In the Brief Eternal Silence (75 page)

Steven knelt beside St. James. “Are you all
right, m'lord?”

“Yes, Steven.”

“An' Tyler?”

“Dead, Steven. Can you find your way to
Morningside again?”

“Aye. But Miss Murdock's closer.”

“But we have no need for her to be seeing
this, do we, Steven? And Morningside is where he would wish to lie
at any rate.”

And together they loaded Tyler into the
cart.

The Squire had thrown in some horse blankets
to carry a fallen dueler back to the stables and they rolled Tyler
in these and St. James took back his coat for he could not afford
for the powder in his pistols to become any more soaked than they
undoubtedly already were.

He caught the three horses that had remained
huddled together, trying to find shelter beneath the bare branches
of the trees. He tied the two that belonged to Red and his man
behind the cart. “Go on, Steven. I take it that Tyler has put your
mother in his cottage there?”

“Aye,” Steven said, his face blank.

“Stay home with her awhile lad, will
you?”

“Aye,” Steven said again. He clapped the
reins on the cart horse's wet back and it moved out at a doleful
walk, a dead man in the back and two horses with empty saddles to
the rear.

And St. James stood and watched it go as the
thunder rolled about and the lightning exclaimed through the sky
and the rain poured relentlessly down. And he reminded himself that
it was but noon of this dark day.

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Damn it, Lizzie, what is the meaning of
this?” Andrew asked.

She had hesitated before again making
appearance from around the corner of the stables, and she was
grateful that she had taken the time to compose herself for instead
of being able to go directly to her rooms and change out of her
battered black silk riding habit (that she had now, when she
thought of it, spent thirty-eight grueling hours in) she found
Andrew looking imperiously around for her from in front of the
stables' entrance.

“Which 'this' are we speaking of?” she asked
with tiredness, for in her state of mind it seemed there were a
great deal of 'this's' that made no sense and which she could not
have stated the meaning of even after a hundred years' rest and
thought.

He frowned at her, annoyed. “You look like
hell, Lizzie, and I swear I could kill my cousin, for I am sure the
condition you are in is directly his fault, if that is what you
mean. But leave that be for now. Why is my carriage being made
ready?”

And she sighed, for she was in no mood to
argue with him over this point, but as it was his carriage, she
supposed that he had some right to know. “I'm leaving here and I
would as lief have a carriage to ride in so that I may get some
sleep,” she answered. “That is, of course, if you do not mind my
use of it?”

“Of course I do not! And I shall travel with
you, for I have no wish to be here either if you are not to be
here.”

But before she could make answer to this, and
really, she was rather relieved, a footman from the house
interrupted them with a discreet cough. “Milord Larrimer, there is
word from the Duchess that she would like your audience.”

“Yes, yes. I will be with her in just one
moment,” Andrew waved him away. “Now, Lizzie—”

“Oh, not now, Andrew,” she pleaded. “For I
want nothing so much as to go in the house and to bathe and change
and make ready. Go see your grandmother, by all means, and then I
will discuss this with you.”

He looked at her with frowning intensity and
relented with a muttered oath. “Well, I shall at least walk with
you to the house as we are both going there at any rate,” he told
her, and he took her elbow and together they went toward the old
and rapidly metamorphosing manor.

Even now, she was aware of activity upon its
roof as slaters were replacing those slabs that were cracked or
broken. There was a wiry chimney sweep and he was black with soot
as he moved from one chimney to the next. The fact that there was a
footman to bear messages from house to stable seemed surreal.

As usual, St. James had covered every
contingency. She had no doubt that even were he to die without
their marrying that he had made arrangements that she and her
father would be taken care of, and as he would have had to have
done this maneuvering quite early on, the thought made her furious
with him.

At least she had thrown one circumstance at
him that he had not foreseen and had not been prepared for. The
fact that he had not doubted that she was serious or had tried to
sway her from her stated intention only showed that he understood
her completely. But then, mayhaps he had from the beginning, when
he had not asked where her servants were.

One only did what must be done.

“You will be staying with grandmother again?”
Andrew asked her, interrupting her thoughts.

“Pardon? No,” she answered, distracted. “I'll
be going to Scotland, of course, otherwise I would not be going
anywhere.”

But Andrew stopped in mid-stride and his hand
upon her arm kept her from continuing also. They were at the foot
of the six flagstone steps to the entrance, and she recalled that
but five days ago, St. James' hand had been upon her arm,
propelling her up those same stairs to get reassurance from her
father that he was not abducting her against that man's wishes.

And it seemed very long ago.

“Damn it, Lizzie! You can not mean to be
going to Gretna Green?”

“Yes. I am. I have. . . promised. . . St.
James that I shall be there waiting for him when he is at a finish
with this. . . business.”

But Andrew looked very troubled. “I know he
has posted the banns, but what ever is the rush? It is very odd,
Lizzie, that there be such immediacy about your nuptials.”

And unaccountably she blushed. “It is at my
insistence, I assure you.” But her words only made his expression
darker.

“Damn him!” he swore. “And he had the nerve
to act affronted when I suggested that—Nevermind!” His blue eyes
latched onto hers with an intensity that frightened her. “Lizzie,
I'm asking you if you desire this marriage? For if you do not, if
you have reservations of any kind, then you must marry me instead.
Immediately.”

He dropped to one knee on the dirt and stone
of the drive before the house, and he moved his hand down her arm
to clutch at her hand. “Go to Gretna Green with me, Lizzie! I
understand that you may be in some manner of condition as to make
you reluctant to join with me in matrimony, but I assure you that
there would never be a word of reproach from my lips or any
indication that I thought any child from you were any other but my
own!”

And she opened her lips in astonishment, a
warm flush sweeping across her features. “Andrew, I assure
you—!”

“I know that it is too early for you to be
anything but frightened at that possible circumstance perhaps being
reality, but I know my own mind, Lizzie, and I swear that if the
worst were to be true, I would not in any way hold it against you,
or the child, but would raise it as my own!”

“My God! Andrew! Do you think St. James is as
entirely without scruple as that!”

He hesitated, but when he spoke again his
voice was low and savage. “Yes, damn it! For I have opened my eyes
fully at last. Lizzie, I do not expect you to understand this, but
there is more reason for him to marry you speedily than what you
are aware! For once he has married, Lizzie, he has control of my
estate, and indeed, if I were to die, he would not only control it,
but would own it.”

Miss Murdock's mouth closed from her prior
astonishment, and her eyes snapped in return. “So it has come to
this?” she asked him with rancor. “She has seen fit to set her own
son upon him, is willing to sacrifice even you, whom presumably she
has done all for, for the sake of saving herself!”

He flushed, not understanding her words in
the least, but understanding the loathing in her tone.

“And so you offer to marry me because of your
deep, abiding love for me, Andrew? Or do you offer to spite St.
James and keep him from his obviously evil intention of stealing
your inheritance?”

He stuttered there on his knee in front of
her, the white fury evident in her face and making him feel very
low, “I—I assure you, Lizzie! If it were anyone but you, I would
not interfere, but would wait and take on the coward as a gentleman
would—”

But he didn't finish his words, for Miss
Murdock, in an rage, slapped him hard in the face. He sat back on
his heels, stunned.

“When I think of what he had made up his mind
to do for your sake and then hear you talk in this manner, it makes
me sick! Sick, do you hear me, Andrew! And I do not expect you to
understand, and probably you will end up hating him at any rate, if
he lives, but at least I can have no regrets in fully unleashing
him.

“And although I have no knowledge of how your
inheritance has been set up, I can assure you without reservation
that you need have no fear,” and her lip curled, “that he shall try
to steal it from you in any manner what-so-ever.

“And if you take that little integer from
your equation, what do you have left, Andrew? Have you been set
upon him to save your own inheritance, or have you been set upon
him to gain his?” She turned from him, leaving him stunned and upon
one knee in the drive, and she did not look back but slammed
through the door of the house, fearing she had said too much.

One had fallen and St. James watched him
driven away with only the rain as a dirge to his passing. And
although with the deaths of Red and his hired man his immediate
danger was at an end, he knew that in reality the worst had only
begun.

At least he could ride on to London without
fear for Miss

Murdock's safety. Or for Tyler's any
longer.

. . . I'll relieve you of the cause of your
reluctance. . .

“I did not murder him,” St. James whispered.
“I did not murder him.” But as he remained in the pouring rain,
dripping and blowing from the tree branches overhead to splatter
with first large drops then small, he knew in his heart he would
not have chanced that shot except for Lizzie's ultimatum. That
Tyler had been dying would have made no difference. As long as
there had been breath in that man's body, he would have not risked
taking away his next. Even if St. James had to die to ensure
it.

Until today.

And today had been the day that it mattered.
Not all of the thirty-three years before it.

Thirty three years of the man's constant
presence. The man who taught him to ride as a child, and warned him
over his headstrong ways. Who spanked his butt when warnings were
not heeded. Who was there when a ten year old boy came to
understand that his hopes of seeing his parents, of knowing his
father, could not be pinned upon tomorrow any longer. For there
were no more tomorrows.

And a man that will spank a child's butt has
some care for that child. Dante's father had never done such,
preferring to wait until Dante was grown to become acquainted with
him then. Wanting to know that child as a man, but taking no
responsibility for the man he would become.

But Tyler had stepped in for Tyler had seen
the need. And where Dante first resented his interference, after
his parents' deaths, he resented him no longer.

And it was an odd and awkward relationship,
where the surrogate father called the adopted son 'milord', but the
very strangeness of it suited them, and Dante could not even
remember a serious falling out between the two of them, for so
masterful of a mentor had Tyler been that he well understood to
guide with a light rein, and only check when it was needed.

St. James told himself that his shot at Red
made no difference, that the creasing of Tyler's cheek was not the
cause of his death, but he found no comfort in it.

For he had been weighing. . . .

You're certain he's going to die?

. . . and the scales, his life or Tyler's,
had tipped even, and St. James knew if it had been Tyler holding
the pistol, and St. James fighting for life that Tyler would have
dropped his gun and died.

But that level balance had been disrupted.
For Lizzie had fallen onto the scales. Now it had been two lives
for the one, and any mathematician would have sided with him, he
was sure, and even Tyler would have said, Aye, t'is only right.

St. James could have left it at that. Except.
. .

You coulda let her take her chances and at
least seen that t'rest of them lived.

What would that same mathematician had said
to that? Dante wondered. What would he have said when there had
been four lives to Miss Murdock's, two of them children, and St.
James had ignored that monstrous imbalance?

No. He had not killed Tyler. Not technically.
But in his heart, he felt very much that he had.

Steven and the cart were long out of sight,
but the storm about him did not abate but intensified. The
lightning left off playing tag with the clouds and began seeking
more interesting targets upon the ground. It was one of these
abrupt flashes, boom, acrid smell in the air from close by that
finally shook St. James from his melancholy.

And as though the lightning had struck him
instead of being near him, he realized he was alive.

For someone that has walked among the dead
for twenty-three years, it was a very strange feeling indeed.

He looked down at the two corpses that yet
lay in the road in the turbulent dimness of the storm. And he felt
as though he glowed in contrast, a product of the lightning, a St.
Elmo's fire burning in the middle of that forsaken copse.

Before him lay death, by his hand. Beyond him
lay death, despite his hand. And yet he stood, alive. His hand went
to the stitches sewn into his chest. Half old, half new. What
delicate thread to keep in life and fend off death. He thought of
Lizzie. What delicate emotion and yet the power of it.