Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
Camberley Place, Surrey
Friday 30 March 1832
Raucous laughter. Drunken shouting.
"Devil take them." Lady Alice Ancaster opened her eyes and stared up at the tester. "What time is it?"
She sat up in not quite complete darkness. She pulled the edge of the bed curtain to one side. The window curtains remained closed, meaning her maid hadn't yet risen—though the drunken louts would soon rouse Aunt Julia's household.
Dawn had cracked, it seemed, but only just.
It was remarkable how much noise three inebriated men could make. She'd last seen them departing for the fishing house for a night of carousing. They couldn't have stayed there? They must come here, directly under her window?
"I have to kill them," she said.
She flung back the bedclothes and said bad words. She pushed the bed curtains fully open and said worse words. She stumbled getting out of bed, but found her slippers. As her eyes adjusted to the heavy grey light of a damp morning, she discerned her dressing gown neatly laid out at the foot of the bed. She pulled it on and started for the window.
More shouting and laughter. Then the crack of a pistol.
She leapt to the window in time to see her brother fall to the ground. "Hugh!"
She ran from the room.
"Is he dead? He'd better not be dead." Alice tried to pull free of the Duke of Blackwood's grasp. "Let me see."
He wouldn't loosen his hold. She jammed an elbow into his ribs, not gently, and struck her heel against his shin. He made a small noise, barely an "oof," but his grip eased enough so that she could pull free.
She fell to her knees beside her brother. Black powder streaked Ripley's face. Blood, too. He seemed so still.
She put her hand on his chest. Through layers of coat, waistcoat, linen, she felt warmth and the unmistakable rise and fall. Breathing. Still alive.
She swallowed panic and made her voice clear and sharp. "Don't stand there like the worthless pieces of lumber you are. Send for a doctor. Now. Call for a litter. Make haste! He can't be let to lie here."
"Stunned, y'know, thash all," the Duke of Ashmont said. "Pistol. Went off in Ripley's face, dinnit?" He turned his bleary blue gaze to Blackwood.
Blackwood blinked, one dark eye opening more slowly than the other. He nodded. "Went off in his face."
"Get help!" she said.
Ashmont dragged a hand through his blond curls. He shook his head, as though he had a hope of clearing it that way. Then he started away, stumbled, and fell over. And lay there.
"Juno, give me strength," she said.
She became aware of the Duke of Blackwood crouching beside her. "Not... dead," he said. He swayed, and she put out a hand to push him away. That was all she needed, one of these great oafs falling on her.
"He might have been killed," she said. "What is wrong with you? Drunk, shooting off pistols, so close to the house—and this house, of all places. Do you three think of anybody else, ever? And you—the one I believed had a functioning brain. You let this happen."
She bent over her brother. "Oh, Hugh."
She brushed his black hair from his face. His eyes opened. Green like hers. Also bloodshot, unlike hers. She took one of his hands. The glove was burnt in places.
"I reckon it mish-mif-misfired," Blackwood said.
A corner of Hugh's mouth turned up. "You... reckon?" He laughed, then winced, then started coughing.
...
