I’d managed to make it through dinner, but begged off when Duke wanted to move on to a club. He hadn’t had much to drink at that point in the night, so I was sent on my way with a kiss and a fond farewell instead of glares and ugly words.
I’d returned to the flat, let myself in, and gone to bed.
I awoke hitting the floor, my head bouncing against the wooden frame of the bed.
For a moment, I thought I’d fallen, but then I felt the warm band of fingers around my ankle and looked up to see Duke crouching over me.
He was smiling, his bow tie once again undone, his shirt very white in the near darkness of the bedroom.
In his other hand, he held a rifle.
The sight of that blue-black barrel in the moonlight made my breath stop, my lungs tight, and a distant buzzing started up in my ears.
“Look what I won tonight,” he said, letting go of my ankle to caress the gun, his long fingers elegant and deadly against the metal. “Belonged to Darcy’s dad. Shot three elephants—no, four—in Rhodesia, and a tiger in India. Kept it over the mantel in his place here, and Darce fucking bet it on a pair. A pair.”
He laughed, and rose to his feet while I lay on the carpet, a rabbit in a predator’s sights.
Shifting the gun against his shoulder, he pointed it at me, one eye closed as he looked down the barrel.
“What do you think is more impressive? Shooting a tiger or shooting a person?”
I couldn’t breathe now, my skin numb even as every nerve in my body lit up in panic.
That laugh again. “Tigers are bigger,” he said, adjusting the angle of the gun slightly. “Deadlier, maybe. But people are smarter. Still, you don’t brag about that kind of thing, do you? Don’t hang the gun on the wall and say, ‘You know, boy, I shot my first wife with that gun.’”
My mouth was so dry that it was an effort to lick my lips, to make myself say something, and when I did, it was just his name.
“Duke.”
“When people kill tigers, they make them into rugs. And when they kill deer, their heads go on the wall. What would you even make out of a dead wife, I wonder?”
He was still smiling, and I realized, lying there on the floor, that this was fun to him. That he was thoroughly enjoying watching me tremble at his feet.
But the question you must be asking, the question I’ve asked myself: Did I think he would shoot me, right then and there?
Darling, I want so badly to say yes. I want to say that what happened next was true self-defense, because I feared for my life in that very moment.
But it’s the truth you asked for, and the truth you’ll get.
I was afraid for my life, yes. But no, I don’t think he would have shot me. There was no fun in that, after all. Just like there was no fun in beating me over and over, breaking skin, knocking out teeth. It was the fear he enjoyed, the threat. My terror made him feel in control, and all these years later, I wonder who taught him that. His father? His mother? A sadistic teacher at that all-boys school he went to in the mountains of north Georgia?
Or was he born like that? Was that desire for power, the satisfaction that came from having someone at his mercy, simply a quirk of his biology, just like his green eyes or his height?
I have no way of knowing.
What I do know is that he heaved a sigh and lowered the gun, setting it upright on its butt against the little bench at the foot of my bed.
“Head’s killing me,” he muttered, turning away.
Terrible last words.
I watched him walk out the door, heading for his own bedroom at the other end of the hall, and all the terror that had raced through me just seconds before ignited into something hot and wild, and I was moving almost before I knew it.
The metal of the gun was still warm from Duke’s hand, the weight familiar to me as I carried it out of the bedroom. I’d been hunting in the woods around Ashby House with Daddy since I was five, and I knew my way around firearms.
The flat was dim, moonlight spilling through windows high up on the wall above the landing, and the sconces on the stairs providing the only light. The carpet was soft underneath my bare feet, the silk of my nightgown cool, and Duke was just in front of me, almost to his bedroom door.
“Duke.”
I didn’t shout it, and my voice sounded surprisingly flat in my ears.
The butt of the gun nestled in the hollow of my shoulder like it had been meant to sit there.
He turned.
He was frowning, I remember that. He wasn’t scared, just irritated that I had decided to keep playing a scene he had already grown tired of.
I pulled the trigger.