For Love or Honor

by Sarah M. Eden

  Marjie stepped inside. She turned back long enough to close the door.

  What would she say? Stanley didn’t think he could endure another heart-wrenching farewell. Not with Marjie.

  She stepped up to him, the scent of roses filling the air around him. He would never smell roses again without thinking of her. She didn’t touch him, did not reach her arms out to embrace him. Marjie lifted up on her toes and leaned toward him. Only their lips met in a kiss of tender farewell.

  Stanley couldn’t breathe. He had resigned himself to never feeling such fulfillment again. His arms encircled her, pulling her flush with him. He should not have allowed himself the moment’s weakness, but he needed her comfort and the strength she gave him.

  The world disappeared. Nothing existed beyond that stolen moment. The years that stretched out ahead of him faded into the furthermost regions of his mind. The hour of his departure disappeared, forgotten and unheeded. His Marjie was in his arms.

  “Marjie,” he whispered, attempting to make himself break away. He could not. A moment more passed before his soldier’s instinct forced him to regain control of the situation. Prolonging yet another farewell would only be harder on them both.

  He took a step back. He closed his eyes, forcing several breaths and lowering his arms determinedly to his sides. He had mere moments before he needed to leave. His thoughts must be brought down out of the clouds and back to his duties.

  Marjie stepped forward, closing the distance between them once more. She reached up and took his face in her hands. “Please don’t leave me, Stanley.”

  “Marjie—”

  “I need you at least as much as they do. Please don’t abandon me. Please.”

  Her words cut so deep Stanley felt as though his heart was bleeding. “I gave my—”

  “I know. I am not asking you to abandon your duties. I am asking, begging, you to take me with you. Please.”

  Stanley held his hands firmly at his side, forcing himself to not reach for her again. Marrying her and taking her to France with him would be so much easier than leaving her behind. He could hold her when he needed comfort. She would fill the broken bits of his soul, the places that had cracked and shattered again and again since the day he’d witnessed his first battle. He would be able to turn to her when he struggled to endure the life he’d come to despise in so many ways.

  “No, Marjie.” Those were the two hardest words he’d spoken all day. “I will not force that life on you. I will not sacrifice your own happiness for mine.”

  “Do I look happy, Stanley? Does being left here appear to have secured my happiness?”

  Stanley held his hands behind his back so he would not reach out and wipe the tears from her cheeks. He did not know if his self-control could endure touching her again. He feared he would give in and consign her to the misery that awaited across the Channel. “I know the life to which I would be taking you.” He stepped back once more, and Marjie’s hands fell to her sides. “Whether you believe me or not, you would be more unhappy there than you could ever be here, and I would hate myself for doing that to you. I cannot. Please do not ask it of me.”

  She stood silently for a moment. He saw her shoulders droop and her gaze drop away from his face. “I know,” she said. “I know. I had not intended to beg you to keep me, Stanley. I had meant only to tell you I love you and I will miss you. I wanted to be supportive and comforting and—” She shook her head almost dismissively and shrugged.

  “No, Marjie.” He knew what emotion that shrug covered. He would not allow her to feel rejected. “You have been all of those things. Knowing that you love me will sustain me in ways you cannot possibly imagine.” He did not deserve her love, but having it, he was determined to live worthy of it.

  “I also wanted you to hold me just one more time.”

  With that simple sentence, he was back in Belgium, lost in the white fog of fever and approaching death. He’d heard her words fluctuating between the hoarse voice of Lieutenant Greenberry and her angelic one in his thoughts. Those words had taken firm grasp of him. To hold her just one more time. That had been worth living for, even if it had meant living a life haunted by memories and regrets.

  “Oh, my Marjie.” He sighed but stepped farther away. “Do you have any idea how you are torturing me?”

  She took a shaky breath, tears still falling from her eyes.

  “I cannot hold you again.” Stanley forced back a groan of frustration. He needed her. “I am not strong enough to let you go if I do. But I have to do the right thing now. I have to.”

  “I know.” Her voice broke.

  “You do know I love you, don’t you?”

  She nodded but seemed unable to speak.

  Stanley closed his eyes and pushed out a tense breath. Her words of a few moments earlier haunted him. “I need you at least as much as they do,” she had said.

  In a moment, he would leave to fulfill a commitment he’d made years earlier. In doing so, though, he would be hurting his angel. It was, in a word, impossible. How did a man find any degree of faith in such a hopeless situation?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Stanley stood at the door to Colonel Falwell’s office, waiting. He had been instructed to report there and arrangements would be made for his transportation to the ship that would take him to France. Pluck stood beside him, quiet and rigid.

  “What in the blazes are we doin’ here, Cap’n?” Pluck hadn’t yet adjusted to Stanley’s change in rank.

  “Fulfilling a commitment.”

  “Iffen ye nobs weren’t so blasted hon’rable, we’d be back at Lampton Park ’stead of gettin’ ready to ride some flea-bitten boat to France. Who the blasted blazes wants to go to France?” Stanley had never heard Pluck grumble as much as he had in the past few days. He knew better than to remind Pluck that he was not obligated to join him on his return to service. Pluck would lay into him with the viciousness of a rabid dog if he so much as hinted at such a thing.

  The colonel’s door opened, and a young man, a lieutenant by his uniform, stepped out. “Major Jonquil?”

  Stanley answered with a quick half nod.

  “Colonel Falwell will see you now.” He held the door open. Pluck was instructed to wait on a bench near the door for Stanley’s return. They would be traveling to France together, but this final interview was to be with Stanley alone.

  He could see a narrow strip of the room within. He understood that he was to proceed forward, but he couldn’t seem to move. His whole life would change the moment he stepped through that door. The documents he would be carrying to France for Lord Hill would be given to him in the next few minutes. The last few pieces of paperwork relating to his promotion and regimental assignment would be his as well. Stepping forward would put him firmly on that path. With Marjie’s sobbing pleadings still fresh in his mind, combined with Mater’s distress and Pluck’s unmistakable reluctance, Stanley felt as though he were dragging his entire family into the direst of circumstances.

  You promised to have hope. You promised to try.

  Though his hesitation seemed to last for minutes on end, Stanley knew he’d paused but a second. He understood his duty. “Always a soldier.” He set his shoulders and stepped through the door.

  “Major,” came the clipped greeting.

  Stanley stopped directly in front of Colonel Falwell’s desk. A tightness wrapped around his lungs, forcing him to work at every breath. The urge to run began creeping through his limbs.

  Strength through loyalty, he told himself only to hear Philip’s voice answer with the lament, “Sometimes I do not know to which loyalty that refers.”

  Father never had addressed the issue of conflicting commitments. Stanley was only thirteen years old when Father died. Perhaps that topic would have been covered if Father hadn’t been taken from them so young.

  “You are still not wearing your sabre.” Colonel Falwell looked both curious and disapproving.

  “No, sir.” Stanley offered no answer
beyond that.

  The colonel’s gaze grew more narrowed, though not angry. “Why is that, Major? It is a required part of your uniform, regardless of your inability to hold it in your sword hand.”

  “I choose not to wear it, sir.”

  “Rather, you refuse to wear it.” Colonel Falwell wove his fingers together and rested his arms on his desk. “Why is that?”

  Stanley maintained his tensely correct posture. He focused his eyes somewhere above the colonel’s right shoulder. “It holds unpleasant associations for me.” That was almost unemotional enough to prevent any of the tremors or noticeable paling he usually endured after speaking so closely to the heart of his worst battle scars.

  “Are those associations in regard to your own wounds or to those you inflicted upon others?”

  Colonel Falwell’s insightful question surprised him. It nonetheless required a response—one Stanley did not wish to give. “Both, sir.” He kept the sentence clipped to avoid a drawn-out conversation on such a painful subject.

  “You are bothered to such an extreme as to willingly embrace insubordination? What if I were to tell you that you are, from this time forth, commanded to wear a sabre as your uniform requires? Would you still refuse?”

  Stanley could feel his heartbeat in his throat. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. To flout the orders of one’s commanding officer was an offense worthy of punishment, court-marshal at times. Yet Stanley knew he could never wear that sword again, or any sword, for that matter. A sword in his hand made him nothing better than a murderer. If he was to have faith in himself, as Mater had pleaded with him, then he could not, would not, wear it again.

  “I would refuse, sir.”

  “What, then, is your plan for enforcing adherence to uniform regulations amongst your men when they, seeing that their major is never in full uniform, refuse to comply themselves?”

  Stanley had not thought of that. A major had greater influence than a mere captain. The men who knew him and understood his background would not question his defiance. There would be new arrivals, however—young cubs eager to test the limits.

  Would he be forced, then, to wear his sabre? The mere thought of doing so made Stanley hate himself to depths he did not wish to plunge.

  “Did you have a chance for a farewell with your loved ones, Major Jonquil?” Colonel Falwell abruptly changed the topic.

  “I did, sir.”

  “It does not appear to have been a painless leave-taking.”

  Stanley instantly forced his expression back into neutrality. He must learn to hide his suffering once more. His men would depend upon him to do so. “I have, by my actions, disappointed most of those nearest me.” He very nearly winced at the memory of Mater weeping and Marjie pleading with him to keep her.

  “They do not support your return to active service?” Colonel Falwell’s evaluative gaze never slipped.

  Stanley kept himself still. He refused to shift uncomfortably like a raw recruit. “They are, in many ways, very dependent upon me. Also, they worry a great deal.”

  Colonel Falwell leaned forward. “How dependent upon you are they?”

  “Sir?”

  His forehead furrowed, the colonel motioned Stanley to the chair opposite his own across the wide desk. “Sit, Major. You have a few moments before you must begin your journey to the docks.”

  An indefinable change swept over the room in that moment, and Stanley didn’t entirely trust it. Something had just shifted, though he could not say precisely what.

  Colonel Falwell leaned forward, watching him from across the desk. “Tell me about your loved ones.”

  ***

  Marjie accomplished absolutely nothing for the first two hours after Stanley’s departure. First, she had wept on her bed for a full thirty minutes. Following which, she had wept at the window, at her dressing table, in a corner of her room, and, finally, on the bed once more. Staring out the window had proven even less soothing. Only one thing would ease her mind and heart.

  She slipped through the unnaturally quiet house and into the book room. Philip had left the house, though Marjie did not know where he had gone. Stanley had insisted on hiring a hack to take him to Horse Guards, and Philip had not argued.

  Marjie pulled open the drawer where Philip kept the unused parchment. She would limit herself to two sheets. Marjie examined the quills laid out on Philip’s desk. If she could find two well-sharpened ones, she would not have to stop partway through her letter to reshape the point.

  She carefully shifted the papers on Philip’s desktop to make room. He had an entire stack of papers regarding some place called Fallowgill and another lone sheet of parchment with several names listed under the heading Reliable Correspondents in Lords Who Are Not Complete Imbeciles. Marjie resisted the urge to search his list for a few of the more visible members of the Upper House if only to ascertain Philip’s opinion of them.

  With a space cleared, she set herself to work. She uncorked the ink bottle, positioned the blotting pad where it would be most useful, and picked up the first of her chosen quills.

  My Stanley,

  She briefly contemplated opening the letter with My Major, if only for the sake of poetic alliteration, but quickly dismissed the idea. Stanley had no love for his new rank and claiming his regard by using it would not express what she wished to convey.

  Letters to Stanley were usually easy for her to write. They practically wrote themselves. Nothing, however, flowed onto the page this time. Her heart was full enough. She had pages worth of things she wished to say to Stanley. But she could not even begin.

  She sat with her quill hovering over the nearly blank sheet as though her mind itself were as empty as the parchment before her. What was wrong with her? She needed to write to him. She simply had to have that connection, and yet she couldn’t do it.

  Her hands began to tremble. What if she found herself unable to write to him from that point on? What if she could never manage it? She laid down the quill, attempting to force an air of calm over her mind and body. The frightening idea had taken root and was swelling to formidable proportions.

  “You are simply overset,” she told herself. “This will be easier after he has been gone a day or—” The words stuck in her throat as a realization hit her. Stanley was not returning, and the passage of time would not make his absence any easier.

  She rose and crossed to the window. A driving rain pelted the windows of the book room. The sun had set already, the sad influence of winter on the allotment of sunlight. She brushed the moisture from her cheek with the palm of her hand. How could she possibly have more tears to shed?

  A clock in the room began to strike the hour. She pressed her hand to her throat, fighting back a sob. Stanley was to have reported to the captain of the Triumphant no later than four o’clock so that the ship of the line could disembark with the tide at five. A fourth time the clock struck, followed by a fifth, and then the room fell silent.

  Marjie closed her eyes. He was gone.

  The dinner dressing bell sounded, bouncing off the walls of the empty house. Though they were in London, country hours were being observed. Dinner would be at six. Marjie had no desire to eat. She opened her eyes and sank onto the window seat.

  A light had been lit in the mews at the back of the house, enough to illuminate the gate leading to them. Gusts of wind opened and closed it with fierce determination. Though she could see little beyond shadows and sillhouettes, she knew the trees jerked and bent under the same influence.

  Would the wind help or hinder the departure of the Triumphant? She didn’t know which she preferred. Should the ship remain docked, Stanley would be nearby longer, though he would still be beyond her reach.

  How sorely she missed him already. How would she endure a separation, not knowing when, if ever, she would see him again?

  “Oh, Stanley.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Do you have any idea how desperately I miss you in this moment?”

  She listened
as nature punished the grounds below. A drop of only a few degrees would likely turn the rain to sleet, rendering the night as miserable as Marjie could imagine it. She pulled her legs up onto the window seat and wrapped her arms around her bent knees, resting her head on them, her skirts draping about her.

  How far away was he? How long must she wait to receive a letter? Would she always struggle to write to him, having known the completeness of being in his embrace only to lose it again?

  The deluge continued. The gate slammed in the wind. The inherent loneliness of the scene, so poorly lit by one tiny spot of light amidst the unrelenting dark, tore at her tender emotions.

  One of the stable hands stepped into view, a caped coat held over his head. He fumbled with the gate a moment, obviously attempting to latch it despite the gusts. If only all difficulties could be solved so easily.

  She sighed. Sorrel would have condemned the melodrama of such a thing, but Marjie found she simply had to release some of the tension building inside.

  The stable hand yet struggled with his task. A change in the wind nearly pulled the large coat from his grasp. Marjie sat up straighter, her face nearly pressed to the windowpane. Beneath his coat, the stable hand wore what appeared to be a dragoon’s uniform.

  “No.” She would not allow herself to hope, but she did not look away. If only the night had not grown so dark already and the window weren’t covered in flowing water, distorting her view. She could not be entirely certain of what she was seeing.

  Apparently conceding defeat, the unidentified man below shifted his heavy coat to his shoulders. He moved a walking stick, previously hidden beneath the long coat, from one hand to the other as he slid his arms inside each sleeve. A walking stick.

  Her heart pounding in her throat, she jumped from her seat and ran.

  Chapter Thirty

  Marjie threw open the french window that led onto the terrace at the back of the house and paused only a moment, drinking in the sight that met her eyes.