Today's Reading
"You know what I mean. You're getting ideas and you'll give her ideas, and it won't do."
Too late, he could have told his friend. He'd got the ideas. He understood the warning all too well, though. Alice was fifteen. She was a gently bred maiden, a lady. He, Ashmont, and Ripley were wild and rebellious and ill-behaved. They broke any number of rules. But innocent girls were sacrosanct. Also dangerous and complicated and far too much trouble for too little fun.
Best to pretend they didn't exist.
"If you want Alice, you've got to take the respectable road," Ripley said. "My sister deserves Sir Bloody Galahad. And that's not us. Not me, not you, not Ashmont, by a long stretch. If you're with us, you can't be with her. I won't have her trifled with. I won't have her hurt. She bore enough of that with my father."
"I would never hurt Alice."
"Then make up your mind. Us or her."
Not the hardest choice at seventeen: a life of excitement—adventures, pranks, fights, parties, not-so-innocent girls, and general rule-breaking with the two fellows who'd stick with you through thick and thin—or a life of following rules.
At seventeen he'd had more than enough of following rules.
He'd chosen the friends.
Easy enough at first. Easy enough when he and she were miles and miles apart. But when Alice was nearby, inches away...
He'd lost his head once and hurt her. He'd stuffed the memory into a deep mental cavern, but it escaped from time and time to haunt him.
It was all too easy for a man like Blackwood to hurt her, to cause damage unthinkingly. Had Ripley been killed this morning...
But he hadn't, and the best way for Blackwood to atone was to clean up the mess he and his friends had created.
He made himself look away from Alice's retreating figure and attend to the business at hand.
He gazed down at Ashmont, who still lay on the ground, smiling up at the dark clouds massing overhead.
"This always happens when you're about," Blackwood said. "Can't take you anywhere."
The pistol. Ashmont's idea. An ancient pistol they'd found... where? He couldn't remember.
Had they been so lost to reason as to let Ashmont load it? Or had Ripley done that?
Or did I do it?
Blackwood's stomach knotted. He knew, better than anybody, the correct way to clean and load a pistol.
He turned back to Ripley.
Black in the face, with streaks of red, and... well, not pretty, in short. All things considered, not so bad.
Still.
"Done puking?" Blackwood said.
Ripley sat up fully. "Daresay."
"Want a doctor?"
"Hell, no."
One of the servants burst through the door of the south front and ran to them. "Her ladyship said there was an accident."
"Don't fuss," Ripley said. "Send Snow to me."
"Not only Snow," Blackwood said. "All three of our manservants. And have the carriage readied."
"Carriage?" Ripley said. "We got here only the day before yesterday. My aunt—"
"Lady Charles has seen enough of you. You've never been beautiful, but at present you'll frighten small children and dogs. You most certainly will upset her. We'd do well to make our exit, and quickly."
Lord and Lady Charles Ancaster had always made Blackwood feel as welcome as their nephew. Their home had been a refuge from the time he, Ripley, and Ashmont had first become schoolmates and friends.
Lady Charles had lost her husband two years ago. She missed him very much. They all did.
They three had behaved badly. True, they always did, and true, she was used to them and forgave a great deal. All the same, they ought to have confined their games and dares to the fishing house down by the river, well away from the main house. As to shooting the old pistol: unforgivably careless.
...
