Page 12 of The Duelist for the Ton
He approached the doors, and the footmen pulled them open.
“Adam,” she called after him.
He turned at the doorway and raised his eyebrows.
“One day, brother, that stone in your chest that passes for a heart will soften, and you will fall in love. And then you shall know what pain is.”
“Dear sister,” he said, “I, as you so frequently point out, am not in possession of a heart. At least not for women. But you are right in that the duty of matrimony comes to us all. I am generous enough to fund your third Season, but I shall expect to see you engaged to a suitable man by the end of it. Failing that, I shall, myself, find a suitable man to take you off my hands.”
He turned his back and exited the breakfast room, the footmen closing the doors behind him.
Portia gripped her teacup, her knuckles whitening as she tightened her hold. What satisfaction would she get from flinging it across the room! But her brother would only laugh at her—and she’d be damned if she gave him the satisfaction, or gave the footmen more work in clearing up the mess.
I shall find a suitable man to take you off my hands.
Portia permitted herself a grin.
“Not if I’ve shot them all, brother.”
Chapter Four
Fog smothered thebattlefield, a thick gray shroud clinging to the landscape, following the contours of the land, the hillocks, the boulders…and the still shapes of what had once been living, breathing men.
Those men had sallied forth toward the enemy, their voices joining the battle cry of their general, only to be cut short with each slice of a sword, each explosion that filled the air with acrid smoke to mingle with the sour, metallic stench that choked the senses as each man’s lifeblood drained into the earth.
The voices that had chanted together in a song of comradeship now filled the air with pain and despair—some calling to loved ones they would ever see again, others to the deity that had forsaken them.
“Death—death is upon us!”
A lone voice filled his mind, filled with agony, pleading for the onset of oblivion. Then the fog cleared to reveal an apparition—the remnants of a soldier, his pale face gleaming in the dying light. The soldier reached up, clawing at the air, and long, thin fingers stretched across the battlefield, reaching toward him.
“Reid…”
The voice swelled in the air, swirling around with the fog, filling his mind, thick agony hammering against his temples, and he pressed his hands against his ears to obliterate the howling ofthe dead—so many dead, their bodies littering the ground… Men—better, braver men than he—who deserved to live…
“Reid!”
A hand caught his sleeve, and he jerked back. The fog dissipated to reveal a face, but it was no longer the colorless face of a dead man. Before him was a living, breathing face—rounded cheeks bearing a healthy pink glow, two warm brown eyes narrowed with concern, framed by a shock of thick, pale-blonde hair.
Captain Broom—his friend and former comrade in arms.
“I say, Reid, old chap, did we lose you for a moment? Are you well?”
“Y-yes, I’m well, Broom.”
Stephen blinked and the world re-formed. The thick gray pallor dissolved into daylight to reveal not a bloodied battlefield strewn with the dead, but a vast, high-ceilinged hall with a neat formation of beds arranged in rows. Shapes moved between the beds in a slow formation, tending to the occupants before moving on to the next, like dance partners at a ball.
Most of the occupants were unlikely to attend a ball again.
“You’re looking melancholy again, Reid,” Broom said.
“Is it any wonder after what happened to you?”
“It no longer gives me pain, old chap,” Broom said, gesturing to the lower half of his body. “And I’m better off than most, thanks to you.”
“It’s my fault you’re in that bed.”
“Aye, it is,” Broom said, with a grin. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be in my grave or, more likely, scattered all over that damned battlefield. I know where I’d prefer to be, and so does my Sophy.”
