by Carla Kelly
He took her hand in his again, running his thumb over her knuckles, feeling the indents between them. “The orders came finally. We were to move on the walls again. Again! We had tried and tried …” His voice trailed off and he let go of her hand.
“I knew it wouldn't work. I mean, why should it?” Beresford moved restlessly. “But it was an order. It became my privilege to stand in front of all those mothers’ sons and tell them to climb those walls.” He closed his eyes and was silent again.
“But … but surely you had given orders like that before, Major?” she asked.
He opened his eyes and then passed his hand in front of them. “Oh, yes. I don't know what it was. Maybe the latest recruits just looked younger than last year's. Maybe I was finally s-sick of war.”
Beresford sighed and stared out the window. Morning was coming. Birds were beginning to wake up in the ash tree outside the window.
“They looked at me with such … trust, Onyx B,” he said and turned his head toward her again, his eyes filled with anguish this time. “They were ready to follow me anywhere. I lined them up, led them out, and watched them die.”
“Oh, Jack, no,” she said, taking both of his hands in hers.
“That wasn't all,” he went on. “When that first wave was lying dead under the ladders, I got to send out another, and another. Finally we were just putting down those ladders on lads of mine who were lying there still alive.”
He looked at her. “Have you ever planted a ladder on someone who is dying?”
Onyx knew her face had drained of all color. She shook her head and clung to his hands, her eyes wide.
He didn't even notice. “And every time you move up a rung on the ladder, it slips a little bit down?” Beresford shivered and slid lower in the bed. With an automatic gesture, Onyx pulled the covers higher on his shoulders, careful not to bump his bandaged arm.
His voice altered then and became practically toneless as he stared out the window again, looking well beyond the fields into another country that she could not see. “We were the first ones over the wall. And I'm a hero of Badajoz. Merciful heaven help me.”
He found her hand again. “Your hands are cold,” he commented, a little more life in his voice. “Could it be that you are not used to such stories?”
She could only shake her head as her eyes filled with tears.
He watched her. “Poor Onyx B, with eyes as blue as Wedgwood,” he said softly. “Whatever did you do to deserve all of this?”
It was not a question to answer, and she did not try.
“As long as our association continues, my dear,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “give me no more fever powders, even if I'm burning up. I only sleep too long …” He swallowed and tightened his grip on her fingers. “And then I dream.”
Onyx waited for him to continue, but he did not. She put her other hand over his. “Tell me. You must, you know.” She had no money to repay Major Jack Beresford for all he had done for her; all she could give him was an ear for his own misery.
“I d-dream that I am climbing up the ladder. I climb and climb, and slip lower and lower.” He could not meet her gaze as his eyes filled with tears. “Onyx, soon I'm hip-deep in bodies. They … they suck me under. And then someone is putting a ladder on me. I struggle and it's so hard to breathe.” He let out a long shuddering breath. “Usually someone shakes me awake by then. As you did.”
He let go of her hands and made a gesture, as if to push her away. She refused to move, and when he began to cry, she gathered him close and held him tight. She smoothed down his hair as he sobbed, turning his face into her nightgown to muffle the terrible sound. She had felt inadequate before, of small use to the major. But as he cried and she held him, she felt herself grow strong and whole again for the first time since Gerald's death. Someone needed her.
As the major sobbed in her arms, Onyx heard someone open the door. It was Alice. Onyx looked over the major's head and put a finger to her lips. Alice nodded and closed the door quietly.
When the major finished crying, Onyx wiped his face and made him blow his nose. She covered him again, tucking in the sheets as she remembered Reverend Hamilton tucking her in when she was a small child. She sat beside him in silence until he finally fell asleep, this time deep, restful sleep.
She thought she would leave the room then, but the sun was coming up, and the room took on such a comfortable rosy glow that she pulled up the chair to the window and watched the land begin to live again. She opened the window a crack again and sniffed the air. It was filled with the perfume of apple blossoms. The fragrance mingled with the lilacs until the pleasure of it made her want to pick up her nightgown by the flounce and dance around the room. There was a sweetness to the coming season that she had never even suspected before, and she smiled through her burden of Jack Beresford's sadness.
Onyx looked back at him. He was totally relaxed now, his uninjured arm flung wide across the other pillow. There were still tears on his face, but she did not wish to disturb him by wiping them off. She sat in her chair and watched the morning cross the fields. Soon she found herself breathing in rhythm with Major Beresford, and then she slept too.
Onyx woke hours later to the sound of a carriage in the farmyard. She had tucked herself into a comfortable corner of the chair with her head resting on the arm of it. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was or why she was sleeping in the middle of the day. Then she looked over at Major Beresford, who still slumbered.
If he had moved in the intervening hours, it had been only a minor adjustment. She sat up and watched him, wondering that anyone could sleep so solidly, especially with that old creaking carriage practically under the window and the Reverend Mr. Andrew Littletree speaking so loudly and rudely to John Coachman.
Her eyes widened. “Dear me,” she said out loud and leapt from the chair. She hurried to the window and peered out, careful not to be seen, hoping that it really wasn't her fiancé standing below, berating the coachman.
It was no one else. In horrified fascination Onyx opened the window a crack wider and leaned over, wishing the vicar away even as she wondered how she would explain her nightgown—she looked at the clock—at two in the afternoon.
She had never seen Andrew Littletree from such a view before. When, in some agitation, he removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, she noted for the first time that it was thinning on top. He'll be bald as an egg before he is thirty, she thought. He will blind his congregation. The idea made her giggle. She jerked her head inside the window before he looked up and saw her.
She sobered immediately. The bigger challenge lay ahead. She would have to descend the stairs in her bare feet, dressed in her nightgown, and wrapped in a sheet, under the gaze of a man of the cloth who appeared to be in remarkable ill humor. “Dear me,” she said again faintly.
The absurdity of her situation kept her from growing entirely numb with fear. I have spent my life in an unexceptionable manner, she thought as she draped herself in the sheet she had worn upstairs hours before. I have become positively hoydenish.
She was halfway down the stairs when Mrs. Millstead let in the Reverend Mr. Andrew Littletree. His eyes fell on her immediately, and he staggered backward and would have fallen if John had not captured him in a clumsy embrace.
“Put me down, you clodpole,” he shrieked, his face going from white to red and white again, leaving ugly splotches. He regained his footing and stared up at her.
Words nearly failed him, but not quite. “Miss Hamilton,” he uttered in failing tones, “you have forgotten yourself!”
To Onyx's logical mind it seemed a supremely silly thing to say. “No, indeed, Andrew, I have not.”
The vicar launched his attack. “I suppose then, Miss Hamilton,” he declared, “that there is some reasonable explanation for the fact that you are standing on the stairs barefoot in your nightgown?” He paused and struck an indignant pose as he snapped open his pocket watch. “At two o'clock i
n the afternoon?”
“Indeed there is,” she replied serenely, resisting the urge to bolt and run. She opened her mouth to say more—what, she had no idea—when she was silenced by a low moan from upstairs that seemed to stretch on and on. Everyone was quiet then, listening, the vicar frozen in his indignant pose, Mrs. Millstead with her eyes wide, and Onyx with her mouth open.
“Onyx!” It was the last word of a dying man. Onyx turned and without a word raced back up the stairs, followed by the vicar, who clapped his watch on his head and tried to stuff his hat in his pocket.
Onyx burst into the bedroom and threw herself on her knees beside the bed. The major was stretched out straight as a poker, his hands folded across his broad chest. Before she could say or do anything, he opened one eye and winked at her.
She choked back the laughter that threatened to spill out of her and took his hand as the vicar ran into the room. “Jack! Jack!” she said, as if trying to summon her patient back from some nether region.
The major turned his head from side to side. “I'm so hot,” he muttered as the vicar retreated to a far corner of the room, still holding his crumpled hat.
Onyx put her hand on Jack's cool forehead and turned to her fiancé. “Reverend Littletree,” she said, her eyes cast down only because she knew she would laugh if she looked at him, “this is Major Beresford, the man who saved my life.” She ran her other hand across her forehead. “You see how he is. I cannot leave him like this.”
The vicar stared at her and then at Jack. “You have been tending the sick, Miss Hamilton,” he said, “through the long and dismal night. How noble of you, how like the future wife of a clergyman. How wise, how very wise of me to select you as my bride, even overlooking your lamentable background,” Littletree congratulated himself.
Jack gave a choke that sounded to Onyx suspiciously like a growl of real indignation. She tightened her grip on his hand. “Don't task yourself, Major,” she whispered in sweet, urgent tones and then glowered at him.
With the greatest force of will, she controlled the urge to box the major's ears and turned back to her fiancé. “My dear, you see how things are. I cannot leave the major in this state. Consider what he has done for me.”
The vicar moved closer to the deathbed, stepping warily, as if expecting the floor to open up and swallow him whole. Jack shifted in bed and exposed his bandaged arm, which was still streaked with flecks of dried blood. Reverend Littletree swallowed, paled, and nimbly sidestepped until he was out of sight of the wound.
“Onyx,” he began when he had sufficiently recovered. “Setting all this aside, we must leave right away. Do you realize that I have lost nearly three days to my homiletics lectures? When that disreputable-looking private showed up at Lady Bagshott's with your very cryptic message, she summoned me immediately. I came, of course,” he added righteously.
“I should hope so,” murmured Jack under his breath for Onyx's benefit. She shot him another withering glance.
“Only by the greatest exhibition of my powers was I able to prevent Lady Bagshott from lapsing into spasms,” Littletree added.
“Heaven help me,” whispered the irrepressible major. Onyx dug her fingernails into his wrist, and he gave her a wounded look that rendered her incapable of comment.
As usual, the vicar made comment superfluous. “I must return to Cambridge immediately,” he continued, backing up as Jack stirred and moaned again. “You'll gather your things together and come at once, my dear.”
Onyx released the major's hand and arranged the bedcovers around him, careful to leave the bloody bandage exposed. “Only if the major comes with us,” she said. “Mrs. Millstead is much too busy with the management of this farm to have any time to devote to Major Beresford.”
“Out of the question,” snapped the vicar, his short supply of righteousness exhausted.
Onyx took a deep breath, avoiding looking at the major, and opened her eyes wide in a remarkable imitation of her stepsister, Amethyst. She leaned toward the vicar. “I do not say it will be so, my dear, but suppose word should get out that you were remiss in your Christian duty to this poor man?” She came close to the Reverend Littletree and twined her hands in his coat front. “Suppose somehow tattlemongers carried the news that you abandoned …” She paused to give the word time to sink in. “ … abandoned one of God's most miserable …” She paused again as Jack Beresford choked and groaned. “ … most miserable creatures surely at the brink of a deep decline.” She rolled her eyes heavenward and clasped her hands together. “Your parish would surely waver from the effect of this example!” She paused again. “If word of this were to get out,” she added, ameliorating the effect by leaning her head against his chest.
The vicar blushed and put her to one side. He advanced toward the bed again and peered down at Jack. “Would he survive the ride to Chalcott?” Littletree muttered, not entirely comfortable with the role of savior yet.
“I think he would, my dear,” said Onyx. She clapped her hands together and the vicar jumped. “And only think, Andrew! Next Sunday, you can take your text from Luke Ten: the Good Samaritan!”
He considered this and found favor in the idea. “I could, Miss Hamilton, I could.”
The mention of sermonizing wrought a marvel. The vicar put one foot forward and clutched his lapel. He closed his eyes against the ecstasy of it all. “A wretched man, fallen among thieves …” he mused as Jack glared at him. Littletree opened his eyes and pointed suddenly at Jack. “‘Which now, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?’ ”He turned to Onyx. “Oh, my dear, you are right, of course. We will take him with us. Think what a sermon this will make.” He rubbed his hands together. “And if he should die, why, I can preach on the many mansions awaiting sinners in God's house. There is no end of topics!”
“What a wonderful idea, Andrew,” Onyx said, staring at him in total admiration until the major began to cough and groan. “My dear, you are a wonder,” she said. “Now, if you will be so good as to go downstairs and summon the farmer and Private Petrie, I am sure that you can make Jack Beresford comfortable in the carriage.”
He did as she said, fairly floating out of the room, already wrapped up tight in the sermon he would preach to his eager parishioners Sunday next. “‘Which one among you,’ ”he repeated as he left the room, stabbing the air with appropriate gestures. He repeated the phrase all the way down the stairs, changing the emphasis from syllable to syllable.
Jack clapped his hand over his wound and held it tight as he shook with silent laughter. “It hurts!” he whispered as he struggled to remain silent. When he almost had control of himself, his shoulders started to shake again, and he abandoned himself to silent mirth.
Onyx frowned at him. “You are the most disreputable man I ever met!”
That set him off again. Beresford rolled over and lay with his face in the pillow. The bed shook as he laughed. When he finally surfaced for air, there were tears in his eyes. He rested his cheek on the pillow. “Onyx B, I am the only disreputable man you have ever met! Barring that ugly customer on the highway, of course. Come sit down.”
She did as he said, her back straight, her lips tight together. Correctly judging her mood, he made no motion to touch her. “Thank you,” he said simply. “I heard the carriage in the yard, and I knew he was coming for you. I would feel much better if you were close by. At least for a while, Onyx B.”
“You must stop calling me that,” she said and touched him on the shoulder. “And turn over, please, before you open that wound.”
He obeyed. “You are right, of course. I must survive so the vicar can have his good example.” He took her by the wrist. “My dear Miss Hamilton, did anyone ever tell you that you are a complete hand?”
“No. Until now I was no such thing,” she retorted, and stood up. “Sir, I would advise you to compose yourself along more pitiful lines. If you can manage to cry out a few times as they are carrying you downstairs, it would help. Perhaps you coul
d even faint.”
She looked around the room. “I imagine Mrs. Millstead will sacrifice her husband's nightshirt for you, but what are we to do with your pants and shirt? Mrs. Millstead reduced them to ribbons.”
“Do whatever you please,” he said, “only save the boots and the coat. That uniform coat belongs to a former tentmate of mine, and I am sworn to forward it to his little brother when I am through.”
“Blood and all?” she asked, picking up the uniform jacket with thumb and forefinger.
“Obviously you are not acquainted with the ways of little boys, Miss Hamilton,” he said, grinning. “Only think how much more valuable it will be now. We will not tell young Master Wilton that the blood is English and not Spanish.” Beresford pointed a finger at her in the style of the vicar. “Would you have denied our own dear little Ned the youthful pleasure of such a bloody treasure? For shame, madam wife!”
She laughed and then sobered immediately. “But we have disposed of little Ned, Major,” she reminded him. “And you must remember yourself.”
“So I must,” he agreed. “But for how long?” he added outrageously.
She drilled him with a minatory glance and stalked downstairs to pack.
HE REVEREND ANDREW LITTLETREE CHOSE not to accompany them to Chalcott. That was his original intention but when Jack moaned and then fainted as he and Farmer Millstead carried the wounded officer to the carriage, the vicar had a sudden change of heart.
“I will return to Chalcott next Saturday in time to prepare my sermon,” he said, eyeing the major as he hurriedly removed his belongings from the carriage and then turned his attention to the farmer. “Surely I can convince this worthy rustic to drive me in his gig to the nearest coach stop. I own it does my consequence little good to ride the common stage, but everyone must make a sacrifice now and then, my dear.”