by Baird Wells
“Are you not, for all intents, the regiment's doctor?” he demanded. Had he not given her that very position after disposing of Astley?
“I never said I was.” She shot him a terse look. “Neither did you.”
If they went one whole day without bickering or chaffing one another, he would drop dead from shock. Martha's tiny hand crushing his fingers erased whatever biting retort had been about to slide off his tongue.
“Breathe now, Martha. Push!” Kate laid a hand on Martha's belly, hanging over her, frozen with concentration. “Ready now. Give us a good push. Push, Martha!”
The smell struck him first, a mix of sweet and something like the mouth of the Thames at low tide, briny and pungent. Fluid cascaded from the edge of the mattress, gushes coming too fast to soak the drape under Martha's backside. Science warred with propriety, and his curiosity won. Stealing a glance through cracked eyes at Martha's belly, he was amazed to behold the baby's progress, how the bump moved lower each time she arched, shuddering through a contraction. Martha wrenched his hand, straining his arm for the duration of a primal moan that transformed somewhere into a low shriek.
“Once more, push!” shouted Kate. Martha drew up, knees to shoulders, teeth bared.
A wet pop, like a cork sliding free, punctuated Kate's rallying cry. She wrestled between Martha's legs, then raised a waxy, purple bundle of limbs. “Here we are!” There was a groan of relief, and Martha fell back against the table panting and released his hand.
“It's a girl, Martha! You've broken your curse.” Smiling ear to ear, Kate plopped the slick, blood-streaked baby onto Martha's belly, draping it with a gray flannel cloth.
He stared, waiting for something to happen. Martha stared, too. It took a moment for Kate's snapping fingers to grab his attention. She poked a finger at their newcomer. “Rub her back, firmly.”
Once, in Spain, he had held part of a soldier's face on after shrapnel tore through their line. That was almost preferable to following Kate's instruction. He laid a hand on the baby's narrow back, feeling moist heat through the thin blanket, and rubbed.
“Harder,” ordered Kate. “You have to encourage her to breathe. It doesn't always come naturally at first.”
He increased the friction. There was a twitch, a hacking little cough, then a cry. Something shifted in his chest at the plaintive sound. Matthew swallowed hard twice. He did not recognize the sensation, but he wished it would pass.
Kate leaned in, lifting the blanket. She pulled at tight little arms and legs, peered into a howling mouth and, to his uncomfortable surprise, pried tiny knees apart to examine parts he would prefer not to acknowledge. She replaced the thin blanket and winked at Martha. “Looks fit as can be.”
“Oh, thank Jesus.” Martha craned her neck, smiling through tears at her baby. There was a palpable relief between the women he didn't understand.
Kate moved past him, pulling a sad face that only he could see. “Last one was still birth,” she whispered, cocking her head.
The information tugged at a memory buried deep in his heart, a sympathetic ache that flared as he studied mother and child.
Kate rubbed her hands with a damp cloth and turned back to her patients. “I'm going to let the general hold her while I treat the cord, since he did such a good job.” Kate shot him an unreadable glance, still speaking to Martha. “Then she belongs entirely to you.”
How could he decline without offending the new mother? He cringed at the way Kate rolled and bundled the flailing, protesting little thing on the bed. She was too rough in his estimation with something so small and fragile. The baby seemed not to mind, tiny fist jammed between her lips.
“Crook your arm. Be sure to support her head.” Before he could protest, Kate deposited the baby against his chest. He folded slowly onto a stool behind him. The feeling from earlier returned tenfold. “I have never held a baby. Not once.” He ached at the realization.
“I wouldn't have guessed,” said Kate, with a quick glance.
Martha nodded her agreement, beaming. “Comes natural for you.”
Kate was leaned over her small charge now, face just inches away from his. He found it impossible not to trace the curve of her cheek with his eyes, studying the way her brows furrowed in concentration and teeth worried a full lower lip. She looked up, feeling his stare, then her eyes darted away. She stroked a knuckle up the baby's cheek. “Look how content she is with you,” Kate breathed softly. Her eyes rose to his again, and Matthew would have paid any sum to understand the mystery there.
His face burned, and he swallowed against a collar suddenly too tight, shifting the bundle in his arms for distraction. Pink and blotchy, nose squished and eyes lolling unfocused over new surroundings, the baby was beautiful in her awkward composition. He brushed a finger over her wrinkled brow, wiping away the white film and marveling at the thinness of her new skin. Relaxing his shoulders, he moved the tiny body deeper into the bend of his elbow. She rolled closer to his chest, and suddenly it seemed they both fit together. He glanced to Martha. “What will you call her?'
Grinning, she shrugged, brown eyes half-closed. “Don't rightly know. We reckoned on another boy.”
Kate slid her arms inside his, working the baby into her grip. Warmth faded from his chest and sleeves, and he shook off the disappointment at giving her up.
Kate turned and lifted, swaddling the baby like it was second nature. “Any suggestions, general?”
Nerves kept the words in his throat. He felt self-conscious under the eyes of both women. “Sarah,” he managed. “It was my grandmother's name.”
“And my David's mum! Maybe it's meant to be.” Martha smiled and worked the tiny body down into her loosened bodice with practiced ease, wriggling the baby to her breast. Matthew ducked his head, then fixed his gaze to Kate.
“I'll go find David. Rest up,” she instructed Martha, “and Porter will fetch the tub as soon as he returns.” Kate jerked her head toward the entrance.
He followed her out with a stone in his gut, daring one last glance to Martha and the baby, and little Mathilda sleeping forgotten in the corner.
Kate settled on a small patch of grass beside the tent, probably the last one in existence inside the fortifications. Arms braced behind her, she arched her back and groaned. There was blood on her shapeless apron running all the way down her gray skirt to the dirt ringing her hem. That was what he tried to notice, instead of the way her breasts pressed at the yoke of her neckline.
Staring up at the sky oblivious, she stifled a yawn. “These first moments are for mother and child. Davy and Thomas will be back – they're too ornery to be defeated by the goat, and Martha's hands will be full. We'll let her catch her breath.”
He shifted his weight to the left leg, side beginning to smart, and watched the movements of the camp without really seeing. The baby's smell drifted off his clothes, and he struggled to make sense of the war raging in his chest.
“Look at you. So impassive.” Kate, who had been staring up at him, cocked her head and smiled.
“Hmm.” He wasn't prone to moodiness and fits of pique. Matthew couldn't understand what had taken hold of him.
“Have you truly never held a baby? I've held so many. I delivered little Henry,” she said gently.
His throat tightened. “Truly. Not once.”
“No children, then?”
“No. I have never particularly regretted it.” That wasn't true. He had simply stopped regretting it.
She shrugged, smile filled with something he could not place. “Perhaps you should reconsider.”
He searched for the words to explain to her, to say that it was not his choice alone, and to convey what he had lost. His mouth opened, ready to spill all the misery held in check for so many years.
“General!” A courier loped up the path, snapping a salute with the stack of letters in his hand.
“Dispatches, sir. Urgently.” He exhaled under Kate's curious stare, closed his mouth and snatched at the letters.
Two from Major Connaught. He tucked them in his coat for later. The third bore a bold slanting signature. He would know it as Wellington's even if he could not read the name. He glanced at Kate, still staring up expectantly. “It is from the field marshal. You may yet expect some work, tonight or the next.” He skimmed the few efficient lines and decided he would prefer news of battle. Poking the summons in next to the others, he summarized it for Kate. “Wellington moves his division north. He's come ahead of them. His command staff are requested at dinner tomorrow evening.”
“Meaning you.”
“Precisely,” he groaned.
Kate stood, dusting at her backside. “That must be an important opportunity for him to get the lay of the land, prepare. The skirmishes around the crossroads are increasing. It cannot be long now.”
He was impressed that she had noticed. “If it were simply Wellington, I would not be so bothered. But he will bring a few hats from London, who inevitably bring their ladies. Not one understands a bit of what's done here. They will want to hear if Bonaparte is really so short, and the best vantage point to observe a battle. Maddening.”
“Fortunate that you have such pleasing, attentive manners.”
He scowled, more at the grin than her barb, earning a laugh.
Ty strode up the path, waving his invitation with a lazy hand. Matthew braced himself for whatever mischief would surely ensue.
“Miss Foster, I had thought to come and invite you to be my partner at dinner tomorrow, but I see the general has beaten me to it.”
Kate looked to him, brows raised in what Matthew swore was a challenge. “He has done no such thing.”
Ty personified absolute smugness, grinning ear to ear. “Then he has missed his chance.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It must have been nearly eight miles to Nivelles, a beautiful ride through green and gold fields rolling out ahead, divided by orchards of trees crowned with blossoms. The British controlled the roads all the way to Tournay, but Kate couldn't fight off the tension she felt any time they ventured outside the garrison's fortifications. Memories of the farmhouse still haunted her. Better to make peace with it now, she reasoned. When they returned, it would be dark.
The town was a cross-section of history that did not exist at home, as though someone had gone through a medieval beam-and-plaster town, adding bricks and columns to the buildings every century.
Arms of brown-mortared shops and townhouses reached out ahead, toward the high gray spires of the town's cathedral. The last of the market stalls was closing up for the day. A kind-faced man with impossibly long trousers and shirt sleeves gartered up tight pulled fan-leafed cabbages from the depths of his brown burlap sack, holding them up for inspection. The gathered women, like the buildings, were constructed alike: Stout and stern-faced, apron-clad, with soft knots of hair swept up to bonnet their heads.
The field marshal's hotel, at the far end of the main street, fell on the more recent end of architecture. High and boxy, it was made of earthy bricks, tall casements along its face. A handful of little gabled attic windows along the roof peered down, guarding the chimneys. They spilled light out into the dooryard, already shadowed by approaching dusk, silhouetting the movement of people inside.
Ty handed her down, and she tucked her fingers into the crook of his elbow. His popularity with the ladies was no mystery. Even knowing him as well as she did, Kate felt a little skip to her heart at his chivalry and his easy grin. “Keep your hand just so. Otherwise someone is bound to steal you away.”
She glanced around them and shook her head. “I would hate to deprive you of more...enthusiastic company.”
Ty did not look the least bit apologetic, not that she had expected him to. “There are any number of such opportunities. But to have you on my arm? That is an opportunity I'm not willing to risk.”
He was too clever, and she was out of her depth. Kate threw up her hands. “This is exhausting. I don't know how you manage being so charming for a whole evening. Five minutes with you and I'm already spent.”
He lowered his voice and winked. “It's a common enough complaint.”
“Incorrigible.” She turned her face away to hide a smile, absorbed in studying the shrubbery. Matthew had arrived just behind them. He passed by, face set at grim angles, with a sharp nod and nothing more. Ty said something, but she didn't hear it. Matthew's broad shoulders spreading the red wool of his uniform dress jacket, his height magnified by calf-high, mirror polished Hessians, pulled her attention with him into the building. So much for her promise to keep her thoughts someplace else.
Ty's fist chucked her gently under the chin, turning her face back to him. “Kate, you know that the general is married.”
She practiced total nonchalance. “He has mentioned it. Why?”
“I could not bear for you, of all people, to be wounded by his circumstances.”
If only Ty's good intentions had the power to prevent it. She had passed the line of disappointed hope some time ago. The best she could do now was devote herself to anything but Matthew until she had healed. “I am unscathed.” She forced a smile for Ty's benefit. “But it's very kind of you to worry.”
They had known each other too long for Ty to be fooled, but he took pity on her pride. “Let's go in. I traveled this far with the aim of showing you off, and it can't be reasonably done from the yard.”
Kate guessed by her knowledge of shifting battle lines that the building did not welcome many travelers. The town did not exactly sit in friendly territory for anyone. If the hotel had seen a decline, though, its interior certainly didn't betray that fact. Wood gleamed with polish, and if the sofa and chairs were dated, their blue damask was clean and in good repair just the same.
Ty led them through the entry hall to the foot of the stairs where an imposing man stood talking in animated gestures with Captain Greene. In all her time with the army, Kate had never seen the Duke of Wellington, but he cut a figure unmistakable for anyone else. The only man present equal to Matthew in height, his blue eyes darted as he spoke, gathering every detail of the activity around him. His jacket collar and cuffs were embroidered with enough gold thread to fill a treasury. His features were bold, with a hooked nose and firm lips, and he radiated an authority that bordered on brusque. It was not hard to see what made him popular with both men and women.
He snapped a nod at their approach. “Major Burrell.”
“Your grace.” Ty made a little bow beside her, and Kate slid her leg back into a curtsy she had been practicing all afternoon. “Field marshal, may I present to you Miss Foster, of Albany.”
“Captain Greene was speaking of you earlier, Miss Foster.” He took her hand, but the hesitant consideration in his eyes left her wondering just what Captain Greene had thought to say. “You are a nurse with one of General Webb's regiments, I understand.”
“I am, your grace.” It was an over-simplification, but she saw no need to argue the finer points, especially not with Matthew's head on the block.
Wellington smiled, but Kate perceived some struggle in the slow way his mouth curved. “Hmm. I'm glad you are able to tolerate the major long enough to join our party.”
She dug her elbow into Ty's side. “By the end of this evening, our positions may be reversed.”
The hard line of Wellington's mouth relaxed. “Major Burrell, take Miss Foster in and acquaint her with everyone. The Ridgeworth-Asters have come down, so I hope you are wearing comfortable shoes. No sitting down this evening.”
Groaning, Ty gave her a miserable glance. “They are curious, and worse, boring. And a talkative pair, but God bless their patriotic spirit.” Fingers pinched to his thumb, he discreetly pantomimed the Aster's enjoyment of conversation.
“Is that all?” She nudged him toward the parlor. “You underestimate my talent for making myself disagreeable.”
He chuckled. “You haven't met the Asters. Not disagreeable enough.”
The parlor was smallish and simple li
ke the hall, with a modest pianoforte and high mantle its only attractive features. The civilians present were over-quaffed and over-dressed, as though transported directly from a glittering London drawing room. Kate glanced down at her brown silk gown, the gift from Adelaide at least a year out of style to anyone in Nivelles. It may as well be a decade behind, to the fashionable ladies present now. She tugged a cuff down over the back of her hand, fiddling while she took her companions' measure.
She was disappointed to see that Matthew was not at hand, until something drew her eyes back, where two couples conversed fire-side. The first pair was unremarkable, a man and woman in their upper years. They were a matched-set of plump peacocks, over-feathered and over-rouged. Ty groaned beside her, and Kate guessed she had caught first sight of the dreaded Asters.
The couple at their mercy could not have been cut from more opposite cloth. The woman was tall, gently animated arms swaying with willowy grace. Black silk draped every swell and curve, leaving Kate feeling plain and dumpy by comparison. Curls with the shine and ink of a raven's wing crowned her head, tumbling over her shoulder. Her neck, fingers and wrists resembled an inside-out jewelry box, roped with precious stones. Beside her towered Matthew, cradling her arm and looking for all the world as though he had never been more miserable. Kate caught his gaze. His head jerked and he looked away. She swore there was shame on his face.
Caroline. Kate's thoughts were in competition, trying to grasp that Lady Webb was here, and reconciling that the viscountess looked almost nothing like she had imagined. Why did her chest ache? Her hands went clammy against Ty's sleeve, and her appetite receded. The night seemed too long to bear. She wanted to return to the garrison. She wanted to turn and run.
Ty leaned close to share his sympathetic whisper. “I had no notion she would be here, Kate. I would have prepared you.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Her protest was genuine, a jumble of emotions too tangled up to identify. She wouldn't look at Ty, but felt his eyes on her for a long moment, probing for the truth. Then he shrugged and was silent.