Minerva Read online

  ‘Be careful,’ said Lord Sylvester with a crooked grin. ‘I’ve had them especially fitted with springs so light that they are hairtriggers. The slightest touch on the trigger will discharge it.’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said the Marquess. ‘When I raised it, the balance was so superb that the damn thing seemed like a part of my arm. One of these in Silas Dubois’ hands will be the end of you.’

  ‘I have a plan,’ said Lord Sylvester, ‘which may work. On the other hand, I might be killed. Do you think, Minerva will weep for me, Peter? Or will she shortly lie in the marital aims of some bucolic country squire?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked the Marquess sharply.

  ‘Of course it matters,’ laughed his friend. ‘I am fighting over her honour, remember? I would like to think she would cry for me.’

  ‘She will,’ said the Marquess. ‘She’s in love with you.’

  For a moment some intense emotion gleamed in Lord Sylvester’s green eyes, and then he sighed. ‘She is too young, Peter, to know what love is. Let us hope I live to think of her from time to time as a pretty memory.’

  ‘You will not be going to the Aubryns’ masked ball on Tuesday night?’ asked the Marquess.

  ‘No. I shall stay at home and commune with my soul. If you are there, Peter, see that my fair Minerva is not plagued by unwelcome suitors.’

  When the Marquess first saw Minerva at the Aubryns’ ball, he was overcome with a strong desire to shake her until her teeth rattled.

  She had no right to look so carefree or so beautiful.

  Minerva was dressed as Minerva. She wore a gold helmet and a filmy white Roman gown and gold Roman sandals. She carried a gold staff topped with a golden owl.

  She was not wearing a mask, and he found himself thinking more kindly of her when he noticed the anguish in her wide eyes.

  ‘Where is he?’ were the first words she asked.

  ‘Sylvester? Having a quiet evening at home,’ replied the Marquess easily. ‘Now, perhaps I could fetch you some refreshment, Miss Armitage?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes. Come with me where we can talk,’ said Minerva wildly.

  They sat down in a corner of the refreshment room. ‘The duel must be tomorrow,’ said Minerva. ‘I know it’s tomorrow. It’s all my fault. If he dies I will kill myself.’

  ‘You must think of your family,’ said the Marquess severely. ‘I saw them the other day, but no doubt you know about that.’

  ‘No,’ said Minerva. ‘Why should you visit my family?’

  The Marquess hesitated, and then made up his mind. Minerva should know of Sylvester’s generosity.

  He explained about the money and the steward and that the vicar would shortly be sending for his eldest daughter.

  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ cried Minerva, her hands flying to her pale cheeks. ‘This is terrible. He is so good, so kind, so generous. I had thought him a heartless rake. And I am sending him to his death.’

  ‘Calm yourself,’ urged the Marquess. ‘It is highly unlikley that Sylvester will die.’

  Minerva looked at him, suddenly as calm as she had been agitated a moment before.

  ‘Please, could you fetch me some champagne, my lord,’ she asked, not looking at him.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the Marquess coldly, immediately putting all her concern down to frivolous, feminine hysterics.

  But when he returned with the champagne, Minerva had gone. He diligently searched the ballroom, but could find no sign of her.

  At last he ran Lady Godolphin to earth.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over her these past days. She’s getting more and more notorious.’

  The Marquess looked at her in a puzzled way, and then remembered her ladyship’s malapropisms and gathered that she had meant ‘nervous’.

  ‘Perhaps she’s gone home,’ suggested Lady Godolphin. ‘Ask if my carriage has been called for.’

  This the Marquess did. He found that Minerva had indeed called for the Godolphin carriage. He shrugged. At least he could turn his attention to the other pretty girls and forget about Minerva … and forget about an enchanting face with two blue eyes, framed in a cloud of blonde hair which had haunted him since he had left Hopeworth.

  Minerva sat grimly in Lady Godolphin’s carriage as it rumbled through the night streets. By the time Lady Godolphin found out where her charge had gone, it would be morning. Colonel Brian had been at the ball which meant that Lady Godolphin would stay until dawn.

  In the flickering light of the parish lamps, Minerva’s face was white and set. Her mind was made up. He probably would not stay alive to marry her even if he wanted to. And so she would spend this last night with him.

  The carriage rolled to a stop outside Lord Sylvester’s house in St James’s Square.

  The footmen jumped from the backstrap and let down the steps. The coachman craned his head.

  ‘There don’t look like no rout a-going on here, miss,’ he called down from the box. ‘Would you like us to wait?’

  ‘No, John,’ said Minerva. ‘I am quite all right. Please go.’

  She mounted the shallow steps and then turned, waiting for the coach to drive away. When it had turned the corner of the square, she took a deep breath and seized the knocker.

  A rather evil-looking butler answered the door, bringing to Minerva’s mind tales that Lord Sylvester hired his servants from the gutter.

  ‘I am Miss Armitage,’ she said firmly, ‘come to call on his lordship.’

  The butler peered past her at the deserted square and then held a branch of candles higher to take a better look at the vision confronting him. His eyes travelled from her golden helmet to her golden sandals and then to the staff with the owl on top which she still carried in one hand.

  ‘See here, miss,’ he said placatingly. ‘You’d better let me fetch you a hack. His lordship is not at home.’

  Minerva leaned weakly against the doorjamb. ‘Not at home?’ she echoed.

  ‘Hey there! Bustle about! Fetch another bottle,’ shouted a familiar voice.

  ‘Sylvester!’ cried Minerva. Before the butler had time to block her way, she had nipped past him. She threw open the door of a study off the hall and stood poised on the threshold.

  Lord Sylvester was sitting in a wing chair beside the fire with an empty brandy bottle on the table in front of him.

  He stared at Minerva and passed his hand over his eyes and stared again.

  ‘She would push past me, me lord,’ came the querulous voice of his butler. ‘I told her you wasn’t home.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Lord Sylvester vaguely. ‘Bring another bottle and another glass and leave us.’

  Minerva walked forward and stood looking down at him.

  ‘Well, my wise goddess,’ said Lord Sylvester, ‘as you can see I am quite drunk. What is your pleasure, Miss Armitage?’

  ‘You,’ answered Minerva, through white lips. ‘You, my lord.’

  ‘I’m not drunk. You are. Do sit down, Minerva, and stop looking heroic. I can’t bear you when you’re noble.’

  A servant entered with another bottle of brandy and a glass for Minerva.

  ‘Now,’ said Lord Sylvester, when they were alone again, ‘I suppose you have winkled the intelligence out of Peter that I fight this duel in the morning and that you have felt yourself responsible for my imminent death and so have come to sacrifice your fair body. Go home, Minerva. I do not seduce virgins. Very boring things, virgins.’

  ‘Do you intend to drink that stuff all by yourself?’ said Minerva coldly. ‘Or am I allowed to have some?’

  ‘By all means.’ He poured her a glass and his glittering drink-fevered eyes watched in amazement as she downed it in one gulp.

  ‘Well, answer me,’ he said harshly. ‘You came to sacrifice yourself on the altar of my dissolute body, did you not?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Minerva, filling up her glass again, and disposing of it as quickly as the last. The brandy was giving her a reckless, heady feeling and she no longer f
elt afraid.

  She looked at him steadily. He was not wearing a coat and was attired only in a thin cambric shirt, open at the neck, leather breeches and hessian boots. Apart from the glitter in his green eyes, he seemed quite sober.

  ‘Go away, Minerva,’ he sighed. ‘The thought of bedding a noble gesture makes me go cold all over. If you leave now, no one will know you have been here.’

  ‘Except Lady Godolphin’s servants,’ said Minerva calmly.

  ‘I shall bribe ’em.’

  ‘No, I think you have spent enough money on the Armitage family. The Marquess of Brabington told me of your kindness, your generosity …’

  ‘It’s his generosity as well,’ interrupted Lord Sylvester rudely. ‘Anyway, I only did it to be rid of you, Minerva. Go home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My love, I am very drunk. I am shortly about to retire so that I may have a clear and sober head in the morning. I fear I may have misled you by my attentions. I am an incorrigible flirt. I have no interest in you whatsoever. I do not find you attractive. You bore me. There. Have I made myself plain?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Minerva, her eyes filling with tears. ‘You have made yourself very plain. I will leave you now, my lord. Despite your cruel remarks, I wish you good fortune tomorrow. Oh, I wish to God I had never set eyes on you.’

  ‘There, now,’ he said. ‘I was too harsh. Come and kiss me goodbye, Minerva, and I will take you home.’

  The room was lit only by the flickering firelight. The furniture and pictures seemed to dance and waver in the reflections of the flames.

  Minerva rose wearily and went over and placed a cold kiss on his cheek.

  All at once he could smell that light flower perfume she wore and he could feel the heavy weight of one of her breasts against his arm, and very gently he put up a hand and buried it in the black tresses of her hair which cascaded from under the gold helmet. He increased the pressure, brought up his other hand and pulled her down onto his lap. The helmet went tumbling to the floor.

  All at once, he was kissing her quite desperately, lost in a hot magic world of lips and breasts and shining hair. He tried to control himself, to pull back, but one timid little hand crept inside his shirt and he thought he would die if he did not have her.

  If she had cried out, or protested, he would have come to his senses immediately, but she seemed a thing of passion, a throbbing, pulsating, burning woman.

  Even when she was tumbled, naked, under him on the floor, and a voice in his head was crying out she was a virgin, she ran her nails down his back in such a way that all hell broke loose and he could not stop until he was twisting and turning and dying inside her.

  And even when he gently pulled her clothes on again, it was to gather her closely in his arms against his breast and carry her upstairs to his bed so that he could rediscover the wealth and wonder he had just found.

  ‘Perhaps he will not come,’ said Silas Dubois, biting his nails.

  ‘Damn you,’ said the Marquess of Brabington. ‘Don’t suspect Lord Sylvester of your own low, twisted values. He will come.’

  A thin ground mist was turning gold as the sun rose above the church tower. The clock chimed six and a skylark started up as if surprised by the noise.

  The Marquess found himself suffering a revulsion against the whole of London society which tolerated such awful toads as Dubois and his second, Jeremy Bryce. The surgeon, Mr Mackintosh, approached and asked in a low voice if everything had been done to try to bring the duel to an end.

  ‘Of course it has,’ said the Marquess harshly. ‘I do not enjoy the spectacle of my best friend putting his life at risk.’

  ‘I think I hear his lordship now,’ said the surgeon. The steady clop of horses hooves sounded in the distance.

  ‘Whoever it is, he’s not in too great a hurry,’ sneered Silas Dubois.

  Driving his racing curricle, Lord Sylvester drove onto the field.

  ‘The fool!’ muttered Silas Dubois.

  He himself was dressed from head to foot in black. Even the buttons of his coat had been painted black so as to offer no target to his antagonist.

  Lord Sylvester on the other hand was dressed in a Spanish blue coat with silver buttons worn over a striped Marseilles waistcoat and a ruffled shirt and starched cravat. A pair of buff breeches and suwarrow boots completed the ensemble. His lordship raised his quizzing glass and surveyed Mr Dubois before letting it fall.

  The surgeon removed his black hat and leaned on his gold-topped cane as if Lord Sylvester were already dead.

  ‘Let’s not waste any time,’ said Lord Sylvester languidly. ‘Choose your weapon, Dubois.’

  Silas squinted into the box and let out a low whistle. He lifted one out, and leered up at Lord Sylvester. ‘Your determination to play the gentleman, Comfrey, is suicidal.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Lord Sylvester. ‘They have hairtriggers.’

  Never had Lord Sylvester looked so calm or so indolent. Never before had his mind worked so furiously.

  The pistols were primed and loaded and the instructions given. They were to stand back to back, count to ten, turn and fire immediately. To withhold their fire, hoping the other would miss or wound slightly, then calmly take aim to kill was unsporting, and the one who did that would be disgraced.

  The morning suddenly seemed very still and quiet. This is it! thought Lord Sylvester, his thoughts tumbling one after the other. ‘I never said I loved her. I should have asked her to marry me. I must not die!’ And then his brain became calm again.

  The pistols were cocked and he stood back to back with Silas Dubois.

  Now, it is instinctive to start on the left foot because the pistol is held high in the right hand. But starting on the left foot means ending the tenth pace on the right foot, which means a vital second or two lost while the duellist brings his left foot up to his right one in order to turn around. By starting off on his right foot, Lord Sylvester planned to end his tenth pace on his left with the right foot behind him so that he would simply have to swivel round to be facing Dubois.

  As he walked his paces, Lord Sylvester slowly brought his pistol arm down. The Marquess held his breath and wondered what his friend was doing. The normal way of duelling was to hold the pistol high, turn, and then bring the pistol down and forward into the aim. While this is happening, however, the opponent is obscured and cannot be fired at until the gun is levelled.

  What Lord Sylvester planned to do was to bring the gun up from a down position so that Dubois would be in full view all the time, so that his actions could be seen, and so that Lord Sylvester could have a choice of aiming his pistol before Dubois’ gun came to bear on him.

  At the count of ten, Lord Sylvester swung around, his gun already coming up fast. He saw immediately that Dubois had also started on the right foot and was already facing him.

  For a brief second, Silas Dubois’ pistol obscured his vision as it came down to ‘point’, but Lord Sylvester, unable to beat Dubois at the turn, found he could beat him at the point. His pistol flashed up and he fired before Dubois could get his gun down.

  Lord Sylvester’s bullet hit precisely the spot he had aimed at … the barrel of Dubois’ pistol.

  The blow set off the hairtrigger and Dubois’ gun discharged harmlessly into the air. The gun flew from Dubois’ hand and he let out an almost animal scream of pain. His fingers had been broken.

  Lord Sylvester calmly handed over his pistol to his second, the Marquess of Brabington. Jeremy Bryce and the surgeon, Mr Mackintosh, hurried over to where the wounded Dubois was crouched on the ground, moaning faintly.

  Mr Mackintosh shook his head over the ruin of Dubois’ hand. ‘Ye’ll never duel again, Mr Dubois,’ he said. ‘When your trigger finger heals, I doubt if it will set properly. Ye’ll never pull a trigger again.’

  Silas Dubois crouched, shaking, humiliated beyond belief. The story would be all over London by the end of the day. His faithless friend, Jeremy Bryce, would see to that. Already Bryce
was trying to fawn on Lord Sylvester, praising his marksmanship.

  The Marquess retrieved Silas Dubois’ gun and brought it back to Lord Sylvester who examined it and shook his head sadly. It was ruined. He put the gun with his own in the case and looked around him.

  How splendid it was to be alive and in love! Everything seemed fresh and new-minted.

  Oblivious of the listening Dubois and Bryce and the surgeon, he clapped the Marquess on the shoulder. ‘We’ll go and have a double celebration, Peter. I am to be wed. If she’ll have me.’

  The Marquess grinned. He did not have to ask who the ‘she’ was.

  They strolled off, arm in arm.

  The surgeon helped Silas Dubois to his feet and after setting his hand, adjusted a sling around his thin shoulders. ‘I have not done yet,’ muttered Silas Dubois.

  ‘Heh, what?’ exclaimed Jeremy Bryce. ‘Of course you’re finished. The man made an absolute fool of you. But by George you were outclassed.’

  ‘By a trick,’ hissed Dubois. His eyes suddenly lit up with malice. ‘But I think I still have him. Hurry man. We must get to White’s.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘Yes, at this hour. Hurry!’

  Mr Bryce kept silent on the road back to town, although he privately thought the shock must have addled his friend’s wits.

  Silas Dubois was muttering and biting the nails of his uninjured hand as the coach lurched and swayed. He barely waited for the steps to be let down when they at last reached St James’s Street, but leapt down and scuttled into the club and immediately started shouting for the betting book.

  He took it over to a quiet corner and slowly turned the pages. Ah, he had it! The entry seemed to leap out at him. ‘Mr F, Sir Y and Lord B do hereby wager 50,000 pounds to be paid to the one who succeeds in winning the prize of Miss A’s affections.’

  He scuttled over to a desk in the corner, and, producing a penknife from his pocket, he carefully cut out the page with the entry. He sharpened a quill and carefully changed the Lord B to Lord S. Then he wrote a brief letter and folded it, together with the page from the betting book, and sealed it and sent it to Minerva by one of the club servants.