The man she thought she knew had always taught her to fight back against people who threatened or bullied her.
Whatever you say, Daddy.
And yet…
Despite the men surrounding her who, excepting Smith and Jeff, apparently held her life in so little esteem. Despite her belief that this fight could prove nothing beyond who was better at swinging swords. Despite all that, something far more powerful seemed to be going on here.
It was kind of thrilling to watch.
How many twenty-first century women got to see their lover
duel
for them?
Arden had never studied fencing, but she quickly grasped the basics. There was no taking of turns, or all the dancing footwork and rapid exchange of blows she expected from the movies…these swords looked a lot heavier. Smith and her father circled each other, sometimes attacking with great swipes toward the other’s head, sides or gut, sometimes putting all their strength into parrying those blows in ringing clashes of metal and strength. Her father had more breadth
than Smith. His blows forced her lover to retreat, to pivot, to duck out of the way.
“Duels are rarely fights to the death,” murmured Will Donnell. Arden couldn’t tell if he was reassuring her or himself.
But of all the many things Arden had to worry about on this awful day, Smith losing the fight wasn’t one of them. Because Smith
did
parry, and dodge and block every one of her father’s attacks.
And unlike her father, Smith wasn’t tiring.
Being Smith, he chose instead to play the smart-ass.
“Don’t you think there’s a
reason
—” he ducked a left-to-right swing of her father’s sword with an upward thrust of his own, locking blade to blade. His arms shook as he heaved the older man back from him “—that the world moved beyond trial by combat?”
“No good one.” Did her father show less grace as he swung the Leigh family saber downward, as if to cleave Smith’s skull?
Smith stopped it with his own fascinating, ancient-looking blade, sinking at the knees to absorb the strike.
“Tradition is everything,” her father panted—and stumbled back, but didn’t fall, as Smith cast off both him and his sword. “Once, it was everything to you. What happened, boy?”
Smith, circling him warily, growled, “I found Arden.”
She caught her breath. Did he really mean that?
“It was one thing when I was a teenager, to think that we knew better than anyone else. Anyone not lucky enough to be born wealthy, male…Comitatus, I mean. But then I met more of the rest of the world. Then I fell for your daughter.”
“Shut up.” Not the words of a Southern gentleman. Her father hadn’t retreated—he only pivoted, slowly, to keep pace with Smith’s slow perimeter. But he no longer stood in charge. Even Arden could see it.
When Smith attacked—“Sword first,” Arden heard Jeff
whisper—it started a faster series of swings and parries, each move exaggerated by the weight and arc of the weapon.
Then Smith was circling again, his footwork as sure as a dancer’s in his worn, off-brand athletic shoes.
A swordsman.
“You really think we’re better than her? God knows people like Lowell aren’t. Arden doesn’t need either one of us to do her thinking for her,” he continued—unexpected balm to her heart. “She can even do without our protection. The only dangers she’s faced this week came from your damned traditions.”
“She shouldn’t have delved into—”
“Why the hell not?” Now Smith and her father just stood, swords ready but still, each catching his breath. “
We
wouldn’t tell her anything, so why
shouldn’t
she find the answers on her own? She’s an adult. She’s a free agent. And in case you haven’t noticed, she’s pretty damned smart.”
Her father leveled his blade at Smith, more in warning than attack. “You have no business telling me about my own daughter.”
Smith smacked the saber away from his face with a sharp ring of steel on steel. “I’m not the jerk who’s considering doing God-knows what to her to protect his precious tradition!”
Both men stood, gazes locked, chests rising and falling over their swords.
We could make it to the door now,
Arden thought, noting everyone’s distraction—but no. This was far,
far
too important. She had the gun. She could protect Jeff…and, if necessary, Smith.
Smith shook his head. “The hell with all of you. Any tradition that would require a man to turn on the people he most cares about isn’t a tradition worth preserving.” He looked at the sword in his hand as if he meant to toss it onto the ground in pained defeat—not defeat at the hands of her father, but at the death of his ideals.
If so much hadn’t been riding on this fight, Arden suspected he would do just that.
“To be a leader,” chided her father, “one must be willing to sacrifice.”
Smith barked out a harsh laugh. “When did it become honorable to sacrifice
what isn’t yours
in the first place?”
Arden saw her father take three breaths, each deeper than the last, as if girding himself for something. When he lunged forward, he attacked more with his body than with his saber. It seemed an ungainly move, even to Arden’s amateur eye.
In a fluid spin, Smith stepped into the attack, past the danger of his opponent’s sword. He body-checked her father even as he grasped his sword arm with his free hand and, in one final clash of blades, disarmed him.
The Civil War saber hit the floor. In the ringing silence that followed, Smith pushed her father away, stepped back.
Then, belatedly, he bowed.
“The Donnell boy won,” marveled one of the Comitatus men whom Arden didn’t recognize. And another, “He
won?
”
Her father—her daddy—bowed back, both hands spread and empty. “Yes. Smith Donnell won.”
“He did not!” That was Lowell, from beyond her father. “You threw the fight—didn’t any of you see that? You let him win!”
“You can’t know that, boy,” warned Smith’s father, bending to pick up the Civil War saber. “If Donaldson Leigh says he lost fair, he lost fair.”
“But he didn’t!” And then, as her own father turned to set his underling straight—
Too fast for Arden to react, Lowell surged at him.
Her father arched back in a sudden agony—and screamed.
E
ven Smith didn’t see it coming—and Smith had no illusions about Prescott Lowell’s character.
Arden’s father bellowed in pain and true surprise. Everyone pushed toward him. But Smith was closest.
He started forward even as Leigh’s great, bearlike form collapsed to the marble floor, revealing Lowell behind him and the bloody, toothy knife in Lowell’s red-stained hands.
He had to use both hands to pull it back out,
Smith thought numbly, automatically raising the Sword of Aeneas.
Lowell flipped the knife into his right hand, blade first, his gaze—and aim—seeking out Arden.
Smith ran him through with the Sword of Aeneas before he got any farther.
Antique as it was, the sword must have taken lives before, maybe in the hands of Hapsburgs, or Caesars or maybe even mythical Greek warriors. Smith hadn’t. The reality of it shuddered through him. One minute, Lowell’s eyes burned with the
hatred of an egomaniac denied his illusion. The next, they had glazed over, and he was gone.
He slid heavily off Smith’s flared blade as he dropped.
Smith would later figure that the shock made everything after that feel so…removed. Jeff screamed and threw himself onto Lowell’s inert body, kicking and hitting, until Smith dragged him back. Arden fell to her knees beside her moaning father, snapped at Smith’s dad to help turn him. Seeing the lake of blood forming beneath the big man’s body, Jeff began to shudder in Smith’s arms.
Arden pressed both hands over the spurting wound, poised and competent to the last.
And then Mitch and Val were there, appearing as if from nowhere, announcing that they’d called for an ambulance. Mitch stripped out of his latest guayabera, revealing a tank beneath, and gave the bunched material to Arden to help stop the blood.
“We’ve got it all on tape,” he said softly to Smith after Jeff had deserted him to help his sister. “If you, you know…wondered. Lowell stabbed him before I could even drop the camera.”
The words seemed far away. Even more surreal was Smith’s father’s command that everyone except him and the immediate family get the hell out of there and leave the matter to him.
“And how do you plan on explaining any of this to the cops?” demanded Val Diaz, not hiding her disgust at the afternoon’s dealings.
“Let me handle the police,” Will Donnell assured them. “The fewer witnesses they have to deal with, the more easily we can control this.”
Heaven forbid word of this get out, right? Secrecy to the end.
Smith didn’t bother hiding his scorn. “I don’t need your protection.”
His father glanced toward the broken Leigh family. “
They
do.”
Still, Smith hesitated. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust his father with Arden anymore. One thing about Will Donnell—
he’d keep his promises, even to the extent of disowning his own son. The Comitatus belief in vows was part of what had caused all this. But Smith couldn’t just
leave.
“Arden…” he started.
But Arden herself disagreed, low-voiced, from her position over her dying father. “I thought you were trying to live off the grid,” she spat.
Smith couldn’t tell if it was an accusation or not. Now wasn’t the time to care. He dropped onto one knee beside her, left the Sword of Aeneas forgotten on the floor—for her—and reached for the already bloody bandage of Mitch’s shirt to help apply pressure. “I want to be here for you. Let me take over—”
“No!”
Blood smeared the heart-shaped face she lifted to him. Her large eyes swam with tears. But her expression left no doubt. “Let me worry about Daddy without worrying about you, too, Smith. If the Comitatus owns the police…and nobody guaranteed your safety…just
get out of here!
”
He didn’t want to leave her. God—anything else! But hadn’t he just explained to her father that Arden was a free agent?
Arden spared him one last glare. “Take your damned sword and leave!”
“I’m…sorry.” But Smith obediently curled his hand around his blade’s grip, taking it up again, wiping Lowell’s blood off on the leg of his jeans. He let Mitch and Val drag him back from the scene, holstering his revolver left-handed when Mitch gave it to him.
He felt himself die a little, inside, to leave the woman he loved all but weeping over the man who’d tried to betray her and then, ultimately, to save her. Because Leigh
had
thrown the fight. Smith knew that better than anyone.
He found he respected Leigh for the first time in years. For losing.
Losing for the right reason beat winning for the wrong one, every time.
Maybe that, thought Smith, was where the once heroic, once honorable Comitatus had gone wrong. They’d always won—until winning became everything. But nobody, nobody could count this as a win.
Leigh had grown unnaturally white as the blood beneath him pooled red.
Damned honor.
“Do you want to ride with your father?” the EMTs asked Arden as they wheeled her father’s gurney toward the waiting ambulance.
Daddy’s hand tightened on hers, his eyes unfocused over the oxygen mask. His blood smelled thick and wrong in the August heat.
Arden glanced at Jeff, where he stood lost at the edge of the drive. “No. I’ll follow with my brother.” No way would she leave Will Donnell to bring him—and she’d just sent away the only man she truly trusted. Maybe trusted. After having seen the extent of his secrets, and watched him skewer a man, she wasn’t so sure.
Which hadn’t meant she didn’t want him out of there and safe.
Daddy’s blue lips moved, blowing red bubbles in his attempt to speak.
Arden bent nearer.
“I’m sorry, bunny.”
Was he? She wasn’t sure it really mattered. Sorry or not, he’d threatened her life. Smith’s life. And maybe worse, even if he’d never have gone through with any of that?
He’d risked turning Jeff into someone just like him.
In the end, the damage was done.
Arden pulled her bloody hand free of his and stepped back, letting Smith’s father climb into the ambulance to accompany her father instead. Chin high against this next chapter in her
surreal afternoon, she watched the ambulance head out, its lights and sirens warning all comers of its approach.
Only then, after the security gates closed behind it, did she open her arms to Jeff. He fell into her embrace, safe.
Mostly.
She knew from her time with troubled teens what witnessing violence could do to a boy his age.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her. “I should—should have told you.”
“Told me what, Jeffie?”
“About the stupid society. About the knives. Some of the guys at camp—they weren’t supposed to tell—it’s all secret—but I was going to join as soon as I turned fifteen, so they figured it was okay. But it’s not!”
Fifteen.
She looked at him, so young and…unfinished. She tried to remember Smith at that age, but they’d avoided each other so adamantly back then. He’d been such a
boy,
wild and obnoxious and arrogant and…
Oh, mercy. Now that she was no longer a teenager herself, she recognized the behavior. Smith had nurtured a crush on her all along! But she’d only started to notice him that way after she’d bloomed into her own power, and after his own personality calmed down a little with adulthood.
The Comitatus gave me something to believe in,
he’d said.
It gave me a direction. And your petty, power-hungry bullying took that away from me.
But he’d lied. Yes, they’d apparently taken his money, his social standing. But he had rejected them first.
Smith
had sacrificed, when nobody else among her father’s peers knew the meaning of the word. He’d been better than he’d thought, all along.
Any last resentment of him for having joined the Comitatus faded to nonexistence. She knew from Greta and Sibyl that the Comitatus was bigger than this small group, bigger than Texas, bigger than the country. She knew Smith remained
exiled, hunted. But she did not, could not regret having spent last night with him, even if safety kept him away from now on.
“It will be okay, Jeff,” she told her brother, kissing his black curls.
“No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it will, no matter what happens—because
you’re
all right. You did the right thing. You protected me, despite that you could have sided with Daddy and the others. I’m so proud of you, for thinking for yourself. I’m so proud of you for being yourself, despite the consequences.”
She could have been talking to someone else, too.
“I didn’t fight him.” Jeff’s words came out muffled against her.
“There’s more to life than fighting.” She hoped. “Now—let’s get cleaned up and go to the hospital.”
Her brother drew away, scowled at her. “Why should we? I don’t care what happens to him. Let him die.”
Her heart threatened to break. Had the Comitatus and their violence already ruined him beyond saving? But no. He was just lashing out. Smith had survived the society for years, and he’d turned out all right.
Better than all right.
“You know why.” She let her steady gaze challenge her brother’s.
He ducked his head, kicked the ground. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”
Arden hugged him again, holding back her tears. Ladies rarely cried in public. But maybe…
Maybe it
would
be all right, after all.
Smith had Mitch—and Val—drive him by their crappy hotel rooms first. He did what he could to finish cleaning Lowell’s blood off the Sword of Aeneas en route. But now that
the danger had passed, he had bigger concerns than this strange new bond between him and the weapon.
He wanted to clean up before he went by the hospital.
“—the movie wasn’t just bootleg anime, but
bad
bootleg anime.” Mitch was laughing as Smith came out of the moldy bathroom, wiped down and wearing a fresh shirt and jeans. “So every time the characters mentioned this legendary sword, the English subtitles called it a ‘utensil.’ The best I can guess is, the translators somehow went from sword to knife to utensil. ‘Behold, the utensil of my father!’ Isn’t that a hoot?”
Val stared at him, not cracking a smile.
“I thought it was a hoot,” insisted Mitch amiably.
Val moved her stare to Smith and deadpanned, “Nice place. Can we go now?”
Of course, it wasn’t a nice place. Mitch had been right—it really did smell like feet. Smith picked up the oversized duffel bag he’d been using over the last year and shoved the plastic Ziploc with his toiletries into it. Then his dirty clothes, in a plastic grocery bag. Then he collected his clean clothes, and shoved them in, too.
“Uh-oh.” Mitch stood, concern sobering his cheerful expression. “You’re making time-to-leave-now motions. Val, why is he…? Never mind. Smith, why are you making time-to-leave-now motions?”
“Besides the obvious?” It wasn’t like Smith had kept that much to carry, after losing his business, his condo, his cars.
Arden.
He’d been right to break it off with her the moment he’d left the Comitatus. How could he stand losing her again now? Other than, you know, getting drunk, which was at best temporary.
Think about it later.
In went his laptop. In went the expandable folder with all his important papers—including, he knew, some well-worn
pictures of a beautiful, green-eyed beauty queen with Irish-black hair and dimples.
“What makes now time to leave? We’ve got the proof we need to protect the comptroller. You won the duel. Arden, Jeff, even Greta should be okay, and Greta’s place is now the ultimate base—no Comitatus allowed within five blocks.”
Smith barked out a laugh. “Of course
you’d
think the Comitatus would keep their side of the bargain.” Once the Stuarts learned of what had just happened, none of them would be safe.
“Why would Blondie here think that?” Val’s sober gaze cut from Smith to Mitch and back.
Oops.
Because unlike the rest of us, Mitch is still close with his dad, who is of course Comitatus.
But Smith couldn’t say any of that without breaking his stupid damned decade-old oath and outing his best friend. So he made do with a shrug, head duck and sulky, “
’Cause.
”
“Right,” said Val. “So are we going to the hospital or not?”
Donaldson Leigh had been brought to Baylor Medical Center, one of the preeminent hospitals in the country. Smith knew that if he, or Mitch or Trace were hurt, they’d end up at Parkland, the county hospital. In only a year, he’d come to actively fear getting hurt especially because of the county hospitals, despite the earnest efforts of the underpaid workers who struggled against overwhelming obstacles to keep them open. Overcrowded and understaffed, the emergency waiting rooms would have teemed with every underinsured patient from the indigent to the struggling middle class.
More people than he could ever have imagined, before circumstances had forced him to join them.
Here at Baylor, though, the surgical waiting area offered wood-paneled walls, leather upholstered furniture, live plants and a flat-panel television. Arden and Jeff had the room almost exclusively to themselves.
“Tell her I’m here?” asked Smith, hesitating in the hallway outside. He’d had to come, but for all he knew, his presence would upset Arden and her brother more than ever.
“No,” said Val, leaving him behind to go gather her friend into a supportive embrace. Smith envied that embrace. Like it mattered, who got to hold her when her father might be dying.
Smith stood in the half-open doorway. If he could be of any help at all, he had to be here for the woman he loved. But if he was going to hurt her—
Hurt her more, that is…
Maybe Val did whisper something to Arden. Or maybe Arden just sensed his presence. She looked up, met his concern with weary green eyes.
Eyes which hardened into emotionless poise.
She shook her head once, dismissing him—and turned back to her friend.
And…that was that. Smith backed away. Let the door swing closed. Bit back a soft curse and turned—