“Yes; I know.” It would have been impossible to miss. “It probably has not helped matters that I’ve been poor company just lately. As ghastly as my visage would imply.” He had not even realized how cross and surly he had become, until little Hattie had cast it up before him. “I have not comported myself well, I admit. Coming back home has been difficult for me. Too many people, too much noise.” Too many stares and jeers; too often addressed by a title which felt as if it had been stolen from worthier men than himself.
He had made himself into the beast he had thought himself to be. The beast that those who gawked and stared imagined him to be. It had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, of sorts. How much happier he might have been, how much less lonely, had he simply shrugged it all off, as Charity had advised?
A lesson he’d only begun to learn now, after sixteen years of loneliness and isolation.
“It has been difficult for all of us, I feel,” Esther said, and the look she cast to him was kind, understanding. “But perhaps for your mother the most. To have lost her husband and two sons, and to be so distant from heronly living child.”
“That has been her choice,” he said quietly. “She has every right to clothe herself in the colors of mourning, every reason for her grief. But she has rebuffed every overture I have ever made.” She’d never even responded to any of the letters he had sent to her while he had been away, and after it had become clear that she never would, he had stopped writing to her entirely. They hadn’t had a single civil conversation since he’d returned.
A little furrow pleated Esther’s brow. “With all due respect,” she said, “I think you may have formed a mistaken impression. The duchess has been in the colors of mourning for years and years.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“She’s always worn black,” Esther says. “For—for as long as I have known her.”
Anthony felt a frown pleat his brow. Mother had worn black for so many years as that?
“It was never my place to question it,” Esther said. “Nor do I know of anyone who would be indelicate enough to ask. But it has been widely speculated that she wears it for you. For the son she lost so many years ago.”
Talk to your mother, Charity had said only days ago, and there had been a funny little lilt to her voice, a warble of some nebulous emotion. He hadn’t done it, yet. He hadn’t wanted to. The last time they’d shared words, he’d had to threaten to shunt her off to Cornwall only to secure her cordiality to Charity.
But Charity had been right before. Perhaps he owed it himself to give it one more attempt.
∞∞∞
Charity smothered a yawn with her fingertips as she waited once again in the drawing room for Anthony to arrive home. Redding had already supplied her with tea and given her permission to wander, but it seemed the last few nights with little restful sleep to be had had at last caught up with her.
She regretted now, just a little, those invitations she had insisted that he accept, for they had kept him engaged these last four evenings. And she had spent those evenings in seclusion within her own little flat, feeling startlingly lonely. While Anthony—Anthony had been taking up his proper place in society.Perhaps even in Lady Cecily’s company.
Had he worked up the nerve to hunt down a secluded spot for an illicit kiss? If he had, had he enjoyed it? Had Lady Cecily? An unsettled feeling tumbled in her stomach, the very same one that had made sleep a difficult thing to manage these last nights.
It was just nerves, she assured herself. A lingering sense of unease that had plagued her since her interview with the bishop. One step closer to the dissolution of their marriage; one step closer to the freedom she had always hoped to have.
One step closer to parting ways forever.
It was just that she would miss him, she supposed. Of course he would go on to marry some perfectly suitable woman—Lady Cecily, in all likelihood—and then…and then there would be no reason ever to see one another again. Indeed, it would be inappropriate to maintain any sort of friendship once they had obtained an annulment. Certainly it would be an affront to his new duchess.
And she hadn’t considered that. That she would miss his company. That the privacy she had enjoyed these last few years had become…rather lonelier than she would have liked, rather lonelier than she had first found it to be. That she might well have created her ideal lover, only to have to surrender him to another woman. Someone eminently more suitable.
It was always a mistress’ lot to see her benefactor off with a smile, and for the first time she suspected she might fail at doing so. Only he wasn’t her benefactor; he was her husband.
At least until he wasn’t. Would it be too ill-mannered to go wandering in search of spirits? Tea was not a strong enough drink for what ailed her at present. No, confound it. There was every chance she might cross paths with the duchess, or Anthony’s sisters-in-law, or one of the children in residence, and she really hadn’t the fortitude for it this evening.
She flounced back upon the sofa, her shoulders sinking into the plush upholstery beneath her. This part of the house, so close to the entrance, was still and silent. Perhaps a bit of a nap was in order while she waited. A small one, to refresh her mind and settle her stomach.
Charity turned onto her side, pillowing her cheek in her hand and allowing her eyes to drift closed. No one could fault her for it; it was terminally boring to be left to wait. The dim lamplight did not penetrate her closed lids, and she felt herself sinking toward sleep softly, gently. Until at last she had plunged in entirely.
The dream began, as it often did, with the wheezes of men breathing their last. Thesickly-sweet aroma of death and decay followed, overwhelming even the coppery tang of blood lying heavy beneath it. So much death, too much, and she could hardly stem the flow of it. With her hands already trembling from exhaustion, with the sickness she suspected was already upon her, she could not possibly stitch every wound in need of it, heal every soldier who lay within the medical tent.
Harden your heart, she told herself with vicious recrimination. But it felt softer just now than ever it had, aching for the wounded and the suffering and the lost. A kind of death she had taken upon herself, a stain upon her soul for those she had failed to save, even if they had been judged beyond salvation before they had ever got to her.
Ashehad. The officer who had been brought to her only days ago, with his face torn apart by a blast of shrapnel. She had gently picked pieces of metal from his flesh, insisted that the surgeon remove the eye which had been pierced too deeply to save, stitched the wounds that had rent his skin, cleansed his face of the debris and detritus that had clung to it. A futile effort, the surgeon had told her.
For days, he had clung to life with a tenacity that had surprised her. But his strength was waning. She could feel it in the cold, clammy fingers that clasped her own. He no longer roused to the sound of her voice as he once had. As if he, too, were slipping away, nearer to death with each moment that passed.
She was going to lose him, too. “He’s dying. He’ll not last the night,”the surgeon had warned, pity saturating his voice—
A warm hand grasped hers, and Charity woke with a gasp, her whole body trembling with relief to be free of the war once again. Reflexively her fingers clenched, as if she might use the hand that had reached out to her to pull herself from the darkness of such memories. Her throat was scratchy and raw, her eyes oddly moist—and when she blinked them open at last, it was to find Anthony crouched before her, concern scrawled across his face. And in that moment she was so very glad to see that face, with its web of scars and that ever-present eyepatch for proof that he had, in fact, survived, that a sob caught in the depths of her throat.
