The Second Shot (The Dueling Pistols) (33 page)

"Yes." Felicity turned to catch sight of Mr. Bedford, leading Diana into the figures.

"She has a different last name," prompted Wedmont.

"She is the daughter of Layton's sister. Layton was my husband."

"I see, and was she ever on the town, this sister of Layton's?"

Felicity focused her attention on Lord Wedmont's curious expression. "No, I don't believe she was brought out."

"Interesting."

The Merriwether empire hadn't been impressive enough to force their inclusion in society, especially not twenty years ago. Seven years ago, Layton had barely been tolerated, and only on the fringe of the ton. He certainly wouldn't have been allowed in Almack's or invited to any of the royal fêtes.

He was better accepted after his death. She supposed that was because he wasn't around to make any missteps that might reveal his lack of breeding.

Felicity started. "Did you hear that?"

Wedmont frowned. "Was that a child yelling?"

Oh, dear God, what was Charles up to? Just that moment, a loud and shrill scream was heard from the front of the house. Not a child's scream, not a woman's scream, but...a man's? Falling, fading, as only the scream of a person falling a great distance could sound.

The cry was clear enough and shocking enough that the musicians at the back of the ballroom stopped playing.

Felicity ran to the street side of the ballroom which ran the entire depth of the house. Unfortunately, all two score of her guests had the same idea.

She managed to look out. The screams and cries continued from a figure lying on the cobblestones in front of her house. Louder now that her guests had thrown open the windows. What on earth had happened?"

Her guests began to cry out.

"It's a man!"

"Did he fall?"

"Did he jump?"

"Oh my!"

There on the street, between two of the empty waiting carriages, lay a figure. Felicity could see the coachmen begin to converge on the man, but not before she saw the odd angle of the twisted leg beneath him.

Felicity shouldered her way back through her guests. She hurried out to the stairs, and half her guests thumped down behind her. She shouted at her butler as she flew through the entry hall. "Send for the physician, quickly. Get a plank or a trestle to use as a stretcher. Bring a lamp. Get blankets and pillows and take them to the morning room."

Her servants who had been standing about in a confused muddle, leaped into action. A footman yanked open the door.

Felicity ignored the cold February weather as she ran out to the street, where Lord Algany writhed and screamed in pain, and the angle of his left leg made Felicity want to lose her dinner. She swallowed hard and told herself there would be time for falling apart later. She knelt down beside him and held his arm while her servants and some of her male guests began restraining Lord Algany.

"Don't touch me! Don't touch my leg!" screamed Lord Algany.

"It must be straightened," said Lord Wedmont. "Allow me."

He grabbed Algany's ankle and pulled the leg to a more natural position. That it was badly broken was obvious.

Algany's scream was blood-curdling, but then he seemed spent and took in breaths in big, leaping gulps. Felicity knew it was small comfort, but she held his hand.

He practically cried as Lieutenant Randleton approached with a door removed from its hinges.

"Don't move me. Please, don't move me," he begged, and tears ran down his face.

"I can't allow you to lie in the street," she said with a tight smile. Then she turned her attention to the guests blocking the doorway and spilling out onto the steps. "Everyone please return to the drawing room while we attend to Lord Algany. I will bring you news of his condition as soon as I know anything."

Most of them stayed where they stood.

She caught her butler's eye. "Has a physician has been sent for?"

"I took the liberty of sending a manservant on horse and another on foot, ma'am."

He moved toward the doorway. "If you please would step inside, your grace," he said to the Duchess of Worcester. "Let the injured man through. Please, let's give him some room to breathe."

With not a small amount of herding skill, her butler quite efficiently moved her guests upstairs to the rose drawing room.

Felicity turned to the whimpering man now on the makeshift door stretcher. "Lord Algany, how did you come to fall? Were you pushed?"

* * *

Tony, with his injured leg, hadn't followed the mass exodus from the ballroom. Instead, he limped over to shut the windows that had been thrown wide open. Several of the candles on the chandelier in the center of the ballroom had blown out already in the stiff breeze. Only the weak gaslight from the wall sconces kept back the darkness from the dimming room. Keene Davies's wife leaned out one while her friend Amelia held her skirt.

He'd heard Davies yell at her to stay put before he'd fled below.

"Is it Algany, can you tell?" Amelia asked anxiously.

"I think so," said Sophie. "Serves him right."

"You don't know that he did anything," protested Amelia.

"He must have been up to something, else he would not be lying in the street now. I wonder where he fell from." She leaned even farther out the window.

Amelia tugged the opposite direction on her skirts. "Sophie, if you fall again, Keene will skin me alive."

"I'm not going to fall."

Tony had reached their window to shut it when they both heard a tiny cry of "Help!"

"Gracious, there is a boy out on the roof!"

Tony's heart stopped beating. "Charles?"

"I'm here," came a thin, reedy voice. "Would you come and get me, please?"

Sophie whirled around fast and knocked into Tony, leaving him grasping the windowsill to remain standing.

"Sophie! No!" said Amelia. Sophie jerked away and left her sprawling on the floor, her hands empty of her friend's skirts. "Oh, stop her!"

But Tony didn't really hear her. His son was out on the roof. Instead, he ran—for the first time in months, ran—down the hall. He ignored the screaming pain in his thigh and ran down to the last room.

As if a part of him weren't really there, he could see himself watching Sophie as she ran ahead of him, her skirts hitched to her knees. And the more demure Amelia scurried along behind him.

"Open window. Has to be an open window," Sophie panted as she ducked into the nursery, where a stiff breeze tossed the draperies this way and that.

Tony realized he should have looked for someone to assist them as they both raced across the room to the window that opened onto the roof.

"Charles," he breathed, seeing the small, huddled figure of his son on the roof slates.

"Could you come get me? I wasn't scared until the bad man fell," said the boy.

"Stay there. We'll get you down," said Sophie.

"Please hurry," came the tiny voice of his son.

Tony felt the crushing despair knowing his bad leg made walking across the roof nearly impossible for him. Never had he felt more inadequate. "Would you fetch help, Mrs. Davies?"

She turned and stared at him. He wanted to sink into himself in mortification.

"I can't leave him alone, but with my leg I can't..."

She nodded quickly and turned.

"Papa, please come get me. That man keeps screaming, and I don't want to hear it anymore."

Lord Algany's screams kept drifting up from the street, and they were spine-chilling, even to a battle-hardened warrior like himself. All he could think was that Charles could fall and be in that much agony or worse. "Just stay put, Charles, and all will be well."

"I was just trying to get away from the bad man. He told me if I went with him he'd buy me a pony. I told him I already had a pony."

"Very good, Charles."

"Besides, I could buy myself another pony if I wanted."

"Quick thinking, son."

Charles leaned back. "Please come get me, Papa. I'm scared."

Tony's heart was breaking. Perhaps he could. That the boy was calling him "Papa" was killing him. What would happen if he failed? If Charles had to witness another man, his own father, falling to certain injury, perhaps death, what would that do to him?

Tony's leg cramped viciously, no doubt in protest to the running he'd just done. He clenched his teeth against the pain.

He needed to keep talking to Charles, to help his son stay calm. "Why did the man offer you a pony?"

The window in the next room flew open. Relief flooded through Tony. Help was on the way at last.

"He said he had to marry Mama, and if I came with him that she would have to marry him, but I told him
you
were going to marry my mama. But he tried to take me anyway."

Tony watched in stunned disbelief as a pink-stockinged leg swung out over the windowsill in the next room, and then another leg and skirts.

"Hold on, Master Charles. I'm coming to get you."

Dread and dismay and the deepest feeling of inadequacy pounded down on Tony. "Mrs. Davies, what are you doing?"

She didn't even look at him as she eased down onto the roof and started inching toward Charles.

"You know, Papa, if he had promised me a dog, I might not have run away onto the roof."

She slipped, and Charles squealed in alarm and turned his face down onto the roof tiles. Tony stood helpless, half the man he once was, watching while a woman—a thin slip of a girl, really—tried to rescue his son, and might very well plunge to her death.

* * *

"There you are."

William felt the unmistakable cold circle of a gun barrel in his back.

"I've been looking for you to be alone all evening," cooed the voice behind him.

William looked around the empty ballroom. Even the musicians were gone. He had watched Sheridan and those two women run out just seconds before, and they must have been the last of the party-goers to clear the room. He'd been looking for Miss Lungren, concerned she might have gotten overwhelmed by the mad rush of guests.

"I think it is time that you feel overpowered by your debts and decide to take your own life, don't you?"

"No, madam, I don't."

The gun barrel pushed into his back, right against his spine. William staggered a step forward. The last of the candles overhead flickered out, leaving them in a murky half-light.

"I do. Given the events of the night, I think a second leap from yonder window might make an interesting suicide, don't you?"

"No, I had rather you shot me."

"Move." Apparently she disagreed. She pushed with the gun.

"He's not dead. Can't you hear him screaming out there?"

"Yes, well, you shall have to leap headfirst. A bit messy, but it will do the trick."

"Look, we know that Jonathon didn't take his own life. You will not get away with this again."

"You know nothing. Now move. You are going to dive out that window."

"On second thought, I might rather prefer poison."

That seemed to surprise her.

Bedford swiveled and rammed his elbow backward, moving away from the gun shoved against his spine and toppling his assailant. "No, I really should prefer to be shot at."

Please just miss,
he thought as he saw the black skirts fly up, and he ran toward the door. For a moment the murderess was bested.

* * *

Outside in the street, they heard everything in quick succession: Charles's squeal of alarm, the scrabbling of someone on the roof, a shriek of rage through the open window of the ballroom, and then a shot.

Keene Davies dropped the corner of the makeshift stretcher and cried with almost as much anguish as Lord Algany displayed in his yowl of fresh pain, as he cried, "Sophie!"

"Oh, my God!" Felicity stared up at the night sky, seeing the tiny figure of her son huddled on the roof, and two roof slates rained down and smashed into dust against the cobblestone street.

Chapter Twenty-One

Meg wondered if it was her lot in life to take care of the sick. Miss Lungren looked dreadful and moved like a woman a hundred years old. She often had to pause and take deep, shuddery breaths as Meg led her away from the jam of people.

Meg had traipsed down the stairs with everyone else before she remembered that William had directed her to keep an eye on the woman. Then Meg had gone back up to find Miss Lungren squashed against the wall outside the ballroom while the guests rushed out the doors and down the stairs. Meg rather thought Miss Lungren might need to lie down and was leading her toward her own bedroom when Major Sheridan and two women came barreling down the hall.

Meg let them pass and then had just got Miss Lungren into her bedroom and convinced the woman to lie down when the shot rang out, quite loud, quite close, quite unmistakable.

"Oh, my Lord, no," wailed Miss Lungren. "We have to go back and find my sisters."

"I don't think so." Staying here until everything calmed down was just fine by Meg.

Miss Lungren coughed and sat up. Then, with more energy than she'd displayed all evening, she moved toward the door. "You don't understand. That shot was probably one of my sisters."

"Oh, I understand, all right. And you're being poisoned. Sorry, love, we're staying right here."

"What...what are you talking about?"

"William told me. Mr. Bedford," Meg clarified in case Miss Lungren didn't know, "told me you're being poisoned. And of course, with him being shot at and all, I 'spect he knows."

"What?"

Maybe the poison made her a bit of a slowtop. "You're being poisoned."

"Mr. Bedford was shot?"

"Well, shot at. Whoever it was missed. But he thought it was probably whoever killed your brother, the captain."

"What?"

"Are you always this slow?" asked Meg impatiently.

"No," wailed Miss Lungren. "No, no, no."

Well, the answer seemed a little vehement despite the rudeness of Meg's question.

"We have to stop her."

"Your sister?" asked Meg uncertainly. She wasn't quite certain if Miss Lungren thought her sister was shot or if she was the shooter.