Page 35 of A Duke of One's Own
The desperate woman blustered, ‘Why was he even there? His reputation will be?—’
‘My reputation,’ said a conversational voice behind her, ‘is so very bad, you know, madam, that nothing you can say can make it worse. Of course I was at an orgy. Where else would I be? Nobody will have the least difficulty believing that I have attended orgies with tedious regularity. The – ah – heroic role I played there on this occasion, of course, will be something quite new, and I dare say will go a long way to rehabilitate me in the eyes of the world. It is a romantic tale, in fact, with a little spice to it, just suited to the modern taste. I expect they will make a play of it, and we shall see ourselves on the stage. And you did introduce us, after all, for which I must always be grateful. As my dear wife says, it seems we owe you our profound thanks.’
The Duke stepped forward from his place of concealment and moved to take Georgie’s hand in his, but he was not to have the opportunity to do so. With an enraged bellow, Captain Hart burst from the undergrowth where he had been hiding and charged straight at him, fists upraised in threat. His Gracewas astonishingly swift in his recovery and stepped aside neatly, and the Captain whirled and came about again. They stood facing each other, both of them taking on a pugilistic stance and circling each other warily, and the Duke smiled. ‘What a surprising afternoon it has turned out to be,’ he said coolly. ‘And who in the devil’s name are you?’
‘He is Captain Hart!’ Georgie cried. ‘You know I told you of my foolish entanglements last year…’
‘I see,’ replied her husband, enlightened, still smiling, perfectly relaxed. ‘The importunate gentleman you struck down with a poker, I collect? What an excellent thing – I don’t recall ever encountering anyone who deserved it more. I wish you might do it again, my love. But this does not explain what you are doing here now, Hart. I do not?—’
The Captain launched an impetuous attack as the other man was still speaking, but it seemed he had signalled his intent to his more experienced opponent by some incautious motion of his body, for the Duke sidestepped him once again – he was the taller, heavier man but somehow much the faster – and struck him flush on the chin with a powerful and unexpected blow from his left fist that set the Captain reeling. A neat blow from his right followed it, and Hart collapsed groaning at his feet.
Mrs Aubrey had been watching all this, unheeded, and now she stepped forward. Any self-control she had previously laid claim to had deserted her when she saw her precious schemes all thwarted, her brother floored, and in Georgie’s eyes she now appeared quite distracted. Her eyes were wild and her hands were trembling. ‘To answer your question, Duke,’ she said, pulling a small pistol from her muff and pointing it at him, or in his general direction at least, ‘he is my brother, and if he cannot make you pay for what you have both done to us, I will!’ She added between gritted teeth, apparently having reached the end of her patience and passed some way beyond it, ‘I have observedin the past that I must alwaysdo everything myself! You owe us money, both of you, and you shall give it to us before you leave this place!’ Glancing down at her brother with what seemed to Georgie a contemptuous look, she added, ‘Or should I say, you shall give it tome?’
‘I cannot see that shooting either of us would do you the least good,’ said Gabriel, preserving his calm as the pistol waved disconcertingly about and Georgie stood frozen in disbelief. ‘Unless you have an unaccountable desire to end your life at Tyburn Tree, of course, which surely cannot be the case. Put down your weapon, madam, and we can converse. You must perceive that the Captain is not seriously hurt. Nothing that cannot be mended has happened here yet.’
‘You can’t intend to kill anyone, Caro,’ added Georgiana urgently. ‘Gabriel’s right. You can still walk away from this.’
‘She doesn’t know how to,’ said the Duke coolly and, his wife could not refrain from thinking, unhelpfully. It was true – she could see that Mrs Aubrey was in a trap of her own making – but there was no need to remind her of it. They stood in a tense little triangle, quite close together, the outside world near but forgotten, Hart groaning helplessly as he lay disregarded by all of them. It was hard to see how matters were to be resolved without harm coming to one of them, since Mrs Aubrey seemed determined to cling to the only advantage she had: her pistol.
And then there was a sudden, shockingly loud sound nearby – a cry, a scream, a child, a bird, it was impossible to tell, and Georgie saw Caro’s finger tighten in reflex action and knew with sickening certainty that she was going to fire, more or less by accident, not deliberately or not wholly so, and that if she did she would hit Gabriel and kill him. Without pausing to think, for there was no time for that, she flung herself in front of his body, pushing Caro down in a rush as she did so. There was a crack, and Georgie crumpled insensate at his feet. She was hit.
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Gabriel saw the whole thing happen in slow motion. Mrs Aubrey pulled the pistol – small but sufficiently deadly in appearance – from her ridiculous muff, and spoke, though he could barely hear her words over the roaring in his ears, some farrago about Hart being her brother. He spoke, calming words, though he had little idea what he was saying. Then a sudden shocking sound – a bird’s cry, some tiny cool part of his brain told him. The woman was startled, and the gun jerked up… Heknew, he knew with horrifying certainty before Georgiana so much as moved what she was going to do. But he could not stop her. He was not fast enough. And a second later she lay stretched out on the ground, her face as pale as death, an ominous stain spreading horribly fast across the pale pink silk of her pelisse.
He fell on his knees beside her. He wanted to seize her in his arms and cradle her to him, to will life back into her as it ebbed away. He wanted to reverse time, to throw himself in front of the bullet, but he could not, he was powerless. And it would not help her, any of it, but might make things worse if there was still some fragile thread of hope. So instead he took her wrist with fumbling hands and felt desperately for a pulse.
It was there, thank Christ, she was alive, at least for now. And as the worst of his panic receded, he realised that the wound was in her left arm, not her breast or her abdomen, so it seemed she had not been hit in the heart or in the lungs, or another vital organ. Perhaps it was just her arm. Just that, though that was bad enough. But she was unconscious, insensible, and when he very gently chafed her right hand, when he touched her pale little face and called her name in pleading tones, she made no response. A wound to her arm should not do that; she should at least be moaning, showing signs of distress, not lying there terrifyingly still and silent. She had hit her head as she fell, he feared.
There were people around him now, people who would insist on asking him a great number of foolish questions, which he could not hear at all over the roaring that still filled his ears, and crowding about him. He turned on them and spoke a few words in a low, biting tone. Once more he had not the least idea of what he said, but it made them fall back and give him space.
He could not leave her here. He was afraid to move her, but he could not leave her here, broken and bleeding into the dirt. He must take her home, find help. Surely somebody competent would help him. He stood – he was dizzy for a moment, but he fought it and gained command of himself – and, with the most care he had ever shown over any single thing he had ever done in all of his thirty-one years, he picked Georgie up and cradled her to his breast. Her head lolled in a disturbing fashion, and he settled it against his shoulder with infinite tenderness. And then the Duke of Northriding set off to carry his bride home, as the frightful bloodstain spread across her garments and his.
The crowd in the Abbey grounds parted to let him pass, though he did not see any one of them, not even the many persons there with whom he was well acquainted, and a few moments later he crossed the Minster front, where he had beenmarried with such ceremony just four days earlier, and turned into Petergate. The narrow streets of the city were thronged with people, as they often were during daylight hours, but once again His Grace was not obliged to force a passage; everyone shrank back and gave him ample room. There was something particularly striking about the slow, measured pace at which he walked, like that of a man following a funeral procession; the very obvious care he was taking not to jar his precious burden. God forbid he should stumble and cause her further hurt.
Nobody who saw the extraordinary sight was ever to forget it, and many who had not been there to see it later claimed that they had. It was a ghastly, deeply affecting tableau to behold, as so many would later aver. It was not just the blood. Such an expression of fixed, blind horror was rarely to be seen on a man’s face outside of the battlefield – there were men in the streets of York that day who had seen battlefields aplenty and could attest to that – and of course it was impossible for the observers to tell, as her husband carried her so tenderly, so lovingly through the crowds, whether the poor young lady was alive or dead, and whether the Duke found himself tragically widowed so very soon after he had wed.
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Georgie regained consciousness to find that she was back in her bedchamber and in a nightgown with not the least idea of how she got there. The curtains were drawn and a small fire crackled in the grate; apart from that, it was very quiet in the room, and somehow she felt that it must be the middle of the night, or early morning. She tried to sit, but sharp unexpected pain – in her head and in her arm – prevented her, and she fell back, gasping.
In an instant Gabriel was at her side. ‘You must not try to get up,’ he said, his voice level, controlled. ‘Lie down, my dear, and be easy. There is nothing to fear now, I assure you.’
‘What happened?’ she asked weakly. ‘I can scarcely piece it together, so jumbled are my recollections. Captain Hart was there suddenly, and you knocked him down…’
‘It transpired that Hart is Mrs Aubrey’s brother – do you remember that?’
She shook her head, then regretted it instantly as sharp pain stabbed her again. ‘Try not to move,’ the Duke said gently. ‘I will explain everything. You have a concussion – you hit your head on a piece of masonry when you fell, for I did not reach you in time to catch you, to my eternal regret. But the doctorapprehends no lasting damage. And the wound in your arm is much slighter than I feared at first. A mere graze, really, though it bled a great deal and gave us all a dreadful fright. The bullet did not lodge in you, and so did not have to be removed: a great blessing, I am assured.’
Georgiana looked down in confusion and saw that her night-rail had been cut away and her left arm was heavily bandaged just below her shoulder. ‘The bullet…?’
He smiled wryly, and raised her right hand to his lips, kissing it with enormous tenderness and saying with a lightness that appeared to cost him some considerable effort, ‘You do not recall your great act of heroism? Clearly you do not. Mrs Aubrey produced a pistol from that ridiculous muff of hers, and was about to shoot me quite by accident, or so you feared, for you flung yourself in front of me and took the bullet yourself. What can I say but thank you, a thousand times thank you, though those words can never be adequate…’ He broke off, impeded by some obstruction in his throat, it seemed.
‘I remember now…’ she said slowly. ‘I thought she would surely kill you. I had to do something.’
‘I thought she had killedyou,’ he replied in a low tone, looking down at her hand where it still rested in his. ‘You were insensible, and there was a great deal of blood, as I think I have said. It was… I have no words to describe it.’
‘That is not like you,’ she said, with a pitiful attempt at humour.
