Lord Harry's Folly, Catherine Coulter [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

was beyond understanding, and he swallowed back further words of warning.

For the next several minutes, the marquess gave ground, parrying thrust after wild thrust, his movements wholly defensive. The boy was tiring, his attack so awkward and ill-timed that the marquess could have easily slipped through his guard. Yet, he held back. He was waiting for the instant when he could catch Monteith’s foil high near his hand and rip it from his fingers. He watched, parried, his eyes alert, waiting for the perfect moment.

He is weakening and falling back, Hetty’s mind told her. Press him, press him harder. That’s right, he’s afraid now. He’s afraid of you, afraid of the death you will bring him. That’s right, send him back and back even more. Press him!

The marquess made a mistake. For the instant his eyes returned to the matted, now huge circle of blood that had spread upward toward the boy’s chest, he broke his concentration.

Hetty whipped her foil under his, and the suddenness of the impact, at the same instant as his attention wavered, jerked his blade from his fingers and sent it flying to the ground.

What a damned fool you are, he thought dispassionately. He felt the pressure of the boy’s blade against his chest.

She’d done it, she’d actually done it. You’ve won, you’ve won. She stood poised forward, her weight on her right leg, her foil extended its full length, the tip against her enemy’s heart. Why does he not say something? Why does he not plead for his life? The glazed shock that had held her in sway loosed its grip on her vision, and she stared at him. He stood quietly before her and she could see no fear in his dark eyes.

The earl of March forced himself to hold his place, even as he shouted, “For God’s sake, Jason, jerk away his foil.”

The marquess made no sign that he’d even heard the earl’s words. He couldn’t be certain why he made no move. There was something in the boy’s eyes that held him.

Hetty felt the powerful, single purpose of her mind begin to fall away from her, and in that instant, she saw herself as she used to be. She saw Henrietta Rolland before she’d discovered the marquess’s hand in her brother’s death. She’d been hollow with grief, hollow with the touch of death. Still, death had not claimed her, and she had savored the full consciousness of life, even in those months when she’d felt most alone. It had seemed so simple to her to plan the marquess’s execution, his death a just retribution, a full payment for the grief he’d brought to her. Yet, he stood before her now proud, arrogant but alive, just as she was alive. She realized that she’d used the idea of his death to assuage her own grief. But to run her foil through his heart, to rob him of life, to actually bring about another human being’s death, was beyond her. Her single-minded hatred, her pact of vengeance crumbled.

She gasped aloud, jerked back the foil from his chest, and clasping it in both hands, plunged it into the frozen ground with all her remaining strength. She jerked her fingers away from it as if it were evil.

She’d thrust it deep enough so that the handle swung back and forth, its gentle hissing sounding softly in the silence.

“Damn you, I can’t kill you! Oh God, Damien, forgive me, but I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” Her cry was filled with the deep pain of her spirit and the growing agony in her body. She looked into his face, the face she had hated even in her dreams. His face grew distorted, twisting into a mask of death Damien’s face. “I can’t kill you,” she said, her voice racked with sobs, wrenching cries tearing from her throat. Her body was taking her over now, closing off any control from her mind. Searing pain tore through her side and she doubled over, clutching her arms about her. She felt hot stickiness on her hands and looked down in dumb surprise at her blood-covered fingers. She looked wildly about her, but saw only blurred images. She heard loud voices, yet they came to her ears as unintelligible sounds. Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell heavily to the frozen earth, her head striking an outjutting rock.

Blackness flooded her.

Chapter Twenty-five

The marquess was at the boy’s side in an instant, his hands tearing at the blood-soaked shirt. He had to stop the bleeding. Damn, but he wasn’t going to be Monteith’s murderer. He acted on instinct, not allowing himself to think about the incredible scene in which he had just played a part. He ripped open the shirt and tugged at the buckskin breeches to bare the wound. It was not bare skin that met his eyes, but a tight-fitting muslin wrap hemmed with blue ribbon. He had torn it apart before the significance of the garment hit him. Though side, ribs, and belly were covered with blood, the inward curving to a slender waist, the soft smoothness of the white skin hit his brain like a stroke of lightning. No, no, there had to be a mistake, he wouldn’t believe this, but he had to. He stared at that blue ribbon, at that white soft skin.

Oh God, Lord Harry Monteith was a girl.

“Jason, how badly is he wounded?”

In that instant, the marquess made a decision and acted on it. He jerked the shirt back over the girl’s side. “It’s bad, Julien. Quickly, give me your handkerchief. Harry, your neck cloth. We must stop the bleeding.”

“Mis Lord Harry. Dear God, Lord Harry.” The marquess glanced up at the valet’s frantic face. God, the man had nearly given all away. He looked Pottson straight in the eye and said firmly, “Lord Harry will be all right. Don’t say anything now. He will survive, I swear it to you.”

“Aye, your grace,” Pottson said, looking from his mistress’s bloody-soaked