Page 58 of Lady Like

Emily realizes too late just how similar all the trees of Epping Forest look.

Though she hired a boy from a nearby estate to lead her to the Cuckoo’s Oak, she sent him back before they had gone all the way, for fear he’d see Tweed and the doctor assembled and realize a duel was happening.

He might call for help or try to stop Emily from going on and call attention to them and her whole plan—if you could call it that—would be ruined.

“You’ll know the Cuckoo’s Oak,” the boy had assured her when they parted. “One hundred paces ahead, with a trunk like an ewer and a whole mess of branches in every direction starting nearly from the ground.”

But she has walked what she thought were one hundred paces, and all the sodding trees look the sodding same, and none pitcher-like, with or without a mess of arms. When she had left the Palmers’ house in the indigo hours before dawn, she had worried she’d be unable to sufficiently conceal herself.

Darkness—or at least the wan light of early morning—would be her greatest ally.

That, and the resin Mariah Swift had used to help Emily affix false whiskers to her face when she had appeared on her doorstep in the middle of the night.

Mariah had no questions when Emily had asked her for a disguise that could pass, from a distance, as a second in a duel.

She had simply disappeared for a half hour down to the Palace costume shop—during which two different ladies’ voices had called out to her from behind the bed screen—then returned to Emily with a hooded greatcoat and a soldier’s uniform from an unspecified country but almost certain a century out of date, and a helmet that Mariah said, to her best guess, would be worn in a war of the future.

She then sat Emily down at her dressing table to affix whiskers to her face and braid her hair tightly against her head before concealing it beneath a cap.

Emily’s only addition to the duds was Thomas’s ring on its chain around her neck—partly for symbolic reasons, partly because she had read a story about a soldier in the Napoleonic wars whose wedding ring on a chain around his neck had stopped a bullet, and she would take any armor available.

After an hour of costumery, Emily had looked at herself in the mirror and seen…

exactly herself. But Mariah had promised that, were one not expecting to see her, it would do.

Particularly if the light was flat and the sky overcast, and the weather at least is on her side now, because though it is summer, the morning is cold and wet.

Fog sits low over the forest floor, and the ground is spongy as a pincushion beneath her boots—Harry’s boots, several sizes too big so that Emily’s feet nearly slide out with every step.

Now all Emily must do is offer herself as Harry’s second when she arrives at the dueling ground—Harry, she is certain, will not come, for her entire inheritance and Collin’s too is now resting upon her morality, and accepting an invitation to an illegal duel is irrefutably not within the bounds of good behavior.

She will then ask Tweed’s second—likely the valet he had brought with him from Sussex—to negotiate a peace, and advise the second that Tweed is soliciting a duel with the daughter of the prince regent, and for his own sake should quit not only the duel, but London itself.

To escape royal persecution, he really should quit the country and never return, or risk the full wrath of the law.

If it all goes well, it will not untangle the whole knot, but it will buy her time. She can get back to Harry, and perhaps they can get the license she’d need to marry Collin. Perhaps the prince might help.

Or, should Tweed’s second refuse peace, Emily will duel in Harry’s place. There is a pistol in her pocket, stolen from the Palmers’ mantelpiece. It is heavy and antique, handed down from Martin’s grandfather as he had told her several times to fill uncomfortable silences in the evening.

And should Tweed’s aim be as good as he seems to think…

She remembers him sitting on the sofa beside her in her parents’ house, forming his fingers into the shape of a pistol and pressing it to her chest.

A sharp wind curls through the trees and she claps a hand to her whiskers lest they blow away.

Mustn’t think of death. Not yet.

Through the fog, at last she sees it. A wide-bellied oak, with a riot of thick limbs exploding from the trunk so close to the ground Emily could have stepped up onto the lowest one with hardly any effort.

Then she sees the lone figure sitting on one of those branches, hunched shoulders cocooned in a dark coat and top hat pulled low.

His back is to Emily, but she recognizes the scrap of yellow fabric tucked into his sleeve.

Tweed.

The realization sinks into her like fog through her shirt, and she stumbles on the path, nearly leaving one of her boots behind.

Tweed raises his head, and Emily panics.

Where is his second and the doctor? Where is the equipage that she had planned to keep between them so she would never need to address him directly for fear of giving herself away?

Are they coming? Are they close by? Are they tying up their horses or pissing in the woods?

Should she hide or approach? She cannot get too close when it is Tweed alone, for while she may pass as a slight and effeminate gentleman to strangers through the fog, this disguise will not pass muster at any proximity—like all Mariah’s work at the Palace, it is best viewed from the gallery. And Tweed will know at once who she is.

Around them, the forest is silent. Tweed and Emily are alone.

The yellow scrap flashes around his wrist again as he reaches up to catch his hat before a gust of wind can blow it off.

And Emily makes a choice.

She reaches into her pocket and withdraws the pistol.

It is heavier now than it felt lifting it off the mantelpiece, and she can feel the etching in the metal plates like scars.

She knows it’s loaded—Mariah even checked on her behalf while telling Emily the story of the three and a half men she herself had shot. Two bullets, one in each barrel.

Emily raises the pistol and levels it with the back of Tweed’s head.

“Do not turn.” Emily pulls back the hammer on the pistol, a sound that reminds her of snapping the necks of chickens in their farmyard.

On the low branch, Tweed freezes. “Robert Tweed, of Middleham, Sussex,” Emily says, pitching her voice as low as she can.

“There is so much for which I should like to hold you to account.” Her throat dries around the next words and swallows hard before her voice has a chance to break.

“Shall we start with your crooked business dealings, in which you have used various means from bullying to arson to convince farmers of the Sussex Downs to sell you their land so you can build your road to Brighton, then employing criminals to work on those roads? Criminals who assaulted young women and you did nothing? And of course today, soliciting an illegal duel with the daughter of the prince regent.”

Tweed begins to turn, but rage catches Emily’s heart like a piece of kindling and sets her alight.

“I told you not to turn!” She fires the first bullet into the air.

The sound is so loud she almost drops the pistol in surprise.

Tweed flinches too, clapping both hands to his face.

“Raise your arms so I can see you are not reaching for your weapon!” Emily shouts, trying to sound like a confident man who has fired artillery many times before, perhaps in a war somewhere, and not like her hand is now tingling and her ears are ringing so loudly she’s not sure if she’s actually shouting or if that’s only in her head.

Tweed obeys. “Yes, his daughter, you miserable cretin. Try to get your pigeon brain around that. Your precious Emily Sergeant is a Sapphist as well as a murderess and hellion and she will never marry you because she is worth so much more than a fiend like you!”

She’s gone too far, but oh hell, how good it feels to say! Besides, she cannot give up her position now—she must stay the course.

“So.” Emily clears her throat and again drops her pitch.

“I have been sent to give you this message for your own good. Leave the country. Cease your pursuit of Emily Sergeant. Do not again trouble Harriet Lockhart or her father, the king, will see that you are pursued and prosecuted for soliciting an illegal duel with his daughter who is under his protection for the rest of your small, miserable life. Make your choice now, then leave.”

Silence. An owl swoops low and lands on a high branch of the oak. The dawn light is shifting, and the fog looks pearled as the inside of an oyster shell.

Tweed does not move. He leaves his hands in the air, that yellow sash fluttering against his black-gloved hand.

The thought flits across Emily’s mind: What if she shoots him?

What if she really is a murderess? She has been called it for years, blamed and accused and punished for something that had not been her fault.

And never could have been, because even in this moment, her finger does not even twitch for the trigger. She cannot imagine it.

At last, Tweed lets out a heavy breath, then throws his head to the sky. Emily only has a moment to think that she hadn’t realized his ancient joints were quite so nimble to allow for such a stretch when he cries, “Fine then. Shoot me.”

And it is not Tweed’s voice.

Nor is it Tweed’s stance as he straightens to his full height rather than the crouch he has maintained since hearing Emily cock the gun.

Nor is it Tweed’s hands pulling off their gloves, dropping them to the forest floor, and tugging the yellow sash from their sleeve as they turn to Emily and proffer it to her.

Emily thinks she must be imagining things, and the fog combined with her own resolute delirium has conjured this half-obscured apparition like a forest sprite from Oberon’s court.

She has breathed too deeply the fumes from her gummy facial hair.

She is still asleep in her cousin’s house and this phantom has come to her at night.

Because how else could Harry be striding across the dell to her, how else could she catch Emily when her knees begin to wobble beneath her and press her to her chest in a fierce embrace?

“Harry,” is all Emily manages to breathe.

“Hello, darling.” Harry grins down at her. “You’ve changed so much since last I saw you. Is that a beard?”

“Chops,” Emily replies.

“Really?”

“They might have migrated. Mariah did them for me.”

“That explains why you’re wearing my boots.”

“You must go!” Emily says. “Tweed will be here—”

But Harry interrupts her. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Emily repeats. “Where?”

“He’s been arrested by order of the prince regent,” Harry explains.

“He challenged me to a duel, for God’s sake!

The courts are historically lenient in such matters unless a man actually dies, but as you mentioned, I am—how did you put it?

The king’s favorite Sapphist bastard? We may be able to paste on a few other charges as well—what a list you had!

I’ll have to write them down.” Emily’s cap has begun to slip down over her eyes, and Harry pushes it back, her thumb lingering upon Emily’s temple.

“Tweed will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And as publicly as possible too, just to be certain that he’s no longer a respectable candidate for you to marry. ”

Emily presses her face to Harry’s chest, and breathes as deeply as she can, filling her lungs with Harry’s familiar scent. “How did you know I would come?”

“I didn’t,” Harry says. “I went to Violet’s to find you, and we discovered you’d gone.

Once she explained that she’d given you a key and we realized you’d also taken a pistol, we suspected you might try to intervene in the duel.

Collin’s at the house, in case you were to turn up there, and Violet was checking coach lines to Sussex, in case you had gone home. ”

Emily takes the scrap of her dress still in Harry’s hand and twists it around her own until their palms are pressed together. “Tweed wasn’t sleeping with this, was he?” Emily asks, and Harry laughs.

“Tied around the handle of his pistol.”

“More fitting for the Middleham Murderess,” Emily says, and her breath stutters at a sudden realization. “Harry, what if I had shot you?”

“You wouldn’t have,” Harry says. “Not me, nor Tweed. I know you wouldn’t.”

“You think so much of me.”

“Someone’s got to.” Harry opens her coat, wrapping it around them both so that Emily can feel the heat from her skin through her shirt.

When Emily raises her face, Harry kisses her, deep and long and all-consuming, the way Emily had thought she would never be kissed again.

To be kissed this way at all, even once, felt like more than most get in their lifetime.

“The beard is a lark,” Harry says, mouth still close to Emily’s. “It’s like snogging a peach.”

Emily laughs, nestling her forehead into Harry’s neck. “I’m so tired.”

“I can imagine.” Harry presses her lips to the top of Emily’s head. “Have you the strength for one last stop before bed? I’d like to show you something.”