Soldier

by Grace Burrowes

  “I got a letter, Miss Emmie!” Winnie came scampering up to her, Scout’s toenails clicking at her heels along the floor. “Two letters, one from Rose and one from Rosecroft. May I open them?”

  “Of course you may.” Emmie bent to take the letters from Winnie. “Let’s attend your correspondence in the library.”

  Winnie had taken to sitting in the earl’s chairs, both in the library and at the dinner table. She was particularly careful to watch Stevens and the vicar every time they schooled a horse in the ring, and just last night, Emmie had gone upstairs to check on the child before retiring and known a moment’s panic. Winnie was not in her bed, and in the past that might have signaled the beginning of hours of peregrinations about the estate.

  Emmie had found her curled up under a spare blanket at the foot of the earl’s bed.

  “Let’s repair to the sofa, shall we?” Emmie sat in the middle and patted the spot beside her. Winnie budged up and peered at the letters.

  Rose’s epistle was a potpourri of little-girl gossip, but she did point out that when Winnie’s Aunt Anna had a child with St. Just’s brother Gayle Windham, then both little girls would be cousins to the baby. From Rose’s perspective, this must surely require a visit on Winnie’s part to her southern relations.

  “A visit?” Winnie said, resting her head against Emmie’s arm. “I should dearly love to visit, but spring is far away. Scout won’t want to wait so long.”

  “He’ll understand if you explain it to him.” And in all honesty, the dog had learned a number of commands easily—almost as easily as he inhaled great quantities of kitchen scraps. “Shall we see what your other letter says?”

  “Please.” Winnie scooted around, her enthusiasm eclipsing her ability to sit still.

  My dear Misses Farnum,

  Our trip down here was uneventful. I can honestly report your friend Douglas was a good boy, though he would be less saddle sore if he got off and jogged beside his mount more often. I trust by now you have trained Scout to devour intruders, or at the very least, subdue the occasional slipper. His pedigree is dubious, but I was assured by his breeder he is the equivalent of many an old-time duke, his antecedents being champions on all sides.

  My family is in good health, and Anna James Windham in particular sends along her greetings to you both. She is in expectation of a blessed event and has managed to distract my dear brother from his infernal correspondence long enough that he joins us here at Morelands for the next week or so.

  My brother Valentine has warned me a gift is being forwarded from him to Rosecroft, a sort of housewarming present. When I consider the way my youngest brother was the butt of jokes and pranks growing up, I am loathe to open any gift from him. If it snarls or emits noxious odors, you must promise to return it unopened.

  I commend Winnie on her prompt issuance of correspondence, but fear I cannot agree Scout should be learning how to pass a teacup. A beer mug, perhaps, but nothing delicate. In the alternative, Winnie, you might teach him to roll over, fetch, or bark on command. The Viscountess Amery has apparently taught these same skills to all the males in her domain, with the command to lie down being obeyed with particular alacrity. Anna seems to be making similar inroads with the future duke—oh, how the mighty have fallen.

  I miss you both and trust this finds you in good health and good spirits. The enclosed provides a few glimpses of my visit thus far with the last little sketch being of Winnie’s new friend, Rose.

  Devlin St. Just

  Rosecroft

  “What does he mean about the mighty falling?”

  “I suppose he means his brother was a very serious man,” Emmie suggested, “until your Aunt Anna married him and made him more lighthearted.”

  “Rosecroft is not lighthearted. He should get married, too. I’m going to go teach Scout to lie down.”

  In Winnie’s absence, Emmie lifted St. Just’s letter to her nose and found to her profound pleasure the stationery bore a faint whiff of his fragrance.

  She was reminded by contrast of the vicar’s attentions.

  Hadrian Bothwell smelled good, too, she admitted.

  With the sense of a person staring over a sheer precipice, Emmie feared she might marry the man after all. She could learn to tolerate him in bed; on the strength of one kiss, she was sure he’d acquit himself competently in that regard. She could learn to socialize with his neighbors and keep herself occupied while her husband took his seat or went off shooting in Scotland or did whatever it was cordial husbands did when their wives had provided them sons.

  Children, she thought with a pang. That was the real draw. Children to love and call her own and raise each and every day under her loving eye.

  Except—she stood up and began to pace—if they were boys, they might go off to public school as early as age six. That decision would be her husband’s, just as every decision regarding the rearing of their children would be.

  And what if she couldn’t tolerate Hadrian’s attentions? A short, fully clothed kiss was one thing, but what about the more intimate dealings? Somehow, she could not imagine ever begging the man to kiss her, not the way she’d begged St. Just. She could not imagine crying in Hadrian’s arms nor handing him her hairbrush nor asking him for an opinion on a recipe.

  Maybe—she sat back down—the situation required a good deal more thought.

  ***

  St. Just came in from his morning ride to find Douglas in the Morelands stable yard, checking to make sure the traveling coach was properly packed.

  “I am pleased.” Douglas said, his gaze traveling over the horse’s lathered coat. “You are off your backside, no longer content to twiddle your thumbs while your sisters throw their friends at you.”

  “I am off my backside.” St. Just swung down. “Beau was sufficiently rested that he was good for a gallop today. We went by some of my childhood haunts and found them blessedly still the same for the most part. But, ye gods, childhood was a lifetime ago.”

  “Can you see someday touring Spain and France and thinking the same thing?” Douglas asked as a groom took Beau.

  “Yes,” the earl said, surprised at his own answer as Douglas fell in step beside him on the path to the manor. “I can, actually. Not for years, but someday.”

  “Then ride every day. It was part of what you enjoyed about being at Rosecroft.”

  “I’m bringing a few more of my youngsters north with me when I go back,” St. Just said, finding a tea cart on the back terrace laden with ice water, lemonade, and bread and butter. “Shall we sit?”

  Douglas nodded and settled into a chair.

  “I’m also nipping into London tomorrow and jaunting down to my own stud farm for a day or two. I’ve sent along a note to Greymoor, requesting word of any worthy prospects, though he charges a pretty penny for anything leaving his farm.”

  “Have you written to Emmie?”

  “I write to them both,” St. Just replied, chugging some cold lemonade. “Emmie chided me to observe the proprieties, so I have not written to her, precisely.”

  “If you did write, just to her, what would you write?”

  St. Just sat back, more relaxed than he’d been in days for having had a good gallop. “I would tell her I miss her, that I am scared of being around people all the time, but only marginally less scared when alone. I’m afraid of the next rainy night, still, and I miss Winnie more than I thought I would. Winnie is just… good. Innocent, you know? I would tell her I am not sleeping as well as I did in Yorkshire, but I am managing not to drink much, so far. I would tell her—”

  “Yes?” Douglas cocked his head, no doubt surprised at the raw honesty of these sentiments.

  “I would tell her I was better when I could smell fresh bread in every corner of my house and know she was busy in my kitchen. I would tell her there are no stone walls here for me to beat my head against, and I miss her.”

  “Emmie is a stone wall?” Douglas eyed his water, his expression perplexed.

  “In
a sense.” St. Just grinned ruefully. “A good sense.”

  Douglas rose to his feet. “If I were you, I would start writing.”

  “I’m not passing along such drivel to such a sensible woman.” St. Just rose, as well, and eyed Douglas a little uncertainly. “She’d think my wits had gone begging.”

  “It isn’t your wits,” Douglas said sternly. He pulled St. Just into his arms, not for a quick, self-conscious, furtive male hug, but for an embrace, full of affection and protectiveness. “It’s your heart, you ass. Now listen to me.” He put a hand on the back of St. Just’s head, effectively preventing St. Just from doing aught but remaining pliant in his arms. “I love you, and I am proud of you. I am grateful for the years you spent defending me and mine, and I will keep you in my prayers each and every night. Write to me, or I will tattle to Her Grace, Rose, and Winnie.”

  “A veritable firing squad of guilt,” the earl said, stepping back. He turned his back on Douglas and reached for a linen napkin on the tea cart. “Damn you, Amery.”

  Douglas stepped up behind him and offered him one last pat on the shoulder. “You’ll be all right, Devlin. Just keep turning toward the light, no matter how weak, shifting, or uncertain. Write to me, and know you are always welcome in my house, under any circumstances, no matter what.”

  St. Just nodded but didn’t turn as he heard Douglas’s steps fade away.

  ***

  “Esther.” The Duke of Moreland smiled as he found his wife in their private sitting room, already dressed for the day. “I thought you were going to sleep in?”

  “I thought I was, too, but Rose leaves us today, and this makes me restless.”

  “Ah, but, my love.” The duke tugged his wife of three decades down to sit beside him on the settee. “Rose had a smashing good time, didn’t she?”

  “She did.” The duchess smiled at him. “She got you out and about but kept you at a reasonable pace. Every fellow recovering from a heart seizure should be assigned a little granddaughter to keep him in line.”

  “I am recovering,” the duke said, eyeing his wife. “Not a hundred percent yet, but I’m coming along. Morelands is good for me.”

  “Morelands is lovely.”

  “I don’t think Morelands is agreeing with St. Just.”

  “What makes you say that?” The duchess kept her tone noncommittal, though His Grace thought she’d come to the same conclusion he had.

  “I was on my way out to the rose garden to see how the white roses are coming along, and I happened to be on the other side of the privet hedge when St. Just was bidding Amery good-bye.”

  “I think they’ve gotten on well.”

  “St. Just was crying in the man’s arms, Esther.” The duke shook his head. “Nothing havey-cavey about it, he’s just… He’s still upset, and Amery doesn’t pull any punches, God knows.”

  “Devlin cannot tolerate boredom,” the duchess said. “His demons plague him when he’s idle, and I fear we excel at idleness here at Morelands.”

  “Mayhap.” The duke patted her hand, as pretty and slim as any girl’s. “I have never known what to do with that one, Esther. He’s just… he insists on holding himself aloof, and all he’s ever asked me is to buy him his colors and one decent horse. Ten years later, England is victorious, two sons are dead, and another probably wishes he were.”

  “You think it’s that bad?”

  “Maybe not now.” The duke stroked her hand, searching her eyes. “Val and Westhaven report his drinking has moderated, and he’s been in regular correspondence with them, his steward in Surrey, and his man of business. Maybe he and Amery just went a bit nancy on us—happens in the army, I’m told. And the women in Yorkshire all look like sheep after a certain age, anyway.”

  “Percival Windham”—the duchess retrieved her hand—“you repeat that nonsense in polite company, and I will hide every tin of chocolates from which you are cadging your treats.”

  “Just a thought,” the duke groused. “Something’s still amiss with the lad, and I’ll be damned if I can fathom it. Why don’t you talk to him?”

  “I’m not his mother,” the duchess, said, but she couldn’t hide the pain flashing in her eyes as she repeated a refrain His Grace had heard from her often through the years. She’d loved the boy from the day he’d arrived at the age of five, bewildered, heartbroken to be cast from his mother’s side, and determined not to be intimidated by ducal grandeur; but Esther would not interfere between Percy and his firstborn.

  “You are the only damned thing he’s ever had that resembles a mother,” the duke shot back, pleased to see he had her attention. “And maybe Amery has the right of it: The boy wants mothering or some damned thing like it. Now, how can we finagle another visit from our little Rose before Christmas?”

  The duchess listened to him spin and discard a half-dozen schemes and bribes before he arrived to the least interesting but most effective option of all.

  “Do you suppose, Esther”—he tucked her hand back into his—“we should just ask?”

  ***

  “I’ve decided Rose must stay with me,” St. Just informed her stepfather, who waited at the bottom of the front steps for his horse to be brought around. “You have John; you don’t need Rose, too.” He scooped his niece up into a tight hug then set her down near the traveling coach.

  “You’ll not kidnap my daughter,” Guinevere Allen, Viscountess Amery said, coming out of the house with John in her arms. “His Grace tried that, St. Just. I frown upon it, and Douglas gets positively irrational.”

  St. Just grinned. “I should like to witness that, but perhaps not inspire it.”

  Gwen leaned up and kissed his cheek. “St. Just, thank you for keeping Douglas out of trouble these weeks. It’s a thankless task, I know, as he’s so naturally prone to mischief. Husband, mount up. Their Graces said their farewells indoors, and the aunts will not be out of bed for hours yet.”

  Douglas assisted his wife and children into the coach and gave the driver leave to walk on, then waited for Sir Regis’s girth to be tightened.

  “You might consider marriage, you know,” Douglas said as the horse was led over. “It solved a world of difficulties for me, and I do not refer to the financial.”

  “Perhaps you just want to assign responsibility for worrying about me to someone else.”

  “I will worry about you for as long as I damned well please,” Douglas muttered. “Behave yourself, and—”

  “I know.” St. Just wrapped him a hug. “You love me, you are proud of me, and you will keep me in your prayers.”

  “Right.” Douglas nodded, holding on for a moment before stepping back. “Glad to see you were paying attention.”

  “Be off with you.” St. Just patted Sir Regis’s neck. “And my thanks for everything.” Douglas saluted with his crop, swung aboard, and trotted off, soon disappearing into the plume of dust raised by the coach.

  St. Just sat on the steps, watching the dust drift away on the morning breeze. If nothing else, the past six weeks had brought a friend into his life. A truly dear, worthy friend, a man he would have served with gladly. It wasn’t like having a brother back, not Bart nor Victor, but it was a profound consolation nonetheless.

  Valentine Windham appeared at the top of the steps, his sable hair tousled, his green eyes speculative. He sidled down the steps, hands in his pockets, his lean form moving with sleepy grace. He lowered himself to sit beside his brother and frowned.

  “Damned quiet without the brat,” Val said.

  “Rose stole your heart, too, did she?”

  “She’s a lot like Victor. I don’t know how that should be, but she’s droll and quick and passionate, and he’s gone, but then there’s Rose. And sometimes, in a certain light, she has a look of him around her eyes.”

  “And in the chin, too, I think. You miss him.”

  “I miss him.” Val glanced up at the blue summer sky. “He rallied in the summers, at least when it was dry. I think the coal dust aggravated him, and t
he damp.”

  “And the dying,” St. Just said. “The going by degrees and days and minutes.”

  “Many times he said he envied Bart, a nice, quick, clean bullet. Alive and cussing one minute, gone to his reward the next. No quacks, no nurses, no long faces around the bed.”

  “I miss Bart, too,” St. Just mused. “No chance to say good-bye, no time to say what needed to be said, no period of grace to bargain with God and find some balance with the whole thing.”

  “Damned lousy,” Val said, sounding more desolate than peevish. He laid his head on his brother’s shoulder. “Promise me you won’t pull a stunt like either of them.”

  “I promise. You?”

  “Swear to God. Word of a Windham.”

  They were silent a long moment, the late summer morning barely stirring around them.

  “That’s why you beat the stuffings out of me, isn’t it?” St. Just glanced over at his baby brother. “You might kill me with your bare hands, but you weren’t going to let another brother be taken from you.”

  “That, and I was only then beginning to realize Victor wasn’t ill, he was dying, and he was fighting it hard not because he enjoyed being trapped in a miserable body, but because we trapped him with our grief. I told him to let go, but he wasn’t about to listen to me.”

  “And I wasn’t even there to comment.”

  “You were drunk, I was coming apart with grief, and that left, as always, Gayle to impersonate the adult in this family.”

  “And he seems to be enjoying the role more and more.”

  “Adulthood has its privileges,” Val said, lifting his head. “But are you enjoying them?”

  “I’m doing better, little brother. My bad days are not quite as bad, and my good days are coming closer together. What of you?”

  “Westhaven’s nuptials have put rather a crimp in my designs,” Val said, scowling. “I liked having the two of you where I could keep an eye on you, but I’m not about to share a home with a pair of newlyweds on the nest.”