Summer Campaign

by Carla Kelly

  She hurried back to the farmhouse, pausing in the kitchen only long enough to clean off her feet, pull on her shoes again, look in on Alice in the parlor, and then bolt the stairs two at a time to the little bedroom under the eaves.

  The door was open. She looked in. The doctor was kneeling by the bed, hunched in great concentration. As quiet as could be, she sidled into the room, hugging the wall. She was incapable of remaining outside or downstairs, beside herself with worry for this man she scarcely knew.

  The doctor glanced around. “Mrs. Beresford,” he said in a low voice. “Come closer. I think your husband is trying to say something to you.”

  She did as he said. With his good hand, Beresford reached for her. She came around to the other side of the bed and took his hand, holding tight to him and sitting carefully beside him.

  “Yes, Jack?” she said softly. The room was so quiet she could hear the clock ticking.

  Beresford had already soaked the pillow with his sweat. When he did not say anything, only watched her intently, hungrily almost, she looked at the doctor.

  “The ball is embedded in the bone. I've been removing bone fragments.”

  She winced at his words and clung tighter to Jack's hand. He seemed not to mind. She wondered why he did not say anything, until she noticed how tightly his teeth were clenched together, as if he were just barely holding on to his own composure.

  “I've removed most of the fragments. I think,” he added. The doctor's glasses had slipped far down his nose. “But I have old eyes. Mrs. Beresford … would it be too much? Or could you come over here and have a look yourself? I daren't leave any fragments. They'll just cause trouble as they work themselves out.”

  In a dream, she unlaced her fingers from Jack's, put his hand on his chest, and came around to the doctor, sitting down when he stood up and peered into the wound.

  Her stomach heaved in revolt, but she ignored it and stared resolutely into the wound until the horror became almost abstract. “I see fragments,” she said suddenly. Her voice was high-pitched and tinny to her ears. “What can I use? What do you have?”

  “Here.” The doctor slapped a pair of long-handled tweezers into her hand. “Get them out. I just can't see them.”

  She put one hand on Jack's bare shoulder and took a firm grip on the tweezers with her other hand. She hesitated, her lips drawn into a thin line, until Jack reached up with his other hand and touched her face. “Go ahead, wife,” he said. “I can manage. You are here.”

  The doctor sighed. “He's been telling me what a bonny lass you are, Mrs. Beresford, what a game goer.”

  She was too terrified to feel any shame at their deception. Working slowly and carefully, she removed the remaining fragments, thinking as she did so of the endless games of jackstraws she had played at Amethyst's insistence when her stepsister was much younger. I must not move anything that is not a fragment or I will lose this game, she thought.

  The sweat trickled down her neck. The doctor dabbed at it. She smiled her thanks to him but did not turn her head. One by one, she dropped the tiny bone chips into the ceramic bowl the doctor held close to her elbow. Her back ached from hunching over. Doggedly, Onyx continued until she was done. She looked up at the doctor and put the tweezers in his hand.

  Her own hands began to tremble then, so she held them tightly together until the moment passed. She moved aside for the doctor.

  “You're a wonder, madam,” he said, wiping the tweezers on his blood-speckled waistcoat. “Now, I will remove the ball, and then we'll see. Perhaps you would prefer to wait outside?”

  She would have much preferred it, but she could not leave Jack by himself. His eyes pleaded with her to stay, even if he could not say anything. Already his lips were pressed tight together and the muscles in his jaw worked.

  Onyx tiptoed around to the other side of the bed and sat there again, holding Jack's hand against her leg. When the doctor probed for the ball, Jack's fingers dug into her thigh. She winced again as he ground his teeth. He gasped and relaxed his grip on her leg as his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Thank heavens,” said the doctor. “I thought he would never do that. Your husband is a tough man, Mrs. Beresford.”

  She nodded, not really hearing him. In another moment he raised the probe in triumph and plinked the little lead ball into the basin. Onyx felt the sweat break out on her back, and she shuddered.

  The doctor spent some minutes just staring at the wound, turning his head this way and that, inspecting it from several angles like a sculptor scrutinizing a piece of art. Finally he shifted his scrutiny to her.

  “If the major were alone, I would suture this right now and leave him to the mercies of this household.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Since you are here, I will wait a day or two.”

  She waited for him to continue. He dabbed around the wound. “There may be other fragments. I want you to keep this clean and look for them several times a day.” He smiled at her over the rims of his spectacles. “I'll leave you some fever powders, for I know you will need them.”

  If she had thought of escape to Chalcott and Lady Bagshott's mercies, she had already scotched that scheme by declaring Jack her husband. She had to remain, no matter what. As she gazed down at Jack and wiped the hair back from his forehead, she wasn't sure she could have left anyway.

  “You must only tell me how to go on, doctor,” she murmured. “Surely we will manage.”

  “I know you will,” he replied. The doctor ran his hand down Jack's sheeted leg. “He has been wounded many times before—and worse than this, from the look of him.” He nodded and smiled at her. “I do not suppose he has ever been in better hands before, madam, and I do not speak of mine.”

  He told her what to do then, how to care for Major Beresford. She listened intently, knowing that she was absorbing only one word in ten, praying that she would overlook nothing that was vital. The weight of her responsibility descended, and she knew that in some way she did not even question, she would never be free of it again.

  The doctor left. Alice Banner came into the room, her eyes wide. “What are we to do when John Coachman arrives, Onyx?”

  Onyx looked up from the end of the bed where she sat. “We'll remain here until the major is better.” She met the mutiny in Alice's eyes and calmly stared it down. “I have promised.”

  There was nothing to say. Alice took a chair by the window and remained silent while Onyx cleaned around the wound, covered it with a layer of gauze, and pulled the sheet up higher on Jack's chest. She wanted to change his soaking pillow for a dry one, but she did not wish to disturb him in any way.

  She came downstairs that evening only long enough to make a few remarks that she couldn't remember the moment after she uttered them and to push the excellent meal around on the plate. She finally excused herself and went back upstairs. Jack was feverish. Onyx stirred the powders into warm water and with Alice's help roused him enough to get him to drink the mixture.

  When the moon was casting its shadows in the room, Onyx heard Sir Matthew's coach rattle into the farmyard. She closed her eyes in relief. “Dear God, I thank thee,” she breathed.

  Mrs. Millstead came into the room. “I'll stay here with your husband while you go downstairs,” she said. “Your coachman is most particular on insisting that you talk with him, even though I told him how ill your husband was.”

  Onyx was glad the darkness of the room hid her guilty embarrassment. She could imagine what John was making of Mrs. Millstead's talk of her husband.

  John stood in the kitchen, tapping his whip against the table. “Miss Hamilton!” he shouted. “What doings are these?”

  She put her finger to her lips and hurried out the back door, knowing he would follow. Private Petrie stood in the yard, eyeing them both.

  “I told him the truth,” he blurted as John glared at him. She turned to the coachman, her hands raised in appeal.

  “I did not know what else to do. The farmer was so suspicious, and
I was so afraid he would not help us.”

  John grunted. He took off his hat and twisted it in his hands, turning it round and round, his agitation apparent to all who chose to see. His face screwed up into an expression that reminded Onyx of nothing so much as a dried apple, and he began to sniff.

  “I told Sir Matthew that nothing good would come of pinching pennies by leaving off the postboys!”

  “It doesn't matter,” Onyx broke in. “The deed is done, and you can see that I cannot leave Major Beresford. Not after he saved our lives.” She eyed the coachman shrewdly. “Particularly since you were not there to protect us.”

  The force of this argument was not lost on the coachman. “It may be so,” he admitted. “But what are we to do?”

  “We're closer to Chalcott than we are to Bramby Swale, aren't we?” she asked by way of answer.

  “Yes, miss, much closer.”

  “Then in the morning you will take a message to Lady Bagshott,” Onyx continued. “You will tell her there has been an accident, but that we are well. You will remain there. I will write to you again when we are ready to travel.”

  “She won't like it. No more do I,” he replied, remorse replaced by stubbornness again.

  “She'll have no choice in the matter,” Onyx replied decisively. “You will deliver her that message on the morrow. I have spent entirely too much time out here in the yard, and I am going in now.”

  She allowed John no time to continue his protestations but turned on her heel and hurried back into the house.

  Mrs. Millstead had prepared a low cot for Onyx next to Jack's bed. “I know you don't want to disturb him,” she whispered in explanation, glancing over at the still form that seemed not to have moved since Onyx administered the fever powder.

  “How good you are to us, Mrs. Millstead,” said Onyx.

  The woman handed her a nightgown. “It is big enough for two of you, I imagine, miss, but you may use it until your trunk is unpacked tomorrow.”

  She whispered her thanks and sank down on the cot, exhausted right through to her shoes. Jack was sleeping. She knew she should sleep too, but as she lay there in the darkness, she could only review over and over again the strange events of the day that had begun in such prosaic fashion. Again and again she watched the robber fall dead at her feet. Over and over she removed bone chips; over and over she watched Gerald's letters flutter by, enveloped in a bolt of white wedding silk. All the events jumbled together and chased each other around and around as she stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of it all.

  Jack woke toward morning and mumbled to himself. She rose from her cot and felt his forehead. “You're burning up,” she murmured out loud. He made no reply as she mixed another dose of fever powder and made him drink it.

  He slept then, and she slept too, until the sun was high.

  Jack Beresford was conscious the next day, but he did not say anything. It was as though the horrors of the day before had left him mute. She fretted about this at first, as she carefully cleaned his wound, removing several more fragments. But as she watched him drift in and out of sleep, she noted how tightly clenched his jaw was, and she realized that he was concentrating all his efforts on withstanding the pain and literally had no time to waste on speech. His eyes followed her around the room, but his gaze was inner-directed. She could tell he was adjusting himself to the rhythm of his own body, massaging his own pain from within. She understood and did not blight his time with words of her own. He seemed to realize that she knew, and he relaxed little by little.

  By nightfall, Alice had finished washing and ironing some of the dresses from her trunk. Onyx took time out to change clothes and swallow a mouthful of Mrs. Millstead's good cooking. She hurried back upstairs again.

  The second night passed much as the first one, but she noticed a difference in the morning. When she opened her eyes and looked up at Jack, she knew that he was better. His breathing was regular, his color good, and best of all, his face was relaxed. Onyx let her breath out slowly in relief and gratitude.

  When she came back into the room after breakfast, his eyes were still closed. She quietly took her seat by the bed and reached for the mending that Alice had not finished yesterday. Onyx applied herself to a torn flounce on her favorite muslin gown, drawing her chair up closer toward the window, looking out from time to time at the field where the farmer was sowing oats.

  “Where have I seen you before?”

  She jumped and stuck the needle in her thumb, turning half around in her chair to look at Major Beresford. He struggled to sit up, and she dropped her mending and ran to him, tucking the pillow up higher and helping him.

  His tone was normal almost, except that his voice sounded unused, rusty. “I have been puzzling it over in my mind this last half hour and more, watching you, and wondering where I know you from.”

  She smiled.“Major Beresford—”

  “Major? Wasn't I your dear husband only two days ago? Or was it a month ago? And what of little Ned?”

  “Two days,” she replied firmly, ameliorating her severity by adding, “Little Ned has taken himself off somewhere. That is, I believe, much in the style of three-year-olds.”

  “But I have seen you before,” he continued relentlessly.

  “That is quite the oldest faradiddle that any soldier ever told a girl,” she protested, smiling in spite of herself. “I imagine it even predates Hannibal.”

  “You're probably right,” he agreed. He raised his wounded arm gingerly, eyeing it with some distaste.

  “It's much better,” she assured him. “I think all the fragments are out. The doctor left word that he would be by today to stitch it.”

  “I am filled with eager anticipation,” he replied.

  She smiled, again. “Prevaricator,” she said.

  “When you smile, you look especially familiar,” Beresford insisted. “The devil take me, I wish I knew where …” His voice was growing drowsy, and he allowed her to help him lie down again. He was asleep before she had time to wipe his face.

  While he dozed, she went downstairs and retrieved Gerald's uniform from her trunk. It looked beyond repair, but she gathered together the pieces and took them up to the little bedroom. She pulled her chair quietly up to the window and arranged the jacket on her lap, fingering the torn shoulders where the epaulets had been ripped off.

  Onyx raised the uniform to her face and smelled it.

  When it had first come from Spain with the rest of Gerald's pitifully few effects, it had smelled of his perspiration, and the cologne he sometimes wore. The odor was gone now. She sighed and put the uniform in her lap, leaning back in her chair and staring across the fields again, seeing nothing this time.

  Before he spoke this time, Major Beresford had the grace to cough and announce that he was awake. Onyx looked over at him.

  “Who … who was the Light Bob?” His voice was almost a whisper, as if he was doubtful of the wisdom of his question.

  “He was my brother,” she replied in a voice as low as his own. She spread the tattered uniform carefully on her lap, stroking the sleeve, brushing off the dirt.

  Major Beresford said nothing, but he watched her in that intense way of his that she was growing accustomed to. He had such expressive eyes. She looked into them and could almost watch his brain working.

  He pulled himself upright again, tucking the sheet around his waist, never taking his eyes from her face. She began to feel uneasy, and then he spoke.

  “T-tell me his name,” he asked, “although I think I know it.”

  “Gerald,” she replied, chilled to her heart at his words. “Gerald Hamilton.”

  He nodded, as if it were no surprise. “I knew Gerald. Everyone did.”

  After two years of convincing herself that she could withstand Gerald's loss in silent calm, his simple words were like a knife, twisting in her heart.

  There was a moment of quiet, and then the major continued, his voice softer. “That is where I have seen you before�
��your blue eyes, the shape of your face, that way you have of sitting so quietly and really detaching yourself. Although I believe Lieutenant Hamilton's hair was quite dark. Black.”

  Onyx nodded. Tears came to her eyes, and she brushed them away.

  “I noticed it in your profile. You bear a strong resemblance to Gerald.” He watched her face and then patted the bed. “Come here.”

  She did as he said, as if pulled from her chair by strings, and sat by him. She spread her hands out in front of her. “He was my twin.”

  “I am so sorry,” he replied, taking hold of her hands.

  “It's nothing,” she said quickly, too quickly. She knew that her eyes were bright with tears. She knew that in a moment she would cry, even though Sir Matthew had forbidden it. Onyx wanted to leap up and run from the room, but Jack held her hands and she could not move.

  The moment passed and she felt her calm returning.

  “Did you … did you know him well?”

  He shook his head. “No, not really. He was much younger than I, and a lieutenant. But everyone knew Gerald. He was so much fun.”

  She nodded, feeling herself relax again, and also feeling no inclination to work her hands out of Jack's. She felt strong and safe. Her words tumbled out, almost before she realized she was speaking. “He used to tease me because I was too serious.” She laughed. “He called me Brother Onyx the monk, Onyx Sober Sides. I …” She stopped, looking at Jack in embarrassment. “You don't want to hear me go on like this.”

  “But I do. And why do I have the feeling that you need to talk?”

  “No,” she insisted. “I don't need to.” Suddenly she felt as though the room was caving in, and she could not breathe. She rose to her feet quickly, and Jack released her hands. “I'm not permitted to. It's forbidden. Sir Matthew says I may not.” She clapped her hand to her mouth and stared at him, horrified at her ill manners in such a revelation. Suddenly she was filled with anger. “You're horrid to try to force me to say what I should not! You and Gerald both!”