“Would you care to take that back?” suggested Alex conversationally.

Fiske crossed his arms across his chest. “Why should I?”

Alex’s lips twisted into a grim smile. “Allow me to provide you with the reasons.”

Penelope wished she could pretend not to understand what was meant by that, but there was no way anyone could, especially not a trigger-happy, honor-mad army man who had fought duels in the past over matters so slight as a disagreement about the set of his lapels. Her head pounded and her chest ached and her throat burned, but somehow, through the drumming of her blood in her ears, she heard her own voice, raised in remonstrance.

“Don’t,” she said sharply. She pushed out from behind Alex, placing herself between the two men. “Just — don’t.”

Fiske smiled lazily down at her, as though it hadn’t been her honor he had been calling into question a few moments before. “Too late for that, old girl,” he said patronizingly. “Matter of honor and whatnot.”

“Yes,” said Penelope fiercely. “My honor. Which, I believe, we have already agreed isn’t worth fighting over.” It hurt to voice it, but it needed to be done. She managed a tortured smile and drew herself up in her best imitation of her usual demeanor, mad hair, blood-streaked face and all. “So we’re done here, yes?”

Alex looked over her head as though she hadn’t spoken. “You’ll name your seconds?”

“Blast you!” Penelope struck at his arm. “There won’t be any firsts! How many times do I have to say it? I won’t have you fighting over me. It’s not worth it.”

Fiske looked benevolently down at her. He was thinner than Alex, but taller, willowy where the other man was more compactly built. He would have the advantage of reach in a fight with swords. “Maidenly qualms, my dear? I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

The derisive amusement Fiske injected into the word “maidenly” brought Alex forward on the balls of his feet, ready to settle with his fists what he had already proposed doing with his sword.

Penelope drove an elbow into his ribs before he could get past her. She could hear the indrawn hiss of his breath, but she didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. Focusing all her attention on Fiske, she said shortly, “I won’t ruin another man’s life — whether it’s yours or his. Fight if you must,” she added, with hard-won flippancy. “But not over me.”

With the peculiar instinct of men the world over to scent a good fight, their raised voices had attracted spectators.

“Who is fighting?” asked Jasper Pinchingdale eagerly, strolling into the courtyard, followed an assorted entourage of grooms, bearers, and functionaries, whose actual function remained a mystery to Penelope.

“No one,” said Penelope forcibly.

Neither Fiske nor Alex — nor, for that matter, Pinchingdale — paid the slightest bit of attention to her. Regardless of her role in the inception of it, at this stage, she was nothing more than an insignificant intruder into the matters of men.

Penelope felt a cold sweat breaking out beneath the heavy wool of her habit. Why didn’t anyone else seem to realize that this was a dreadful idea? That men could die this way?

That Alex could die this way.

Penelope wanted to thump them all. How could they be such idiots? Wasn’t one fatality enough for any journey?

Unless, of course, someone wanted another fatality.

The prospect hit her like a punch to the gut. Penelope’s head buzzed with confused suspicions and inchoate fears. The Marigold. She had forgotten all about that. It seemed like a million years ago that she and Alex had discussed Fiske’s potential culpability in the predawn dark of the bedchamber she had shared with Freddy. All of that seemed very far away, but it wasn’t, and Alex knew it. It had been Alex who had warned that Freddy’s death might be more than an accident, and urged her to be on her guard.

Why couldn’t he listen to his own advice?

The two opponents exchanged a long, level look. “We can settle this back at the Residency,” said Alex in a hard voice.

Fiske readjusted his gloves. “I shall look forward to the sport.”

“How very sporting of you,” said Alex dryly.

“I’ll put odds on you, old man,” said Pinchingdale to his messmate, brightening at the prospect of a bit of blood and bookmaking. Remembering his purpose, he added, “Just came to tell you that we seem to be all packed up and ready to go. Proper beds at the Residency tonight!”

Fiske’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy’s. “Except for those of us who wake at dawn.”

With an inconsequential comment to Pinchingdale, he pointedly turned his back on Alex. Whatever it was he had said, it must have been amusing. Penelope could hear Pinchingdale’s arrogant laughter floating away with the sound of their retreating footsteps.

From the entryway, someone signaled to Alex, undoubtedly about one of the hundred tasks to do with getting the cavalcade back underway. Alex held up a hand, indicating that he would be along in just a moment.

Turning to Penelope, Alex looked at her searchingly. “Are you all right?” he asked gently.

All right? Had there ever been a more idiotic question in the history of the world?

Every emotion she had ever had boiled and churned and spilled over like acid, burning through whole layers of skin, leaving her naked and exposed and vulnerable. She felt as though her guts had been dragged out through her nose and left lying all over the cobblestones.

“You idiot,” she fumed. “You pigheaded, mule-brained, feeble-minded man. You walked right into that like — like an idiot sheep to slaughter. Did you ever stop to think that he might have done it on purpose?”

“Yes,” he said calmly. Penelope gaped at him. Taking advantage of her momentary speechlessness, he added, in a voice that brooked no dispute, “Fiske can’t be allowed to say such things about you with impunity.”

“Why not, when it’s true?” demanded Penelope frantically. “Others have said worse.”

Alex’s face set in lines of pure granite. “Not anymore.”

He appeared to be missing the point. Images of Freddy, waxy-skinned and lifeless, flashed through her head, oddly intermingled with images of Alex, Alex sprawled like a dropped doll on a patch of trodden ground, mouth slack, eyes hollow. They were all muddled together in her head, death after death after death, and all on her account. She had thought she could save him by staying away. Why, oh, why had he been fool enough to seek her out?

Balling her hands into fists at her sides, Penelope said fiercely, “I won’t, won’t, won’t let you kill yourself for me.”

She knew she had lost even before he spoke. He grinned down at her, an endearing, boyish grin that made her throat lurch with the presentiment of future pain. “What makes you think I’ll lose?”

Idiot!

Penelope didn’t even attempt to answer. If she had possessed Charlotte’s vocabulary, she would have excoriated him in a thousand different ways, each more scathing than the last. But she didn’t. She walked right past him, listening carefully to the slap of her own boots against the paving stones, willing the sound to expand and expand until it drummed out the shrill buzz of raw panic that roared in her ears and battered against her chest.

This was worse, far worse, than finding a cobra waiting for her by her dressing table. Then she had been calm. There had been no one’s life but hers to account for, and she held that life cheap. No great loss to the world if she were to shuffle off this mortal coil. Henrietta and Charlotte would mourn her for a week — when they eventually found out — and Freddy, were he still alive, would have celebrated her memory by going on a spree with his mistress.

But, Alex! Steady, reliable, careful Alex. What had he been thinking? Was it part of the same madness that had seized his brain when he had allowed himself to take up with her? She had battered at him and battered at him and battered at him until he had; less a seduction and more an assault, sapping and razing his defenses, turning him inside out for her own selfish gratification.

Penelope swallowed hard, fighting the image of Freddy lying in the palanquin, dead and cold, with gold coins where his eyes should have been. As she watched, the bright gold hair darkened slowly to black, like a shadow creeping over the moon, and the coins shrouding his eyes blackened and tarnished and charred until they, too, were black, black and empty. It would be Alex lying there instead and no matter how she tried to shake him he wouldn’t wake up, he wouldn’t ever wake up, and it would all be her fault.

With an effort, Penelope took hold of her rising panic, forced it down, hunching over her horse’s neck until Buttercup sidled and knickered reproachfully. She forced herself to lighten her seat, but the leather of her riding gloves stretched tight across her knuckles as she gripped the reins. The duel had to be stopped, that was all there was to it. She wouldn’t let Alex die as Freddy had.

Chewing the inside of her lip, Penelope rode along beside Fiske and Pinchingdale, grateful for the broad hat that shielded her face as mile passed mile. The Resident might be the answer, Penelope thought determinedly. It was his jurisdiction. He would have the power to stop the duel.

Unless he didn’t want to. Penelope’s hopes, which had begun to rise, abruptly crashed again. The Resident was a man, after all, and there was no telling how they would react to perfectly logical requests. Honor must be served and a duel provided good sport.

Even if the Resident did stop the duel, it would go poorly for Alex. Duels were technically illegal — in England, at least. Penelope had no idea whether the rule extended to India. If it did, Alex might find himself facing disciplinary action or demotion for having embroiled himself in such an affair. All the sordid details would have to come out, Fiske’s insinuations, Alex’s reactions. It would look bad for him. It would look even worse if it ever came out that it was all true. Adultery was a crime, too, and public opinion, with all its usual perversity, would run on the side of Freddy, simply because he was dead. Freddy. He always had had a miraculous ability to wallow in muck and come out shining golden. Death hadn’t changed that.