Chapter Twelve

An hour remained until dinner. Stanley wasn’t overly hungry, but he waited impatiently for mealtime. Only during dinner did he allow himself Marjie’s company. The temptation to throw all his convictions aside and make a push to win her affections, regardless of the impact on her or anyone else other than himself, had nearly proven far too great. Avoiding her had seemed the best option.

Pluck disagreed. Stanley had lost count of the number of times his batman had used the phrase “rush the wall” during their journey to and from Nottingham that day. By the time they’d returned to Lampton Park, Stanley had informed him in language one learned only in the army just what he could do with that wall. And Pluck, being Pluck, had laughed.

Stanley had denied himself the luxury of lying down, knowing he was tired enough to simply sleep through the night. He would not miss dinner. He had to see Marjie at least once that day.

So he was wandering the halls, passing the hour before his favorite time of day. He had regained some of his stamina. The commissariat couldn’t compete with the Lampton Park chef, nor could the constant tension of life in the aftermath of war offer even a hint of the solace found in the peaceful English countryside. Being home again, Stanley could almost believe in the divine reparation his brother Harry and so many of his fellow clergymen preached of. He almost felt hopeful that the familiar words of Ecclesiastes were more than the empty poetry of the ignorant—maybe there was indeed both a time to kill and a time to heal.

Stanley walked to the conservatory without thought. He had spent a great deal of time there the past three days. He sought Marjie’s company vicariously, hoping he could find in the walls of glass a tiny bit of her comforting presence.

He took in the moist, earthy air of the indoor garden in such an enormous quantity that his entire chest swelled with the influx of breath. The air held the very smell of life. Odd that in all the years he had lived at Lampton Park he had never realized the significance of that aroma. Five and a half years of becoming nauseatingly familiar with the smell of death had given him an appreciation for its opposite.

Before the lungful of air had a chance to dissipate into his spent and broken limbs, all the air was pressed from him in a whoosh of surprise. Marjie stood near the iron bench that he had occupied day after day. She did not look at him but rather watched the dimming light of day outside. The blazing hues of sunset gave her golden curls a hint of fire. He, like a moth to a candle, felt himself drawn to her.

He moved closer. Either she was very distracted, or she was ignoring his arrival. He knew he didn’t move quietly; his walking stick tapped loudly against the stone floor of the conservatory. Yet Marjie didn’t look at him as he approached.

As he drew nearer, he could see she wore a very pensive expression. What was worrying her? He had heard through Pluck, who had obtained the information from the bevy of servants below stairs, that Sorrel remained unwell. Perhaps her sister’s health weighed on her.

“Good evening, Marjie.”

That she didn’t seem at all startled by his sudden words told Stanley she had, in fact, noted his arrival. She still didn’t look at him.

Marjie wrapped one arm around her middle; the other appeared to be pressed to her heart.

“Marjie?”

She didn’t respond, which was not at all like her. Was she hurt? Ill?

He moved with more speed than grace to where she stood. “Marjie, what—?” The question died on his lips. A tear sat in the corner of her eye, seemingly ready to drop. He searched her face for some clue, some indication as to the source of her suffering. That tear hovered only a moment longer before slowly slipping down her cheek.

Stanley’s heart seized painfully in his chest. He stood, frozen, watching the tear fall. Nothing should ever make his Marjie cry.

“You have been writing letters.” Her whisper shattered the silence that surrounded them.

“Yes. I sent two today.” The admission seemed to upset her. “I was a little late in doing so.” The letters ought to have been sent from France, but being ordered back to England had interfered with his plans. “I am hoping the recipients will forgive the delay.” He had no idea how those letters were received. It was entirely possible they were resented.

“How late were the letters?” Something very odd colored her tone—it was flat, very nearly emotionless.

“A fortnight.”

Marjie looked up at him then. The anguish in her eyes cut through Stanley with all the searing pain of the bullet he’d taken at Orthez. “I waited for six months.” Her voice broke on the words. Mingled with her look of pain was a flash of anger Stanley hadn’t been expecting. “But my letter was not merely delayed, was it? You never had any intention of writing to me.”

“Marjie—”

“I am certain those women will forgive you a fortnight’s delay.”

Enough accusation hung in that sentence that it set Stanley’s back up a little. Getting those letters written and posted had taken a great deal of effort, considering he absolutely hated the undertaking. He did not need further proof that he would never be entirely free of the blasted war. It followed him all the way back to England, back to his place of solace. Was even his time with Marjie to be tainted by it?

“I am certain you had something very important to write to them about.” She seemed to doubt it, as if it had been a letter filled with the idle gossip of two aged dowagers.

Tension rippled through Stanley’s body. Something important to write about? He felt his jaw clench. Was he now to be criticized for attempting to redeem what little remained of his soul? “I had the immense privilege of informing ‘those women’ that their sons are dead.” The words snapped out of him. Lud, he hated the army sometimes.

“Dead?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Stanley registered the suddenly fragile quality of Marjie’s voice. “Two of my men. They were killed in France just before I left.”

“But I thought the war was over.”

“It will never be over,” he grumbled. He turned away, ready to leave. He needed to push all thoughts of war and death and fighting out of his mind. He needed to remain in control of himself. Again, his oft-repeated survival strategy echoed in his mind. “Always a soldier.” He needed to clear his thoughts, to step behind his shield of neutrality once more.

He felt the light pressure of Marjie’s hand on his a split second before the flash of pain that followed. He winced, pulling air in through his clenched teeth. He could feel his hand shake, and he struggled to keep hold of his walking stick. As suddenly as her touch had come, it disappeared.

He waited for the questions, for the words of pity and worry. She would fret; she always fretted. He did not want to be the invalid to her nursemaid. She was supposed to be an angel, untouched by violence and suffering, and he was meant to be a source of only happiness for her. That had always been what he’d imagined. Before Napoleon’s return and the resurgence of war, he’d dreamed of that both literally and figuratively. Marjie was always meant to be his escape from the slow, deteriorating death of guilt and regret born of years spent in the business of warfare.

But Marjie didn’t ask any questions. When her silence stretched longer than Stanley could endure, he turned his head back to look at her once more. No pity registered in her face. Though there was a hint of worry, she mostly looked heartbroken.

“I am sorry I was short with you,” she said, her chin quivering as she spoke. “I was just so . . . so—” Marjie dropped her eyes, and her cheeks pinked with what looked like embarrassment. “Jealous.”

Jealous?

“All I ever wanted was a letter, Stanley. A single note. I know you said you didn’t want me to worry, but not hearing from you, not knowing . . . It was horrible.” Again she wrapped her arms, both this time, around her middle, almost a self-offered embrace. “At first, I simply told myself you were busy, that you had more important things to do.” Stanley heard her implied words. Marjie saw herself as unimportant to him. “But after Waterloo”—Stanley winced at the name, just as he always did—“I was desperate. We all were. Every day the lists grew longer, and every day I was more afraid to read them.”

“What lists?”

She looked up at him again. Her eyes were bleak, haunted. Without thought, Stanley reached for her, cupping her face in his left hand. She closed her eyes just as she had that night by his fireside. “The casualty lists,” she whispered. “We read them every day. I felt so relieved when your name didn’t appear, but I could never be certain. Names were added all the time. I died a little every day as I searched, so afraid your name would appear there.”

Here was yet another reason to feel guilty. By not sending word that he was alive, he had added to their distress. His family would have recognized that whatever he sent had not been written in his own handwriting, he not having a usable right hand. That would have piqued their suspicions that all was not well, and they would have worried anyway. Nothing he did seemed to truly help them.

“What a coldhearted person I must be to be jealous of these women you have written to, who have lost so very much when I have you here safe with me.” Another lone tear slid silently down her face. “I only wanted a letter. I wanted it so desperately.”

His throat constricted. She needed to understand, at least a little. But explaining any part of this meant thinking about the horrors he’d barely survived, reliving the pain and the sounds and smells of the battlefield. It meant admitting he’d come home disfigured and broken. He couldn’t admit all. But she ought to know enough to ease her own pain.

He brushed the track of moisture from her cheek with his thumb. He lightly caressed a wispy gold ringlet before allowing his gloved hand to slide down her arm and clasp her hand. He needed the strength of her touch. “I didn’t write the letters to those two women.”

“But you said—”

“I dictated them.” He was determined to conclude his confession before his memories overpowered him. “I have sent letters to the families of every soldier in my squadron who has been killed in the more than five years since I joined the army. Most families receive no notice or regrets from the army beyond what few personal effects can be returned to them. It is cold and unfeeling, but that is the nature of war.”

Marjie pulled on his hand—his left, thankfully—and he followed automatically to the bench and sat awkwardly. She sat beside him. He could feel her eyes on his face but couldn’t bring himself to look at her when speaking of dark times he’d rather forget.

“So I started sending letters. I’d try to think of something to say, a memory of that family’s loved one, something the other men admired about him. Little things I thought would help.” Stanley swallowed against the narrowing of his throat. “It sounds pretty arrogant, I suppose, thinking that anything I wrote would help.” He couldn’t stop the groan deep in his throat as the next thought formed the instant before he spoke. “There were so many after Waterloo. But I couldn’t write the letters.”

“Was it too difficult?” Marjie asked, and he knew she referred to the emotional toll. That certainly had been a factor but not what he’d meant.

“I couldn’t write them,” Stanley repeated. “I wasn’t physically able to.” He looked into her eyes for the first time since beginning his rather unspecific explanation. “Though I thought of writing to you, I couldn’t.”

He watched as Marjie’s eyes dropped to his right hand, gloved and resting on his lap.

“I have noticed you do not use your right hand,” Marjie said. “It seems to pain you.”

“I was injured.” Please do not ask more. Let that be enough.

She didn’t press. She didn’t speak at all. Marjie took his right hand in hers, holding it so gently she might very well have been the angel he’d always thought her to be. Stanley stiffened as she tugged lightly on the smallest finger of his glove.

“Marjie, please don’t.” He knew what she would see.

She looked up at him, and to Stanley’s surprise, some of the anguish had left her eyes. She touched his face and smiled ever so slightly before returning to his glove. Slowly, gently, she pulled it off.

As his hand slipped free, the feeling of relief he looked forward to every night rushed through him. With his glove removed, the leather and sweat and rubbing no longer irritated his wounds. But the sight of his gnarled hand required it remain covered during the day and that he endure the discomfort of doing so.

Marjie’s eyes hadn’t lifted from his hand. The splotches of deep black were still there, and the melted, twisted skin and puffy red sores had not miraculously healed nor grown even more horrendous. As always, he could smell the battlefield again, could see the horror on Pluck’s face as the fire drew closer to him. He swallowed against a surge of bile. He tried to pull his hand away, but Marjie had a surprisingly firm grip.

“Is it a burn?” She spoke as calmly as one would when inquiring whether he cared for sugar in his tea.

“Yes.” He couldn’t manage more than the single syllable. He fought every moment against the memories that flooded over him. In his mind, he could hear the sounds of men crying out in agony and guns pounding the air.

“It continues beyond your cuff.” Marjie was unexpectedly calm. She did not fuss, nor sob inconsolably, nor run from the room in horror.

The sound of her voice tugged at him, pulling him momentarily from his thoughts, freeing him for an instant from the memories he could never seem to escape on his own. He nodded in response to her observation. The burn reached nearly to his elbow.

“Your glove irritates it, Stanley. You simply must allow it relief from the constant rubbing. Sorrel had to do that while her leg was healing the first time. Absolutely nothing touching it but air and a very soothing salve.”

Stanley sat silently for a moment. She had not asked for a detailed explanation or insisted she be told the difficult details. The assault of unwanted memory eased, and her face refocused.

She looked up at him. “Thank you for telling me.”

She was thanking him for exposing her to this? A gently bred young lady was meant to be sheltered from the grotesqueness and unpleasantness found in the world.

“When you didn’t write, I worried that you had forgotten all about me.”

Stanley shook his head. “Never that.”

“I think I will go give Cook the recipe for that salve.” Marjie rose to her feet. “Perhaps it will help.”

“Perhaps.”

She smiled at him, and much of the tension drained from his body. Memories of that smile had, at times, been his only grip on his sanity.

In a movement so quick and so fluid he hardly realized what she was doing, Marjie leaned toward him and placed a brief, feather-light kiss on his cheek. It was precisely the sort of kiss one received from one’s mother while still in leading strings, and yet it set his heart to pounding once more.

She flitted from the room with her characteristic cheer. He smiled. He had just ungloved his mangled hand and, to a degree he usually avoided, relived a piece of Waterloo, and still he smiled.

His angel, it seemed, was a miracle worker.