Her brilliant eyes regarded him with interest. “I had been thinking, my lord, that I should like to learn more about your experiences in the war, but then I thought that was impertinent, to ask you to bring out stories that must be harrowing for you to remember, and merely for my edification.”
“I have not spoken of it much. Too many people do not want the truth when they ask, and I will only ever tell the truth.” He spoke from bitter experience. Conroy, his best friend, the companion of his youth, was a willing audience when Drake first arrived home. But he did not really want the truth, he wanted stories of valor and glory, a major-general borne from the field of battle after a glorious victory. Conroy had stopped asking after the first ruthless tale of blood and misery. Drake was afraid he had lost forever the ability to make small talk. He was not fit for the drawing room, nor for polite company.
“That is ever the way of people though, my lord. In my village many of the gentry wish to help the poor, but they want it to be the picturesque poor, in rags, but clean rags, you see, despite the lack of firewood to heat the water to clean the clothes. They want to see clean, pretty children with bare feet and round rosy cheeks, not the half-starved babies of the abandoned wife, or the gin-soaked farm laborer who beats his family on Sunday, or the dirty little heathens children become when insufficient attention is paid to their upbringing.” She sighed with a wry grimace. “To gain their help for the poor I must sometimes dress the truth, as well as the children, in prettier clothing.”
He gazed down at her frowning. She returned his fierce gaze with her steady blue eyes, wide but not alarmed. “I refuse to prettify war!” he growled. It had turned his stomach, when he returned, to hear some military men, men who knew better, turning the war into a glorious battle of good against evil, with the English and their allies as some kind of God-chosen heavenly army. The truth was so far removed from that, that to experienced ears their stories bordered on the ludicrous.
“And so you should, my lord,” she replied calmly. “Refuse, I mean. You can do more good by telling the truth than ever you could by glorifying war. I saw so many boys from our village join, expecting glory and adventure, only to come home with no leg or arm, sad and poor, or . . . or not come home at all. The truth needs to be told by men who were there and suffered.”
Drake swallowed hard past a lump, unable to reply to her calm, measured response. The quick rage that had arisen when he thought he was being counseled to lie, died. He must stop this defensiveness he had fallen into, this inability to allow people their own opinions about something he felt perhaps too strongly about. His own view of the war and the English military was hardly impartial.
Miss Becket looked down at her soft, worn gloves. “I’m afraid I am one of those whom you will perhaps call foolish, having a tendency to hero-worship those of you who fought so hard for us. But I have since come to think that the burden of worship is not fair. You have done your duty and more. You should not have to live up to some myth of absolute goodness and heroism. I cannot imagine what you have seen, what you have lived through, but I do know that you must have seen friends, comrades in arms, die before you. And the awesome responsibility of command, of having all those soldiers looking to you for their next actions! How terrifying I would find that.”
When True looked up, she saw a gleam of tears in the viscount’s eyes, and wondered if she had gone too far, reminding him—as if he could forget!—of all that had occurred on the battlefields of Belgium, and so many battlefields before. But she had only said what she had thought as she sat there watching him. Despite his fierce demeanor, she knew somehow that she could say anything to him.
Drake felt his calm façade crumble. No one had ever asked him, or even mentioned, the friends he had lost, the men whose lives had been in his care and keeping. He had attained his elevated rank at Wellington’s behest, for old Nosey complained that he was surrounded by fools and incompetents and he needed men with the ability to command. But the price paid for that ruthless ability to lead was a lifetime of sleepless nights and a weight that pressed on him always, the weight of the dead. He could bear it—he had borne it all through the war and even now—but it was wearing him down, he feared. Now that the need to maintain a cool head and a cold heart was gone, pain flooded in to fill that hole in his soul.
He came back to his senses to find Miss Becket gazing at him with ready sympathy in her lovely eyes. Sympathy from some he could not bear; it was too close to pity. But from her it seemed almost healing, a balm instead of a curse. He recalled her last words, and said, “I have seen many friends die, and had to write their wives and sweethearts letters of condolence. It was a most painful duty. If I had known before I bought my colors what I was in for, I do not know if I would have had the courage.”
“I think you would have always had the courage, my lord. I believe that courage is facing fear, not conquering it. Those with no fear die. We are only human after all.”
Her sweet voice washed over him. Only human. Horace always said he was vain, thinking he ought to have been better than all the others, all the ones who also lost men under their command. Wellington himself bore the responsibility for all of them, and carried his burden with grace and dignity.
“I suppose that’s how I should look at things, but I confess—”
“What are you two whisperin’ about over there?” Lord Leathorne’s querulous voice was raised over the conversation of the others.
Drake turned his cool glance toward his father, resenting the way he had drawn attention to them, interrupting what was a most interesting conversation. “We are not whispering, sir.” He glanced at his companion and saw on her cheeks that pretty rose shade again. Ah, she did not like attention drawn to her, it seemed. “Miss Becket was asking me about the war,” he added. “We were conversing, not whispering.” He saw the swift frown on Lady Swinley’s pinched face. Was Miss Becket, spinster and vicar’s daughter, truly a “companion” in the paid sense, he wondered, and did Lady Swinley hold that over the young lady?
“As a matter of fact, Miss Becket had just agreed to allow me to escort her on a tour of the gardens,” he said with sudden decision. He rose and held out his arm for Miss Becket, noting how the pink stain on her cheeks deepened.
Lady Leathorne watched them exit the saloon through the large doors between the sets of windows that lined one wall. On the one hand, it was good to see Drake being an obliging host, and drawing out that mousy companion of Arabella’s, but he had not spent two minutes talking to Lady Swinley and her daughter. Isabella and Arabella had been invited with the express intention of matching the two young people in a marriage that would virtually guarantee the future of the Leathorne holdings through their progeny. It would also unite two old and proud families. This beginning did not bode well for the visit. Isabella’s narrow, lined face was pinched into a frown, and even Arabella’s lovely young visage was showing how much she would look like her mother in time.
Perhaps she should have canceled this visit, or at least postponed it, Lady Leathorne thought, knowing Drake was still ill, if not in body, then in his troubled mind. But the Swinleys had been invited the moment she had known when her son would be home. She couldn’t very well have uninvited them without an explanation, and she supposed she did not want to admit even to herself how sick her son was. The servants were gossiping, she knew, about the young master being “not quite right in the head.” One poor maid had found him dozing in the library, and as she had come to find him to deliver a message, had tried to awaken him. He had reacted most violently, striking out at her and shouting, whereupon the girl had gone into hysterics.
All of that would not be so bad if he did not fall into those brooding silences, often ignoring guests totally. If Lord Conroy was not there visiting—he was so skillful socially, and always had a way of deflecting attention away from his friend’s moodiness—Drake’s behavior would probably already have become common gossip in the neighborhood.
No, she would just ha
ve to have a talk with Drake about his behavior. Arabella had every right to be miffed that he appeared to prefer her companion, some poor relation, over her. It was terribly rude! At least Conroy, dear boy, had turned on his legendary charm and was turning her up sweet.
Lady Leathorne gazed out the window with troubled eyes to where her son was strolling arm in arm with Miss Becket. Miss Truelove Beckons, indeed!
Chapter Three
Oh, this was ridiculous, True scolded herself. Her emotions were a chaotic jumble of pleasure and nervousness and . . . well, and a silly feeling that she would swoon from the very touch of this devastatingly attractive man at her side. He held her arm close to his body as they strolled through the formal squares of gardens lined with boxwood hedges and filled with chrysanthemums. Fragrant herbs spilled over the walkway in riotous profusion: lavender, rosemary, low globes of thyme and red-leafed basil that sent up their perfume when crushed inadvertently by a footstep. His hands were ungloved, and she was fascinated by the broad strength of them, the prominent veins, and how very different they were from her own small hands, encased in worn blue gloves a little too big for her, as they were Arabella’s cast-offs.
Lord Drake was not a man to be taken lightly. Unwillingly, her mind turned to thoughts of Arthur Bottleby, her father’s curate and soon to be vicar of his own parish, the man who had asked for her hand shortly before she had received the invitation from Lady Swinley and Arabella. Mr. Bottleby was not unattractive—in fact many of the village maidens were entranced by his burning dark eyes and intense manner—but in comparison to Lord Drake, this golden nobleman at her side . . . she frowned, castigating herself once again. How could she compare her suitor with Lord Drake, Major-General Lord Drake, one of Wellington’s most trusted leaders? It was not fair to Mr. Bottleby, and another example of how silly she was being. She knew better than to idolize a man based on reputation, and really, Mr. Bottleby was a very good man, very earnest—
“Do you agree, Miss Becket?”
She had lost the thread of his lordship’s conversation in contemplation of his lordship’s magnificence! Just like the green schoolgirl she had not been for many years now. She gazed up at him, eyes wide. “I am sorry, my lord, I was not attending. What did you ask?”
A grin lurking at the corners of his mouth, he said, “Have I lost your attention so very easily?”
“No,” True said, mortified that he would think so. “No, really, I was just contemplating the beauty of your home,” she said, sweeping a hand out to indicate their lovely garden surroundings. “It is so beautiful.” There; could she have sounded more the widgeon? He would think her the veriest half-wit, and deservedly so.
“It is. I thought of Lea Park often while I was gone. And when I came back it was like stepping into my own past, only I was so very different.” He paused at the edge of the terrace by a boxwood hedge, and they gazed out over the valley, the hazy distance to the west lit by the descending sun.
She relaxed again at his taking up of her subject. It was kind of him to ignore her wool-gathering. Mr. Bottleby would have been stiff and angry with her for that lapse in courtesy, for he did not like to be ignored or not attended to. “That is the way with all of life, though,” True said, responding to the viscount’s comment. “When you revisit the haunts of your youth, it is with the golden expectation that everything has remained the same. Sometimes it has, but you yourself are so changed that it seems . . . different. Smaller. Shabbier. It is the same with people that one has not seen in a long, long time.”
“True. I spent some time in London when I got back, before I came down to Lea Park. I was injured, but still able to get around. I thought I would revisit my old haunts, visit with some of my cronies. We used to have such fun, going to mills, gambling until dawn, visiting the opera houses and—”
“And the opera dancers,” True chuckled, and then flushed. Oh, her unruly tongue! A young lady was not supposed to know about opera dancers. She would not, but for Arabella’s sometimes scandalous tales of London life. For a girl of twenty-two her cousin had an extensive grounding in the affairs—sometimes quite literally the affairs—of the denizens of that great metropolis.
But Lord Drake squeezed her arm and chuckled with her. “That, too. Young men will have their amours. But . . .” His expression turned serious.
True gazed up at him, noting how the golden sun bathed his face in a ruddy glow. He was so very handsome, even with the lines of weariness and worry etched on his gaunt face. Something about him touched her deeply. Perhaps it was the sadness she saw in his golden eyes, or some longing she sensed from his soul, a longing for peace, she thought. “But?” A breeze swept up from the riverside and tugged at her curls. She swept them out of her eyes impatiently.
His voice, when he spoke again, was remote. He gazed into the distance and frowned. “Do you know, I never had to buy a single drink for myself those first weeks in London. And I was invited to more parties celebrating our victory than I could go to in a hundred lifetimes. But I was restless. Something about it all seemed fraudulent, empty. I haven’t been able to sleep well since coming back. One night I was staring out the library window at the street outside . . .”
His voice trailed off and his eyes, misty with remembrance, showed a shadow of pain.
“You were staring out at the street?” True urged him on. She gazed up at him, memorizing the high arch of his rather beaky nose, the strong line of his chin, noticing the faint sandy stubble. There was something about this moment, standing on the terrace of Lea Park with the scent of the herb garden drifting around her and the smell of him, a musky, sandalwood scent, filling her nostrils, that would stay with her forever, she thought. This day was one of those she would remember even as a very old woman. The slanting sun filled his curls with light and it was like a nimbus around his head.
“There was a man,” he continued, finally. “Probably about forty or so, though he looked older, and he was walking, or rather limping. He was not wealthy, and I thought he must have been a soldier in the war, for he was an amputee, as many of our poor fellows are. He was struggling along on homemade crutches; he was not used to them—I deduced that he must have been injured late in the war, at Waterloo or the run-up to it—and it was painful to watch his slow progress. I did not know what he was doing in Mayfair, but it didn’t really matter. I was going to run out the door and “halloo” him, ask him if I could stand him a pint somewhere. Horace—my batman, you know—was off visiting his family and I was lonely for companionship with someone who would understand my . . . well, who would understand.”
“I can imagine,” True said when Drake paused. “You must feel separated from your friends who were not in the war. You have not those shared experiences and they cannot know what it was like. None of us can.”
He gave her a grateful glance and laid one long-fingered hand over her arm where it rested on his. His tawny eyes darkened to brown and his halo of gold faded as the sun was obscured behind a drifting cloud. “I was just coming out of the front door when I heard a clatter, and these young ‘gentlemen’ came racketing down the street on prime bits of blood and bone, whooping and hollering like savages.” His voice had become bitter and the words dropped from his mouth like pebbles to pavement. “One of ’em had a cricket bat, and he leaned over as he rode and knocked one of the man’s crutches right out from under him.” Lord Drake made a swooping motion with his free arm, as if he held that cricket bat, then laid the hand back over hers again. “The fellow tumbled to the ground with a cry of pain.”
“Oh, no!” True cried, the vivid picture of the dark night and the soldier tumbling to the street making her heartsick.
“Yes!” Drake said, through gritted teeth, his lip curled. His eyes flashed with anger and bitter hatred. “At that moment I wanted to kill that young man! If I had had my pistol, I might have. As brutal as the offense was, it did not merit death, but I would have meted it out to that disgusting young demon without a second’s thought.” He glanc
ed down at his companion and saw tears shining in Miss Becket’s eyes.
“What happened to him? The fellow on crutches? Was he all right? Was he hurt? Did he get up?”
Unerringly she had struck to the very heart of the matter, Drake thought, humbled. She did not pause to reassure him or commend him for his reaction; she did not rush to condemn the young men for their actions. Her first thought was of the soldier, for the truly important part of his story was that man on crutches, not Drake’s own anger and bitterness, nor his desire for revenge. And she had not lost sight of that for one second. His heart thumped and warmth flooded his soul to know there were still people who could judge so truly and care so much. It was the unerring instinct of true humanity.
“He is all right,” he said, reassuring her with a half smile. He squeezed her small hand, wishing it were gloveless so he could feel the tender skin under his callused palm. “I went to him and helped him up. Poor fellow, I was right. He lost his foot at Quatre Bras, and counted himself lucky to be alive. He had been in Mayfair looking up his commanding officer, who had promised him work after the war; somehow he did not know that his captain was one of the unlucky ones. Died at La Haye Sainte. I knew him; he was a gallant fellow, one of the best, poor man.”
He was silent for a moment, gazing off into the distance. “I could not see him just disappear on me. I took him to a tavern and we talked long into the night, about the war at first, but then the conversation turned to our intentions now that peace has finally arrived. He has a wife and children, but no one would hire a cripple, he said. It was all very well to celebrate the brave men who fought and died for this country, but what about the living? Do we not owe them something, at the very least, a job? I have hired him to do some work on my estate, Thorne House. He is a master carpenter; he hired himself out in his regiment to do carpentry that needed taking care of—made extra money to send home to his wife. He repaired wheels, carts, anything and everything. But he has a true brilliance when it comes to fine carpentry, and I have put him in charge of a crew of ex-soldiers; they are renovating my library.”
Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Page 3
