On a Midnight Clear

by Sandra Sookoo

  On top of everything he’d endured, careless words from people who should have known better would stick in his mind for a lifetime. “That’s gammon,” Sarah whispered, her throat tight with sorrow for his experiences. She took more of the balm from the bottle and worked it into his side, pushing at his arm until he moved as she wanted, opened himself for her exploration. The heat of him seeped into her skin, the fresh, clean, masculine scent of him competed with the balm and wrapped around her in teasing bands. She knew every inch of his body, scarred or not, and each plane and angle was as familiar to her as the cottage. “You are still the same dashing man I knew that night.”

  A barely discernable uptick of his breathing indicated her words had affected him. “Except I’m hideous and at half strength.”

  “No.” When she returned her touch to his shoulder, his neck, his muscles flexed, his pulse fluttered wildly beneath her fingertips. “Scars mean you’ve survived something horrible that was meant to break you. You were stronger than the ill that befell you.” With each pass she wished to know his story if only to reassure him it hadn’t ended his life as he thought. “Tell me how this happened.”

  “It is of no consequence and will bore you.”

  Stubborn man. “It’s your truth and what led you here.” She eased her fingers down his arm. “Help me understand you—the man you are now, the man you are growing into.”

  Cecil’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. Finally, he turned his head and met her gaze. Anguish mixed with despair swirled in his lake-blue depths. “It was chilly that day, the sun anemic, but the battle was huge, on a grander scale than I’d ever participated in before.” The words sounded pulled from him. “It’s deuced uncomfortable going into battle when one’s fingers and toes are frozen.”

  “I can only imagine.” She poured more of the balm into her hand and again worked it into his ribcage.

  “Shouts echoed over the field, both of command and of the dying. Even now it rings in my ears,” he said in a hushed whisper. His eyes were haunted, and even as he stared at her, she doubted that he truly saw her, for he was far away, back on that battlefield. “I’d led my regiment as I’d always done; my men were uncommonly brave, but we weren’t foolish. We knew exactly what we were about. Had done the same thing a hundred times over in the course of the war.”

  Sarah waited, loathe to interrupt him.

  “A nearby cannon exploded, sending shrapnel and hot pieces of metal into me and my fellows. I dragged three men to safety behind English lines.” His recitation was succinct, cold, as if he’d thought long and hard over the telling, had tried to make it as clinical as he could to spare himself from feeling again. Had it worked, or was he lying to himself? “I didn’t realize I was injured until I couldn’t walk any longer due to the bones in my lower leg being broken.” His voice shook, and she made soft soothing sounds as she rubbed in the balm.

  “You were so brave,” she whispered as tears stung the backs of her eyelids.

  He ignored her. “The pain was excruciating. Never had I felt what I did that day, as if my whole body were on fire, the skin shredded, my uniform soaked with blood. I was forced to tourniquet my leg. I then crawled to safety and assistance.”

  All the while, she worked the balm into his skin, letting him talk or lapse into silence.

  By increments, Cecil relaxed, whether from her ministrations or the telling of his tale, she couldn’t say. “The surgeon in the camp said I’d die, but I refused to give up.”

  “Because you’re stubborn,” she breathed, nearly losing herself to the sound of his voice and the hardness of his body.

  “Perhaps.” A barely-there flash of a grin curved his lips. “Wellington won the Battle of Toulouse that next evening, but Allied casualties exceeded French losses by more than a thousand.” He shook his head. “So much death, too many futures snuffed out.” His swallow was audible. “I was transported with the worst of the wounded. The trip through France was agony. I thought I’d die for certain, but eventually, I reached St. Thomas hospital in London. Was there five months. At death’s door, but I was recalcitrant, as you said.” He met her gaze once more, and his eyes were clear if a bit haunted.

  “You always were that, and lucky besides.” Sarah left off with her ministrations and rested a palm against his chest.

  By fractions, Cecil lowered his arm, snagged it about her waist, and she welcomed the familiar weight of it. “Luck.” Bitterness rang in the bark of laughter.

  “It’s true. You are here.” Trembling from being in such close proximity, she gently pushed him, maneuvered him over the short expanse of floor and then encouraged him to sit on the edge of the bed. “Let me see your leg.”

  “Sarah...”

  “Please.” Her throat remained tight with unshed tears, but she met his gaze, willing him to understand her want to help. “Let me do this. For you. Because you are still worth something. You are alive for a purpose, Cecil, and I appreciate you being here.”

  She realized the truth of her words the second she uttered them. No matter what had happened between them, no matter how he’d come to arrive on her doorstep, no matter what their futures held, he was here now, and she would do what she could to make him welcome and feel safe.

  “Fine,” he growled, but there was no sting in the one-word answer. He bunched the edges of the towel in his lap, and his cheeks were tinged with a trace of redness.

  Had she ever seen him embarrassed before? How adorable and approachable it made him. Sarah laughed, but it was more of a throaty affair than it had even been. Dear God, he was having a profound effect on her. “I’ve seen you in your altogether, you know.”

  He grinned, and the gesture was so genuine it caught her breath, for he looked completely different without lines of strain crossing his brow or framing his eyes. “That was years ago, and not in this context.”

  “Does it matter?” Awareness of him as a man raced over her skin, sending tingles through her blood. This man, this hero, so broken and yet so proud, sent her scuttling into a cloud of confusion and awoke something deep inside of her.

  “No.” He stretched out his right leg so she could better attend to it.

  Sarah took the bottle of balm from him as she knelt between his splayed legs. After pouring another dollop of the liquid into her palm, she gave him back the bottle and then applied the lotion to his flesh, rubbing it into the long, silvery scar as well as the jagged marks where stitches had punctured his skin. She worked the taut muscles of his calf and just over his knee, and when she glanced at him, she wisely said nothing when the towel twitched. Did he desire her, or was it merely an unrelated reaction?

  Somehow, she couldn’t fathom he would have done the same to any of the other caregivers he’d encountered, and heat burned within her cheeks.

  They both needed a distraction else this might end in disaster. She dropped her gaze to his knee, concentrated on the blond hair covering his leg. “The war will end soon, for the English might has finally subdued most of the French uprising.”

  Cecil grunted. “I believe it ended after Toulouse, but you’re right. However, there will always be a war somewhere. As long as there are men, there will be strife.”

  Obviously, talking of such things wouldn’t usher in healing. Once more she shifted topics. “Simon adores you.”

  A self-depreciating laugh escaped him. “I am a novelty of the moment.”

  “No.” The man needed to find his confidence again. “On some level, I believe he knows...” Her voice caught and she raised her gaze to his. “He knows you’re related.”

  His blue depths were shuttered. “Do you regret the decisions of your life?”

  “Not even one minute.” She stilled her fingers on his leg but couldn’t bear to break their connection. “Everything that happened to me has made me into the woman I am today. We must always own our path—good or bad.”

  Silence reigned between them for long moments. Then Cecil nodded. “Did you ever think of me while we
were apart?”

  Another flare of heat went through her to lodge in her lower belly. The man was dangerous to her peace of mind. Sarah quickly stood. “Yes.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I wondered where you were, how you fared, if you’d married.” If you were happy with your life... if you thought of me.

  “I couldn’t leave anyone behind who cared, and after that night...” He left words unsaid, and that was telling and all too intriguing.

  “Yet here we are.”

  “Indeed. Odd how fate works.”

  “Perhaps it gives us what we need, for whatever reason, which we have to puzzle out.” Her voice shook as did her hands. Why was he here, and what was she supposed to learn from it? The longer she stared down into his face, the more her resolve to remain distant from him shattered. They were forever linked, and perhaps that’s as it should be. She didn’t love him, of course, for passion years ago didn’t equate to that, but she did feel something for this man.

  For herself, for him, for the people they’d been that long-ago night, as well as her own curiosity, Sarah stooped and swiftly pressed her lips to his. She kept her eyes open, as did he. Shock pooled in his cool depths, his sensual lips not giving quarter, but before he could reach for her, she stepped away. “I... I must go...”

  Coward that she was, she fled the room, the heat of his lips still tingling through hers and her mind wrapped in more confusion than ever, for the tiny kernel of need she’d always carried for him began to blossom into something more.

  Chapter Ten

  December 19, 1814

  When he woke that morning, slightly less sore than yesterday, after dressing, Cecil began the task of clearing out a couple of drawers in the bureau to finally put away his belongings. It was nice not to live out of a trunk or a knapsack for the first time in twenty years.

  As he removed some of Sarah’s unmentionables, scarves, and shawls from the drawers, his mind wandered to her. How could it not after she’d kissed him yesterday and then run from this very room as if the hounds of hell were after her?

  Every morning at dawn, she snuck in to retrieve clothes for the day. She assumed he slept through her furtive visits, but what she didn’t know was that he never stopped being alert. A man too long in the military learned to sleep lightly—if he slept at all—for there was always something to remain watchful for.

  And every morning he pretended to sleep while she gathered her things. Most times, he’d watch her though slitted eyes, took in the rounded curve of her hips, the nip of her waist highlighted by the apron’s bow at the small of her back, the enticing swell of her bosom, the sweet slope of her cheek. Time had been kind to her, and she was even more intriguing, perhaps beautiful, than she’d been all those years ago. No longer was she a recent widow, new to and curious about bed sport. Now she was a woman with life experience, touched by sorrow, marked by the highest joy.

  Perhaps they both were. Changed from what had happened to them, and he had to believe it was for the better.

  But how to make that mindset stick?

  Beyond her morning visits, he wondered about her, this woman he’d had no choice but to throw in his lot with for the sake of sharing a cottage and keeping the Christmastide peace.

  Since the intruder had spooked her, Cecil’s protective instincts had flared. The fear in her eyes after that incident had troubled him, for it had been all too real. What hadn’t she told him about her life, and why wouldn’t she fully trust him with the secret? He didn’t know, but if someone hunted her, was bent on nefarious trouble, he was honor bound to protect her. Beyond that, he had to admit to himself that it was nice having someone take care of him, of eating hot meals, of having someone to talk to in the evenings after the work of the day was done.

  Never say I’m succumbing to domestication.

  A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he removed two carefully folded shawls from a drawer. Her violet scent clung to the clothes and teased his nose, further binding him to her in ways he didn’t understand, for they were nothing to each other. Did she want him here with her? That quick, impromptu kiss from yesterday indicated that she did. Yet he’d glimpsed her eyes even as he’d reveled in the petal softness of her lips; she’d been as surprised by her actions as he was.

  Cecil touched his fingertips to his mouth, imagining she was once again with him. Did he wish for her to stay here? Perhaps he should summon some of that long-ago charm and find out.

  When his hand bumped against a stack of letters, he abandoned his musings in favor of pulling out the two-inch high bulk. Tied with a black satin ribbon, the edges of the envelopes slightly yellowed with age, the top envelop bore his name in flowing handwriting that had feminine touches with the loops and swirls.

  Captain Cecil Stapleton.

  What the devil? Sitting with his back resting against the side of the bed, he yanked on the ribbon and unwound it from the envelopes. Unease sat like a lump in his belly, for he knew what the envelopes contained.

  She truly did write me letters.

  One by one, he pulled sheets of paper from the envelopes, stacked them up and then sorted them by date. Perhaps twenty in all, some of the papers held more creases than others. Some were dotted with spots of ink while others were stained with water drops—tears, perhaps? But they all had one aspect in common: none of them were finished.

  As his curiosity ramped, Cecil began to read.

  ...I write to you with mixed feelings, for I know you’re occupied with the war and do not need this added distraction, but as a result of that glorious night we spent together, I have now found myself with child...

  He rapidly scanned the three other paragraphs before setting the letter aside and starting on the next one.

  ...I have moved into your father’s cottage in Buckinghamshire. It is where I feel safe and can disappear, for life in London isn’t my future any longer. My confinement is nearly over and still I haven’t found the courage to finish a letter and actually post it to you. If all goes well, I plan to deliver our child in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I’m learning how to keep chickens and to make a living as an apothecary...

  The letter slipped from his fingers, and with hunger and regret warming his chest, he scanned the next several, which weren’t as long as the first two. Perhaps she hadn’t the time to write, perhaps she no longer knew what to say.

  ...I’ve named the boy Simon, for it is a strong name and I hope he grows into it. Simon Matthew, after your middle name...

  And in another.

  ...Our son is a handful even as a one-year-old, but he heavily resembles you in some regards, if the light hits him in just the right way. Where are you, Cecil? Why can I not finish a damned letter and send it, and if I did, would you even care?

  A lump lodged in his throat. As his chest tightened, he pressed his free hand to his aching heart. But he couldn’t leave off reading. Paper fell to the floor as he leafed through another five or so.

  ...Simon said his first word today: cup. He has a dear little voice. Though he has brought me overwhelming joy, that happiness is tempered knowing you are out there somewhere, fighting to protect us from the French scourge, and that you are not aware he exists...

  Unaccountably, tears welled in Cecil’s eyes. Never had he cried from something as pedestrian as reading a letter, but he didn’t care, for these were Sarah’s most private thoughts, and through her words it was as if he could see life as she’d lived it, and he was linked together with her and their son.

  ...Yet another letter I cannot finish or even post, for what would I say to you now, so far after the fact? Simon is three today, and he is every bit as stubborn and charming as I remember you being. He challenges me at every turn and gets into trouble more often than not... Where are you, Cecil? Each time I visit the village, I scan outdated copies of The Times for your name with those of the dead, and while I am relieved you are not listed, neither has there been word you’ve returned to London. I pray you are safe...

 
Oh God. Not only had she written to him, but she thought often of him as well. He’d done her a grave disservice by judging her, accusing her, not trusting her.

  Papers littered the floor about him as he continued.

  ...do you ever remember our night together, when we talked as if we had the world at our feet and we forgot the war for a few precious hours?

  His own teardrops fell to the pages to blend with hers. If only she knew how much he’d remembered her and had made her into an angel of sorts, a muse that kept him moving onward, one foot in front of the other. Enduring... everything.

  ...I fear this will be my last letter to you, Cecil. It’s obvious you aren’t coming back, and for that, I will always carry this horrible regret that I never told you of Simon. He is four today, a proper little man and so much like you in looks and temperament it sometimes hurts me. I hope he continues to take after you, for though I only had one night with you, I know you were the best of men. For my sake and his, I have to let you go. Perhaps if you remain Captain Fortunate you might return someday. Until then, remember me...

  As the last letter fell from his hand, tears streamed down Cecil’s cheeks. Sarah had written to him. She’d recorded not only her life but also Simon’s, but she’d never finished the letters, nor had she posted them. In the reading of the brief missives, he’d felt as if he’d been at her side all the years they’d been apart. Why hadn’t she found the courage to post them? Even these fragments would have made such a difference to him while he fought in hell against the French.

  I am so sorry, Sarah. I didn’t know...

  Stunned, perhaps a bit mortified, he scrubbed at the tears on his cheeks, rubbed his eyes, and when the emotion passed, he tidied the letters with shaking hands. Somehow, he fit each one back into an envelope, stacked them all up and tied the black satin ribbon around them. Then he sat amidst the clothing he’d removed and stared unseeing at the empty bureau drawer.