Page 258 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Nichts, Serene Highness,” he said indignantly. “But I knew you would not come with me if I asked.”
Harriette glanced around the room again. They were alone. A tray of cheese and bread and small beer stood on the table next to the chair. Her velvet cloak hung from a peg. She still wore her boots. She patted herself down quickly, found her porte crayon in one pocket and her sketchbook in another. She ought to pull it out and capture the villain, but she went to retrieve her cloak first. The room was cold despite the tiny fire, and the gray gloom at the window told her it was either late evening or early morning.
“What time is it?”
“The duel will be soon,” the man said. “We must stop it.”
Harriette sighed with relief, which soon turned to irritation. “I meant to stop it until youabductedme.”
“Entschuldigung, bitte,” he apologized politely, and Harriette nearly laughed.
“Let me guess. You are Dietz?”
He bowed.
“And Franz Karl did not come to his senses?”
It was part of the unwritten code duello that time should pass between the issuing of the challenge and meeting upon the field of honor, during which time every effort would be made by the seconds and others to dissuade the aggrieved party from pursuing a course leading to possible loss of life. That Franz Karl had defied the English custom and insisted recklessly on satisfaction showed his character in no better light than what she had already concluded about him.
The manservant shook his head, his face covered in distress. Harriette felt her insides twist. “Do you know where they are? And how to get there?”
He gestured hesitantly toward the window, and Harriette ran to it. In the narrow street before the tavern, empty at this predawn hour, stood the Countess of Calenberg’s cabriolet, with Beater on the platform and Jock atop the horse. Abassi sat in thedriver’s seat holding the reins. A case that held the former Count of Calenberg’s prized dueling pistols covered the seat beside him.
“I deliver the weapons,” Abassi called up. The gleam of his smile lifted her heart. “But I tink we do better than dat, yah?”
Harriette clattered down the stairs to the street, Dietz trundling behind. She was beside Abassi in a flash, urging him into motion, while Dietz scrambled onto the platform beside Beater.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“Th’ molly does,” Beater groused, jerking his chin toward Dietz.
Harriette turned and studied the man’s face. The servant flushed a dull red, but he didn’t attack Beater as a man would if the accusation were false.
“You are his valet? Bodyguard? Companion?”
Dietz set his square, overlarge jaw and looked straight ahead with a stony expression. “You know he is to marry me,” Harriette pressed. “What do you think of that?”
The man’s ears burned red. “It is the way of the world, Highness,” he bit out.
Harriette turned to face forward as Jock navigated the horse through the narrow streets. They moved through some older part of London she didn’t know, but she trusted her aunt’s men with her life. And Ren’s. The life of the man she loved.
And Dietz had stolen her from Renwick House because he wanted her to save the life of the manheloved, if she could.
The signs of the city melted away into farmland, and they came to a pasture with a large oak tree in one corner and a fence of crossed wood. A building sat in the distance in one direction and a copse of trees in the other, but all Harriette saw was the cluster of men beneath the tree. Franz Karl, in a suit of a truly stomach-turning pea-green, wearing a powdered wig and asmug, murderous expression. And Ren, her beloved Ren, in an understated brown suit with a golden waistcoat and his white-tipped riding boots, the early sun catching golden glints in his unpowdered hair.
Harriette threw herself out of the coach before it had fully halted and stumbled toward the group of men.
“Stop,” she cried hoarsely, the word barely a whisper. “You must stop.”
Franz Karl’s eyes narrowed as he glared at her, then sent an accusing look at Dietz. His manservant stared at the dirt path.
“I will not stop!” Franz Karl cried. “I demand satisfaction!”
“You have no reason to shoot him.”
Harriette threw herself in front of Ren. He leaned on his cane—she knew his leg pained him in the morning, especially if he’d not had a chance to do his stretching exercises. Unable to stop herself, she laid a hand on his chest, but faced her cousin.
“There is no satisfaction, Franz,” she said, trying to infuse her half-whispered cry with authority. “I am not going to marry you.”
