Chapter Nine
AFTER HANNAH FLETCHER departed with the sleeping baby, the remaining hours of Sunday seemed ten times longer to Gavin. He could have sworn some invisible force was holding back the hands of the clock. He tried to occupy himself by rereading the newspapers and tracing Bonaparte’s movements since Waterloo. But it was difficult to separate the golden needles of fact from the haystack of rumor and speculation.
If only he could have talked it over with Miss Fletcher, he felt certain the picture would have come into clearer focus. But that was impossible because he had sent her away. Had he overreacted to their accidental contact and the unexpected feelings it provoked?
There could be any number of innocent reasons why he felt closer to her than he had any right to. Most likely it was because they had been forced to spend so much time together. Pairs of soldiers sent out on patrol often came to rely on one another and develop a close camaraderie.
Or perhaps the feelings he imagined were prompted by the presence of his infant daughter. All the firmness and severity he had cultivated as a cavalry commander deserted him when he held that small, soft creature in his arms. His heart grew as malleable as warm wax, which she proceeded to wrap around her tiny finger. Was it any wonder such a state should make him vulnerable to unexpected fancies? Perhaps it was best to keep a cautious distance.
Gavin roused from his musing to realize he had spent far more time thinking about Hannah Fletcher than Napoleon Bonaparte.
The next morning was just as bad. The time crept by with aching slowness. Yet whenever Gavin sought to pass it, his wayward thoughts returned to Miss Fletcher like a flock of stubborn homing pigeons. When they did, his conscience never failed to reproach him.
He looked forward to the early afternoon hours which would bring the post and a visit from little Arthur. He longed for those events as eagerly as any embattled regiment had ever looked for reinforcements. When at last he heard Miss Fletcher’s firm, brisk footsteps approaching, his heart bounded with the expectation of deliverance.
She entered the room, cradling his tiny son against her shoulder. In her left hand she clutched a newspaper and a letter. Seldom in his life had Gavin beheld so welcome a sight.
“I have received a reply from Lady Benedict!” she announced with barely suppressed excitement.
A fortnight ago, Gavin would not have believed her capable of such feelings. Since then he had glimpsed several unexpected facets of her character. She also possessed many fine qualities he had perceived but failed to appreciate. She was honest, practical, responsible and hardworking. But the lady had a softer side, which she tended to keep well hidden. Perhaps because she feared it would make her vulnerable? Though she strove to appear placid, Gavin had discovered she could be stimulating company with an engaging sense of humor. Now he was pleased to find she was capable of almost childlike eagerness.
The contagious feeling communicated itself to him, banishing the frustrated boredom of the past hours. “What does Lady Benedict say? Do she and her husband accept my invitation? When will they arrive?”
“I will not know until I read her letter.” A winsome smile softened Miss Fletcher’s tart reply. “Since that will be difficult to do while holding a squirming baby, I must ask you to take your son.”
She transferred the child to Gavin’s waiting arms then seated herself beside his bed. She tugged off her bonnet and opened the letter.
Meanwhile, Gavin greeted his small son. “How do you do today, Arthur? I hope you are in good cheer.”
Though he could not understand his father’s words the child answered by bursting into a wide grin. His eyes sparkled with innocent pleasure in Gavin’s company.
“I see you have learned something new!” Gavin gave a delighted chuckle. “You did not want your clever sister to get ahead of you, I expect.”
His enthusiastic response made little Arthur smile even wider. He wriggled in Gavin’s arms and crowed happily.
“Have you seen what he can do?” Gavin held his son up for Miss Fletcher’s inspection. “Isn’t he a clever lad?”
She glanced up from her letter as if reluctant to stop reading. But a smile tugged up the corners of her lips in response to the baby’s. “What would the men of your regiment say if they could see their colonel now?”
He tried to resist her teasing tone but found it quite impossible. “The bachelors among them might reckon I have gone mad from being confined to quarters for so long. But the men who are married with young ones of their own would surely take a more charitable view.”
Gavin addressed his next words to his son. “Give Miss Fletcher another smile and turn her to mush so she will not make fun of your poor, doting papa.”
The baby obliged, with precisely the effect Gavin had predicted.
Hannah Fletcher cooed and chucked Arthur under the chin. “You are going to grow up to be a charmer—I can see that.”
“What does Lady Benedict write?” Gavin asked, now that Miss Fletcher had begun to read the letter.
She winked at the baby then glanced back over her friend’s missive. “Rebecca asks me to thank you for your kind invitation and says they would be grateful to accept your hospitality. She also wishes you their sincere condolences on the passing of your late wife. She hopes it will not be too inconvenient for you to entertain guests while Edgecombe is in mourning. The rest is private news I will not tire you with.”
Miss Fletcher seemed a trifle flustered. Gavin wondered what Lady Benedict had written that might affect her so.
“I am pleased to hear my invitation has been accepted.” He kept his gaze fixed on his infant son. “I look forward to meeting your friend and her husband. When do they expect to arrive?”
“Rebecca writes that they should be here on Friday, if that will be convenient.”
“Perfectly.” Gavin raised his voice to carry over the babbling of his small son. “With the doctor’s approval, I should be out of this wretched bed and able to receive them properly.”
“You will still be here, then?” Miss Fletcher asked. “Not gone to the Continent?”
Gavin could not tell whether the prospect pleased or dismayed her. “I doubt it would be wise to depart on a long, uncertain journey the day after I am allowed out of bed. Besides I need reliable information, which I hope Lord Benedict can provide. Speaking of reliable information, can I prevail upon you to check whether the newspaper has anything useful to report?”
He knew he should save the paper to occupy him after Miss Fletcher and his son went away, but he enjoyed hearing her read the news to him in her clear, melodious voice.
“Of course, sir.” Miss Fletcher opened the newspaper and searched for the reports he wished to hear.
“Well…?” he prompted after several minutes of paper rustling without a word out of her. “Have they anything at all to report?”
“Not about the subject of most interest to you,” she replied. “There is only a single sentence in the Brussels Mail column. ‘It is not known what is become of Bonaparte.’”
How could one man create such havoc then disappear without a trace? Gavin could barely suppress a growl of helpless vexation. What made him imagine he could catch the man when no one else in Europe seemed to have the slightest idea of his whereabouts? Gavin could picture his father sneering at the very idea.
“Is there anything else about the situation in France?” he asked.
He found it harder to keep his attention on the baby, who had stopped smiling and begun to grow agitated. Perhaps wee Arthur was picking up on his mood.
When Miss Fletcher finally answered his question, her voice sounded husky. “There is nearly an entire page given over to returns of the killed, wounded and missing from Waterloo and the other battles. The numbers are almost impossible to comprehend. They go on and on.”
“I can imagine.” Gavin held the baby to his shoulder, hoping it would soothe the wee fellow as it had his sister. “I saw many of them fall. Does it give a total reckoning for Waterloo?”
“The total killed for British and Hanoverian troops combined was two general staff, one colonel, four lieutenant colonels, six majors, forty-eight captains, twenty-eight lieutenants, sixty cornets or ensigns, five staff, two quartermasters, one hundred and seven sergeants, thirteen drummers, one thousand eight hundred and nine rank and file and one thousand four hundred and ninety-five horses.”
In a hollow tone, she read off the numbers missing, which were roughly equal to the number dead, then the number wounded, which was five times higher.
In spite of Gavin’s efforts to soothe his small son, the baby began to wail as if he understood the devastation those stark figures represented.
“Something I cannot fathom,” Hannah Fletcher concluded in a horrified murmur, “is how fifteen hundred men can go missing.”
Gavin shrugged. This deadly reckoning of war’s cost had long ago become routine to him. But the massive casualties of that one battle and Miss Fletcher’s sickened reaction made it seem intensely personal. “They were unaccounted for after the battle. Some may have deserted their ranks or been taken prisoner, others may have gotten separated from their regiments somehow but turned up later. Most will be dead, I’m afraid.”
He did not tell her how wounded soldiers might crawl away under cover to die, their bodies only discovered long afterward. Or how a direct hit from artillery could leave almost nothing to identify. The impersonal numbers alone had been enough to appall her.
“It is not only for Molesworth’s sake that I must prevent Bonaparte from ever doing this again.” His son’s cries provided a fitting accompaniment to Gavin’s fierce declaration. “It is for every one of the men those casualty numbers represent.”
Perhaps it was a good thing he had become so attached to his children. Leaving them to undertake his final mission would be a sacrifice, but only a minor one compared to what those men had given for king and country. He could not let it have been for nothing. If it meant he must miss some of the babies’ early accomplishments, he would make it up to them later, during the years of peace those brave men had won.
Would seeing those casualty returns help Hannah Fletcher accept what he must do? Gavin hoped so. He sensed he would have a much greater chance of success with her staunch support.
Those grim numbers in the newspaper haunted Hannah as she returned little Arthur to his wet nurse and then headed back to Edgecombe. The sky had grown overcast, and now the black-bottomed clouds spat large drops of rain on her. It felt as if the heavens were weeping for all those slain at Waterloo. Hannah was inclined to join in, venting some of the grief she had been obliged to stifle so she could fulfill her promise to Lady Hawkehurst.
It was not only her dismay over those appalling casualties that made her throat tighten and her eyes sting. It was also her fears for his lordship. She had made such excellent progress fostering his paternal feelings for the babies. When he spent time with the twins, he seemed content to sit and cuddle them, not itching to be off in pursuit of Napoleon Bonaparte.
But hearing those dreadful numbers of soldiers killed had revived the earl’s determination to take up his quest. Hannah was relieved that he seemed willing to delay his departure until after Rebecca’s visit, but that would only buy a little extra time. If no one else captured Bonaparte by the time the Benedicts departed, there would be no stopping Lord Hawkehurst.
Much as she longed to find a way, for the sake of her young charges, she could not deny the need to prevent a repeat of Waterloo in another year. The Allied commanders had allowed the former emperor to slip through their fingers, which led Hannah to wonder whether one resourceful, resolute man might succeed where unwieldy armies had failed.
But must that man be Lord Hawkehurst? As Hannah entered the big house and hurried up to the nursery, she fancied she could hear the late countess questioning her loyalty. Was it not enough that the earl had put king and country ahead of his family while his wife was alive? Must he abandon his three motherless children to go off on a dangerous mission, from which he might never return? There must be something more she could do to persuade him where his priorities should lie.
Hannah squared her shoulders and tilted her chin. She could not let her ladyship down, nor the children she had come to love as if they were hers. Gavin Romney was a much better man than she had appreciated until recently. She knew he wanted to be a good father to his children. He’d needed her help learning to handle the babies. Now perhaps he needed her help to understand how very much his children needed him.
When she entered the nursery, Hannah found Peter with the nursemaid, folding scraps of paper into little boats and other shapes.
“Aren’t you clever?” Hannah ruffled the child’s hair affectionately. “Did Maisie show you how to make those?”
“Only the boat,” said Maisie, beaming with pride in her young master. “He figured out all the others by himself.”
That gave Hannah an idea. She picked up the remaining paper and addressed her young pupil. “Why don’t you choose three of your best ones and bring them to show your father? I am certain he would like to see them.”
The child looked over his creations with a frown of concentration. At least Hannah hoped that was the cause of his expression. “I thought Papa could not see me because he is too tired. You said he must have a very long rest and you needed to look after him.”
It took Hannah aback to hear her excuses parroted so accurately. Sometimes young Lord Edgecombe could be rather too clever for his own good. She considered what to tell him and decided the truth would be best, now that he seemed to be recovering from the shock of his mother’s death.
She pulled up a chair and sat down beside him at the nursery table. “Your papa did need to rest, but not only because he was tired. He was injured, you see, and he needed to get better. But he is almost well now and I believe he finds the time long with little to do. I believe he would enjoy a visit from you.”
The child pursed his lips and turned his paper boat over and over in his hands. “Do I have to go and see him, Miss Hannah?”
How should she answer that? Hannah did not want to force the child to do something against his will. On the other hand, it would not be a good thing for the earl and his son to be kept apart much longer. The sooner they began to build a proper relationship, the better it would be for both of them.
“I think it would be a very kind deed for you to visit your papa,” she replied after several moments’ consideration. “Remember how much you enjoyed having company when you were ill in bed last winter?”
She rose and held out her hand to the child. They could discuss his reservations on the way. By the time it was all settled, they would have reached his lordship’s chamber.
“That’s because it was Mama who came to see me.” With a reluctant air, the boy slid off his chair and gathered up three of his folded paper creations from the table. “Papa never visited me at all.”
Hannah thought back. “That’s because he had been summoned to London, remember? I’m certain he would rather have stayed home to visit with you, but there were urgent army matters that required his attention.”
She began walking toward the door. Though she did not insist Peter accompany her, he followed.
“Papa is always doing army things,” the child grumbled as he trailed her down the thickly carpeted corridor hung with imposing family portraits. “Mama said he should not have gone to London when I was ill. She said he cares more about war and fighting than he does about us.”
Hannah spun around as if someone had seized her from behind. Why had her ladyship said such a terrible thing to her young son? Even if she’d believed it, how could she have told the child something that was certain to hurt him and poison his chances of one day growing close to his father?
She recalled how desperately Lady Hawkehurst had hoped the end of the war would mean the beginning of an idyllic family life with her husband. But while the earl had returned to Edgecombe in body, his spirit had remained elsewhere. Uncommunicative and preoccupied, he’d sought any excuse to escape the house. Lately Hannah had begun to understand why, but back then she’d encouraged his wife to confide in her, providing sympathy and indignation to a long litany of complaints. Had they sometimes spoken within earshot of the child, assuming he was too young to understand? Perhaps he had grasped more than they’d ever suspected.
Overcome with remorse for the harm she might have done through her thoughtlessness, Hannah sank to the floor before her young pupil. Was it too late to undo the damage?
“Peter, you know how devoted I was to your mama, but I do not believe your father cares more about war and fighting than he does about you.”
“Why did Mama say it, then?” The child regarded her with a grave, doubtful expression, his head cocked to one side. “She wouldn’t tell me lies.”
“Of course not.” The last thing Hannah wanted to do was turn Peter against his late mother. “But sometimes when people get angry or frightened or have their feelings hurt, they may say things they would not say if they were quite happy. When they feel better, they might admit they… exaggerated. I know it must be difficult for you to understand now, but when you get older…”
Her explanation trailed off. Was there any way she could convey such a complex idea that a child might understand?
“Is it the same as when I was ill and you had to put that poultice on me?” asked Peter. “I didn’t like it so I said you were nasty and I wished Mama would send you away. I meant it just then but after I was sorry and wished I hadn’t said it.”
Out of the mouths of babes, indeed.
“That is just what I meant.” Hannah reminded herself not to underestimate the child’s powers of reason in the future. “Regardless of what anyone has told you about your father, I hope you will give him a chance to prove himself. I do not believe he likes fighting and war, but he knows it is sometimes necessary to protect our country and its friends.”
She rose and beckoned the child on, hoping his innocent wisdom would guide him to give his father the benefit of the doubt. If the earl could win her regard after the way she had misjudged him, surely he could forge a bond with his young son if he tried.
“Now that the war is over,” she continued, “I believe your papa wants to devote himself to you and Arthur and Alice.”
It was certainly what he ought to do and what she wanted him to do. There were times she had watched him with the babies and felt certain it was what he wanted, too. Yet he had such stubborn, limiting ideas about what he could and could not do. Sometimes his fear of failure seemed to prevent him from trying things Hannah firmly believed he could do. Though he had any number of good reasons for wanting to apprehend Napoleon Bonaparte, she wondered if the earl felt he had a better chance of succeeding at his final military mission than he did of raising three young children.
She had helped him experience some success with the babies. Now if she could bring him and his eldest son together, perhaps he would realize that fatherhood might be his most important mission.
When they reached the earl’s bedchamber, she peeped in. “Excuse me, sir. I have brought Lord Edgecombe to visit. He has something he would like to show you.”
Lord Hawkehurst reclined on a pile of pillows, studying the newspaper, his dark brows knit in a severe expression. Hannah could hardly blame him, considering the news. Yet she hoped his look would not frighten his young son. In her experience, children that age viewed everything in relation to themselves. If someone was angry or upset, it must be their fault.
“Has he, indeed?” The earl set his newspaper aside and made an obvious effort to welcome his son… a bit too obvious, perhaps. His tone of forced heartiness rang false. “Well, bring him in and let me see.”
Peter peered around the edge of the doorway but made no move to enter. Hannah was reluctant to push him. Had the child ever been inside his father’s bedchamber or seen him in his nightshirt?
Perhaps the most helpful thing she could do was approach Lord Hawkehurst, to demonstrate that there was no reason to be afraid of him. She marched toward the bed and tried to ignore the fluttery sensation inside her that had nothing to do with fear. Was she only anxious that this meeting between father and son go well or was it something more?
“Maisie showed him how to fold paper into little figures.” Hannah raised the sheaf of paper and waved it to fan her cheeks, which had suddenly grown warm. “He is very skillful. I thought you might care to give it a try to pass the time.”
“Folding bits of paper?” The earl gave a derisive laugh, which ceased abruptly when Hannah shook her head and nodded toward the door, where his son hung back. “I… er… suppose it might be amusing. Though I am not certain I possess the necessary dexterity.”
Who had first told him that and made him believe it? Hannah could guess. “I imagine it takes considerable dexterity to handle a horse and wield a weapon at the same time.”
“Coordination, perhaps.” The earl made it sound like nothing of which to boast. “Wielding a pen takes far more skill, which I never properly mastered.”
“I can make my letters,” piped a small voice from the doorway.
With a swift jab of shame, Hannah realized that she had almost forgotten about the child.
She turned to him with an encouraging smile. “You are making fine progress with your penmanship.”
There was still room for improvement, but Hannah refused to dwell on that. Her young pupil did very well for his age. She had no intention of planting any seeds of doubt about his abilities in his impressionable mind. She had seen what poisonous fruit they could bear in later years.
The earl’s voice rang out, addressing his son. “You are a fortunate boy to have such a kind governess. When I was you age, mine was a perfect ogre in skirts.”
“She was?” Peter’s eyes widened.
His father gave a rueful nod. “According to her, I was the greatest dunce in three counties and too lazy to improve my shortcomings.”
What would Peter make of all that? Hannah wondered. It helped her understand why the earl had once resented the privileged position she’d assumed in his household. He must have viewed her as another ogre in skirts, determined to think the worst of him no matter how hard he tried. She wished his opinion of her had been further from the truth.
“Miss Hannah says everyone makes mistakes.” Peter edged over the threshold. “She says mistakes can help us learn sometimes.”
Inwardly Hannah shuddered at how prim and naive that sounded.
The earl gave no sign of sharing that opinion. “Then Miss Hannah is wise as well as kind. Does that mean if you show me how to fold paper I should not allow my mistakes to discourage me, but try to learn from them?”
His lordship’s praise, and his use of her Christian name, made Hannah’s heart swell, while his question to his son humbled her. She had intended to show him how to draw closer to the boy. Yet even after they’d gotten off on the wrong foot, the earl had kept trying until he began to find his way. She prayed his effort would yield the success he deserved.
In reply to his father’s question, Peter nodded. “That’s right.”
As Hannah stood rooted to the spot, the child walked past her toward his father’s bed. “Would you like me to show you? It isn’t as hard as you think. It may be easier for me because my fingers are smaller, but you mustn’t mind about that.”
The remark might sound patronizing coming from a young boy to his father, but it was kindly meant. It brought a lump to Hannah’s throat and a smile to her lips at the same time.
“These are some of the ones I made.” Peter spread his handiwork on the bedclothes. “Maisie showed me how to make this boat. She floated hers in the nursery basin, but I didn’t want mine to get wet. Next I made this little box. And this one is supposed to be a hare.”
“I thought so by the long ears.” The earl glanced from the small paper objects to his son.
Pride and pleasure in the child’s company seemed to battle fear that he might put a foot wrong again and spoil the promising beginning they’d made. Hannah hoped he would heed his son’s advice about learning from mistakes rather than letting them prevent him from trying.