Free Out of the Dark by Jennifer Blake Page B

turned my father into a half-deranged drunkard whose punishment was mainly self-inflicted. Being hot-headed and only eighteen, I thought only of the slur cast on my family name.”
    “My brother was also that age,” she said quietly.
    “Then you should realize that once matters reach a certain pass, there is no way, save dishonor, to draw back. The difference between my case and your brother’s is that I was the one left alive when the thing was over.”
    “That may be,” she said in neutral tones, “but it explains just one meeting.”
    “You are interested in the others? My second was with the cousin of the first man I had bested. He demanded revenge for family honor, you see, and was carried home on a jalousie for a stretcher. The third was over a lady’s mistake. She began an affair with an actor who threatened blackmail when she tried to break it off. I intervened at her request, and her paramour objected. A puffed up Romeo with more ego than sense, the actor would not declare himself satisfied at first blood, and so he died. The fourth man was a young fool who wagered that he could break my winning streak—he still carries his arm in a sling in damp weather. The fifth was a card sharp who happened to be a relation of mine. He became offended when I dared speak to him about his habits. The sixth—but do I bore you?”
    She gave him a straight look. “I do see your point.”
    “I’m delighted. But having begun, I would like to finish the list for you. As it happens, it was somewhere around this time that it became the fashion to cross swords with the man people were calling the Dark Angel, and the next eight meetings fall into that category—my life was not my own until I managed to discourage that particular test of courage. My fourteenth meeting, however, was with a man I saw beating his servant boy with a riding crop. He now has trouble breathing due to a badly healed puncture wound in one lung. The fifteenth was with a sea captain whose mistake was thinking I would be less able with an old-fashioned cutlass than with my usual sword. Then there was the last man.”
    “Number sixteen? I had not realized the count went so high.”
    “Actually, it is a recent affair, one that I pushed without mercy. My opponent was an arrogant rake who seduced the daughter of an old friend, then watched her leap to her death from a steamboat deck after he denied responsibility for the child he gave her. I meant to correct his manners, and interrupt his career of seduction with a mark or two on the face, but he was as much a coward on the dueling field as in his private affairs. As the challenged party, he chose pistols. We were stepping off the normal ten paces when he turned at the count of eight and fired. He missed, and was killed by his own second for that breach of the rules—a second who happened to be his brother.”
    “Dear Heaven,” she breathed with a shudder. “What a terrible thing dueling is.”
    “It is. And you can be sure I remember every meeting, every man, every drop of blood spilled and last breath of life taken by those I fought. Yet the practice ensures that men remember their manners and deal fairly with their fellow men or suffer the consequences. It’s the inescapable code we live by. If I have killed, it is because the only other choice was dying. And I am not ready to die.”
    “No,” she said in constricted tones, “but neither was my brother.” She could see him still in her mind’s eye, laughing, teasing, so full of life. Yet he had been bloodlessly pale and cool when they brought him back from his meeting in the dawn.
    “For that loss, I am desperately sorry,” Lucien said. “I would take it from you if I could. But I am not to blame. Death is a natural thing, whether for a man or a panther; it always comes in its time. Whether it arrives early or late is in the lap of the gods. It is only left for us to feel gladness for being alive instead of guilt, to celebrate the joy rather