Page 122 of The Captive
Iloveyou. I will always love you.
Stoneleigh steepled his fingers and said nothing. He didn’t have to speechify further, for Christian already understood that anybody who considered himself Gilly’s henchman could not approve of this duel.
“I will pass along the letter should I hear of your death,” Stoneleigh said, “and return it to you if you prevail. You’re confident of prevailing?”
“I’d be a fool to call myself confident against a man of Girard’s cunning. I’ll do well enough with pistols. If he chooses swords, a few prayers for my soul might be in order.”
“Your Frenchman isn’t stupid. A stupid man might have tried to hide.”
“He’s not stupid, but he’s arrogant and given to histrionic displays and—unless I miss my guess—weary to his soul.”
If a soul he indeed possessed.
Stoneleigh rose and busied himself moving pots of violets around so the most flowers benefited from the sunlight pouring in the window. “You’ve chosen your seconds?”
“We have.”
“Well, then, I have nothing more to say except best of luck. Where is the match to take place?” He lifted one blue ceramic pot sporting a cluster of deep purple flowers and sniffed.
Gilly had been denied even the pleasure of the gardens. Would she tend Christian’s burial plot if Girard should prevail? She’d probably plant nettles over Christian’s grave and water them frequently.
“St. Just will offer three locations in reverse order of my preference.” He went on to describe them, two being in London’s environs, one in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, and all surrounded by dense woods to ensure privacy. When Christian left an hour later, he was confident that Stoneleigh would deliver the missive to Gilly if the need arose, and keep his mouth shut about the business generally.
When Christian returned to St. Just’s town house, St. Just’s mouth was busy swearing heartily in what Christian suspected was Gaelic.
“Calm down,” Christian said, closing the door to a surprisingly well-stocked library. “You met with the second, and the details are resolved. If you can recall the King’s English, you might consider sharing those details with me.”
A volume of Blake sat near a reading chair, opened to the very same damned poem Christian had quoted for Gilly. She’d known much more about being mocked in captivity than he’d understood.
“He’s chosen foils,” St. Just spat. “The bloody Frog wants foils.”
Well, of course. “To the death? Hard to kill a man with a foil.”
“Not hard,” St. Just said. “Time-consuming, for you must pink him over and over, or try for a lunge to the heart or lungs or windpipe—some damned organ that will shut him down. Messy business, foils, and not the done thing.”
An odd notion flitted through Christian’s head as he shoved Blake into a desk drawer: captivity came in many forms. A marriage being one, a dungeon being another,aquestforvengeanceanother, though far preferable to the variety Girard had traded in.
“Perhaps among the French, foils are the done thing.”
St. Just left off pacing long enough to move a carved white pawn on a large chessboard that sat under a tall, curtained widow. The set was marble and had to have cost a decent sum.
“If you’d like to spar, Mercia, I can accompany you to Angelo’s.”
“Generous of you, but if I did not acquit myself well, my confidence would suffer, and if I bested you, I might become overconfident.”
“Tell me you’ve at least been practicing,” St. Just said, walking around the chessboard and fingering a bishop, as if he’d oppose himself.
“I’ve been practicing.”
“With asword?”
“You fret over details,” Christian said. “I must meet the man, St. Just. For the sake of my own sanity, I must meet him, and the outcome is in God’s hands. If I best him, he’s dead. If he kills me, he will be tried for murder and executed. Either way, a just God will see a period put to the man’s existence.”
“Not God,” St. Just said, shifting the black bishop half the width of the board. “Don’t bring the Almighty into it. That good fellow thought twenty years of mayhem at the hands of the Corsican was merely entertaining. Half a million men dead in the 1812 campaign to Moscow alone, and you want God to determine the outcome of this duel?”
“St. Just, must I get you drunk?”
“Tonight, yes,” he said, scowling at the board once again from the white perspective. “You’re to meet your man the day after tomorrow, at daybreak in the copse a quarter mile distant from the Sheffield Arms. We’ve arranged for two surgeons, as the choice of weapons was—Blessed Virgin preserve us—foils.”
