by Carla Kelly
ALSO BY CARLA KELLY
FICTION
Daughter of Fortune
Summer Campaign
Miss Chartley's Guided Tour
Marian's Christmas Wish
Mrs. McVinnie's London Season
Libby's London Merchant
Miss Grimsley's Oxford Career
Miss Billings Treads the Boards
Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand
Reforming Lord Ragsdale
Miss Whittier Makes a List
The Lady's Companion
With This Ring
Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind
One Good Turn
The Wedding Journey
Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army
Beau Crusoe
Marrying the Captain
The Surgeon's Lady
Marrying the Royal Marine
The Admiral's Penniless Bride
Borrowed Light
Coming Home for Christmas: Three Holiday Stories
Enduring Light
Marriage of Mercy
My Loving Vigil Keeping
NONFICTION
On the Upper Missouri: The Journal of Rudolph
Friedrich Kurz
Fort Buford: Sentinel at the Confluence
© 2012 Carla Kelly
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, whether by graphic, visual, electronic, film, microfilm, tape recording, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Cedar Fort, Inc., or any other entity.
ISBN 13: 978-1-4621-1037-7
Published by Sweetwater Books, an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc.
2373 W. 700 S., Springville, UT, 84663
Distributed by Cedar Fort, Inc., www.cedarfort.com
Previously published by Signet/New American Library in 1989.
Cover design by Angela D. Olsen
Cover design © 2012 by Lyle Mortimer
Edited and typeset by Melissa J. Caldwell
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my daughter Mary Ruth Huerta,
and the memory of Sheldon Lundberg
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
… I … W-WANT TO GO HOME.”
Major Jack Beresford looked around him and pulled his cloak tighter. He raised his shoulders and hunched his neck down, but still the rain crept down his back and settled in a discouraging puddle where his belt was gathered tight to hold up someone else's breeches.
A dead man's breeches. This remembrance was to himself only, so he did not stutter, thinking the memory instead of speaking it. The cloak was borrowed, the boots his own, and thank heaven for that too, because no one else had feet so big. The uniform jacket was loaned on the promise that it be taken eventually to Curzon Street and given to its owner's little brother for adoration until some future date, when the rightful owner returned to claim it.
“I-I'm going … home.” He spoke out loud again to give reassurance to the fact.
Jack leaned against the ship's railing and braced himself against the pitch and yaw of the cross-channel packet boat. He would have liked better weather, but this was familiar weather, foggy and damp and totally different from the dry scorch of Spanish summers.
As he watched the dimly outlined cliffs, the mist gradually rose until he could see them for what they were, white cliffs decorated with seabirds that swooped and bobbed on the breeze until the air was sharp with their raucous welcome. Tears started in his eyes, but he had not cried since Badajoz a year ago, and he knew the moment would pass.
“Lovely sight, don't you know?”
Jack recognized the voice of his colonel and moved over, even though the railing for the entire length of the ship had no other people bellying up to watch for England.
“Ye-yes, lovely sight, sir.” Jack cleared his throat. “But … but I do not wish ever to see it again.”
“How's this, man?” asked the other officer.
“S-s-simple, Lord Carlton. To see this again would mean I was approaching England again. Th-that would mean I had been away. And I do not mean to be away—not ever again. No.”
The colonel nodded and was silent for a moment, then turned to look at him, compelling Jack to face him. “And what have you planned?”
Jack shrugged and would have turned back to the railing, but the colonel put out his hand and held Jack's arm.
“I want to know, Beresford. I really want to know.”
“Well …” Jack looked down at his feet. “Home … home to Adrian, of course. His last letter w-w-worried me.”
The colonel let go of Jack and reached into his pocket, pulling out a cheroot. He glanced up at the major and grinned. “Blasted Spanish habit. Think Lady Carlton will take one whiff and make me repair to another bedroom?”
Jack grinned for the first time. “S-sir, how long have you been gone?”
“Four years, same as you.”
“I th-think she w-won't.”
The colonel laughed. He scratched a flame from the lucifer he held cupped against the wind, but the match puffed out. The colonel crammed the cheroot back in his pocket. “But seriously, my man, what plans have you made?”
Jack turned again toward the water and watched the cliffs. The sunlight was watery, but the gleam of white was enough to make him squint.
“J-just home.”
The colonel smiled and put out his hand again. “Several of us are hiring a chaise and four and posting together to London. Come with us, boy. You know your aunt wants to see you.”
“No. You … you know what would h-happen.”
“Beresford, so what if the ladies want to gather around and pat your arm and cry a few tears and make you tell the story again and again!”
“No. I-I'm no hero. I led heroes, but I'm no hero.”
The colonel sighed. “That's the devil of it, Jack. You are. And don't walk away from me! I'm still your colonel, until such time as you see fit to officially resign your commission.
“S-sorry, my lord.”
The colonel smiled in apology for his outburst and touched Jack again. “Stubborn burro. Foolish, stiff-rumped, back-up, blasted nuisance burro! I'll miss you, Jack. Promise to visit us when next you come down to London.”
“I … I will, sir.”
Leave-taking at the Dover dock was easier than he had dreamed. A slap on the back, a handshake, a promise here and there to visit, to drop in at Watier's, to down a bowl together some Christmas. All his gear was in a borrowed duffel bag. It was new, bought since the bombardment, and contained only a hairbrush, razor and cup, and his one good uniform, saved from the artillery barrage that destroyed the village because he had sent the coat and pants ahead to Lisbon for alterations. He had a few souvenirs for Adrian and Emily, and that was all.
He shouldered the bag and would have left the wharf, but he chanced to look around once more and ended up helping the wounded come ashore,
long after the other officers were gone. He left them finally with the able-bodied men, protected from the drizzle under a long wooden porch. From the looks of the stains on the wood planking, the porch had long been sheltering the wounded coming back from Boney's wars.
He didn't want to travel by night, so he hitched a ride into Dover and had the carter drop him off at lodgings that held more promise than those closer to the docks. It was a small matter to speak for room and board for one night and ask the way to the nearest stable.
And then there was nothing to do but sit on the bed and stare at the wall and wait for sleep to creep up on him when he wasn't looking.
He did not surrender willingly. Even as his body cried out for rest and his eyes burned into his brain, he fought sleep.
Major Beresford, late of His Majesty's Forty-fifth, knew that he would wake up screaming. He knew that before his eyes opened wide, or someone shook him out of it, he would be back at Badajoz again, and he didn't want to be there, not now especially, now that he was back in England.
His own screams woke him, as he knew they would. He could almost hear his heart beating faster and faster. He hunted around for the bedclothes he had flung off in his frenzy to escape and wrapped them about him as he shivered and perspired at the same time.
When he went downstairs in the morning, he knew that he had wakened the entire inn. He could tell by the way the innkeeper looked everywhere but at him as he paid his shot and went into the taproom. As he drank his ale and dipped his bread in it, he could feel people staring at him.
The ostler already had the horse saddled and ready when he crossed the yard. He flipped the man a coin.
“Good-o, Major, and thank ye.”
Beresford nodded and swung into the saddle, securing his little bundle behind him. He breathed deeply of the sea air. The sky was sea blue and there were birds. Not the scavenging birds that flew around the battlefields, waiting for opportunities of their own to thrust and parry; not even the seabirds of yesterday, but small birds, wrens and swallows. English birds.
Major Jack Beresford didn't know if he could get home fast enough.
HE REVEREND MR. ANDREW LITTLETREE HAD come to propose. Onyx Hamilton had known for several days that he would. During his last visit, she had simpered and postured as she sat with Amethyst's mending, uttering “Is that so?” or “Really, sir?” in her soft voice, as the conversation demanded.
Conversation was never very demanding with the vicar. He required only an audience. It mattered not that she listened. He knew with the instinct of the truly self-involved that she would hang on his every utterance. Anything less than her total attention would never have occurred to him.
Onyx had discovered ways to make his weekly monologues educational. Before she heard his gig in the front drive, and certainly before his “Miss Hamilton, oh, Miss Hamilton” summoned her into the Blue Parlor (the Yellow was for death and company of a more illustrious nature), she mentally extracted a volume from the library of her lively brain and opened the book behind her eyelids, where he could not see it.
One week her private topic might be the poems of Ben Jonson (although Lady Daggett did not approve of poetry about dead children or popish ideas). As the vicar ranged on and on about his virtues and the defects of others, and as she nodded and smiled over her mending, she was mentally reviewing the pitiful death of Solomon Pavy, or thoughtfully considering the romantic implications of sup-ping of Jove's nectar.
She knew when her attention would be required. Always before he made a statement demanding comment, the Reverend Mr. Andrew Littletree would clear his throat. Then Onyx Hamilton would lower her needle and thread in her lap, raise her fine eyes to his countenance, and await the pearl soon to issue forth from his lips.
But this week, she knew the visit would be different. Lady D had hinted so last night over the whist table, where Onyx allowed herself to be beaten with prodigious regularity.
“Onyx, the time is ripe,” Lady Daggett had said in a tone that carried throughout the room. “I am sure that the vicar will bring himself up to the mark this week.” To add emphasis to predestination, Lady Daggett laid down her cards with a snap and sat back in triumph. Whether it was in pleasure over her excellent hand or in satisfaction that at last Onyx would be suitably engaged and out of the Daggetts’ establishment, Onyx did not know.
“How is this so, Lady Daggett?” she had asked. Playing whist night after night bored her, but it was no worse than the boredom she suffered each Tuesday week after week during the vicar's prosing, improving visits.
“He has asked to speak to Sir Matthew. That can only mean one thing. Are you prepared with your answer?”
Onyx was prepared with her answer, but one last shred of stubbornness compelled her to silence.
“Oh, come now, Onyx!” said Lady Daggett, tossing aside whatever remained of her patience. “You knew it would be this way, especially when Sir Matthew adopted my daughter Amethyst and not you. Come now, and do as you are told!”
Onyx's resistance crumbled in the wake of Lady Daggett's wrath. She knew that she had to accept the reverend. It was not a fact that filled her with any enthusiasm, but she knew her duty. And now it was knocking at the front door.
Onyx put down her needlework and looked into the mirror, fluffing her brown hair absently and tucking the lace a little higher across her bosom. Andrew Littletree had made it plain to her in his roundabout way that he did not approve at all of ample proportions, but there wasn't a great deal she could do about her bosom. There it was.
“And what will it be today?” she asked herself. “What will I occupy my brain with?” Ben Jonson could never do justice to the occasion. It would have to be the properties of oxygen. That was it. Her twin brother Gerald's schoolbooks had found their way into her room two years ago, when they had been threatened with extinction, and she had learned French by reading poor headless Lavoisier's treatise on the properties of oxygen. Yes, it would be oxygen. She would require deep drafts of oxygen to get through what promised to be a trying interview.
She waited until the front door opened and closed and the footsteps hurried up the stairs, followed by a scratching on her door.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Miss Hamilton, it is the vicar.”
She opened the door on the maid, whose eyes were round as breakfast biscuits. “Miss, I cannot imagine what is the matter, but my lady has shown him into the Yellow Parlor! You had better come quickly!”
The Yellow Parlor. It was reserved for deaths and other auspicious moments, and as she descended the stairs, she knew that she didn't want to enter the room. Her last venture into the Yellow Parlor had been when Sir Matthew pulled her inside to tell her of Gerald's death two years ago. She didn't want to go there again. She could still remember Sir Matthew's fingers on her arm, and the way he shook her when she started to cry and had hissed at her, “Enough of that, you silly girl! Do you want to upset Lady Daggett? I won't have it! Gerald's dead, and that's it!”
So it was. She had not cried another public tear for Gerald. She had not dared.
Onyx paused outside the door. She twisted Gerald's ring on her finger, relying on the sparkle of ruby and tiny diamonds to cheer her. She held her hand up to the light, watched the glitter a moment, and then opened the door quietly.
The Reverend Andrew Littletree stood with his back to the door, over by the little collection of Sevres vases that Sir Matthew prized so highly. He had picked one up and was looking at it intently, holding it to the light, turning it this way and that.
I wonder if he is pricing it, she thought and caught herself before she laughed out loud. It would never do for her future husband to know that she thought him silly. Without a word, she went back out the door, closed it silently, and then opened it again, making sure that she was louder this time. When she looked at the clergyman again, he was standing in front of the table, the vase back in its usual place, shivering just slightly from the encounter.
“Reverend Lit
tletree, how nice to see you,” she said in her quiet voice. “What is it that brings you here today instead of your usual Tuesday?”
The vicar smiled at her and then posed as he always did, one foot pointed in front of the other, one hand on his hip, the other clutching his coat front, as if he were on display before a congregation. “I had rather an important matter to discuss with your stepfather, or rather, Sir Matthew, my dear,” he replied. “If indeed, I may call you ‘my dear.’ ”
She made no comment but came further into the room, wishing herself anywhere but there. If she looked apprehensive, it did not show. The vicar was warming to his subject, and consequently his thoughts were entirely self-directed.
“Of course,” he continued, “once we become one, I will not call you by such a tender name. It would not be seemly in a clergyman, do you think?”
She had a thought on the matter, but he did not hesitate in his headlong prose long enough to reflect that questions required answers.
“Yes, we will reserve this moment as a matter between us, and it will never come up again,” he continued. “Never.” The sound of his voice resonating in the room must have pleased him, because he repeated “never” again, and then motioned for her to take a seat nearby. She sat and waited for him to clear his throat.
He did finally, after striking another pose. “Onyx … I may call you Onyx, mayn't I?” he asked. “Although I cannot imagine what Lady Daggett was thinking when she named you. I do believe I will call you … Mrs. Littletree … later. Yes, that would be appropriate, I think, and certainly less … pagan.”
She stared at him in wonder. If this is a proposal, how very odd, she thought.
The vicar sighed heavily, as if he regretted what was to follow, as if the weight of marriage to her was already onerous. He came toward her quickly, and for one precarious moment, she thought he was going to drop at her feet. She knew that she would burst into laughter if he did, so she was relieved when he lowered himself carefully down beside her on the settee and possessed himself of her hands.
“Miss Hamilton, you know that in my position I must have a wife.”
She said nothing. His hands were clammy, and he smelled faintly of wax candles.