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In the half shelter of the ruined barn, Richard Thornton rubbed one hand over the other, trying to keep them warm. His stomach churned with hunger. Before, in the worst days, he had thought he knew hunger as he forwent suppers and breakfasts, taking his mutton with servants and cab drivers at midday. 

That was nothing to this.

His every waking thought was of his tormentor: of that vapid, pretty face over the barrel of a pistol, thinking this could all still be brushed away, thinking that every measure of infamy and treachery could be laughed away, thought all that would be well if he bawled at his inferiors and brought out that deathly affability of his, Dickie, please...

How many times had Richard heard those words? 

Had they ever inclined him to mercy? 

In that moment, Richard could have done it. Could have sent a ball splintering into that delicate skull, putting out all the light in those blue, blue eyes. 

He could have done it and laughed while he did so. He had been full of the spirit of vengeance, pure with his rage. They had faced each, holding twin guns: virtue wronged, and every corruption imaginable – corruption with the laughing face of a picture book knight. 

Richard closed his hand around where the pistol was tucked beneath his shirt. The metal was warmed by his skin, and beautifully worked. Such a beautiful, hateful thing. 

Valance had always referred to his guns as women, had spoken of them as though he loved them. His first had been his ‘Girls’, then the adored ‘Sweethearts’, and now these… what had he called them? His ‘Ladies.’ 

It appeared Valance was going up in the world. Infamy would always prosper. 

And where was virtue while he rose? Scrambling from wet hovel to remote ruin, living by its hands and wits and, yes, by dishonesty. Richard’s coat was torn and muddied, his skin speckled with stubble, his white shirt ruined by filth. His hair grew from its neat crop in wild curls he would have disdained only weeks before.

He remembered the feeling of pistol’s report in his hands, the recoil.

Valance’s gun had damned him. 

Richard could not remember if his finger had pressed on the trigger, or if it had merely been the heat of the moment, the fury, the distraction of Valance’s hectoring voice. 

Just thinking of it, his fists clenched, his breathing came too fast.
Yes, that was how it had happened. Richard had been angry. Valance had, naturally, bought the sort of guns that answered to the slightest touch, and Richard’s fists had clenched. 

That must be how it happened. For how else could it have beem? Richard was no murderer.

He was a virtuous man. An honourable man.

It did not do to dwell on vengeance, rage. Instead, he forced himself to think of Serafina, of her long, auburn-brown hair, the white skin marked so sweetly by freckles, the way a blush would spread through her like wine into a white cloth. He remembered the single press of his lips against her own, and the softness there, the lush weight of them, where before he had only known the stubbled vigour of Valance’s loathsome caress. 

Because however strong, however complete Richard made his armour against such sin, Valance had always been able to wriggle his way around it. He seemed to view it as a challenge, just as every law, and decency, and social propriety was a challenge to him. 
Such things, he seemed to feel, should be flouted for their own sake. 

Valance had always been like that. 

Richard had seen it when they met. 

He had been a prefect, then, at the forefront of the school’s reform of manners and dress. It had not taken him long to know every troublemaker by name and reputation. He remembered them all, every huffing defiance, every snarling challenge, and he had brought them all to heel. With most of them, it was simply a matter of form – they fought him, and all other authority, because they thought it was a way to prove themselves men. It had been his duty to educate them and bring them back in to line. Cold-eyed, resenting, they had respected him for it.

But not Valance. 

No, Valance had delighted in his cleverness, his excuses, he had flaunted his disobedience, rolled his blue eyes and pouted his girlish lips as though those things conferred some impunity. 
And everyone had let him get away with it, for wasn’t he an amusing little rogue? 

Oh, yes, they would beat him, try to shame him, but all they would ask in return was that brief, laughing acquiescence which would vanish the moment they turned away again. They had all told Thornton that the world would eventually knock some sense in to Valance, but that, in the meantime, there was no real harm in the boy. 

Yet some instinct in Thornton had seen the corruption underneath all that play, the real wickedness which Valance spread about him with that careless laugh and those sparkling eyes. Something in Richard had baulked at leaving such an affront unchecked, something in him had known that measures must be taken. 

So, he had undertaken to teach Valance the price of such provocation, to press Valance’s face into his own shame and make him understand the ways in which his swaying hips, his coy smiles were a disgrace to any manly virtue. 

But instead, instead...

No. 

No, he must not think of this.

He must think of his angel, his Serafina. She was aptly named. She had come into his life, and lifted him out of error, set him back upon the path of decency and honour. For her, he would suffer any injustice, endure any indignity.

The thought of her, alone, at the mercy of such men as Valance, was abomination to him. 

And he had only himself to blame. 

He should not have run. He should have stood his ground, surrendered to the Watch, let justice take its course. He could have argued, spoken politely and with propriety. He could have drawn upon a lifelong exemplar of probity and proved that the Watch man’s death had been a tragic accident - nothing more. 

Instead, standing on the meadow with the pistol still hot in his hand, he had chased after emotions he was no longer permitted, pride to which he could no more lay claim. 

That morning, the object of his hatred had been in his sight and he had held in his hands a weapon of retribution. Finally, finally, he was able to cleanse his life of Valance’s bane, and how dare anyone step between him and the vengeance? 

How dare someone see fit to assault him at that moment? How dare any man dishonour him, disrespect him so?

Therefore, he had levelled the pistol without remorse, and...

The weight of the gun against his chest was at once treacherous, and comforting. 

What would Serafina think, knowing him a murderer? Knowing his hands to be stained with innocent blood?

Within layers of damp wool, within boots that had surrendered to the wet, Richard shivered. He must look ruined, a desperate man, rugged and dangerous - he, who had always been so proper in his dress and manner. 

A blessing that there was no looking glass nearby. 

From his pocket, he drew the slip of paper that had become his salvation, his lifeline. The place, the date, the scrawl of signature.