Page 80 of Henrietta

Hargan admitted he had not.

‘Dead within a week,’ Hetty said damningly. ‘Sepsis, you know.’

Hargan began to feel rather ill. ‘Timothy bleeds so very quickly,’ Hetty added, which did not help matters. ‘The scandal would be great, even if they do not harm each other. Both families would be affected – and Miss Corcott and Trixie in their first Seasons …’

Mr Hargan shifted uncomfortably. He had not considered any ladies to be affected by this – he wished Miss Clithero had not come; she was making him out to be dashed unchivalrous, and it felt rather unfair. First of all, he had been given the arduous task of organising the duel – now, she expected him to unorganise it?

‘I cannot stop it,’ he said, trying to appeal to her good sense.

‘You are picking up Timothy in the morning, are you not?’ she asked. ‘Could you not take him to the wrong place?’

‘The dishonour,’ Mr Hargan protested weakly. ‘Besides, what’s to say they would not simply rearrange?’

This was regrettably a good point. Hetty considered the pistols again.

‘So to avoid the dishonour,’ she began. ‘We need them to go through with the duel, but not be able to harm each other in any way.’

‘I could try to persuade them to do it at thirty paces,’ Hargan proffered.

‘I think,’ Hetty said slowly, ‘I have a better idea.’

CHAPTER XXV.

MR Hargan and Timothy left Duke Street before dawn. Taking one look around him, Timothy heaved a poetic sigh. There seemed to him, in that moment, something both beautiful and sad about the fact that his family, streets away, lay still peacefully sleeping, none the wiser as to the fact that they might be about to lose their dear Timothy forever.

‘To the heath!’ he announced with all the grandeur he felt the moment deserved.

‘Hush,’ Mr Hargan warned him. ‘Someone might hear.’

‘Oh, pish posh,’ Timothy dismissed – but Hargan had a point. While the hour was early enough that few in the fashionable West End were yet awake, they were not entirely alone. For, across the street, toddling off home from a night spent supping with friends, was Major Morgan.

The Major was, admittedly, rather the worse for wear still, but not so bosky that he could not recognise Mr Timothy Allerton when he saw him. What’s more, he thought with vague interest, he knew Mr Hargan, too – and the third man, climbing into the carriage with them, was strangely familiar. It took Morgan one further street to make the connection in his mind: the fellow was a surgeon, he realised triumphantly! One who had had occasion to reinsert a dislocated shoulder of his after a bad fall from his horse on the South Downs – and by God, that had been a good day …

He spent the length of another street in happy reminiscence before the strangeness of young Allerton going to the heath was borne upon him – he had said ‘To the heath’, had he not? – with a doctor in tow, and a gun box in hand …

Frowning, Morgan drew to a halt, and then made an about-turn. His head might be woolly, but his gut was decisive – this, he felt, was something he ought to lay at Allerton’s door. Fortunately, he knew exactly where that gentleman was, for he had numbered one of the fellows at the dinner party – though, instead of heading home for bed, he had declared his intention of continuing the evening at an establishment which was, fortunately, not far from here.

‘There you are, old thing!’ he said, relieved to be able to unburden himself so swiftly.

Arthur’s mind, though slower than usual, quickly grasped the salient facts: Timothy – early hours of the morning – surgeon – Hampstead Heath. Then, once he had put them together, he rejected the idea summarily. It was ridiculous. Timothy was certainly not the duelling sort. Anyway, if he was in a situation as grave as that, Arthur would certainly already know about it – Timothy would, naturally, have taken him into his confidence as the first port of call.

There was enough in what Morgan said, however, for Arthur to leave the tavern and make his way over to Duke Street, to see if Timothy’s valet knew the reason for his excursion – if he had even left, for Morgan was certainly bosky enough to have concocted the whole fiction.

His valet did not know, but he had, however, been left a billet bearing Arthur’s name upon it. Timothy had never been the best letter writer. His account of the events which would lead to his own demise were confused to say the least – but had the effect of sobering Arthur up as quickly as a douse of cold water. He consulted his pocket watch. He did not have much time.

His groom was – thankfully – already awake, and though much shocked to find his master appearing at the stables himself, rather than sending a servant to fetch him, he recovered quickly. Side by side, they tacked up his fastest horse and Arthur was soon upon his way.

Riding with more haste than care, it did not take him above half an hour to reach the edges of the heath, where he paused – not knowing which direction he ought to search first – and damned the mist, which would make the task of locating his brother and the others so much more difficult. After a moment of deliberation, he drove his horse upward, with the logic that he might more easily spot them from a high point, all the while scanning left and right, until he saw a carriage – at last! Surely that must be connected to the party.

‘Sir!’ he called to the driver as he rode up. ‘Where are they?’

The driver viewed him with some suspicion. ‘To whom do you refer, milord?’

‘The young gentlemen who employed you – where are they?’

‘I’ve been paid handsomely for my discretion,’ the driver insisted stoutly. Then, under the weight of Arthur’s stare, he jerked his head left towards a thicket of trees. ‘A hundred yards that way.’

Arthur wheeled his horse about and made off in that direction at once, weaving through the woods as fast as his horse could carry him.