Chapter 66

VOLUME TWO: DEDICATION
London 1810
There was nothing wrong with pistols at seven paces at dawn. Except dawn was at eight o'clock tomorrow, and Splendor had a dressmaker's appointment then. Three thimbles and the scissors had smacked into the back of the Chinese dressing screen the last time she'd wandered in ten minutes late. Madame Renare had said these were meant for her assistant, that paying customers, even those who were well behind with their bills, were sacrosanct. Splendor knew she lied, that Lady Haskins, who always had the next appointment, would depart wearing Splendor's guts for garters if she were late again. And if she didn't bring the money to pay the bill.
Worse than not being able to do that, she was going to be shot at dawn. Or rather, eight o'clock.
Checkmate. If she'd known that one word was going to cause all this trouble, would she have said it?
When she'd promised Gabe she wouldn't do anything to draw attention to herself, too.
"My second, Your Grace?" she asked, speaking in carefully lowered tones as if duels were things she was challenged to fight every day of life--by the best shot in London too.
"Yes, boy," Kendall Winterborne, the third Earl of Stillmore, snarled. "Your second. Who's it to be? Well?"
Maybe her spectacles, which weren't hers any more than the clothes on her back, rendered her blinder than a belfry of bats, she still dragged her gaze from the shining blur of silver buttons on his waistcoat and peered through them at the blur that was his face.
Kendall Winterborne. Young, handsome, divorced, a rake and killer in every way, in the bedroom, on the chessboard and the dueling field. Or so her sources had said.
Impatient, foul tempered, drunk, and a conniving fiddler, who couldn't play chess for toffee, was more accurate. A bad loser too.
But she couldn't very well say so. Not when, technically, she really shouldn't be here. And, if it was discovered that she was ..? Well?
"Well ... I ... Well. You see, Your Grace ... About that. I was really hoping that you
and I might-. That is, where duels, indeed, where seconds are concerned ... We might, we might come to an ... an .. you know, an arran-- "
"Oh, hang it all to hell and back. Chasens!"
His terse huff was followed by a terser finger snap. Please God, not another brandy to add to the lake the drunken earl had already drowned himself in and it not even two o'clock in the day when she really needed to end this.
The man standing behind him, a smudge in black, snapped to attention. "Yes, sah."
"You might as well fetch me some paper and ink to go along with that snifter. Then I can pen my autobiography while I'm damn well waiting."
"Splen ..." Gabe tugged her aside. "If you think for so much as one solitary second you can rope me in to bein' your second, I ain't doin' it. Maybe it's escaped your notice, but every borin' old clod-pate in here is glarin' holes in what just happens to be my coat what I was good enough to let you wear."
True. Even the grandfather clock in the nearby alcove appeared to be holding its breath midtick, the potted palms to have frozen. Silence stretched from window to window, slipped between the heavy crimson drapes, wound around the yellow tassels, hung from the poles, all the way to the entry salon on the ground floor of Boodle's Gentleman's Club, which was why she wished he wouldn't haul her aside and argue the toss like this. Did he want everyone looking and seeing she was a woman?
"I know that, Gabriel. At least I suspect that, but you see-"
"No buts. We leave now, do you hear me? Ain't I the one what told you and told you, stick to enterin' the ladies tournament? But would you listen? You never listen."
"Well, how could I when the prize money was so much less. Nine-and-a-half thousand pounds? What kind of a discrepancy is that? Now, will you shut up and let me do what I have come here to--?"
"What? Get yourself arrested for fraud? 'Cos you know where you're headed next, if they find you out, don't you? And I ain't talking the cemetery. Ten thousand bleedin' pounds ain't no bleedin' good if you ain't around to spend it."
A voice cut across the hall. "Would someone mind telling me what the devil is going on at table number seven?"
While she couldn't see who spoke for the spectacles, her heart almost sprung through the bindings around her chest. The tournament organizer, the Duke of Brampton.
"Well? Kendall, why has play stopped? Surely you have not fallen out with your opponent?"
Her gaze froze behind her spectacle lenses. She knew indeed where she was headed next now.The place Starkadder had taken her out of. Prison. Even now, despite the thick fug of cigar smoke clouding the high ornate ceiling, that festering stink of prison, of centuries-old dirt, lay loose as a winding sheet on her skin. She couldn't go back there. Not now. Not ever. Gabe was right. This was fraud. Pure and simple. And they arrested people for fraud. Besides, the money was no good if tomorrow was the lateness to end all latenesses and she ended the day in a box without any money to pay for her funeral either. Well?
"You're right." She caught his bony wrist. "Let's go. Now. Hurry. Before they--"
"Excuse me." The Duke of Brampton, blurry in purple and blue, a powdered wig on his head, squeezed between the tables, blocking her way. "Now then, Kendall, everyone is looking. And, sufficient to say, yet again, it is at you. Be a good fellow and sit down, won't you and let me deal with this?"
Before Splendor could move the duke pressed his be-ringed hand on Stillmore's black-brocaded chest and pushed him down into his chair.