by Emily Larkin
November 23rd, 1808
Somersetshire
It was raining when they left Bristol. Their party now numbering five, Reid hired two post-chaises to convey them to Exeter. Letty traveled in the foremost carriage with him and Houghton. She had the very strong impression that Reid would have preferred not to be in the same carriage as her; he seemed unable to meet her eyes today, and whenever he addressed her, he spoke to her shoulder.
They journeyed south through a gray, wet landscape. Letty spent the first hour studying her gloves, plucking at the fingertips, wishing she’d not given in to the impulse to kiss Reid’s organ. And really, in the light of day, it was difficult to understand why she’d done something so bold and scandalous and obviously wrong.
She loved Reid, and she’d wanted to give him bliss, and she’d allowed those things to override good sense and prudence. She’d tried to be Julia, and that had been a mistake, because she wasn’t Julia, had never been Julia, and never would be—and now there was this terrible awkwardness between them, and Reid couldn’t even look her in the eye.
She thought she could guess why he was so embarrassed: she’d seen a part of his body that no woman other than his wife should ever see. Or a whore, she reminded herself, and that was an unsettling thought, and she plucked at the fingertips of her gloves and wished even more fervently that she’d not given into the impulse last night.
This is what comes of trying to be Julia. And, now that she thought of it, Julia had almost broken an arm falling out of one of the trees she’d climbed, and she had broken her neck jumping a fence that was too high for her horse, and why hadn’t she remembered that last night?
Reid’s conversation with Houghton tugged at her attention. The two men were discussing what businesses might usefully employ crippled soldiers. Reid appeared to have the intention of setting up several enterprises and funding them with his prize money. Letty found herself listening as they discussed and discarded half a dozen possibilities. “I won’t have them picking oakum, like inmates in a workhouse,” Reid said. “Or selling doormats and boot blacking door-to-door. A man needs some dignity!”
Houghton favored a bakery. “I’d be no use as a baker,” he said, with a shrug of his truncated arm. “But anyone with two hands can knead bread. It wouldn’t matter how many legs he had.”
Reid expanded on this theme, proposing a confectioner’s shop. “Like Gunter’s, with ices and wafers and all kinds of sweetmeats.”
From here, they moved to discussion of other types of business. Houghton suggested a tavern, or a chandler’s shop selling turpentine and pitch and rope and all the supplies a sailing ship would need. The conversation took a turn at this point. Reid, it appeared, was very taken with the idea of a farm. “If a man has spent years campaigning, he’d hardly wish to be confined indoors. I know I wouldn’t.”
Letty listened with interest—and growing hope. Reid was thinking ahead, looking to the future. Had he changed his mind about dying?
“I’ll put everything in your name,” Reid said. “Right from the start. That way, there’ll be no complications when I die.”
Letty’s hope was extinguished.
* * *
They took refreshments at the posting inn in Shepton Mallet, twenty miles south of Bristol. Reid escorted Letty to the coffee room, saw her seated by the fire, and managed to avoid looking her in the eye or speaking to her directly.
Letty sipped her tea and nibbled her bread-and-butter and worried. She’d rescued Eliza, and Reid had rescued Green and Houghton, but who would rescue Reid?
I’m dead already, he’d said, and his voice had rung with truth.
It seemed to her that the only person who could rescue Reid was Reid himself. He didn’t need money, he didn’t need a protector; he needed to want to live.
She wished she could reach inside his skull and rearrange his thinking, wished she could find the part of his brain that thought he was already dead and amputate it, as the surgeon had amputated Houghton’s arm. But she couldn’t. The only tools she had at her disposal were words.
Words that she’d spoken before, and that Reid had not listened to.
* * *
After everyone had partaken of refreshments, they braved the rain again. Their progress was slow. Great puddles lay across the road and the horses were often brought to a walk. The rain came down more heavily, drumming on the carriage roof. Letty peered out at the postilions. “The poor postboys are half-drowned!”
“We’ll not make Taunton,” Houghton said.
“No,” Reid said. “We’ll have to put up at the next posting inn.”
But ten minutes later, the rain stopped drumming on the roof, and ten minutes after that, it stopped entirely. And ten minutes after that, so did the carriage.
Houghton glanced out. “Road’s flooded.” He opened the door and jumped down, his boots splashing in a puddle.
Letty looked out after him. Ahead, the road had transformed itself into a pond.
Reid climbed down from the carriage. Letty followed.
Houghton stood at the water’s edge, surveying the flooding. “Less than twenty yards across, and it doesn’t look more than two feet deep at the most. What do you think, sir? Shall we try to push on?”
Letty glanced at Reid, and then a second time, more sharply. His face reminded her of the day he’d been tossed by his horse: the rigidity of his muscles, the faint flare of his nostrils. He’s terrified of the water.
“I think we should turn back,” Letty said briskly. “For all we know, it gets worse further on.” She turned to the postilion astride the outside leader. “Is there an inn nearby?”
With a jingle of harnesses, the second post-chaise-and-four pulled up behind them.
The postilion wiped his dripping nose. “There’s one half a mile back, ma’am.”
“Turn the carriage, please. We’ll stay there for the night.”
* * *
The inn in question was a humble establishment, a short way off the post road. The single ostler was thrown into a state of agitation by the arrival of eight post-horses and four postilions, and the landlord was so surprised by the appearance of Quality on his doorstep that he was temporarily lost for words. He overcame his stupefaction, bowed low several times, begged them to step inside, and called urgently for his wife.
The Two Geese was a rustic establishment with low ceilings and crooked floors, but it was clean and dry and able to accommodate five unexpected guests. “There’s two bedchambers at the front,” the apple-cheeked landlady said, bobbing yet another curtsy. “And three at the back. And the postboys may sleep in the stables, ma’am.”
“Excellent,” Letty said.
She selected the front two bedchambers for herself and Reid, and left Eliza laying out a change of clothes, while she ventured down to the kitchen. There she found the landlady and another female, considerably flustered. “Quite discombobulated, I am!” the landlady declaimed, wringing her hands. “What I’m to feed ’em, I’m sure I don’t know! They’ll be wantin’ half a dozen dishes laid afore ’em, and there’s only that goose and the last of the beef, and as for dessert—” She broke off when she saw Letty, and her plump cheeks grew even rosier. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am. I didn’t see you standin’ there.”
Letty spent the next few minutes assuring the landlady that their needs were simple and that they were happy to sit down to a dinner consisting of only two dishes. “My husband and Mr. Houghton were soldiers, you know. They have no patience with finicky food; they much prefer a plain meal!”
She then broached the subject of Houghton’s one-handedness.
The landlady rose to the occasion. “Goose pie would be just the thing, and we can turn the beef into a stew. We’ll be sure to cut the meat up small, ma’am, of that you can be certain!”
“Thank you,” Letty said. “And I assure you, we need no dessert.”
But the light of zeal was in the landlady’s eye. “Apple tansey,” she declared. “It’ll be
just the thing!”
* * *
The Two Geese possessed no private parlor. Letty dined in the coffee room with Reid and the sergeant, while Eliza and Green took their dinner in the kitchen. Reid managed to pass the entire evening without once meeting her eyes, and every time that he looked past her instead of at her or spoke to her shoulder and not her face it felt as if he’d given her the cut direct in the middle of a ballroom. Is he never going to look at me again? Letty struggled not to show her mortification, her anxiety, struggled to maintain a light, cheerful conversation.
After the meal, she sat by the fire with a book, while Reid and Houghton played two games of backgammon. It was impossible to read. The words looked like scratches made by sparrows. She stared blindly at the pages and thought about Reid not looking at her and wondered how on earth she could make things right between them again.
The rain resumed. Letty listened to drops striking the windowpanes, and while she listened, she came to a decision.
After the second game, Houghton yawned and declared himself ready for bed.
“I’ll retire, too,” Reid said.
Letty closed her book and took a deep breath. “Icarus, may I please have a word with you before you go? Good night, Sergeant.”
She waited until Houghton had shut the door before looking at Reid.
He didn’t meet her eyes, choosing instead to gaze at the fire. “You wish to speak with me?”
“Yes,” Letty said. “I want to apologize for last night. It was not my intention to offend you.”
A grimace flickered across Reid’s face. He turned his head further from her. Letty understood from those two reactions that he would have preferred that she hadn’t mentioned the incident. She bit her lip. Now I’ve embarrassed him again. Silence grew between them. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I truly am. I didn’t realize it was such a terrible thing to do.”
Reid turned his head to look at her. He met her gaze for the first time that day. The impact of his silver eyes made her breath catch in her throat. “You don’t understand, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Letty said, even more hesitantly. “Are you embarrassed that I saw you?”
Color rose in Reid’s face. He looked away again.
“Can’t we just forget it happened? Please?”
Reid looked back at her. He seemed to be debating what to say. Finally, he said, “What you did last night was a sexual act and you can’t do things like that to people without their consent! Imagine how you’d feel if you woke up and found that I’d done something like that to you.”
Letty considered these words. If she woke to discover her nightgown up around her waist and Reid leaning over her, touching her intimately . . . she wouldn’t just feel embarrassed, she’d feel violated. That’s what I did to him. With that realization came a sick, cold feeling in her belly. “It was a violation, wasn’t it? I violated your privacy, and your trust in me.”
“Yes,” Reid said.
Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I thought you’d like it. Lucas liked it. He looked so happy!”
Reid’s mouth tightened. “I wish you’d never seen that.”
So did Letty. She hunted for her handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I thought it was just another way of kissing someone. I mean, I guessed that it wasn’t quite respectable—”
“Not quite respectable?” Reid gave a humorless laugh. “Good God, I can hardly think of anything less respectable! It’s an extremely lewd sexual act. A man would never ask it of his wife.”
“I’m sorry,” Letty said again, wiping her eyes.
Reid sighed. “Don’t cry, Letty. It’s not worth crying over.” It was the first time he’d ever called her by her Christian name, and that made the tears come even faster. Letty sniffed, and tried to blink them back, and mopped her cheeks.
Reid crossed to where she sat. “Don’t cry,” he said again, and he lowered himself to perch awkwardly on the chair alongside her. “Please, Letty. It’s not worth it.”
Letty clutched the handkerchief tightly. “I give you my word I won’t do it again—my word of honor!—if . . . if you can bring yourself to believe me?”
“Of course I believe you,” Reid said, and it was true, and that made more tears spill from her eyes.
Letty wiped them away. “I’m sorry about last night,” she said, in a small, shaky voice.
“I know,” Reid said.
The tears stopped coming so fast, and then they stopped coming at all. Letty was able to dry her cheeks and blow her nose and fold up the handkerchief.
They sat quietly for several minutes, watching the fire, and it felt as if they were friends again. Letty’s thoughts became less agitated. She found herself pondering several questions. “Icarus? What I did last night . . . is it something that generally only men do to each other?”
Reid recoiled slightly in his chair. “What? No!”
“But Tom—”
“Forget you ever saw that!”
Forget it? Did he not realize how impossible that was? The scene was imprinted in her memory, as vivid as if she’d witnessed it only yesterday. But Letty obediently turned her mind from it and instead sifted through everything Reid had said tonight. Lewd. The sort of thing a man wouldn’t ask of his wife. “Is it something that only fallen women do?”
Reid looked as if he didn’t want to answer this question. Finally, he said, “In the main, yes.”
“But why?” Letty said, folding her damp handkerchief even smaller. “I don’t see what’s so dreadful about it. It wasn’t unpleasant in the slightest.”
Color mounted in Reid’s cheeks. He returned his attention to the fire. “It’s exceedingly intimate.”
That, Letty could concede—the scent of his skin, the taste of his seed—but even so . . . “Wives never do it?”
“Most would not.”
Letty reflected on this answer for a moment, remembering the pure bliss on Reid’s face last night. “Don’t their husbands want them to?”
Reid noticed that the fire needed more wood. He pushed to his feet and laid another log on the embers and spent some time arranging it to best advantage.
“Don’t their husbands want them to?” Letty repeated.
Reid straightened. “I wouldn’t know,” he said repressively. “Having never been married myself.”
“Do you think that’s why so many men are unfaithful to their wives?”
“I can’t possibly comment.” Reid fished his watch from his pocket. “Goodness, is that the time? I shall bid you good night.” He bowed politely, and hastened from the coffee room.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Letty jerked awake a short time after one o’clock. She heard rain on the windowpanes, and the sound of a man crying out in distress. She flung back her bedclothes, fumbled for the tinderbox, and threw her shawl around her shoulders.
Reid came out of his nightmare berserker-mad, lunging up from the bedclothes—and struck his head on the low ceiling. He gave a grunt. His legs folded and he sat abruptly on the bed, his expression a mixture of shock, pain, and bewilderment.
“Icarus? Are you all right?”
Reid bowed his head into his hands with a groan.
“Icarus?” Letty went to him, and cautiously touched his shoulder. The berserker fury had drained from his muscles. “Icarus, did you hurt yourself? Is it bleeding?”
He didn’t reply, but he did let her gently run her fingers through his hair until she found the swelling. To her relief, there was no blood.
Letty put her arms around him. “Poor darling,” she whispered.
Reid didn’t hear the endearment. He sat with his forehead resting against her shoulder, his breath wheezing in his throat, his whole body shaking from the nightmare. Letty laid her cheek against his hair and rocked him gently, as if he was a child. “Hush,” she whispered, stroking the nape of his neck.
When his breathing had steadied, she released him and straightened his bedclothes and rearrange
d his pillows. “Sit back.”
Clumsily, Reid obeyed.
Letty pulled the covers up, poured a quarter of a glass of brandy, and sat beside him while he sipped. He needed both hands to hold the glass steady. “Does your head hurt terribly?” she asked when he’d finished.
Reid glanced at her. His eyelashes were spiky with tears. “No.”
Letty’s heart clenched painfully in her chest. Icarus Reid, I love you. She took the glass and climbed off the bed and poured Reid a teaspoon of valerian. “Here.”
Reid swallowed the valerian.
“Would you like me to read to you?” Letty asked diffidently.
Reid looked at her and hesitated, and she knew that they were both thinking about last night. The hesitation drew so long that she was certain Reid was going to say No, but instead he gave a brief nod.
He trusts me. Letty had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. She picked up Herodotus and sat at the end of the bed. “Aristagoras, the author of the Ionian revolt . . .”
She didn’t stop reading when Reid’s eyelids grew heavy, nor did she lean over and kiss him; she didn’t think she could endure it if he rebuffed her tonight. She read eight pages, ten pages, twelve, until Reid was deeply and profoundly asleep, and then she closed the book and sat looking at him in the candlelight: the bony, beautiful face, peaceful now in sleep; the slow rise and fall of his chest.
How could Reid believe he was dead?
She hugged Herodotus and watched him sleep. Rain pattered steadily against the windowpanes. The night chill sank into her skin, making her shiver. Finally, Letty climbed off the bed. She laid her fingertips lightly and fleetingly on Reid’s brow, and then tiptoed from the room.
* * *
It was still raining in the morning. The landlord informed them that the post road was under water in several places. “Then I think we should stay here,” Letty said.
Embroidery was not her favorite way of passing time, but there was little else to do. Letty stitched by the fire, while Reid and Houghton sat at the table, deep in discussion. She listened idly while they debated the merits of a confectioner’s shop over a bakery over a chandlery and then argued back and forth over whether to purchase a farm or two as well.
