Not so lucky as that. Not so lucky as she might have been, had she bothered to make her survival known to him. To his family. “Sixteen years,” he said. “I did search for you. At least, I tried to do so. But there was no one who knew where you might have been taken. The war had long since ended. The surgeon—the one you assisted—”
“Mr. Bell,” she said. “I am given to understand that he saw me situated at a proper hospital in Brussels. He paid for my care, bless him. But I was very ill, and he had a family waiting for him back in England. He could not stay.”
“I was never able to find him,” he said. “I did not…return to England. But I made inquiries.”
“He passed away,” she said, and her dark gaze dropped to the floor. “His heart failed him only a month or so after he’d returned home. He was already gone when I finally recovered. Months gone.”
She sounded truly regretful. Mr. Bell had been a demanding taskmaster, and he knew well enough that she had worked herself to the bone beneath his authoritative supervision. And still, she seemed to genuinely regret his passing. “My commanding officer passed as well,” he said. “Worse still, I did not visit his grave until—well, I suppose you know.”
“Too many lost,” she murmured, and shadows swam behind her dark eyes. Probably, he thought, she’d seen every bit as much death and suffering as had he. Perhaps she had never killed a man on the battlefield, but she had watched those in her care die of unrecoverable injuries. Probably she’d held more hands than only his own.
Had they all worshiped her as he had? Longed for her comforting presence in the darkness of the night, when sleep was too distant and pain was a constant companion?
“I thought if you had survived,” he said, “you would have made yourself known to my family. You had every right to do so.”
“What right?” she asked, with a queer little furrow of her brow. “I was just eighteen, you know, and with no proof of my claim. Every witness tothe—themarriagewas dead or lost.”
“The chaplain—”
“Dead,” she said. “Of the same illness I survived.”
“Our marriage lines?”
An uncomfortable little shrug. “If ever I had possession of them, they did not accompany me to the hospital. It is an easy thing to claim, Captain Sharp, for one to have become a war widow. There were far more of them than only I. But it is a difficult thing to prove. You will forgive me, but I did not fancy testing so tenuous a claim with a family wealthy enough to justify the purchase of a commission for what support of which they might have deemed me worthy.”
He supposed it must have been a daunting prospect to a girl still so young as she had been. And probably Mother—with the disdain she had already shown to Charity—had hardly disabused her of that assumption.
“I have consulted with my solicitor,” she announced, taking another bracing sip of liquor. “Regrettably, he could give me no reason that the marriage itself might be legally invalid.”
“You have a solicitor?”
“I have had quite a long career,” she said, “and it often involves certain legalities. Naturally I have got a solicitor to negotiate on my behalf, and to ensure that I am not cheated of that which is due to me. Men are often wont to make promises,” she added, “which they do not intend to keep. If I hadn’t a solicitor to protect my interests, I should not have amassed for myself a respectable fortune, which affords me a comfortable living.”
Sensible of her. And to be able to speak of it so plainly evinced a certain strength of character. “I see,” he said, and bit back a grimace. “I do apologize for my mother. She was unforgivably rude to you.”
“No more so than I had expected,” Charity said with a blasé shrug. “I am accustomed, as you might imagine, to those who bestow their judgment upon me. But simply because they would cast it does not mean that I must accept it. I am not ashamed.”
“Still, she ought not have—”
“No, but she is going through quite a difficult time. I suppose you all must be. Given your circumstances, I can make allowances.”
“Would that it were only that. Unfortunately, my mother is simply a difficult woman. She was fond of me, once. But my decision to purchase a commission was the end of that.”
“Oh?” she said. “It was my understanding that a military career was aperfectly acceptable vocation for a younger son.”
“It should have been,” he said. “I’d hardly be the first of her family to take up a commission. My uncle—my mother’s elder brother—did the same, and she spoke of him often.” And fondly. So much more fondly than she had spoken to or ofhimin nearly the last twenty years. It had always sat ill with him that she had been so strenuously against his military career, that it had killed the closeness they had once shared. “She wanted me to go into the clergy instead.”
“Well, she will certainly enjoy sharing her title with me even less than that,” Charity said. “And if I might be so blunt, I am utterly ill-equipped to be either wife or duchess. My solicitor says that the marriage itself is legal, but—but I’ll admit I mislead him just a little about who, precisely, was seeking the dissolution of a marriage. A title—especially one so prestigious as yours—might make all the difference.”
“You want a divorce?”
“I would prefer an annulment,” she said swiftly, chewing at her lower lip. “A divorce would be a scandal of its own. I have had quite enough scandal attached to my name already. I would like to avoid the gathering of more. I do have family, Captain Sharp, and I should like to keep my name, and thus theirs, off of wagging tongues as much as possible.” A little roll of her shoulders. “Probably your mother and your sisters-in-law would also prefer to avoid the scandal of a divorce. But failing an annulment—I suppose divorce would then be the only option. Parliament would no doubt grant one on grounds of adultery.”
“That’s hardly fair. You had every reason to think you were a widow.” Just as he’d thought himself a widower.
A wry smile, coupled with a glint of dry amusement there in her dark eyes. “You must know that is not the way the world works,” she said. “What I believed will never matter half so much as what was true—whether I knew it or not. Vows are meant to be sacred only for women, you see. Adultery on a man’s behalf is merely a matter of course. No one would fault you for betraying your vows, even knowingly, but they will certainly rake me across the coals for the same.”
She was correct, of course. If there had to be a divorce, then he would have to be the one to petition for it. Adultery was grounds enough for a man to seek a divorce, but not for a woman.
