Lady Silence Read Free

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.
     
    ~ * ~
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    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