In the Brief Eternal Silence (52 page)

And she tightened her grip on the chair
arms.

St. James looked at her, “We shall have to
post the banns, Miss Murdock.”

“Banns?” she asked, her voice faint.

“Your engagement to me. It will have to be
announced in tomorrow's papers.”

“Oh, no, milord!” she demurred and rose from
her chair. She turned her back to him, then whirled to face him
again. “I thought I made it clear! I would sooner have it said I
had eloped with Andrew than that I was to marry you!”

Bertie made an exclamation, but in her sudden
terror, she could not grasp what he had said.

St. James took his glass again and sipped
from it, but his gold eyes never left hers over its rim. She could
almost see the great wheels of his mind spinning behind those two
blazing eyes, and she began to realize that she was in for the real
battle and that the skirmish over whether she was to return home or
not had just been the calling to arms. “As bad as all that, Miss
Murdock?” he asked.

She waved a hand in agitation even as she
felt her face flushing. “Unfair!” she cried. “You can not mean to
make me list my reasons when you must be perfectly aware of them by
now. I am sure I made it blatantly clear to you by my actions this
morning!”

A sudden, startled movement by Lord Tempton
brought her attention to him. He was standing up from his chair,
and to her amazement, his face was very red. “Ahem,” he coughed. “I
shall just wait in the other room!”

Miss Murdock, with a sinking feeling,
realized that her words had been quite suggestive. “Oh, sit down!”
she snapped at the hapless Bertie. “He was barely conscious, let
alone capable of. . .oh, nevermind!”

St. James was laughing. “Yes, yes,” he agreed
between his chuckles, “for do you think, Bertie, that I would have
survived any display of impropriety without receiving another blow
to the cheek? Despite my already grievous condition?”

“Oh, stop it!” she cried, and broke into very
unladylike tears. “Can you not see,” she snuffled into her hand,
“that you are provoking me again?”

“Indeed, I do see it,” he told her, his voice
tender. “And if you can forgive me for not fetching you a
handkerchief, you will find one in my top wardrobe drawer.”

Bertie, who never had sat down, got this item
for Miss Murdock before she could move for it, and then let himself
out the bedroom door to go, Miss Murdock could only assume, to wait
below in St. James' study.

“Come sit with me, Lizzie,” St. James
persuaded once the door was again closed, “and tell me all of your
concerns, and we shall endeavor to come up with something that you
can accept.”

“No, no,” she continued to cry. “For I well
know what tactics you will choose, and you can not understand—” and
she was beside herself with tears and worry, “that what I do is for
the best for both of us! Why can you not see it? Why must you
insist upon making me wish and want when it can only make me more
afraid than I already am? And if the worst does not happen then we
will be sentenced to making each other perfectly miserable for the
remainder of our lives.”

He threw back the sheet that covered him. His
robe fell open to bare his bandaged chest, and he swung his legs
around to get out of the bed. His face paled with the effort, but
it was so set with determination, that she knew he would sooner
pass out than admit that he could not get up from that bed.

She paled herself to see him risking the
stitches she had sewn into him. “Oh, stop it! You are going to kill
me with worry. How can you torment me this way?” and she went to
him, where he remained on the side of the bed, robe open revealing
his laced shorts beneath, his head bowed, his right hand clutching
his bandage wrapped chest, but his teeth clenched in readiness to
continue his effort. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I will sit with you,
if you will only remain in that bed!”

He raised his head enough to give her a grim
smile. “Swearing like a sailor again, Lizzie?”

“You provoke me into it, milord, for even my
father could not agitate me to this degree.” Then she knelt in
front of him. “Please, I promise I will listen to you if you only
stay in your bed and rest.”

He moved his right hand from where it had
been holding his chest, laid it along her cheek and his fingers
curved to feel the line of her jaw. “You intoxicate me, Lizzie,” he
murmured.

“No,” she said, and lowered her eyes. With
desperation, she raised her hand to his, where it warmed her face
and his fingers caressed beneath the angle of her jaw. He caught
her hand in his, held it and began lying back on the bed, his eyes
half hooded in twin gold flames, and pulled her with him.

“Come to me, Lizzie.”

Lizzie, in an attempt to keep from falling on
him, placed her free hand on the white bandage of his chest, and to
her horror she realized that she was in nearly the same position
she had been in at the inn, when she had attempted to button his
shirt and straighten his cravat. The skirt of her dress was again
between his spread legs. She was again leaning with precariousness
over him, one of her hands already on his chest. In a motion of
either mocking her, or reminding her, or of claiming some promise
previously made, he placed her other hand on his chest also and
pinned it. His other hand moved up and he held both of her palms
captive above his thumping heart. Again she was aware of the
movement of his breathing. And the lids of his eyes drew back and
his nostrils quivered at her nearness.

Then he buckled both of her trembling arms
and she landed with a thump on his chest, her small body laid out
along his own. He gave a small groan and she could not discern if
it were from his stitches being aggravated or from another reason
entirely.

As a cat thrown into water seems to leap out
as soon as its feet hit only the surface, she fought to get up. But
he wrapped his right arm about her, and his legs, and held her
there.

Miss Murdock, shocked and panicking at his
most improper actions, raised her head and shoulders and glared
down at him.

“As bad as all that, Miss Murdock?” he asked
her with teasing lightness, and then his hand moved and she
stiffened more in her difficult position. But he only ran it up her
back, her neck, and to the ribbon in her hair, and he untied the
knot of it with the same adeptness he had shown her once before
when he had pinned her hair up.

“Dante,” she choked. A tear dripped from her
face and landed on one harsh plain of his pale cheek.

“Shh. Do not argue with me now, Lizzie, for
can you not see, can you not feel, that I am too busy to talk?”

She closed her eyes, unable to meet the
tender depths of his own, and she felt the dark warmth of his body
beneath hers, as hard and tightly strained as she had always sensed
it would be. He shifted her, his grip loosening, so that her hips
turned until she lay on her side atop him. He pressed her skirted
legs up to rest in a bent position along his thighs. Finally, he
slipped her head to rest on his shoulder and he turned his head and
studied her eyes that had opened wide throughout all this sure
maneuvering.

She was more comfortable and less threatened,
lying more like a baby than a lover in his arms, even though the
most of her body still lay, in fact, upon his. With a little faint
but profound sigh, she moved her hand to take his.

He was quiet for a long time and only his
right hand moved, coming up to rub through her hair, caressing the
back of her head again and again in a slow ritual of comfort that
made her heart slow from where it had been quickly beating to a
slow tempo that made her feel sluggish in his arms as one on the
verge of deep sleep or death.

When he finally spoke, his voice husky, she
heard him as someone who has been hypnotized hears the voice of he
who cast the spell. “Don't ever be afraid to come to me,
Lizzie.”

And without any thought at all, she said, “I
won't be.”

“Tell me your concerns, Lizzie, and we shall
endeavor to come up with something that you can accept.”

And she smiled a little through her tears
that she feared were dampening his chest even through his bandages.
“You know my concerns, Dante. There is nothing I can accept that
will alleviate them.”

“Can you accept that it is too late for me to
walk away from this?” he asked her. “Can you accept that if I live
then I am yours, and if we are not married already, I will pursue
you until we are?”

“No,” she whispered. “It can not be so.
You've only known me for four days. And what is poignant and new to
me is only,” and she swallowed, “diverting to you.”

His hand continued its movements through her
hair, working through the strands in an endless combing over his
fingers.

“Diverting,” he mused, and his voice
questioned, pried into his own soul. “No.” And he shifted, kissed
the tip of her nose. “Enchanting, I think is a better word. You are
enchanting and I am enchanted. I lay in this bed with you and I
wish to ravish you, and make your skin glow as bright as your
cheeks. I could easily grow drunk on you, for you are like wine in
my blood, fine, dark and full. And I curse all the blackness around
me that keeps me from courting you and wooing you as you should be,
and which, I think, I would enjoy very much,” and he smiled but his
eyes seemed in equal measure sad and divine. “And yet, if it were
not for all of this, would I have ever known you, Lizzie? And would
I have ever loved you as I do?”

His mouth met hers on the end of his words,
his lips caressing across hers in faint greeting and she trembled.
His lips came again, caressing across in the opposite direction,
and she turned her head in following. And he returned his lips to
her, and as hers were openly seeking his, he settled his mouth upon
her lips at last with finality, and what Miss Murdock had thought
had been love before she realized had only been the vague thunder
one hears before an oncoming storm.

His mouth was in constant and almost violent
motion. It left her lips and widened until he scraped his teeth
gently but urgently along her jaw. He moved down her neck and
kissed up the point of her chin. His hand tightened in her hair,
until he had a knot of it around his fist, and when his body moved
so that she was slipped to the bed and he rose over her and onto
his elbows, she could not have told when it happened or if she even
noticed it. She only knew that her arms wrapped about his neck, as
someone clinging to life. And he spoke, hurried, thick murmurings
of satisfaction and frustration that were muffled against her skin,
in her hair and her neck. And when he reached her ear, she
understood what he was saying, “Marry me, Lizzie. Tell me you'll
marry me. For if I can not have you soon, God help me but I may as
well die.”

With an effort, he pulled back and his gold
eyes were above her, demanding answer, demanding she accede, and
she did by nodding once, her eyes very large and hart-like. For an
instant, he looked pained, as though she were a hart, and he had
just pierced her with his oft too often deadly aim. And mayhaps he
had a sudden picture of Steven saying 'Da' and his thumb dropping
on the hammer, and that brief, eternal silence between the man's
words cutting off, God, no, Steven! Say t'isn't you, la—, and the
final deathly boom of the gun, like thunder following lightning
that had already struck.

Then he lowered his head until his mouth
found once again her trusting one and any thoughts or memories were
swept into oblivion.

By the time Effington tapped on the door Miss
Murdock felt as possessed as any woman ever had in a man's bed, and
he had never, in fact, done more than kiss her. Dante, with a
curse, raised his head enough to call out in a thick voice,
“Another minute, Effington, blast you!”

“No, milord. Pardon me, milord, but you've
been in there,” and he coughed, “long enough. Lord Tempton bade me
to tell you that he is still waiting. Perhaps you need some help
with your attire?”

St. James stared down at Miss Murdock, and he
shook his head as if to clear it. “Mayhaps, you are right,
Effington. I seem to have lost track of the time. You may go tell
Lord Tempton that he may come up and I will speak to him while,
yes, you dress me.” Then more softly, he said, “Miss Murdock, if
you think we are adequately finished for now?”

She blushed furiously, pushed up so that she
was sitting next to him. “As I have agreed to marry you, then you
have achieved your objective, milord, so I can not see any point
in—”

“But I have not met my entire objective,” he
teased. “Ah, I can see you are becoming angry. But unless you wish
Effington and Tempton to see you here in my bed, I suggest that you
save your ire and tiptoe to the sitting room.”

“I should box your ears for you are
insufferable.”

“But if you do that, Miss Murdock, everyone
will see that I have been taking liberties with you again,” and he
raised his brow. Then he took her hand, kissed the back of it. “Go,
Lizzie, before they burst in here and you are left to feel
embarrassed, for if either one makes a snide remark to you, I shall
have to call him out, and then whatever will I do without my valet
or Bertie's keen intellect?”

And she did go, for she realized that he
would kill for her (for was that not what St. James was about?
Killing for those he loved?) and her heart stopped rather coldly in
her chest. She managed to softly close the connecting door behind
her and then she heard the outer door opening a mere second later
and St. James said with a tone of laziness, “You needn't look so
scandalized. I had merely lost track of the time, you know.”

And Miss Murdock, who had been standing numb
for that brief few seconds, stumbled over to the chaise lounge and
collapsed not upon it, but on the floor beside it. She rested her
elbows on the seat of it and her head in her hands, and dwelled on
the fact that St. James professed to love her and had indeed
convinced her with a great deal of skill that he did.