Page 102 of Tremaine's True Love
She took another sip of her posset, then another. This was why men got drunk, because it hurt too much to remain sober. Nita would never chastise Mr. Clackengeld for his excesses again.
She was about to drain the contents of her mug when a gust of cold air heralded a commotion at the back door. The cat leaped onto the table and glowered in the direction of the noise.
“Don’t touch my drink,” Nita said, rising—a bit unsteadily. The boot boy had opened the door, though he apparently didn’t know what to make of Addy Chalmers.
“Addy, is Annie well?” Maybe the drink was to blame, but Nita could not find the resolve to don her gloves and cape and slog through a chilly morning to tend the child.
Please, not today. Though she would. Of course she would.
“Annie is fine, but, Lady Nita, I was at the livery, mucking stalls because Mr. Clackengeld is the worse for drink this morning. I knew he would be, and yet the horses must be tended, mustn’t they? The lads were talking, and they’d heard it from Bartlow’s scullery maid when she brought in the eggs.”
Addy was agitated. A mother with a child at the breast shouldn’t be agitated.
“What did she hear?” Nita asked.
“Your Mr. St. Michael has been called out by Edward Nash. They’re to fight a duel, pistols, and George is Mr. St. Michael’s second.”
Nita sagged against the wall between her sisters’ everyday cloaks, hung in age order on pegs. A hanging ham dangled by her shoulder, and her posset abruptly provided anything but comfort.
“A duel?” Nita whispered. “Why, in the name of all that’s sensible—?”
That Tremaine St. Michael—shrewd, calculating, brilliant, and dear—would go off to face death, and over what? Some rash words? A stupid exchange between stubborn men?
Nita would have been enraged, but the idea that Tremaine coulddiekept her pinned to the wall, knees abruptly threatening to refuse their usual office. Death had no honor. A man who woke up hale and hearty could repose in a coffin by nightfall. Tremaine was daft if he thought he alone could cheat death.
Daft and endlessly, hopelessly dear.
“Men can be stupidity itself when they get to flinging their honor about,” Addy said. “You should sit down, Lady Nita. You look a mite peaked.”
“Excellent suggestion, but I cannot seem to move.” Or breathe, or think.Tremaine could die.A quick end if he took a shot to the heart. A terrible, lingering death if the wound festered in a limb, and the worst death of all if the bullet hit his belly.
Nita had not absorbed the grief of Tremaine leaving her future, and now this most awful, non- negotiable, permanent…and he’d apparently chosen this pathwillingly.
“You!” Addy snapped at the boot boy. “Fetch the countess, or my lady’s sisters, and be quick about it. Mind the earl doesn’t see you.”
“A duel.” A funeral, more like. Nita could adjust to a world without Edward Nash in it, but she could not fathom that Tremaine might have Edward’s blood on his hands. Far better to let intemperance end Edward Nash some months hence, or bad fish—anything that posed no risk to Tremaine St. Michael’s continued well-being.
“Come, my lady,” Addy said, taking Nita by the arm. They steered around hams, cloaks, boots, braided onions, and the marmalade cat to return Nita to the worktable.
“Why pistols?” Nita wailed softly. “Gunshot wounds bleed like the devil and can so easily kill a man. They get infected, they disfigure. I hate gunshot wounds.” Nita hated all wounds, come to that, wounds to the heart most of all. “I believe I’m tipsy.”
“I’m the last who’d judge you for that,” Addy said. “Norton Nash told me that guns are preferred to swords so the duel is more quickly over, and because guns allow the duelists to delope. Everybody fires into the air, honor’s avenged, and the gentlemen can get back to their clubs and cards.”
“Norton Nash told you that?” The scoundrel with the cowlick, may he rest in peace, whom Nita was relieved not to have married.
Addy swung the teakettle over the coals. “Norton liked to talk almost as much as he liked to engage in other activities. We were to be married, but because he’d bought his colors, he said we should keep our engagement quiet. You’ll not tell anybody?”
Nothing made any sense. “Why wouldn’t I tell Nicholas, who will hold Edward accountable for Norton’s bad behavior? Nicholas cannot engage in duels because Leah would kill him and he’s the magistrate. Mary is a Nash, isn’t she?”
With the same bright red hair Norton had been so vain about—no cowlick, though.
“Would you turn your bastard daughter over to Edward Nash’s tender mercy? I considered approaching Penny Nash, but didn’t because he might well have left the matter in Edward’s hands. I’m sorry—I know you were sweet on Norton too.”
Half the shire had apparently beensweet on Norton, though what did that matter when Tremaine was facing death?
“Addy, good day.” The countess came down the kitchen stairs, followed by Susannah, Kirsten, and Della. Leah’s greeting held a question, because Addy would no more presume on Belle Maison’s hospitality than she’d open the dancing at an assembly.
“Edward has called Tremaine out,” Nita said. “Tremaine could die in the next hour, and I’m about to be sick.”
