He allowed Astarte to move slowly forward toward the clearing. His vision no longer blocked by the trees, he stiffened at the strange sight that met his eyes.
There, in the small clearing not twenty yards away from him, stood two men, pistols raised properly in front of their faces, standing back to back. There were no dragons to slay that Julien could see.
Good Lord, he thought, appalled, they’re going to duel. He thought blankly that surely that wasn’t right. Dueling was for dawn on a foggy morning with seconds standing about slapping their hands together for warmth.
There were no seconds— no one but the two duelists, who now began to pace away from each other, one man’s voice calling out the paces in a loud, clear voice, “One, two, three . . .”
Julien gently dug his heels into Astarte’s side, and she obediently moved forward, making no sound until they reached the edge of the clearing.
Fascinated, Julien stared fixedly at the two men. Surely it was just some sort of practice, surely the pistols weren’t loaded. Surely.
“Eight, nine, ten!”
The men turned in quick, smooth motions and faced each other. One of them pulled up his pistol in a quick, jerky movement, stiffened his arm, and fired.
The gun’s report rang through the silence of the woods. The pistols were most certainly loaded.
The bullet missed its mark, for the other man remained standing, and now, in what seemed an endlessly cruel delay, he slowly raised his pistol and aimed it at his opponent’s chest.
Julien found himself frozen into inaction, his hands clutching the reins, simply disbelieving. The man stood proud and stiff, waiting, without a sound.
With a nasty laugh the man fired. To Julien’s horror, he didn’t raise his pistol skyward and delope. No, he fired straight at the man. His opponent grabbed his chest, gave a loud moan of pain, staggered forward, and finally fell heavily to the ground, arms and legs flung wide.
The spell broken, Julien dug in his heels, and Astarte leaped forward. He pulled her up short not ten yards from where the man lay, and jumped from his horse. With unbelieving eyes, he saw that the man who had committed this dishonorable murder was leaning against a tree, holding his sides in laughter.
Ignoring him, Julien strode quickly to the fallen man and knelt down. He was small, slight of build. Julien gathered the scrawny body in his arms, and suddenly, overwhelmed with fury, yelled at the murderer, who now stood in shocked silence, as if aware, finally, of the enormity of what he had done, “You damned idiot! What in God’s name have you done, man?”
The man raised his hand in a helpless gesture, but seemed unable to come forward and speak.
To Julien’s shock, the slight figure in his arms began to struggle violently, and he gazed down for the first time into the face of the fallen man. A startled pair of the greenest eyes he’d ever seen stared up at him.
Those moss-green eyes didn’t waver from his face, but they did blink in rapid succession. Pale lips parted in surprise and then two dimples peeped through on white cheeks.
“Good grief, it’s a stranger. Why, sir, I think you have much mistaken the matter.”
“My God,” Julien said, so taken aback he nearly dropped her. “You’re nothing but a damned girl.”
“Well, I am a girl, that is true enough, but I’ve never thought of myself as nothing. Also, I don’t believe you need to damn me for it.” Her damned dimples deepened.
Finding himself without a word to say, Julien instinctively dropped his arms from about her shoulders. With the utmost unconcern she pulled herself away and came up to her knees, her hands resting lightly on her breeched thighs.
“Harry,” she called, laughter lurking in her voice, “I do believe we’ve given the gentleman something of a shock. Stop standing there like a half-wit and come here. Thank the Lord he didn’t interrupt our duel. That would have been beyond what I could have accepted.”
Julien, finding that his addled senses were returning to normal, looked up to see a young man coming toward them, a sheepish grin on his cherubic face. He rose slowly and turned to look down at the girl. He was not happy. He was beginning to feel very much the fool, a condition that made his innards cramp. His eyes narrowed on the girl’s face, and he said in a voice colder than the St. Clair lake in January, “Are you in the habit, my girl, of playacting at such deadly games?”
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