Then he paled, remembering. “The duel.”
“Yes!” Catrina spun around, disappointed. At seeing him nearly dressed or at the fact he’d challenged a man to a duel? “You could send Jonathan with an explanation that you were quite in your cups when you threw down the gauntlet, and that with the return of daylight your senses also returned and you realize now that Lord Edward was right. This is precisely why duels occur most oft in daylight—so you might sleep off stupidity. They would surely be lenient if you admitted being so horrendously wrong due to the evils of alcohol…”
“But I was not completely soused. Not until after they left.”
Jonathan grumbled something as he put away Rowen’s nightclothes.
Catrina wrinkled her nose. “True, but they do not know that. So you just say—”
“So you would make me a liar twice over? I was not drunk. And not wrong.”
“Rowen. You made a bad decision. In the heat of an argument. You tried to protect someone’s honor—someone whose honor was not hers to give—all because of some time you spent with Jordan in the past. You were wrong to do so. Many times over.”
He glanced at her and then at the window and the light flooding in. “What time is it?”
“The bell in the main square rang out eight just moments ago,” Jonathan said.
“Just enough time,” Rowen muttered.
“Yes,” Catrina agreed. “If you write the note and send Jonathan—”
Rowen fixed his gaze on her. “Just enough time to make it to Watkin’s Glen,” he corrected. “Are my sword and pistol ready?”
“Wh—”
Jonathan nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You can’t be serious!” Catrina shouted. “I will—I will…” Her eyes widened, realizing what the most potent threat was. “Tell your mother.”
Rowen sighed. “Do so. My head is already pounding, my fate already sealed. I am no marksman. Tell her so she might at least scream something akin to a good-bye to me—as it will surely not be a farewell that passes from her lips.”
“Why … I…”
“Do not, Catrina. Do not bring additional drama to me in this, the last hour I will likely spend on this Earth. Let me at least do what I said I would. Let me at least be enough of a man to be true to my word.”
“Rowen…” she protested weakly.
He addressed Jonathan. “Will you do me the honor of standing as my second?”
“It is not even legal…”
Jonathan ignored her, nodding. “Of course, young sir. ’Twould be my honor.”
“And if the moment comes—you will be man enough to end my agony?”
“I pray that is not necessary, sir.”
Rowen shrugged. “We shall see.”
“He will be implicated in murder,” Catrina insisted. “Rowen. If you will not think of yourself, then at least think of Jonathan; he will be an accomplice if you succeed, a victim of lawlessness if you fail.”
Rowen nodded. “Wise words, Catrina.” He stepped to his nightstand and pulled something out of the drawer. Holding it in his fist, he crossed to Jonathan and took his hand, placing the thing in his palm instead. “Regardless of the outcome once the deed is done, you must take a horse—”
Jonathan retrieved his friend’s sword and pistol from their usual places and set them on the bed.
“Good God, you’ll be stealing horses from the militia stalls to do this, too?” Catrina howled, her voice reed-thin.
Rowen’s eyes widened briefly and returned to their normal appearance. “Regardless of the outcome you must take a horse and leave. Get as far away from the city as you can. Go and pack your things now,” he suggested, and Jonathan turned on his heel and left, walking quickly back to the servants’ quarters to obey what might very well be the last request his young lord would make of him.
“Rowen, you cannot do this,” Catrina said.
“You mean to say: Rowen, you cannot succeed at this. That much I know. Do you not realize what I have lost already? I had a friend in Jordan. Not a perfect friend, but a suitable one. A match for me. A friend I was beginning to court. Do you know how few men of any station can say they were fortunate enough to wed a woman they were friends with first? Look at my parents. Most days they barely make it through without throttling each other. There is no love lost between them because there was never any love between them.”
“You can find love elsewhere. If you just look,” Catrina said.
“I do not want to look. And, frankly, I do not care that much for love—if it comes, it comes. But compatibility…” He shook his head. “I had that. Jordan may not have loved me, but she knew me. She understood me.”
“I know you, too…” She reached out a hand and he shook it off.
“No. Not like she did. I cannot explain it. But I had something that was growing—something that was good…”
“And that—what you had—is worth dying for? That—the past—is worth ending your life?” She grabbed his sleeve. “Do not die for something that no longer exists—do not die for the sake of memory or of what might have been. Live for what might yet be. Write the damnable letter! There is still a way out.”
He pulled back from her, hearing the rip of fabric as the seam on his shirtsleeve gave way. “Dammit. As if the day could not get worse…” He pushed past her, brushing the hair back from his eyes and examining the sword lying beautiful and still in its scabbard. His finger traced the length of the metal and leather case hesitantly, pausing on the weapon’s crossguard before he snared the hilt in his hand and yanked it free. “A pretty thing, is it not?” he asked, looking across the blade at her. “I have never truly fought someone with one. I fence, yes. What man doesn’t? But truly fight?” He shoved it back into its scabbard so that it clicked, metal meeting metal. “Perhaps we will not even come to blows with swords … Perhaps it will end before that…” He set the sword down and opened the wooden case that held his pistol, powder, patch, and ball.
“You must stop thinking that way,” Catrina insisted. “You must think of the act itself. Of aiming. Of firing. Of ending a man.”
“A highly unlikely outcome,” Rowen muttered.
“It is possible. Hold that thought in your head. Kill him so that you might yet live.”
“Say I do. Then what? I win, I’m a murderer. I lose, I’m a dead man. I asked for first blood.”
“Write the blasted letter!”
He snorted and raised his chin. “My penmanship is godawful. No one should be subjected to reading what I write.” He attached the scabbard to his belt and, picking up the gun case, thrust it into her arms. “Let us do this thing. Now.”
“No,” she said flatly, refusing to hold the case. “I am not giving up so easily. I am telling your mother.” She turned on her heel and strode out of his room.
“As if the day could not get worse,” he said through a grimace, steeling himself for the next fight of his day.
Lady Burchette was waiting at the door for her son, hands on her hips like a scullery maid, Catrina standing right beside her, chin tipped up in what surely approximated victory.
“My coat and hat, Jonathan,” Rowen said.
Jonathan obliged.
“Just where do you think you are going, young man?” his mother shrilled.
“Most likely to my death, but I daresay it will be far more peaceful than this household.” He slipped on his coat and took a moment to appreciate her stunned silence.
“You cannot,” she finally croaked. “I will not let you…” Her face was turning red.
“Mother. You cannot stop me,” he said.
“I most certainly can!” She turned to Jonathan. “Stop him!”
Jonathan choked a little at the command. He clicked his heels together and gave a gracious bow, but rising from it, he said, “Dear lady, your good son is three inches taller than I and a half stone heavier. I daresay if he wishes to go somewhere I am not the man to stop him.”