The sound was floppy but no less loud as it reverberated off the marble floor and wood paneling. Melinda gasped, her gaze riveting to the red mark on Mr. Anaedsley’s cheek.
“Oh no,” she moaned, but Lord Charming smiled, though his eyes glittered menacingly. Melinda stepped forward. “Um, perhaps—”
“You’re not supposed to use my gloves, you idiot. You’re supposed to use your own.”
Everyone looked to the pair of gloves in Ronnie’s hand. Sure enough, they were Mr. Anaedsley’s calfskin pair, not Ronnie’s black leather pair.
Without a word, Ronnie set the calfskin aside, then moved for his own hat and gloves.
Mr. Anaedsley’s voice cut cold and low through the hall. “Don’t reach for those unless you mean it. Unless you mean pistols at dawn.”
Ronnie would do it. Melinda knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ronnie would fight in some misguided romantic idea of a duel. And he would die that way. Or Mr. Anaedsley would, which would be especially awkward, as he was the grandson of a duke.
“Don’t even think it,” she said. “Either of you. Ronnie, if you so much as touch your gloves, I swear, I will…I will…” Damnation, it had to be something romantic, something appealing to his chivalric code. “I will drown myself in the lake.”
That got both their attention. Ronnie’s eyes widened and a softness came into them. “Would you? Would you really, my Mellie?” Lord, he actually sounded hopeful.
Mr. Anaedsley merely snorted. “There isn’t a lake for miles.”
Well, as if that was anything to the point! Didn’t he understand she was trying to avoid backing Ronnie into a corner? “But there are streams.”
“Not deep ones.”
“They have rocks. I could dash my brains upon one.”
“Of all the—”
“You won’t if I win,” Ronnie said, pulling himself up to his full height. “You’ll see me defeat the monster and—”
“And jump from the tallest tree to dash my brains out upon the rocks. I despise violence. It is my guiding principle. If you fight, then I shall kill myself.”
Mr. Anaedsley regarded her with a smirk trembling at the edge of his lips. “You do understand that killing oneself is still considered violence.”
She glared at the man. “I am most determined.”
“And what of my honor?” he challenged. “I have been insulted.” He touched his reddened cheek for emphasis.
“You have no honor,” bellowed Ronnie. And given his girth, he had quite a bellow. It made everyone in the hall flinch.
Meanwhile, Lord Charming straightened in mock horror. “What a dishonorable thing to say! You, sir, are no gentleman!”
“Oh, stop goading him!” Melinda snapped. “He’s quite serious. That’shisguiding principle.”
Mr. Anaedsley frowned. “Being serious? How is that a—”
“Deadly serious.” She spoke it in accents of doom merely because she knew it would please her cousin and hopefully shift his thoughts away from duels. And in the meantime, maybe Mr. Anaedsley would take the hint. Ronnie was fully idiotic enough to follow through with an affair of honor if they didn’t turn his thoughts aside. “Why I remember once when—”
Smack!
This time the sound wasn’t floppy. It was the hard clap of something hitting a man’s palm. It was loud and sharp, and it was Ronnie’s gloves as Mr. Anaedsley caught them mere inches from his face.
“God, Ronnie,” Melinda moaned. “Why would you do such a thing?” She knew the answer, and yet some questions had to be voiced, especially as the two men were now locked together—Ronnie’s gloves gripped in Anaedsley’s hand—while the two stared at one another like two tensing bulls.
Mr. Anaedsley spoke first. “I could kill you, you know,” he said softly. “Pistols or swords, I can best you in minutes.”
Melinda pushed forward aggressively this time. She knew better than to step between them, but she set her feet so both men could see her clearly. “And you’d have to flee to the Continent. Dueling is illegal. Good God, my father is the magistrate here!”
Ronnie’s nostrils flared. “Fisticuffs then? I swear, I will not kill you.”