In the Brief Eternal Silence

by Rebecca Melvin

  There was a monstrous amount of blood on his face and St. James took out one of his fast dwindling supply of hankies and with tenderness wiped the blood from him. It was not all Red's either, he saw, for his bullet had creased Tyler's cheek before finding its final target, and although it would not have been fatal, he could not quite reconcile himself to the fact that he had nearly murdered his groom. And the last thing Tyler needed was to be losing more blood.

  He unbound Tyler's swollen wrists. “Tyler?”

  Another groan, but the old, familiar eyes twitched open. “Aye,” Tyler murmured. “Was tryin'. . . t'play. . . 'possum. . . Waitin'. . . on

  a. . . chance t'help. . . Just too. . . damn. . . weak t'do. . . anythin'.” “I'm afraid I shot you as well as him,” St. James told him softly. “Aye. . . Felt. . . it. Killed. . . 'im?” “Yes.” “Did. . . good. . . lad,” and his hand twitched as though it wanted

  to pat St. James, and St. James took it and held it tight.

  “Stay with me awhile, Tyler. Steven is coming with the cart and it should not be overlong.” He dug in his coat pocket for another handkerchief with his other hand and tried to stem the bleeding from Tyler's leg, but it was up near the hip, the bone shattered. “Miss Murdock has already sent Ryan for a doctor, and we will cart you there in quick time and they'll sew you up right again.”

  “Don't. . . doubt. . . it,” Tyler agreed.

  There was a dreadful boom of thunder and the skies that had been threatening let loose with a great deal of fury, and the rain spattered down into the groom's face. Dante struggled from his coat, only removing his hand from Tyler's when he could immediately reclasp it with the other, and he lay the coat over the groom. He held Tyler's hand beneath the coat, the rain soaking his dark hair and pouring into his eyes.

  He did not know how long he remained in that manner, but he did not stir or look up until there was the sound of horse hooves. He glanced up and saw a cart with a very wet Steven in the flash of the lightning.

  Steven pulled up in that same flash, for the scene before him was something from a nightmare. Two bodies dead in the muddy, rain splattering road, pink rivers of diluted blood running from them. Three horses huddled in nervous resignation beneath the trees, their empty saddles shedding water. And St. James in only his shirt sleeves with the white fabric plastered to him, hunched and shivering over a third form lying beneath his coat.

  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 b
e 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.

  If one wished to quit drinking, one threw the flask away.

  If one wished to live, one lived.
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br />   In the pouring rain he moved. Like a ghoul he dragged the body of his first victim from the road to the ditch. He turned to Red, rolled that man over and felt through his pockets. There was a long, small bowled pipe in one. And a small, wax lined brown bag that contained what appeared to be opium.

  Perhaps the scales tipped more in his favor. If Red had lived, what abominable business of his would have lived with him? Mayhaps his death made no difference at all in that direction. But, mayhaps it did.

  It hit him hard for a moment. Had it even been a question of his life or Tyler's? Or had it been a question of Red's? Perhaps evil being taken from the world is larger than the question of which soldier falls in the battle to bring it down.

  Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.

  St. James had thought for twenty-three years that it had been his.

  And he trembled, humbled. He had delayed so long in snapping off that last shot. How much blood had Tyler lost while he had hesitated, weighing the risks?

  There had been a chance for life for him, a chance for life for Lizzie, and even a chance for life for Tyler. And a chance to be rid of a solid chunk of evil in the same instance.

  And he had hesitated. The man had killed his father, his mother, his unborn sibling. He had Tyler struggling for life, held hostage and St. James at gunpoint, and Dante had stood there weighing the odds, the risks, the consequences.

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

  St. James dug through the wet, difficult fabric of the man's pockets. He found several notebooks and he pocketed these. He dug further, found several scraps of paper, pocketed these. Dug once again, found a folded bank draft. This he opened instead of pocketing it unread. It was written out for fifteen thousand pounds on the account of the estate of Earl Mortimer Larrimer (deceased) with Lady Lydia Larrimer signing as trustee.