Henry tramped the forty paces to Wadsworth and stood at his side. “That was not a bad shot,” he said. “We ought to be within a few inches of one another. Unfortunate for the tree, but I’m sure it’ll survive this morning’s work.”
The viscount gaped, quick breaths hitching his chest. “How…”
“If you are satisfied this morning, I am,” Henry added calmly.
“You… your arm…” Wadsworth reached for Henry’s coat sleeve, then drew his hand back as if singed.
“You see, Wadsworth, that I can defend myself. I always will. But I would much rather sleep in of a morning than come back to Chalk Farm. Wouldn’t you?”
The man looked at the gun in his own hand, then in Henry’s. His cool eyes narrowed, and his mouth twitched. “Indeed.”
With a curt nod, Henry walked away. He heard grass rustling a few seconds later and knew Wadsworth was trailing a few yards behind him.
His ears were open to every sound—the high buzzing call of a starling, the crackle of a breeze blowing the drying green leaves of late summer. The sky was the color of mosaic gold and ruby-clear realgar.
The air smelled faintly of powder, but the scent did not tighten his chest, pull him back in talons to the Bossu Wood. It was just a smell. Less pleasant than, say, vanilla. More pleasant than the filthy streets of Whitechapel. It was… fine.
But the world was more than that. It was fine. Not in the sense of acceptable. In the sense of excellent. It was a fine morning.
He met Jem under the tree he and Wadsworth had shot. Poor tree. It had performed a good service.
Jem poked his forefinger into a hole in the bark. “Not three inches between your bullets,” he said in a wondering voice.
Henry handed him the pistol. “Thank you for being my second, Jem. It means more to me than I can ever tell you.”
“You could try to tell me a few things,” Jem said. “For one, how did you make that shot? Was it luck?”
“No.”
Jem darted a sideways glance at him. “How’d you do it, Hal? I was sure you’d be killed.”
Henry couldn’t blame his brother for his lack of confidence. He’d never told Jem the truth, though it was simple. “I may not have known how to write or paint with my left hand when I came back to London, but I knew how to shoot with it.”
Jem was still staring at him, agog, as if Henry had asked him for help trimming a bonnet.
Henry grinned. “There’s no call to practice art or penmanship during war, but a man never knows when he’ll be in a tight corner and will need to fire well with both hands. I simply practiced. I practiced a long time ago.”
He patted Jem on the shoulder, prodding him into a march toward Carlson and the waiting pistol case. Jem’s blue eyes were narrowed for once, not wide, and he seemed to be searching Henry’s countenance in the brightening dawn.
“Well done, Hal,” he said. “Well done. If you had to have a duel, this was the way to do it. I oughtn’t to say I’m proud of you, of course. Not for dueling.”
“Of course.”
Jem sighed. “Oh, Hal. It was hell, wasn’t it? The war, I mean. I hated seeing you with a gun in your hand this morning, but you must have had one in your hand every morning for years. I just didn’t see it happen. I didn’t realize what it meant.”
“It’s all right, Jem.”
“No, it’s not.” Jem shook his head, squinting into the distance. “If I’d been a better brother to you, it would never have come to this point.”
Henry put his hand on his brother’s arm, stopped him. “Jem. It was never your fault I had a gun in my hand.”
Jem twisted away, shaking his head. Henry tried again. “Jem. Listen to me. I know you think you control the world, but you don’t.”
Jem’s eyes flew wide and startled. He stared at Henry. Uncertain.
And then he laughed.
Shakily at first, then strong enough to bring a smile to Henry’s face and allow him to continue. “None of it was ever your fault, Jem. I did what I thought best, and you were the best brother imaginable for letting me go against your will. You could have prevented me, you know. You’re wealthy and influential. Instead, you let me make my own way.”
It had taken Henry a while, but he’d finally done it. The whole of his experience as a soldier could not, should not, be reduced to one day, one arm, one failure. For three years, he had done his best to be a good soldier, a good leader. He’d tried all his life to be a good man.
Quatre Bras had been a disaster. But he would not allow anyone to blame him for it again. He had already blamed himself enough.
It was done.
He chuckled, the sound surprising him. “I suppose that’s worth an arm, after all.”
“What will you do now?” Jem asked. “Are you going to leave London for Winter Cottage?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said.
That was fact: he didn’t know. He had finished one battle this morning. He’d conquered many demons. Hell, he’d even reassured his brother, who had never been in need of reassurance in Henry’s memory.
But he’d left carnage behind him last night—a brutal fight with Frances—and he did not know if the wounds they’d inflicted could be healed.
For now, though, the sun was up, and the air was sweet in his lungs.
For now, it was enough.
Twenty-Four
Henry came home to a stack of letters higher than his fist.
Sowerberry handed over the sheaf of correspondence with a sniff, telling Henry the notes had been piling up since dawn.
Henry had not realized the City awoke so early, but London was a gossipy village that just happened to have hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. There were invitations to breakfasts, Sowerberry said. Calls. Boxing, fencing, riding, hunting. All manner of manly sports.
It seemed it took a duel—one of the worst trespasses against mannerly society—to bring Henry back fully into its fold.
There was no letter on heavy paper sealed with red wax, though. Henry shuffled the notes twice to check.
Well. Why should there be?
Next to Henry, Jem yawned. “Anything for breakfast yet, Sowerberry? I could do with a pot of tea. No, chocolate.”
“My lord, her ladyship has requested that you attend her at once upon your return.”
Almost before the butler could finish his sentence, Emily pounded down the stairs and threw herself into her husband’s arms. “Jemmy, Jemmy, thank God you’re safe.”
Her auburn hair was tumbled down her back, and she was engulfed from neck to ankles in a quilted dressing gown of Jem’s. It was frayed at the hem, and there were damp spots on one sleeve that looked like stains from tears hastily wiped away.
She looked frightful. Henry had never seen her so… undone.
Poor Emily, waiting at home this morning. Hoping for the return of both brothers, fearing only one might come back, or none.
Poor Emily. It was probably the first time in the decade he’d known her that Henry had thought that phrase. It was certainly the first time he’d seen her look frightful.
Jem patted his wife’s back with a tentative hand. “Now, now, Em. We’re fine. Everybody’s just fine.”
“I was sure you would both be shot.” She took a deep breath, straightened, and smoothed Jem’s coat where her embrace had wrinkled the fabric. “You haven’t killed Wadsworth, have you?”
“Nobody got killed this morning. Except possibly a tree,” Henry said.
“Good.” Emily took a deep breath, nodding. “That’s good.”
Then she spun to face Henry, glaring. Once, twice, she struck him hard in the chest. “You idiot. You damned, foolish, stupid, careless—”