“Damien, stop… please…” Vanessa implored anxiously, but he refused to loosen his grip.
When Clune’s strained face turned crimson from lack of air, several gentlemen voiced protests of concern and alarm. Finally one of them physically intervened.
Nicholas Sabine stepped forward to put a restraining hand on Damien’s arm. “You don’t wish to kill him, do you?”
“Don’t I?” Damien retorted savagely.
Releasing his hold, though, he made a visible effort at controlling his violent urges and stepped back, his blazing gaze fixed on Clune. “You will give me satisfaction. The choice of weapons is yours.”
He heard Vanessa gasp at his challenge. “Damien, you cannot-”
“I advise you to name your seconds,” he told Clune tersely, the hushed vehemence of his tone deadly serious. “I trust Thornhill and Matthews will act as mine.”
Ignoring the astonished gazes of his colleagues then, Damien took Vanessa by the arm and ushered her along the hall, away from the spectacle.
Chapter Nineteen
The curricle ride home was fraught with tension. Vanessa felt herself shiver in fear, while beside her Damien seethed with fury.
“You can’t possibly mean to challenge Clune to a duel,” she said finally as he guided the pair of chestnuts onto the road to Rosewood. “Surely you will call it off.”
A wintry smile touched his lips. “I have no intention of calling it off.”
“Damien, it was a prank, nothing more. Harmless enough-”
“Harmless?” His jaw clenched. “Clune compromised you before a gathering of the premiere rakes in England. That is hardly harmless, to my mind.”
“My identity might have remained secret if not for your outburst. Whatever possessed you to such violence? Had you behaved rationally, your friends would never have been aware of my presence.”
“Clune would not have been satisfied with a rational response from me. He deliberately orchestrated my outburst. But he overstepped the line, holding you prisoner.”
She took a deep breath, trying to control her own anger. “What he did was ungentlemanly, even despicable, I’ll agree, but it is over now. And a duel would only publicize my humiliation and compromise me further. Please, can you not simply forget the incident?”
Damien slanted her a fierce glance. “It’s too serious to forget. I would be fostering the notion that he can dishonor a lady under my protection with impunity. I won’t sanction his scurrilous behavior.”
“You won’t sanction?” Her own glance was scathing. “What gives you the right to sit in judgment of others? To play God with people’s lives? First Aubrey, and now Clune-”
“Enough! I don’t intend to discuss it further.”
Vanessa pressed her lips together to stifle an angry retort. She would have been furious, if not for her feelings of dread.
She endured Damien’s simmering silence for the entire journey home. But the moment he drew up before the manor, Vanessa stepped down from the curricle.
Without speaking another word, she marched up to her bedchamber and changed into a traveling dress. With the help of two maids, Vanessa packed her trunks and ordered them taken to Damien’s carriage. It was late afternoon, but she intended to try to catch the stage at the coaching inn in Alcester. If she could make London tonight, she would reach her own home in Kent by tomorrow.
She gave one last glance around the bedchamber where she had known such pleasure and heartache, then shut the door quietly behind her. She went downstairs again without stopping by Olivia’s room. She couldn’t bring herself to say farewell just now, not when she was so emotional. But she would writ
e the moment she arrived home.
She found Damien in his study, sitting at his desk, inspecting a set of dueling pistols that, according to the name engraved on the case, were the exquisite work of Manton. Vanessa paled.
For a moment she studied his perfect profile, her heart aching with fear and love. “You really mean to go through with this?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” Damien replied without looking up.
“You could die, don’t you realize that?”
“I don’t expect to die. I’m considered a crack shot.”