In the Brief Eternal Silence (17 page)

“Nonsense!” Lady Lenora replied with force.
“He is a Larrimer, I need not remind you. If he were to merely bow
in any baggage's direction they would immediately favor his company
over all others, no matter what his reputation. And her father and
mother would be quickly, and somewhat joyfully, I dare say,
mollified by his worth and his title!”

“Yes, milady. I dare say you are right. But I
only say this and I will say nothing more: he is lucky to be a
duke, for if he did not have that protection, every respectable
door would have closed to him long ago.”

“You may be quiet now, Lydia,” the duchess
said, ending the conversation.

Andrew, who had been striding about the room
while his mother and grandmother bickered, broke in to say,
“Really, mother, he is merely going about the business of finding
the murderer of his parents. There is bound to be some fallout from
that sort of activity, but you can not simply expect him to stop
because it has put a few mars on his reputation.”

His mother gave a little gasp, her
needlepoint forgotten. “Who told you that?”

“Why, no one,” Andrew said with a vague wave
of his hand. “I know it is only what I should do if I were in the
same situation. I admit, I admire him for it.”

“See!” Lydia turned to the Duchess, quite
beside herself. “He breaks every rule of society with seemingly no
regard for it, and my son admires him for it.”

Lady Lenora's faded eyes narrowed, and her
head shook a little as she responded, “There are some things,
Lydia, that are bigger than social standing and who gets vouchers
to Almacks. I for one, do not think it will harm Andrew to find
this out now.”

“Well, I for one,” Lydia returned, picking up
her petit point and jabbing her needle through it with viciousness,
“would never be able to hold my head up again if my son were denied
vouchers to Almacks. And I happen to know that St. James has not
been sent vouchers for that establishment in years!”

Andrew said, “Oh, Almacks is a bloody bore,
mother. I should be happy if I were to be taken off their precious
list.”

“Do not curse, Andrew, in the presence of
ladies. And you would do yourself better to attend Almacks more
often instead of hanging about Whites or Boodles and those other
unsavory places.”

“St. James hangs about a good deal more
unsavory hells than that, and he has come out all right.”

“Enough!” the Duchess cried before her
daughter-in-law could respond, and hence the argument should go
further. “Lydia, you keep your son on much too short a string. He
shall turn out even worse than St. James if you continue to nag him
to death. He is twenty-three years old. You can not expect him to
hang about dancing attendance on your every smothering whim. And as
for Almacks, I merely need to say the word and I could have
vouchers for St. James tomorrow, if I so wish. And I guarantee that
rather than reluctance, the committee ladies would fall all over
themselves with eagerness to provide them. For if they quit sending
them to him, it is only because he has never stepped foot in that
place once in all his years and they had given up on luring him
in.” At the end of her words, she banged her cane for her butler,
who had left the room some time ago, as was his custom. “Ashton!”
When he opened the door, she told him a good deal out of humor,
“You may assist me up the stairs now, for I am ready to call it a
day!”

Andrew came over to her even before the
butler with his aged strides could reach her. He kissed her
wrinkled cheek, which she turned up for him to do so, and he
whispered, “I am sorry if we have upset you, grandmother.”

“Not at all,” she returned, but when her
daughter-in-law bid her good night, her head once again bent over
her sewing, the duchess merely said, “And good night to you, also,
Lydia,” and allowed Ashton to help her from her seat.

It was well past eleven and although she was
now comfortable in her bed, the lamp still burning beside her, a
novel held in her fragile hands, and a plate of wafers at her side,
she could not concentrate on reading, and she knew herself also to
be unable to sleep if she tried, although she was quite tired.

She had her concerns. Oh, indeed, she had her
concerns.

It was not often that she allowed Lydia to
upset her with her strait-laced views. For she knew her
daughter-in-law to be such a slave to the conventions as to be
blind to any other consideration in life. But her accusations of
St. James' very public and unrepentant behavior coupled with
Andrew's offhand summary of why he behaved as he did had disturbed
the Duchess greatly.

She had realized for years what St. James was
about, although she could not approve of his methods. And as much
as she would like to see the perpetrator of the crime that had
robbed her of so much, had indeed been the greatest grief in her
life, brought to justice, she was reluctant to see her most doted
upon grandson continue in what was beginning to seem to her a
futile quest. He was nearly beyond the recall of all civilized
boundaries of society, as Lydia had so spitefully pointed out, and
she had a sudden fear that she would see him go beyond the recall
of even herself.

St. James had always heeded her to a degree,
more to indulge her, she had the suspicion, than because he truly
took her advice to heart. But if she were to see him make any sort
of life for himself beyond this unholy mission he had set for
himself, she was going to have to make a valiant effort to take him
in hand, a final time, and convince him that all he had done these
many years was enough, and that it was time for him to move beyond.
If the murderer of those many years ago had been findable, surely
St. James would have found him by now!

It was time for him to stop, before he
spiraled further down a path that would result, she was now sure,
only in his own self-destruction.

Somehow, this sudden involvement of a
mysterious Squire's daughter did not bring her any comfort but more
of a feeling of foreboding. She could not credit that even an
incomparable could manage to halt Dante long enough in his tracks
to have him for an instant take anything or anyone else into
consideration, not when he was so bent on vengeance. From what
Tyler had told her, this Miss Murdock was not an incomparable.

This Miss Murdock was merely brown.

There was no rhyme nor reason to any of it,
and she felt that there was something spinning in St. James'
unfathomable mind that was going beyond even his usual tactics. And
his usual tactics were quite deplorable enough.

There was a tap on her bed chamber door, and
rather than being annoyed to be interrupted at this late hour, she
rather welcomed it, for it at least stopped her mind from the
endless circles it had been moving in. “Yes. I am awake, you may
come in,” she bade, and moved her thin-fleshed arms to aid herself
in sitting up further.

It was Soren, her lady's maid, as bowed with
age, nearly, as her employer. “I am sorry to interrupt you so late,
milady, but I thought you would wish to know that your grandson,
milord Duke of St. James, has just arrived.”

“Here?” her ladyship asked, surprised. “If he
has blown back into town, I can hardly see why he would come here
instead of his own townhouse. Has he asked for me?”

“No. He did not wish to disturb you, but. .
.” and Soren paused for a delicate moment, “he has asked that a
guest room be made up for a young lady that will be arriving. He
says that he has already notified you of her visit, but that it has
been pushed unforeseeably up and he expects her here within the
hour.”

“My God,” Lady Lenora exclaimed. She glanced
at her clock. “It is past midnight now!”

“Yes, milady. It is highly irregular, milady,
and I thought you would wish to know.”

“You are indeed correct, Soren. You had
better help me into my dressing gown so that I may go below and
find out from him just what is the meaning of all this. He had told
me in his letter it would be several days before she arrived, and
he said nothing of returning himself to London.”

Her lady's maid fetched the required garment,
helped the Dowager to sit on the edge of the bed and assisted her
into it. Then she removed her sleeping cap for her, ran a comb
through the still considerable length of her thin, white hair and
then pinned it up, the Dowager's pink scalp showing through beneath
it.

Then the dowager, muttering with exertion and
annoyance, struggled to her feet with the aid of her maid, procured
her cane which had leaned against the bedside table, and then as
she stood on her flimsy, shaking legs, she began the trek below
stairs on Soren's arm, banging the cane beside her.

Her grandson was in the salon. Evidently he
had heard her coming, as she had wished, for he was standing
awaiting her when she struggled into the room. “Grandmother,” he
said, and came to her. He took her aged hand in his, kissed the
back of it, and then retaining his hold on it, said with quiet
concern in his voice, “I did not wish you to be disturbed.”

The dowager dismissed her maid before turning
her faded eyes to her grandson. She took in his appearance, going
over his face detail by detail and at last settling on his eyes.
“You look like hell!” she said, her voice harsh. “When is the last
time you slept? You ate? And you have been drinking again, I have
no doubt, for there is the smell of now stale booze upon you.”

He chuckled, his eyes glinting and there was
a suppressed excitement in them that worried her, for that look
could only be associated with when he was enjoying himself, and
enjoyment for Dante usually meant something bordering on
outrageous. Or dangerous. “I slept for an hour this morning. I ate
immediately afterwards, and yes, I have been drinking, but that has
been some hours ago now.”

Her faded eyes went over him in critical
assessment. “Well, whatever damage you have done yourself, I can
see that you are in good spirits.”

He suppressed a smile, and she could almost
feel the secrets he was suppressing along with it. “Fair spirits,
yes, grandmother. Fair.”

“Humph!” she snorted. “You may help me to a
seat, you young rascal, and then you can explain what trouble you
are about now.”

“Trouble, grandmother?” he asked as he helped
her into her seat. “Why ever would you think I were about some sort
of trouble?”

“Because your eyes are glinting in that way
they have when you are feeling particularly pleased with yourself.
Although,” she added as she settled back into her seat, “you are
not normally wont to go on a binge when you are occupied by
something that you find promising. So, really, I do not know what
to think, Dante. But whenever have I known when it comes to you,”
she ended with tartness.

He smiled but his voice was sober. “Well, I
shall not lie to you, for I have been on quite a tear, I regret.
Nearly two solid days, but as you know, the mood comes upon me from
time to time and there is nothing for it but to ride into that
blackness until I ride out of it again.”

“Hmm,” she ruminated, her eyes missing
nothing about his demeanor or expression. “And this Miss Murdock
that I understand is to arrive rather prematurely within the hour.
Is she connected to this latest lapse?”

“Somewhat,” he told her, and his eyelids
which had been up and unguarded, came half down, cutting her very
much off from him.

She sighed. “I see you shall be as stubborn
as your groom was. Curse you, Dante. What is it that your are
taking such pains to hide from me?”

He was silent, and to her regret, he moved to
the sideboard where several decanters of excellent liquor remained
out. He searched through the crystal bottles, settled at last on a
light sherry, which mollified her to some degree. He poured into a
slender glass, turned to her. “Would you care for one,
grandmother?”

She waved a hand, indicating that he should
pour, which he did, and then he came back to her, a glass in either
hand and offered one to her. For another minute, they each drank in
silence, and the Duchess felt again that vague foreboding that she
had felt earlier in her bed chamber. At last she said, “You do not
mean to tell me, do you, Dante?”

“No, grandmother,” he replied. “I know that
you would do anything that I ask, but in this case, all I ask of
you is that you make Miss Murdock welcome when she arrives. She has
had quite a trying time, of which I am, I am sorry to say, directly
responsible for.”

His grandmother choked a little on her drink.
“Egad, St. James! Do not tell me that in some drunken state you
have compromised the girl!”

To which to her puzzlement, he laughed with
very real amusement and said, “No, grandmother. Nothing quite that
drastic, for she is as pure as the driven snow, I dare say, if
rather somewhat browner.”

“Brown!” the Dowager said, irritated. “All I
can gather from you or your groom is that the young lady in
question is somewhat brown. Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean that her eyes are as softly brown as
a hart's and that her hair is as velvety brown as cattails in
summer, and that her skin is as freshly brown as creamy tea. And as
a guinea hen hides in the bushes she hides in her brownness and
thinks herself undetected. But she is as steady and riveting as a
hummingbird in motionless flight as she flits nearly silently
about, never realizing that her very brownness and her very
solemnity draws the very attention she thinks she is so adroitly
avoiding,” he told his grandmother. And he took a long, debating
swallow from his glass as she watched him, and when he met her eyes
there was an expression of regret in them, as though in finding
something, it were somehow eluding him.

“Well,” she said, her voice faint. “I am
certainly looking forward to meeting this Miss Murdock.”