weapon wasn’t bright enough to chase away the image of her in the moment of her crisis, which seemed permanently branded onto the backs of his eyelids.
He was a fucking mess.
“Bloody good shot,” Benedict remarked, and Nick blinked at the target before him.
He’d landed his shot dead center, surprised he’d managed it while so distracted. Nick handed the weapon off to Aubrey, who set about reloading as he took up the second pistol.
“Do you think you’ll ever have to use these?” David asked, watching Nick prepare the second flintlock.
“He might,” Benedict said with a dry snort. “If the way Martin Lewes looked at him the other night at Boodle’s was any indication. The man despises you, Nick.”
Nick’s jaw tightened at the mention of the man who stood in a prime position to take Calliope away from him. The thought was so ridiculous he nearly laughed aloud. For Lewes to take anything from Nick, the assumption must be made that she belonged to him in the first place.
And she didn’t; not in any way that mattered. It was the damnedest thing, because where before he’d been determined to bed her, he now found himself wanting all the rest.
He didn’t want her to accept Lewes’s suit, settling for life as the bland wife of a future viscount. He wanted … he wanted …
“The man is an ass,” he spat, raising the pistol and taking aim at the target once more. “Why Calliope wants him is beyond me, but then, aside from knowing how to curl their toes I can’t pretend to understand women.”
He imagined that the circular target was Lewes and opened fire, lip curling in satisfaction as the man’s head exploded in a gory spray of blood and bits of skull.
The fantasy brought him no satisfaction.
He snatched the second loaded pistol from Aubrey and shoved the other into a pair of waiting hands. He tightened his hand around the butt, closing one eye and preparing to put another ball through the target.
The flintlock cracked in his hand, and this time the ball struck just right of center. Just to the side of perfection, of being good enough.
He growled and dropped the pistol, standing back to let Aubrey take a turn.
“It doesn’t matter, at any rate,” Benedict stated. His voice was light, but Nick felt the other man’s stare—knew his friend could somehow sense what was happening to him. “Your job is to provoke his jealousy so he offers for her, and from what I’ve heard you have nearly accomplished that.”
Nick’s hands spasmed as he fought not to hit something. He didn’t care to be reminded how close he stood to watching Calliope become Mrs. Martin Lewes. Aubrey’s shot rang out, the ball striking even farther to the right than Nick’s.
“Yes,” he agreed through clenched teeth. “Aubrey, you’re carrying too much tension in your arm. Slight bend in the elbow, exhale when you pull the trigger. Try again.”
Aubrey muttered something under his breath about being a linen-draper, not a bloody marksman, but accepted the other pistol from David and tried again, this time landing his shot closer to the center.
“This house party ought to be the end of it,” Benedict said. “Don’t you think, Nick? You’ll be glad to be rid of her, I suspect.”
Yes, he told himself as he offered a silent nod. Yes, he ought to be happy for it to end, because then he wouldn’t have to feel as if she were reaching inside him and tying him in knots. He wouldn’t have to face the fact that even if he wasn’t a courtesan, he still wouldn’t be good enough for her. He wouldn’t have to think of an empty future in which he watched her become the mother of another man’s children from a distance, while he went on … doing what? Surely he could only go on as a courtesan for another few years, and by then he might have fucked his way through all the women of the ton. His reputation would ensure no respectable lady would even consider setting her cap for him. He’d die old and alone, mourning the only woman he’d ever really wanted for more than just her money or the offering of her body.
David stepped up to shoot with a grip that was sure to result in a sprained wrist when the pistol inevitably kicked. Grateful for the distraction, Nick fixed his friend’s grasp and changed the angle, then waved a hand for him to carry on.