In the Brief Eternal Silence (47 page)

Dearest Lady Lenora,

I find that upon reflection over your
grandson's behavior at Almacks this evening, that I can not bear to
be in London knowing what a spectacle I have become. Hence, I am
returning home this very night, for I do not wish to argue with you
and upset us both more than we both already are (I am sure). Please
forgive me. I will explain more adequately as soon as I possibly
can.

Earl Larrimer has kindly offered to escort
me. Please do not blame him, for I insisted and he was afraid that
if he did not accompany me that I would set out on my own. Which I
of a certainty would have.

I express my most heart felt affection and
appreciation for you, and hope you can find it in your heart to
forgive me someday.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Sara Elizabeth Murdock

Tyler returned even as she was writing the
Dowager's name on the envelope. “You have them then?” she
asked.

“Aye, miss. Everything I could lay me hands
on that I thought may be of help,” he said and placed a wicker
basket full of supplies on the chair next to the bed.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are incredible,
Tyler,” and to her amazement, he looked a good deal embarrassed.
She handed him the letter in its envelope, reminded him to make
sure that Andrew took it into the house and left it in her bedroom
when he went to get Steven out, and then he was gone leaving Miss
Murdock alone with the unconscious duke of St. James.

She delayed for a deliberate moment, going
through the basket Tyler had brought in, taking inventory and
pulling out those items she felt she should need, and a few others
just in case. She lined up these items on a folded white cloth on a
small table that she pulled up to join the one already at the head
of the bed that held the fresh water and the lamp, which she turned
up to its brightest. She had three different needles and she made a
small solution of Borax and water in his lordship's empty (and
thanks to Effington, spotlessly clean) shaving cup and soaked the
needles in it as she unwound the suture thread and cut it off three
different times. Then she pulled the needles out one at a time and
secured the thread to each and laid them in line so that she could
get to them with the least amount of fuss or effort. She put the
open tin of Borax powder beside them. Then, taking a deep breath,
she picked up the sharp scissors she had also laid out and turned
to the unawares St. James.

Tyler met with Earl Larrimer in the stables,
his hand going to his breast pocket for his bag of chaw only to
come out empty again. “Damn it,” he muttered. Then looking at
Andrew, he asked, “Ready?”

“Yes. I got the horse blankets as you said
and disposed of the rug also. No need hauling that around when it
can only add to the mess.”

“Aye. Good thinking, milord. You're learnin'
fast.” Tyler climbed up onto the driver's seat, and Earl Larrimer
surprised him by joining him. “Sure you don't want to ride below
where yer less likely to be seen?”

“Not until we've finished and get it cleaned
out,” Andrew answered with distaste.

Tyler laughed, backed the horses, which were
relieved to be moving after standing for so long. He sobered as he
turned the carriage skillfully around until it faced in the proper
direction. “I think someone's gonna have to ride below, because
near as I can tell, we're gonna have to change the plan slightly
and pick up t'lad first. If we wait 'til we get this business
finished, may be too late.”

“I agree,” Andrew said. “I can't like him
being alone in Miss Murdock's room. What if he awakes and finds her
not there? But I hate to have him with us while we fetch his
father's body. Do you think we would have time to bring him back
here, first?”

Tyler considered as he drove, glancing at the
low hanging moon. Then he shook his head. “Nay. Might do him some
good at any rate to see that his father isn't just going to rot
there but is being properly taken care of.” He added in a mutter,
“More than he deserved at any rate.”

Andrew gave him a sharp glance. “It's not
quite the way Miss Murdock pieced it together then?”

“No, milord,” Tyler shook his head, his face
grim. “Not at all. And damningly, I have discovered that St. James'
pistol has been left behind as well, and that we must locate it
also.”

Andrew, who was well aware that his cousin
owned an extremely rare and fine pair of dueling pistols, and that,
quite understandably, they were well known, fully understood the
implications of this last remark. “Whatever shall Miss Murdock say
if she discovers this?” he wondered aloud.

Tyler nodded. “Know it isn't going to be me
to tell her that Steven's father lying dead in the mew is from St.
James' hand,” he said with conviction. “Neither do I think his
lordship will be pleased to learn that his would be assassin is
getting a proper burial courtesy of milord's pocketbook!”

“Is Steven aware of how his father died?”
Andrew asked, troubled.

“Aye. T'lad was there,” Tyler answered. “And
you can see what a great mess this all is!” As they were now a
small distance from his lordship's home, Tyler laid the reins on
the horses' backs, and they moved out into a fast, long reaching
trot as they headed for the Dowager Duchess' home in the
surrounding night.

At this pace, they reached the Dowager's
residence in short time, and Tyler was soon slowing the horses down
to approach the house more quietly. He and Andrew each scanned the
windows but found no indication of anyone being up or about, at
least not until they turned the corner into the mew, and then Miss
Murdock's light was on in her room. But as Andrew expected that she
had forgotten to blow it out, dangerous, but understandable in the
circumstances, he was not alarmed by it.

Tyler stopped the horses as soon as the back
of the carriage was out of sight from the street, and Andrew jumped
down. “I'll move as quickly as I can manage,” he told the groom in
a hushed voice, and then he was running to the front of the house,
where the door should still be unlocked, but if it were not, he had
the proper keys as it was not unusual for him to be out late at
night.

As Tyler kept the restless horses, who no
doubt had had about enough for one night, calm, he noted that Miss
Murdock's window was still open also. He hoped Andrew would think
to close it. He took a brief second to reflect that when St. James
had been here just twenty-four hours ago, they could not have
fathomed how quickly everything was to change for the worse.

Then Andrew's dark head was hanging out the
window, drawing his attention once again. “He's not here!” he
hissed down.

Tyler had the sudden gut feeling that
everything had just turned a good deal more worse than he had first
thought. “Mayhaps we'll find him in the mew, with his father,” he
returned. Then added, “We haven't time at any rate, the moon is
falling and dawn can't be far!”

Andrew nodded in understanding and his head
moved back inside the window, which, to Tyler's relief, he
remembered to close. Then the lamp was extinguished, leaving that
window black, and Tyler backed the horses and the carriage out of
the mew and onto the street, facing in the direction that would
take them toward the Thames and the mew.

Earl Larrimer came out of the house a brief
second later and wasted no time in joining the groom. “I can't like
it,” he said with vehemence.

“Did you leave t'letter?” Tyler asked.

“Yes, damn it. I did. But this business with,
what is his name, Steven? I can't like it.”

“If he's gone, he's gone,” Tyler said, trying
to calm his own uneasy feelings. “We haven't time to spare
searching for him and we daren't wake the house doing so at any
rate. He's probably gone home to his mother.”

But Andrew said, “Without any breeches
on?”

Chapter Nineteen

Her hand stilled upon the white cloth of his
bandage and the scissors in her other hand dropped to her side. He
was vulnerable, and she had not ever thought to see him like that.
His eyelids were closed, and the fluctuating emotions of his gold
eyes were hidden from her. That sharp, dancing contradiction in
them that bespoke of endlessly seeking thoughts, like twin candle
flames that flickered and burned and gorged themselves on the very
wax that kept them alive, until they burned the wax completely down
and gutted out, a victim of their own brightness.

It was not the thoughts she should be
thinking. A moment ago, she had been ready to embark on her task,
but that was before her hand had fallen on his bandaged chest, and
her eyes had roamed enough to notice the puckering of scars in his
pale skin. It was not the first time he had been injured. It was
not the first time he had been vulnerable.

She wondered if he had always survived on
nothing but the rough ministrations of a crusty old groom whose
methods dated back to Waterloo. And she shuddered.

Who was she to think that her attempts would
be any better? And she bowed her head and fought back a sudden urge
to shed tears.

There was nothing for it but to press on. In
the pressing on, she was aware that everything she had fought
against had come about on its own accord anyway. Had she not
foreseen just this situation? Had she not dreaded loving him, and
watching him die?

Oh, yes, she did love him, and she
acknowledged this to herself as she stood with one hand upon his
shallowly breathing, bandaged chest and her head bent in tears.
Foolish and impossible as it was to love someone in the space of
four days. Four days? If she would be honest with herself, she had
loved him that first night when he had been so drunk that he walked
her hallway with his shoulder propped against the wall, and stopped
and turned and given her that crooked grin that made her stomach do
a sudden lurch and her own smile freeze foolishly on her face.

Lizzie the caregiver, the rational part of
her mind admonished her. And my, haven't you picked a project for
yourself this time.

But she had tried to retreat from his needs!
Had tried to explain that the picture he presented of her
entertaining herself with all his money while he fought a struggle
for his life and his future was not how it would be, could be, with
her. She could not have stopped herself from caring for him any
more than she could have passed by a bird with an injured wing, and
the only sanctuary for her would have been to purposefully take a
different path. A path where she could not see his needs, or his
hurt.

But of course, he had not understood this.
Or, if she were to be honest, and by God, she was being honest
right now, wasn't she? Was fairly slapping herself in the face with
the truth. If she were to be honest, she had never boldly explained
it to him, had shrank from it, a complete coward.

Milord, the simple truth is that if I come
with you, you will break my heart. Either you will die, and I will
have to witness it, or you will prevail and suffer through a
marriage with me that you would have never desired under normal
circumstances and that you will regret for the remainder of your
life. So, you see, your plan is really quite impossible.

And he had been so full of dismayed wonder at
her using the word sacrifice!

She was becoming angry now, but at least with
anger, she could do what had to be done. It steadied her. She
swiped at the salty tears in her eyes, brought up the scissors and
began snipping through the bandages.

The very sound of the scissors cutting
through the threads of the linen made her calm. It was a sound she
had heard often, and she began to have that feeling of confidence
that she was able to do something and to do it well, and if it were
an uncommon talent and one no where near ladylike, her penchant for
healing, she still took a great deal of satisfaction in it.

She pulled gently on the fabric, took a
sponge and squeezed water beneath it where it was pasted to him by
drying blood. Her anger and her distress were rushed away in a wave
of concentration. From habit, she began to speak, of nothing and
everything, for she was too used to having to soothe a frightened
animal as she worked.

Her voice took on that quality she had used
when Leaf had been in the fence, a sort of soft teasing that it
should be in such a mess that reassured by its light tone that
someone with more sense could and would get it out.

Do you know that Tyler and I decided you
should be Lord Habitual Ill-Humor, Dante? Indeed, we agreed upon it
quite totally.

The cloth was loosening, a little at a time,
but it still must be pulling painfully at his skin. He groaned but
did not stir.

It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to
see the look upon your face when I threw your flask into the ditch.
I knew quite a bit about you just from that, Dante. I knew you were
not given to temper tantrums, although I am sure many would argue
with me, for if you were to be given to them, you would have had
one then.

Her voice went on, soft and soothing, and if
St. James could weave a spell with his eyes and his mouth on her
wrist or her palm, Lizzie could weave a spell with her voice.

You gave me your gloves, do you remember? I
felt like boxing your ears for that. It frightened me that you
could so easily shoulder the complete responsibility of another
person's life, clear down to whether her fingers were cold. It
frightened me because it showed me just how very, very serious you
were.

Then the wound of his chest was exposed and
she did not like what she saw. The blood was not clotting properly,
despite Tyler's rough cauterization of the vessels, and she sniffed
in a most undignified manner at it, pausing for that instant in her
talking, but then her voice began again after that small break.

You promised to listen to my concerns once we
reached the inn, and you did, although I am sure you would have
rather told me to be quiet and do as you said without question.
I've noticed that Tyler and the Tempton brothers do so. That
frightened me also, that they should take your word as law, then I
came to see they merely trusted you a great deal.