Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1)

by Baird Wells

  Her brow peaked with suspicion. “Why is it under your bed?”

  “I enjoy having it close by.”

  She was stifling a laugh; he saw the tell-tale twitch of her lips. “For what purpose?”

  Shrugging, he smiled. “There is but one, Kate.”

  “Shocking,” she gasped. “You had it at least a week before we...before our first night!”

  He nodded honestly. “And you were paramount in my thoughts for every one of those seven long nights.”

  She shook her head, waves bouncing fetchingly, open disbelief on her face.

  “You truly had no notion why I had come that first night?” he asked.

  Kate pressed hands to her cheeks. “No idea. Not at first, anyhow.” Her laugh was wry. “I should have, but you surprised me. I was too worried about your pained expression to make sense of the obvious.”

  He hesitated, working up his courage. “Did you not think of me that way, in all the months we had been acquainted?” There was a little twinge in his chest, at the idea she had perhaps not shared his feelings for very long.

  “You know better than that,” Kate chided. She leaned in, taking his hands and tugging insistently until he slid from the chair. He planted on his knees in front of her, scooting close, and clutched her fingers.

  “I thought of you in every way, Matthew. As my confidante, my friend,” She smiled, “My enemy.” Her smile dimmed a moment. “No, not enemy. That's not right. An ...opposing ally, perhaps?”

  He pulled her hand to his heart. “I was always on your side, Kate.”

  “Unquestionably.” She beamed, absolutely radiant in the dim lamplight. “And you should not imagine, just because I was slow to fit the puzzle together, that there were not moments when I longed for what we just shared. Nights when I lost sleep enjoying the memory of your smile, the way my hands felt on you.”

  He perked at the information. “The way your hands felt on me?”

  “Er, generally speaking,” she fumbled, glancing away.

  Matthew studied her face intently, until it became plain she would offer no further information. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Why did you not come to me, Kate?”

  “Were you certain, when you entered my tent, that I would not turn you away?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Exactly.” She paused, seeming to chew on something a moment. “Besides, you were a married man. Are a married man. You have given your word. I would never ask you to break it.”

  “You could have said as much. I'd have set you straight.”

  “I'm careful with my heart,” she admitted softly. “What has grown between us...I do not give myself over to it lightly.”

  She meant Patrick, of course. Caroline's coldness was something he had learned to live around, while Patrick's love was something Kate had learned to live without. She carried hurt and regret in a way he could not fully comprehend. “I've never had enough of Caroline's love to miss it,” he confessed bitterly.

  “Help me understand, Matthew. This cannot be simple infidelity. Too many couples in London seem to take that in stride.”

  More than she realized, he wagered. A faithful match was the most noteworthy sort in London. Men and women married for all manner of reasons besides love. In due time, other things began to share their bed; lust, politics, resentment, excitement. A man would lie with his mistress on the grounds of not wanting to 'burden' his wife. The wife would visit her lover under the excuse of advancing her husband's political career. Strangers under the same roof. He knew the feeling well.

  Matthew raked fingers through still-damp hair. Perhaps he would feel better, confiding in Kate. Besides, she had shown him that trust, when their places were reversed. He took a breath and prepared to jump.

  “Caroline was my brother's fiancée, first of all.” He nodded, acknowledging her wide eyes. “She would pay a call with her mother, or I would see her at a ball, and such jealousy would well up. There was something sensual about her that made me feel as though we were undressing one another when we spoke. I wanted just such a woman. At least I thought I did, at the worldly age of nineteen. Chas certainly did not deserve her, by my estimation.” He paused, recalling some of the uglier details he had long ago put away.

  “He wasn't capable of fidelity, even till the wedding day. I never quite reckoned out how such a foul-tempered drunkard charmed women so easily. Or how a woman like Caroline, or the sort of woman I thought her to be, was fooled by him.” He stared at his finger, the pale band from his ring all but gone. “But I don't think she was fooled, not any longer. Chas had a fortune and the same bad habits. They were eager to marry because they were birds of a feather.”

  “Isn't it funny,” breathed Kate, wriggling against his side, “That our hearts, so capable of seeing the truth of people, can be so blind?”

  He realized she was talking about herself as much as him and nodded. “Mine certainly was.” Matthew snapped his head, trying to shake off a wave of self-pity. “Her father gambled their estate into total ruin, then ran off to France and shot himself just weeks before my brother died.” His laugh tasted bitter. “Charles...He was found face down in a horse trough behind a doss house. Fell in too sodding drunk to climb out. The gossip nearly killed my mother.”

  “Unfathomable.” Kate clasped a hand to her mouth, eyes wide.

  “At least what was left of the family estate was safe. Highgate lands have been in my family four-hundred years, and were nearly lost in two.”

  Matthew paused again, stilling himself against a flood of emotions. When he had pulled the cork, he had been ill prepared for how fast the old resentment would bubble over.

  “When Caroline hinted that she would have me in my brother's place, it never occurred to me to question her motives. I was ecstatic. A soldier with nothing more distinguishing in his future than the army. Suddenly I had a title and a beautiful fiancée.”

  Kate laced her fingers tighter into his, eyes turned down. “Didn't you worry, even for a moment that she might be false?”

  “I should have. Neither of us came to our wedding bed a virgin. I'm no hypocrite. I would not have cared, except she had led me to believe otherwise. A habit of hers, as it turned out.”

  “Misleading you?”

  “Mmhm.”

  Kate's head fell heavy against his ribs. “Your poor mother. She saw what Caroline was from the beginning.”

  “Entirely. But when she was Chas' fiancée, I think mother felt there was a kind of justice in it. They deserved one another.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Your mother loves you so much. Your marriage must have gutted her.”

  “She could not tolerate Caroline or her mother, Lady Linsley. Adelaide's feud with them is a long-standing and public one. But Caroline's brother Edward...he was the exception.”

  The name stabbed at his heart with a depth that surprised him after so many years. “I loved Ned the way I ought to have loved my own brother. He was young and handsome, full of military enthusiasm. No swearing or drinking in the presence of ladies, but he would ride hard at a French battery and never blink an eye.” Kate laughed, and he answered in kind. “Truly the king could not have boasted a more loyal soldier. He was forced into service by his family's reverses, but I think he had secretly longed to join his whole life.”

  “And naturally, you encouraged it,” she said.

  “When he came to me asking for a loan to purchase his commission, I was happy to do it. Caroline was furious. Two soldiers in the family? Embarrassing. Ned and I secretly took a good measure of enjoyment spiting her. How terrible is that?”

  Kate stayed silent, but the sour slant of her mouth answered as clearly as any words.

  “I could spin you a long tale, but the heart of the matter is, Ned fought and died under my command in Portugal. Slashed in the face by a French scout who betrayed our regiment.” His fingers flexed unconsciously at the memory. “I pressed my hand to his throat while he bled to death and got shot i
n the ribs in the process.” The words spilled out in a rush, each one tearing the wound in his heart, even after so long.

  Her arms slipped around him in a gesture of comfort, but he hardly noticed. “I was sent home, to mourn and convalesce. Make no mistake, I fully appreciated that my wife had lost her only brother. I was prepared to take up the blame. It would have been healing, strange as it sounds, for her to rage at me – I certainly felt I deserved it. Instead, she was sullen, withdrawing from me entirely. When I came to her, seeking an embrace for comfort, she shrugged me off. It seemed to baffle and annoy Caroline if I showed even a hint of anguish at Ned's loss.”

  Kate wore a dubious frown. “Did she mourn her brother?”

  He smacked a hand against the knee of his trousers. “Absolutely. I believe her grief was genuine, and I do not think it has ever healed. She was jealous of anyone who even hinted that they loved Ned as she did.”

  Many times over the years, it had occurred to him that Ned was the only person she ever had loved.

  “Guilt and uselessness ate at me, and I began to drink. I threw myself into the bottle, Caroline threw herself into society, and somewhere in the following year Mercier Pitt crossed her path. By then I had been stripped of all husbandly roles, save that of 'income'.”

  “Pitt...Pitt...” Kate repeated the name softly, trying to place it.

  “He was at the officers' dinner in Nivelles.”

  Kate's hand flew to her chest. “How did you keep the reins on your temper? I wouldn't possess enough self-discipline in your shoes to keep from strangling him.”

  He laughed, believing her claim was probably true. “He was under my command in Portugal. I learned to tolerate him because I was not permitted to shoot him. Whether his being my subordinate influenced Caroline's choice, I can't say, but I assume it did.”

  He could imagine her taking pleasure in the awkward sort of triangle. Matthew laughed again, this time at himself. “I was wounded at being a cuckold, until I reflected on just what he had taken from me. Thanks to Pitt, Caroline was rarely home when I slipped in at the cock's crow, soaked with gin and her waiting to flay me with her razor tongue. He had practically done me a favor.”

  Kate squeezed his hand. “You did not truly believe that...”

  “I had loved her violently once, and I desperately wanted her love in return. I hated that she would not give it to me, and that I humiliated myself continuing to try.”

  She rubbed thumbs over the backs of his hands. “You were as miserable then as you were a few weeks ago. Something made you stay.”

  Matthew hated to remember it, an old dim sorrow that had awakened in his memory the day he held Martha's baby. “There was a pregnancy. It could have been his or mine; I'm not certain I cared. There was no better reason for us to reconcile than a child. I wanted a baby, and I was certain we would reconcile.”

  Kate, perceptive as ever, scooted into the last breadth of space between them. She fitted herself into the crook of his shoulder and slid her arms fully around him. He inhaled the scent of her hair, felt the last beads of sweat at her temple where it pressed to his chest. Stroking fingers up and down the crisp fabric of her sleeve, he pushed on.

  “The morning Caroline woke to find spotting on the sheets, my heart stopped. I was a madman, consigning her to bed, dragging the doctor across London with blustering threats.” Matthew shook his head. “Put me in front of five-thousand troops, but do not task me with a personal crisis.

  “Doctor Eckman was so calm about it. We were five months along!” He massaged a throbbing right temple. “I really wanted to injure him just to provoke a response, so that I did not feel as alone. Of course there was nothing to be done, but I was desperate. We had begun treating one another with kindness, and something like respect. The moment our baby was lost, I feared Caroline and I would be divided for good and all.”

  “It is very lucky, was very lucky,” she corrected gravely, “That she did not die from complications.”

  He had thought so too, at the time. “I think she nearly did. For months afterward, she was ill. Weak, sometimes fevered. In every way I struggled to be attentive and to dote on her. Reading to her, bringing flowers from the hothouse, seeing that anything she desired was bedside when she woke. Sometimes we just lay on the bed together with our hands joined.” He pushed away the optimism his younger self had treasured so eagerly, despising those few months of hope more than all the misery to follow.

  “It was working; I was so certain. She needed me. Our marriage was on the mend as much as her body. At some point Doctor Eckman suggested she go out for air, short walks. I don't recall one specific day, but she was just suddenly coming and going like she used to. Little by little the good will and affection drained away.”

  “She had gone back to Pitt,” Kate added sagely, squeezing her arms more tightly.

  “We never stepped out together. We were strangers in our house, and I was not welcome in her bed.” A bitter taste parched the back of his mouth. “It was full enough, with Major Pitt's return from the Peninsula.”

  Kate stiffened against his side, sounding furious in a strangely touching way. “He waited until you'd patched her up, then took his sport again.”

  He nodded. “And that was the end. When she lost the baby, I think Caroline formed some doubt in her mind. I don't know what finally settled it, but a wall went up between us and there was no breaching it.”

  Wriggling away, Kate studied his face, looking more upset over the memory than he was. “She has stayed all this time. You don't think perhaps she loves you, just a little?”

  So like her, to try and find the good in someone. He had no doubt in that moment that, had he expressed even a bit of uncertainty where Caroline was concerned, he could have confided in Kate. She would have murdered him after, he chuckled, but she would have heard him out first.

  “I am useful, nothing more. She lives in perpetual fear of being poor, and worse, unpopular. Major Pitt is diverting, but lacks a title and income.” He swallowed, struggling with his words to form a realization he had only just come to. “My love and loyalty were cultivated into a bridle, for her to keep me in-hand. I'm certain, after all these years, she never imagined my leaving.” He got to his knees, leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Kate's temple. “She did not count on you.”

  Tucking knees to her chest inside the wrapper, Kate chewed at her bottom lip. “I'm not comfortable in the role of 'other woman'.”

  He leaned down, stroking a thumb over her cheek. “I won't ask it of you. Tell me that you wish to wait until I've secured a divorce, and I'll not object.”

  Kate stretched out a stocking-clad leg and brushed her toes from his knee to his thigh, stirring his body. “You know by now that I'm incapable of saying such a thing.”

  He grinned. “Odd. Running contrary to my wishes has always seemed to come naturally for you.”

  Kate spaced her thumb and finger apart, holding them up for him. “That was before you planted your little vermillion flag on me.”

  “Not so bad when the redcoats win, now is it?” he prodded.

  “I'll never admit it!” Her exclamation was drowned by a wide yawn, and she smiled. “I should go. You're hardly getting sleep as it is.”

  He glanced around the tent, warring over what to say next. She should go, but there was not an ounce of self-discipline to make him part with her. He got up, went to the trunk behind his wash stand and dug out his spare gray blanket.

  “What are you about?” Kate arched up, craning her neck to spy on him.

  Smiling, he reached out a hand. “Clear out for a moment. You'll see.”

  “Hmm.”

  He hauled Kate up beside him, snapping the blanket and spreading it over the floor. Stretching out along its length, he grabbed a fistful of her wrapper, tugging her down beside him.

  She fit herself against his side, one slender arm draping across his bare chest. “We are doing the very thing we both agreed not to.”

  He shrugged. �
�In a few days we'll leave for Brussels, where no one particularly cares about the sort of relationship we share. And when you return to the regiment, in whatever capacity, it will be under very different circumstances than we face now. At the rear or along the front, no man has idle time enough in battle to contemplate his officer's, or doctor's private dealings.”

  “In other words, you do not give a fig,” she laughed.

  “No, I do not.” They had been bound together, well before either of them had stopped squabbling long enough to realize it. Everyone else would have to wrap their minds around it eventually. For now, being called up to Brussels solved most of their problems.

  She leaned farther over him, poking fingers at the hard ground under their blanket. “Are you certain you want to pass the night this way? I think you're a little old to be comfortable sleeping on the floor.”

  He played at being wounded. “I am thirty-four, not sixty-four!”

  “And I am twenty-three, but Belgian tree roots still bruise the same as any other.” Kate punctuated her giggle with a pinch to his ribs.

  “There is no limit to what I would endure to keep you beside me,” he confessed.

  Her head bobbed at the crook of his arm, nodding in agreement. “It is hard enough, being only beside you.”

  “What do you mean?” He raised up on an elbow, tipping his head and trying to get a glimpse of her expression. Kate wriggled up his chest, draped over him, and traced his lower lip with her finger. “Even when I am against you like this, I feel the space between us. An absence, really, that's only filled when you are inside me. Not lust, not pleasure...” She shook her head.

  “As though you've found a bit of yourself.”

  “Yes! That's it exactly.” Kate rewarded him, brushing her mouth over his.

  He cradled her face in his palms, pulling Kate away to meet her eyes. “You’ve got into my blood. Even arm's-length is nearly unbearable.” He drew her back, exploiting her lips with a pressure that made it impossible for him to think of sleep.