by Abby Ayles
He pressed the small gift he had brought her, a wooden charm fashioned by one of the soldiers in his command to the shape of a heart, into her hand. It was small, but it was something, and he hoped that it would give her strength.
“I will see you anon,” he promised. “Whether it be November, under this tree, or when I come through the doors of that house over there to claim you as my bride.”
“I can only dream of it,” Juliana murmured. “I will dream of it every night. It is all I can do.”
“That is more than enough to ask from you,” Christopher assured her. “I will think of you, and you will think of me. I hope that will bring you a smile, each night, to know that we think the same thoughts.”
“It will,” Juliana told him, her eyes brimming with tears even as she smiled. “Then farewell, Lieutenant Hardwicke. Go now, before I am weak again and cannot bear you to leave.”
“I will,” Christopher said. He gave her one last kiss upon the brow and hastened to his horse, untying the reins from the fence and climbing up into the saddle as quickly as he could.
It would not do to falter now, for if he did, he felt that he might stay under that oak tree forever.
He gave her one last look as he wheeled his mount back to face the way he had come, and what he saw there was so heart-rending, tears streaming down Juliana’s face, that all he could do was lift a hand in farewell and go.
If he had tried any other course, he would have been trapped, and unmanned, and nothing they had planned could have come to pass.
The long ride home was a fruitful one, in which he redoubled all of his plans and marshaled his thoughts to an arrangement that would bring their betrothal in the quickest possible terms.
He did not allow the week to pass before he had taken action. He rode to nearby inns where he knew he had caused a commotion when drinking with Jasper, and paid each innkeeper a fair recompense for furniture broken or ale mugs smashed.
He apologized to each one, and more besides: men he had fought with in his cups, anyone he might have insulted when he played the scoundrel, those affected by his poor behavior.
And more besides that: he took his spare time to help widows and poor women in the villages around the barracks, bringing loaves of bread bought with his own wage or mending fences or roof shingles.
He became a known sight in the parishes, helped his men to excel as soldiers, and led a good example of his own in any way that he could.
There were promises that he had made, and no one could ever say again that he was a man who broke his promises.
The weeks and months wore on, and Christopher worked on becoming the best man he could envisage: a man more honorable than Brazen, more fair than Edmund, more earnest than Samuel.
In short, he took every good quality he could think of to the furthest extreme it was possible to go, all the while with his thoughts on Juliana.
Chapter 35
The last of the summer months, hot and sticky, whiled away. Juliana could not help but pine for Christopher, holding the charm close to her chest as she slept and dreaming of his kisses.
If the nights were bliss, her only possible release, then her days were hellish.
The Duchess had not given up her wailing on the subject of Juliana’s failure to marry thus far, and would not let a single day pass without mentioning it as loudly as she possibly might.
“It is awful, having a spinster for a daughter,” the Duchess moaned at breakfast on one such example of a day. “What are we to do about balls? Should we parade her, or is it only an invitation for scorn on our name?”
The Duke rustled the pages of his paper meaningfully, not pausing to look up at her. “It is your choice, my dear,” he said vaguely.
“Both of her sisters were wed and with child by the time they were the age Juliana is now,” the Duchess said. “Myself, too. There is no hope for it; none at all.”
“She will have to make her way with it,” the Duke said, in the tone of one who is tired of discussing the same subject ad nauseum.
“Did you hear about Lord Drevon?” the Duchess asked.
“Mama, you told us last week,” Juliana tried, in an effort both to end this painful repetition and to give some remembrance that she was still in the room.
“Married!” the Duchess cried, ignoring her daughter. “Married, already, to another young lady from down that way.
“The chance is gone; even if his pride would allow him to take Juliana back. Our last hope, taken from us entirely! And we not even invited to attend the wedding!”
“It would have been rather odd if we were there, dearest,” the Duke pointed out, not unreasonably.
“It was the grandest ceremony Drevon has seen for some time,” the Duchess continued regardless.
“White doves, they had. And much dancing. All the noble lords and ladies for miles around, and any they knew from Bath or London, were all invited. Such a large party!”
Juliana and the Duke both said nothing. Juliana because she wanted nothing more than to drop into a hole in the earth than to hear this story again, and the Duke because he was simply uninterested.
Whatever was in his paper was more compelling. Juliana could not blame him, but the Duchess did not seem at all deterred.
“She will die a spinster now, mark it,” she continued. “That lord, what a party he threw for all of his guests! It was such a gay affair. No one will do that for Juliana now. She will stay here until you die, you know, haunting us like a bad penny. Whatever will we do with her, husband?”
The Duke cleared his throat and turned the page of his paper.
“Oh, confound you both,” the Duchess shrieked, getting up with such a clatter that her chair almost overturned.
“I go to the sitting room. I should not wish to be disturbed by either of you for the rest of the morning.”
When she was gone, Juliana made one last attempt to pick at her breakfast, but sighed and left it. She was getting thin under all of this admonishment; already, her favorite dress was starting to hang loose.
The Duke closed his paper and put it down, glowering at Juliana. “See,” he proclaimed. “Now your mother is upset.”
Juliana stared at him. If she had expected any sympathy at all to her plight, and the unending reminders she received of it, she was clearly wrong. The Duke blamed her just as much as her mother did.
When Juliana made no reply, the Duke harrumphed and shook his head. “Such an ungrateful child,” he said.
“I will go to my room,” Juliana said quietly, knowing better than to argue her case or even to stay where she was.
She retreated to her own domain, where she was at least not as much of a prisoner now; yet, still made to feel unwanted and unlooked for, she returned there for most of her waking hours.
It was there or the small library, where she could at least read about the life of some other character and follow her instead.
It was much nicer to drift into the realm of imagination, even when the characters were faced with danger or misery. It was not her own, and that made it sweeter; and when they overcame and triumphed at the end, she could not help but feel her own day of triumph was near.
She did not waste her hours on worry. Juliana had drawn great strength from her meeting with Christopher, and though she wished that the day would come sooner that they could be together, she trusted in his quest to make it happen.
She believed that he would come for her, and free her from these days of melancholy.
So, she sat, and endured as he had asked of her; and she waited for the day that he would arrive on her doorstep to change everything.
Though her mother had other ideas.
The dinner had not been announced to her, though when it came, it seemed clear that it must have been planned for some long time previously.
Juliana’s elder sister, Margaret, came to visit them with her husband, which called for an elaborate dinner in celebration; and Margaret’s husband just so happened to bring his fr
iend Lord Montagu along.
Not only that, but Lord Shelville, a neighbor of theirs with an estate considerably smaller, happened to come around on the same evening – and bring with him, too, another friend.
Lord Colward was the least likely of the lot, being a man over sixty years old with silver hair and a fat girth, who clearly did not know Shelville at all as well as their introduction suggested.
It did not take a genius to understand that she was being shown off to suitors like a prize heifer, and also that her pool of such gentlemen had decreased in quality significantly since the last auction.
Juliana despaired; would the Duchess never tire of these foolish pursuits? And what if one of them were to show an interest, and she were to be forced to go along with it yet again, in the manner of John Woode?
Oh, she could not bear it!
Which is why Juliana determined even from the moment that the guests were announced to ruin the evening as much as possible, and prove once and for all that she was not of a marriageable quality.
It began even before the first course was served: when Juliana, seated between Shelville and her brother-in-law, with Colward and Montagu opposite to better admire her beauty, used the excuse of reaching for her drink to deliberately catch a piece of hair in her fingertips.
Thus dragging it forward, she quite undid the neat handiwork of her maid, and left herself a disheveled mess with efficiency.
The Duchess cleared her throat, a prim noise that nevertheless conveyed the alarm she undoubtedly felt at seeing her daughter come loose so.
Juliana was not done yet, not by a long shot.
She picked up her spoon and took a sip of her soup, even though grace had not yet been said. Then she yelped at the heat of it, allowed the liquid to pour back out of her mouth and into the bowl, and fanned her face rapidly.
“It’s scalding hot,” she said, perhaps unnecessarily.
“Juliana,” the Duke protested.
“She must be so agog at having all you fine gentleman here that she has quite forgotten herself,” the Duchess laughed uneasily. The three strangers stared at her, nodding politely but with some uncertainty in it.
Juliana allowed it to rest for a while; there was no use in overdoing it. Then they might begin to think that she was putting on a comedy routine on purpose, or that it was all a test devised to discover the worth of each gentleman.
Such things happened all the time in novels. She had to ensure they believed her act.
Shelville attempted to begin a conversation about the Indies, at which stage Juliana feigned complete ignorance of the geography of the world, and asked repeatedly where they were, and how long it would take to get there.
When Shelville gave her answers of them being near this or that country, she would ask where they were, and on.
When Colward gave a little snippet of French – a recitation of poetry which Juliana did in fact recognize, she deliberately mistranslated it.
She laughed heartily at his ‘joke’, inferred that he would not dare to say such words in polite company if they were English, and even threw in a few mispronounced words of her own to add to the illusion.
Colward and Shelville were soon talking amongst themselves, no doubt thinking that they had come to the wrong party indeed; but Montagu, who was connected more closely as a friend of a relative of hers, was apparently not yet deterred.
In fact, she began to realize with horror, he actually seemed to be warming to her the more unintelligent she made herself appear.
So, he was not to be dissuaded by a stupid girl. Perhaps he would take more offense at a rude one.
“What is it that you do, Lord Montgomery?” Juliana asked, deliberately misremembering his name.
“Montagu,” the Duchess corrected hastily, in a low voice.
The lord gave a charming smile both to Juliana and her mother. It was a smile that said: do not worry, I am not offended. Juliana hated that smile.
“I am in the fishing business,” he said. “Our company imports fresh stocks all the way from Scotland, and down the whole coast of England; in fact, you may have dined on our goods many a time, if you are partial to seafood.”
Juliana made a face. “I hate fish,” she said. “Such a smelly food. And the men who work with it always stink the same.”
She made a show of sniffing the air around him, and wrinkled her nose even further, as if she did not like what she smelled.
“Do not worry yourself with that,” Montagu laughed, though there was a strained quality to it this time. “I am on the business end only. I do not deal directly with the product.”
“Disgusting business, anyway,” Juliana went on. “I couldn’t respect a fishmonger, no, not at all.”
“Juliana!” the Duchess rushed out, her eyes fair bulging from her head. “Are you feeling unwell?”
“Now that I think about fish, I believe I may be,” Juliana said.
To contradict her words, she picked up a piece of cooked chicken from the plate in the center of the table with her fingers, making sure to smear it across her chin as she stuffed it into her mouth.
“You might find some refuge in your room,” the Duchess suggested; though it was clear from her words that this was to be interpreted as an order.
Juliana stood quickly, never having been more pleased to hear those words in her life.
“I believe I shall; the company shall certainly be livelier there than this dreary lot,” she announced, before flouncing away with her head held high and her loosened hair floating about her face.
It was not half an hour before her mother appeared in her doorway, made a silhouette by candlelight and yet so obviously furious that it did not need to be seen.
“I have reached my last never with you, Juliana!” she scolded. “How could you act in such a way? You have fair terrified those gentlemen, and they must think our family no better than animals!”
“Good,” Juliana said. “It was my intention. If you think I shall be tricked into consorting with another John Woode, you are mistaken.”
“Give up this childishness,” the Duchess said. “You act as though you are the first woman in the history of time to be wed to one for whom she has no affection.”
“I am not, for I do not intend to be wed in that manner,” Juliana argued. “Mama, do you not remember how it was to fall in love? How you felt when you were happy with Father?”
The Duchess faltered and did not speak.
“How can you deny me that feeling? I love a man! I have found him already – the one soul to whom I wish to be bound, forever, before the eyes of God. How can you deny me such pleasure and passion? Such happiness?”
The Duchess smoothed the front of her dress before she raised her voice again. “Juliana, you do not understand everything about life. You are simply a girl still. Such love may vanish in the light of day.”
“Better to vanish than to never be present at all,” Juliana said bitterly.
The Duchess went to leave the room, which was strange; Juliana would have expected much more of a diatribe, a rant on every single aspect of her behavior.
But the Duchess walked away, turning her head at the threshold as if to say something, before continuing on soundlessly.
Perhaps Juliana was starting to get through to her, even if just a little bit.
Chapter 36
The Major was moving up.
The men were all talking about it, and Christopher could not help but be drawn in. His fellow Lieutenants sat in the mess hall and joked and gossiped and speculated over who would take his place.
Some said Brazen was the obvious choice. Others said it would be too scandalous, and besides, the army would rather take payment for the commission than promote from within.
But the talk continued, continued for so long that Christopher’s head hurt, and he decided to retire to his quarters for some silence before the first morning drills.
He was interrupted, however, by the arrival of the boy who took care of
the post and ran errands for the officers.
“Captain Brazen would see you, sir,” he said, breathlessly.
“Thank you,” Christopher told him, allowing himself to be led over to the building where he knew he would find Captain Brazen waiting.
His thoughts were wild, but he contained them. This was some small day-to-day matter, no doubt; a task that needed doing.
There was no need to get worked up about anything. The change he had been working hard for was probably some ways off yet.
“Ah, Lieutenant Hardwicke,” Brazen said, accepting his salute as he entered the room. “At ease. I’m glad you’re here; I have a matter that I would like to discuss with you.”
