Heart of the Cotswolds: England

by M. L. Buchman

  Aaron looked at the mess of his disassembled arch. A beer sounded really good at the moment. “The Queen’s Guard pub on the square in ten.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “That’ll give me time to shower.”

  “Good! You always did stink,” then Jack hung up giving him the last word, at least in Round One.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Jack?”

  “Drinking beer with you.”

  “Real illuminating.” Aaron focused on his beer.

  The captain looked too damn good, which said he was fresh off a deployment. Aaron tried hard to not be desperately jealous and completely failed.

  Yakov Feynman wore civvies, but the t-shirt was desert tan, as were his slacks. He looked ready to go into the field at a moment’s notice. Every move he made had that extra sharpness, the precision of hot action recently piled atop the Delta standard of constant training. Aaron was staring at his beer, but he could feel Jack constantly assessing the room and everything else around him. When had Aaron lost that extra bit of edge? It had slipped away without him noticing.

  “It’s good to see you walking. Must have been hard.”

  Aaron shrugged. Hard didn’t begin to cover it. Thanks to Jane and her insistence on PT, he was walking better now than he had in months, maybe ever since the injury itself.

  But seeing Jack fresh off a deployment was reminding him of everything he’d lost. He didn’t know what to do with the anger building inside him. Maybe because this whole day had sucked big time. At the moment, keeping it focused on his physical therapists seemed like a useful target. Worse, he knew enough to know the limits of what it could achieve. No matter how good his knee became, he’d never be field qualified again.

  “Did you hear about Dodger?”

  “Haven’t heard about anyone in a while.”

  Jack scowled at him as Bridget delivered two massive baskets of beer-battered fish and chips.

  “You always were a prickly bastard to have a conversation with.”

  Bridget’s snort of laughter didn’t help Aaron’s mood.

  “You’re not helping.”

  “’E’s right, you know. Before Jane, you had more in common with a hedgehog than a human.”

  “Just the way I liked it,” he grumbled.

  “Jane?” The captain suddenly perked up as he always did about women.

  Aaron didn’t need to hear this. He lumbered to his feet and went to the bar for a fresh round of beers. He asked Hal if there was any hot news coming in over the lambcam—there wasn’t, the lambing season was mostly over—as if that somehow compared to a two-month deployment quietly cleaning the worst elements out of Libya. He also watched the mirror. Saw the captain and Bridget laughing together. Maybe he should have stayed to defend Jane’s honor, but that would have brought up even more issues.

  By the time he had the beers in hand, Bridget had moved on.

  “Jane? You’re dating a woman named Jane? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Jane. Is she plain?”

  “Drink your goddamn beer.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain saluted.

  Being civilian, Aaron resisted the urge to return it. He’d mustered out as a master sergeant, definitely not a sir anyway.

  “So, we’re not discussing women. Fine. Let’s talk about your leg.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “Docs said I shouldn’t be able to see the limp so much by now.” All the banter was suddenly gone from Jack’s voice.

  Aaron looked up slowly from his meal. “Try that one again.”

  “Finally got your attention, didn’t I?”

  “You’re here to check up on me.”

  “You were one of the best soldiers in my entire platoon and you know it. First, I look out for my men anyway, but you were something special, Mason.”

  “Not that it matters now.”

  “I’m a captain, so I’m smarter than you. That means shut up and pay attention.”

  There was enough of the soldier still in him that he did. There was enough civilian in him now that he wished there wasn’t still so much soldier. Instead he focused on eating his fish.

  “Dodger didn’t dodge so good. Stepped off the side of the road for a piss outside of Kunduz and walked right onto an IED. Docs had to take his leg off above the knee because there was nothing left below that.”

  Aaron winced. At least he’d kept his leg. Dodger had been good, even by Delta standards. He’d gotten his nickname because he seemed to dodge through bullets even in a full-on firefight. Or maybe, it was speculated, the bullets dodged to avoid him—he was a kick-ass soldier when the shit hit the fan. Everyone around him would have rounds hammering into their armor and Dodger came through without even a nick in his outer clothing. But he should have known better than to step off the road without a K-9 sniffer dog checking it out first. Somebody should have taught him that—and both Aaron and the captain knew it.

  “I talked to the docs at Walter Reed. For above-knee amputation, they can now fit him with a prosthetic that might put him back in the action within a year.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  Jack shrugged. “A couple of Green Berets are back in and a gung-ho in the 82nd Airborne made it through the Jumpmaster School and is back in the Dustbowl as a paratrooper. Dodger would be the first to make it into Delta. Docs say that its possible and he always was a driven sumbitch. I did some checking and—”

  “So to get back in all I have to do is chop off my fucking leg?” Aaron wanted back in so badly that it almost sounded like a fair trade.

  The captain looked at him like he was a total idiot.

  “Shit!” So Dodger was luckier than he was because he’d lost his whole leg at once.

  “We don’t hack off good meat when it’s still bolted on and operational, no matter what sort of an idiot it’s attached to.”

  Of course not.

  But for one, brief, solitary second, Aaron had tasted it. The salt of hard-won sweat, the bitter after-bite of a battle’s adrenaline high, the dust of Kandahar, Helmand, the Mog, and all of the other hellholes he’d fought in. He could feel the way his muscles would scream in agony at the end of a forty-kilometer hike in full gear over the Hindu Kush. The sound of an A-10’s 30 mm cannon full-throated roar as it flew close cover above them.

  And the heavy beat of a rescue helo coming in fast to grab his broken body and haul it away on a stretcher, to finally be replaced by the slow tick of the IV feed and the lazy beep of the heart monitor.

  He tried to shake it off—cricked his neck, shook out his clenched fists. Even if they would chop it off, that would mean going back into the sterile, white-sheeted hell of a hospital. A year in rehab? A freaking year. He’d rather take on ISIS in his underwear with a water pistol.

  Slowly the other sounds trickled back in. Trent, Hal, and Conrad laughing at the bar. Bridget flirting with a customer, just like any good waitress. The happy hum of a good pub on a busy Friday night.

  The captain simply sat and watched him.

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Offering you a way back in.”

  “I’m not cutting off my fucking leg.”

  “Not in ops. Training.”

  Training? Delta operators were trained by more senior Deltas. That’s how The Unit was built. Guys who survived to drag their asses out of the field, rotated back to Fort Bragg between deployments to pass on what they’d learned and get more training themselves. What had he learned? Don’t get your ass shot up in the Yemeni desert—or at least not just part of your leg.

  Some big help he’d be.

  He’d also be looked down on by the newbies as not good enough, and by the qualified operators as a symbol of failure. But he’d be back in. How sweet was that?

  “I’m guessing you’ll be needing some time on this.”

  Aaron could feel himself nodding. “When do you need an answer?”

  “The offer stands as long as I’m in command.
”

  Aaron tipped his beer to the captain in thanks. It was the most generous offer he’d ever received, except perhaps the moment when Jane Tully had offered herself to him.

  The conversation wandered off to old missions and new stories through the second beer and the third. The crowd swirled in and out. He left it to the captain to keep an eye on any hot birds flocking through.

  Still humming away in his head was the sound of gunfire—a thousand rounds of training in an afternoon. The quiet focus of requalifying as a sniper. The snores of his own squad as they sacked out in the back of a roaring C-130 transport on their way to a HALO parachute insertion. The high of extracting hostages or knowing that another leader of al-Qaeda and his inner cell had been sliced away.

  Maybe not out on the line any more, but he had been good. When the SAS had asked for one of their best—The Unit had sent him. He could help. He could.

  He wasn’t sure when Jack had wandered away. “Have to be back in Bragg by the morning.” Fort Bragg. Aaron’s home for a decade, even if he’d never gotten a place outside the Delta compound. Back when he had places he had to be. Back when he still had a place called home.

  Home. That rang another bell. Someone talking about “home.” He managed to muzzle the memory with another pint before it could surface.

  Aaron vaguely remembered an argument with Hal over how much beer was enough.

  He wasn’t sure when Jane came into the pub looking for him. It was quiet by then. The glass in front of him empty. He remembered her leading him upstairs, but he didn’t remember anything else.

  Chapter 13

  Jane had watched Aaron all week with a growing pinch on her heart. Something had happened that night she’d been gone. What was it? And why had she stayed in London?

  Her stupid errand had been to spend a couple hours walking through Harrods. She’d happily spent the time imagining just what pots and pans to get, picking out the right headboard for a bed they’d be sharing as soon as the bedroom was redone, deciding what she did and didn’t want for a desk. The cottage wasn’t ready for any of it yet. The only thing she’d purchased was a set of dish towels for the kitchen, printed to look like limestone walls.

  Aaron’s monotone response? “Nice.”

  She’d built a world of foolish dreams after three weeks together. One getting acquainted and two of them as lucky lovers. Week Four was turning into a classic Jane Tully-style train wreck, but usually she knew why. And she didn’t want to just let it go this time. What they’d had was real. She knew it! Could feel it in her bones!

  Her dream world had been one that included Aaron…until he’d stopped talking. The intimacy of their first three weeks together faded as well. Her attempts to find out more met with limited success.

  “Is it something I did?” A grunt of “No, you’re perfect. It’s just me.” Then silence.

  “Is there another woman?” His look that said she was crazy to think such a thing. As if.

  A week of it was enough to drive her crazy. Finally desperate and before she tipped over into stark raving lunacy, she walked over to Fosse Manor. The rain started when she was halfway there and, by the time she arrived, she was more drowned rat than the potential guest of an earl, despite having worn a light jacket.

  At the door she lost her nerve. Remembering the earl’s kindness after the wedding, in the lambing shed, and over their several shared pub meals, wasn’t enough to see her past the presumption of her visit. She turned aside toward the front garden. She’d found some peace there once, though she couldn’t quite remember how. There was no peace at the cottage, nor at the pub—both were too thick with memories of when Aaron had still been speaking to her.

  She was halfway through the garden when it came back to her. She’d found peace sitting with Aaron on the stone wall by the stables. She remembered the heat of his kiss in the moonlight, the taste of chocolate cake on his lips.

  The bench leapt out at her. Actually, it probably hadn’t moved since the time of Queen Victoria, but one moment she was stumbling past the yew hedge and the next she was collapsing on the bench after barking her shin so hard against it that she cried out. Clasped hands over the scrape were soon warm with the blood seeping through her soaking-wet slacks. All she could do was hold on to her shin and let her tears mix with the rain, which mixed with the blood.

  She cried out again when a hand touched her shoulder. The earl stood over her in a long black raincoat far more sensible than her windbreaker. His massive umbrella sheltered them both from the chilly downpour that had soaked her to the bones.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you unannounced,” was the first thing she thought to say through choked sobs and sniffles.

  “Nonsense, my dear. You are always welcome,” the earl assured her. He offered his arm as if he was about to escort her onto the wedding dance floor rather than finding a bedraggled mess in his garden. He escorted her through French doors into his office and ordered tea, towels, a robe, and a bandage.

  He waved her to an adjoining bath to change. The maid who delivered the tea whisked away her soaking clothes. The earl sat her down in front of the warm fire that crackled happily and filled the room with warm light on a gloomy day. To her chagrin, she could see out the window that the rain had moved on and the afternoon was already brightening. He bandaged her shin himself, which had stopped bleeding, mostly.

  “Well, my dear, it seems that you and Aaron will now have matching limps for a short while.”

  It was too much and she was crying again.

  The earl provided a handkerchief and some friendly pats on the shoulder. He also waited patiently until she could force herself to regain control. She didn’t cry often, except sometimes alone in the shower where no one could see or hear her. But a memory stabbed of weeping on Aaron’s shoulder along the shadowed footpath to the manor. Weeping because it had felt safe enough in his arms to let it all out. Which only made now even worse when she didn’t feel safe at all. It was the heat of her embarrassment that finally stopped the flow.

  “I need help and I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

  “Glad to assist if it’s within my power.”

  Jane started sensibly, noting that something had changed abruptly with Aaron last Friday and she didn’t know what it was about. Within moments, despite her best efforts to fight it down, she was spilling out the worst of her fears. There was something wrong with her, there just had to be. It was the only explanation. And she’d known it all along. There always had been and always would be because she was such an oddity, a weak woman who—

  “I think that’s enough of that,” the Earl of Evenston cut her off in a severe tone.

  “I’m sorry.” She should never of come here. “I’m so sorry. I’ll just go now. I’m—” Jane began rising to her feet to escape from her mortal embarrassment. But how was she to walk back through the rain in a borrowed robe? And where was she supposed to go? How—

  “Sit down, Ms. Tully.”

  Her knees went out from under her and she had no choice. The red leather creaked as she landed on it like a sack of potatoes.

  “I meant that was enough of thinking that the fault lies with you. I can’t imagine that to be possible.”

  She buried her face in her hands. How little he knew. She was such a wreck, useless, and watching Aaron…decay through the week had only served to assure her that she was right in her self-assessment. When she finally dared to look up, he was holding out a cup of tea and wore a kindly smile. She took it and stared down at it as she balanced it on her knees.

  “Drink some tea,” he ordered.

  The strong mint did little to ease her tight throat, but it did remind her what warmth was once like. At least before Aaron’s chill had—

  “As it happens, I know for a fact that it wasn’t you.”

  Jane could only blink at him in surprise.

  “I was in the pub last Friday,” the earl explained softly. “Your friend shared dinner with a man who might have
been his brother. Oh, he wasn’t. The man was smaller and blond, but he was clearly military. I perhaps should have said brother-in-arms.”

  “But why… What happened?”

  “For the answer to that, you’ll have to ask Aaron. All I know is that he was a different man by the end of that meal. The tables around him didn’t refill, despite the pub being busy. I believe that, in his parlance I might say, his changing mood established a no-fly zone that encircled his position for a fair ways around. Only he and the military man he sat with know what transpired.”

  “But he’s stopped speaking to me.”

  The earl offered her a plate of chocolate shortbread cookies (she hadn’t been here long enough to think of them as biscuits), but she could only shake her head. He took one himself, sat back, and dunked it in his tea. “Well, if—”

  “Connie, your son is being impossible!” Debbie burst into the office without knocking. She wore a Dior riding outfit: leather boots, tight pants, and a flowing black silk blouse. Jane didn’t think she’d ever touched a horse and certainly wasn’t likely to go riding in the rain. “Oh, well, look who’s still in town.”

  Then she walked past Jane until she was standing between them and facing the earl. That left Jane faced with her sister’s butt and Debbie knew it.

  “Without my permission, your son—”

  “Is not my problem anymore,” the earl cut her off, showing none of that patience he’d been offering to Jane mere moments before. He set down his teacup and cookie and folded his hands. Suddenly, the sympathetic kind man transformed into a Peer of the Realm. “You are his wife now and he is now yours to manage…as you can.”

  Jane couldn’t believe her presumption that she’d ever thought to bring her trivial personal problems before such a man as the Earl of Evenston. He was wholly unrecognizable from the man who had nursed a ewe in the lambing shed or shared a pint in the pub.

  “Christ, Connie. You sound just like her,” Debbie tossed her head in Jane’s direction before turning to face her straight on. “What are you still doing here anyway? Isn’t your precious little business back in the States missing you? All you ever seem to talk about is consulting this and systems that.”