Kasey Michaels - The Bride of the Unicorn

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings,

and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire

THE SUN SHONE BRIGHT as Morgan Blakely and his father, William, duke of Glynde, walked away from the family mausoleum at The Acres, the duke’s ancestral Sussex home. Each man was dressed in funereal black with an ebony satin armband, and each carried his hat while following behind the young minister who had conducted a mercifully short ceremony in the village church.

The duke appeared more than usually frail and wiped at his eyes with a large white handkerchief already banded on all four sides with a thin ribbon of black satin, as if his wardrobe was perpetually prepared for mourning—which, in a way, Morgan realized, it probably was. His father had buried his wife, both his sisters, one of his sons—and now his twin, James—in somewhat less than fifteen years.

Morgan though it must be a depressing way to live, surrounded by all that dying.

He sighed silently and glanced back up the hill at the impressive Italian marble structure that held all his relatives save the one at his side. How long would it be before he took this walk alone, leaving his father’s mortal remains locked behind those airless walls of veined pink stone?

Would his father forgive him—truly forgive him—before he died?

Would he, Morgan, forgive himself? Could he live with himself? Why did he live at all, with Jeremy dead? Were thoughts of revenge enough to keep a man alive? They hadn’t been enough for Uncle James.

But his father was speaking, and for once his tone held no censure, no pity. “It was quite a lovely service, wasn’t it? I had never supposed that the Reverend Mr. Sampson could discover so many pleasant things to say about our dearest brother James.”

“Indeed. I find it remarkable that anyone could summon up a single kind thing to say about the man, Father. And hauling his carcass here to The Acres for interment in the mausoleum is decidedly unnerving, as we have only succeeded in walling him up. Frankly, I would have much preferred to snuggle the bastard twelve or more feet belowground with a boulder or two piled atop his chest, on the off chance he should try to rise again.”

“Morgan! Keep a civil tongue in your head, if you please. We have just buried a man. My brother. My twin. The man with whom I shared our mother’s womb. Had it not been for the vagaries of the birth order, we might well have buried the duke this day.”

“Now, there’s an intriguing thought,” Morgan responded, putting on his hat even as he nodded his goodbye to the minister, who had earlier begged release from any refreshments being served to the mourners after the interment, citing the necessity of attending at the bedside of an ailing villager. “I can only wonder how The Acres would have fared once Uncle James reached his majority and transformed the place into a brothel.”

The duke looked at his son with rheumy blue eyes that had faded over the course of his three and sixty years, like curtains hung too long in the sun. “I will pray for you, Morgan,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness liberally mixed with resignation.

Morgan bristled, then swallowed down any hint of anger at his father’s words. Anger did no good in battle or when trying to reason with the unreasonable. That did not mean that Morgan Blakely, Marquis of Clayton, was not conversant with the tumultuous emotion. He simply chose to ignore it. “You do that, Father,” he said, deliberately stripping the black satin ribbon from his sleeve and stuffing it in his pocket. “You pray for me. Pray for Uncle James. Pray for Jeremy.”

“Do not make a mockery of your brother’s immortal soul!” The duke’s thin cheeks flushed with unhealthy color. Or righteous indignation. Or possibly even religious fervor. Morgan could never be sure. “Not when you were partially the instrument of his death.”

Morgan took one step backward, stung as sharply as he would have been if his father had just slapped his face. “You never tire of that song, do you, Father?” he asked after a moment. “Do you sing it every morning as you wake? Does its accusatory melody lull you to a dreamless sleep at night?”

“Now you’re being impertinent, Morgan,” The duke countered quickly, laying a hand on his son’s forearm. “I have forgiven you. In my heart I have forgiven you. My God demands it of me.”

“Really?” Morgan smoothly removed his arm from his father’s grasp even as he allowed his full lips to curve into an amused sneer. “Your God. Wasn’t that exceedingly accommodating of him? Promise me, Father, when next you speak with him—and I am quite convinced that you will—thank him for me. And pray don’t insult the fellow by reminding him of how damnably cold his charitable forgiveness is to us poor sinners. Ah, here is one of the grooms with your pony cart, Father. How thoughtful of the boy. I shall forgo a ride back to The Acres myself, as I wish to be alone a while longer—to mourn Uncle James, of course. I wouldn’t wish to distress you with my tears.”

The duke shook his head and sighed deeply, as if to acknowledge the impossibility of finding a way to communicate with his son. “If you wish it, Morgan. I will see you at the dinner table, I hope. And in time to help me lend a blessing to the meal, please. I do not ask much of you while you are at The Acres, but I must ask that you follow my wishes in such matters. Coming to table with a glass of Burgundy in your hand is offensive.”

Morgan assisted his father up onto the seat of the pony cart, then stepped back and bowed to the man. “I would rather cut off my own arm than offend you, sir,” he drawled softly, then motioned for the groom to drive on, leaving him behind to contemplate his uncle’s passing.

And to wonder why the sun was shining while Jeremy, and all of Jeremy’s older brother’s hopes for happiness, lay moldering in that pink marble mausoleum on the top of the hill.

THE SMALL ORPHANAGE at Glynde, a foundling home of indeterminate age and antiquated drains, was situated just outside the village proper, sunk in a small cutout of land and hidden behind a stout wall and a stand of trees. Good ladies and gentlemen riding in their carriages, farmers on their carts, and even people on foot could pass by the orphanage without fear of having their sensibilities offended by the sight of too-thin legs, too-large eyes, or the many tiny graves that lined a plot at the bottom of the kitchen garden.

The world, Morgan knew, was a hard, unforgiving place for an orphan in this land where wealth was too rare, where poverty and hunger already hung too close to home to be reminded of it daily, and where sympathy was reserved for the alms box at Christmas and Eastertide.

For all his newly discovered religion, even the very Christian duke of Glynde had not as yet extended his largesse past repairing the steeple of the Reverend Mr. Sampson’s church, to bestow his bounty on the unwanted, unloved children whose very existence cried out for compassion.

He should bring the duke here, Morgan thought. He should shake him out of his self-imposed religious limbo and back to the world of the living. Hell and damnation, just the smell emanating from the place should be enough to do that.

Or perhaps, like the rest of the county, his father simply hadn’t looked, hadn’t chosen to see past the walls and the trees.

Morgan knew he hadn’t seen past them either, except for a few times when, as a young, adventurous child, he had talked Jeremy into climbing over the high walls of the orphanage to steal apples from the single tree within the packed-dirt courtyard.

It wasn’t that there were not ample trees at The Acres or that the one within the orphanage wall was of a tastier variety. It was the thrill of the adventure itself that had intrigued Morgan. Just as the risk of the thing had led him to ride his father’s best hunter bareback at midnight, to steal away to watch a hanging in the village square, and to visit the local barmaid at the Spotted Pony at the tender age of fourteen.