A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (17 page)

Both men were shouting. Even without the noise of the Force they would have shouted.

Giovanni shook his finger like a disappointed nanny. “Do you mean to ruin yet another young woman’s reputation?”

“No, Giovanni. You have it all wrong,” Megan tried to get his attention.

Giovanni ignored her. Stonily he extended a hand to help Reed from the water. They faced one another, both dripping with what seemed a personification of their rage. “The duel, sir!” Giovanni shouted.

“Duel?” Megan exclaimed. “What duel?”

Both gentlemen ignored her.

“Beg pardon,” Reed shouted politely. “Slipped my mind.”

“Name your weapons.” There was little that was polite in Giovanni’s tone.

“Weapons?” Reed was trying to remove his drenched jacket and having a spot of trouble, so tightly did the fabric cling.

“Pistols, swords or fists?” Giovanni demanded.

Chapter Seventeen

M
egan was beside Reed in an instant. “A duel?” she shouted against the noise of the falling water, against her own disbelief.

Reed fought to extricate himself from his coat, a well-tailored garment so completely soaked it did not want to be removed. “Help me off with this thing!” He whirled in a frustrated circle, arms pinned behind him by coatsleeves he had turned almost inside out in an effort to shed the dripping garment

“Pistols! Swords! Are you gone mad?” Her voice rose angrily.

“It is this coat drives me mad. Help me free of it, if you will.”

“We must go at this from the proper direction,” she scolded. The duel concerned her far more than the coat, “You could be killed or clapped in irons engaging in such foolishness.”

“You assume I would survive the encounter.” He managed, at last, to slide free of the sausage casing sleeves. Waving the dripping garment at Giovanni, who was as trapped in the removal of his coat as Reed had been, he shouted without rancour, “I do not think survival likely, given his physique.”

“You cannot mean to fight him,” Megan bellowed. Giovanni had the look of a man who won any fight in which he engaged. His seams were in the process, even now, of giving way under his well-muscled assault.

Reed shrugged.

Megan was infuriated by that shrug. “Perhaps you could strike him down while his arms are pinned.”

Reed looked shocked. “You jest!”

“Of course I jest,” she yelled. With a feeling of complete frustration she went to assist Giovanni.

He was a single-minded fellow. Over her head he shouted the only question that seemed to trouble his mind. “Pistols, swords or fists?”

Reed shrugged and headed in the direction of Ambleside. Giovanni and Megan--still mutually fighting his coat--caught up to him, at a pace that had Megan quite breathless.

“You would run from me?” Giovanni shouted.

Reed said with admirable nonchalance, “I do not run. I walk away from the noise. I am tired of shouting. As to your question, I have yet to make up my mind as to weapons, but I should like to be dry before I die. Can we agree upon that much?”

Giovanni, squelching with his every step, reluctantly agreed.

They adjourned to the nearest inn.

Reed played for time. He had no idea what weapons to choose against Giovanni, who was his physical superior in every way. He was not so sure he had any intellectual edge over the fellow either, not when he had just been wrenched from the mind-numbing wonder of Megan’s lovemaking.

He turned to look at her as they wetly made their way toward dry clothes and a stiff drink. She gazed back with a worried look. Was she as concerned as he that they might never be able to finish their kissing lesson if he went and got himself killed? It behooved him to think of surviving. Perhaps when he was dry a fitting method would come to him.

And yet, even dry, and somewhat more comfortably attired in some of the innkeeper’s ill-fitting togs, he had no clear answer. “Best bring me pen and ink,” he said to the man as his wet things were taken away.

“Will you be needing to write a letter then, sir?”

“Not a letter. A document of some importance.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

Reed stopped his departure in the doorway. “Tell me, my good fellow, if you had the choice, would you prefer to die from a fatal thrust, a bloody great hole blown in some part of your anatomy, or a bruising blow to the kidneys?”

The innkeeper looked at him as if he were daft. “I would prefer to die in bed, sir, at a ripe old age, if it’s all the same to you.”

“As would I,” Reed nodded his approval of the scheme. “How best to go about it is the real question.”

“To that, sir, I have no answer. Shall I bring the writing materials here, or do you mean to join your friends downstairs?”

Reed shrugged. “Downstairs will do.”

Giovanni was pacing the private sitting room they had been given use of, when Reed made his way downstairs. Megan sat looking out of the mullioned window, hugging herself. He wondered if she was damp, perhaps even a little cold. Her face, paler than usual, turned in his direction the minute he passed through the doorway. Terror troubled her, not a chill. He could see it in her eyes despite the weak smile she managed to send him. He wanted to kiss her stiffly upturned lips, wanted to pick up the delightful exchange Giovanni had so rudely interrupted. Far more fun, after all, kissing Megan, warming away her fears, than getting oneself killed.

“Name your weapons.” Giovanni was tiresome in his persistence.

Reed took a deep breath. How to convince a hot-blooded Italian bent on his destruction that it was in neither of their best interest to indulge in such barbaric exercise?

“Reed! You cannot go through with this.” Megan voiced the very thought that ran through his head.

Giovanni eyed them with bright-eyed expectancy. He looked ready to spring into the active pursuit of a pair of pistols or swords, given the word.

The innkeeper arrived, ink standish and quills balanced on a tray. Giovanni plucked one of the quills from the standish as the man passed him.

“What’s this? An instrument of torture?”

“I'll have none of that, now,” the innkeeper said. “No stains on the rugs, upholstery, or the shirts I’ve been kind enough to loan you gents, if you please.”

“We shall try to avoid bleeding on anything, if at all possible.” Reed promised.

“Bleeding? Is it ink do you mean, sir?”

“That too,” Reed said.

Giovanni dismissed the wide-eyed man with a coin and a wave of his hand.

Sharpening a quill, Reed sat at the secretary, pen poised over the inkwell. How did one begin? Ah, yes, he remembered now. “I, Reed Talcott, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath. . .”

Megan leaned in over his elbow, read the words he had written and hissed, “Stop this nonsense at once.”

“I suppose you are right,” Reed muttered. One had to possess something of value in order to will it away. Giovanni leaned heavily on the secretary and threw the quill he had been holding into the standish, splashing ink. “Name your weapons, sir.”

Like a bloody parrot he was.

“Name them at once.”

A bloody serious parrot. His blue eyes were chill.

“No more prevarication.”

Reed looked from Giovanni’s implacable expression to the discarded quill. “A pen, sir, shall be your weapon.”

“You make a joke, yes?” Giovanni was not amused.

“To the contrary. What better way to voice your contempt of me?”   

Megan seemed to hold her breath.

Giovanni shook his head, dashing hope. “The contest is not severe enough.”

Reed puzzled a moment. “If I cannot convince you of my innocence in the course of a single page, I give you leave to release your version of events to the London papers. No reprisals. No claims of slander.”

“Reed,” Megan gasped. “My reputation would be completely ruined. Severe enough for you?”

Giovanni nodded curtly. “I agree to your terms.”

Reed smiled, pleased. Life was good. A duel of words, he had a chance of winning.

Half an hour and a scattering of ink-stained sheets later, the pens stopped the erratic scratching. Silence loomed more ominously than the scraping of pens. Written pages exchanged, the real test of wills began.

She contained her tongue far longer than she might have considered possible. Never before had she felt so cut off from what transpired before her very eyes. Designated the outsider in this stupid duel of words, she would go mad if her ignorance went on much longer.

“Ha!” Giovanni said contemptuously before he reached the end of the page.

His contempt did not bode well.

“Mmmm,” Reed shook his head over Giovanni’s writing. “My, my. That’s harsh.”

Giovanni angrily waved the page. “You cannot expect me to believe this.”

Reed had every appearance of remaining unperturbed. “Read on.” He waved his hand negligently. “Do me the courtesy of reading all of it before you make up your mind.”

Giovanni read on. Megan got up from the window seat to pace the room, fretting. She could see in her mind the awful damage that would come of Giovanni’s story being printed in the gossip sheets. Reed would be an outcast--polite society’s pariah.

Giovanni stopped reading. With an oath, he cast the page across the surface of the secretary. “This is true?” He slapped at the page in wide-eyed disbelief. “All of it, true?

This was not the response Megan had anticipated.

Reed nodded gravely. “I regret to say, it is true, as far as I know. The names and addresses I have included at the bottom of the page should satisfactorily verify my accusations.

“Accusations?” Megan looked on in confusion. Giovanni stood and held out his hand to Reed. “I owe you an apology.”

Megan had to sit down. The room was spinning.

Reed gave Giovanni’s outstretched hand a firm shake. “Apology accepted.”

Snatching up the pages he had scrawled, Giovanni held the edges of the paper to the candle on the desk. “This insulting bit of slander, is best consigned to the flame.” The pages caught fire, curling darkly as Giovanni turned and tossed the burning paper into the cold fireplace. “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said earnestly as he faced Reed, his posture more formal than usual. “If there is any way in which I can repay you, you will let me know?”

Reed nodded with subdued enthusiasm. “I shall. You are most kind. I am pleased we were able to settle this like gentlemen without bloodshed or blows. In such an exchange I am sure I would have left the field the bruised or bloodied loser.

“You flatter me, sir,” Giovanni said graciously.

Megan was stunned. None of this made sense to her. She could no more than nod when Giovanni folded up Reed’s pages, stuffed them in his borrowed pockets, wished her good day and left them.

“What was that all about?” she fairly exploded.

Reed shrugged, his eyes fastened to the door Giovanni had closed in his wake. “The settling of a disagreement.”

“Reed! Names. Addresses? Who? And what have they to do with this?”

Brow furrowed, Reed crossed to the fireplace to study the charred remains of the page Giovanni had burned. Bending, he extracted a fragment of the writing that had survived intact. Crossing to the candle on the secretary, he gave the survivor no quarter. “If I asked you to do something, Megan, something I considered important to your safety and well-being, would you do it without question?”

“That would greatly depend on what you ask of me. I will not blindly promise.”

His expression was unusually serious. “I would ask that you no longer frequent the company of Lord Frost and his sister, Laura.”

“Do you mean cut them off entirely?”

“I do.”

“You would have me do this without benefit of an explanation?

His brow wrinkled. “I realize I ask a great deal.”

“I assume you saw fit to explain to Giovanni?”

“Correct.”

Megan frowned. “I do not like to make uninformed decisions. Is the truth so shocking?”

Reed sighed. “I have no stomach for maligning another’s character without firsthand proof of that person’s wrongdoing. Giovanni was in danger, if the tales I have heard secondhand are true. I believe they are. You, too, are endangered by further contact with the Frosts, though perhaps not so perilously. I had hoped you would trust my judgment enough to agree to avoid them in future.”

Megan considered his words. “All right. I agree. On your recommendation, I shall avoid the Frosts like the plague.”

He kissed her then, but not on the lips as she had hoped, on the forehead, with an avuncular chasteness, and when she wrapped her arms around him he returned the embrace for no longer than a moment before saying, Come. We must go. I’ve much to do.”

Chapter Eighteen

T
hat evening Megan proved her intentions to adhere to Reed’s request.

“Tomorrow, if the weather is fair, we must explore the ruins of the Roman fort that once guarded Hard Knott pass,” Tom said.

“Sounds vastly entertaining,” Gussie agreed. “I suppose we should extend an invitation to the Frosts now that Reed means to abandon us.”

“Not the Frosts,” Megan said quickly. “I no longer care for their company, but Giovanni Giamarco might care to come along.”

Reed seemed to carefully refrain from looking at her.

Gussie could not disguise her surprise. “Giovanni it is, then. Tom will send a note around to him this evening. Won’t you Tom?”

Tom nodded. “By all means.” He clapped Reed on the shoulder. “We shall miss you, my good man, but as you can see, we are not to be stopped in our quest for the picturesque.”

Reed laughed. “Nor should you stop. Indeed, I would like nothing better than to remain and assist in the quest.”

He exchanged a look with Megan, would have liked nothing better either.

Contrary to both their wishes, Reed departed early the following morning. He pulled Megan aside after breakfast for a private moment to kiss her good-bye on the cheek. For an awkward moment she wondered if he would buss her lips instead.