Wherefore Art Thou.

by Melanie Thurlow

  Someone knew something and he was determined to find out.

  But three towns later, and three failed attempts to find her, Desmond’s blind ambition turned to hopeless dismay. He could hardly find the strength or courage to lower himself down from upon his mount. It was almost too painful. But the thought that he’d never find her at all was more painful still. He needed to find her. Even if he had to tear through every town in the country to find someone who had seen her.

  He’d do it. He had done it. But he just couldn’t do it right now. All day he’d spent upon his horse. All afternoon he had spent questioning people whose answers only left him disappointed. He just couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t take another dose of discouragement.

  He stood with his back to the door, silent as Robert stood at the counter, speaking with the proprietor of the inn. Small towns like this operated around the posting inns. If anyone were going to know anything about a single, blonde traveler, it would be the innkeeper. A minute passed and Desmond was ready to accept the inevitable and move on, move on to the next town, and any one after that. He wasn’t ready to give up. But he was ready to stop hearing firsthand the confirmation he himself felt all the way down to his bones.

  Desmond decided he’d do just that, give up, leave. He turned towards the door and had it halfway opened before the innkeeper’s remark made him turn back to face the counter the man stood behind.

  “Depends who’s askin’,” the heavily-accented man remarked.

  Desmond’s feet brought him forward two paces with ill-contained fury. This man knew something, and he needed to know what. His hands clenched into fists at the thought that he would do anything—anything—to obtain the information.

  But Robert spoke first, his firm voice coupled with calm reason stopping Desmond’s advance. “I am her brother-in-law, the Duke of Brighton,” he lied partially, “and this is her betrothed.”

  “Your grace,” the man bowed. And again, “My lord. Ever so sorry,” he continued speaking to the duke, “you can never be too careful.”

  “Indeed,” Desmond spoke through clenched teeth, drawing the attention of both duke and innkeeper alike as the air in the closed inn tensed.

  Robert turned back around, his civility far from what was required—or even expected—from a duke, and thus put out some of the flames Desmond had appeared to ignite with merely one word. “Do you happen to know where we can find her?”

  “She was found unconscious in the road hours ago, I was informed. One of the hands from my own stable was the one to find ‘er. Phillip carried ‘er all the way back to town, him did. Good man that Phillip Barrell.”

  The ringing that was constantly in Desmond’s ears compounded more still at the mention of the name. Vaguely he overheard Robert asking about the direction in which they might find the doctor’s house and slipping the man a ten pound note for his assistance. It wasn’t until Lord Brighton had gathered all the information that he needed and had turned back to Desmond to take his leave, that Desmond himself spoke up.

  “What name did you say?”

  “’Xcuse me?” the man asked, confused.

  “The name. Of the stable hand that found her. What was it?”

  “Phillip Barrell.”

  “Phillip Barrell,” Desmond whispered as he paled.

  Robert leaned in so that he could lower his own voice and say, “Desmond, what is this about?”

  Desmond shook his head. “It is nothing, I am sure. The name merely reminded me of someone from a long time ago.”

  “Shall we, then?” Robert said, indicating the door.

  Desmond nodded and took his leave behind Lord Brighton. He didn’t have the strength to go forward alone, to take the lead. He barely had the strength to believe that they might have, against all odds, actually found her.

  The belief became a certainty all too soon, as they crossed the threshold of the doctor’s home to find Isabelle lying unmoving on the table in the front room, covered in a white sheet. Desmond gasped. The home smelled musty, of dampness and mothballs and death. It was a sickening smell that drove Desmond to cover his mouth and nose with his hand.

  He couldn’t move further into the room. He couldn’t continue following the duke. Isabelle was lying there, still—too still—and he couldn’t move, couldn’t go to her and see the immobility of her chest and accept that she was gone. He was just fine where he was. He would stay at a distance. Better yet, he would bolt back out the door, seeking shelter in the darkness of the night that had swallowed the town of Middlebury that they were in.

  The door clicked as the doctor shut it behind him. It seemed like so very long a period, like he’d been standing, staring down a tunnel at her prone body for so very long, and yet it had been mere seconds. What was to become of the rest of his life? he wondered.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Lady Isabelle did you say her name was?” the doctor said, addressing Robert.

  “That’s correct. How is she?”

  How is she? Desmond wanted to laugh. Not that any of this was in the least bit funny, but it was certainly laughable. Oh, how life could be so cruel.

  “She is alive, and I believe well.”

  Time froze.

  “Has she woken?” Robert returned.

  “Only once and only very briefly. She was in a fair amount of pain, so I gave her a dose of laudanum. She likely won’t awaken for several hours yet.”

  Robert nodded, as did Desmond. But then Desmond added almost oblivious of the words, “She is well. She is alive.”

  “Yes,” the doctor confirmed.

  Desmond nodded unconsciously for a second time. Swallowing, he voiced another concern, “And the child?”

  “The child?” Robert asked, aghast. “Surely you weren’t in each other’s company long enough to conceive.” But both Desmond and the doctor ignored the duke’s interjection.

  The doctor held his stare equally. “Lady Isabelle lost a significant amount of blood, but she has blessedly not suffered a miscarriage. It is nothing short of a miracle, really, with the amount of blood that she lost.”

  A miracle.

  Desmond didn’t know the exact nature of how she came to lose such a vast amount of blood, but they were details he considered he could live without knowing.

  A miracle.

  It was a miracle that she survived. It was a miracle she’d survived the carriage accident weeks before. She was a miracle, in that she was his miracle. She’d helped him know love again, showed him that it could still exist in a world where one saw such awful tragedies.

  She was a miracle, and he could not stand the thought of losing her. Not ever.

  Desmond swallowed as the duke brushed a stray strand of golden blonde hair back from Isabelle’s unflinching forehead. Lord Brighton then looked up at him and said, “I will go to the inn and secure us some rooms for the night. I assume it is okay for us to move her to the relative comfort of the inn nearby?”

  “Entirely,” the doctor—whose name Desmond still had not learned and would’ve probably been immediately forgotten even if he had—replied.

  “Then it is decided.”

  But nothing was decided. Desmond couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t stay in this home and feel so very close to death, know that he’d been so very close to losing her, could possibly lose her still. The doctor said it himself. It was a miracle. And it was by a miracle alone that she was even still here with him now. He didn’t feel so very secure in allowing the fate of his future to be decided by a mere miracle. He wanted her to live because she was supposed to live. He didn’t want to bank on the hopes that she would pull through. He wanted the security of her sitting upright and conversing and agreeing to become his wife.

  “I’ll go, Brighton,” he said.

  “Are you certain?” Robert responded. “You could stay here while you wait, if you’d rather.”

  “No,” he said, his tongue clipped. “I will go and secure our rooms and have a carriage sent round with which to c
arry her back to the inn.”

  “Very well,” Robert nodded, but Desmond felt his disapproval. No, disapproval was not the word. The word was… Well, he didn’t know for certain what the word was, except for that the duke expected him to want to stay. And in truth, he did want to. But he also didn’t want to be present to watch her die.

  Chapter 33

  It was only minutes later that Desmond was back at the small posting inn that was quite literally the center of town, though at this late hour it seemed all but deserted. Only one lantern burned outside of it, leading travelers to its doors. Without any fuss, Desmond managed to secure three rooms—one for Isabelle, Lord Brighton, and for himself—then he went back around to the stables.

  He hadn’t been of mind to bring with him a carriage in his search for Isabelle. It would have slowed down his progress considerably if he had. And though the distance from the doctor’s home to the inn wasn’t very great, it wasn’t as though he could merely grab Isabelle about the wrists and the duke about her ankles and carry her the distance. Such wouldn’t be respectable. Luckily, the innkeeper had assured him that the stable-hand had yet gone home and would be more than obliged to harness a carriage to transport the maiden.

  Desmond walked into the dark stables in which a few lanterns flickered their yellow light, but which otherwise appeared empty—of human inhabitants, that is.

  “Is there anyone there?” he called.

  He heard movement and a voice call, “Over here.” Then the person came shuffling into view, striding towards him, on his lips the words, “I apologize, my lord. How can I be of service?”

  But the young man’s eyes met Desmond’s at the same moment and he stopped short his advance. Desmond was at a loss. For words. For thoughts. For breath.

  “Major Thornton?” The man smiled in disbelief.

  Desmond made no answer, no confirmation. His ears were ringing, the world seeming to spin about him. This was a hallucination. It wasn’t real. But the man looked very real, not much different than a boy. The boy. Phillip Barrell.

  There was a flash. One he was all too familiar with.

  When the innkeeper had spoken the name it was like he had seen a ghost—a ghost he’d already seen once, just days ago outside the Crooked Candlestick Inn in Hollyfield. And now, here it was again, standing in front of him.

  “Are you all right, sir?” the man asked, taking several steps closer. Desmond held up a staying hand to stop his progress.

  He blinked, forcing himself to breathe in through his mouth and out through his nose, and said, “You’re dead.”

  The man lifted up his hands for show, a plain smile lifting up his face. “No.”

  Desmond didn’t blink, didn’t move, didn’t breathe. His nightmare flashed before his eyes. It was a nightmare, but it was reality. “I watched you die. I held you as you took your final breath.”

  “I lived.”

  Desmond felt his brow crease in concentration. He was in the stables of the inn in Middlebury. He was present. This was not the past. The man before him was not an illusion. He was here.

  “How?” he asked, the question simple.

  “The French believed me dead, just as you did. But one of our scouting teams was sent out in search for us, they recovered me, fished the bullet out of my chest, and I survived.”

  “You survived.” Desmond felt a numbness spread across his chest.

  The head of the man, with the face of the boy who had died in his arms, tilted to the side. “And so did you.”

  “I cannot believe it.”

  The man shook his head, shrugging his shoulders as he did. “It was a miracle, sir. Nothing short of a miracle.”

  Two miracles in one day. It certainly seemed against every odd. And every odd had undoubtedly, for years, been turned against Desmond. Miracles only gave way to the unknown. And he didn’t want to be in the dark any longer. He wanted certainty. He wanted to be sure that Isabelle would live, certainty that the man standing before him wasn’t a hallucination.

  “Sir?” Phillip inquired when Desmond had been silent too long.

  Desmond snapped to and said in his brisk, military tone, “I need a carriage brought round to the doctor’s house to pick up a patient and a friend.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” the man responded just as though they were still in the throes of war.

  Desmond turned on his heel and began to stroll quickly away. But stopped to turn and say, “Lance Corporal Barrell?”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m glad you lived,” he said directly into the man’s eyes.

  “Me too, sir.”

  Desmond almost chuckled at the absurdity of the conversation he was having. “Did you marry that girl? The one from the photograph?”

  “I very well did, sir.”

  Desmond nodded. “Good man.”

  The man, former soldier, merely smiled. Desmond could feel it on his back as he turned once more and walked away. The boy had lived. For years he had been harboring guilt for the boy he couldn’t save, of the men he had lost. But this boy had lived. It was only one, but he was the one, the one that hit home the hardest, the one that hurt the deepest. Perhaps, Desmond thought, he would never have the nightmare again, would never hold the dying boy in his arms and feel as though he were dying himself. But even if he didn’t, he was not so sure that this nightmare would not be replaced, that every moment wouldn’t be filled with fear for Isabelle, or rather fear of the possibility of the loss of her.

  *****

  “Isabelle. Isabelle,” came the muted tones of a male voice through the clouds of smoke filling her mind.

  Slowly, it came into focus as the fog cleared, and Isabelle’s eyes flickered open to find not the faintest trace of smoke in the air, or the faintest familiarity with the room. She stared up at the bare ceiling and silently wondered where she was.

  “You received my letter,” she said, not bothering to move a single hair on her body at first, not even bothering to look at the person who had so gently roused her from the sleep she could feel was trying to pull her back under.

  “Yesterday evening,” answered the crisp, male voice of Lord Brighton. “I rode through the night to get to Hamilton Hall, only to find you… gone.”

  She’d posted the letter yesterday morning, when she’d awoken to find her memory still at home in her mind. She had left at dawn and walked into town. She’d hired a messenger to ride straightaway to Nottinghamshire where Brighton Castle stood, with the instructions to deliver the missive into the duke’s very hands. The man had been true to his word. There were some who would not have been so.

  “You have impeccable timing,” she credited him.

  “Apparently I was not quite as expedient as I should have been,” he said leaning closer.

  She smiled wanly and moved to try and sit up. She was sore, it was true, but the table she was on was quite uncomfortable.

  “No, don’t try to sit up,” Lord Brighton said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  She could have gathered; her body felt so weak.

  She tipped her head back on the hard surface beneath her and closed her eyes—they were too heavy to keep open. “What happened?”

  “You collapsed on the road.”

  “Oh.”

  “Your child is still safe within you.”

  Isabelle opened her eyes at that and met Robert’s for a fraction of a second before closing hers again, this time with a flood of embarrassment. “I was hoping you would never have to know. I was hoping no one would ever have to know.”

  “It is all right.”

  It was at that point that Isabelle turned to her visitor. The dark hair, chiseled features, eyes like ice and honesty. Robert, the impressive Duke of Brighton, man and myth, was standing in her room, and it wasn’t even her room. She didn’t know where she was.

  “Will anything ever be all right again?”

  The duke smiled sadly, his eyes answering the question his lips no doubt couldn’t. He cou
ldn’t know. But Isabelle did.

  Isabelle sucked in a breath between bared teeth, biting back her tears. Desmond would not take her to wife now, and that hurt beyond any sort of measurable amount. But she’d made her choice. She’d left, before she could be told to leave.

  And finally, she accepted the truth of her actions. She hadn’t left merely to do what she thought was best. She hadn’t left merely to accept responsibility. She had run away. Because she couldn’t stand to see the hurt or disapproval or rejection in Desmond’s eyes.

  She swallowed and forced the thoughts away.

  “Did you tell my parents where I was?”

  “No. I know your parents, lest you forget. Besides, I didn’t know what to tell. I thought it imprudent to uncover the facts for myself, first.”

  “I’m with child.” She didn’t blurt out the words, but she didn’t soften the blow either. And it wasn’t like he didn’t already know.

  “I know,” Lord Brighton said, nodding.

  It wasn’t as though they were close—they had conversed on a few occasions during her family’s recent house party, but those had been each short and strictly formal. He didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him. But he was a duke, and a gentleman—he didn’t have to know her to scold her, to reprimand her.

  He didn’t have to be calm and sympathetic. And yet, he was. His eyes were kind and full of understanding and sadness.

  He continued, “And Lord Thornton is—”

  She could hear the question and felt her teeth grind together in anticipation. She couldn’t bear to hear the question verbalized, so she interrupted, “Not the father. I happened across him little over a week ago. He has been taking care of me is all, as I explained in the letter. But he won’t have me. Not now. Now that he knows.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lord Brighton said, one side of his lips rising in the barest hint of a smile.