“I just do.” When he hesitated, Madeline snapped impatiently, “You might as well tell me, Freddie. I can discover the location on my own, but you will save me the trouble of having to search all of London. Either way, I mean to find out.”
His protest grew more vocal. “Miss Ellis … Madeline, you cannot interfere in a matter of gentleman’s honor!”
“Since I am not a gentleman, I am not bound by your codes of honor.”
She meant to prevent the duel somehow, even if she had to persuade the duelers at gunpoint. She still had her pistol with her, Madeline remembered, and she was not about to risk letting Rayne get shot or suffer for killing Ackerby on her behalf.
When she kept her level stare fixed on Freddie, he finally gave a sigh of disgust. “I suppose they mean Rudley Commons. It is a field on the outskirts of London where duels often are held.”
“Thank you,” Madeline said, relieved that he had given in so she didn’t have to spend interminable hours trying to discover the information on her own. “Then will you be kind enough to escort me there tomorrow morning before the duel begins at dawn?”
The strangled sound Freddie made was practically a yelp. “I most certainly will not escort you there! Rayne would slay me if I dared do any such thing.”
“I will slay you if you don’t.”
Regrettably, Madeline could see her threat held little weight, so she tried a different tack, softening her tone to sound more imploring. “You said if I ever needed you to repay the favor I did for you that all I had to do was ask. Well, I am asking now.”
“I say, Madeline, that isn’t fair!”
“Do you mean to go back on your word?” she pressed. “After all your fine talk about gentleman’s honor?”
Freddie glared at her. “You know I cannot.”
“Then you will take me tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, blast you, I will take you. But you will have to explain to Rayne how you coerced me, or you will have my death on your hands.”
“I promise to tell him and absolve you of all responsibility,” Madeline agreed, practically faint with relief. At least she now stood a chance of stopping the duel.
Yet the knots in her stomach were still stretched taut with worry. The danger to Rayne hadn’t passed yet. Nor had the danger to herself, Madeline realized with fresh dismay. For the threat to his welfare had confirmed what she already feared: By allowing herself to become so involved with Rayne during the past several days, she’d fallen into deep trouble.
She’d fallen hopelessly in love.
Chapter Nine
I have done it, Maman. I have sealed my fate for better or for worse.
“I still say this is a dreadful mistake, Madeline,” Freddie complained as his curricle forged unevenly toward London in the dark of early morning.
Clinging to the vehicle’s side rail as they plunged through a thick fog, lurching over potholes and slithering in four treacherous inches of mud, Madeline was more than a little distracted when she answered.
“I clearly understand your feelings, Freddie. You have told me so above a dozen times.”
Despite the impropriety, they had quickly come to a first-name basis, since danger tended to make intimate bedfellows.
Just now the danger was in being thrown from the curricle if it slid off the road—a fate that seemed entirely too possible as Freddie’s pair of grays labored valiantly to maintain their footing on the perilous surface, their hooves churning up clumps of muck and mire onto the passengers behind.
But while Freddie might be a trifle scatterbrained, he was an excellent whip, and Madeline trusted him to deliver her to Rudley Commons in time for the duel.
They had left Chiswick well before dawn in the midst of a drizzle, which had since abated. By now her bonnet and cloak were soaked through and covered with mud, and so was the veil she wore to conceal her identity.
Yet Madeline ignored her misery and kept her focus on the road ahead, straining to see through the swirling mists.
She could not as easily ignore Freddie, however. She’d begun to think of him almost like a brother, and regrettably, he was just as stubbornly persistent as her real brother when Gerard wanted his way.
“Truly, you shouldn’t worry about Rayne,” Freddie repeated for the third time in five minutes. “He is not in much danger since he is a deadly shot.”
“Given his former occupation, that doesn’t surprise me in the least. I would expect him to be lethal with a pistol. But Ackerby is accounted a fair shot himself. And if either of them were to be hurt or killed this morning….” Madeline shuddered. “I couldn’t live with their blood on my conscience.”