Chapter Twenty-Five

“What is all this?” Stanley looked around in confusion. There had to have been upward of five dozen people meandering about the grounds, in addition to what appeared to be the entire Lampton Park staff and a few maids and footmen in Farland Meadows livery. Interspersed amongst them all were an alarming number of blue dragoon uniforms, too many to be mere coincidence.

“It appears we have stumbled upon a party. Shocking.” Philip wore his mask of mindlessness, but a mischievous twitch at the corner of his mouth belied the impression.

Stanley gaped at the faces he quite suddenly and unexpectedly recognized: Private Sands, who had left the army after taking a bullet at Albuera; Private Smith, who had very nearly died of dysentery during Stanley’s third year on the Continent; Private Black, who’d lost an arm, a leg, and an eye during the forlorn hope at Orthez; Lieutenant Greenberry, a deuced fine officer who’d sold out after Waterloo. Why were they all at Lampton Park?

“If I didn’t know better,” Philip said almost sarcastically, “I’d guess this was some sort of reunion.”

Reunion? Stanley glanced from Philip to the gathered guests. It was a blasted army reunion. Stanley could feel his gaze grow mutinous. He turned sharply and walked in the direction of the house.

“Don’t you dare.” Philip’s command stopped Stanley in his tracks. “Many of these people traveled long distances to be here, and the effort of arranging for their transportation and, in some cases, the financial means for them to do so deserves a moment of your time.”

“Time?” Stanley spun to face him. “You think I object to the inconvenience?”

“I think you object to the idea of remembering any of the things these people stand for in your mind,” Philip answered, his understanding uncanny. “But you will do so, for their sake and your own.”

“My sake? Revisiting any of this will do me no good.”

“I never knew you to be a coward,” Philip said. “This will be difficult, I can appreciate that, but I honestly believe you will be better for the experience if you can find the fortitude to face it.”

“Is that why you went behind my back and planned this . . . this ridiculous scheme?”

“I did not plan it, though I helped with its execution.”

“Then who did?” Stanley suspected Pluck.

“You think I will simply give you a name so you can throttle the poor soul?” Philip raised an eyebrow. “I think not.”

“I won’t go over there without a name,” Stanley warned.

“Good heavens,” Philip muttered. “It is as if you were five years old again.”

Philip grabbed Stanley by the back of his arm and forcibly propelled him in the direction of the gathered horde. Stanley could do nothing to prevent being dragged, and he would not appear so ridiculous.

“So this is why you gammoned me into wearing my best uniform,” Stanley muttered.

“Couldn’t have you disgracing yourself.” Philip pulled him all the way to the nearest knot of people.

“Lieut—Cap’n Jonquil.” Private Nielsen had known Stanley before his promotion. The man enthusiastically shook Stanley’s hand. Someone must have warned him, for he reached without hesitation for Stanley’s left. “Can’t say how pleased I am to have been invited and to see you again.”

Stanley was forthwith introduced to Nielsen’s young wife, Minna. His little boy was pointed out as he ran about with a group of children. Nielsen had been so young when first they’d met and so afraid he’d not survive. Yet here he was, alive and well, with a family of his own.

Names were exchanged all around the remainder of the circle. Stanley found he knew every one. Among them were names he’d written on letters long ago, names burned into his memory. A mother, a sister, a father, a wife of a soldier who’d been lost.

Each group of people was the same. He saw faces he recognized and heard names he would never forget.

“My mother wouldn’t stop cryin’ after word of Jem reached us,” a sister of one of Stanley’s earliest losses said. Tears pooled in her eyes as she spoke, and Stanley felt himself grasping at his vastly fluctuating emotions. “Then she got yer letter, Cap’n Jonquil. An’ ye had so much to say ’bout poor Jem that was kind and happy. Turned her around, it did. She still was sad and missed him something awful, but she could smile again. She had the vicar read that letter again and again till she could say it word for word.”

“I am grateful that I could do something, however small.” He had done little but write a letter, and the disproportionate amount of praise he was receiving made him decidedly uncomfortable.

“Oh, but it weren’t small,” the woman insisted. “It meant the world to her.”

“You did a lot of good, Stanley.” Marjie’s voice at his side came as a surprise. “I don’t think you realize how much.” She slipped her arm through his, leading him toward another gathered group.

“But Jem Baker is dead.” Stanley shook his head. “I merely wrote a letter. How can that possibly compare to his family’s loss?”

“You are measuring wrong.” Marjie squeezed his arm. “Rather than compare the impact of a letter to that of a lost loved one, compare it to the impact of losing that loved one without receiving a letter of comfort at all.”

She walked with him through several more introductions and reunions. It was easier with her beside him. As the impact of each name struck and he attempted to push back the memories various faces conjured up, she would squeeze his arm or move closer to him, and he found he could endure it.

Marjie didn’t leave his side until they came upon a face Stanley had always felt was impossibly out of place on a battlefield.

“Lieutenant Greenberry.” She stepped to where the young lieutenant stood and offered her hands. Marjie pulled him closer to Stanley, and he found himself forcing down a surge of pure jealousy. Greenboy, as they’d all called him, had charmed each and every female he’d come across simply by looking at them. He had seen nearly as much action as Stanley himself but without coming away scarred and broken. “Captain Jonquil has arrived at last.”

“Jonquil.” Greenboy was no longer in the army and was out of uniform, and though many of the other former soldiers had reverted to old habits as they’d been introduced, the former lieutenant offered a bow rather than a salute.

“Greenberry,” Stanley shot back. Mixed with a desire to pull Marjie back to his side and scuff up that cherubic face of Greenberry’s was a wave of remembered battles and an afternoon spent with a soldier they had, between the two of them, tried and failed to save.

Greenboy smiled at Stanley’s curt tone, those dimples that more than one camp follower had swooned over popping up on either side of his mouth.

Stanley found himself unexpectedly and unaccountably chuckling. “You angel-faced devil,” he said, holding out his left hand and receiving a hardy handshake.

“How have you been, Jonquil?”

“I believe I will leave you two gentlemen to your reunion.” Marjie moved to Stanley’s side. She raised up on tiptoe and whispered, “I am so very happy to see you smile again.” She kissed him on the cheek, much as one would a sibling, then gently touched his face before walking away.

Stanley watched her go, his heart hammering in his rib cage. He’d taken Philip’s advice quite to heart and had kept his distance from Marjie. Though he thought often of pulling her into his arms and kissing her thoroughly, he hadn’t done more than hold her hand. That simple salute on the cheek had nearly undone him.

“Our captain’s angel,” Greenboy said.

“She really is an angel.” His men had given her that name without realizing how much it fit her.

“An angel who is quite obviously in love with you.” Greenboy motioned with his head toward the tables of food where the assembled guests were gathering. Stanley followed the unspoken suggestion, grateful Greenboy adjusted his usually brisk pace to allow for Stanley’s permanently slower one. “While we are all grateful for this chance to see so many friends again, none of us is so foolish as to think she arranged all this for our sakes.”

“She arranged all this? Marjie?” Not Pluck? Not one of his brothers?

“Her letter was almost ridiculously convincing,” Greenboy said. “Not to mention the fact that there were a lot of us who were so shocked at receiving a letter from our captain’s angel that we would have done absolutely anything she asked of us just for the honor of being written to.”

“Her letters.” So much of what he’d seen the last few weeks began to make sense. All the mail Marjie had sent, all the secretive looks and aborted conversations had been related to this. Ridiculously convincing? “What did she say in her letter?”

Greenboy’s grin spread wider. “That you were home for a short time and that she wished very much for you to see the men who had come to mean so much to you during your service, along with a few other things.”

“What other things?” Stanley wasn’t sure why he wanted so desperately to know precisely what she had written about him, how she had convinced such a large gathering of people to come during a difficult season for travel. For some in attendance, such a trip would be a hardship on many levels.

“Let’s just say she made it clear that you needed us to be here, and seeing as how you are our captain, none of us would think of being anywhere else, now would we?”

“She made me out to be a charity case?” Embarrassment warred with indignation.

“Your angel?” Greenboy scoffed. “Would she do anything like that?”

“No. No, she wouldn’t.”

“C’mon.” Greenboy waved him forward, toward a clump of former soldiers laughing over pints and plates at a nearby table. “Come give the boys a few minutes. They need this as much as you do. We may not have left the service with the injuries you did, but we all carry around the weight of it. We need a dose of captain comfort.”

Stanley cringed at the despised nickname. “Our captain” was tolerable. “Captain Comfort” made him sound like a shot of hard liquor at a seedy tavern.

The table full of mangled, prematurely aged, and weather-bitten men hailed Stanley as he joined them. How different they would all have been without their shared experiences. He summoned one of his artificial smiles, the kind he’d become so adept at during the war, and accepted a cup from Private Smith, who looked far better than he had the last time Stanley had seen him.

Smith had always been the best storyteller in their regiment. “We were just rememberin’ that time marchin’ through the Pyrenees when Major Horace-Fulton’s mount refused to go another step.”

Greenboy exchanged an amused look with Stanley, who couldn’t help the mirth that spread across his own face.

“Poor ol’ Horseface couldn’t get the beast to move so much as an inch.”

Snickers sounded around the table. Horace-Fulton had not been a popular officer. The entire regiment had enjoyed the major’s humiliation at his lack of control over his own mount.

“So Major struts to his horse’s head”—Smith stood with his chest puffed out in a deuced good impression of the loathed, arrogant officer—“an’ barks at the thing, ‘You will move!’ An’ bless ’im, the horse moved. Moved its head enough to bite a button off Major’s jacket.”

Stanley laughed at the memory. Not a soul had intervened as the major’s horse had grown more insubordinate; they’d simply glanced at one another, silently laughing at a moment they knew would be long remembered.

“‘Give it back,’ Major ordered.”

“An’ the lovely horse spit it at him,” Private Black shouted out, pulling laughs from the entire table.

“So what does the high-steppin’ major say?” Smith looked around at the men, who all knew the answer well enough.

Stanley rose to his feet, pitched his voice at the ear-grating height that had easily identified Horace-Fulton amongst a crowd, and said, “‘I am a major!’”

They all laughed deep and full. What a ridiculous picture that conceited man had made. His foolish escapades had been nightly campfire fodder.

“Pulled rank on a horse, he did!” Smith wiped at a streaming eye as he continued laughing.

The stories flowed endlessly. Stanley had forgotten how funny some of their experiences had been. He lived with the constant reminders of loss and suffering but had needed a reminder of the things he had actually enjoyed about his years of service.

Some hours later, a bonfire was lit, adding warmth and light to the approaching night. The staff brought out yet more food. Strangers had become instant friends, while old friendships were firmed and renewed.

Stanley found he was even able to greet Lord Devereaux with some degree of equanimity. He saw in the viscount’s treatment of Marjie precisely what she had described: the attentions and concerns of an older brother. Lord Devereaux shared yet another story of a family who had been touched by Stanley’s letters. It was mind-boggling. He’d written out of a helplessness he couldn’t seem to shake and had unknowingly managed to do some good after all.

He stood near enough to the bonfire to feel its warmth and watched the faces around him. They had all lost so much, and yet hope and joy filled their expressions. He wanted to think he had played a role in their happiness, that the past five years hadn’t been entirely destructive.

Stanley sensed Marjie’s approach before he saw her. She had floated around, overseeing all aspects of the gathering, checking on Sorrel, though unobtrusively, and had generally held the entire day together. He was beginning to realize Marjie was, somehow, even more amazing than he had realized.

She stopped beside him. “Are you terribly angry with me?”

Of all the things she might have said, Stanley had not expected that. “Why in heaven’s name would I be angry with you?”

Her gaze shifted from his face to the fire and the people surrounding it. “You didn’t look very pleased when you first arrived.”

Good heavens, she thought he was angry with her. Stanley temporarily consigned Philip’s advice to Hades and wrapped his arm around Marjie, pulling her up against him.

“I wanted you to see—to understand—” She didn’t lean into him but didn’t pull away. “You said once that you wondered if you ever did any good by the men you served with. I needed you to see that you have.”

Stanley turned enough to draw her fully into an embrace. He felt her arms wrap around his waist.

“Please don’t be angry,” she whispered into his coat front.

He bent enough to whisper into her ear. “I love you.”

Marjie turned her face up to look at him, a pleading light in her eyes. Stanley kissed the tip of her nose but allowed himself no other liberties.

“And I thank you for this day,” he added. “You have done more good than I think you realize.”