His tears were soaking the bodice of her gown; she could feel the wetness on her skin. She rubbed and massaged his shaking shoulders, kneading the knotted muscles of his neck, holding him to her. No one had ever been so close to her before, not even Harry, but this felt utterly right, holding him like this. She wondered at the welter of confused emotions that were coursing through her brain and heart as she stroked and touched him, but then she turned away from her own feelings. There would be time to think, to contemplate, later. Right now he needed her.
If she could just infuse him with some of her faith and peace, it would be worth any price, even . . . even the destruction of her reputation if they were found like this.
She glanced around, up the riverbank and across to the other side. No one in sight. Not that it would make any difference to her actions if there was someone, for she felt needed in a way she never had before. She was overwhelmed by her desire to give this man in her arms whatever she had that would ease his acute suffering. His heart pain was so deep it was almost like a physical wound, she thought. What do we do to our men and boys, she wondered, murmuring comforting words. How can we send them off to kill or be killed? And yet when they return, we expect them to be fine, to suffer not at all, to not feel all the fear and horror and pain of what they have had to do. We call them heroes but expect them to be the same young men we sent off to war, untainted by all the violence and death that surrounded them for so long. It was not right, she thought. After the celebration was over these men were sent back to their families to resume their lives as if nothing had happened in the interim.
“Wy, you could do nothing but what you did.” She spoke in her gentlest tone and smoothed the hair back from his damp brow, laying a kiss there. “As long as governments start wars, they will send their best and brightest men out to fight, to kill or be killed, and you were one of them. You went out a boy, eager for the glory, and came back a man, saddened by all you had witnessed. But you could do nothing less, once on that battlefield. You could do nothing less, for you were protecting your men and yourself.”
She talked on for a few minutes, sharing what she had just been thinking, and then realized that his tight grip around her waist had loosened and he slept, peacefully and with a look of sweet relief on his handsome face.
The afternoon advanced. The lowering skies cleared, eventually, and the sun came out, though they sat in deep shade under the old oak tree. A breeze, cleaner and cooler than any in the past days, riffled over the top of the long grass in the meadow, setting the daisies to dance. And Wy slept on, the deep, dreamless sleep of a relaxed and unburdened heart.
Through the long afternoon True felt her limbs numb from staying in one place so long, but she would not move for the world. Her mind wandered far afield at first, over her own dilemma. To marry or not to marry? But it was a subject that curiously could not hold her attention. Instead she thought of Wy, and his pain. What could he do to soothe the ache in his heart? The one thing that had given him the most joy, it seemed, since he had been back, was helping Stanley, the ex-soldier amputee, and the other former soldiers he had hired to rebuild his library. Perhaps if he found others to help, and he did have the resources to do it, he could find solace in the lives he was helping to mend.
He needed something to look forward to. He had been a soldier for so long, it was hard for him to be idle, she thought. As he was rebuilding his library, so he needed to rebuild his life, from the very basics, tear it all apart and start over again. He had long defined himself as a soldier, and he was not that anymore. What was he? Who was he? He would need to answer those questions before he could find comfort.
The shadows lengthened. Those at the house must be wondering where they were. Could she say she lost her way? She did not think a lie was a sin in a case like this. She knew in her heart that she had done nothing but what she ought, so there was no guilt associated with her actions. But no one else would understand, least of all her cousins. Arabella was there to win Lord Drake’s hand, and she would either swoon or go into a rage to see Drake and True at that moment. As much as she loved her younger cousin, she still knew Arabella well enough to know that she would see it as True poaching in her woods. Ah well, True thought. There was nothing she could do about that.
• • •
Drake stirred, stretched and yawned. He nuzzled his pillow, feeling like he had slept better than any time since he had come home. It was a foreign feeling, this sensation of rested wellness. Turning slightly, he looked up, directly into the smiling eyes of Miss Truelove Becket!
He scrambled away from her. Her cheeks were pink, but her blue eyes were calm, as though it was quite an everyday occurrence to cradle a gentleman in her lap while he slept. “True! Er, Miss Becket, what . . . ?”
She stretched her legs out awkwardly, her movements as clumsy as a newborn calf. With a rueful grimace she rubbed her legs. “I am afraid it was not just you who fell asleep, Wy. My legs seem to have done the same.”
Memory flooded back to him. Another tortured nightmare! He had started to dream of the first advance of the day—of that day, Sunday, June 18, 1815—but it had swiftly turned into the old nightmare of pain and death, and hands clutching at him, pulling him, demons dragging him down to hell for his misdeeds. Mortified, he remembered it all, remembered awakening to find her gazing down at him with a look of tenderness and pity so powerfully sweet that he had burst into tears, as half asleep as he was at that moment, and on her bosom he . . . God help him, he had babbled all his pain and torment, all his shameful weakness, all his dark hatred of what he had become on the battlefields of Europe.
“I suppose I owe you an apology,” he said stiffly. He was horribly embarrassed to be caught in such weakness, and by a woman for whom he had an enormous amount of respect and . . . yes, and care. No one had ever seen him cry. It was unmanly, as his father had impressed upon him when he was just three years old. Men did not cry!
“Apology?” she said as she staggered to her feet.
“For babbling like an idiot; for crying like a woman!”
“Why is it that men always compare themselves to women when they feel they have been weak and stupid?” True said, frowning. “My father says that God weeps when He looks down on the world. When I was a child, that is what I thought rain was . . . God’s tears. If God can weep from sorrow, then I do not suppose that men are above such a thing.”
He had to smile, so adorable did she look, doing her best to appear the scowling harpy and only succeeding in appearing even more enchanting, with her hair disarranged and grass clinging to the skirts of her ugly brown dress. She had scolded him as she would a child, and a curious lightheartedness stole through him, his embarrassment disappearing in the face of her resolute sanity. “And who does God tell His troubles to?” he teased.
She chuckled and her eyes widened. Hers was a face made for smiling, and not for scowling. “Why, I suppose St. Peter. Or perhaps the angels.”
“St. Peter has always struck me as being just the slightest bit judgmental. He would have to be to guard the gates, I suppose, only letting the right people in.”
She cocked her head on one side. “Perhaps you are right. Archangel Gabriel, then. That is who God would tell His worries to.” She watched him for a minute, as her hands brushed at her skirts in a doomed attempt to get rid of all the twigs and grass. She stood just at the edge of the shade of the tree, and the sun glanced off sparkling reddish highlights in her brown hair. “I hope you’re feeling better, Wy.”
“Do you know, I think I do.” Wonderingly, he realized that it felt as though his soul had slept for a while, and was refreshed, cleansed just a little. All of the pain was not gone, but he had given away a little of it, just by telling True. He glanced around and gathered his hat, fishing pole and jacket. The shadows were long and the breeze was becoming chilly, refreshing after the heat they had suffered lately. Suddenly he wondered just how late it was. “How long did I sleep?” he asked.
“For
a few hours,” she answered calmly, picking up her discarded basket and bonnet.
“A few . . . my God, True!” He had compromised her, utterly and completely! They had been alone for hours, and he had actually slept on her bosom. Staring at her, aghast at the implications she appeared to be completely unaware of, he said, “True, we have been gone for hours. People will wonder.” He gulped and moved toward her, but stopped before touching her. “I think we should tell them that we are to marry.”
“Marry?”
Her expression was an unreadable mix of incomprehension and something else. If only he was more adept at reading faces, but he had never had that knack, especially with ladies. He could not tell if she was disturbed, incredulous, or disbelieving. As for himself, he was a little shocked at such an outcome, but he felt certain that it was not only right and necessary, but that it would not be the worst thing that could happen. Having Miss Truelove Becket around every day and every night would be . . . well, pleasant? That word did not do justice to his feelings on the subject, but he could think of no other.
“Why should we marry, Wy?” Her voice trembled just a little, betraying some strong emotion, but her stance was straight and her expression serious.
Was she thinking of her vicar? Damn, but he had forgotten the bothersome man. “We have been alone together for hours. If anyone found out, you would be ruined! I cannot let that happen to you because you were so kind to me. It would not be right.”
She sighed and shifted her empty basket so it was looped over her arm along with her bonnet. “No one needs to know that we have been together. As far as anyone knows you went out for an afternoon of fishing, and I went for a walk. I simply lost track of time and lost my way. I have a habit of absently wandering, and so I have been gone for hours before; Arabella knows that.” She stepped toward him and laid her hand on his arm, looking up at him with a smile touching her pink lips. “It will be all right, Wy. There is no need for us to marry.”
He glanced down at her small brown hand on his arm and wondered if he most felt relief or disappointment. He had the oddest impulse to pull her to him and kiss her, like he did that night at the inn. But this time the reason for doing so was not desire . . . or at least not wholly desire. The warmth of the day, the sweetness of her face, the delectable curves under her soft, worn dress; any man would have to be mad not to want her in that way.
But there was something more, and he could not for the life of him name it. He wanted to hold her, to surround her, to enclose her in his arms and stand just where they were until the shadows became twilight and the night noises of owls and wee creeping animals started. Ridiculous flight of fancy for a soldier! He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, if you think there is no need, then I suppose we should be getting back.”
She stepped away from him with that same unreadable expression on her unfashionably brown face. “I think we ought to arrive back at Lea Park separately, though, or there will be talk.” She smiled, turned, and started up the bank and across the meadow, stopping to pick some wildflowers as she went, swinging her basket and shabby bonnet on one arm. He watched her until she was out of sight.
• • •
Lady Leathorne presided over the tea table, filling cups for the ladies while Lord Conroy, her husband and her son drank port. This day had been an unfortunate one . . . or had it? Miss Becket had been gone all afternoon, hunting for watercress she said, though she came back with nothing but some wildflowers. And Drake had been gone even longer. He had fallen asleep while fishing, he said—she met him in the hall coming back with his fishing pole over his shoulder—and slept most of the afternoon.
“It is true, Mother, so do not give me that suspicious look. I fell asleep.” He smiled down at her from his absurd height—where he had got that from she did not know, for neither his father nor herself were tall—and challenged her to disbelieve him. He wore a shabby hat and carried his jacket on one arm.
She was loath to bring it up, but curiosity would prevail. “And you did not have one of your nightmares?”
His eyes became hooded, shadowed, but with a shrug and a deep sigh he seemed to release whatever brooding thought had arisen to plague him. “I did have a nightmare, but I awoke from it, and then I fell back to sleep and slept the rest of the afternoon without incident.”
Why did she have the feeling he was leaving something out? She knew him. Not from time spent together, for he had been gone most of the last fifteen years or so, and before that had been at school. When at seventeen he said he was buying his cornetcy in the Kent Light Dragoons, she had raged and stormed and wept. She had not borne a son, her only child, to have him perish on some distant battlefield alone. She had tried every strategy in her bag of mother’s tricks, but stubborn, willful . . . and yes, strong and manly, he had resisted all argument, and calmly done what he wanted. He was a boy when he left, but through the years, on his occasional visits home, she had seen him grow into a handsome, intelligent man. But when he came back from that dreadful Waterloo, he was a different man. Regardless of all the changes in him, though, she knew him as a mother knows, from her heart. And there was something he was not telling her.
She knew that Isabella and her daughter thought so, too. Their suspicions were of their cousin, Miss Becket. She had overheard their whispered conference as she was just entering the saloon for tea.
Isabella had told her daughter that no matter what True and Lord Drake were doing together, to not make a fuss. “For he is only having his bit of fun, you know, Arabella. Men do. They are creatures of lust, and when they find a willing lady . . . But he does not intend to marry her, you know, and that is all that is important. It is you he will wed, I would bet my diamond tiara. We must not force him to admit that they were together, or he will feel compelled to offer for her. What a disaster that would be! There will be plenty of time to curtail his . . . well, his outside interests, once you are married. There are ways to ensure a man’s good behavior, and I will teach you them all.”
It was a chilling conversation in a way. Arabella had said not a word, but with such counsel! Isabella seemed to be saying that after marriage there would be plenty of time to apply the yoke of fidelity on Drake, that he could be brought to heel soon enough.
It was enough to make her wonder, Lady Leathorne thought, if Arabella were truly the right mate for him, if that was what her mother had been feeding her. She glanced across the saloon at Drake, so tall next to his father. They were discussing something, horses likely, their one point of common ground. Since Drake had come back in mid-July it was as though a piece of him were missing. Had he found that missing piece, or rather, that peace he had been missing, down by the river, alone or . . . or with someone else?
And was Miss Truelove Becket the kind of young woman who would lay with a man outside of marriage? She was a vicar’s daughter, but that did not guarantee morality nor innocence. More than one maiden had given away her virtue, hoping to snare something of infinitely more value. But was Miss Becket one of those? She would not have thought so. In the two weeks or so the guests had been at Lea Park she had never seen the young woman act immodestly or say a thing that could be taken as flirtation. Was it all an act? Did she scheme secretly to seduce and capture Lady Leathorne’s son?
He glanced across the room and smiled at her, and she felt her heart jolt with joyous recognition. So had he looked as a boy, her son, her child. She stiffened against the swell of tenderness in her heart. She would rein in her emotion, for if she did not tears would come to her eyes, and she would not look like a foolish old woman in front of the man she loved more even than her husband. Her love for Lord Leathorne was for what was, and for the kindness he had shown her throughout their married life despite the fact that he had never understood one tiny portion of what she thought or felt or needed, but her love for her son was fierce and deep, the most powerful of emotions.
Drake came across the room to the tea table and sat down beside her. “Father is talking about getting ri
d of his hunters, and I have said I will purchase them for my stables at Thorne House.”
“He has been talking about getting rid of his hunters for two years, ever since he took that fall off Strider during the Quorn, and nothing has come of it,” she said dryly.
Drake chuckled. “Well, when he is ready to sell, I will be ready to buy. I hope to have Thorne livable by Christmas; I think I will go even if it is not quite done. I want to move in. You will have to see it, Mother; it is coming along well. It will be odd to have a home of my own after so many years as a soldier, but I look forward to it.”
Did that mean he intended to marry? Lady Leathorne wondered. He had never said so, though she was sure he knew the reason Arabella Swinley had been invited. “If there is anything you need, just let us know. We are so happy to have you back.” And whole and alive, she thought, unable and unwilling to put all of that into words.
“I begin to be glad I am back,” he mused. “I know it was like I was in a fog for a time, but I think it is a difficult adjustment to civilian life. I wonder if others are finding it as difficult as I? There may be some reason I was spared. Perhaps I can help somebody else.”
“I know you were, Wy; I know you were spared for a reason.” She allowed herself the luxury of running her fingers through his unruly hair, the curls that during his time as a soldier had been closely shorn; it was a caress that had been habitual between them when he was a child. He had gone from Lea Park a boy, anxious to don scarlet regimentals, and had come back finally, at the end of it all, a stranger, a tall, brooding mystery man with sad eyes, haunted by horrors she could not even imagine. What had changed in one afternoon that made her feel able to touch him as she did when he was a boy? She sensed a . . . what was it? Healing? Was he truly beginning the road to wellness?
If she thought for one minute that Miss Truelove Becket was responsible for this change, she would have kissed her and called her daughter. If he spent the afternoon with her, as the Swinleys seemed to suspect, and he came back looking so rested, then the young woman must have some magic no one else possessed. But it was not the kind of thing she could ask him, and so she would bide her time and wait and watch. Vigilance would be her watchword.
Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Page 9
