Today's song, kids: "Hurt," by Nine Inch Nails

The dead clump of leaves, along with the branch they clung to, dislodged and came crashing down at Willoughby's feet. The younger man's bullet emerged noisily from his pistol as an afterthought, flying far afield of Brandon's person. Willoughby collapsed to his knees and began shaking, sobbing. Brandon watched him without expression for a few moments. Willoughby collected himself, looked up, and gave Brandon a shaky, malevolent grin. "I see you missed."

"I didn't miss," Brandon grimaced.

"Well, it's obvious you did," Willoughby said. "Maybe you need to remember your spectacles next time."

"I'm done with you, sir. Please leave me and mine alone. If you refuse to do your duty by Miss Williams, then I advise you to stay away from her. If I ever hear of your actions threatening to harm another young lady, rest assured I will ruin you in her eyes forever." Brandon dusted the pistol against the outside of his thigh and blew the smoke away from the barrel before handing it back to John, who patted him grimly on the shoulder.

"A young lady named Marianne Dashwood, for instance? You really think this posturing is going to convince me to give her up? You sad, sad man. You need to abandon ship. She will never look at you with anything but contempt, no matter what you say to her. You really think she'll believe you over me? I've got her in thrall. She looks at me exactly like your bastard girl did. You know what? After all this, I'm looking forward to our wedding bed even more. Both to taste her honey, and to think of how I've unmanned you twice over. Now go home and pout about it, you irrelevant fool."

Musel had sauntered up to Brandon and John and now began to try muscling them back towards their carriage. John grappled with him.

"Willoughby, please tell your trussed-up gorilla here to unhand us."

The large man's eyes flared up with rage at the insult, and he and John began to tussle in earnest. Willoughby laughed from a safe distance. Brandon, energy still coursing through his body, gripped the back of Musel's coat and hurled him miraculously off of John's writhing body, and then his arm pulled back and he levelled a punch at Musel's sturdy stomach that nevertheless caused the large man to double over. (It also may have broken a knuckle or two of Brandon's hand, but that could be dealt with later.) "John, get to the carriage," Brandon said, and then Musel, vengeance on his mind, unhooked a small knife from his boot.

Brandon suddenly felt a piercing, blinding pain in his left upper thigh, a pain that immobilized him.

"Musel," Willoughby's voice purred. "Stop playing. We need to be getting back. Although I can't see what damage you caused him, it looks like he won't be bothering about Marianne Dashwood in the future, will he?"

"I was aiming for his prick but couldn't find it," Musel replied in heavily-accented English and breathing hard over Brandon as he wiped the bloody knife on the grass and shoved it back in his boot. "Which is probably what every woman who's ever bedded him has complained of, as well."

"Now, now. There'll be time for jokes when we're back in Mayfair. Let's go." And the prig and the behemoth alighted the carriage and rode off.

John's face had somehow manifested itself above Brandon's, but the wounded man was in shock and couldn't remember when. "Chris. Chris. Are you able to speak? What did he do?"

"I-I think I will...be…"

And that was the last thing Brandon remembered before he woke up in his own bed in Greenwich.