In the Brief Eternal Silence (14 page)

“I am not used to this incessant questioning
of my motives and my decisions, you stubborn lass,” he returned. “I
realize that your acquaintance with me is short, but if there were
another here that knew me, they would tell you that you have
already pushed me far further than I normally allow.”

“And you seem to think that no one but you is
capable of making any decision, even if it is about their own
future happiness,” she countered. “I can not believe that whatever
motivates you is so compelling as to make these actions you take
right or even acceptable.”

His jaw tightened, and he did not look at her
for a long moment, but placed a fisted hand on the table and bowed
his head. “You are right, Miss Murdock, and I can hardly blame you
for pointing it out to me. No motive, however compelling can make
this right. But what you do not understand, and what I will
endeavor to explain to you for the final time, is: I do not care.”
He lifted his head and his gold eyes were like twin icons in his
face, cold and hard and metallic. He went on, his voice chillingly
reasonable, “You are of the proper age, a little young for me
perhaps, but better than being thirteen years older. You are no
beauty, but neither are you so displeasing as to make one stop and
wonder why I should marry you. Your father is, I regret to say,
rather poor protection and you have no other relatives to interfere
in whatever decisions I make regarding you and our life together.
You have no other suitors for me to deal with and nothing in your
life that I am taking you from that I should feel I am doing you
any real disservice. In short, Miss Murdock, you are available and
convenient. And I need you very badly. So if you must rail against
something, rail against fate for bringing you to my attention. For
now that I have turned my attention to you, you may fight the good
fight all you wish, you may even scream and kick and slap, but it
will not deter me, for I have devoted my life to accomplishing what
I must accomplish. If it means turning your life upside down, I
regret it, but I shall still meet my eyes in the mirror every
morning without flinching. You may curse this day for the rest of
your life. You may curse me, if you so wish. But in the end, you
will walk down the aisle with me and if it will not be tonight, do
not doubt that it will be tomorrow or the next day.”

Miss Murdock blinked once, solemnly, like an
owl. Her blood was beating in her head. “Why?” she asked, her voice
colorless. “Why do you do this?”

St. James' eyes half closed, shuttering his
expression. “It would make no difference to you, would it, Miss
Murdock? For I am just a fiend, bent on my own will, and no
explanation could make it seem less so to you.”

Miss Murdock said with thoughtfulness, “I
just wish to know for what I am being sacrificed.”

His head snapped back, as though she had
slapped him. “Sacrificed?” he asked wonderingly. “Now there is a
word that I would not have expected.” He considered for a moment,
his eyes narrowing. “It does not concern you,” he said finally. “As
I said before, I shall either die rather abruptly, leaving you a
very merry widow, or I shall live and spend all of my incredible
will trying to atone to you. There is no more you need to
know.”

“Mayhaps not, milord. I guess that I, in all
my apparent dimwittedness, have no need to understand you or your
reasoning. But you did promise, milord, to satisfy my curiosity if
I satisfied yours.”

His mouth twitched in some wry amusement
known only to himself. He pulled out his chair at the table, seated
himself with innate elegance into it, and rubbed his upper lip with
one finger, brooding. Even as she watched him, knew as soon as his
finger went to his lip that he would honor what he had said and
tell her, as she had asked, she saw his eyes darkening as if two
dark clouds had passed over the sunshine brightness of them. “I was
ten years old, Miss Murdock,” he began.

I was rather wild at that age, as I am sure
you can believe.

Yes, milord. At this point I would believe
you if you told me you were born with two horns and a tail.

If you wish to hear the story, Miss Murdock,
you must indulge me just a little bit. I spent a lot of time alone,
having no brothers or sisters, and at that point no cousins either.
Bertie, Lord Tempton, lived on the neighboring estate in
Lincolnshire, but as we were only there for holidays and summer, we
did not, as of yet, see much of each other.

My father, William Desmond Larrimer, then
Duke of St. James, was a close confidant of the then young Queen
Victoria, as he had been to King William the fourth before her. He
was very involved in sensitive work for the crown and was rarely at
home for more than a few days at a time.

Larrimer. I did not even know your family's
name. Or your Christian one, for that matter.

I apologize, Miss Murdock. It is Dante. No
one uses it, except for my grandmother. I have been called merely
St. James for many years.

My mother was very social. Big season,
little season, Bath in the off-season. I never really saw her
except for the summer month and Christmas at the manor. So you see,
I was left mostly to my own devices and being rather naturally
headstrong, I was well on my way to being out of control even
before that Christmas of my tenth year.

We had gathered at Morningside, our country
estate, as we had every year since I had been born. My grandmother
was there, but my grandfather, the prior Duke of St. James, had
already been dead since before I was born. He was much older than
my grandmother when they married, and he did not marry her until he
was nearly forty. It's said that I get much of my temperament from
him, for he caused his share of scandals in his day also. He had
eyes similar to mine. I know my grandmother still receives a shock
every time she looks at me. I gather she loved him very much.

My father's younger brother was in residence
for the holidays, and his new bride, my aunt Lydia. You shall meet
her eventually, for she has been residing with my grandmother since
my uncle's death last winter. Miss Murdock, I would not be lying if
I told you that this is perhaps one of the best memories of my
life. My father was there, my mother was there, and they were
uncommonly happy. They were going to have another child you see,
after ten long years of trying. And I was very glad, for I thought,
of course, that perhaps then I would not be so alone. I was very
excited, for they had just confirmed she was expecting and it was
all very new to me and to the others when they announced it at
Christmas Dinner. I was filled with thoughts and plans, already
eager to show my younger brother, for in my youthful mind it could
not be but a brother, all of my secret hiding places, and the best
places to scale the walls to sneak off into the surrounding woods,
of which I had been strongly warned against wandering in. And I
imagined being with him when he was first learning to ride, and
that I would allow him my prized pony to learn upon, as I was
growing too big for him at any rate, and on and on and on. I can
not tell you how utterly exulted I was. I did not realize of
course, that had he lived, there would have been that span of years
between us, and that in reality, we would not have had as much in
common as I imagined.

He did not live?

No, Miss Murdock. He was not even born.

It had been planned that we remain at
Morningside until after the new year, but mid-week between
Christmas and New Year's Eve, my father received a summons from the
Queen. I never have been able to ascertain what it was about, as my
father evidently destroyed all correspondence from the crown and
kept no notes on what he was doing. All those secrets he held in
his head died with him. I have often wondered how the last two
decades of our history would have played out had he lived. What
projects had he been working on that were to be left forever
incomplete?

My mother was not particularly unhappy about
the change in plans. Despite being with child and all the
annoyances that I am sure a woman goes through in that condition,
she was feeling quite stifled at Morningside. So she refused my
grandmother's offer to stay on and to allow my father to go on
ahead alone. Instead, she made ready for the trip, which, as the
summons had only been received late that afternoon, would have to
be made during the night. She ordered that only the essentials be
packed for us, and that the rest of the luggage could be brought up
the following day at a more leisurely pace. I was dressed and
ready, looking forward to the trip as I considered it an adventure.
For I normally traveled with my grandmother, and every journey with
her was as big as a caravan and as slowly moving. She has grown
even worse over the years, by the by.

However, I was no more than settled into the
coach when I began to cough. It had been the cold night air, I
suppose, and then the sudden closeness of the coach. And it was not
just coughing, but great, loud barkings. I remember feeling my
throat constricting just as quickly as you please, and wrenching
out those barking coughs. It was the croup, my mother told me, and
she was rather annoyed, I remember, for I hadn't had that malady
since being a very young lad. There was no way she could expect me
to travel in that condiion. I tried to argue, for as I had said, it
appealed very much to me to be out on the road at night, traveling
lightly and quickly with none of the constraints of my
grandmother's great expeditions. It still does, to this day, appeal
to me.

At any rate, I was quickly hustled off back
into the house. I no longer had a nanny, of course, but the
housekeeper, Mrs. Herriot, tsked and sighed over me and hurried me
up into bed, where she quickly heated and shoved in bed warmers
below my feet and prepared a poultice for my throat. And all the
while, I was perfectly miserable, because I knew that my time with
my parents was once again at an end.

Of course, I was right. My mother spoke to
my grandmother, and it was arranged that I would remain on at
Morningside until after the New Year and return to London with her.
My mother would go on ahead with my father, where she would manage,
in all probability, to keep herself entertained in Town while my
father went on about his important business.

But my father never finished that business,
Miss Murdock, and my mother was never again entertained, for they
were not above two miles from our home when they were set upon on
that dark road and murdered. My father, my mother, and her unborn
child.

It was Tyler that found them, strangely
enough, for one of the horses at last managed to break free of its
harness and made straight back to the stables, wild-eyed and
spooked by the smell of blood in its nostrils. Tyler recognized it
immediately and he and my uncle set out to find what the trouble
may be, assuming at first there must have been an accident. It was
well into the following morning by then. What they found was no
accident. Both coachmen were dead on the ground, having been,
apparently, ordered at gunpoint from their stations.

My father was still in the coach, huddled
partially over my mother's form. They had killed him, and Tyler
told me it looked as if they had then kicked him aside in order to,
yes, kill my mother.

He should not have told you such a thing! It
is too horrible!

But he did, Miss Murdock. For I have
questioned him to the degree that every detail of that scene that
he still sees in his mind, I see in mine.

Suddenly the salon, which had faded away from
her, reeled back in upon Miss Murdock as the Duke of St. James
before her uttered these last words. She blinked several times,
trying to orient herself.

She was shaking, she realized, and when she
spoke again, she could only choke, “I'm sorry.”

The gold eyes razed her. “I did promise to
satisfy your curiosity.”

He pushed back his chair, got up abruptly,
almost as though they had conversed of nothing of more consequence
than the weather. He went to the sideboard and picked up a bottle
of brandy. He hefted it in his hand several times, as if
contemplating its exact weight before opening it, tilting it, and
filling his glass. Then he turned to her. “As I said before, Miss
Murdock, even this tragic story does not make what I do right. I
would rather you go into this alliance with your eyes firmly on
what you are to gain and upon nothing else. I would not wish you to
get some misguided notion in your head of cooperating out of pity
for me. I would much prefer you continue to hate me and argue with
me than that.”

“There is a large difference between pity and
sympathy, milord,” she attempted, but as his eyes only brooded at
her, she added, “But I assure you, I will not suddenly become
compliant because I still cannot fathom how your marrying in this
haphazard manner is to further whatever cause you have set for
yourself.”

“You can not realize my objective?” he asked.
He took a long sip of brandy and considered her over his glass rim.
“You think, perhaps, that my reputation as a skilled shot is merely
some fluke of nature? You don't think that I spent more time
practicing with a pistol than most people spend on their knees at
prayer, even the most devout?”

Miss Murdock blanched, feeling her stomach
knot.

St. James nodded. “I see you understand me
now, Miss Murdock. Vengeance is the word you are thinking,” and he
smiled.

“But marriage,” she stuttered.

And he put his glass down with an abrupt
thump. “Enough, Miss Murdock. I deem it necessary, and that shall
have to be enough for you for one day. Do you never get weary of
picking at my mind? What do you think you will find if you pick
long enough? For I can assure you, you will find nothing to your
liking. If my best memory is punctuated at the end by the death of
my parents, what do you think all my worst memories are punctuated
with? No, Miss Murdock. Do not prize at me any further than you
already have, and although I am to be your husband, you would do
well to keep your distance.”