Brethren Page 5

  By the time the meal and tale-telling were finished, it was dark yet again. I returned to bed with a snifter of brandy and a book from the library, only to find I did not wish to read or sleep. I watched the lamplight flicker on the ceiling and sipped from my glass. I felt warm and comfortable and well sheltered from the rain pattering on the roof. Yet it did little to calm the unease in my soul.

  Nothing seemed to have changed since the last time I visited here. That would have been a month or two before I departed. I felt the imposter in this happy place that stood safe from the ravages of time. I had surely changed; yet they treated me, despite the stories, as if I had not, as if I were still that boy. And thus I felt I was still that boy, and I found it alarming in the extreme. That boy I had once been knew so very little of the world.

  He would not have realized that it was odd that they had not spoken of my family or asked why I had left and then returned. They had wanted to hear stories of my travels, yet they had given me little back. With this thought, I understood that I had indeed changed in their eyes. They knew all too well that I was no longer the boy. This eased my worries some, and with the brandy warm in my belly, I turned down the lamp and settled in to sleep again. I only checked for the pistol and dirk under my pillow once.

  My uncle arrived during the evening of the next day, and his embrace nearly brought a tear to my eye: not out of heartfelt emotion, but from the reverent force of it. He was as big a man as my father; and as I had the night before, I felt small and young again. When he let me breathe, we retired to the study to eat by the fire and drink and talk. He studied me with a critical eye, and I returned it. He was older, and it showed about his blue eyes and wide mouth. His hair was grey now. He was still well-muscled, though, and seemingly in robust health.

  “You look well,” I commented.

  He smiled. “As do you, my boy.” His eyes narrowed. “You have grown into yourself. I daresay traveling and adventure has suited you.”

  “Some would say so, but there are times when I wonder what I would have become if I had stayed.”

  His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he looked away. “You would be miserable.” He grinned widely and adopted an enthusiastic tone. “Married and bored and hoping for any chance to see a tenth of what you have seen now.”

  “Aye, aye, but there have been times I wished for…” I had planned to say the safety of home, but that would have been absurd. That was a fantasy I had concocted, the history of a character I had played in many drawing rooms. I had not come from a loving or safe home, which was why I had left. I watched the brandy swirl in my glass and started again. “There have been times when the situations I found myself in were fraught with danger or irritation, and I have wished for a quiet place to retreat to.”

  My uncle smiled. “A den to hide in is a fine thing indeed, but one cannot stay in it long without it becoming cramped and even more irritating. I have been here too long now. I have not traveled in over a year. I had planned a trip to the north to hunt this fall; and then London burned and I had matters to attend to. But I have discovered something even better now.” His eyes twinkled with an inner light that far outshone the flames reflected in them.

  “And what would that be?”

  “The New World. The colonies.”

  “Do tell? You plan to travel there?”

  “Aye, I have become involved in some business with a man who owns land in the Massachusetts colony. They say the forests there stretch uninterrupted for as many square miles as there is in the whole of Christendom, with mountains and rivers and game you can scarcely believe. And so I am going to see it for myself. You should come with me.”

  Even if it was a fairytale, it did sound intriguing. “Should I?”

  “Aye, before you settle down or whatever it is you returned here to do.” His voice had grown distant again, and I looked up to find him frowning at the fire. “Why did you return?”

  I frowned and shrugged. “Was it ill-advised?”

  “Nay, aye, damnit all, that is not as I meant it to sound. I was wondering at your motivation. Where were you last, Florence, I believe? Did something occur there to bring you back to us?”

  I had thought on this question; not on the truth of it, but on what I would tell others. There were a good many people I would easily dissemble to, and then there was my uncle: one of only two people I had wanted to reassure that I was alive and thus remained in contact with.

  “I was involved in an endeavor with certain political and legal consequences. Instead of traveling even farther…” I caught myself; I should have said instead of running. I sighed. “My closest friend gave me a lecture on accepting the yoke of responsibility, and how he would be off to do that very thing and not accompanying me on further adventures and… I cannot run anymore. There are matters that must be dealt with.”

  His smile was sad. “Your father will do everything in his power to keep your cousin and you from each other’s throats. Which is not for the best in my opinion; I think you two should settle matters. But you are not my son.”

  I had expected that. I had not thought my uncle would be so quick in the relaying of it, though.

  “Has he gone and adopted Shane yet?”

  “Nay, nay,” my uncle sighed. “And he never… should. You are his heir while you live. He…” He studied the fire and considered his words. When he spoke, his smile was reassuring.

  “When I get enough wine in him, he talks of how he wishes you would return. When he is sober, he is afraid you will. All the while, he tells any who ask that you are doing well and studying this or that artistic pursuit. He makes a fuss over how unfortunate he is to have a son who will not come home and behave properly. Yet… He always implies in those discussions that despite being an aggravation to him, you at least have interests beyond whoring, drinking, and hunting foxes, which is what his friends’ sons do.”

  I was mystified. I could barely remember what I had written my uncle over the years, and I doubted he had told the same tales to my father that he had told his servants. Why had my father decided I was pursuing artistic endeavors? Granted, I had from time to time; but I had found I had no talent for it. It intrigued me that he would choose that as the lie. My father seemed to have little use for art. I could not imagine him pretending to have pride in a son who practiced it; yet perhaps that was a kinder thing than what he did think I pursued across Christendom.

  I had never told my uncle precisely why I left, though he knew that I fought with Shane and he understood there was much to settle. Battered or despondent, I had occasionally taken refuge at his house. Once, when asked at a weak moment, I had admitted to the nature of my relationship with my cousin. My uncle had not seemed surprised. I was now curious as to what had been said to whom after my departure.

  I did not believe my father was fond of me. The more I thought on what my uncle said, the more I was able to place it in the proper context. My father was an Earl. Noblemen need heirs, thus his wishing for my return. Wolves are exceedingly competitive and like to brag, thus his lies to his peers. My father still loved Shane far more than he loved me, thus his fear that we would fight if I returned. There was no true caring, only his needs. I was a disappointment to him in so many ways. He was not a disappointment to me; I expected so little of him there was no pedestal for him to fall from.

  “How are… they…?” I asked. “Your letters have said all is well, but it has been some time since I received one so…”

  “Your mother is ailing.”

  “How so? The plague?” I was not distraught; I was not close to the woman. When I pictured her, the only expression I could ever remember her having was one of utter disapproval at something I had said or done on the rare occasion I was allowed in her presence.

  He sighed and shrugged. “Nay, nay. We were all spared that, out here in the country. Nay, no one will say precisely, to me anyway, but I have gathered it is a matter of her female organs. There is no answer for it and your father’s physician m
erely prescribes increasing amounts of laudanum. Apparently there is great pain.”

  “So she is dying?”

  My uncle nodded. I did not have to hide my lack of emotion at this revelation from him. He knew my feelings on the matter. He was not fond of her, either. Her marriage to my father had been well arranged. I do not remember my parents ever behaving with any fondness for one another. As I had aged and come to know how children were created, I had oft wondered how it was that I was conceived and had two sisters. I had decided my father was a very dutiful man.

  “And the others? My father?” I asked.

  “He is well.”

  “Nothing was disrupted by the Restoration, or the fire, or plague, or war with France?”

  He shook his head. “Your father has a keen mind for matters of money and politics, and he has kept himself well-insulated from things that would harm him. He engages in calculated risks and often reaps rewards.”

  I wondered if he still taxed the peasants more than they could spare.

  “He is a good wolf,” I muttered. My uncle frowned and I sighed. “A good nobleman.”

  He smiled. “That he is. Born and bred for it, just as you and I are.”

  “I do not forget that,” I said with a trace of guilt. “And my sisters?”

  “Elizabeth is quite the twit. She will marry next June. Making a match has been the sole aim of her existence; and now that she has achieved it, I wonder what she will do with herself. Probably drive the poor fellow to drink or a mistress.”

  I chuckled. Elizabeth took after my mother; except, by all accounts my mother was an intelligent and shrewd woman, and her oldest daughter was not.

  “Sarah?” I had been reasonably fond of Sarah, even though she had been only six years of age when I left.

  “Now,” he smiled. “She is the one you would do yourself well to make the acquaintance of. I have taught her how to shoot, and she rides like the wind. She has your penchant for books. It is a shame she did not have your tutor; but perhaps that is for the best, too, as I seem to remember he filled your head with an odd notion or two.”

  I chuckled. Apparently there might be an interesting person to look forward to meeting at the house.

  “I am glad to hear Sarah has grown into something of note. How is my tutor?”

  My father had dismissed Rucker even before I left home, as he had blamed the poor man for many a thing related to why I was such a disappointment. Rucker had gone to live with his sister and teach at a village school. I had continued to send him letters through my uncle, on the rare occasion I chose to write.

  “I am sorry, I honestly do not know. I have not seen him in years. The man I dispatched last with a letter said he received it himself.”

  I nodded. For all of my uncle’s seeming kindness, he was not a man prone to befriend a poor scholar such as Rucker.

  “I shall visit him next.”

  “And then? Should I tell anyone you are here?”

  “I do not know. I will see them. But… What of Shane? Is he whoring and hunting foxes?”

  “Aye, and assisting your father with various business matters.”

  “As a good son should,” I muttered.

  “Marsy,” he chided. It was the name he had used for me in my youth. “You left.”

  “I was driven out.”

  “Your father would never permit that…”

  “You are wrong!” I was as surprised as he at my sudden flash of anger. I stood and paced and attempted to explain myself, but that only made matters worse. “He was not blind or deaf. When things escalated to the level where Shane tortured my favorite horse near to death and I was forced to relieve the animal of its misery…” Unbidden, all of the sensations and emotions returned to me, and for a moment, I was standing in the stable listening to Goliath’s pained breathing, watching him try to stand with his legs slashed to the bone, his trusting eyes glazed with agony and confusion. I had left him at the manor because he had come up lame before I had to travel to London. I knew now Shane was responsible for the lameness. He had wanted to buy himself time to break my hunter, the one he could not ride.

  I looked away from the fire. “I gave Goliath a funeral pyre, in the main lawn, with all of my father’s alcohol as fuel. My father was in his study. The windows faced the flames. The drapes were not drawn. It was night. Yet he never once asked why I emptied the sideboards of every bottle and burned a horse in front of his window. Not once! Not a word was said!” Nor had anything been said all of the times I had come to dinner with bruises about my face.

  My uncle was grimacing. He sighed heavily when my eyes met his. “Marsy, you must understand, he did not understand. He thought you were just being boys. He wanted to allow you to address the matter yourselves. He felt if he interfered, then he would have to manage the situation for the rest of your lives. He regrets that. You do not know how much he…”

  “Enough.” My anger transmuted to a distant horror, and I sat heavily in my chair. I poured another glass and downed it, to burn the threat of tears away.

  “You must speak with your father,” my uncle said gently.

  “Why? I cannot recall having a conversation with the man that did not involve the weather, the disposition of the hounds, or the state of the roads.”

  My uncle rubbed his temples until they seemed as red as the flames, and then poured himself another glass. “I love my brother, dearly, but he is such a God-damned fool at times.” His arm shot out to grasp my hand painfully. “You must talk to him.”

  “I hate him.” My voice sounded hollow, even to my own ear. “Almost as much as I hate Shane.” Or myself for that matter, for allowing it to go on as it had, for not putting a stop to it, no matter what the consequence. I had killed so many men since those days when I had not killed the one I most needed to.

  My uncle released me and sat back. “That is obvious. And he has given you reason. But, Marsy, he does not know that. He does not understand.”

  “Do you truly feel he could be made to at this late date?” My tone was far harsher than I intended.

  He did not regard me. The silence hung in the room, broken only by the crackle of the flames.

  “I apologize. You are not the one I am angry with. You have been… more of a father to me than he ever was. I do not mean to bring you pain.”

  “Oh, Marsy. My Lord, I am honored by that, yet, it is not as it should be.”

  “Aye, I know. I will speak to him, and not of the weather or the wine or things of a meaningless nature. And then I may take you up on your offer to go to this Massachusetts.”

  He smiled. “You will be welcome if it comes to that; but perhaps it would be best if you stayed and… became accustomed to life here again, or allowed it to become accustomed to you.”

  “You feel my father would take more interest in me if I were not a ghost.”

  “Correct.” His eyes bored into mine again. “And you cannot kill Shane. As much as you may hate him, for whatever reason you may have. That road will only lead to you hanging from a gibbet or renouncing your title and running for the rest of your days.”

  “I understand.” What he said was true. I was known here. If I killed Shane, even in a duel, I would be forced to run. But perhaps it would be worth it. Then at least I would be running from something more tangible, in a fashion, than my own shame. I did not share that thought with him, though, and we discussed pleasanter things until we were weary.

  In the morning we went hunting game birds, and had an unremarkable and peaceful time. I knew he had sent word to my family that I was in England, but we did not speak of it. I spent close to a week with him before riding on to find Rucker, whose residence lay in the opposite direction from my father’s lands. Thus I would pass by my uncle’s house on my return, and learn who wished to see me and where.

  The sun shone, yet it was cold as I rode east. It matched my mood well. Since the discussion with my uncle, I felt that light had been shed on a great many things. Yet I found myself as n
umb and frozen as I had felt leaving Florence. I did not know what to think or feel. Therefore it was easier to do neither; and I had done everything I could to avoid straying into the aegis of either of those twin pillars of human consciousness.

  Unfortunately, once on the road, I had little to do but ride and think. I carefully kept myself on the task of composing my thoughts on my travels into essays of a sort, much as I would do if writing them down, so that when I told Rucker of them, he would not find me completely empty of all the knowledge he had attempted to impart to me.

  Ira Rucker had been my tutor from the time I was six until the age of fourteen, when my father dismissed him. I had been his sole pupil – until Shane came to live with us after his parents died, when I was eight and he was nine.

  Even though Shane had been added to our lives, when it came to matters of books and learning, Rucker and I were in a world of our own. Rucker had given Shane lessons and taught him everything a young gentleman needs to know, but he had paid little attention to Shane beyond that. He had doted on me because I possessed an inquisitive and flexible mind. If anyone else had ignored Shane when we were young, I would have been very vexed. Rucker ignoring Shane was acceptable to me, because I truly did not want to share him, even with Shane.

  I had no proof, but I believed Shane was responsible for Rucker’s leaving. Matters were never clearly stated, but someone had intimated that perhaps my relationship with my tutor was a little too much in keeping with that of a teacher and student from the days of ancient Greece. This was complete and utter hog-wallow. My relationship with Rucker had been in all ways chaste, and I had in truth never harbored any thought of that nature concerning the man.