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checkpoint, bound for the prison colony of Australia. Hawk s eyes glittered with satisfaction at the poetic
justice of bribing the ship s keepers into taking the warden aboard and throwing him down among the
convicts. No doubt a number of the prisoners in the hull would remember the warden and would repay
him for his brutality from the Fleet.
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At the foot of the dock stairs, a fisherman s little dinghy bobbed. He looked again at the convict ship.
What the name of the duke of Hawkscliffe could not accomplish among these underworld river rats, that
of Lord Jack Knight, his privateer brother, easily could. If all else failed, he could simply dump the
warden over the side of the dinghy and let the Thames take him.
He returned to the warden and dragged him across the dock and down into the rowboat, then unwound
the line that moored it to the post. He set out, rowing hard against the sweep of the current.
By the time he got back to shore, the rain had already washed away the blood from the cobblestones.
Still feeling the jittery intoxication of pure wild instinct in his veins, Hawk tilted his head back, closed his
eyes, and let the rain fall on his face.
Gentlemen, you have two minutes, intoned Dolph s second, checking his fob watch.
Bel watched Robert confer with Lord Alec a short distance away.
In a remote grove in Hyde Park, amid the gray predawn mist, they met for the duel.
Dolph was pacing by his coach. The physician and surgeons whom Lord Alec had obtained waited
impassively, leaning against their carriage. The earl of Coldfell had arrived, too. He sat in his luxurious
black coach, shrewdly watching everything while his bony fingers slowly drummed upon the head of his
cane.
Alec left Robert with a nod and went to Dolph s second to make sure the foes bullets carried equal
charges of powder.
Bel was distraught as she stared at Robert walking toward her. She hated every minute of this ordeal but
would not have missed being here with him for anything. At least this was one advantage of being a
fashionable impure; a lady could never have attended a duel. It was small consolation also that the
seconds had agreed that the duelists should fire at the same time. She didn t know how she could have
borne it to watch Robert stand there and offer himself to Dolph as a target, only waiting for his turn to
shoot.
She couldn t bring herself to ask where he had gone while she slept; deep down, she knew. He had
returned with flecks of blood on his clothes. As he sauntered toward her now, he slipped the flask she
had given him out of his waistcoat and took another swig from it. He offered it to her with a little, teasing
smile meant to coax a smile out of her, in turn, but she shook her head. He put the flask back in his
waistcoat, then captured her hand and led her beneath a large oak tree.
He gazed down at her, holding her hands in his. They stared at each other.
Robert, she uttered, willing herself not to cry nor to beg him again not to do this. She knew he really
had no choice.
He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them, one by one. No tears, bonny blue. Just a kiss for luck.
She threw her arms around his neck and drew him down to her, kissing him for all she was worth, trying
to hold him when Alec came and told him it was time. She clung to him. Bel felt her tears brim and rush
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hotly down her cheeks as she tasted him, savoring the brandy on his tongue, memorizing the silk of his
ebony hair and the scratchy texture of his cheek in need of a shave. He ended the kiss, caught her face
between his hands and stared fiercely at her, his dark eyes ablaze. You are my lady and I fight for your
honor. Releasing her almost roughly, he withdrew.
Stifling a cry Bel watched him walk away, her body trembling. That one small word lady he had to
know it meant the world to her. The sky was beginning to pale in the east and Venus gleamed blue-white
above the trees.
Robert went to the center of the grove where Dolph waited. Lord Alec came to Bel and tucked her
hand in the crook of his arm, escorting her over to the coach. She couldn t fathom how the blond
archangel managed to look so cool headed at a time like this.
Rob s going to be just fine, Miss Hamilton, I assure you. He s too bloody minded to bow out knowing
Jack would inherit his title.
Pistols in hand, Dolph and Robert stood back-to-back in the center of the grove as the first blood red
rim of the sun showed through the black trees.
Bel felt sick to her stomach as the first notes of the morning s birdsong lilted through the grove. She
began to pray again very hard in her mind.
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