A Hero to Hold

by Sheri Humphreys

  He looked up when he heard the rustle of her skirt. Charlotte’s smile hit him like a cannon shot to the chest.

  “I’m thrilled,” she announced, “with the donations pledged at the ball.”

  It pleased David, knowing Charlotte so enjoyed participating in the administration of the Fund, and he was inclined to forget all the annoyance he’d felt at the ball. After all, the talk had been about him. Better yet, she seemed relaxed and comfortable these days. He recognized the easy camaraderie they’d acquired over the last few weeks as something to be treasured. He didn’t think he’d ever really had a lady friend. Not a close one, anyway, whom he saw and worked with every day.

  Friend? his brain mocked. If only his too friendly, rather carnal thoughts weren’t continually calling him out as a liar.

  “Your hard work paid off brilliantly,” he said, deciding she deserved praise after all. He couldn’t deny everything she’d done to make the ball a success.

  “I think ours is becoming a very popular cause. Not surprising, since the Queen and Prince Albert were the first patrons.”

  “Just as important, it’s worthy,” David pointed out.

  “Yes, it is, and I’m so proud. I wanted to do something valuable, and this is.”

  Her lashes swept down, and the crests of her cheeks turned rosy. Probably she felt embarrassment at sharing her feelings. David quashed his smile. “I feel the same way. One can always be proud of working hard and doing one’s best, but knowing your work has helped improve someone else’s life…? There’s a very special pride in doing that.”

  His own words gave him pause. When he’d first landed in this damnable chair, he’d thought he faced an ineffectual life. He’d almost given up on everything. Thank God he was a stubborn son of a bitch. He’d been so wrong. This work made him as proud as anything ever could.

  “You’re right.” Charlotte nodded, looking easy again. “I’m so thankful to be here.”

  He hadn’t wanted her. Forced to hire her, he’d been infuriated. Now, the other night’s frustration aside, he couldn’t imagine life without her. She was wonderful in the office with the women and children. Which reminded him…

  He waved her forward. “Come in and sit down. I need a bit of help with something, if you have no objection.”

  She settled into the chair just in front of his desk, and he caught a tantalizing whiff of roses and jasmine. He inhaled deeply.

  “What can I help with?”

  He retrieved the uppermost sheet of paper from the stack atop his desk and slid it across to her. “A Mrs. Peter Carroll would like to make an appointment. She intends to give us a rather nice donation, and she has a few questions about how the funds will be used. Would you mind meeting with her?”

  Charlotte picked up the paper. She looked puzzled. “You always see the donors.”

  Until now, he had.

  “Mrs. Carroll has requested that she meet with someone other than myself.” Even though he’d once sat at her table, shared laughter, food and friendship with her and Peter. But that was before Peter secured his promise to keep a brotherly eye on Edith and died in his arms. It was a promise David was having the devil of a time keeping, since Edith would have nothing to do with him.

  Charlotte made a little noise. “What? What do you mean?”

  She sounded highly offended. For him. That eased a bit of the strain thinking and talking about Edith always caused him. David sighed…and found he wanted to tell her everything.

  “Peter Carroll, Wakefield and I met at Eton. All three of us were younger sons of titled fathers and immediately became fast friends. We did everything together.” From sports to studies to practical jokes, it had been always the three of them.

  “When we finished school, we banged around Europe a while then joined the army. We couldn’t believe our luck when we found three cornet commissions available in the Eleventh Hussars. We’d desperately wanted the cavalry but never dared dream we’d find places in the same regiment.” The occasion had necessitated a celebration, during which a state of thorough drunkenness was achieved and never again surpassed.

  “Settling into the cavalry was like settling into our favorite old saddles. Miles and I made good officers. Peter was in a class unto himself. The men under his command adored him. He said it suited him as nothing ever had.

  “Then he met Edith. I stood up with him at their wedding, and I’d never seen a happier couple. Edith didn’t like army life, but she knew how much Peter loved it and for a while everything was fine. We were stationed at Hounslow then, escorting the Queen. Nothing really changed after we moved to Norwich. We were gaining experience and rank. Peter was an extraordinary officer and leader, and clever. Everyone knew he’d have an exceptional career.”

  “What happened?”

  Charlotte’s question pulled David from his cache of memories. Thank God. From here on he’d best just recite the facts, or there was no telling what he’d end up doing and saying.

  “We received orders for Dublin, and Edith didn’t want to go. She wanted Peter to resign and work for her father in his import business. The arguments were endless, and Peter was miserable. He didn’t want to sell out, but eventually he reconciled himself to it.” David paused as the all-too-familiar cloak of guilt settled over him. “I talked him out of it.”

  He barely registered Charlotte’s little sound of distress. He’d been aghast that Peter would give up the life he so loved, and what promised to be a phenomenal career. It didn’t bear considering that the army would lose such a man. Only, he should have minded his own business. Peter hadn’t survived their first big battle. Edith had accused him of playing God when, months after her husband’s death, David went to see her. It was his first time out in public in his chair, the first time he left Summerbridge. He’d only managed it because he’d felt compelled to see her. Edith hadn’t even invited him in. She’d stood in the doorway, oozing bitterness and anger, and blamed him for her husband’s death. Every moment was torment.

  “He fell at Alma. We’d landed at Varna only three months before.”

  David wasn’t really aware of Charlotte moving until he felt her hand on his shoulder. Then he looked up into her eyes. The pain that had risen with his recollections drained away.

  “Edith hates me, of course.”

  Charlotte squeezed his shoulder, and warmth spread through him like drinking hot mulled wine on a bleak winter day. “Of course I’ll meet with her,” she said. Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips before she added, “I-I didn’t know Peter, but he wouldn’t have stayed in Her Majesty’s service if he hadn’t wanted to, would he?”

  No. Peter had wanted David to change his mind. Of course he had. Even after he’d made the decision to stay and had an unholy row with Edith, he’d been smiling and good-humored. He’d said he’d shed an elephant from his back.

  “But he wasn’t supposed to die,” David said.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Charlotte agreed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  David received his own copy of Lady Garret’s little novel in the Tuesday morning post. Chetney brought it in, a pained look on his face, one hand still clutching the paper wrap he’d removed. David accepted the silk-covered volume, anger springing to life. The sender could only want him to think badly of Charlotte—as the sender had likely wanted with Miles.

  He certainly would have hidden it if he’d heard her, but his secretary had not yet turned to leave when the rustle of her skirts alerted him to Charlotte’s presence. She glided through the doorway and stopped, eyes wide and riveted on the slender book in his hand. Her gaze lifted to his face, and David’s stomach fell.

  “It arrived in the morning post.” He dropped the book onto the far side of his desk and held Charlotte’s gaze. “You can take it if you like.”

  Charlotte backed up a step. “No.” She opened her mouth as if to say more but then shut it. She glanced away, blinked, then looked back and studied him, a tiny furrow between her brows. “Who sent it
?”

  Chetney handed over the wrapping and retreated to his office. David glanced at the brown paper and then held it up for Charlotte to see. It bore only his own name and address.

  #

  Charlotte stared at the dark, angular script, trying to make sense of the book being here. Heat enveloped her; her heart pounded and threatened to overwhelm her senses.

  She raised a shaky hand to her throat but quickly lowered it. Scott would think her feeble if he noticed her trembling. Was there never an end to her shame? A few days ago she’d been unbearably tense as she waited to see what kind of greeting she’d receive from the Patriotic Fund ball patrons. The relief at their lack of attention had been staggering. She’d thought society was ready to consign her scandal to the past, but here was evidence of the false reprieve. Lady Garret wasn’t done meting out torture.

  She stared at the mocking, bright green cover, tingling as if the baroness had slapped her. A deluge of anger drowned out everything else. She wanted to grab A Marriage Most Awkward and bash it against the wall. It was so unfair! She’d done nothing—nothing—to deserve Lady Garret’s destruction of her reputation.

  “It was Baroness Garret?” Scott asked.

  Charlotte’s very marrow recognized Lady Garret’s hand in the direction. “Of course it was.”

  “Ah. Wakefield got one, too.”

  Charlotte heard quiet sympathy in Scott’s voice, and she wondered if she could contain the fury that boiled through her. His face bore a pained look, and that helped. She felt his kindness cooling her rage.

  “Were you expecting this?” he asked.

  Expecting the baroness’s little book to make another appearance? “No.”

  She hadn’t expected the devastation she felt when she saw Scott holding it, either. How foolish she’d been, thinking the armor she’d forged in the country strong enough to protect her.

  She sat down in the empty chair facing Scott’s desk, and an irrational desire to tell him the whole story swept through her. Jane was the only person she’d confided in, and even Jane didn’t know all of it. Charlotte had been too humiliated.

  The surge of longing was foolish. Even if David Scott’s strength could easily encompass and support her, she couldn’t bear to reveal how meek and half-witted she’d been. How could he hear her story and not think less of her?

  #

  David wished she’d do something: curse or cry or grab the damned book and tear it to pieces. Instead she sat with hands clasped tight, her full lips pressed into a thin line, spine straight and unsupported by the ladder-back behind her.

  Her countenance was so composed that it made him ache. Only her eyes were not. They spoke of confusion and hurt, and much as he wanted to ignore their message David found he couldn’t. He understood how it felt to be helpless and angry. Once home from the Crimea, he’d cursed, thrown things, and piled abuse on Boone. There had been a time of drunkenness and despair, of blaming God. He’d thoroughly frightened his brother, but Julian had refused to let him go to Hades and he’d worked his way through it.

  The tense, contained woman before him needed to work her way through this, maybe even by confiding in him…but he knew she wouldn’t. He couldn’t expect her to either, not when he’d never shared his own trials. Charlotte had no way of knowing he still found each day a struggle. Just getting into the building required effort, and his prospects for true happiness… What would she think if she knew how he resented Wakefield’s flirting and dancing with her?

  He reached forward and picked up the little book. “I’ve never read it,” he assured her as he smoothed his hand over the silken cover.

  The look of defeat in her eyes smote him as effectively as the saber he took at Balaclava. Helplessness assailed him.

  I must do something.

  He opened the book, grasped the first few pages, ripped them out and tossed the paper into the brass waste receptacle beside his desk. He kept going, and it didn’t take long to work his way through the book and turn it into a heap of tumbled trash. Next he located a cache of matches in his desk drawer and extracted one. As soon as it flared, he pitched it into the waiting pile. The flames soon licked up the sides of the receptacle and fully devoured the contents.

  Chetney came in, saw the situation and began waving his arms about in an attempt to dissipate the thickening smoke. He went to the window and after a brief struggle raised the sash. Then he began waving at the smoke.

  “Couldn’t you have waited until you got outside?” he asked.

  David heard Charlotte chuckle. He looked up and found her fingers pressed to her grinning mouth, eyes alight. He grinned back, and suddenly they were both laughing, huge, belly-shaking laughs that made ebullience swell his chest near to bursting. The encounter left him gasping, and quite certain that Charlotte Haliday’s eyes were as lovely as spring bluebells.

  #

  At last. She was home.

  Charlotte did no more than nod to Beckham and hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. Rebecca followed, but Charlotte dismissed her.

  She’d never seen Scott grin or laugh like that. She’d been unable to tear her gaze away. Her buzzing awareness of him had only increased, and all day his laughing face kept coming back and making her smile. How it had transformed his visage! And there was more. She hadn’t offered him any explanations, yet without hesitation or qualification Scott had championed her today. The way he’d immediately destroyed that book, his obvious outrage that Charlotte had been subjected to such a thing… She’d grown so warm, once she returned to her desk she had to apply her fan. Scott believed in her. Believed her a person of value.

  She remembered his laughing face, his blue eyes glinting, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and her own persistent, humming awareness. She feared she had come to think of him in a manner most like a lover, and that wasn’t what she wanted, even if she did feel an excitement in it that was completely novel. Completely hopeful. David Scott made her feel renewed and left her breathless and lightheaded, the way she imagined she’d be if she could actually waltz with him, dance and twirl while holding him so close she could feel his heat. But she didn’t think she still believed in love. Not for herself. She couldn’t imagine offering up her heart to anyone. She wasn’t brave enough.

  Scott seemed such an admirable man, but he was still just a man. She would never again succumb to the whimsy of romance. It was mostly insubstantial.

  She did believe in friendship, however. And though she’d never had a man as bosom-friend, she couldn’t help but think she and Scott might develop such an unusual attachment. A close connection with Scott would have substance, would make it possible to bear the tribulations of this senseless attraction.

  Love might be no longer possible for her, but perhaps happiness was.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “My lady?”

  Charlotte kept her attention on the letter she was penning. She spent a portion of each day writing to Fund widows who lived outside of London. She’d already acquired a fondness for a number of her correspondents, and her small, spartan office with its modest desk was becoming a place of pleasure. Today she’d sat down, swept her gaze around the unadorned room and wondered at the sense of contentment it gave her.

  “Yes?”

  She expected the secretary to offer tea, but when he remained quiet she lifted her head. He slid through the doorway and closed the door. Placing his palms flat on the desktop, he leaned forward, stretching across the scarred wood surface.

  “It’s the Earl of Bridgewaite, my lady. Mr. Scott’s brother.”

  Surprise and curiosity brought Charlotte to her feet. “Did you tell him Mr. Scott’s not expected until later?” He was attending the Patriotic Fund’s Royal Commission meeting, and they didn’t expect him at the office until afternoon.

  “Yes, but I thought you might like to meet him,” Chetney said. “And I don’t know if you’ll have another opportunity. I asked him to wait in the reception area.”

  Charlotte gave the
secretary a grateful smile and made her way to the front.

  Unexpectedly, the sight of the tall nobleman brought her up short. It was oddly hurtful to see him, a man so like Scott in appearance, standing. He was older yet presented a more carefree appearance. His light brown hair was tousled, his face unguarded. Charlotte wondered if the brothers were of a like height. Even as tall and robust as the earl was, Scott’s shoulders were broader.

  Bridgewaite smiled, removed his hat and gave her a little bow. A sudden catch in Charlotte’s throat had her clearing it. Instinctively she knew the earl’s self-assured grace had been shared by his brother.

  “Lady Haliday?”

  “How do you do, Lord Bridgewaite? I’m afraid Mr. Scott isn’t here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Chetney was kind enough to inform me.”

  “You’re here for the ceremony tomorrow, of course.” Scott had been closed-mouthed about the medal presentations, but the London Gazette and her own father had provided details. A vast amphitheatre of seats had been erected in Hyde Park. The Queen herself would present the newly created medal to the sixty-two recipients at a grand ceremony. Twelve-thousand attendees were expected.

  The earl nodded. “I don’t often get to London, but I’ve brought the entire family for this. The children are excited beyond belief. We’re all very proud.”

  “Oh, children? How old are they?”

  The earl’s eyes sparked with pride. “Edmund is ten, Simon is eight, and Sarah is four.”

  “I believe there’ll be seating near the front for recipients’ families. You should have a good view of the proceedings. I hope I’ll be able to obtain a good seat, too.”

  An unexpected dart of anger made Charlotte look away from the earl. Her father would be seated in a section reserved for Members of Parliament, but she herself had received no special invitation—surely thanks to the damage Lady Garret had done to her reputation. She planned to go early and obtain the best seat she could. She wanted to see the Queen pin the medal on Scott.