Like No Other

Chapter 25: The Aftermath

        Miss Davis, her soft heart wrung at the sight of her sobbing friend, put a consoling arm around her. “Poor Marianne. There, there. Do not cry now, else your eyes will be awfully red. What is it? Please tell us.”

        “Oh, I’m sure they will,” she moaned and hastily dashed off the tears. “It’s about that disgraceful cousin of mine, you see.”

        “Lord Stokeford? Why, whatever he’s done to you?”

        “Nothing! Except that he’s been worrying me like the plague, for what must he do but constantly embroiled himself in a fine trouble, that stupid creature? The other night it was a bruised jaw, and now a — a  duel, with his arm se-severely wounded f-from it. Oh, and the horrid scandal to be dealt with!”

        Sophie gave a gasp of shock, but Caroline visibly stiffened and paled. She whispered: “A duel, you say?”

        Nodding, Miss Carstairs blew her nose. “I’ve just learned everything this morning when I visited Stokeford House. Poor Stefan! If only you’d seen him, so pale and weak and aching all over he could hardly talk. Thank heavens he’d come out alive from the wretched fever last night, but he still suffers a relapse from the gunshot wound.”

         Her heart pounding anxiously, Caroline walked to the window —  a ruse, so that they wouldn’t see how she was struggling to compose herself as well. Dear God, a duel! They said he was a fine shot and never missed his mark, but recollecting Miss Carstairs’s words about the scandal, a grim possibility occurred to her mind. She gasped, spun around and almost wailed to her friend: “Oh, Marianne, never say he killed his opponent?”

        Rather shocked by the possibility herself, Marianne said faintly: “No, no. I heard Wickham’s alive and well, and not in the least wounded.”

        “Good gracious! Lord Wickham?” struck in Sophie. “So they’d finally settled the score, and in a duel, no less. How horrid men are!”

        “They are! Do you know that my cousin came to cuffs with him outside their club at St James? Shameful!” Miss Casrtairs declared scornfully. “That was when Wickham had challenged him in a due. They said the quarrel was forced on Stefan but I daresay it wouldn’t come to pass without the slightest provocation on his part!”

        Caroline let out a sigh of relief. “At all events, Lord Stokeford did not kill him so he wouldn’t be obliged to leave the country with the Bow Street Runners after his heels,” she inferred in a more sanguine tone. As if an afterthought, she added uncharitably: “But I heard that this Wickham is a dreadful young man and it would have been better had his lordship shot him as well. To teach him a lesson, I mean.”

        “Caro!” exclaimed her outraged cousin.

        Marianne broke into a giggle. “Heavens, but you’ve a cold blood running in your veins, my dear.”

        “Well, I think I have,” she said and retreated to the window again. Because I do not want to see someone I’ve come to care about in pain, she thought.

        Had Lord Stokeford heard his cousin’s most vivid description of him languishing weakly in his bed, he would have been irked by such gross exaggeration. Earlier that morning he’d felt bone-tired, and his arm still ached like hell — all true, but be damned if he would stay another minute in his bed. Not even the tearful appeals of his valet could have induced him to go back to that ‘confining nest which had become so curst uncomfortable’, as he wrathfully described it. 

        Mr Brandon turned a dubious eye at the large four poster bed, looking very cozy and inviting with silk-covered pillows strewn about. Risking another display of wrath from his employer, he tried his appeal again. “But with all due respect, my lord, I am under strict orders by the doctor not to let you get up. You’ve been injured but a day, and the fever has just broken down! You’ll tire yourself fast and worse, another bout of fever may return again! Which will never do, my lord, else the doctor will ring a nice peal over me again!”