Chapter 37

Gabriel saw the whole thing happen in slow motion. Mrs Aubrey pulled the pistol – small but sufficiently deadly in appearance – from her ridiculous muff, and spoke, though he could barely hear her words over the roaring in his ears, some farrago about Hart being her brother. He spoke, calming words, though he had little idea what he was saying. Then a sudden shocking sound – a bird's cry, some tiny cool part of his brain told him. The woman was startled, and the gun jerked up… He knew, he knew with horrifying certainty before Georgiana so much as moved what she was going to do. But he could not stop her. He was not fast enough. And a second later she lay stretched out on the ground, her face as pale as death, an ominous stain spreading horribly fast across the pale pink silk of her pelisse.

He fell on his knees beside her. He wanted to seize her in his arms and cradle her to him, to will life back into her as it ebbed away. He wanted to reverse time, to throw himself in front of the bullet, but he could not, he was powerless. And it would not help her, any of it, but might make things worse if there was still some fragile thread of hope. So instead he took her wrist with fumbling hands and felt desperately for a pulse.

It was there, thank Christ, she was alive, at least for now. And as the worst of his panic receded, he realised that the wound was in her left arm, not her breast or her abdomen, so it seemed she had not been hit in the heart or in the lungs, or another vital organ. Perhaps it was just her arm. Just that, though that was bad enough. But she was unconscious, insensible, and when he very gently chafed her right hand, when he touched her pale little face and called her name in pleading tones, she made no response. A wound to her arm should not do that; she should at least be moaning, showing signs of distress, not lying there terrifyingly still and silent. She had hit her head as she fell, he feared.

There were people around him now, people who would insist on asking him a great number of foolish questions, which he could not hear at all over the roaring that still filled his ears, and crowding about him. He turned on them and spoke a few words in a low, biting tone. Once more he had not the least idea of what he said, but it made them fall back and give him space.

He could not leave her here. He was afraid to move her, but he could not leave her here, broken and bleeding into the dirt. He must take her home, find help. Surely somebody competent would help him. He stood – he was dizzy for a moment, but he fought it and gained command of himself – and, with the most care he had ever shown over any single thing he had ever done in all of his thirty-one years, he picked Georgie up and cradled her to his breast. Her head lolled in a disturbing fashion, and he settled it against his shoulder with infinite tenderness. And then the Duke of Northriding set off to carry his bride home, as the frightful bloodstain spread across her garments and his.

The crowd in the Abbey grounds parted to let him pass, though he did not see any one of them, not even the many persons there with whom he was well acquainted, and a few moments later he crossed the Minster front, where he had been married with such ceremony just four days earlier, and turned into Petergate. The narrow streets of the city were thronged with people, as they often were during daylight hours, but once again His Grace was not obliged to force a passage; everyone shrank back and gave him ample room. There was something particularly striking about the slow, measured pace at which he walked, like that of a man following a funeral procession; the very obvious care he was taking not to jar his precious burden. God forbid he should stumble and cause her further hurt.

Nobody who saw the extraordinary sight was ever to forget it, and many who had not been there to see it later claimed that they had. It was a ghastly, deeply affecting tableau to behold, as so many would later aver. It was not just the blood. Such an expression of fixed, blind horror was rarely to be seen on a man's face outside of the battlefield – there were men in the streets of York that day who had seen battlefields aplenty and could attest to that – and of course it was impossible for the observers to tell, as her husband carried her so tenderly, so lovingly through the crowds, whether the poor young lady was alive or dead, and whether the Duke found himself tragically widowed so very soon after he had wed.