He was risking everything for her.
If that was not change, what was?
Callie’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God.” She leaned toward him, reaching across the desktop to grab his arm. “Benedick, you have to take me there.”
“Callie…” Benedick shook his head. “I cannot take you there. You know that.”
She shot up from her chair, announcing, “Benedick! He could die!” And she went tearing out of the room, up the wide center staircase and back into her bedchamber, Benedick hot on her heels. She threw open her door with a crash and rushed to her armoire to retrieve a dress from inside. “He could be killed!” she cried.
Benedick closed the door behind him, attempting to keep Callie calm with a soft, steady tone. “He won’t be killed, Callie. Duels rarely go that route anymore.”
She turned to him, arms laden with muslin. “Am I mistaken in how they operate, Benedick? Twenty paces, turn, and fire? A pistol? A loaded pistol?”
“Well, yes,” Benedick conceded the point, adding, “But death is not usually the expected outcome. I mean, one could go to prison for killing someone in a duel, for heaven’s sake.”
“Ah, so it’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement?”
“Exactly.”
“Really more for show than for purpose.”
“Quite,” he said, pleased that she understood.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “And, what if one of the gentlemen in question is a poor shot?”
Benedick’s mouth opened, then closed.
Callie shook her head and moved behind her dressing screen. “You’re taking me.”
Her nightgown was almost immediately tossed over the top of the screen. Benedick threw up his hands at the indignity of the moment and turned his back to the general area. “I am not taking you, Callie. You shall wait here, as women do.”
“I most certainly shall not! I am no longer meek and biddable!”
“You labor under the misconception that you were ever meek and biddable!”
Benedick turned to find Callie dressed and yanking on a pair of walking boots. Her eyes flashed. “You have two options, Benedick. You may escort me like a good brother, or you may stand aside as I leave this house and travel through London in the dead of night by myself.”
“You’ll never find it.”
“Nonsense. You forget I am well acquainted with a public house or two in this city. I’m sure news of a duel involving one of London’s best-known aristocrats travels fast.”
His eyes widened. “I shall lock you in!”
“Then I shall climb down the trellis!” she announced.
“Damn it, Callie!”
“Benedick, I love him! I’ve loved him for a decade. And I had him for one day before I made a complete and utter mess of things. Or he did. I’m still not sure about that. But you cannot really believe I won’t fight to save him?”
The words hung between them as brother and sister faced off.
“Please, Benny,” she said softly, plaintively. “I love him.”
The Earl of Allendale gave a long sigh.
“Lord, deliver me from sisters. I shall call for the curricle.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Nick leaned against a lone rowan tree, hunching his shoulders against the cold morning mist and watching as Ralston checked his pistol. “You could be killed.”
“I shan’t be killed,” Ralston said distractedly, looking across the wide expanse of field that Oxford had chosen as the location for their duel.
“Better men than you have said as much, Gabriel. I don’t want to have to put you in the ground.”
“It would serve you well,” Ralston said morbidly as he meticulously packed the gun with powder. “You’d be a marquess.”
“I have been around you long enough to know that I do not actually want to be a marquess, thank you.”
“Well then, I shall endeavor to retain my title.”
“Excellent.”
Silence fell as the brothers waited for the arrival of Oxford and his second. The duel was set for dawn, and the field was bathed in a pale gray light that stole the color from the lush spring landscape and turned the setting bleak.
After several long minutes, Ralston said, “I cannot let him get away with saying such things about her, Nick.”
“I understand.”
“She deserves so much more.”
“She deserves you. Alive.”
Ralston turned to his brother, meeting his gaze firmly. “You must promise me something.”
Nick knew immediately what Ralston was going to say. “No.”
“Yes. You must. You’re my brother and my second. You haven’t a choice but to hear and accommodate my last wish.”
“If this is your last wish, I shall follow you into hell to ensure that you pay for it.”
“Nevertheless.” Ralston looked up at the sky, pulling his greatcoat closer for warmth. “Promise me you’ll take care of her.”
“You will take care of her, yourself, brother.”
Brilliant blue gazes met. “I swear before you and God that I will. But if something should happen, and this morning should go awry, promise me you’ll take care of her. Promise me you’ll tell her…” Ralston paused.
“Tell her what?”
Ralston took a deep breath, the words bringing a tightening in his chest. “Promise me you’ll tell her that I was an idiot. That the money didn’t matter. That, last night, faced with the terrifying possibility that I had lost her…I realized that she was the most important thing I had ever had…because of my arrogance and my unwillingness to accept what has been in my heart for too long…” He trailed off. “What the hell have I done?”
“It appears that you’ve gone and fallen in love.”
Ralston considered the statement. The old Ralston might have scoffed at the words—so pedestrian and fantastic and terrifying—instead, he felt warmth spread through him at the idea that he might love Callie. And that she might love him back. Perhaps he had, indeed, “gone and fallen in love.”
Nick continued, unable to keep the smug smile from his lips. “Shall I tell you what I would do if I discovered I’d been a royal ass and had lost the only woman I’d ever really wanted?”
Ralston’s eyes narrowed on his brother. “I don’t imagine I could stop you.”
“Indeed not,” Nick said. “I can tell you I wouldn’t be standing in this godforsaken field in this godforsaken cold waiting for that idiot Oxford to shoot at me. I would walk away from this ridiculous, antiquated exercise, and I would find that woman and tell her that I was a royal ass. And then I would do whatever it takes to convince her that she should take a chance on me despite my being a royal ass. And once that’s done, I would get her, immediately, to the nearest vicar and get the girl married. And with child.”
A vision flashed of Callie full and rounded with his child, and Ralston closed his eyes against the pleasure of it. “I thought that allowing myself to love her would turn me into Father. I thought she would make me weak. Like him.”
“You’re nothing like Father, Gabriel.”
“I see that now. She made me see it.” He paused, lost in the memory of Callie’s big brown eyes, her wide, smiling mouth. “My God, she’s made me so much more than what I was.”