Lady Silence (2 page)

“
And what have we here, Mapes?” Damon
asked.

“
A stray, sir. Came to the door last
night in the snow. We—Mrs. Tyner and I—wondered if you might have a
place for her, sir”

A domestic crisis, that’s all he needed, with
his head splitting open, and what little wits he had left firmly
fixed on his new life in the cavalry.

“
You, girl,” Damon barked, “what’s your
name and where are you from?”

“
Sir, she doesn’t talk,” Mrs. Tyner
interjected.

“
Nonsense! Well, girl, answer me!” The
green eyes went wide, the frail shoulders firmed. Chin high, she
stared right back at him. Flaunting her defiance, by
God.

Truthfully, Damon had only seen such a sorry
sight when his carriage passed through the teeming stews of London.
Someone had made certain the girl had clean face and hands, but her
hair was a tangled mass of dirty blond curls, and the gown that fit
her like a flour sack must have come straight from the rag bag.
Clearly, it was unfit even for the poor box.

Well, what was a man to do? The parish
took care of its own, but this child was a stranger, of that he was
nearly certain. Undoubtedly, her fate was to be chased from parish
to parish until she was snapped up by some girl-nabber and added to
a London brothel.
Hell and the
devil!
Damon’s head ached, his stomach
churned.

“
She doesn’t look like she eats much,”
he pronounced, settling the waif’s fate. “Doubtless you’ll find
something for her to do.”

“
Indeed, Mr. Farr. Thank you, sir.”
Mapes shooed the girl back into the crowd of servants. Once again,
Mr. Farr turned toward the door. Mapes cleared his throat. Damon
halted, swaying slightly as his devoted butler finally delivered
the expected speech of farewell, to the accompaniment of an
occasional sniff and one outright sob from a parlor maid, earning a
glare of reproof from Mrs. Tyner. Mr. Farr managed the proper
responses.
Noblesse oblige
.
And only then could he descend the front steps and enter his
waiting carriage. Where he suffered a perfectly abominable journey
to London, his only consolation, thoughts of the grand new life
awaiting him as an officer in one of His Majesty’s cavalry
regiments. No thoughts of the blond child adopted into the confines
of Farr Park so much as entered his head. In fact, the girl was of
such small significance that he barely recalled her existence
through his five years on the Peninsula, his months as an
aide-de-camp at the Congress of Vienna, and certainly not during
that final great battle in Belgium.

He was, however, all too frequently forced to
think of his sister-in-law, Drucilla, wife of his elder brother
Ashby, Earl of Moretaine. For every time he received a letter from
his mother, the young countess’s name was prominently mentioned. At
first, with long-suffering, then indignation, and finally outrage.
The dower house was not, it seemed, sufficiently removed from
Castle Moretaine to make co-existence possible between the dowager
and her daughter-in-law.

Therefore, shortly after Talavera, when
Captain Farr was laid up with a nasty saber slash to his thigh and
had ample time to reflect on his mother’s plight, he offered her
use of Farr Park during his absence. This seemed to serve quite
well, as the dowager’s letters turned positively cheerful, if
frequently dotted with references to a Katy. He did not recollect
anyone of that name among his staff, so decided she must be some
impecunious family connection employed by his mother as a
companion.

When, after six and a half years of war,
Damon—now Lieutenant Colonel—Farr headed home, he was a far
different man than the young fire-eater who gone off to war,
expecting to lick the Frenchies in a year or two. His thoughts were
all of Farr Park, of his mother and elder brother Ashby. Of English
soil, English villages, the English language echoing around him
like some litany of joy.

Home. He was going home.

To Farr Park, a cocoon of peace waiting to
welcome him. At twenty-eight, he was an old man, longing for
serenity. No guns, no blood, no mud. No blistering heat on the
plains or shocking cold in the mountains. No smoky-eyed señoritas.
Or mass graves. No bugle sounding the call to arms. No pounding
hooves and gleaming sabers. No letters to write to grieving
relatives.

Farr Park. Serenity. A box into which he
could plunge and pull down the lid.

Not all wounds of war ran red.

~ * ~

August 1815

On the last few miles of his long trip
home, Colonel Farr’s thoughts turned to his welcome at Farr Park.
He groaned. Mapes would turn them all out again, standing stiff as
boards in the hall or—
devil take
it!
—perhaps lined up along the front drive like
soldiers on parade. He wasn’t his brother the earl, all pomp and
circumstance, pontificating in the House of Lords. He was just a
country gentleman, who, like a fox just escaped from being torn to
bits by a hunt pack, wished only to withdraw into his den and lick
his wounds.

But this time his mother would be among the
crowd of servants. Or perhaps not. Would she choose to stay in the
drawing room, asserting her right to a private reunion with her
younger son? Her son, the stranger, who was nothing like the eager
young man who had charged off to war with dreams of glory
obliterating even the slightest hint of reality.

The colonel swore, rather colorfully, in a
combination of Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He would endure his
welcome back to Farr Park, this last hurdle before freedom, as he
had the war. And then he would draw his home and his land around
him like a cloak of invisibility and retire from the world.

At least for a while. Until he felt fit for
the society of those who had not seen what he had seen nor, even in
their wildest nightmares, done what he had done. Would his coming
days at Farr Park be like the fantasy of the peace conference at
Vienna—starched and pristine uniforms, glittering gowns, royalty
and nobility from a dozen countries greedily dividing up Europe by
day and dancing away the nights—dreamlike months sandwiched between
the Peninsula and Waterloo? Or would the horror finally begin to
fade? Would he once again be able to touch and be touched in
something other than desperation?

Jarred out of his none-too-sanguine thoughts
by the post chaise’s sudden turn to the left, Damon leaned forward
to drink in the sight of the curving drive leading to Farr Park. He
was home. By God, he was home!

Farr Park was a fine eighteenth century
structure of mellowed red brick with a well-scythed park ornamented
by the exotic shapes of several Cedars of Lebanon and the colorful
glow of numerous copper beeches. His mother had written that the
gardens behind the house still thrived. His steward vouched for his
stables, his crops, and his sheep.

A shiver shook the colonel’s lanky frame. How
was he coming home to all this when so many others had died?

Damon Farr uttered a word usually reserved
for his troopers. For there was his staff, every last one of them,
poised under the heat of the August sun on either side of the front
entry. Mapes, standing at the forefront, looked surprisingly like a
sergeant-major in spite of his conservative tailoring. He was still
a beanpole of a man, Damon noted, with an angular jaw and a bit of
gray beginning to show. Beside him was Mrs. Tyner, plump-faced and
heavier by a stone or so, her beaming face looking as if she never
had a serious thought when, truth be told, he’d often wished he had
someone with her efficient organizational skills with him on the
Peninsula.

And there, running down the steps like the
veriest schoolgirl, was his mama, Serena, Dowager Countess of
Moretaine. He would have sworn he had no tender emotions left, but
his feet insisted on running to meet her. When he recovered enough
to put her from him for a good look, Damon discovered she had
changed very little. The countess had always been slim and was now
perhaps even more so. And, yes, her hair showed more gray than
brown, but her eyes were filled with pride and joy. (He made a
silent vow not to disillusion her.) His mama’s gown, the colonel
noted, was in the first style of elegance, not unlike the day gowns
of the highborn ladies in Vienna and Brussels. Obviously, living in
the wilds of Wiltshire had not cut his mother off from the world of
fashion.

Colonel Farr endured the formal welcome of
his staff with far more aplomb than he had tolerated his long-ago
farewell, for Wellington’s officers had had to put on a good front
no matter how they felt, no matter what conditions they faced. And
then, finally, he was alone, staring at the walls of his room as if
he had never seen them before. On the Peninsula Old Hooky and his
entire staff would have considered themselves blessed to share a
suite of rooms the size of his personal apartment. And, now, it was
all his. As was Farr Park, an inheritance from his Uncle Bertram
for which he had never been more grateful.

Supper was a quiet affair, exactly as he
wished. Damon paid little attention to his mother’s apologies for
the absence of her companion, the oft-cited Katy, until Lady
Moretaine added that she feared the dear girl did not wish to
intrude. Nonsense, of course. Dear Katy would never be
encroaching.

Dear girl?
He
must have misheard. For years he had pictured Katy as an elderly
cousin or maiden aunt. No matter. He’d find out soon enough. For
the moment, he was content to eat Mrs. Huggins’s welcome-home
feast, a compilation of his favorites, including pea soup with
bacon and fresh herbs, dressed crab, asparagus in white wine and
cream, minted lamb, and a Florentine of oranges and apples. Grandly
topped off, after his mama left him in solitary splendor, by a
generous sampling of the port he’d had shipped home from
Portugal.

With each sip Colonel Farr’s foreshortened
world seemed to take on a more rosy hue. At Farr Park, the problems
of the world beyond Wiltshire would not intrude. In the morning his
new life awaited him. And tonight he need only fob off his mama
with some of his more humorous tales. Strangely enough, there were
more than a few. Somehow—yes, somehow—he would manage to get on
until the shadows went away.

During the weeks after Waterloo, with his
duties down to seeing that his wounded were tended, letters written
to the families of the dead, and his able troopers sheltered and
re-equipped, Damon had had time to select a method for the exorcism
of the shadows—the ghosts, if you will—that haunted him. Some men,
he knew, could put the war behind them, as if dropping the handle
of a pump, shutting off the rush of water on the instant. He envied
them, but he could not emulate them. He would, therefore, make an
effort to record his experiences. Not that anyone would ever read
what he wrote, but if a man were going to crawl into a box and pull
down the lid, he must have some occupation, must he not?
Concentrating on the memoirs of Colonel Damon Farr should do the
trick.

Or should he write something people might
actually want to read? Perhaps a comparison of Wellington’s
maneuvers to great commanders of the past, a treatise that would
appeal to not just military officers and trainees, but to the many
Englishmen who were grateful to those who had rid the world of the
overly ambitious Little Emperor.

After spending the morning with his
long-suffering steward, Elijah Palmer, Damon sat at his mahogany
kneehole desk, frowning at the blank paper centered in front of
him. He glanced at the quill sitting in its standish, then back to
the paper. His frown deepened. He raised his eyes to the tall
windows to his right, felt a slight amelioration of his gloom as he
noted that the gardens did indeed still flourish. He reached for
the quill . . . hesitated . . . then, barking one of the worst of
his acquired foreign profanities, buried his head in his hands. How
could a man write if he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to
write about?

A small thump. Damon opened his eyes to a
silver tray on which reposed a steaming cup of tea, fragrant with
spice, and a matching china plate with macaroons and two biscuits,
one that looked like ginger, the other vanilla or lemon frosted
with sugar. His mouth watered.

But how . . . ? For nearly seven years his
life had depended on being alert, yet he had not heard anyone enter
the room.

He looked up. Straight into the face of an
angel.

She was young, she was beautiful. Blond and
green-eyed, with a figure that would have inspired whole regiments
to duel for her favors. Her gown, sprigged in blue, was modest for
a gentlewoman, decidedly out of place on a maid. No matter. She was
far more mouth-watering than the biscuits.

The girl bobbed a curtsy, turned to
leave.

“
No, wait!” Colonel Farr, catching the
frantic note in his first words, lowered his voice. Who are you?”
he asked.

Merciful heavens!
Yesterday, her view of the returning hero had been obscured
by misty eyes and a sudden attack of shyness that had kept her
lurking behind Jesse, the tallest footman. Still fixed in her mind
was the drunken boy who had stumbled down the stairs on his way to
war. Not this whipcord-thin, dark-haired, broad-shouldered,
lantern-jawed,
imposing
adult. With lines radiating from the corners of eyes as dark
as his hair, deep-cut slashes from nose to chin, cheekbones that
formed lines of their own, and a mouth that looked as if it never
smiled.