“But it wasn’t like that at all. Three hundred sixty-one.” The number was tattooed in Stanley’s memory. “That’s how many people I knew, knew personally, who died between the time I reached the Continent and the Battle of Orthez.” Too many faces swam through his mind. “They weren’t even all soldiers.” Tears coursed more quickly down his face, some pooling in his hands. “There were women and families who followed the drum, marched alongside us with their husbands and fathers, and they didn’t always survive. They weren’t even there to fight, and they died.” He lifted his head, but his eyes couldn’t focus enough to see anything but the fuzzy light of the fire. “There were thousands of others—people we passed in the villages—who were starving to death, casualties of a war they didn’t ask for and couldn’t end, conquered people who were desperate. I helped carry soldiers off the battlefields only to have them die before I could get them help. Some were so mangled and ripped apart that we couldn’t even tell who they were.
“I can still see every one of them, a constant stream of faces. There are days when I close my eyes and the faces won’t go away. And mixed in with all the rest are the men I—” Killed. But he couldn’t say it out loud. “I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
The silence between them dragged out. He tried to stop the memories but couldn’t hold back the onslaught.
Layton didn’t let the subject rest. “And the forlorn hope?”
Stanley felt himself droop further. “I just wanted to go home.”
“Were you that desperate?” Layton asked. “You would only be sent home if you were horribly injured, but you were far, far more likely to be killed.”
“Either way, I would have been done.” The words were barely audible, and Stanley wasn’t entirely certain either of his brothers had actually heard him.
Philip stood, crossed the room, and sat in the chair nearest Stanley’s. “If things were so bad, why didn’t you tell me? We could have arranged for you to sell your commission.”
Stanley shook his head.
“Why not?” Layton asked. “If you dislike the army so much—”
“I gave my word,” Stanley said. “My solemn oath to the army and the Crown that I would serve. There was no predetermined allotment of time. It wasn’t a promise to be loyal and fight for the Kingdom only until I no longer enjoyed the work or it became inconvenient. It was a commitment. A gentleman does not break his word.”
“The buying and selling of commissions is part and parcel of the armed services,” Philip said.
“Which is part of the reason so many incompetent officers botched so many things.” Stanley shook his head. He’d seen what happened when men tossed aside their promise to serve and left holes in command. Inexperience became the ruling force in the engagements that followed. Lives had been lost that would not have been. “I do not hold my honor so cheaply.”
“But to be willing to die—”
“Everyone who fights a war must be willing to die.” Stanley could hear his sudden sharpness. He would get up and pace if he weren’t absolutely certain he’d topple over.
Philip sighed rather loudly and with noticeable heaviness. Stanley kept his gaze focused on the fire.
“Would you never consider selling your commission?” Layton asked.
“So long as they need me and I am able, I will go where I am sent.” Could they hear the resignation he felt?
“Are you fit enough to return?” Philip asked.
Stanley nodded slowly. “Since W”—he cleared his throat and forced the dreaded word—“Waterloo, I’ve done more organizing than fighting.”
“That should be easier to endure.” Layton sounded reluctantly optimistic.
Stanley very nearly snorted out loud. “Certainly. I still get to decide who marches to their death; I simply don’t have to watch them do it. Won’t that be so much better?”
“There should be fewer deaths now that the war is over,” Philip said.
“Fewer deaths.” Stanley sneered at the coldness of that phrase. “Only in the army would fewer deaths be such an improvement. Would you feel better if someone told you after an epidemic had decimated your family that you ought to put your mind at ease because there should be fewer deaths in the future?” He shook his head again and again.
“Did you never find any satisfaction from your service?” Philip sounded nearly as weary as Stanley felt.
“I know it is what Father always said I would be good at, so, in that sense, I suppose there is some satisfaction. But I do wonder why he thought I would excel at killing people and watching half-grown boys die.” Boys like Pluck, a frightened face behind a wall of flames. In that moment, he had looked closer to seven than seventeen.
“Father knew you were happiest when you were helping people,” Philip said. “He thought you might find the opportunity to do that in the army.”
“Help people?” Every muscle quivered with the growing tension seizing through him. “I have shot men dead. Tell me, Philip, how much did I help them?” Stanley glared at his eldest brother, daring him to turn those years of survival into something noble. Philip paled. Perhaps reality had finally penetrated. “I chose which of my men were at the front of a battle charge, knowing those on the front lines were the least likely to survive. I sent boys and men with families out to their deaths. How did I help them? Tens of thousands of men died at Waterloo. What good did my fighting do any of them?”
“The victory at Waterloo saved us all from another dozen years of war,” Philip said. “Everyone who fought there did good. Everyone. For the first time in the history of the Kingdom, the Crown is awarding a medal to every one of our soldiers who fought in that battle.”
Stanley’s hackles instantly rose. “A medal?”
“As a means of expressing the gratitude of the entire Kingdom.”
“It is essentially saying, ‘Here’s a hunk of metal with Prinny’s ugly phiz stamped on it. Thank you for spending five years of your life having your soul ripped to shreds. We’re ever so grateful.’ I don’t want it.”
“I don’t think the medal is intended to be equal in any way to the sacrifices made,” Layton said. He always had been the brother who tried to soothe tempers. At the moment, it was decidedly annoying. “It is simply an acknowledgment.”
“I don’t want it.” Stanley pronounced each word with tremendous precision.
“Then what do you want, Stanley?” Philip was not the peacemaker Layton was. “You don’t want to sell out. You don’t want to be in the army. You don’t want the medal you earned. What do you want?”
Too many things he would never have.
“When I accept your medal from the Prince Regent on your behalf, since you obviously will not be doing so yourself, what would you like me to tell him you want instead?”
Philip’s sarcasm was the final push that sent Stanley past his usual barrier of self-protection. “Tell him I want my leg back.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Stanley muttered an oath under his breath at the look of shocked understanding that crossed his brothers’ faces. He hadn’t intended to confess to any of this. Blast the House of Lords. He had always been more likely to spill his secrets to Philip and Layton than to any of his other brothers.
“You lost your leg?” Philip asked after the uncomfortable silence had stretched out overly long.
“I hate that expression.” There would be no avoiding an explanation now. He felt too weary to even attempt it. “It sounds as if I misplaced the deuced thing. ‘Now, where did I put my leg? I was so certain it was right here.’” He would have rolled his eyes if he’d been one for such a theatrical expression. “I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is.”
“Where is it?” Again, Layton’s tone indicated he was searching for answers to more than just the question he’d asked out loud.
“My men buried it under a tree in Belgium.” He refused to break into tears again. “Pluck turned it into an overblown ceremony. They eulogized the devil out of that stup
id leg and wept like it was their mothers they were burying.”
More like every fellow soldier they’d lost and mourned for. Only sixty-five of the 260 men in the Thirteenth who had gone into battle the morning of Waterloo had returned at the end of that single, horrific day of battle. Some were dead, some wounded. Some were simply never found. Stanley knew the men who’d buried his leg hadn’t been weeping over the lifeless hunk of flesh. They were simply crying out as human beings puzzled and pained at the inhumanity of war. Though they all understood the necessity of the fight, the aftermath was difficult to endure.
“It was even given a headstone—not everyone who died at Waterloo was granted that. It was just a rock with a poem scratched onto it.
‘Here lies our dear captain’s leg.
‘It didn’t stand a chance.
‘Turns out his leg was luckiest.
‘The rest of him’s in France.’”
At Philip’s crack of laughter, Stanley felt a smile tug at his mouth. It was a rather witty inscription. None of them had been too keen on the idea of marching to Paris.
“Pluck said they spent an entire night composing the epitaph. As I understand it, they were thoroughly foxed by the time they finished their little poem.”
Philip’s grin tipped lopsidedly. “Oh, I am certain spirits played a vital role in that composition.”
“Where was your leg amputated?” Layton asked. “And don’t say ‘Belgium,’” he quickly added in the instant before Stanley opened his mouth to say precisely that. “I mean, where on your leg?”
“Just below the knee,” Stanley said. The subject was proving less horrific to discuss than he’d anticipated. At least Layton and Philip didn’t look disgusted or disturbed. He had yet to see a look remotely resembling pity.
“You have acquired some kind of prosthesis, then.”
Stanley acknowledged Layton’s statement with a nod of his head.
“How did it happen?”
Stanley looked at Philip, though Layton had asked the question. Philip had grown strangely quiet. He watched Stanley closely but didn’t say a word.
“Cannon shot.” The familiar sounds and smells echoed in Stanley’s memory, but he pushed on. “Took Shadow right out from under me.”
“I wondered what happened to your horse,” Layton said.
“Most of my leg came off right there on the field, stripped down to fractured bone and some scraps of flesh. Only one of the lower leg bones remained entirely intact, though my foot was entirely whole. War is like that. Some things are destroyed completely while others are left untouched.” He could feel his mood slipping once more. Talk of warfare always dragged him back there.
“I think I will commission Pluck to write a poem in honor of my chest,” Philip said quite suddenly.
Layton laughed in obvious surprise. “Your chest?”
“Certainly.” Philip once again wore his remarkably thorough mask of featherheaded carelessness. “The perfection of my chest was quite irrevocably flawed, you know. I have a battle scar.” His pomposity was so overblown, Stanley didn’t for an instant take his assertion seriously.
“You mean that little scratch you got at Kinnley?” Layton drawled.
Stanley very nearly laughed at Philip’s theatrical look of shock. “Scratch? I was shot.”
“Well, hand me a handkerchief before I’m soaked with tears,” Stanley said dryly. “I have been shot hundreds of times.” The actual number was seven, but he was enjoying the air of exaggeration that had descended on their conversation. His spirits were certainly rallying, something he found difficult to do on his own.
“I can see you have absolutely no appreciation for what has become of me.” With that mock-offended declaration, Philip stood and began tugging at his cravat, his jacket having been off since before Stanley’s arrival.
“What are you doing, Flip?” Layton asked.
Philip tossed his cravat onto his chair and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “I will have my poem if we have to write it here in the House of Lords. Find a pen and paper, Stanley.” Philip worked at the buttons of his shirtsleeves.
“No one needs to see this.” But Layton was laughing. “We want Stanley to fill out, not lose weight because you’ve made him retch.”
Philip had begun untucking. “I believe best would be an appropriate rhyme for chest. Write that down.”
Stanley laughed out loud. “With what? There are no writing implements at hand, and I refuse to hobble around looking for one.”
“Impressed would work as well.”
“How about obsessed?” Layton suggested. “That rhymes.”
“You, my brother, are not a poet.” Philip pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on top of his abandoned cravat. “Now,” he dramatically indicated the very obvious scar high on the left side of his chest, “does this not inspire a composition?”
“As a matter of fact,” Layton said, “I feel a verse coming on.” He cleared his throat.
“My brother Flip went searching ’round
“For what he could not find.
“For the more he looked and searched and sought,
“The more he lost his mind.” Layton ended with an exaggerated smirk.
“Well done, Layton,” Stanley said.
“Atrocious!” Philip’s entire face twisted in disapproval. “You did not spare a single syllable for the spoiled splendor of my chest. Try again.”
“‘Spoiled splendor?’ That’s taking things a bit far, don’t you think?” Layton shook his head. “It looks like you simply spilled something on yourself and haven’t bothered to clean it up. The scar isn’t even that interesting.”
“I suppose you are in possession of a very ‘interesting’ scar?” Philip’s look of condescension pulled another laugh from Stanley.
“Yes, on my left leg,” Layton said.
“If you take your trousers off, I really will start retching,” Stanley said.
“Lower leg.” Layton propped his left foot on the footstool in front of his chair and began rolling back his pant leg. A thin, zigzagging scar ran nearly six inches down the side of Layton’s calf.
“Oh, please,” Philip said. “That is hardly noticeable.”
“It may be lighter than yours, Philip, but what it lacks in pigment it makes up for in character.”
“And what do you propose we rhyme with leg?” Philip asked with a flamboyant gesture of annoyance.
“Poached egg,” Stanley offered.
All three brothers burst out laughing.
“I had no idea the House of Lords conducted its business half naked.”
Stanley recognized that voice. Based on the looks of barely concealed amusement, so did Philip and Layton.
“Holy Harry,” Philip said under his breath.
“Great, Flip,” Layton muttered back. “Now we’re going to get preached to.”
Stanley glanced toward the door and had to bite his lips against another wave of laughter. Holy Harry was in fine form, his right eyebrow raised to precisely the correct level of clerical disapproval.
“We stand before you,” Philip said with the air of one making a very difficult confession, “guilty of the very great transgression of coveting our brother’s injury-inspired poem. We were attempting to compose poetry of our own in order to relieve the weight of envy upon our souls.”
Harold swept them with the look—the one he’d perfected not long after taking his first steps—the look that had clearly indicated he was destined to be a very devoted servant of the church. “And your penance involves removing various articles of clothing?”
“Of course,” Philip answered in all seriousness. “Inspiration, you see.”
“I am absolutely certain Byron composes his works in varying states of undress.” The mischief in Layton’s eyes very nearly broke Stanley’s rigid hold on his laughter. Holy Harry would certainly not approve of the infamous Lord Byron.
“These are all poems written to your scars?” Harold still hadn’t
moved from his perch in the doorway. His gaze shifted to each of them in turn.
“Except Layton’s. His doesn’t really count.”
Harold didn’t acknowledge Philip’s jab at their brother. Stanley seemed to be Harold’s focus at the moment. For perhaps the first time in Harold’s life, Stanley saw a remarkable resemblance between Harold and Layton. He had that same soul-searching look on his face but with such a mixture of vicarly concern that Stanley couldn’t help fidgeting under the scrutiny.
“I have a scar.” Harold stepped farther into the room.
“Please let it be someplace hard to get to.” Philip actually steepled his hands as if directing the wish heavenward.
Layton attempted to cover his laughter with a cough. Stanley held back a smile.
Harold, having joined the rest of them near the fireplace, pushed back his collar a bit and tipped his head so his jaw on the left side was more visible. A line of white ran along it, probably two inches in length.
“What happened?” Philip examined the old scar.
“I was shoved into the stream on the north end of the Park. I cut my jaw on a rock at the bottom.”
“What did you do to provoke your attacker?” Layton asked.
Stanley could think of any number of times Harold had annoyed every one of his brothers enough to warrant a dunking.
“I—” Harold was suddenly terribly red and stammering. He cleared his throat. “I kissed her.”
Philip’s eyes and mouth made three wide Os on his face. Layton’s expression wasn’t any less astonished.
“Whom did you kiss?” Philip’s eyes were glued to Harold.
Their usually somber brother grew even redder.
“If you don’t tell us, we’ll simply speculate,” Layton warned.
“And go about asking everyone until we find the poor female,” Philip added.
Harold tugged a bit at his cravat. In a voice that sounded rather strangled, he said, “Sarah Sarvol.”
For Love or Honor Page 16
