The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All Read Free Page A

sober yeoman folk. Wesley and Bullard snickered like a pair of itinerant knights at the potato pickers in filthy motley, bowed to their labor in dark, muddy fields. Luke Honey didn't share the mirth. He'd seen enough bloody peasant revolts to know better. He knew also that fine cars and carriages, horses and guns, the gloss of their own pale skin, cursed the nobility with a false sense of well-being, of safety. He'd removed a bullet from his pocket. The bullet was made for a .454 rifle and it was large. He'd turned it over in his fingers and stared out the window without speaking again.
        After supper, Dr. Landscomb and Mr. Liam Welloc, co-proprietors of the lodge, entertained the small group of far-flung travelers who'd come for the annual hunt. Servants lighted a fire in the hearth and the eight gentlemen settled into grand oversized chairs. The parlor was a dramatic landscape of marble statuary and massive bookshelves, stuffed and mounted heads of ferocious exotic beasts, liquor cabinets and a pair of billiard tables. Rain and wind hammered the windows. Lights flickered dangerously, promising a rustic evening of candlelight and kerosene lamps.
        The assembly was supremely merry when the tale-telling began.
        "We were in Mexico," Lord Bullard said. Lord Bullard hailed from Essex; a decorated former officer in the Queen's Royal Lancers who'd fought briefly in the Boer War, but had done most of his time pacifying the "wogs" in the Punjab. Apparently his family was enormously wealthy in lands and titles, and these days he traveled to the exclusion of all else. He puffed on his cigar while a servant held the flame of a long-handled match steady. "Summer of 1919. The war had just ended. Some Industrialist friends of mine were visiting from Europe. Moaning and sulking about the shutdowns of their munitions factories and the like. Beastly boring."
        "Quite, I'm sure," Dr. Landscomb said. The doctor was tall and thin. He possessed the ascetic bearing of Eastern European royalty. He had earned his degree in medicine at Harvard and owned at least a quarter of everything there was to own within two counties.
        "Ah, a trying time for the makers of bombs and guns," Mr. Liam Welloc said. He too was tall, but thick and broad with the neck and hands of the ancient Greek statues of Herakles. His hair and beard were bronze and lush for a man his age. His family owned half again what the Landscombs did and reportedly maintained ancestral estates in England and France."One would think there are enough territorial skirmishes underway to keep the coins flowing. The Balkans, for example. Or Africa."
        "Exactly. It's a lack of imagination," Mr. Williams said. A bluff, weatherbeaten rancher baron attired in Stetson boots, corduroys and impressive buckle, a starched shirt with ivory buttons, and an immaculate Stetson hat. He drank Jack Daniel's, kept the bottle on a dais at his side. He'd come from Texas with Mr. McEvoy and Mr. Briggs. McEvoy and Briggs were far more buttoned down in Brooks Brothers suits and bowlers; a banker and mine owner, respectively. Williams drained his whiskey and poured another, waving off the ever-hovering servant. "That's what's killing you boys. Trapped in the Renaissance. Can't run an empire without a little imagination."
        "Besides, Germany is sharpening its knives," Mr. Briggs said. "Your friends will be cranking up the assembly lines inside of five years. Trust me. They've the taste for blood, those Krauts. You can't beat that outta them. My mistress is Bavarian, so I know."
        Lord Bullard thumped his cigar in the elegant pot near his foot. He cleared his throat. "Harrumph. Mexico City, 1919. Bloody hot. Miasma, thick and gray from smokestacks and chimneys of all those hovels they heap like ruddy anthills."
        "The smog reminded me of home," Wesley said. Wesley dressed in a heavy linen coat and his boots were polished to a high gloss. His hair was slick and