The man who lived

Phillip Kensington, Marquis of Huntley, heir to the Duke of Buckingham, Absolute Scoundrel, evil twin, reformed rake and hero of The Rogue And The Rival, was supposed to die.

In fact, I did kill him off.

A very early version of The Heir And The Spare included his death scene, in which he reconciles with Devon while slowly bleeding to death in the master bedroom of Buckingham House. I killed him because there was some nasty business about the title that needed to be resolved, and it was easily done so long as he was sent off to the hereafter. And he was really awful and kind of deserved it. My mum said this scene made her shed a tear or two upon reading his death scene.

But then one day, a line popped into my head: Time had been good to Phillip Kensington, even though he certainly did not deserve it.  I thought that had a ring to it, and was an excellent first line of a novel. And I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of story would follow that up….and what kind of woman would be the one to reform the greatest scoundrel of a generation. She would have been ruined, since Phillip had ruined (or was purported to have done) four women. And where would he have met such a woman? An abbey seemed perfect.And then with the thought of Phillip Kensington in an Abbey I was off and running.

I had written eighty pages of a different novel and I scrapped that to write his story, because I felt so passionate about it. It became The Rogue And The Rival.

Fortunately, Phillip’s reversal in fortune (and fate) occurred when I still had a chance to make changes to The Heir And The Spare. When it came to revise that novel, cutting out his death scene was the first thing I did.

In honor of the man who lived, here is his original death scene.

Note: This excerpt is a few years old and has never been copy-edited.

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Devon didn’t have the time to wait for his carriage, and Phillip’s home, the official London residence for the Duke of Buckingham, wasn’t too far away. He ran through the London streets, still empty at this hour. When he knocked on the front door, slightly out of breath, the butler opened it, and immediately showed Devon to a room upstairs.

Phillip’s body was sprawled on the bed in the master suite. The only light in the room crept through the partially opened drapes and a few candles dripping wax onto the bedside tables. Devon went over to the bed. Phillip’s skin was ghostly white, his eyes were closed. His breath was uneven, and Devon could see spots of blood seeping through the bandages around his chest and through the sheets.

“What happened?”

“Duel. Tripped, shot himself,” Parkhurst said from the side of the bed.

“How is he? What’s going to happen?” Devon asked another man in the room, presumably a doctor.

“It’s the blood loss that will be his undoing,” the man said.

Devon sat on the edge of the bed, and his brother turned to look him. His eyes opened, bloodshot and dark.

Instinctively, Devon took his hand. He couldn’t think of any words to comfort his brother. He looked at Phillip’s face, the broken nose he had given him, and the obvious pain etched in his features. Phillip squeezed his hand.
“You’re going to be fine,” Devon choked out.

“Don’t…be…an idiot,” Phillip replied between breaths. “It’s…yours…rightfully yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The title,” Phillip panted.

“I don’t give a damn about the title,” Devon nearly shouted. Unlike Phillip, Devon had never truly wished for the title, nor had he wished for Phillip out of his life. He simply wanted peace between them. “Phillip, you have to hold on, don’t give up,” Devon urged.

“Thank you…little brother…for…being,” Phillip coughed, blood rattling in his throat, a gruesome sound. Devon still held in his hand. “For being with me…now…after…,” Phillip panted out. His chest was heaving, and red spots grew brighter on his chest. “…everything,” Phillip managed with pain.

“You’re still my brother,” Devon said quietly, with Phillip’s pained gaze on his face. His eyes closed. Devon felt his brother’s hand relax, he saw that his chest no longer rose and fell. His twin was dead.