiped the sleep out of his eyes, and snapped to it.

  He had to wear a roomier tailcoat than usual to accommodate the bandage wrapped around his bicep. His arm burned like hell, and he was a little pale from lack of sleep, and probably from blood loss.

  But other than that, by the time he strode into his father’s grand mansion in St. James’s, he looked more or less normal.

  The old family servants smiled fondly at him as they ushered him toward his waiting father’s study, and the butler offered a discreet look of sympathy as he led him thence.

  Admittedly, Gable’s heart pounded as he approached the door. The march to his place of punishment was not unfamiliar, but it had been a long time—years—since he had been officially called on the carpet.

  The trim, gray-haired butler, Hawkins, went in ahead of him to make sure His Lordship was ready to receive Gable.

  Then he was ushered in to account for his actions. Hawkins whisked away, leaving him standing at attention across from his sire.

  “Ahem. Good morning, Father. You wished to see me, sir?”

  The Earl of Sefton was about Lord Hayworth’s age but his opposite in temperament. He stood by the window, gazing out at the birds in the garden. His only hobbies were golf and a bit of bird-watching.

  Dull fellow, wrapped up in his parliamentary work, Gable reflected, still waiting for any sort of response.

  But he knew the earl was choosing how to begin, likely debating with himself as he stood in the morning light, cravat perfectly starched, posture ramrod straight, hair thinning, but not a one out of place.

  “I trust you are unscathed?” At last, His Lordship pivoted with his usual automaton-like stiffness.

  Gable braced himself and stood at attention. Actually, he had been shot in the arm, but he was alive, and any such complaints would have been duly met with the frostiest scorn. “Yes, sir.”

  The earl’s patrician face was expressionless, but his eyes were fiery. “I hear you have been busy, sir,” he said politely, simmering anger just beneath the surface.

  It would soon erupt, Gable had no doubt. He kept his mouth shut and let his father have his rant.

  “You do realize you are, first, a grown man, not a boy, and second, the heir to an earldom, yes?”

  Gable tensed. “Er, yes, sir. On both counts.”

  “Good. That is very good, son.” Radiating righteous indignation, his father lifted his chin and attempted to look down his nose at him. But he could not really do that anymore, now that Gable was taller than he was. “You further realize that if you die, our title goes to a very obnoxious branch of the family?”

  “Of course I do. If I could just say—”

  “I hear you deloped,” Father interrupted. “And even…apologized?”

 
; Silenced, Gable merely nodded.

  “Well. That much, at least, shows honor.” Lord Sefton paced around his desk. “And that is the only reason I am not cutting you off immediately.”

  Gable looked at him in alarm.

  The earl sighed. “I am extremely tired of your immaturity, Lord Roland. It ends now, do you understand me? Netherford is a terrible influence on you,” he added. “Stay away from him.”

  Gable gritted his teeth. Ah, but he was used to this. Being under his father’s control. He chafed at it with every fiber of his being. “As you said, sir, I am a grown man. I’m sure I can choose my own friends.”

  When his father let this go with no more than a disapproving glance, Gable got his first uneasy inkling that the earl had something larger in mind.

  “Very well. But I have made a decision regarding your affairs.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Since you are so keen to sample other men’s wives, I think it’s time you had one of your own.”

  “Pardon?” Gable blurted out.

  “I am giving you exactly four weeks from today to find a suitable girl and marry her. You have until Saturday, sixth of June. If you fail to do this thing—if you refuse—then you shall live in penury, for that is also the day that, if you fail, I shall be cutting off your funds. My decision is final. This matter is not open for discussion. Let me know when you find her. Good day, sir.”

  Gable flinched, but he was hardly surprised. “Father, I don’t think you understand. If I could just explain—”

  “No, Gable, you don’t understand!” his father suddenly thundered at him, the impassioned use of his first name betraying the fact that he was not just angry, but frightened, belatedly, at how things could have gone. “You are my son! You could have been killed. And even if you weren’t, you could have killed a man this morning! Do you really want to live with such a burden on your soul, all for the sake of your mindless pleasures? Truly, have I sired a conscienceless fool?”