Wallflower (Old Maids' Club, Book 1) (39 page)

This would be much easier if he wasn’t
armed. Not that she had a clue what she would do, but undoubtedly
her chances of escaping this mess with no one getting hurt would be
exponentially increased if no one else had a weapon. She could
control herself. Others, however? Not so easy to
control.

Before she could think better of it,
Tabitha turned her pistol on Oglethorpe. “Stop where you are and
put the pistol on the ground.”

He laughed. The bloody blackguard
dared to laugh at her. “Devonport couldn’t handle his duel on his
own, could he? He needed to bring in his fat cow of a fiancée to
take care of things for him?”

A collective chorus of indrawn breaths
came from the onlookers at his insult, but Tabitha couldn’t be
bothered by it. She expected that and worse from the lecherous
wretch. What she found more bothersome was the fact that so many
apparent “gentlemen” had come to witness such a barbarous
activity.

“
No less than I’d expect
from such a milksop.” Oglethorpe continued toward her, closing the
distance between them with every word and waving his weapon about
as he spoke. If he wasn’t careful, he would fire the thing at
random. He could hit anyone.

Father. Owen. Toby.
Noah
. She couldn’t let
that happen. If anyone was going to shoot one of them, it was
damned well going to be Tabitha.

“
I’ve already warned you
once, Lord Oglethorpe. I’ll not warn you again.” She aimed her
pistol at his heart.

“
Finally grown a backbone,
have we, Lady Tabitha?” Coming to a standstill, Oglethorpe smirked.
“You’re quite the feisty wench—I realized that from our tryst here
at Hyde Park a few weeks ago. I expected you to run home to your
dear Papa then, and this would have all been settled long ago. But
you bowled me over. Didn’t say a word to him, did you? Or your
brothers, either? I should have gone to them and told them what a
common doxy you are then. We could have been married right away and
avoided this whole scenario.” Throughout his speech, he continued
to wave the pistol about like it was nothing more dangerous than a
lady’s fan.

“
What are you saying?”
Father took a few steps closer to Oglethorpe before turning and
catching Tabitha’s eye. “What is he saying, Tabitha?”

She shook her head. In the intervening
weeks, Tabitha had done everything in her power to avoid thinking
about Oglethorpe. To avoid thinking about what he’d almost done to
her, the way he’d tried to ravish her. Tears stung at her eyes and
blurred her vision, but she fought them down.

Behind her, Noah moved closer. She
felt him more than heard him. His heat told her he was close enough
to touch her, close enough to rip the pistol from her hands, close
enough to move between her and Oglethorpe, but he didn’t. He was
just there. Calming. Soothing. Letting her know he was there if she
needed him.

If
she needed him. If.

What a freeing thought.
Noah was going to let her handle the situation. He wasn’t going to
make a decision and force her to live with it.
She
was in control, this
time.

“
He’s revealing himself
for the libertine he is, Father.” With deliberate care, Tabitha
pulled back the hammer until it clicked into place. In the silence
that had descended over the clearing, the sound carried well. It
almost seemed to echo, like it was caught in the slowly lifting
fog, destined to repeat until all of the mist had disintegrated
into the atmosphere. “I’ll ask you one final time to put the pistol
on the ground. If you don’t, I’ll shoot.”

He sneered, like he didn’t believe she
would do it. Or perhaps as though he suspected her aim would fail.
“Be a good wench and give the gun to your namby-pamby fiancé over
there, so he and I can finish what we started.” Once more, he waved
the pistol.

Tabitha couldn’t be held to blame for
Oglethorpe’s churlishness, nor for his idiocy. Why did the man
insist on endangering everyone present? And the way he continued to
cast aspersions on Noah’s character was beyond the pale. In an
instant, she adjusted her aim and fired.

It hit him in the upper arm. The horse
whinnied beside her and pulled away, dashing off into the park.
Oglethorpe screamed and dropped the pistol he’d been holding,
grasping at the bleeding wound with his other hand. “Good thing
your aim is poor, you fat bitch.”

Briskly, Tabitha moved over to where
he’d dropped the firearm and grabbed it before any of the men
scrambling to pick it up could do so, dropping her discharged
pistol in the process. A good half of the observers had made an
attempt at Oglethorpe’s weapon, and she waved the barrel in their
direction, silently warning them to back off before returning her
focus to Oglethorpe.

“
On the contrary, you’re
quite fortunate my aim is precise. You can thank my brothers for
that. They took great pains to instruct me in all variety of
pursuits you might find improper for a lady. But then again, you
don’t seem to think of me as a lady, so perhaps I’m mistaken on
that point.”

She cocked the hammer of his loaded
weapon and pointed it at his face, point-blank. “Now, I’d
appreciate it if you would stop calling me a wench, my lord. And
cease insulting my fiancé. It makes my fingers itch, and I might
accidentally fire again.”

A few of the men in their audience
chuckled.

Oglethorpe cast his eyes about madly,
scanning the crowd. “What are you all waiting for? The bitch shot
me, and she’s threatening to do it again. She ought to be
imprisoned. Someone call the watch.”

“
I don’t think you want to
do that, Oglethorpe,” Lord Leith said from by her side. When had he
moved? She hadn’t heard him, and she certainly hadn’t seen him.
“Lady Tabitha has done nothing wrong, from what I can tell. And you
might want to rethink what you just called her.”

Oglethorpe lunged forward. “Nothing
wrong? I could bleed to death.”

“
From my perspective, that
would be a vast improvement.” Toby stepped closer, putting a hand
out to stop Oglethorpe’s progress. “Besides, nothing would happen
to Tabitha if the watch came. I’m the one who shot you.”

Tabitha shook her head at him. “No
you’re not. I did it.”

“
No, I did it. I shot
him.” Noah came to stand by her other side. He took her free hand
and pressed it firmly, enveloping her in his warmth. “It was my
duel.”

“
You can’t have shot the
bastard, Devonport,” Owen said. He took up a position near Toby and
Oglethorpe. “I did it.”

Father and Christopher moved in, each
claiming to have fired the shot at the same time as nearly half the
gentlemen in their audience did the same.

“
You’re all mad,”
Oglethorpe shouted. “Eggerley, fetch the watch. And a doctor while
you’re at it.” He was shaking, whether from loss of blood or anger,
she couldn’t tell.

“
I wouldn’t do that if I
were you, Eggerley,” Father said coolly. “It would be the word of
the two of you against all of us.”

Owen looked at the wound on
Oglethorpe’s arm. “The shot went straight through. You’re fine.” He
pulled Oglethorpe’s coat off of him and wrapped it around his arm.
“Hold that tight. It’ll stop the bleeding. And I’d suggest, if
Devonport agrees and is satisfied, that we call this duel settled.”
Owen ignored the look of abject outrage on Oglethorpe’s face and
turned to Noah.

“
I’m satisfied,” Noah
said.

Tabitha jerked her hand in
his and he squeezed. It was a let-me-handle-this sort of motion.
Damn and blast, she had thought they were past that. She was
not
going to just stand
by and let him decide this. “I’m not satisfied. Since I’m the only
person to have fired a shot in this duel, and since I’m the party
over whom the duel is being fought, I think it should be my
satisfaction we should be looking to secure.”

“
Agreed,” called out an
unfamiliar voice from the crush of onlookers. “Let the lady do as
she will with the sorry rat.” Noah and the rest of her family
looked between each other and eventually nodded.

Keeping her weapon trained
on Oglethorpe, she took a breath to steady her thoughts. Tabitha
wanted to be sure she covered everything. “We’ll let you leave with
no more than the two holes in your arm if you cooperate.” When he
finally nodded his assent, she continued. “You’ll admit before
every gentleman present that you lied and that nothing took place
between us at Vauxhall—that we did not so much as speak a word to
each other, in fact. And I’m sure that I can count on their
assistance in making certain that word will spread to the rest of
the
ton
of your
lie.”

A murmur of assent traveled over the
crowd. Oglethorpe cast his eyes about, likely looking for someone
to side with him. “Fine.”

“
You’ll also refrain from
making any disparaging comments about either myself or Lord
Devonport in the future, or you’ll find yourself right back
here.”

Oglethorpe nodded. “Satisfied now?” he
drawled.

“
Yes, I
believe—”

“
Not quite yet,” Noah
interrupted. “We want one more thing. You’ll take out a page in
the
Times
telling
the entire
beau monde
that you’re a lying fortune hunter. I want a full page,
detailing for every mother of a young miss, for every father of a
debutante, all of the countless ways you’ve schemed to leg-shackle
yourself to a lady with a generous portion.” He looked around at
the throng of gentlemen, each of them grinning from ear to ear as
Oglethorpe squirmed and the color drained from his face, and
nodded. “And I can assure you, there are enough of us present who
know enough of your exploits that we’ll know if you leave anything
out. Understood?”

Oglethorpe nodded, but Toby apparently
wanted more. He took Oglethorpe’s arm, just where the wound was,
and gripped hard. “Give Devonport an answer.”

“
Yes. Understood.”
Oglethorpe’s voice was hardly more than a squeak.

“
Excellent. Then I believe
we are all satisfied. Correct?” Toby turned and looked to each of
them in turn, waiting for a nod of affirmation. “Off you go, then.
I expect to see your page in tomorrow’s paper, Oglethorpe. It can
be your wedding gift to the happy couple. Don’t make me hunt you
down.”

Before anyone could change their
minds, Oglethorpe scurried away, holding his bloodied coat over his
arm, with Eggerley hot on his tail. Tabitha watched them go until
their forms disappeared behind the trees and she couldn’t see them
any longer.

Noah’s hands ran over her shoulders
and her arms, lowering the one still holding the pistol in a
death-grip until it was pointed at the ground. Lord Leith took the
barrel in his hand and tugged gently, but she couldn’t release it.
“Let go, sweetheart,” Noah urged in her ear. “It’s over
now.”

But her hand had been molded around
the wooden butt of the gun for so long, with her fingers positioned
just so, she didn’t know how to release it. One by one, her fingers
were pried loose and the pistol came free.

Strong arms came about her and picked
her up. “I’ve got you,” Noah said. “You can stop shaking
now.”

Shaking? She didn’t realize she’d been
shaking. How long had that been happening? Tabitha buried her face
in the crook of Noah’s neck and breathed in the familiar scent of
his cologne.

“
My carriage is closest,”
Father said from somewhere behind them. “Let’s get her
home.”

Moments later, Noah placed her on the
seat of her father’s carriage and sat beside her. He brushed a few
stray hairs away from her face and kissed her over her
cheeks.

“
Oh, but the horse!” In
all that had happened since, Tabitha had forgotten about the horse
she’d taken from her father’s stables.

“
Leith is taking care of
it,” Toby said as he climbed in after them. “He’ll manage that and
he’ll still make it to the wedding on time.” The wedding. Devil
take it, how could she go and sit through a wedding after the
morning she’d had? She wanted to enjoy her own wedding, after all.
But Toby was still prattling on. “Speaking of the horse, what in
God’s name were you thinking riding in like that?”

And Toby was back to being Toby.
Picking at her mercilessly. Tabitha huffed.

“
She was perfect,” Noah
said. He smiled down at her with such devotion, she thought she’d
melt from it. “My knightess in shimmering muslin, racing in to save
the day on a white charger.”

Tabitha felt a blush rising up the
back of her neck at his words and turned away. Father and Owen were
climbing into the carriage, so that was enough distraction that she
hoped the conversation would move to something else.

Once they were all settled inside and
Father rapped on the wood to signal the driver into motion, Noah
turned back to Tabitha. “Promise me one thing.”

She looked up at him dubiously. She
wasn’t going to make any promises until she knew what she was
agreeing to.

“
Promise you’ll never hold
a loaded gun to my face again.”