Stories from the War: Military Dystopian Thriller

by Autumn M. Birt

Chapter 2

  THE EARL OF KESMERE

  THE PAST

  Derrick would have thought his father had arranged it, that his power stretched that far. After all, the last thing David Eldridge said to him was to watch her. His father had seen the Lady Grey’s move to the adjoining estate of Rhiol as a threat, and an opportunity. But Derrick had never been his father’s spy, much less his lackey. The conversation had grown more heated. When Derrick had put down the phone, bitterness coated his tongue. That phone call just before Byran’s arrival had been the first time they had spoken in two years, and not simply because phone lines and mail were barely restored.

  The one assurance that Derrick’s father had nothing to do with it was that he would never have included Byran. Of that, Derrick had no doubt. That fact moved Arinna’s arrival from a plot to simply ironic chance twisted with ... what he wasn’t sure. With his eyes drifting over Byran’s quiet face, Derrick was afraid to hazard a guess.

  Guests would arrive soon, but Derrick’s mind was reeling. The fire warmed the wool of his pants, his leather riding boots protecting his shins from its heat. He played with a port glass resting on the mantel, twirling it absently.

  He remembered his childhood friend vexed and cross, pacing across the suite of rooms Derrick had taken for a month. The windows overlooked the Mediterranean on the Costa del Sol of Southern Spain. It had been before the war came to Europe, but only just. Back and forth, Byran stormed, exclaiming his denied passion. His hands flailed in emphasis of his words. Derrick laughed so hard his chest hurt.

  “It isn’t funny!” Byran shouted, sending a bottle of wine swaying. Only the remaining liquid and heavy bottom kept it upright.

  “Please, it is the first woman who has denied you anything. That is all that has your goat: that she won’t fall for you with nary a word. Besides that, she is like all the others.” Derrick laughed and waved it away.

  Byran looked out the window at the moonlight on the water, his features oddly empty compared to the tantrum a moment before. He reset a chair on its legs. Sitting, Byran faced his friend, running a weary hand across his eyes and through his hair. The coal-black curls sprang back from his passing fingers.

  “No, she is different,” Byran said, meeting Derrick’s eyes soberly.

  Derrick stopped laughing.

  “She said she would never betray her husband.” Byran snorted as he said it, as if he couldn’t believe such a notion. He picked up his forgotten glass of wine before adding, “and even if that weren’t so, what had I ever done to ‘recommend myself to her.’” On that, his voice trembled.

  Byran’s hazel brown eyes were haunted as he gazed at his friend. He downed the wine in one shot then rolled the empty glass on its base, round and round in a miniature version of his wild pacing.

  Derrick considered his friend, whose greatest assets were wealth, a political family that had guaranteed him a job and position, and his Spanish good looks. Derrick tried to think of what to say.

  “What have I done?” Derrick repeated the phrase from his memory, his voice trailing off as he looked out the window of the salon in Kesmere.

  His glass still twirled slowly in his fingers. He could see Byran’s pale reflection in the storm-darkened pane. Hair as dark as the night outside, Byran’s broody eyes stared unseeing out from where he sat at a desk under the windows.

  It evoked a second memory a few years after the first. The war had just begun though at the time it had felt like it surely had to end soon. The war had been known as World War III in the beginning when there were still news channels and TV. Though in the end, it had been known as the Greatest War. Now, it was simply called the War for no other before it had even come close to its vastness and destruction.

  The sun was dim on the horizon, shadows still claiming what was left of Europe. The old rambling manor house was yet another headquarters in this time of moving fronts and shifting targets. Derrick could not even recall what former country it had been in. Byran sat hunched in the window seat, his fingers laced through his hair. His eyes rested against the palms of his hands as if he could block the world from his sight.

  “She is gone. She left without saying a word,” he said, his voice thick and nearly unrecognizable.

  Again, Derrick felt late in getting the details.

  “What happened?”

  Byran looked up. Derrick had never seen his eyes so bloodshot and lost, before or since.

  “Her husband was with the Grey Guard, the division that flew and fought over Kiev yesterday. None of them survived,” Byran choked out the last unnecessarily. The bombs that had torn Kiev apart had left nothing alive or standing for miles.

  “I found her in the hallway. She cried. She cried so hard I thought it would tear her apart,” Byran said quietly. “We ... I found her a place to sleep. I left to find breakfast this morning, but when I returned, she was gone.” Byran looked at him with anguish. “If I hadn’t married Isabella, if we weren’t expecting Santi so soon after Cerilla was born ...” There had been no words for those what ifs.

  “She was the one. The one you went on about in Porto Banus and again in ... whatever hellhole that was after Kiev?”

  Coming fully to the present, Derrick stated it more than asked. He wasn’t sure why he had never questioned who at the time, who could have won over Byran so fully, but he was certain of the answer now. Still, he glanced over to see Byran’s confirming nod. Derrick swallowed another sip of port. It hit his throat tasting of vinegar. His mind whirled.

  “You could have told me it was her.” This time the statement was made with an accusing look.

  “Hah, like that would have helped. If I had told you that the woman I loved was also the person you’ve come to detest the most, you would have changed your mind?” Byran snorted into his port glass before taking a swig.

  Derrick paused, unsure. “It wouldn’t have hurt,” he said finally. He tried a smile to lighten the mood.

  Byran half smiled back, his eyes still lost to the past. “I tried to tell you once,” Byran said. The comment dropped the room from under Derrick’s feet for the second time that night.

  “When?” he choked, unable to recall any conversation including Arinna’s name.

  Byran waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Derrick took a breath, then let it go. The expression on Byran’s face told him now wasn’t the time to push. “Have you talked since?” he asked, instead.

  Byran nodded in answer, which quieted some of Derrick’s unease.

  “Mostly letters, but we’ve seen each other peripherally at events, of course.”

  Derrick knew what his friend wasn’t saying, that they hadn’t really talked about their past at all. He rubbed a dull ache between his brows with a finger.

  “It’s been what, eight years since then?” The time would not add up in his mind. The events of the war, moments he did his best not to think about, seemed unconnected.

  “Six and a half, Santi is six.”

  That said it all to Derrick. Byran was not close to forgetting Arinna.

  Derrick could hear horses pulling up to the main entrance to unload passengers under the shelter of the overhanging porch. He took the last of his port in one gulp. Straightening, he walked over to set his glass on the table, squeezing Byran’s shoulder as he walked by.

  Byran tried to smile, but his eyes were still shadowed and belied the action. Derrick wondered suddenly what he’d begun inviting the Lady Grey into the refuge he’d made of Kesmere. Derrick pushed concerns aside and went to greet his guests.