by Emily Larkin
Isabella shivered. She stared down at the hymn book, gripped tightly in her hands. The rector was talking again. The words blurred together in her ears. What do I want?
“Isabella?”
Isabella looked up blankly. Everyone else was standing, talking, moving. The service was over.
“Isabella?” Mrs. Westin said again. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said hurriedly, rising. “I was just, uh . . . thinking.”
What do I want?
She tried to focus on her cousin, on the conversations around her, on anything but the answer. But the answer refused to go away as she gathered her hymn book and her bible, as she donned her wrap, as she stepped out into the sunlight.
If Major Reynolds is the man I think he is, then I would like to marry him.
To acknowledge the words, to say them in her head—if not aloud—was shocking. For a moment she stood frozen. People brushed past her, their voices a meaningless babble in her ears.
“Isabella?”
With effort she focused on her cousin’s face.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Concern furrowed Mrs. Westin’s brow. “You look very . . .”
Lost. I’m lost. In the past week I’ve become someone I don’t know. I no longer recognize myself.
“. . . very pale.”
Isabella attempted a smile. She swallowed and spoke, “I’m perfectly all right, Cousin.”
She might not recognize who she was, but she recognized the emotion rising in her breast. Not dismay, but hope.
I want to marry Major Reynolds.
Isabella blinked and looked around her. The world seemed somehow different, unfamiliar. A world in which she might have a husband, children, a family.
It was a dizzying thought.
Isabella walked carefully down the steps, holding onto the railing.
The route home seemed much shorter than usual. Isabella listened with half an ear as her cousin discussed the morning’s sermon. In her mind she built dreams of a husband with a scarred face and green eyes, of children, of laughter and love. Reality returned when she stepped into the cool foyer of her house in Clarges Street.
Would Major Reynolds want to marry her? She bore no resemblance to the bride he had described, youthful and biddable. Perhaps he thinks me too old, too odd.
Would he want to mold her into someone else? He liked her, that much she knew. And he wanted her. But to want someone and to love someone—to love someone as they were, unchanged, unmolded—were two completely different things.
Isabella climbed the stairs beside her cousin, her brow creased in thought. Was it merely lust that Major Reynolds was experiencing—his hungry kisses, the way he held her pressed so close to his body—or was it something more?
The only way to know was to ask him.
Dare I?
Rufus bounded down the second flight of stairs, his tail wagging. Isabella bent to greet him, patting him, ruffling his fur. She glanced up at the sound of footsteps. Harriet.
Isabella straightened slowly.
And dare I tell him the truth about Harriet?
How would Major Reynolds react?
If he was the man she thought him to be, a man of calm good sense, then he wouldn’t judge her too harshly.
If he wasn’t . . .
Isabella shivered, suddenly cold.
Monday morning brought no letter from Harriet’s aunt. “Don’t worry,” Isabella told the girl. “If we’ve heard nothing by Friday I’ll send my man of business to Penrith to look for her.”
“I’m sorry to be such a burden, ma’am.”
“You’re not a burden,” Isabella said. “We’re very glad of your company, believe me.” She smiled cheerfully at the girl, although privately she was becoming a little worried. What if Harriet’s aunt was dead?
Harriet gave her a trembling smile in return. Unshed tears brimmed in her eyes. Where those tears of gratitude or misery? Probably both. The poor child was as innocent as one of the kittens and almost as helpless. The world was a frightening place if one had no family, no money, no protection.
Isabella was struck by a sense of how lucky she was. She had everything Harriet lacked, not through virtue or endeavor but through a quirk of birth.
No, not everything. Harriet had had one she thing hadn’t had: Major Reynolds as a bridegroom.
I want the man she ran from. How was that for irony?
After luncheon, Isabella paid a call on Gussie, ostensibly to see how Saffron was. “I still have one kitten left unhomed,” she said, as ginger-striped Saffron purred in her cupped hands. They sat in Gussie’s morning room, with sunlight streaming in through the lace curtains. “I was wondering . . . perhaps your cousin might take her?”
“Which cousin? Nicholas?” Gussie said, looking up from her cross-stitch. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I thought I’d ask you first what kind of man he is,” Isabella said, avoiding Gussie’s eyes.
“What kind of man?” Gussie laid down her needle. “You ask me that, after you’ve been in each other’s pockets the past two weeks?”
Isabella felt a blush rise in her cheeks. “I know his social face,” she said, focusing on the gilded urn clock on the mantelpiece. And I know the lover. “But you know him so much better than I. I just wondered . . . what your opinion of him is?”
“My opinion of him?” Gussie repeated in an amused voice. “You want to know my opinion of Nicholas before you bestow a kitten on him?”
Put like that, it did sound odd. Isabella studied the ornate metal fire guard. “Yes.”
There was a moment of silence. Gussie cleared her throat. Her voice, when she spoke, was uninflected and businesslike. “Nicholas was my favorite cousin when I was a girl. My opinion of him is very high.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” Gussie’s voice trailed off as she thought. “Because I trust him. Because he makes me laugh. Because he’s nice.”
“Nice?” Isabella repeated doubtfully. A bland word, a word that told her nothing. “Would you say he’s domineering?”
“Domineering?”
Gussie was silent a moment. Isabella risked a glance at her. Her friend’s brow was creased in thought. She was chewing on her lower lip.
“No,” Gussie said finally. “I wouldn’t call Nicholas domineering. He is very decided, and he has a great deal of determination, but he’s not domineering. At least—” she qualified this, “—he has never been so to me.” She put her embroidery frame aside. “Nicholas is a very capable man. He has a reputation for getting things done.”
“He does?”
Gussie nodded. “When I was a child we used to spend our summers together, and even then, when I was . . .” she shrugged, “. . . ten years old, maybe twelve, I knew that if I needed something done, it was Nicholas I should go to, not Gerald.” Her smile was wry. “That’s why Gerald dislikes him so much. Nicholas is so much more competent than he is.”
“Oh.”
Gussie leaned forward. She clasped her hands together on her knees. Her expression was serious. “The Nicholas I knew was a schoolboy—kind to me and patient and he listened when I spoke, as Gerald never did, but that was many years ago. The man . . .” She shrugged with her face, with her hands. “I’m learning to know him again. He was gone a long time.”
“At war,” Isabella said. Twelve years of soldiering, of fighting, of leading men into battle, of killing. Twelve years of blood and death. Her gaze dropped to Saffron, sleeping peacefully, a warm bundle in her hands. “Such an experience must change a person. Harden them.”
“Yes,” Gussie said. “But I think Nicholas is still the person he was. I think he has not become . . . too hard. Although I have to admit that he is more restrained than he was, quieter, more controlled.”
Yes, Major Reynolds, was a very self-controlled man. A disciplined man. Except when he’s kissing me.
Isabella glanced up and met Gussie’s eyes.
After a lo
ng moment of silence, while tiny motes of dust spun in the sunlight, Gussie said softly, “I think he would make a fine husband.”
Heat scorched Isabella’s face. Her gaze skittered to the silver teapot, the dainty porcelain cups, the plate of cakes. “I wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . I was only asking because . . .” She bit her tongue, stopping the babble of words. She met Gussie’s eyes and said, with what she hoped was dignity, “I was only asking because of the kitten.”
Even to her own ears it sounded ridiculous.
Gussie’s lips pursed, as if she tried not to smile. “I see,” she said blandly. “More tea?”
Lady Isabella halted the phaeton. Her groom leapt down. Nicholas stepped up and sat beside her, fending off Rufus’s eager tongue. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, Major.”
He settled back on the silk-lined seat as the horses moved into a slow trot. How many times had they done this? A dozen?
Rufus nudged his knee. Reminded, Nicholas rubbed his warm flank. The dog leaned against his booted legs and closed his eyes in pleasure.
The day was mild, the temperature warm and the sun bright. Only the faintest of breezes stirred the air. Hyde Park was busier than he’d yet seen it. Curricles, phaetons, barouches, and landaulets thronged the drive.
Lady Isabella wore a carriage dress of Clarence blue trimmed with braided ribbon. The color made her eyes seem more blue than gray, her hair even more golden. He glanced at her smooth cheek, her soft lips. I must kiss her tonight.
He looked ahead, not seeing the busy drive, absently pulling one of Rufus’s ears between his fingers. Where would they be tonight? Oh, that was it: the Middletons’ ball.
The phaeton stopped.
Nicholas focused his gaze. The roadway ahead was blocked. A curricle had clipped the wheels of an elegant barouche. The curricle’s driver had lost his horses’ reins and sat red-faced, enduring the scathing commentary of the barouche’s coachman, while his groom attempted to gather the reins.
Lady Isabella ignored the commotion. She turned to face him. “You know why I don’t wish to marry, Major,” she said, in her clear, frank way. “May I ask, why do you want to?”
The question drew his attention most effectively from the disturbance ahead. He studied her for a moment, the direct gray-blue gaze, the hair gleaming golden beneath the jaunty hat, the serious set of her mouth.
“Why?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Nicholas glanced down at Rufus, leaning against his legs. He could brush off the question, give an answer that was flippant or vague, one that told her nothing . . . but she had answered his questions honestly on the Worthingtons’ terrace; he owed her the truth.
“Soldiering is about death,” he said slowly, pulling Rufus’s ear between his fingers. “I knew that. I’d always known it. But at Waterloo . . .” His surroundings faded as memory flooded over him: the sound of cannon fire, of horses and men screaming; the smell of gunpowder and blood; death all around him.
Rufus nudged his hand. Nicholas realized he’d fallen silent, become motionless. He cleared his throat. “Waterloo was a slaughter. I watched so many men fall . . .” Memory intruded again: a welter of blood, of torn flesh and shattered limbs, of death, death everywhere, the smell of death, the taste of it on his tongue, the sound of it in his ears.
He swallowed. “It seemed that no one could survive. It seemed . . . impossible.” He glanced at Lady Isabella. She was staring at him, her face pale. Was he shocking her? “I remember a moment, when I stood on the battlefield. My horse had been shot from under me, and all around me were dead men. Scores of them, hundreds, thousands. The French cavalry were attacking again and . . . and to survive seemed impossible.” He had touched his cheek. I am lucky, he’d told himself, but he hadn’t believed it.
Nicholas drew Rufus’s ear slowly between his fingers. “I vowed that if I lived, if I survived that day, I would sell my commission, that I’d have nothing more to do with death.” He met her eyes, held them. “I want life. I want children. I want to see them grow. I want to watch them go out into the world and have their own children. Life, not death.”
Lady Isabella swallowed. He saw the muscles move in her throat. “I had heard Waterloo was bad,” she said in a low voice. Her face was almost—but not quite—expressionless.
I did shock her. “It was,” he said simply.
She looked away and moistened her lips. “Thank you for telling me.”
This was too dark a conversation for Hyde Park, for the frivolity of the Grand Strut, the ladies with curling feathers in their hats and the gentlemen with absurdly high neckcloths, the prancing horses and the silk-lined carriages, the sunshine and birdsong. “It was a long time ago,” Nicholas said, his voice hearty and cheerful.
Lady Isabella cast him a narrow-eyed glance. Don’t treat me like a child, he read in it. “Why did you decide to become a soldier?”
So she refused to be diverted, did she? Part of him respected her for it. No milk-and-water miss, Lady Isabella.
“Why?” He had to think back. It was hard to remember the young man he’d been, fresh out of Cambridge and eager to make his mark on the world. “I had intended on a diplomatic career, but . . . I decided I wanted more of a challenge.”
“And was it a challenge?”
“Oh, yes.” The challenges of soldiering had been many. He’d learned how to scout terrain and assess enemy positions, how to command men, how to lead them into battle even when the odds seemed stacked against them. He’d learned how to kill, how to lose one’s friends, how to survive. And then there had been the purely physical challenges: the forced marches, the filth, the bitter cold and the searing heat, the scarcity of food, the boils and the lice and the fleas, the fevers. “It was everything I’d thought it would be, and more. It was extremely challenging. But I enjoyed it . . . for the most part.”
Lady Isabella nodded. She glanced ahead. The offending curricle was gone. The barouche was almost alongside them, the coachman sitting erect on the driving block, his chest puffed out, proud victor of the moment.
With a deft flick of her whip, Lady Isabella encouraged the horses into motion. “Thank you for telling me,” she said again.
“You’re welcome,” Nicholas said. He looked past her, towards Kensington Gardens. Trees, sunlight, water.
He experienced a moment of disorientation, as if the world tilted slightly on its axis. His fingers stilled, pulling Rufus’s ear. How could this greenness, this sunshine, this safety, exist in the same world as the mud and blood and carnage of Waterloo? How could that battle, that slaughter, have been less than a year ago? How was it possible?
He blinked and shook his head slightly.
Lady Isabella caught the movement. She glanced at him. Her eyebrows rose inquiringly. “Major?”
Nicholas shook his head again, more firmly this time. “Are you going to the Middletons’ ball tonight?”
“Yes,” she said. “Will you be there?”
“Most definitely,” Nicholas said. I have to kiss you.
Chapter Sixteen
Colonel and Lady Middleton’s ball was well under way when Nicholas arrived. He gave his hat to a footman and climbed the stairs to the ballroom. It reminded him of Gussie’s ball, two weeks ago: the hubbub of music and laughter and conversation, the mingled scents of perfume and perspiration, the almost-suffocating warmth.
But tonight there would be no sly laughter, no sideways glances, no whispers. I am passé. London has moved on.
Nicholas accepted champagne from a servant. He sipped it as he strolled around the perimeter of the ballroom, nodding to acquaintances, pausing to talk with friends, all the while scanning the room for a glimpse of wheat-gold hair. The ballroom was colorful with the dress uniforms of various regiments: the blue, scarlet, and gold of the Royal Horse Guard, the green of his own Rifle Brigade, with its black facings and silver lace, the red jacket of the Lifeguards, trimmed with rich gold lace. Lieutenant Mayhew wasn’t pre
sent; Lady Isabella was. He found her going down a set with Lucas Washburne. She was tall and elegant in a white satin slip under a robe of celestial blue crêpe.
Nicholas watched her, his shoulders propped against the wall, sipping his champagne. When the cotillion had finished he pushed away from the wall and strolled across the dance floor. “Lady Isabella,” he said with an inclination of his head. “Lucas.”
He observed with satisfaction as Lady Isabella’s cheeks flushed faintly. I am going to kiss you tonight, he promised her silently. Anticipation twisted in his gut, a quicksilver flicker of desire.
“Would you like something to drink?” Lucas asked Lady Isabella. “Lemonade? Champagne?”
“Champagne, please.”
She watched Lucas stride away, glanced at Nicholas, colored faintly again, and turned her gaze to the dance floor, where a quadrille was preparing to start. Her attention focused on one of the dancers, a man Nicholas recognized.
“You know him?” he asked.
“Lord Riles? Yes.”
Something about her tone made him study her more closely. “Another of your suitors?”
Lady Isabella nodded.
Nicholas looked at the dance floor again. Riles was moderately tall, moderately handsome, and possessed of impeccable breeding and a large fortune. “Why didn’t you marry him?” From what he knew of the man, he had a sense of humor.
“I felt that his personality was . . . too compliant.”
Nicholas swallowed a laugh. You would have led him by the nose.
“We wouldn’t have suited.”
“No,” he said, voicing his thoughts aloud. “You’d need a strong husband.”
Lady Isabella looked sharply at him. “To dominate me?”
“To match you.”
“Oh.” Her gaze fell. She turned her attention to the dance floor again, watching as the partners made their bows to one another.
Clarissa Whedon was in the same set as Riles. Nicholas observed her for a moment. My bride, he thought, sipping his champagne. It tasted slightly sour in his mouth.
Lady Isabella glanced sideways at him. “A strong wife would suit you, too.”