by Diane Gaston
It was not good for David to spend too much time in bed, even though he required a lot of sleep to recover. It was sleep, though, that brought the nightmares. Helene needed to get him home to Yarford, to familiar surroundings where he could feel safe again.
But home to Yarford meant leaving Rhys.
Rhys was, at this moment, out looking for transport to Ostend and passage to Ramsgate for her and David. It was no easy task. So many wounded men were travelling home to be cared for by loved ones. David was by no means healed, but Dr Goode, who looked in on him from time to time, pronounced him fit enough to travel.
Rhys, however, would be re-joining his regiment soon. Helene and David would be travelling alone. Helene could bear it if only she knew Rhys would eventually return to her.
David groaned as he turned to swing his legs over the side of the bed. ‘Help me.’
She picked up his crutch and brought it to him.
He took the crutch and walked very unsteadily with it.
Rhys had gone to a great deal of trouble to find that crutch in a city where perhaps more than a thousand crutches were in demand. David had been afraid to walk with it and Rhys very patiently worked with him until he could manage well enough.
Helene followed close, in case David lost his balance or feared he would. He settled into a chair and she brought him a banyan to cover his nightclothes. He winced while she helped him put his arms through the sleeves. He’d been trampled on by horses and men and there were not many parts of his body that did not still hurt from it.
‘What would you like to play?’ Helene brought over the card table and placed it in front of him. She seated herself in a chair on the other side.
He stared past her. ‘I don’t care. Whatever you want.’
Piquet, the game they played together at home, would require more thinking than David was up to at the moment. ‘Two-handed whist?’ she suggested.
He shrugged.
There were times David would lose that distant look and return to his normal self—almost. Sometimes Helene merely needed to persist in pushing him to do normal things to make the old David return—almost.
She shuffled the cards.
From outside a man shouted and the sudden sound of a galloping horse reached their ears. David flinched and his arms flew up to protect his face.
Helene jumped from her chair and came to him. ‘It is nothing, David. A horse going by, that’s all. You are safe.’
She grasped his trembling hand until she felt him calm down.
‘I want to go home,’ he cried, sounding like a little boy. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Rhys is trying to arrange it,’ she assured him. ‘We’ll go home as soon as he can find us passage.’
He glanced away from her and nodded.
She tapped on the cards she dealt him. ‘Pick up your hand. Let’s play.’
Helene returned to her chair and sorted her own cards. ‘Would you like me to send word to William Lennox to call upon you again?’
Lennox and his sister Georgiana had called a few days before, but David refused to see them. Helene was sure he would perk up from such a visit, but he would not allow it.
‘No!’ David covered his face with his hands as if suddenly feeling shame. ‘I lost the Duke’s horse and William’s clothes! How can I ever face him again?’
‘I’ve already arranged payment,’ she reminded him. ‘They did not even ask for it. I think William was simply worried about you.’
‘I do not want to see him,’ David insisted.
Very well, Helene would not press him. It only distressed him more.
They played out the hand, which Helene easily won, because David forgot what suit was trump and put down the wrong cards.
She shuffled again. ‘Another?’
He stared into space again. She wanted to shake him, as if that would restore him to himself.
The door opened on the ground floor and footsteps sounded on the stairs. Her heartbeat quickened and she looked towards the doorway, knowing who it would be. Rhys had returned.
‘I am back.’ His eyes smiled at her.
Sensation flared through her body at the mere sight of him. ‘I am glad.’
‘Let me go upstairs and brush some of the dirt from my clothes. I’ll be right back down.’ He turned and Helene could hear him taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
‘Was that Rhys?’ David asked, although Rhys had plainly been within his view.
‘Yes.’ What did David see when his thoughts took him away?
She dealt another hand.
Helene doubted David realised she and Rhys were lovers, that they shared the same bed every night. David had never been upstairs, so he would not know there were only two bedchambers up there, one for Louise and Wilson, one for her and Rhys, but mostly she thought David was caught too much in his own misery to notice the heat in every gaze she and Rhys shared. Or much of anything else, for that matter. Helene was desperate to shake David out of this miasma he was caught in. Bringing him home was the only way she knew to help him crawl out of it.
They played another hand of cards and she won again. David seemed not to care. He normally detested losing.
Rhys entered the room. He brushed his hand against hers as he sat in a nearby chair.
‘Hello, David,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘It is good to see you up. How are you feeling?’
David barely looked at Rhys. ‘I am well.’ His words were automatic.
Rhys shared a glance with Helene.
He took a breath before speaking again. ‘There is a packet leaving in two days from Ostend.’ A ship that would take them home. ‘I booked you passage on it and I was able to hire a carriage to take you there. But you would leave tomorrow.’
Helene’s heart sank. ‘Tomorrow?’
His gaze met hers and she felt her pain mirrored there. ‘So many people are trying to leave Brussels. I do not know when you’d have another chance to leave, so I seized the opportunity.’
She turned to her brother. ‘David? Did you hear? Rhys said we could leave for home tomorrow.’ A moment ago she’d been thinking it urgent to get David home, but not tomorrow.
‘Home,’ David repeated in a flat voice. ‘I want to go home.’
‘There is more.’ Rhys turned to David. ‘I also hired a valet to travel with you, David. A man of experience whose employer was an officer killed in the battle.’
David’s expression turned pained at the mention of the battle.
Helene hurried to speak. ‘A valet, David! He will be able to help you in ways I cannot.’
David turned his eyes to Rhys but did not appear to really see him. ‘Thank you, Rhys.’
Her brother was not the only one struggling with emotions at the moment. Helene’s were churning inside, as well. Her heart was pounding at the idea of parting from him. Tomorrow! Nothing was settled between them. How could she go back to Yarford House when Rhys would be so far away from her without knowing when—or if—they would be together again?
‘Helene?’ Rhys asked, his voice low.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Yes.’ Her voice shook. ‘Thank you, Rhys. You have thought of everything.’
She placed her cards on the table and left the room, too unsettled to stay another minute.
* * *
Rhys put his head in his hands. Did Helene think he wanted them to leave so soon? It was tearing his guts out to part with her.
These four weeks were the most idyllic he could remember, spending each day with her like when they’d been young, making love with her each night. Only when he ventured out in the streets did reality shake him out of this reverie. The city was still filled with the wounded, still reeling from the aftermath of battle. There was more work to be done, even though Napoleon had abdicated. His regiment was head
ing to Paris, if not there already. Their job would be to ensure that the peace held. The French had so quickly welcomed Napoleon’s return that no one knew how they would react to his final defeat.
Rhys’s duty was to be with his regiment, to protect his men from the new dangers that could arise. He’d gone to the Allied headquarters at Place Royale and learned it was requested he re-join his regiment in two weeks’ time.
His idyll with Helene was at an end.
‘Rhys?’ David’s voice broke into Rhys’s misery. ‘Where is Helene?’
Rhys rubbed his face. ‘She went upstairs.’
‘I thought we were playing cards.’
At least the boy’s eyes focused on him now, although there remained something distant about him. Rhys had seen such detachment before in soldiers after a battle, as if they had one foot in the present and one foot still caught in the battle’s horror.
Rhys glanced away. ‘Helene was upset. At the thought of leaving for home so soon, I expect.’
‘Upset? At going home?’
Rhys thought it would be obvious, but David was not attending to much going on around him. ‘Because Helene and I will have to say goodbye to each other,’ he explained.
David still looked puzzled. ‘Why would that upset her? I mean, I know you and Helene were friends, but that was a long time ago.’
Rhys peered at him. ‘Do you not know of what happened between Helene and me? About why I left Yarford?’
David lifted his shoulders. ‘You bought a commission in the army and left; that is all I know.’
David had been at Westminster School in London at the time. Apparently, no one told him what happened while he was away.
The boy averted his gaze. ‘I once wanted a commission in the army...’ His voice trailed off.
Best to lead David away from those thoughts.
Rhys took a breath, deciding to tell David about him and Helene. ‘Your sister and I were going to be married—to elope to Gretna Green.’
David turned back, eyes widened. ‘Married? How could she marry you? Our father was an earl.’
And Rhys was the vicar’s son. At least the old David was still inside him somewhere.
Perhaps Rhys would not tell him the whole story. ‘Well, we did not marry and I did leave for the army, but being apart from each other was—’ How to say it? ‘—difficult for each of us. Finding each other again has—has brought us happiness. That is why it will be upsetting to part again.’
David shook his head. ‘But you can’t marry. Helene is the daughter of an earl.’
Rhys gave him a disgusted look. ‘The thing is, David, your father’s title and my lack of one never made a bit of difference to Helene and me.’
David’s brows knitted and his eyes flashed in worry. ‘Are you going to marry her now? You can’t! She needs to take me home! I need to go home.’ He was quickly becoming overwrought.
Rhys lowered his voice. ‘Do not worry, David. Helene will be taking you home.’ Because Rhys could see no other option for them.
Rhys had spent a couple of hours walking the streets of Brussels thinking about his future with Helene, never mind all the time it filled his mind these last four weeks.
Rhys rose from his chair. ‘Do you need anything, David?’
David had picked up the deck of cards and was absently shuffling it. ‘No. Just to go home.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Helene sat on the bed in their bedchamber and stared out the window that looked on to the alley behind the house.
She and Rhys were to say goodbye tomorrow.
From the moment she saw him in the tavern that first night in Brussels, she knew this moment would come. But after these four weeks, it had become impossible for her to imagine being apart from him. How was she to bear another goodbye?
She thought of their first night together, after the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. She’d thought then it would be their last time together. Saying goodbye to him then filled her with fear as well as grief, because he could have been killed in battle.
But she did find him again, on the eve of Waterloo. After another night in his arms, she’d had to face another wrenching goodbye. They’d not spoken of a future both those times, not with Napoleon so ready to snatch it away from them, not when her only prayer was that Rhys might live.
Helene knew what a soldier’s death looked like from the countless maimed and bleeding soldiers who took their last breaths in her arms. She closed her eyes. Any one of them might have been Rhys.
It was an incredible gift that Rhys lived when all those thousands of men perished on the battlefield and in the hospitals. Goodness! They were still dying here in Brussels, from infection or other complications of their injuries. Rhys might have been one of them. He might have been lying among the bodies where he’d found David. If Rhys had died, then David would have died, too. No one would have known to look for him. God had been doubly good to her.
Perhaps it was too much to ask for what she wanted now. To stay with Rhys. To marry him. To spend the rest of her life with him.
At that moment Rhys entered the room. Helene could not bear to look at him, so she continued to stare out the window. He sat next to her on the bed, took her hand in his and raised it to his warm lips. The loving gesture pierced her heart and she fought to remain composed.
She turned and leaned her forehead against his. ‘I’m better now. I—I simply was not prepared for the idea of leaving Brussels—leaving you—so soon.’
He lifted his head and stared directly into her eyes. ‘I also found out I am expected back with my regiment within two weeks’ time.’
There was no denying it, then. Parting was inevitable. Unless...
Rhys took both her hands in his. ‘Helene, I have been remiss. I should have talked with you about the future, about what we should do. I fear you have long expected that of me.’
She placed a quick kiss on his lips. ‘Rhys. Do you not remember? I said I would ask nothing of you but that you would live. I received my wish. You owe me nothing more.’
But she wanted so much more!
He tightened his grip. ‘I owe you more. I vowed to myself that I would not repeat the errors of the past. Five years ago, I did not seek you out to explain why I had to leave. I will not repeat that mistake.’
Helene drew back, unsure she wanted to hear what he would say.
‘Ethically I should marry you,’ he began. ‘I have compromised you, so marrying you would be the honourable thing to do—’
She cared nothing about that.
He glanced away as if a thought just occurred to him. ‘Although if you are with child, I would do the honourable thing—’
‘You should. You would.’ His words wounded her. ‘But you do not want to marry me.’
‘It is not that.’ He released her and ran a ragged hand though his hair. ‘I love you, Helene. My heart wants to marry you, even more strongly than five years ago. But I am not that foolish young man any more.’
Foolish? He’d be foolish to marry her? Is that what he thought?
‘I must use my head.’ Now he seemed to be arguing with himself. He looked at her earnestly. ‘My life, my livelihood, is with the army and my men, my superior officers, are expecting me in Paris.’
He wanted the army. Not her.
She lifted her chin. ‘You could ask me to come with you.’
‘And leave David?’ He shook his head. ‘I would not ask that of you. We both know he needs you now.’
‘Then I could join you later,’ she persisted.
‘An Englishwoman travelling alone into France? You cannot.’
He would not escape this argument so easily. ‘Perhaps Wilson and Louise would come with me.’
For a moment he seemed to be actually contemplating this possibility. But he shook his head again. ‘No. We do
not know what dangers we will find in Paris. Napoleon was instantly welcomed back. The people will not so welcome the British army in their midst.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Not only that. I do not know where I might be sent after Paris. If the peace holds, it will become even more difficult to advance to a higher rank. I may have to take posts that are far more unpleasant than Paris.’
These seemed like excuses to Helene. ‘You know I can take unpleasantness, Rhys. I did so at Waterloo. There were many women at the battlefield—’
He stopped her. ‘Those women, if married, were married to the soldiers. They live in terrible hardship. I will not have that for you.’
She continued undaunted. ‘I know some officers take their wives with them. When the army was marching to Quatre Bras, I saw a wife riding next to her husband, an officer. She stayed by his side. Why can I not be like her?’
‘Because the places I may have to go if I am to advance in rank—the West Indies, India—pose a great risk of disease and other dangers.’ His tone remained resolute. ‘Or if we married and you did not come with me, we’d spend years apart. I cannot want that for you either.’
‘Other women manage that,’ she told him, but she did not like the idea of years of separation either.
‘Helene.’ He looked directly into her eyes. ‘I cannot support you on my captain’s pay and I cannot guarantee I will advance in rank. You do not deserve to live in straitened circumstances—’
‘I have some money from my mother.’ Not much, though, actually. Her father had not provided for her beyond that inheritance. ‘Besides, have I not shown you I am able to endure hardship?’ She swept her arm around the room. ‘Look how humbly I can live. I can even cook.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘You are game for anything and I have always loved you for that, but what if we have children, which is very likely? How humbly would you wish them to live? How much hardship—and disease—are you willing for them to endure?’