In the Brief Eternal Silence

by Rebecca Melvin

  “Well, he is a very odd man,” Miss Murdock returned, and was amazed that her voice had taken on a defensive quality. First I attack him, but if anyone else does, I turn right around and defend him. She glanced up at Ryan's laughing face. “Oh, do not point it out to me, for I have already seen it,” she said. “I can not wait for this night to be over.”

  “Forgive me if I can not agree,” Ryan teased. “For I can not remember when I have had such a jolly time at Almacks or a better time dancing with a female. T'is almost better than Whites!” he confided.

  Their dance came to an end and Ryan went to take her once again from the floor, headed very much in the direction of Lord Tempton, his brother, so that he could be convinced to come to Miss Murdock's aid also, but he did not reach him for they were stopped and she was asked to dance by a nice looking young man whom she had not even made acquaintance with before.

  Her suspicion that Andrew had been busy enlisting another man to aid her in her hour of need was laid to rest when she asked her surprised partner upon taking the dance floor with him, “And how were you prevailed upon to rescue me from being ruined, Mister Thomas?”

  Choking back an incredulous laugh, he answered, “They could not have prevailed upon me to not come and dance with you, Miss Murdock, for I wish to see for myself what all the hullabaloo is about!”

  From there they struck up an excellent conversation, and Miss Murdock, distracted by his banter, found to her surprise that she was having a very good time and, to her gratitude, her partner told her that he was having a most unexpected good time also. “It is usually frightfully dull, Miss Murdock, and we all have you to thank for livening it up. And the Duke, of course,” he dared to add.

  “Oh, he is just being as he usually is,” she said with a great deal of feigned unconcern. “And you must not put too much weight upon it for I am sure he will be here the next time making some other poor girl the object of everyone's attention. At least until the ladies of the board have had enough of his antics and revoke his vouchers from him again!”

  “That, Miss Murdock, will be a sad day indeed! I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance, but from his reputation, I had no idea he had such a spirit of fun! Rather naughty, yes, but I can see that he must know you well enough that he was confident you would see the humor in it and so no harm done.”

  Miss Murdock agreed.

  She was most gratified when yet another man asked for her hand for dancing, and from that point on she did not see any of the party she had come with until Andrew managed to catch her for a final dance. “I have been trying for an hour to step back in!” he told her with a pleased grin. “I think we have managed it.”

  “Thank you, Andrew,” she told him. “It really was not necessary, for I am leaving soon at any rate, but I would have so hated walking from the floor dejected and humiliated. Did he leave me there?”

  “No. I—I'm afraid I busted in, for I very much feared what he would dare to do next. But he was not at all upset and only nodded to me and asked if I could handle it. Then he turned his back and left directly. I don't even think he spoke to grandmother again. The place was positively roaring with speculation.”

  “I thought all that roaring was the blood in my ears,” she admitted.

  “Thank God you were still lucid enough to dance!” he told her, fretting. “I just do not remember St. James ever being so, well, cruel.”

  “It was cruel, wasn't it?”

  He didn't answer her and she was grateful. They were both silent for a moment, and then she asked, “Did I look as close to fainting as I felt?”

  “No. Just very stunned.”

  “He may not have realized—” and she stopped, biting her lip.

  Andrew comforted her. “I am sure he did not!” He swallowed and continued in a low voice, “And thank you, Lizzie, for telling me all

  that nonsense in the salon this evening.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling foolish. “I—oh, dear.”

  He gave a sudden laugh, his old self. “I knew all along. You were doing it just a tad too brown, you know!” With that he swung her into an exuberant circle that had everyone that remained (for quite a few had left with the lateness of the hour) once again staring at Miss Murdock. But she only laughed and did not care.

  She would not find out until some time later that if the crowd in Almacks had not been roaring with speculation, as Andrew had said, that they all would have heard the gun shot that was fired from outside shortly after St. James made his exit.

  If St. James felt any satisfaction with the predicament he had placed Miss Murdock in, he did not show it. His face was unconcerned as he nodded to Bertie, who, he would wager, he had to thank for the fine crowd attracted as witnesses tonight, and several other familiar faces as he made his way through the crowd at Almacks. He would have liked to turn, even once, to see if Andrew were indeed handling it, but an air of carelessness better suited his purposes.

  When he reached the wide double doors, he pushed his shoulder against them hard, and went out into the cold of the night. There he paused, leaned for a single moment against one of the cool, white pillars that stood on either side of the entrance with his arm stretched above him and his head resting on it. But he did not close his eyes. He stared out into the darkness that was beyond the twin torches that lit the steps below him. After a moment, he dug out his pocket watch with his other hand, opened it, glanced at it, and then returned it. Not a bad piece of work for under thirty minutes.

  Tyler would not be expecting him to be out so soon.

  He moved from his uncharacteristically weary stance and as he walked on down the steps, there was nothing left in his demeanor to suggest that he had been affected at all.

  He turned right and started down the long line of coaches facing him, most of them abandoned for now as the coachmen had left their posts to pop in to nearby pubs, secure in the knowledge that their employers would be preoccupied for some time to come. The light from the intermittent street lamps flickered across his face and his fine wine coat made a very nice target from the darkness surrounding him.

  St. James heard a loud crack! and felt pain in the side of his chest and arm, as though stung by hornets, and was knocked off balance from the force of it. He let himself fall, but controlled it to the degree that he landed between the two coaches he had been passing, and he rolled into a crouch, his hand flying to beneath his coat for a pistol that was not there. The horses he had disturbed by his sudden dive beneath their noses tossed their heads and backed up a few steps, and then as they must have smelled blood coming from him, neighed loudly.

  “Damnation!” St. James whispered to them. “Put out a bloody billet why don't you two nags?” but his left hand moved to soothe them as he peered into the alley that lay beyond. He winced at the movement, but he did not look down to see how badly he was injured.

  He moved along the off-side of the horses and into the shadow of the coach they were harnessed to, then to the back corner of it. He crouched and using the wheel as cover, glanced into the dark mouth of the mew that ran between the building that housed Almacks and its neighbor to the left of it. A conveyance came at great speed toward him from down the street, and he crouched down lower into the shadow and turned his head to see if this were some new peril. But it was Tyler, driving his horses hard with one hand and resting one of his lordship's pistols on his knee with the other. St. James jumped to the side of the horses as they came up beside him, grabbed the near one's bridle, and slowed it to a stop beside the coach he was using as cover.

  And very nearly got shot for his troubles by a nervous Tyler.

  That man, made a bit more nervous by the fact that he had nearly shot who he had been coming to aid, jumped down and St. James gave him a crooked grin, his eyes bright and hard, but he said nothing. He held out his hand which Tyler filled. “The other?” Tyler whispered, but St. James shook his head. Then he darted from behind the coach, leaving Tyler behind, and back onto the sidewalk to the co
rner of Almacks, the pistol held loose but ready at his side as he half crouched against the brick of the wall and glanced into the blackness of the mew that ran along the side of the building. Utter darkness met his eyes. Without any apparent hesitation, he slid around the corner and made his way into the deepest of shadows. There he crouched for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to this new lack of light even as they were in constant motion. His piercing gaze pounced upon and marked several obstacles. A low row of barrels that had not yet been stored. A wagon resting empty and unhitched to one side, leaving but a narrow pathway around it in the narrowness between the two buildings. And in direct line across from him another barrel sitting upright and alone at the corner of the opposite building. St. James moved toward it, paused as he noticed the roll marks in the dirt of the alley. Then at the barrel itself, scuff marks where someone had righted it, and footprints throughout it all, all alike, indicating but one person. He knelt behind the barrel, saw that someone had a clear view of the sidewalk he had just been strolling down, and as he did so, he smelled freshly discharged gunpowder coming from the wood. He lifted a hand, ran it along the edge of the barrel's top, brought it up to peer at it. Then he cursed

  for his hand was covered with his own blood.

  But he had no time for that now.

  A fresh flurry of horse hooves came not from the street but from

  the dark mew at his back, and he sank down into shadow once again, lifted his pistol and trained it on the narrow space between the abandoned wagon and the brick side of the building. A small horse came through it with a smallish figure on its back. St. James waited until the hard riding horseman was nearly upon him before rising, spooking the horse into nearly unseating its rider.

  “M'lord!” Steven gasped as he controlled the cob purchased for him that day. “He's headed east toward the river.”

  “Riding?”

  “On foot!”

  St. James grasped the lad and pulled him down from the skittish horse. “Well done! Find Tyler. Tell him to drive the carriage as you have said.” With a single leap, he jumped into the ratty saddle that they had tacked the sad little horse with. He winced as his chest gave a fresh reminder of his injury, and then he turned the cob and headed it back through the small gap of the mew. He cantered through the main thoroughfare on the other end of the alley, rode south on it for a few yards and then turned into another shadowy mew that pointed toward the river. The cob was no Behemoth, nor even a Gold-Leaf-Lying-in-the-Sun, but with his assailant still presumably upon foot, St. James expected to come across him quickly. Especially when he would have taken little notice to the dirty urchin of a boy riding a sorry nag of a horse who had come across him. He should have no knowledge that he had been spotted, his direction noted, and that his intended victim was fast riding him down.

  It was not until a third alley that St. James caught site of his quarry. He was running, but did not seem panicked in any way, indicating that he must believe himself safely away. Whether he was confident that he had done the duke enough grievous harm to insure his death, St. James could not guess, but his mouth tightened into furious grimace as he thought that if he did not find out soon precisely what his injury was, the man may very well have achieved his objective.

  At the sound of horse hooves bearing down upon him with alarming quickness, the man turned. In the dim light, St. James saw a great deal of fearful astonishment on his face as he must have recognized that red velvet coat. But then he had no chance for any other expression or words, for St. James kicked the cob, commanding without question his supreme effort, which the cob gave to him as if a wolf had snapped at his heels. St. James with unrelenting direction on his reins ran the cob into the man, and over him.

  There was a cry of fear and then pain. The cob squealed and managed a little leap to avoid the man fallen beneath him. St. James abandoned the saddle, landed awkwardly, turned swiftly, and as the man rolled groaning onto his back his first sight was of two gold buckled shoes, one on either side of his head. The mouth of a pistol barrel pointed down at his face.

  The cob skittered around in a small circle at the loss of its rider, nickered and then stood trembling. The man stared up and St. James stared down. A large drop of blood ran down the barrel of the gun, hesitated, and then dripped onto the man's forehead. It ran down his temple and into his ear.

  “Your weapon?” St. James asked. “Where is it?”

  The man blinked. There was not much light but St. James could see that he was older than himself and extremely dirty. His hair was graying and his face was a great deal scarred. One eyelid kept twitching, but whether that was from some old injury or an indication of his distress at the situation he was in, St. James could not have said. Neither did he care. The assailant licked his lips and after a false start managed to say, “'Neath me coat.”

  The coat, so many rags, lay open for want of quite a few buttons and a butt of a pistol was just discernible at the man's waist. “Remove it,” St. James commanded, “slowly and carefully and hand it to me.”

  The man's hand did not seem to want to work. It shook as it moved with infinite caution to his waistband beneath his coat. “Inch it out,” St. James told him.

  The man inched it out, his eyes locked with the duke's, the pistol St. James held a great exclamation point between their gazes. “Take it by the barrel,” St. James instructed.

  The man's hand fumbled, grabbed the barrel. With slow caution he brought the gun, a two barreled affair, in a stiff-armed arc up to in front of St. James' waist. St. James reached out and took it with his free right hand. Then St. James cocked the second hammer on it and pointed it down into the man's face.

  The man looked up into the two pistol barrels trained on him. “I—It is all a mistake. . . milord!” he panicked.

  “A very grave mistake on your part,” St. James agreed.

  “T'wasn't me that tried to kill you.”

  “I have in my hand your pistol with one chamber already empty. From the amount of powder I feel on it, I would say it has been fired within the past few minutes.”

  “What—what do you want me to do?” the man asked in desperation.

  St. James moved back two steps, both guns still pointed on the man. “Get up!”

  The man rolled, sat up, his eyes never leaving the duke nor his weapons. “Aye. I know when I'm beat,” he said.

  “Stand up,” St. James commanded, and he stepped back again, but this time he reeled and it was only the wall behind him that saved him from falling. “Slowly.”

  The man stood up as slowly as he sat up the moment before. “I am not your enemy, milord,” he persuaded. “I have no desire to see you dead. I am only a poor man trying to feed my children.”

  “Good. Then you have no care if I discover who has put you about this business.”

  “I—I do not know who is behind this.”

  St. James leaned hard against the wall and although the pistol he had taken from the man that was in his right hand was aimed at his assailant steadily, the left one was shaking. “How were you contacted?”

  The man was silent, and St. James prodded him by saying, “I am growing rather tired from my loss of blood and as I have already squeezed the trigger and the only thing that keeps a bullet from entering your heart is my thumb on the hammer, I should not take overlong about this.”

  “By the same way as before, milord,” the man strangled out.

  “Before?”

  “Aye, when it was t'other duke, the duke before you, out in Lincolnshire.”

  St. James' eyes flared into unholy fire. “You were involved in that?”

  “I didn't mean to be, milord!” the man babbled. “I thought it to only be a robbery. I had kids to feed then, too, you know.”

  “You must have a great many children,” St. James observed.

  “How were you contacted then? How were you contacted now?”

  But the man seemed more intent upon pleading his case than providing information. “Never did I do i
t again, 'tween then and this day. That night turned me right off of t'business, milord. But then I gets this message sayin' if I's wished to keep that in t'past, I had best get t'one that shoulda been done that night and wasn't in t'coach. What was I t'do, I ask you?”

  “Who sent you the message? Talk, man—”

  But St. James' words were cut off by the sudden sound of carriage wheels and horses' hooves coming at a high speed into the mouth of the mew. St. James held his weapons on his quarry, but his attention shifted at this new distraction, and the man took the only chance he was likely to get.

  He jumped to the side, snagged the cob that had stayed near, and put the smallish horse between he and St. James and with a yell, threatened it into a run with him beside it. St. James lurched from the wall, staggered as he did so.

  The carriage horses were reined in at the sight of the fleeing man and the cob running toward them. St. James saw that it was Tyler at the reins, standing and pulling his pistol. Steven was up beside him. Before anyone could divine his intention or call out, the boy stood and dived forward off the carriage and onto the half crouched, running man. “Damn ya, lad!” Tyler shouted down into the darkness. The man and the boy struggled in the shadow of the carriage and it could not be seen who was who or even what was happening.

  The cob reacted badly to the flying figure that had half landed on him before taking down the assailant. He reared back, startling the carriage horses. The carriage lurched forward. St. James found himself on one side of it and Steven and the man on the other. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” He reeled to the head of the horses that Tyler reined in, steadying himself by leaning against the near one's neck. His hands held both pistols, thumbs still on the hammers of each. Blood stained the chest and side of his coat, and his left arm was drenched with it.

  Tyler was making desperate attempt to control the horses, and at the same time trying to aim the pistol left in his care at the man, but he did not dare squeeze off a shot for fear of hitting Steven. The noise was chaotic and echoed against the walls of the buildings on either side of them. Nervous whickering, St. James cursing, Tyler damning the horses and Steven in equal measure, and the panting and scuffling from the man and the boy mixed with their cries of determination and pain.