Chapter Twenty-Two

Marjie was lonely.

All stood in readiness for The Gathering only a week hence. She felt decidedly unneeded in matters pertaining to Sorrel’s welfare. Mater and Marion had become her sister’s confidantes, and Philip’s attentiveness ensured that not a single need of his wife’s went unmet.

Marjie had been doing her best to maintain a distance from Stanley, both physically and emotionally. Doing otherwise simply hurt too much. Over the past few days, he’d seemed to almost be seeking her out, and avoiding him had become more difficult, due partly to the fact that she truly missed his company. Her heart, however, could not bear to be bruised again.

Luncheon would be served soon, but Marjie had no desire to partake. Philip wasn’t expected to leave his library, having some pressing estate matters to see to. Stanley had been conspicuously absent since breakfast, and that would leave Marjie exclusively in the company of the three women and their talk of children and confinements.

She had decided to spend the afternoon in her bedchamber, more likely than not gazing out of her window, wondering what it was about her that eventually convinced the people she loved to keep her at arm’s length.

The air of indifference she clung to in company dropped the moment she stepped inside her personal, private bit of the house. There was no reason to pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking when there was no one to see it. She’d taken to shrugging so often that her shoulders felt tense at the end of each day.

She sighed and sat on the edge of her bed, her gaze settling on the window, as always. It was a pleasing prospect, the bare trees dancing in the late-autumn breeze. Her thoughts wandered.

Stanley had seemed happier. He hadn’t been brimming with joy by any means, but a degree of contentment had settled over him. What had brought about the change? She hoped it would last, that returning to his regiment would not destroy his happiness again. Were she going with him, she might be able to help. He would have someone to talk to at least.

Reminding herself once again that Stanley had been most clear on the matter of her place in his future, she pulled her thoughts back to the present. She needed a distraction. Where had she put that book she’d been pretending to read?

Her gaze fell on a single white rose lying on her bedside table. It had been cut and dethorned. As she stepped closer, she saw a folded bit of parchment beside it.

Her name was printed on the front in letters so shaky and ill-formed that she immediately suspected the note had come from Caroline, though she could not think of a reason for the young girl to be writing to her. Marjie unfolded the small sheet of paper. In the same blocky lettering were two simple sentences.

Please come sit with me. I am waiting in your favorite room.

It was inexpertly signed “Stanley.”

Marjie sucked in a trembling breath as everything fell into place. He had to have written with his left hand, hence the uncertain penmanship. He had sent the rose, knowing somehow that white roses were her favorite. He was waiting in the conservatory; she had told him that was her favorite room.

She pressed her hand to her pounding heart. “He wrote to me.” After all her months of anguished waiting, her Stanley had written to her.

She pulled open the drawer where she’d faithfully kept the ribbon she’d intended to tie around his letters. With shaking fingers, she wrapped it around that single missive and tied it in a bow in the front.

She had a letter!

She very nearly ran from her room, ignoring the startled look she received as she flew past an upstairs maid. In her mind, she kept repeating, “He wrote to me!”

Stanley was in the conservatory when she arrived, his back to her, his focus on the view outside. He turned as she approached, no doubt hearing the sound of her swift footfalls. He smiled at her, and Marjie melted.

Here was the reunion she had envisioned: a letter from him, a token of affection, and a smile of welcome when they met again.

She felt tears well up in her eyes but did not pause a single moment to halt their fall. She rushed to where he stood and threw herself into his arms, wrapping hers around his neck.

“Oh, Stanley,” she whispered.

Gently bred young ladies did not kiss gentlemen. But she did, fervently and affectionately. Every ounce of her heart took part as she pressed her lips to his. She felt his arms wrap more tightly around her as he returned her kiss.

He whispered her name as he gently pulled back, his breathing as ragged as hers. One hand brushed tears from her face. His other arm still held her to him.

“That was quite a ‘how do you do’ you just offered. I am not sure Lord Devereaux would approve.”

“He would tease me mercilessly.” She felt remarkably content standing there in Stanley’s embrace. With a silent sigh, she laid her head on his shoulder, grateful she was tall enough to do so, even if barely. “Between him and Philip, I have quite had my share of surrogate older brothers.”

“Older bro—?” Stanley’s shocked question ended abruptly. She truly wished she could see his face, though she was unwilling to move a single inch from the circle of his arms. “Yes, older brothers can be a trifle annoying at times.” There was actually joy in his tone.

Marjie breathed deep the smell of him. How she had missed being close enough for that familiar scent to comfort her as it always had.

“Might I ask what warranted such an unforeseen greeting?” Stanley asked, not releasing her in the tiniest bit.

“You wrote to me.” She had to fight back the tears that threatened to spill over again.

“All this over a note?”

“I wished daily for a simple note from you while you were away.”

Stanley’s hand lightly caressed her hair. “I confess I didn’t realize until just now how truly important that was to you.”

“Without a letter, I couldn’t be entirely certain you hadn’t forgotten me.”

Stanley’s hands shifted to Marjie’s shoulders, and he set her back from him a little. His gaze captured and held hers. “I never once forgot you, Marjie. I thought of you every day. Even in my moments of delirium you didn’t leave my thoughts.”

“Delirium from the fevers?”

Stanley nodded.

“Because of the injury to your hand?” She could well imagine the infections that had set in from such a severe burn.

“And to my leg.” His expression clouded a little. “Can we sit?” he asked. “I am not certain my balance will last much longer.”

“Of course.” Marjie slipped her hand into his undamaged left and walked with him the few steps to the iron bench she’d so often occupied.

Stanley sat silently a moment, his face growing more somber. Marjie didn’t at all trust the change. She grasped his hand, holding it in both of hers.

“My leg was very badly injured at Waterloo.” He said the name of the battle with less difficulty than he had those first few weeks.

Thank the heavens for that small improvement.

“It was—” Stanley cleared his throat awkwardly. Marjie squeezed his hand. “It was not salvageable.”

Marjie thought on that for a moment, trying to decipher his meaning. For the second time that afternoon, she felt a mishmash of clues suddenly rearranging themselves: the stiffness of his right leg but the lack of pain. It had been badly injured and considered “not salvageable.” “Your leg was amputated.” She made the connection out loud.

Stanley nodded but did not look at her. He sat awkwardly, uncomfortably.

Marjie had no trouble identifying the emotions flitting across his face. “Now you are expecting me to be disgusted or pitying or horrified.”

“Aren’t you?”

Marjie reached up and gently touched his cheek. “What would have happened if your leg had been left as it was after the battle?”

Stanley dropped his gaze to the hand she was still holding. “It would have grown putrid.”

“And in war, is not infection a greater threat than any enemy?”

Stanley nodded, still not looking at her. Obviously, he found this hard to speak of. She had heard crippled soldiers express frustration and loss at their injuries. Many felt themselves somehow less than the person they had been because of their loss of abilities.

“If Sorrel’s leg had required amputation to save her life, I would not have cared for her any less than I did before,” Marjie said. “She means more to me than the mere sum of her parts.”

She brushed her fingers through the hair that fell across Stanley’s forehead. She trailed her fingers down the side of his face, resting them beneath his jaw. He did not respond to the upward pressure she exerted. “Please look at me,” she whispered.

He raised his head, and the pain in his eyes very nearly brought her to tears again. What a weight he carried. He had obviously decided that what he had endured, that the toll of battle on his body, would cost him her affection, perhaps even her respect.

“I love you, Stanley Jonquil.” He could not possibly know the risk she felt admitting as much. “I love you for who you are inside.” She moved her hand from his face to his heart, laying it there for emphasis. “I love your goodness and your kindness. Though I wish with all my heart I could take away the pain you have endured, I am selfish enough to be grateful that the surgeons kept you alive by what means they could.” A tear rolled down her face. Heavens, she had spent a lot of time crying.

Stanley seemed to be holding back tears of his own.

“I prayed constantly for your return,” Marjie said. “I simply wanted you here again. Perhaps it is my fault this happened.”

“Mar—”

“I ought not to have been so unspecific or persistent. I will carry the blame for that on my soul if I must, just as I do with my father.” Marjie leaned closer to him; she couldn’t seem to help herself. Months of fearing for his life pressed against her still. “I could not have lived if you were gone.”

She wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss that followed—it was brief and gentle but poignant. She could feel a certain hopelessness in Stanley that tore at her heart. What was wrong still?

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side, her head once more resting against him. She felt him sigh, though he made no sound.

“If I were but a farmer,” Stanley said, “would you be happy spending your life with me?”

“I would be happy with you if you were a highwayman,” Marjie said.

Stanley chuckled a little, the sound almost sad.

It was his profession, then, that stood in the way? “If you weren’t a soldier, would you marry me?” Marjie had no idea where her sudden forwardness came from. She was always more confident with Stanley than with anyone else but had never before been quite so bold.

She felt him kiss the top of her head. “If I weren’t a soldier, I’d have married you at Kinnley the very day I met you.”

Her heart soared. Not wishing to make him regret admitting so much, Marjie matched his light tone. “The very day?”

“Within the week, at least.”

“You must have liked me very much.” She closed her eyes, her heart pounding against the lingering possibility of rejection.

“I think I have loved you forever,” Stanley said quietly.

“But as a soldier, you cannot marry me?”

“There is but one thing I wish for more than to have you with me,” Stanley said. “I wish most for you to be happy. I have given this a great deal of thought. I know that life in the army would make you miserable.” Marjie opened her mouth to object, but Stanley spoke before she could. “The war may be over, Marjie, but the suffering continues. People are still dying. There are those who yet view us as their enemy and treat us as such. Soldiers are still being killed. True peace will be a long time coming. I cannot ask you to endure that. As much as I wish you could be with me, as much as I need you by my side, I could not force you to share a life I know would make you unhappy.”

Marjie shifted so she could look up into his face once more. “I could never be unhappy if I were with you.” Didn’t he understand that?

He lightly kissed her forehead before guiding her head back to his shoulder again. “You would be. You would come to know the soldiers only to have them die. Seeing the children of Paris suffering after years of neglect and hunger would tear at your heart. There are many people who are angry and unhappy and hateful. In time, the weight of it would pull you down.”

She wanted to argue, to insist that she would be happy in any circumstances if only they were together, but his words held a great deal of truth. As she pondered the pain of losing people she had come to care about, of seeing children starving in the streets, of the pulsating hatred of former enemies forced into close confines, she knew such a situation would be difficult at best.

“You are certain, then, that you will be recalled?” she asked.

“Yes. And I have a duty to perform, one I have sworn to see through to the end.”

He’d spoken of his career in those early days after they’d met as a matter of honor and loyalty to his country. Stanley did not intend to sell his commission and leave the army; his integrity would not allow it. His sense of honor was one of the things she loved most about him. She would never ask him to do something he would consider dishonorable.

They had another option though. “Not all army wives travel with their husbands.” Being left behind would be hard, but knowing she was his wife would keep him closer to her.

Marjie felt Stanley shake his head before he even answered. Another crack split her heart. She’d expected him to refuse, but it hurt just the same. “You deserve better than a husband who would be absent for years at a time. That would make you nearly as unhappy as being in the midst of conflict.”

“Then there is really no hope for us?” A moment more and she would be crying again.

“Hope is sometimes a fickle thing, my dear.” The endearment felt painful when spoken as part of such a heartbreaking conversation. “We hang on to it because we need to, even when there really is no point.”

“That is a very sad sort of hope,” Marjie said.

Minutes passed. She didn’t know how many. The sky outside darkened a bit as evening approached. She simply sat beside the man she loved and tried not to think about how much she had gained and lost in a few short sentences. He would be gone in a fortnight, and she would be alone again.

“Will you write to me?” Marjie asked, her voice not loud enough to reach beyond their little corner of the vast room.

He hesitated only a moment. “Until you are married and your husband objects.”

How could he believe she would marry another when she loved him so deeply?

She refused to think on it, to even ponder the possibility of marrying simply to stave off her loneliness. She had two weeks left with Stanley, two weeks in which to convince him that being left behind with the reassurance of his ring on her finger was far better than being left behind with nothing. If she could not manage that, she would spend the fortnight building memories on which to lean when the weight of his absence grew too heavy.

Until he left, she refused to give up on what little hope she had, no matter how forlorn that hope proved to be.