Dawn in My Heart by Ruth Axtell Morren

Author:Ruth Axtell Morren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2006-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

A few hours later he exited a pub, his legs unsteady. He was good and thoroughly drunk, as he’d intended. All cautions forgotten, he staggered in the streets, trying to get his bearings. As he turned down one street, he saw a light at one end, and a crowd gathered. He headed that way. Light, that was what he needed. He’d be safe from cutthroats in the light.

His mind focused on that fact and he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

When he arrived at the gathering, he could have wept for disappointment. It was nothing but a street meeting. Some fool was standing on a block proclaiming the Savior and describing the horrors of hell for those who refused the invitation. The flames from a few torches surrounding the man gave substance to his graphic illustrations. Tertius watched the flickering shadows against the brick walls and on the faces of the poor fools, their faces upturned, taking in the vivid descriptions.

Tertius turned away.

No one could save him now. He remembered those years of catechism as a young lad. How little those lessons served him now. What was it? Fragments of a verse came to him, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

What a joke. Hadn’t he wanted? Look where it had got him.

Suddenly he was forced to turn into another dark alley and fall to his knees to retch.

These days he couldn’t hold down his liquor as in his youth, or much else, for that matter. Everything disagreed with him. His guts were in a continual turmoil; he’d end his days facedown in a gutter. What an ignominious way to go, he thought, wiping his mouth at last on his neck cloth, unable to do anything about the vile, acid taste in his mouth.

He staggered to his feet and made his way back out to the street. When he finally arrived at his home, Nigel, after scolding him for being out alone, helped him into bed, although Sky tried to shake him off.

“A pity my dear wife doesn’t know what a losing bargain she got for a husband. Never mind, soon she’ll be a dowager countess, her worries past….” He doubled over in pain as Nigel finished pulling off his boots.

His father was right. He was no Edmund. The word he’d been running from since his fateful wedding night stared him in the face now.

Failure.

The word rang in his mind like a gong. He was nothing but a fraud and failure.

You’re not half the man Edmund was and never will be. How could he ever have thought to fill his brother’s shoes? What audacity.

He couldn’t even manage a respectable marriage. He couldn’t hold his head up in English society. In his thirty-five years he’d only managed a mediocre success in an insignificant society a thousand miles across the sea. What a colossal conceit to think his puny success would hold any account here in his homeland.

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