In the Brief Eternal Silence (13 page)

“Miss Murdock,” he began, and his brief
suggestive look was not evident in his voice, reassuring her, “let
me suggest that you mayhaps envisioned yourself remaining on with
your father well into his dotage, until at some unfortunate time in
the future when he died. And that after that, assuming that he
lived for a goodly amount of years and you were perhaps by then in
your forties or mayhaps even fifties, you had envisioned yourself
having a small bit put back, through diligence and economy, and
bethought that you would perhaps sell the estate, your father
having, I am guessing, no apparent heirs, for whatever sum it would
get, and buying yourself a small cottage, and living the remainder
of your life doing whatever small tasks you found pleasure in.
Perhaps gardening, or reading, or being of some use nursing others
in need.”

“Vetting,” she said, her voice small. “I'm
good with all animals, not just horses, and have learned quite a
bit from our old groom, Kennedy, about poultices and herbs and
drenching. I've nursed numerous hares and birds, pigs and calves,
as well as horses. He says I have the knack for it.”

There was silence, and she was reluctant to
meet his eyes, for now that she had spoken the words aloud, there
could be nothing but condolence in his eyes, for it all sounded
pitiful and hopeless even to herself, and she snuffled, afraid she
would cry, and wondered why on earth she should find anything to
cry over, for it was as good a life as many had and better than a
good deal many more.

“I thought as much,” he said. “Although I did
not foresee the vetting. Of which I should have, for it is apparent
that it is very important to you to care for others, be it your
father or those that can not even voice their needs.”

She nodded, feeling miserably exposed, to
criticism or laughter or pity.

“I admire your plans, Miss Murdock,” he told
her, his voice grave. “For you to think of nothing but the comfort
of others and to intend to devote your life to it, and finding
pleasure and, I dare say, fulfillment in it, is breathtakingly
fresh from what I have been exposed to.”

“Then perhaps,” she sniffled, “you should
find a more worthy crowd to run with, milord, besides gamblers and
the like.”

He smiled as she glanced at him. “I admit
that what I have been exposed to, I have sought out, but I have had
a reason for keeping the company I keep and spending time in the
most unsavory of places. To find a snake, one must seek where they
are apt to be found, and perhaps become a bit of a snake himself,
in order to slither in their midst.”

He shook his head as she stared at him, took
a ruminative sip of his tea. Then he glanced at her, his eyes like
a pointed finger. “Let me sketch another future for you, Miss
Murdock, and please do not dismiss it out of hand. Your father
taken care of, either in our home or his, whichever he prefers. And
perhaps his life lengthened somewhat by the joy of a grandchild to
dandle on his knee. And what could be more satisfying to a caring
heart than to have a tiny babe to look after, to nurture and love,
spoil and discipline? To have the time and the means to travel with
that child, to educate him, and to show him all those caring skills
you already possess. To be free, perhaps, to live your life any way
you choose, whether it be a cottage, after all, where you can grow
many flowers instead of vegetables from necessity, or a great
manor, if your taste runs for it, or a townhouse in London, if you
enjoy the opera and the playhouse and the amusing social circles.
In short, Miss Murdock, I am offering you the freedom of choice, to
live as you please, where you please, or to change residences and
activities as you see fit. Mayhaps you would be constrained in
having me as a husband, but as you admit that you were not hoping
to fulfill some ideal of love, would it really matter? And there is
always the possibility that you would be free to marry again,
should I die prematurely, and even that constraint would be gone
from you. Am I really doing you such a disservice, Miss Murdock?
For I assure you, should I live, I would make every effort to
accommodate you and your wishes, would not stand in the way of your
finding fulfillment in any way you wished, even if it meant a lover
that you found yourself attracted to, as long as I had an heir
already, and you were properly discreet.”

She nearly dropped her teacup at his final
words, could not keep herself from gaping at him.

“Do not look so shocked, Miss Murdock. It is
often done so, I assure you.”

“I find that appalling,” she gasped at last.
“I am not sure which is more appalling: that you fully intend for
this marriage to be—to be— so complete as for you to have an heir,
or that you would so casually turn a blind eye if I were to carry
on an indiscretion after you had obtained an heir!”

“Ah, you have very provincial notions about
marriage, indeed, Miss Murdock. I vouch that, as I have described,
it is very common and accepted. No one would think the lesser of
either you or I.”

“I should think that I would think a great
deal less of myself,” she squeaked. “I can only credit your belief
that this behavior is acceptable to the company that you keep. For
if you associated with a more decent class of people, I am certain
you would find that their views match mine.”

“Enough, Miss Murdock,” he said. “You are
moving beyond expressing your views and into lecturing them.”

“Be that as it may, milord, I have to decline
your offer, finding it both distasteful and smacking of immoral. To
enter into a marriage with every expectation of being adulterous
within it can not, I believe, be advisable.”

“I am sorry you feel that way, Miss Murdock.
Would you rather that I woo, pursue and court you, profess feelings
I do not have, elicit these same feelings from you, maneuver you
into marrying me, and then perhaps leave you a grieving widow in
short order? Or bearing in mind that I survive, have you shocked
and hurt when I conduct affairs on the side, to which you in your
belief that I truly loved you, would be hurt, humiliated, and
possibly heartbroken?”

“You are a cad! The options you present are
equally objectionable to me, as they must be to anyone with even a
shred of decency, of which you are obviously lacking. I can not
prevent you from offering this atrocious proposal to another
female, but I can, myself, refuse it, of which I am doing now. I
would wish you better luck elsewhere, but I would be lying, for I
certainly hope that no other female out there is so anxious to be
titled and rich that she would sell any other chance at happiness
she may one day have to attain those much over touted
commodities.”

St. James stood up from his chair at the end
of her words, placed one fist on the table top and leaned upon it.
“Is there any thing you wish to add to your diatribe, Miss Murdock?
Or are we finally at the end of your reprimand?”

She stood herself, furious, for he seemed
totally unaffected by her speech, except for a small tic beneath
one eye. “Oh, there is plenty that I could add, milord, but I fear
that I would be merely covering much of the same ground, and as a
result, beating a dead horse! For if the words I have already
spoken do not shame you into seeing sense, I fear that nothing on
this earth could.”

“Good,” he ground out. “Now, if you can
possibly keep your outrage under wraps for a brief few minutes, I
will endeavor to think of a satisfying compromise to this
situation.”

“I have already offered you one,” Miss
Murdock reminded him through clenched teeth. “You take my horse and
walk away and I return to my home.”

“Unacceptable, Miss Murdock,” the duke
returned in short order. “Now if you will be quiet and allow me to
think for a moment!”

Miss Murdock stood fuming, biting her lip,
but when St. James turned from her and began pacing back and forth
the width of the room, one finger rubbing at his upper lip, she
realized that he was, in fact, concentrating, and felt a small hope
that he would heed her words, would give consideration to her utter
reluctance to enter into alliance with him, no matter how much it
seemed to be upsetting all of his carefully set plans.

She had a sudden wish that she could
understand why it was so important to him, not that it would change
her mind, she reassured herself, for it most certainly wouldn't!
But for any man to be so bent on marrying a woman he had not met
until yesterday, and who professed no infatuation or other romantic
feeling for said woman was a mystifying puzzle to her, and she
would have been less than human if she were not the slightest bit
intrigued.

He turned on her, his pacing halted. “I shall
have to change my plans slightly, damn it. And the bit of insurance
I hoped to have will be gone.”

“I am sorry if I am inconveniencing you,
milord,” Miss Murdock said with bitterness.

He threw her a quick grin, obviously
distracted as he had been speaking more to himself than to her.
“Are you, Miss Murdock? I doubt it!” Then he was off pacing again,
his finger rubbing, rubbing at his lip. “There is no way around it,
that I can see,” he muttered. “I had planned on your going to
London and having your coming out, as you had not had it yet. I
shall have to simply go forward with this immediately instead of
delaying until after we had gone to Gretna Green.”

Miss Murdock, making every effort to follow
this dialogue his lordship was having with himself, said, “I can
not see, if that were your intention all along that I should have
my season, how forgoing a trip to Gretna Green would be so very
bad.”

His dark head came up and his gold eyes
focused on her with intensity. “But it is, Miss Murdock, for now I
can hardly send you to London with, had God been willing, my child
in your womb, if I have not taken you to Gretna Green and married
you first.”

Chapter Seven

Miss Murdock collapsed onto her chair. She
placed her head in her hands, and from between her fingers said, “I
really, really wish to go home now.”

“I'm sorry. I have shocked you,” St. James
told her. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Blast this
whole situation. I have cursed it many times, but I have never had
to see it so completely bleed over onto another as it is
today.”

In response to his words, his savage voice,
Miss Murdock dropped her hands from her face and regarded him in
silence. He spun away from her on his booted heel, walked the
length of the room with jarring strides. Then he spun back around,
walked back toward her. “I am trying very hard to accommodate your
wishes, Miss Murdock, so you needn't look at me like that.”

Miss Murdock, who could not have named what
expression she had on her face, for it felt so foreign to her,
merely said, “I am sorry, milord,” and she gave a little grievous
laugh. “I must apologize, I suppose, for interrupting your so very
thorough plans for my own person.”

“Come, Miss Murdock. I said marriage, I said
it would be as soon as possible. I spoke of heirs. I assumed you
would naturally realize what marriage would entail.
Immediately.”

“Frankly, milord, I had given it no thought
at all, since, as you had made clear, this was to be a bloodless
marriage made out of convenience and not feeling.”

He sighed at that, a single sound of
displeasure and exasperation. “Now that you know exactly the extent
of my intentions, you would not see your way clear to changing your
mind, would you, Miss Murdock?” he asked her cheekily.

“No!” Miss Murdock returned. He had shocked
her to such a degree that even this further reference to
unmentionable matters could shock her no further. Or his suggestion
that she would welcome them.

“Quite.” He paced again.

Miss Murdock sat back in her chair,
struggling with the undisciplined, shadowy images that his words
had brought to mind.

Because her thoughts were getting a bit out
of control, she said more sharply than she intended, “Since I am
being so unfairly uncooperative, perhaps you would do better to
abandon any further plans you have for me, milord, and find another
a little more eager to accommodate you.”

St. James glanced at her, a frown drawing his
brows together, but when he spoke, his voice was flip, “No, Miss
Murdock. I have already spent a good deal of my time merely
convincing you to leave your home. I do not look forward to
starting anew with some other female. So please, bear with me, and
I am sure if I cannot make you happy, I can at least make you
somewhat less unhappy.”

“You think I am being totally unreasonable, I
see, in wanting to control my own life,” Miss Murdock observed. “To
me, it is not only reasonable, but a basic desire, and yet all you
do is mock me, as though I were some sort of oddity.”

“You are an oddity, Miss Murdock,” he
returned. “But you misunderstand if you think I mock you, for I
mock only myself. Your desires are reasonable, and what I ask of
you is totally unreasonable, and yet I find that I am even willing
to do this with barely a qualm.” His next words were murmured to
himself more than to her. “I have walked so long with the dead,
have practiced their ways for so long, that even should I have the
chance to live, I doubt if I will know how to go about it.”

Giving a puzzled frown, Miss Murdock said in
impatience, “I do not understand you, milord. You give every
appearance of regretting what you do even before you have done it,
and yet you insist on doing it.”

“If I were as insistent as you say, we would
not be having this conversation now, but would instead be on our
way to fulfill the plans I had made previously.”

A bright spot of color invaded each of Miss
Murdock's cheeks. “You shall hold that threat over my head, now, I
see, in order to keep me in line. You are something of a bully,
sir.”