In the Brief Eternal Silence Page 4

  This brought a startled laugh from St. James and an answering guffaw from Lord Tempton. Ryan merely looked a good deal puzzled.

  “Good God!” Bertie exclaimed. “A right odd one. Never thought any of those women had any feeling for the poor groom other than how deep his purse was and how they can go about spending it. I told you, St. James, how my cousin's new bride set about redecorating their London home and is insisting on an entire new wing being added to their country estate! T'is no wonder he is always at White's trying to get a little entertainment for his money before she manages to run through it all. And hardly married a year!”

  “You act as though I should be shocked to hear it, Bertie, when you well know my feelings on the matrimonial state. Merely a business proposition, and there will always be one in the party left feeling that he or she did not get quite the bargain they deceived themselves into thinking they were getting,” the duke replied. “No, Squire, if I were you I would disabuse your daughter of such foolish notions, for no doubt, she would be getting a great deal less than what she thought also, and hence, they would be even.”

  “By God!” Ryan interjected, sounding exasperated. “Whatever has happened to love?”

  The other three in the salon turned to look at him, a great deal surprised. “Love?” Bertie asked. “Why, what in the world does that have to do with marriage?”

  “Pshaw!” the Squire added. “Well and good for a young man fresh out of University to dream of such, but we're talking marriage, my boy. No place for it there, if a man is a wise man! Why, it's difficult enough to keep the wife in line without being besotted by her in the bargain.”

  “They are quite right, young Ryan,” St. James added. “Love is best kept for those little indiscretions on the side. Much easier to be rid of the object of your passion once the passion has waned and you realize you really can not bear to look at the girl another moment. Can you imagine waking up feeling that way one morning and realizing she is your wife?” His slight frame shuddered at the thought. “No. Much better to go into marriage with someone pleasing enough that you can do your duty as a husband and procure heirs, but not in the least under illusions of love. Makes, I imagine, for a much better union than otherwise.”

  “Listen to St. James, my brother,” Bertie waved a glass in the direction of the duke, who at the end of his words, had gotten up from his seat to open yet another bottle of brandy. “For he has escaped the clutches of anxious mama's and besotted young beauties for many years now.”

  “But,” Ryan began, looking somewhat chastised, “I always believed it was because you had not found one yet that you truly loved.”

  That brought a rude bark of laughter from St. James, one that made him spill onto his wrist some of the drink he was pouring. He put the bottle down, switched his glass to his other hand and raised his wrist to his mouth and licked the brandy from it before turning to Ryan. His eyes were dancing, or possibly it was just the fire from the grate reflecting in the gold of them. “You credit me with more feeling than I possess, I assure you, young Tempton. When I marry it will be for no other reason than that I have come to a point that I deem it desirable to do so. Any available baggage at hand will fit the bill then. I will not care what she looks like or behaves like, as long as she has enough intelligence to be a mother to my children.” He gave a deep frown before continuing. “Actually, I would require that she have rather more intelligence than usually found in our fairer sex, for it is quite possible, likely even, that she would have to watch over my estates and affairs until my heir was old enough to take care of what was his.”

  There was silence after this remark. The Squire, of course being not at all familiar with the duke and his odd takings, could only believe that the amount of liquor he had been consuming had put him in some dark mood. As if in agreement with his thought, Lord Tempton said, “Don't get gloomy on us, St. James. T'is only too much drink, you know.”

  For answer, St. James downed the contents of his glass, which he had just finished pouring. “Not enough is my take on the situation, Bertie, old boy. Care for another while I am pouring?”

  “No. For if you are going to be in for a taking again tonight, then it is my duty to stay sober and keep you out of the trouble you are always wont to get into. Blast you, St. James!” he said. “You sore wear my patience. Just for once, I should be allowed to drink myself silly, and you should have to stay sober and keep an eye out for me.”

  “Why, Bertie, I do believe you resent me, and I have no idea why. Have I not always been ready to stand by you through thick or thin? And even when I am drunk, have I ever failed in my duty to you?”

  “No. Too damned quick to fulfill it is the problem when you're drunk. You see slights where there are none, and insults where there are only slights.”

  St. James grinned. “Perhaps my perceptions are merely more acute, rather than askew. But leave it as you would like to believe, I would not let it stop you from drinking tonight, for what trouble can I possibly get myself into? I am here among my friends, have no place to go and nothing pressing to do. So you see, we are all quite safe and you can imbibe to your heart's content knowing I am safely under wraps.”

  For answer, Bertie pushed his glass forward. “Fill it then, and damn you while you're at it. There will be trouble and you know it better than I.”

  “Posh! We shall now find out,” St. James said.

  Bertie took his glass without further comment and drank from it.

  “I was thinking, Squire,” St. James turned to that man. “Your daughter shall keep her horse and you shall secure her future. And I shall get what I am in need of also.”

  “Here we go,” Bertie said. “You have as much subtlety as an axe, St. James.”

  “Hush, Bertie. This appears to be promising. Squire, do you wish me to continue?”

  The Squire felt a little quiver go up his back. His mouth was dry, despite his drinking, and he suddenly felt the amount of alcohol he had been consuming was too much. “Aye, miduke. You may continue.”

  St. James seated himself. His voice, when he again spoke, was low and pointed and the glimmer of the gold of his eyes seemed ominous and forbidding. “First, tell me of your daughter. Is she intelligent? And you will tell me the truth of this.”

  The Squire gave a shiver. He wanted to ask why it mattered, and if he were really the one to measure the intelligence of another, being not the sharpest knife in the drawer himself, and where was this question to lead at any rate? Instead, he knotted his brows, looked to the ceiling, finding himself unable to meet that shuttered, elusive, golden gaze, and said, “Well, miduke, she took over the accounts when she was fourteen, the year after her mother died. Wasn't much good at them myself, I admit,” he added.

  “That is a start,” the duke agreed. “Go on.”

  “And she knows her way around horseflesh. I saw no promise in that filly at all, if you must know the truth, but Lizzie, she said, that's the one, and she's turned into a right runner, she has.”

  “Can not be but an asset in my eyes. Continue.”

  The Squire scratched the top of his head. “Don't know what else. She's a good housekeeper, but she can't sew worth a lick. She can shoot well enough for a girl, better than most, but I've never seen her hunt. She can cook well enough, but not without getting soot smeared all over her. She can muck out a stall as fast as pretty near any man I've ever seen,” he ended on a slightly triumphant note.

  The duke stared at him for a long moment. “Lovely,” he said at last. “You have just described your daughter as a glorified scullery maid with a little stable groom mixed in. But what any of that has to do with her intelligence, I can not fathom.”

  The Squire flushed. “She's smart enough to know how to make a month's worth of coal last all winter, and a single joint last all week, if you must know. She's smart enough to know how to make roast one day, take the leftovers and make stew the next, take the leftovers from that and add a little pastry and make potpie the next and take th
e leftovers from that and make vegetable soup the next. And if that doesn't give you an idea of how poorly our situation truly is, I can tell you that she was smart enough to tear out her mother's flower garden and plant vegetables instead and she's bullied our one remaining groom, old Kennedy, into raising chickens and hogs in the back sheds.

  “So, milord,” and his lip curled as he finished, feeling the bite of his humiliation at the extent that he had exposed his poverty to these men in their fine clothes with their fine estates and fine London homes, “she may not have the book-learning you were asking after, but she's intelligent enough to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table with my limited income, and for me, that is good enough.”

  St. James made no answer, just raised the lids of his eyes for a brief second giving the Squire the full impact of his piercing gaze, then he turned with considerable nonchalance and poured himself another brandy, and in turn refilled the Squire's glass, Ryan's glass, and then Bertie's glass.

  “There you go, St. James,” Bertie said when the pouring was finished. “So now you may put an end to this before it goes any further.”

  “An end? No, Bertie. It just begins.” St. James raised his glass in salute. “I say, she'll do.”

  Chapter Three

  Bertie let out a groan. “Egads, St. James! Can I not convince you the whole scheme is foolhardy? And you have done nothing but drink since we arrived here. It is already past midnight. Go to bed, I say, and sleep it off. If it is still what you wish to do, you can be at it tomorrow. But I guarantee you, you will be glad you left it all unspoken tonight.”

  “What? Left what unspoken?” Ryan asked. Through much of the preceding conversation, he had sat slumped to one side of the table, stifling his yawns, but now, feeling he had obviously missed something, he sat up and asked again, “Whatever are you two talking about now?”

  “We are talking about the same thing we were talking about earlier, young Ryan,” St. James told him. “Marriage.”

  “Marriage?” Ryan echoed.

  “Marriage?” the Squire asked also in a surprised voice.

  “Marriage,” Bertie sighed.

  “Yes. Marriage,” St. James repeated. “Squire, I'll ask for your daughter's hand in marriage and take the horse as her dowry.”

  “By God, I think you mean it! You want the horse that bloody badly?”

  “Do I want the horse that badly?” St. James mused to himself. He looked into his glass to see if the answer were there. “Yes. I think it amuses me to say I want the horse badly enough that I would offer for the daughter of a Squire. Plain, scullery-groom girl that she is.”

  “You can not be serious, St. James!” Ryan exclaimed. “You are jesting us, surely. Even you can not want a horse badly enough to marry someone you have only seen once, and then she was covered with mud!”

  “Why not, young Ryan? You yourself professed her a likable lass.”

  Ryan flushed, looked at his brother as a weatherman looks at a barometer. Bertie shrugged. “Have another drink, St. James. Perhaps you'll fall flat on your face before this goes any further.”

  St. James did take another drink, a long one. Where his movements of before had seemed slow, they were now sharp and agitated. He was very drunk, as Bertie had observed, drinking perhaps three drinks to every one of theirs, only the Squire keeping up with him. That he was still standing seemed unnatural, an abomination even. What man could put that much poison into his body and still be upright, alert, talking coherently? Pouring yet another?

  “You have no objections, Squire?” the duke asked after a moment.

  “What?” Squire Murdock asked with obvious befuddlement. “Marriage? You mean my Lizzie to you?”

  “Why, yes, of course. I thought I made it clear, but perhaps I did not. I offer for your daughter, as I said.”

  “My Lizzie marry you?” the Squire asked again, with seeming growing disbelief instead of lessening.

  “Yes. Yes. Your Lizzie to me. Come. Do not say that you had no hope of such in mind.”

  “Indeed, I did not,” the Squire answered with florid face. “Not bloody likely with you at any rate!”

  St. James let out a brief chuckle.

  Becoming aware of Ryan's look of shock, the Squire hastened to explain. “It was possible, I thought, that Lizzie could be attractive to someone with a common interest.” He paused and then continued in impatience. “They would've been thrown together a good deal. Stranger things have happened. And she is likable. A regular wit and sensible as the day is long.”

  The Squire halted as he took in their silent faces. Then to St. James he said, “Marriage, damn you. I'll have nothing less for her and my circumstances can be hanged.”

  “I assure you, Squire, it will be marriage.”

  “And whatever filth you're into, you are to keep well away from her!”

  That brought a tight-lipped smile from St. James. “Indeed, there is a great deal of filth. I have no intention of allowing her to know of any of it.”

  The Squire gave him a hard stare then he dropped his head to rest in one hand, his gray hair glinting in the lamp light.

  St. James appeared unmoved at this pitiful sight. “Squire,” he insisted. “Do I have your permission to wed your daughter?”

  The Squire did not lift his head, but murmured, “Proper amount of time. . . Proper placing of banns. . . Several months down the road. . .”

  “No. No, no. That will not do at all,” St. James mused. “Tonight, I think. The border is not all that far from here. If I start out now, we should make it by tomorrow eve.”

  The Squire hunched further in his chair and let out a small groan.

  “St. James!” Ryan gasped. “You can not be serious! Think of the girl involved if you can not think of anything else. You can not go and haul her from bed in the middle of the night and take her to Gretna Green with you. She has no chaperone for one, and, and— Well! It is just not done. It is not civilized!”

  “By tomorrow night it will not matter if we are chaperoned or not,” St. James replied and he pulled the brandy bottle up to his mouth, drank deeply from the lip of it, as though to show just how uncivilized he could be.

  “Why?” young Ryan asked incredulously when the older man replaced the bottle, the level of its contents quite a bit depleted. “Can you just tell us why, for God's sake, you have taken this notion into your head?”

  “Of course, young Ryan. I like the horse. Very much,” he added with a tight smile. “That's reason enough, don't you think?”

  Ryan could only shake his head, feeling quite a bit disillusioned. “I always thought. . .” he trailed off.

  More gently, the duke asked, “What, Ryan? What have you always thought?”

  With defiance, Ryan raised his head. “That the tales about you were exaggerated, that you were not. . . were not as bad as all that—”

  His words were cut off by a great laugh from St. James. “Oh, but they are true!” he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “They are all true. I am that bad and much, much worse, young Ryan. So, enjoy my company, but never forget the entertainment I provide is usually the shocking sort. I'm bad enough to take a young girl from her bed in the middle of the night and haul her unchaperoned to Scotland at my whim.” He reached his hand out for the Squire. “Come, Squire Murdock. T'is time for me to collect your daughter, and I would rather you were there to smooth the way.”

  Ryan turned to Bertie. “Aren't you going to stop him?” he asked a little desperately.

  “No,” Bertie replied, refilling his glass. “For I have never been able to stop St. James once he has taken a notion into his head. And if it is not her tonight, it will just be another on another night. Let him be, Ryan. This is what he wishes to do.”

  “And you agree with him?” Ryan asked, incredulous.

  “Agree with him? No. Not at all. But I know from experience there will be no changing his mind.”

  The Squire rose to his feet. He was drunk and more than a little confuse
d. But, by God, Lizzie would have a husband. He may not be all that he should be, but at least he was well-set for blunt. And if Lizzie could not stomach him, she could come home again, and bring his damned money with her.

  St. James eyed his large, swaying form. “Well, I shall certainly have suitable company, in any event,” he commented. He walked to the door, opened it, barked out a single call into the dark of the inn's hallway. “Tyler! Damn it, Tyler. I have need of you. Now!”

  A door was heard opening and then closing further down the hall, and then a large man loomed in the doorway, dwarfing his employer.

  “Aye, milord,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his square, craggy face. “What's your pleasure?” and his voice sounded of resignation, as though he had been summoned from his sleep many times before at the request of the duke.

  “I'll need my curricle brought around, if you please.”

  The groom tugged on his cap and without any further answer retreated back down the hallway to make his way to the stables.

  There was a brief silence in the room as they waited. St. James picked up the Squire's coat, threw it to him. Then he put on his own, lurching a bit at the task and the booze awash inside of him. Still, he stood straight, and if his face was haggard and paler than usual beneath his dark hair, it only served to make his eyes seem all the more poignant in his dissipated face.

  It seemed a very short period of time before the groom came back, announcing that all was ready, and the duke took the Squire's thick arm into his hand. Just before they passed through the door, he turned to look at young Ryan, whose worried eyes were following his every move. “Don't forget, either, young Ryan, that I have my reasons,” St. James told him, and then the door was closed behind them.

  Ryan turned to his brother. “What reason could he possibly have for this?” he asked, feeling very much indeed, young and wet behind the ears.

  For answer, Bertie pushed the remaining bottle of brandy toward his brother. “I fear I know what his reasons are. I pray to God I am wrong,” he said. Then he let out a long stream of curses that was very much at odds with his usual boisterous banter and finished with, “God help him.”