Page 79 of The Trouble With Dukes
“I’d bet my coach and team Sir Fletcher has blackmailed the poor sod somehow,” Hamish said. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Keswick took a leisurely sip of his drink, which appeared to be lemonade. “We’re talking now.”
“Fine, then I won’t tell you that the glowering lot of lords Megan calls cousins must stay by her side every moment for the next two weeks. Sir Fletcher has made a pest of himself, and I wouldn’t put it past him to propose to my Meggie in public.”
Keswick wrinkled a splendid beak. “Three doors down the corridor, there’s a parlor without a fire. We’ll not be disturbed there.”
Hamish let Keswick lead the way. Though as for not being disturbed, Hamish was well beyond disturbed. Copying Megan’s letters showed determination, cunning, malice aforethought, and all manner of alarmingly shrewd tendencies in a man Hamish wanted to dismiss as a lazy bully.
Keswick locked the parlor door, and while the fire hadn’t been lit, one wall sconce flickered dimly. The room was more shadows than light, and after the chatter and hum of the ballroom, quiet as a tomb.
“Why must Megan Windham be protected from an eligible suitor?” Keswick asked.
“Because Sir Fletcher Pilkington is a damned scoundrel.”
“He’d say the same about you, and has been doing exactly that in half the clubs on St. James’s Street. He claims your violence knows no bounds, you betrayed your men, and you’re half-mad on your best day. What I’d like to know is why Sir Fletcher is indulging a penchant for old gossip now?”
Keswick was inviting confidences, such as Hamish hadn’t reposed in anybody, not even his beloved. Hamish could not entirely oblige.
“Sir Fletcher is discrediting a rival, of course, and if you were in Spain, you know well what was said about me.”
“I was there,” Keswick said, taking up a lean against the mantel. “Saw you snap that poor bastard’s neck. Saw the French start to fall back immediately thereafter. I’d been frequenting battlefields for years at that point, and observing that one death nearly had me retching in the bushes.”
Keswick pushed away from the mantel, and Hamish thought this little frolic among the battle ghosts was over.
Instead, Keswick took two steps closer. “I cannot imagine what that must have been like for you.”
Hamish’s idiot, stupid, useless brain formed words, and his hopeless, floundering mouth pushed them into speech, though abruptly, ambushes lay on every hand.
“I meant to shove the damned man aside, to get him the hell out of my way, but the bloody Frenchman wouldn’t move. I could see a half dozen of the French infantry closing in on my brother from behind, and Colin was oblivious to the danger, focused only on moving forward. I had to get to my brother’s side, or I’d be watching him die, not ten yards away.
“And there was the Frenchman,” Hamish went on, more softly, “blocking my way. I put my hands on him, and then he was dead. I think he slipped. I never meant to kill him. I long to believe he slipped, and that his death was an accident.”
Keswick’s gaze was unreadable in the gloom. “War is a series of accidents, either miraculous or tragic. That ground was so damned muddy we were all slipping, the horses were going down, the artillery couldn’t be moved into position quickly enough. Youraccident, if that’s what it was, turned the tide of a battle that wasn’t going well at all for our side. That single death probably prevented many others on both sides, and yet, I feel you’re owed an apology.”
Hamish had never asked an eyewitness what that tragic, violent moment had looked like to an observer, but Keswick’s recitation brought back memories.
The screams of horses falling in the mud, the cursing of the infantry when the artillery couldn’t do its part as needed, the slippery frustration of boggy ground hampering an advance the French had been mortally determined to stop.
Keswick didn’t offer a ready assurance that the worst moment of Hamish’s life had been an accident, but he offered a reminder of evidence supporting that conclusion.
All of which Hamish would ponder when Megan was safe from Sir Fletcher. “Nobody owes me anything, Keswick—and you’ll not bring this up with Colin, ever—but you lot owe Megan Windham your escort. Sir Fletcher is spoiling to create scandal by calling somebody out, and if that somebody is me, I’ll have to choose between breaking my word to a lady and taking a bullet from a scoundrel.”
Keswick wandered off to a comfortable reading chair. He produced a flask and offered it to Hamish.
Well, yes. A restorative tot was in order after every ambush.
“Are you that poor a marksman?” Keswick asked.
His flask held a fine, smooth brandy. It wasn’t whisky, but it would do. “Compared to Sir Fletcher? Probably. I also promised the Baroness St. Clair I’d not fight any more duels. The baron is a formidable man, but his baroness puts even him to the blush.”
“I’ve had the pleasure,” Keswick said, accepting his flask back. “Gave me considerable encouragement at the time, to think that if St. Clair could stumble into the arms of a good woman, there’s hope for the rest of us.”
“He cheated my secrets from me,” Hamish said, something only St. Clair himself knew. “Drugged my drink, because he said it would have been too much trouble to torture the information out of me. I was supposed to be consoled by that.”
“And guilt has tormented you since,” Keswick said. “Maybe that’s the greatest wound war inflicts—guilt for when we fight well, guilt for when we don’t. Guilt when we leave our loved ones at home, greater guilt when we leave comrades on the battlefield. Here’s to peace.”
Keswick tipped the flask up, then passed it over to Hamish. Gentlemanly consideration meant Hamish took another nip.
