Pity.
Shit! He did not need pity. He needed...
To be alone. Left alone to wallow in self-pity.
His solitude lasted barely fifteen minutes until another knock resounded on his door. “Can you not leave me in peace, for God’s sake?”
The door opened and Maggie walked in once more. “You’ll need this.” She held out a warm coat and hat. She, too, had changed, bundled up in the drab gray coat she’d worn the day she arrived.
Clayton’s brows beetled. Was it only days ago since she’d walked over his threshold and disrupted his world? He eyed her with suspicion. “Why, precisely, do I need my coat? I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh that’s where you’re wrong. It’s time you got outside.”
“It’s winter. Freezing. There’s snow, and if you remember, my last escapade in the snow wasn’t quite successful.”
“So? Are you like that spider that tried and tried again to climb until it succeeded or are you going to give up, Clayton?”
“Are you comparing me to an insect?”
Her mouth pursed, and suddenly the idea of kissing her lips shot across Clayton’s brain. He definitely wanted to kiss her—and not just once.
The idea had merit.
“No, I’m comparing you to a great warrior. Now, what I need is for you to turn tail and walk out of here.” Maggie laid his coat and hat on the bed, and retrieved his cane and held it out to him. “I’m not leaving this room unless you come, too.”
“There’s that bossy streak again. It goes with the red hair, I suppose.”
Her free hand shifted to her hair. Cut in the new short fashion, it rested in the curve of her neck. Her neck was slender, her skin alabaster, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“It’s not red, but auburn, and you’re trying to change the subject.”
His mouth hitched. “I am.”
“It won’t work.” She proffered his cane again and directed her gaze to his coat. “You’ll need this, so I suggest you hurry up and put it on.” She turned and retreated to the doorway, then hesitated. “I never took you for a coward, Clayton. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
The door closed quietly behind her, leaving Clayton alone.
A coward!
Him?
How right she was. He’d called himself that ever since the bullet and shrapnel had pierced his knee and destroyed his face. A coward who’d let his men walk into the haze of mustard gas, to die.
Clayton’s hand fisted on his cane. A coward. Coward.
Jaw clenched, he ground his teeth back and forth.
A coward.
He tossed the cane to the bed and shoved his arms through the coat sleeves and jammed his cap on his head. He picked up his cane and he strode to the door.
Pain be damned.
Just as he reached the doorway, he stopped, grabbed a scarf lying on his chest of drawers and wrapped it around his neck, draping it so that it covered his facial wounds.
Maggie Francis may bully him into going outside, but he sure as hell wouldn’t let the world see him. He’d done that already and had suffered through the rejection.
Never again.
He spied her waiting at the bottom of the stairs and her gentle gaze held his as he took each step down the stairs. But there was no pity.
Thank God. That I could not endure.
As he reached the bottom, she opened the front door. “Welcome to the world, Clayton.” She stepped outside, expecting him to follow, but hesitation held him back.
He shoved it aside. “I am no coward, Maggie Francis.” He walked past her and down the steps.
“I never thought you were. Now, let’s walk to the river.”
His jaw dropped, and he turned to her and witnessed her stoic countenance. “You’ve definitely got the bullying tactics honed to a fine art, Miss Francis.”
She offered him a smile. “Thank you.”
They walked in silence for most of the way; Clayton refusing to admit that with each step, pain tore through his leg from toe to hip, the icy wind seeping into his bones.
He gritted his teeth and carried on, while sweat, despite the chilled day, poured down his face and between his shoulder blades.
At the riverbank, several of the local villagers fished. They offered him sheltered glances.
Maggie waved as they walked by. “Good morning.”
“Morning to you, too, Miss. Mr. Abbott.”
Clayton grunted and kept on walking.
A few yards on, they rounded the bend, and Maggie stopped walking. “How dare you be so rude!”
Clayton stopped and turned to face her. Scarlet whorls colored her cheeks and her eyes blazed. “Those villagers were polite enough to say hello, and all you could manage was a grunt. That, in my book, is bad mannered and I would expect better of you.”
“Why?”
“Because...because you’re a gentleman for starters, and because life is too short to be rude to those around you, though it is my assumption you’ve managed that quite well for some time.”
“You’ve only been here a few days. What gives you the right to analyze me or boss me? I did not ask you to arrive on my doorstep.”
“No, you didn’t, but you sure as...well, you need someone to shake you awake. You’re lost in your own miserable world.”
“Better that, than relive the world we’re in. Haven’t you seen it lately? Death. Dying. Men going off to war and coming back as shattered and broken representations of whom they once were.”
“Are you talking about people you know, or yourself?”
“Bloody hell!” Damn it. Why did she have to dig so deep? Why did she have to be right?
But the sudden fury in her expression softened and Clayton sucked in a breath, though he felt as if his lungs were devoid of oxygen.
He spun away, and took a step. “You wanted to walk. Let’s bloody walk.” He took another step and another and another, increasing his pace, though the pain in his leg increased with each step, he ignored it. He swiped a hand across his brow, wiping away the perspiration.
As they arrived back at the entrance to Bellerose, Clayton caught Maggie’s sudden smile.
“What now?” He held his breath; uncertain he really wanted to know.
“Congratulations. You’ve done it. I knew you could. A challenge is always good, isn’t it?”
Realization dawned. “You tricked me with your baiting.”
Her smile broadened and something inside him fluttered.
“It worked, didn’t it? You’ve moved more today than in the last few months, from what I understand, and it’s done you good to get out. Sitting around feeling sorry and drinking yourself into a stupor isn’t going to help. You need to move and move some more. You aren’t the only one with wounds. Life has to go on.”
“And you know this, because?”
“Because my father was a doctor.”
She took the steps ahead of him and like a silent lamb he followed, his brain whirring with questions he wanted to ask her, but didn’t.
He’d never thought to ask her about her family, about where she was from, about why she left. Now he wanted to know. “Maggie,” he called as they entered the house. But the moment she turned to face him, he knew his questions would go unasked, for her eyes were sad, the threat of tears glistening with every blink of her long lashes. Instead, he offered her a tight smile. “Thank you for the walk. It was—”
“Enjoyable.” She gave him a mischievous grin.
He shrugged off his coat. “That might be going a bit too far, but let’s say it was enlightening.”
“Good. Then you’ll be up for another later today.
“Today!”
“Absolutely.” And with that his housekeeper, who was becoming more intriguing by the hour, walked upstairs and left him alone.
Alone.
It was the word that had been his war cry for months.
Leave me alone. I don’t want anyone, or need any
one. Not their pity, or their help.
He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted anymore.
Ensconced in the library, Clayton lost track of time as he mused over the day’s goings on. Walking. Talking. Going out in public, the one place he had avoided since he’d witnessed people’s reaction to his disfigurement.
But Maggie hasn’t run screaming for the hills.
Clayton eyed the decanter of whiskey on the sideboard, and for a moment second-guessed himself.
Should he?
What would Maggie say?
“Bloody hell. Bloody woman.” Clayton pushed out of the leather chair and strode to the sideboard, pouring a drink before he changed his mind.
Downing the whiskey, ignoring the burn as it slid effortlessly down his throat, he replenished his drink and went back to his chair.
How long he sat there he didn’t know, his reverie broken when Florrie came rushing into the room.
“Mr. Abbott, sir, there’s been a phone call. I answered it. I hope that was all right. I didn’t know what else to do. It rang and rang and you didn’t answer it.”
Clayton shook the fog from his brain. “I never heard it.”
“I’ve never answered a phone before.”
“Who was it? Did they leave a message?”
“The Earl of Darlington. He is coming to visit.”
“Edward?” Clayton frowned. He’d thought Edward was in the East undertaking business on his behalf. When he’d been wounded, and then in the sanatorium in Scotland for the long months of recovery, he’d asked Edward to carry on with the running of Bellerose Trading in London. Edward had been only too happy to oblige and as the months had progressed, Clayton hadn’t changed the status quo. Easier that way. Besides he’d lost interest. What was this visit all about? “Did he say when he’d be arriving?”
“On Saturday.”
That soon. “Tell Maggie I want to see her, please.”
While Clayton waited for her he spied Josephine’s diary she’d been reading, and idly skimmed the pages, but cast it aside as Maggie entered.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, my friend and business partner, Lord Edward Hindmarch, the Earl of Darlington, is arriving in two days. Can you make sure a room is ready for him?"
Maggie’s brows rose. “An earl? Of course. Anything else?”
“Nothing at present.”
“Good, that means you’re free to go for your next walk.”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like it?”
She didn’t. In fact she looked rather fierce, her expression serious. She also looked rather...beautiful, with her sky blue eyes bathed by long dark lashes, her hair tied back. Several strands had fallen loose and grazed her cheeks and Clayton found himself wondering what it would be like to touch her cheeks. Kiss them. . .
But to go outside again? See people?
He tried to stall her. Lied. “I have business papers to attend.”
“They can wait.” Her foot tapped on the wooden floor, hands resting on his hips.
“I do declare, Miss Francis, you would give the Hun a run for their money.”
“You’re probably right, so how about you march to my tune.”
A rumble of laughter bubbled from his chest. “They definitely wouldn’t have had a chance.” Nevertheless he did as she asked and donned his jacket and cap. He opened the door and offered a wink. “After you, Madame Sergeant Major.”
“Glad you understand.”
“Oh, I understand all right. You, Miss Francis are all hard exterior, but I do believe the interior is quite the opposite.”
Heat colored her cheeks. “Such poetic license.” She sidestepped him and headed out the door and down the steps to the pebbled driveway. “However, I do not think you would give Lord Byron any competition.”
Still laughing, Clayton walked in step with her, his cane an ever-present accessory.
Theirs was a convivial silence, though each time he struggled with a step, he heard her soft gasp.
“Just as I thought.” He righted himself from a rutted section in the path along the river’s edge and clutched tighter on his cane. “Your soft side is showing, Maggie.”
Indignation colored her eyes and she went to speak, but he stalled her. “You can protest all you like, but it’s true.”
Her mouth closed up, and she redirected her gaze straight ahead.
“I like that about you, Miss Francis. The changeability. It shows in your eyes. They change color with your mood.”
She tugged her felt hat forward to shadow her face and Clayton’s smiled broadened. “Exactly.” And he liked being right.
“I saw you in the library last eve. Are you still reading that diary?”
“Your family’s history is interesting, though she never mentions who gave her the emeralds.”
Clayton gritted his teeth, placed the flat of his hand on his right thigh and dragged his leg across the sodden ground. The early snow had melted days ago, leaving the ground a muddied slush. “Probably because it wasn’t her husband. There’s a portrait of her wearing them and little else.”
“I wish she’d continued to write.”
He shrugged. “She died in a house fire.”
Maggie clamped a hand across her mouth. “Oh, how sad.”
“Life is sad.”
She stopped walking then and turned to him. “No, Clayton, you’re wrong. Life is what we make it.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have left everything to start a new life.”
His brows quirked. “What do you mean?” He asked the question and then immediately regretted uttering a word. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to get involved. Asking meant listening, meant he might care. And caring hurt.
“You’ve come home from war, your spirit broken, as well as your body.”
His gut churned. Why hadn’t he just shut the hell up? He definitely didn’t want to hear any of this, but again he couldn’t silence his tongue. “Says who?”
“Oh, Clayton, look at you. You’ve shut yourself away from life for months. You didn’t want anyone’s help. Not even mine.”
“And you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Why do you think I did that? I didn’t need to stay. You’re rude, ungrateful, and...”
“Enough!” He held up a hand to silence her. “I get the picture. I’m a pain in the derriere.”
She answered him with a gentle smile. “Quite. And you’re not the only one who lost...” She turned from him and stared across the gently sloping fields that led down to the river Wye that ran through Bellerose.
“Maggie?”
***
Maggie held herself in check, swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, and inhaled a deep breath. She turned back to Clayton. “Others have lost family, their homes, their dreams for the future, and when they finally thought they had survived, along came that bloody Spanish flu to decimate everything all over again. So really, Mr. Abbott, you should consider yourself lucky.”
“Are you talking about your life, Maggie?”
His question was quiet, barely audible and how she wished she hadn’t heard it. She nodded, and blinked away tears about to fall.
Clayton stood close, his breath white in the cold air. Reaching out to her, he brushed the back of his gloved hand across her cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
She looked up at him, her lashes tipped with tears. “I know, but I wanted to make you understand that you are not the only one who has had to face loss and grief.”
“Your family?”
A tear trickled down her cheek and she again swallowed back the lump closing off her airways. “Gone.”
He frowned. “Gone?”
“Dead.”
His expression morphed into instant shock. “All of them?”
“There...there was only my mother and my father. The Zeppelins came while you we
re in the trenches. We were open fodder to the German’s air power. They bombed while my mother was out helping at a community center. It was late. She didn’t return home.”
“I’m sorry.”
“War came too close that day. It changed everything. My life. My father...”
“You mentioned he is a doctor.”
“Was.” A gasped breath hiccupped from her chest. “He’s dead. He...” She spun away from Clayton, but not quick enough as he clasped her shoulders and drew her back to face him.
“I’m sorry, it couldn’t have been easy.”
Her mouth trembled. God, she was going to cry. Really cry. And in front of him. “Don’t be nice, Clayton.” She wasn’t sure she could cope if he offered her sympathy.
For weeks, months, she had held herself together. Now that resolve threatened to crumble.
“Why? Is it because you don’t want to admit to weakness? You’ve been a tough taskmaster frog marching me out on these damned walks.”
“They’re for your own good.”
“Tell that to my bloody leg when it aches. Besides, it is better if others are not subjected to this.” He waved a hand at the scarf that covered half his face.
“It is only a wound.”
His jaw set hard. “No, it’s more than that.”
Maggie could see the pain in his eyes. Not physical pain, but something else. More. Deeper. She wanted to reach out to him, but held back. She was his employee. Nothing more. Something she needed to remember.
Instead, she tucked her hands into her coat pockets. Better that than to give in to this strange and sudden need to touch him. “It’ll get better the more you use it.”
“So you keep saying. But this conversation isn’t about me, but you. You can cry, you know. You don’t have to be strong.”
“Yes I do. If I don’t I will remember that last day. Remember my father, his purple face, eyes bulging. I will remember seeing his body hanging from the rafters as if it were a branch shifting in the breeze, only there was no window open and no breeze. There was no life.” She lifted her gaze to Clayton and he wrapped her in a hug, holding her hard against him. Maggie’s eyes squeezed closed. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. It’s me who should say sorry. I’ve been a bastard.”
“Not quite, but you have been grumpy.”
Saving the Soldier's Heart (The Emerald Quest Book 2) Page 4