by Mary Balogh
“Shall we stroll along too, Mrs. Simpson?” he asked. “I confess to a need to work up more of an appetite for tea.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking his offered arm.
And they settled into a silence that he found difficult to break. It was strange—he had never felt awkward in her presence before. But he had noticed during the ride from Brussels that she had not once looked into his eyes. Damn him for a careless dancer. Their collision of the previous evening had been a small matter, but it had embarrassed her dreadfully.
And he had woken in a sweat during the night with the fragrance of her hair in his nostrils.
She was Ellen Simpson. Charlie’s wife. The quiet woman whose presence had always made Charlie’s tent a haven of peace and comfort. The woman in whose presence he had always been able to relax fully. The woman whose presence he had often been unaware of, though he had always noticed when she was not there for some reason.
She was just Ellen Simpson.
“Do you ever miss England?” he asked. “This is a very lovely spot, I must confess, but it is not home, is it?”
“Home!” she said softly. “Home is not a place to me, my lord. Home is my husband. And he has a habit of moving about with the army.” She smiled.
He looked down at her in some curiosity. He had never asked her about herself. He knew very little about her, in fact.
“Were you with your father from infancy?” he asked. “When did your mother die?”
“I went to Spain with my father when I was fifteen,” she said, “and lived with him until he was killed. And then I married Charlie. Ten years altogether. Ten years of wandering.”
She had not answered the second of his questions. Had her mother died when she was fifteen? Was there no other family to whom she could have gone?
“Which part of England are you from?” he asked.
“London mostly,” she said. “My father…That is, we had a home in Leicestershire, but we rarely went there. I grew up in London.”
“Do you not dream of going back?” he asked. “Of finally having a home of your own again? A place where you belong?”
“Yes, sometimes,” she said. “In the countryside. With no troubles and no dangers. So that I would not always have to live in terror that something was going to happen to Charlie. It must be heaven to live with one’s husband in peace. And in one place. A place that is one’s own. Oh, yes, I do wish for that.”
“The time will come soon enough,” he said, touching the hand that rested on his arm and withdrawing his fingers hastily. He did not want to make her uncomfortable again. “Charlie is talking of selling out once this business with Bonaparte is finally finished with.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I have learned in the past ten years not to look too far ahead and not to dream too much. I have my husband today. We will spend this evening together. That I can look forward to with some certainty and some eagerness. But not the home in the country. I will not think about that yet.”
“Charlie is a fortunate man,” he said.
She looked up at him, startled. “Oh, no,” she said. “I am the fortunate one. If you only knew! Charlie is the kindest and the most wonderful man in the whole world. He gave me a reason for living when I had none, you know. He is everything to me. My world would collapse if I did not have him.”
He had learned in the previous few weeks that there was more to Ellen Simpson than just the quiet strength of character that he had been long familiar with. He had learned that she could be gay and humorous and vitally beautiful. And now he was seeing that there was passion in her. He looked down at her, intrigued.
“I know something of Charlie’s kindness,” he said. “I am not sure that I would not have bolted from the terror of my first experience with battle if your husband had not been there to encourage me. It must have been a comfort to have him for a friend when your father died. Were you very fond of him?”
“He was good to me,” she said. “But I never knew him well. I had terrible problems adjusting to army life when I first went to Spain.” She smiled. “Charlie found me crying outside my tent one day because I had just brushed my hair and found the brush to be gray with dust, and there was nowhere to wash my hair. Or my clothes. I had never really experienced dirt before. He put his arm around my shoulders and sat on the ground with me and told me stories, just as if I were a child.” She laughed. “He was wholly paternal, you must realize. I was fifteen, and he thirty. And he told me of his little girl, whom he missed. Jennifer. After that, he used to seek me out often to see that I was not unhappy. And he used to bring me presents whenever he had been into a town. A fan. A mantilla. A clean comb.”
It was hard to imagine Mrs. Simpson as a bewildered girl, crying in the dust. He knew her as a woman who endured the worst of hardships with quiet cheerfulness. The only time he had seen her react to discomfort was when she had fallen from her horse into the mud one day and had been cursing like one of the men when he and Charlie had come up to her.
“I made friends among the women quite fast,” she said. “And I got used to the life. But you cannot imagine how having just a glimpse of Charlie came to light up my days. Sometimes he would wink at me from a distance. I suppose he was like the father I…He was like a father to me. Or an older brother.”
Like the father she had never had? Lord Eden completed in his mind. There was something fascinating about discovering what two of his friends had been like before he had met them.
“I asked him to marry me,” she said, and she flushed when he looked down at her with a grin. “It is shocking, is it not? After my father died, he wanted to send me to his sister in London. Lady Habersham, with whom Jennifer always stayed when not at school. He was willing to do that for me. But I asked him to marry me. I even begged him. He did not think it fitting. He said he was too old for me and not right for me.”
Lord Eden laughed aloud. “I shall have to tease him,” he said, “about being led squealing to the altar.”
“Oh,” she said, and she was laughing too. “Please don’t do that. Please don’t. I was very selfish. I did not even consider that perhaps he did not want to marry me. But I loved him so dearly. I could not bear the thought of being parted from him. Life would have had no more meaning. But I don’t think he has been sorry. I think I have brought him happiness, too.”
“If you had had to spend your days with him as I did when you were gone to England, ma’am,” he said, “you would be in no doubt about that. He was like a bear in a cage.”
She smiled brightly at him. “I am sorry,” she said. “I must have been boring you terribly, telling you these things.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I have been fascinated.” And that was certainly no lie. He was totally surprised. He had always assumed that Mrs. Simpson had been persuaded into a marriage of convenience after the death of her father, though he had never been in any doubt of her devotion to Charlie. But of course, when he thought about it, he had to admit that her story made sense. Charlie was not at all the type of man to take advantage of an unhappy and bewildered girl.
“It seems that Lieutenant Penworth would make a good reconnaissance officer,” he said. “I am afraid I would be hopelessly lost in this forest by now. But you see? He has brought us full circle, and there is the picnic party.”
She seemed to have run out of confidences and conversation. It was something of a relief to be back with the others again and to be able to arrange matters so that he sat down on the blanket beside Jennifer. She was glowing with high spirits, as usual, and looking particularly fetching in a blue muslin dress and straw bonnet trimmed with blue flowers.
Lord Eden did not know why he could not shake from his mind the memory of Mrs. Simpson pressed to his body the night before, her face turned up to his. Surely such a thing must have happened to him before. If she had been a stranger or a passing acquaintance, doubtless he would have forgotten all about the incident by now. It was just that he was unaccustomed to thinking
of her as a woman. She was Charlie’s wife, someone he liked and respected a great deal. But still, just Charlie’s wife.
It was foolish to feel this embarrassment, this awareness, in her presence. And to know that she shared the feeling. He did not like it at all. He set himself to charm Miss Simpson.
CAPTAIN SIMPSON TURNED to Ellen and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. He laughed.
“Have you ever seen such a little whirlwind?” he asked. “If her mouth could move any faster, Ellen, she would make it do so.”
Ellen too laughed. “But she is enjoying herself so much,” she said. “And she has made so many friends, and amassed so many admirers, Charlie. You must be very proud of her.”
“I am,” he said. He walked away from the door through which his daughter had just whisked herself on her way to the theater with the Slatterys. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself, Ellen, just to believe she is my daughter. Can you imagine me being father to such a pretty little creature?”
“I can,” she said.
He smiled and sat down beside her on the sofa. “So this afternoon it was all Lieutenant Penworth, was it?” he said. “Can’t say I know the puppy, except that he’s a Guardsman. From Devon, she says, with a parcel of younger brothers and sisters and a love of riding and sailing and playing cricket. Do you fancy visiting our grandchildren in Devon, lass?”
“Oh, Charlie,” she said, laughing at him. “Jennifer is not ready to fix her choice yet. She very much has eyes for Lord Eden, but I think she is shy of talking to you about him because he is your friend.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t want her married yet. She should have time to enjoy herself, shouldn’t she? Did you have a good time, lass?”
“Yes, I did.” She reached up a hand and smoothed it over the thinning hair at the side of his head. “But I would have preferred to be at home with you. Did you miss me?”
“I went to the shops,” he said.
She laughed. “You, Charlie?” she said. “To the shops?”
“How else could I buy you a present?” he said, grinning at her.
“A present? You bought me a present?” He had not done that for a long time, not since they were in Spain. Oh, he had given her money when she went to England, with strict orders to spend it on herself. But it was the little, often absurd presents that she had always valued most. “Where is it?”
“In my pocket,” he said. But he clasped a hand over the pocket as her hand went toward it. “What do I get first?”
She knelt on the sofa beside him and wrapped her arms about his neck. “What do you want?” she asked, and kissed him lightly on both cheeks.
“The lips,” he said. “Nothing less than the lips.”
“Oh,” she said, “it must be a very valuable present, then. All right, the lips it is.”
They were both chuckling after she had finished kissing him lingeringly.
“Maybe we should forget the present,” he said.
“Not a chance!” She reached into his pocket. Her fingers closed around a package wrapped in soft paper that rustled.
“Perhaps you will not like it,” he said, sitting quite still.
“I will,” she said, drawing it out. “I don’t care what it is. What is it?”
He laughed. “Open it and see, lass,” he said.
It was a pair of earbobs, tiny, delicately made, each set with an emerald.
“To wear with your new evening gown,” he said. “The one you wore last night.”
“Oh, Charlie,” she said, “they are lovely. And must have cost you the earth. You shouldn’t have. You don’t need to buy me expensive gifts.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “Oh, yes I do, sweetheart. And they were the very smallest jewels in the shop.”
They both laughed as she wrapped her arms about his neck again. “Thank you,” she said. “But I don’t have a present for you.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, closing his arms about her. “You are a whole treasure, remember? My treasure.”
She rested her cheek against the bald top of his head as he hugged her. Then she sat back on her heels and looked at him, the earbobs in her hand.
“Tears?” he said softly, reaching out and wiping away one tear from her cheek with his thumb. “What is it, sweetheart?”
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Oh, Charlie, nothing. And everything.” The muscles of her face worked against her will, and more tears followed the first as his arms came firmly about her. She slid her legs from under her and hid her face against his shoulder.
“What is it, sweetheart?” He was kissing the side of her face.
“Everything is changing,” she said when she could. “It is all different this time. I’m frightened, Charlie. Time is running out for us, isn’t it?”
He forced her chin up and dried her eyes with a large handkerchief. “Nothing has changed,” he said firmly. “We are still here together, lass, and we still love each other. And it is unlike you to talk this way. You never did before. I have always come back to you, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Well, then,” he said. “I’ll come back this time too. And this will be the last time. I promise. We’ll go back to England and buy that cottage at last, and you shall have your own garden and dogs and cats and chickens and anything else you like. We’ll be there by this time next year.”
“I don’t care about the dogs and the cats,” she said, “or about the cottage or the garden. I only want you, Charlie. Tell me you will be there. Promise me you will. I can’t live without you. I wouldn’t want to live without you.”
“Sweetheart!” His voice held surprise as he caught her to him again. “Sweetheart, what has brought on this mood? It is most unlike you. Have I been neglecting you? Is that it? I have been, haven’t I? I’m so selfish. I thought you were enjoying yourself with Jennifer and with Lady Madeline and Eden and Mrs. Byng and Mrs. Slattery and all the rest. I’m sorry, lass. I’ve been neglecting you. But I love you, Ellen. You know I love you.”
She pushed away from him suddenly, grabbed the handkerchief from his hand, and dried her eyes with it. She smiled a red-faced and watery-eyed smile. “How foolish I am!” she said. “What a goose! And all over a pair of earrings. They are more precious to me than the costliest of diamonds, Charlie. Shall I put them on? Though they will look quite dreadful with this pink dress. But you must kiss me anyway and tell me how beautiful I look. And then I want you to tell me all those old stories about your childhood. The fishing stories, and the Christmas stories. Will you?”
“What a silly lass you are,” he said, taking her free hand as she rose to her feet to find a mirror, and lifting it to his lips. “You have heard those stories a hundred times. Go and put the earrings on, then, sweetheart, and come for your kiss.”
She sat curled in to his body for the rest of the evening, his arm about her shoulders. And she played absently with the buttons on his waistcoat, and laughed at his stories, and kissed his chin while determinedly shutting from her mind unwilling memories of a strongly muscled arm and a broad shoulder well above the level of her own, and of laughing green eyes and fair wavy hair. And of that cologne that he had worn also the night before.
THROUGH MAY AND THE EARLY PART OF JUNE in that fateful year of 1815, it might have seemed that the predictions made by sons to anxious mothers, and husbands to wives, and brothers to sisters, that nothing would come of Napoleon’s escape from Elba and the King of France’s flight to Ghent, were quite right. All would pass over peacefully, they said. Old Boney would never be able to gather together a large enough army to threaten the one the Duke of Wellington was amassing in Belgium and the Prussian one that Marshal Blücher was bringing to his assistance. And even if he could, he would think twice about attacking the forces led by two such formidable generals.
And yet rumors persisted that the French army led by their emperor himself was larger than ever and that it was marching on Belgium. Some rumors even developed into s
cares and panics. The French were over the border already and marching on Brussels, Napoleon at their head. No one ever believed the rumors, of course, and scoffed at those who did. But still, one never knew. One never knew quite where the Corsican monster might rear his head. If he could escape from confinement on Elba—and had not British soldiers been his guards?—he could also march an army on Brussels and arrive before anyone was ready for him.
But despite everything, and despite the persistent gaiety of Brussels and of the Duke of Wellington himself, the preparations went on. Those battalions and brigades already in Belgium drilled and readied themselves for what they knew might well be the battle of their lives. Other battalions poured into the country almost every day, some of them made up almost entirely of raw troops, and took up their billets at Liedekerke or Schendelbeke or Enghien or Grammont or wherever else in the vicinity of Brussels they could be squeezed in. And the Peninsular veterans who had gone to America and whom the duke needed so badly were on their way back.
And always, it seemed, artillery poured across the English Channel and rumbled ominously over the countryside to remind those who denied the fact that war was indeed imminent. Wellington complained constantly to London that the amount of artillery he was receiving was woefully inadequate, but there was quite enough to dampen the spirits of all those who witnessed its arrival.
And still the entertainments went on: balls, theater parties, court parties, reviews of the troops, excursions to places of interest, afternoon picnics, moonlight picnics. Young men who knew that their days might be numbered danced and flirted with determined gaiety. Young ladies who refused to believe that war was coming but who secretly could not believe their own self-deception gave themselves up to the pleasure of being feted by so many attentive and splendidly uniformed gentlemen.