Chapter 2 #3
“Dying, still dying. I wish he would bloody well get on with it. He didn’t ask after you, by the way.”
“Well, no. Why should he?”
George glared. “How can you always be so damned calm?”
“Why are you never?”
George flung himself into a chair. He was still in travelling clothes and his boots were muddy.
Although it was a simple matter to trace a familial resemblance between the brothers, there was no denying George was the bearer of Nature’s felicity.
There was a luminous vivacity to him and a pronounced sensuality in the generosity of his mouth and the brightness of his eyes.
At present, however, he looked tired, and lines of dissipation were beginning to mar his fine-cut features.
“He’s on at me to get married,” he said finally.
“I thought you might rather like to be married.”
“I would but not at his instigation.”
“That’s just churlishness. You would not deny your own happiness simply to thwart His Lordship’s.”
“Damn right, I would.” George dug around in the pockets of his overcoat for his cigarette case, plucked a cigarette from amongst its fellows, and lit it with clumsy fingers. “It’s the only choice he’s ever given me.”
“That’s simply untrue. And what of your duty—”
“Fuck duty. My duty was to die nobly in a pit in Balaklava.”
Thomas gave him a horrified look.
“What? It’s true. I sometimes wish I was back there, to be honest. And what a bloody terrible thought that is.
The best years of my life were spent in a hole in the ground, watching all the men around me fall to disease, neglect, and gunfire.
” For a moment, something softer than bitterness touched George’s features.
Sadness perhaps. Or regret. But then his expression shifted, and the moment was gone. “It’s a bloody joke.”
“I’m sorry, George.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Is that really the best you’ve got? That’s the word from Above, is it? ‘Sorry, old chap, your life was all a bit of a blunder.’”
“No,” said Thomas sharply. “No, I was speaking as a man, as your brother. Not in any sort of official capacity. But it was still a facile excuse for an answer.”
George’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “I suppose I shock you?”
“You could never shock me, George. Should I have some coffee sent up? You seem . . .”
“I seem what?”
It turned out, there was no good way to tell your brother he was inebriated past the point of self-control or circumspection. “Perhaps you aren’t . . . thinking clearly?”
“Oh, I think all too clearly. At least I was doing something back then. And what am I now? Stupefied with idleness. Our father’s puppet.”
“Let me see about that coffee.”
Thomas went to the bellpull, and they waited for the summons to be answered in a silence that was not quite comfortable.
Mrs. Clark slipped into the room a minute or two later.
Her gaze flicked momentarily to George, and Thomas experienced the painful revelation of seeing his brother through someone else’s eyes.
A man careless, spoiled, and intoxicated at eleven in the morning.
But whatever Mrs. Clark might think, her composure did not falter, and she departed to see what could be done about the coffee.
Thomas had been about to say something understanding, if not reassuring—for George would not have thanked him for an attempt at consolation—but his elder brother spoke before he had properly assembled his thoughts.
“Well. She’s a fine piece, make no mistake.”
Thrown by the abrupt change in conversation, Thomas grew flustered and finally managed, “She’s been very kind.”
“Hah. I know you’re a clergyman, but you can’t say you didn’t notice.”
“Notice what?”
“Fucking hell. Did the marquess make you a eunuch as well as a priest?”
“I own,” offered Thomas uncertainly, “she is a handsome woman?”
“She’s a stunner, man. Even in that ghastly grey thing she’s wearing.
Those eyes. That hair. And her body. Like iniquity made flesh.
” George gave his brother another provocative look and crossed himself flamboyantly in the Catholic fashion.
“Oh, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Or I’d very much like to. ”
Accustomed to this style of baiting and not disposed to see malice in it, Thomas simply smiled, shaking his head in mock chagrin.
Evidently recognising that teasing his brother was a lost cause, George grinned. It banished the cynicism of his eyes and made him look younger. “How’s your mongrel?” he asked.
“Please don’t call him that.”
“What do you expect if you take waifs and strays off the street? What’s next, a plucky urchin? An honest doxy? People are starting to talk, you know.”
“Let them talk, if they must. I can’t imagine what they might find to say.”
“His Lordship won’t like it.”
“Perhaps he need not find out?”
George laughed without mirth. “He will. He always does. Even figured out I’m in queer street. Read me a bloody lecture, can you believe? Didn’t give me a clipped copper, mind. Says I have to cut loose the divine Lady Montague before he’ll bail me out. Miserly son of a whore.”
“How can you possibly be in debt, George?”
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking care.”
George fell silent, staring sullenly at nothing, just as Mrs. Clark entered with coffee.
He roused slightly at the sight of her, but she studiously avoided his gaze and then fled.
With his attention still fixed speculatively on the spot she had last occupied, he went on, “Maybe I will do what he wants. Lady M’s a bore, anyway. ”
“Then why must you”—Thomas folded and unfolded his hands—“consort with her?”
“Because it’s the fashionable thing to do. And because His Lordship doesn’t like it.”
Once again at a loss for anything more useful to say or do, Thomas handed his brother a cup of coffee, the rich bitter smell of it mingling with the musty room.
“Here, drink this. It will steady you.” He paused, trying to find the right words.
“And I hope you will not behave badly towards Mrs. Clark.”
There was no reply. Just an apathetic glance, as mistrustful as a wounded animal’s.
“She is under our protection,” Thomas persisted. “She is not for your . . . entertainment. I know you’re angry and frustrated and, for that matter, intoxicated, but you’ve never been cruel.”
“And you’ve always been a prig.”
Thomas nodded. “I know.” He gave a faint, apologetic smile. “I don’t mean to be.”
Disregarding this small attempt at conciliation, George climbed to his feet and strode to the window. He pulled the heavy velvet drapes aside, stirring up a column of dust motes, and stared down into the pristine green haze of the Grosvenor Square garden. “I hate this house.”
“You could probably improve it,” suggested Thomas. “If you tried.”
“Edward was supposed to do that. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
Edward had said he would fill the rooms with light and the halls with laughter. Thomas caught his breath against a sudden twist of pain.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” muttered George. “A hunting accident. He didn’t even like hunting. Damn fool way to die.”
“Yes.” It was all Thomas dared to say.
George half-turned. The sunlight gleamed upon his tangled hair. “Tell me again. How did it happen?”
Thomas swallowed the taste of sickness as he repeated the lies his father had taught him. “His gun discharged. It was an accident. A stupid, tragic accident.”
His brother gave a weak smile. “Well, at least you were there, eh? Got him winging his way to heaven ahead of the crowd.”
“Yes,” said Thomas, in barely more than a whisper.
There was a long silence. Thomas poured himself some coffee in order to have something to do with his hands, which, unaccountably, he could not hold still.
“If the dead go to a better life,” asked George, at last, “why do we mourn them?”
“We mourn ourselves. Our own loss.”
“Bit selfish, don’t you think? Should we not be celebrating everlasting happiness instead?”
Thomas could feel the gatherings of what would surely turn into a stormy headache. “Is there a point to this?”
“I just think if we truly believed everything we say about death, then grief would be different. I don’t think we’d be so afraid. I don’t think it would feel so final.”
“I do not wish to talk about this,” said Thomas in a stifled voice.
“Why not? Isn’t it your area of expertise?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“I want an answer, Thomas. Don’t forget, I’ve seen a lot of fucking death.”
“I don’t have an answer,” cried Thomas, pushed beyond endurance. “Not to this. Not to any of it.”
“At least you got to see him. I just waved him off on his honeymoon, and the next thing I heard he was dead.” George said nothing for a moment, still gazing out of the window, at the world beyond.
Then his shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I wanted to be an uncle. I had every intention of being a doting one. ”
Thomas sank into a chair, fingertips idly massaging the bridge of his nose.
“What do you want from me, George? I’ve already told you, I can’t help.
” He sounded so very weary, even to himself.
“I wish I could. But the mysteries of the universe are as mysterious to me as they are to everyone else. We simply have to trust in . . . in a plan, the workings of which are too subtle, and too vast, for us to discern them.”
“So it’s submission to someone else’s, one way or another.”
“Is that so terrible?”
His brother stared at him. “Yes,” he said. “You grovelling charlatan. It’s fucking terrible.” Then he threw his coffee cup against the wall. It shattered: pieces of white porcelain and a dark stain.
And when George stormed out, a few seconds later, Thomas did not try to stop him.
He simply sat there, a little dazed, feeling not unlike the broken cup.
What had he been thinking? What sort of priest would have said such a thing?
Is that so terrible? He should have explained that God only wanted His children to flourish.
That He did not want their submission. But, truthfully, it was far easier to believe in a patriarch who expected obedience than one who offered love, and somehow he had allowed himself to speak aloud what he felt, instead of what was needed.
And with that—with a few selfish, heedless words—Thomas had failed his brother and his God. Yet again.
He crossed the room, lowered himself to his knees, and used his handkerchief to gather up the remains of the cup, doing his best not to catch himself on the sharp edges. Suddenly, the door swung open and Mrs. Clark came over the threshold with something less than her customary care.
“I . . . I heard a crash.” She, too, looked flustered. Her colour was high, and a lock of hair had been shaken loose across her cheek.
“Mrs. Clark, are you quite well?”
Thomas heard the distant slamming of the front door.
“Yes, yes, quite well.”
“There was an accident,” he explained, politely disregarding the fact that she sounded far from well, quite or otherwise.
“There’s no need for you to do that, sir.” She sank down beside him. “I can see to it.”
He sat back on his heels, noticing that the sleeve of her dress had been torn. “What happened here?”
“Oh, I caught it. It’s nothing.”
Thomas frowned, suspicions he did not wish to entertain, let alone acknowledge, clouding his mind. “Did my bro—”
“Forgive me, but may I make a suggestion?”
“Of course.”
“It’s about the man upstairs. I wondered . . .” She hesitated. “I wondered if you might try him with laudanum.”
“The doctor told me not until the fever had broken.”
“I see.” Again, she hesitated. “I am not a doctor, and speak only from my limited experience, but I believe it may help him. I believe he suffers from the lack of it.”
He turned his head to look at her. Her grey eyes were steady on his.
“I do not believe it could make him any worse,” she added.
“I suppose there can be no harm in trying.”
To his surprise, her fine, pale skin flushed. “You have only my word for it. I . . . I did not think you would listen.”
He pressed her hand lightly. She was cold, her fingers stiff under his, but she did not pull away. “You are clearly a woman of superior sense and kindness, Mrs. Clark. Why would I not?”
The flush deepened, but she spoke with a sharpness he found quite charming. “I have not found those qualities any guarantee of consideration.”
“Well.” He stood, dusting off the knees of his trousers. “You may consider yourself considered.”
He had surprised her into laughing, and the sound rippled through the stillness of the room like a stone thrown into a stagnant pool.