There was silence, and she was reluctant to meet his eyes, for now that she had spoken the words aloud, there could be nothing but condolence in his eyes, for it all sounded pitiful and hopeless even to herself, and she snuffled, afraid she would cry, and wondered why on earth she should find anything to cry over, for it was as good a life as many had and better than a good deal many more.
“I thought as much,” he said. “Although I did not foresee the vetting. Of which I should have, for it is apparent that it is very important to you to care for others, be it your father or those that can not even voice their needs.”
She nodded, feeling miserably exposed, to criticism or laughter or pity.
“I admire your plans, Miss Murdock,” he told her, his voice grave. “For you to think of nothing but the comfort of others and to intend to devote your life to it, and finding pleasure and, I dare say, fulfillment in it, is breathtakingly fresh from what I have been exposed to.”
“Then perhaps,” she sniffled, “you should find a more worthy crowd to run with, milord, besides gamblers and the like.”
He smiled as she glanced at him. “I admit that what I have been exposed to, I have sought out, but I have had a reason for keeping the company I keep and spending time in the most unsavory of places. To find a snake, one must seek where they are apt to be found, and perhaps become a bit of a snake himself, in order to slither in their midst.”
He shook his head as she stared at him, took a ruminative sip of his tea. Then he glanced at her, his eyes like a pointed finger. “Let me sketch another future for you, Miss Murdock, and please do not dismiss it out of hand. Your father taken care of, either in our home or his, whichever he prefers. And perhaps his life lengthened somewhat by the joy of a grandchild to dandle on his knee. And what could be more satisfying to a caring heart than to have a tiny babe to look after, to nurture and love, spoil and discipline? To have the time and the means to travel with that child, to educate him, and to show him all those caring skills you already possess. To be free, perhaps, to live your life any way you choose, whether it be a cottage, after all, where you can grow many flowers instead of vegetables from necessity, or a great manor, if your taste runs for it, or a townhouse in London, if you enjoy the opera and the playhouse and the amusing social circles. In short, Miss Murdock, I am offering you the freedom of choice, to live as you please, where you please, or to change residences and activities as you see fit. Mayhaps you would be constrained in having me as a husband, but as you admit that you were not hoping to fulfill some ideal of love, would it really matter? And there is always the possibility that you would be free to marry again, should I die prematurely, and even that constraint would be gone from you. Am I really doing you such a disservice, Miss Murdock? For I assure you, should I live, I would make every effort to accommodate you and your wishes, would not stand in the way of your finding fulfillment in any way you wished, even if it meant a lover that you found yourself attracted to, as long as I had an heir already, and you were properly discreet.”
She nearly dropped her teacup at his final words, could not keep herself from gaping at him.
“Do not look so shocked, Miss Murdock. It is often done so, I assure you.”
“I find that appalling,” she gasped at last. “I am not sure which is more appalling: that you fully intend for this marriage to be—to be— so complete as for you to have an heir, or that you would so casually turn a blind eye if I were to carry on an indiscretion after you had obtained an heir!”
“Ah, you have very provincial notions about marriage, indeed, Miss Murdock. I vouch that, as I have described, it is very common and accepted. No one would think the lesser of either you or I.”
“I should think that I would think a great deal less of myself,” she squeaked. “I can only credit your belief that this behavior is acceptable to the company that you keep. For if you associated with a more decent class of people, I am certain you would find that their views match mine.”
“Enough, Miss Murdock,” he said. “You are moving beyond expressing your views and into lecturing them.”
“Be that as it may, milord, I have to decline your offer, finding it both distasteful and smacking of immoral. To enter into a marriage with every expectation of being adulterous within it can not, I believe, be advisable.”
“I am sorry you feel that way, Miss Murdock. Would you rather that I woo, pursue and court you, profess feelings I do not have, elicit these same feelings from you, maneuver you into marrying me, and then perhaps leave you a grieving widow in short order? Or bearing in mind that I survive, have you shocked and hurt when I conduct affairs on the side, to which you in your belief that I truly loved you, would be hurt, humiliated, and possibly heartbroken?”
“You are a cad! The options you present are equally objectionable to me, as they must be to anyone with even a shred of decency, of which you are obviously lacking. I can not prevent you from offering this atrocious proposal to another female, but I can, myself, refuse it, of which I am doing now. I would wish you better luck elsewhere, but I would be lying, for I certainly hope that no other female out there is so anxious to be titled and rich that she would sell any other chance at happiness she may one day have to attain those much over touted commodities.”
St. James stood up from his chair at the end of her words, placed one fist on the table top and leaned upon it. “Is there any thing you wish to add to your diatribe, Miss Murdock? Or are we finally at the end of your reprimand?”
She stood herself, furious, for he seemed totally unaffected by her speech, except for a small tic beneath one eye. “Oh, there is plenty that I could add, milord, but I fear that I would be merely covering much of the same ground, and as a result, beating a dead horse! For if the words I have already spoken do not shame you into seeing sense, I fear that nothing on this earth could.”
“Good,” he ground out. “Now, if you can possibly keep your outrage under wraps for a brief few minutes, I will endeavor to think of a satisfying compromise to this situation.”
“I have already offered you one,” Miss Murdock reminded him through clenched teeth. “You take my horse and walk away and I return to my home.”
“Unacceptable, Miss Murdock,” the duke returned in short order. “Now if you will be quiet and allow me to think for a moment!”
Miss Murdock stood fuming, biting her lip, but when St. James turned from her and began pacing back and forth the width of the room, one finger rubbing at his upper lip, she realized that he was, in fact, concentrating, and felt a small hope that he would heed her words, would give consideration to her utter reluctance to enter into alliance with him, no matter how much it seemed to be upsetting all of his carefully set plans.
She had a sudden wish that she could understand why it was so important to him, not that it would change her mind, she reassured herself, for it most certainly wouldn't! But for any man to be so bent on marrying a woman he had not met until yesterday, and who professed no infatuation or other romantic feeling for said woman was a mystifying puzzle to her, and she would have been less than human if she were not the slightest bit intrigued.
He turned on her, his pacing halted. “I shall have to change my plans slightly, damn it. And the bit of insurance I hoped to have will be gone.”
“I am sorry if I am inconveniencing you, milord,” Miss Murdock said with bitterness.
He threw her a quick grin, obviously distracted as he had been speaking more to himself than to her. “Are you, Miss Murdock? I doubt it!” Then he was off pacing again, his finger rubbing, rubbing at his lip. “There is no way around it, that I can see,” he muttered. “I had planned on your going to London and having your coming out, as you had not had it yet. I shall have to simply go forward with this immediately instead of delaying until after we had gone to Gretna Green.”
Miss Murdock, making every effort to follow this dialogue his lordship was having with himself, said, “I can not see, if that were your intention all along that I shoul
d have my season, how forgoing a trip to Gretna Green would be so very bad.”
His dark head came up and his gold eyes focused on her with intensity. “But it is, Miss Murdock, for now I can hardly send you to London with, had God been willing, my child in your womb, if I have not taken you to Gretna Green and married you first.”
Chapter Seven
Miss Murdock collapsed onto her chair. She placed her head in her hands, and from between her fingers said, “I really, really wish to go home now.”
“I'm sorry. I have shocked you,” St. James told her. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Blast this whole situation. I have cursed it many times, but I have never had to see it so completely bleed over onto another as it is today.”
In response to his words, his savage voice, Miss Murdock dropped her hands from her face and regarded him in silence. He spun away from her on his booted heel, walked the length of the room with jarring strides. Then he spun back around, walked back toward her. “I am trying very hard to accommodate your wishes, Miss Murdock, so you needn't look at me like that.”
Miss Murdock, who could not have named what expression she had on her face, for it felt so foreign to her, merely said, “I am sorry, milord,” and she gave a little grievous laugh. “I must apologize, I suppose, for interrupting your so very thorough plans for my own person.”
“Come, Miss Murdock. I said marriage, I said it would be as soon as possible. I spoke of heirs. I assumed you would naturally realize what marriage would entail. Immediately.”
“Frankly, milord, I had given it no thought at all, since, as you had made clear, this was to be a bloodless marriage made out of convenience and not feeling.”
He sighed at that, a single sound of displeasure and exasperation. “Now that you know exactly the extent of my intentions, you would not see your way clear to changing your mind, would you, Miss Murdock?” he asked her cheekily.
“No!” Miss Murdock returned. He had shocked her to such a degree that even this further reference to unmentionable matters could shock her no further. Or his suggestion that she would welcome them.
“Quite.” He paced again.
Miss Murdock sat back in her chair, struggling with the undisciplined, shadowy images that his words had brought to mind.
Because her thoughts were getting a bit out of control, she said more sharply than she intended, “Since I am being so unfairly uncooperative, perhaps you would do better to abandon any further plans you have for me, milord, and find another a little more eager to accommodate you.”
St. James glanced at her, a frown drawing his brows together, but when he spoke, his voice was flip, “No, Miss Murdock. I have already spent a good deal of my time merely convincing you to leave your home. I do not look forward to starting anew with some other female. So please, bear with me, and I am sure if I cannot make you happy, I can at least make you somewhat less unhappy.”
“You think I am being totally unreasonable, I see, in wanting to control my own life,” Miss Murdock observed. “To me, it is not only reasonable, but a basic desire, and yet all you do is mock me, as though I were some sort of oddity.”
“You are an oddity, Miss Murdock,” he returned. “But you misunderstand if you think I mock you, for I mock only myself. Your desires are reasonable, and what I ask of you is totally unreasonable, and yet I find that I am even willing to do this with barely a qualm.” His next words were murmured to himself more than to her. “I have walked so long with the dead, have practiced their ways for so long, that even should I have the chance to live, I doubt if I will know how to go about it.”
Giving a puzzled frown, Miss Murdock said in impatience, “I do not understand you, milord. You give every appearance of regretting what you do even before you have done it, and yet you insist on doing it.”
“If I were as insistent as you say, we would not be having this conversation now, but would instead be on our way to fulfill the plans I had made previously.”
A bright spot of color invaded each of Miss Murdock's cheeks. “You shall hold that threat over my head, now, I see, in order to keep me in line. You are something of a bully, sir.”
“I am not used to this incessant questioning of my motives and my decisions, you stubborn lass,” he returned. “I realize that your acquaintance with me is short, but if there were another here that knew me, they would tell you that you have already pushed me far further than I normally allow.”
“And you seem to think that no one but you is capable of making any decision, even if it is about their own future happiness,” she countered. “I can not believe that whatever motivates you is so compelling as to make these actions you take right or even acceptable.”
His jaw tightened, and he did not look at her for a long moment, but placed a fisted hand on the table and bowed his head. “You are right, Miss Murdock, and I can hardly blame you for pointing it out to me. No motive, however compelling can make this right. But what you do not understand, and what I will endeavor to explain to you for the final time, is: I do not care.” He lifted his head and his gold eyes were like twin icons in his face, cold and hard and metallic. He went on, his voice chillingly reasonable, “You are of the proper age, a little young for me perhaps, but better than being thirteen years older. You are no beauty, but neither are you so displeasing as to make one stop and wonder why I should marry you. Your father is, I regret to say, rather poor protection and you have no other relatives to interfere in whatever decisions I make regarding you and our life together. You have no other suitors for me to deal with and nothing in your life that I am taking you from that I should feel I am doing you any real disservice. In short, Miss Murdock, you are available and convenient. And I need you very badly. So if you must rail against something, rail against fate for bringing you to my attention. For now that I have turned my attention to you, you may fight the good fight all you wish, you may even scream and kick and slap, but it will not deter me, for I have devoted my life to accomplishing what I must accomplish. If it means turning your life upside down, I regret it, but I shall still meet my eyes in the mirror every morning without flinching. You may curse this day for the rest of your life. You may curse me, if you so wish. But in the end, you will walk down the aisle with me and if it will not be tonight, do not doubt that it will be tomorrow or the next day.”
Miss Murdock blinked once, solemnly, like an owl. Her blood was beating in her head. “Why?” she asked, her voice colorless. “Why do you do this?”
St. James' eyes half closed, shuttering his expression. “It would make no difference to you, would it, Miss Murdock? For I am just a fiend, bent on my own will, and no explanation could make it seem less so to you.”
Miss Murdock said with thoughtfulness, “I just wish to know for what I am being sacrificed.”
His head snapped back, as though she had slapped him. “Sacrificed?” he asked wonderingly. “Now there is a word that I would not have expected.” He considered for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “It does not concern you,” he said finally. “As I said before, I shall either die rather abruptly, leaving you a very merry widow, or I shall live and spend all of my incredible will trying to atone to you. There is no more you need to know.”
“Mayhaps not, milord. I guess that I, in all my apparent dimwittedness, have no need to understand you or your reasoning. But you did promise, milord, to satisfy my curiosity if I satisfied yours.”
His mouth twitched in some wry amusement known only to himself. He pulled out his chair at the table, seated himself with innate elegance into it, and rubbed his upper lip with one finger, brooding. Even as she watched him, knew as soon as his finger went to his lip that he would honor what he had said and tell her, as she had asked, she saw his eyes darkening as if two dark clouds had passed over the sunshine brightness of them. “I was ten years old, Miss Murdock,” he began.
I was rather wild at that age, as I am sure you can believe.
Yes, milord. At this point I would believe you if you told me
you were born with two horns and a tail.
If you wish to hear the story, Miss Murdock, you must indulge me just a little bit. I spent a lot of time alone, having no brothers or sisters, and at that point no cousins either. Bertie, Lord Tempton, lived on the neighboring estate in Lincolnshire, but as we were only there for holidays and summer, we did not, as of yet, see much of each other.
My father, William Desmond Larrimer, then Duke of St. James, was a close confidant of the then young Queen Victoria, as he had been to King William the fourth before her. He was very involved in sensitive work for the crown and was rarely at home for more than a few days at a time.
Larrimer. I did not even know your family's name. Or your Christian one, for that matter.
I apologize, Miss Murdock. It is Dante. No one uses it, except for my grandmother. I have been called merely St. James for many years.
My mother was very social. Big season, little season, Bath in the off-season. I never really saw her except for the summer month and Christmas at the manor. So you see, I was left mostly to my own devices and being rather naturally headstrong, I was well on my way to being out of control even before that Christmas of my tenth year.
We had gathered at Morningside, our country estate, as we had every year since I had been born. My grandmother was there, but my grandfather, the prior Duke of St. James, had already been dead since before I was born. He was much older than my grandmother when they married, and he did not marry her until he was nearly forty. It's said that I get much of my temperament from him, for he caused his share of scandals in his day also. He had eyes similar to mine. I know my grandmother still receives a shock every time she looks at me. I gather she loved him very much.
My father's younger brother was in residence for the holidays, and his new bride, my aunt Lydia. You shall meet her eventually, for she has been residing with my grandmother since my uncle's death last winter. Miss Murdock, I would not be lying if I told you that this is perhaps one of the best memories of my life. My father was there, my mother was there, and they were uncommonly happy. They were going to have another child you see, after ten long years of trying. And I was very glad, for I thought, of course, that perhaps then I would not be so alone. I was very excited, for they had just confirmed she was expecting and it was all very new to me and to the others when they announced it at Christmas Dinner. I was filled with thoughts and plans, already eager to show my younger brother, for in my youthful mind it could not be but a brother, all of my secret hiding places, and the best places to scale the walls to sneak off into the surrounding woods, of which I had been strongly warned against wandering in. And I imagined being with him when he was first learning to ride, and that I would allow him my prized pony to learn upon, as I was growing too big for him at any rate, and on and on and on. I can not tell you how utterly exulted I was. I did not realize of course, that had he lived, there would have been that span of years between us, and that in reality, we would not have had as much in common as I imagined.
In the Brief Eternal Silence Page 10