In the Brief Eternal Silence (5 page)

“Yes. What is wrong with her?” Bertie asked,
dabbing his mouth with a napkin as he spoke. “Couldn't see more
than two eyes in her head, she was so covered with mud, but she was
not over-large. She was neither humped-backed nor broken-toothed.
Surely, she can not be as homely as all that?”

“No, no. Of course not,” the Squire hurried
to say. “I am her father, but I tell you quite honestly that she is
nothing worse than plain. Nothing really wrong, just nothing really
right if you know what I mean. Brown hair, brown eyes, skin too
brown from being outside in the sun over-much. If her mother were
still alive, well, perhaps she could have done something for her.
Kept her indoors, did her hair more attractively, sewed her the
proper dresses and taught her how to be more lady-like. But I fear
that she's run wild for the past seven years, and I can do nothing
with her, even if I knew what it was I was supposed to do.

“And to make matters all the more bad, she
will not even consider going to London for her coming out, and now
that she has had her twentieth birthday this past spring, I fear it
is nearly too late for her.”

“She won't have her coming out?” Bertie
asked. “I thought all girls lived and died for that nonsense.”

“Well, if she were the normal sort, I guess
that would be true, but she says she can think of nothing more
appalling than trying to be something she is not and perhaps
actually duping some poor fool into marrying her, and then after
the wedding he would find out what he had actually married, and
then wouldn't she be to blame for deceiving him to begin with?”

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 the 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.”