An Early Engagement (21 page)

* * * *

Smoky was healing. There was no doubt of that, nor that it would take a long convalescence before he was fully recovered. He was awake longer now that the laudanum dosage could be cut back, although the pain was still intense and he could not be moved. The fever never came back so violently, but he remained too debilitated to hold a spoon and too weak to care. He fell asleep during Aunt Ingrid’s visits, albeit Emilyann thought he was shamming. Nadine’s one visit certainly exhausted him, with all her chatter of the young officers whose recovery she was overseeing.

“Gads, the chit’s got no taste,” he told Em after she hustled the younger girl out, seeing how weary Smoky had become. “She thinks Lieutenant Andrews is cute. He’s got freckles and no chin, and his ears stick out. Last time was Chippy Harrington, and he has spots.”

So he encouraged Sparrow to spend time with the ladies back in town, to keep an eye on his sister, and because he hated to see the shadows under her eyes and the paleness of her face from sitting by his bedside for hours on end. He sent her, although he dreaded the thought of her laughing with the military youngsters who must be predisposed to adore her anyway, living on her bounty as they were. As if anyone would
not
adore Sparrow, knowing her lively charm, her enchanting dimpled grin, those blue eyes of summer and sunshine. He sighed.

And Emilyann went back to town occasionally so Smoky could not see her anguish at his pain, her frustration at not being able to do more for him. There was less to do anyway, once the farmer Merced came back with his wife, after Emilyann sent word that she would help rebuild the little farm, in gratitude for Merced’s kindness to Lord Stokely. Now the pair stayed with neighbors but came every day to take charge of the cooking and cleaning and keeping the fire going, in addition to seeing to new plantings and stock, so the major’s nursemaids were tripping over each other in the small house.

In town Emilyann made sure Nadine did not go beyond the pale, but she had not taken a misstep, not with the men considering her an angel, and Aunt Ingrid only just reconsidering her opinion of Nadine as an imp of Satan.

Ingrid herself was seeing that Nadine’s silliness did more to lift the officers’ spirits than her own preachings, although not in the long run, of course. But for now she was toning down her fanaticism and finding friends among the English gentrywomen who accepted her as a kindhearted lady, not a dicked-in-the-nob eccentric who had to be tolerated because she was a duchess.

No matter the time Emilyann spent with her family, she hurried back to Smoky each evening, just to touch him in his sleep and watch his chest rise and fall, and make sure her love kept him safe. She sat for hours, memorizing his already well-known features, that firm jaw and not-quite-straight nose. She had to be there, she told her protesting aunt, because when he groaned with pain and drug-induced bad dreams, her voice still calmed him better than any other’s.

For his part, Stokely fought sleep rather than dream of Sparrow laughing and singing with those park soldiers back in town, maybe getting up impromptu dances for the men so they did not fall into the doldrums. He tried so desperately not to dream of his wife in another man’s arms that he ended up falling through grotesque webs to that other terrible nightmare of cold and blood and rain that would not stop. He was wet and—

“What the hell do you think you are doing?”

“Why, I am bathing you, of course, silly.”

He grabbed for her hand that held the sponge before it could go any lower, and pulled the sheets up. “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

“But I’ve been taking turns with Rigg and Jake for weeks now, Smoky. They need their rest, too.”

He still held her hand. The damn water was dripping on his chest. “But you’re a lady.”

She mopped at him with a towel and laughed, telling him, “No, I’m not, I’m your wife, remember?”

“I remember you are not quite,” he said, which brought color to her cheeks.

To cover her embarrassment, Emilyann teased, “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” and his hand clenched her wrist again.

“Who is it? I’ll kill him.”

“Are you feverish again? Shall I fetch the laudanum?”

“Couldn’t you have waited, Sparrow?” he asked bitterly. “Or did some rake catch your eye?”

“A rake? Do you think that I ... ? Why, you ...” And she mashed the sponge down on his nose till he sputtered, then she wiped him off tenderly. “You really are a clunch. I meant that I had seen
you
these past weeks, with bandages and without. Besides, you forget that I am a country girl.”

“I don’t recall a lot of naked men running around the countryside in England either.”

“Silly, I mean the animals. The milk-and-water misses in the towns may pretend not knowing where lambs come from, but every farm-bred girl knows when the cows are brought to the bull to be serviced or the stallion stands to stud.”

Smoky lifted the sheet again. “Bulls? Stallions? My dear, are you in for disappointment!”

She fled the room, blushing furiously, while he laughed and laughed, despite the basin of water overturned on his head. Smoky was definitely healing.

Stokely was sick of being sick. He was tired of lemonade, bored with the same four bare walls, and irked at not being able to hold his wife. He was heartily disgusted with his dreams, especially the one where he could hear someone pounding nails in his coffin, so he decided to take no more laudanum, and then had to face
that
nightmare, after which he was even
more
blue-deviled, with more energy-draining pain. And the same bad dreams.

Emilyann tried harder to cheer him, bringing books and a chess set and all the news from town.

“Nadine is in alt. There are starting to be small dinner parties among the English and the returning local gentry. Nothing ornate, mind, out of respect for the wounded, but with England in the throes of victory celebrations, some festivity was called for.”

“Never fear, Nadine could find a party in the Antipodes, dancing with the penguins.”

“She even found a local modiste with the latest fashion plates from Paris, so we are having new things made up rather than sending home for our fancier gowns. I told her she might have a small evening entertainment herself next week, to repay our hostesses, since I am hoping the doctor permits us to move you soon, and then you wouldn’t want any such commotion around.”

He wouldn’t want any of those other officers around either, but he didn’t picture Sparrow tossing them out in the streets.

“Nadine and the count’s fancy chef have been concocting menus for days. He is a true
artiste,
and I have half a mind to bribe him to return to England with us. What do you think?” she asked brightly.

Smoky thought she only had half a mind at all, to be asking someone who had not tasted the chef’s cooking, being limited to gruel, gruel, and more gruel. He muttered something impolite, which she ignored, as she had the rest of his ill humor.

“You shan’t mind our socializing without you, shall you?”

He minded a great deal, and also her insensitive, patronizing attitude, so he grumbled, “It must be costing you a fortune.”

“I won’t argue with you about it, Smoky, if you are looking to start an argument.”

“Why, because I’m sick?”

“No, because you’re too pigheaded. Geoff writes that the harvest was excellent, and he is getting high prices for the market stock, so you are well out of dun territory.”

“Aye, and into petticoat financing.”

“It’s always the money, isn’t it?” she asked sadly, and he reached for her hand, saying, “It’s
your
money.”

“Not according to Papa’s will and English law. Those papers we signed give me a handsome settlement all my own, so I do not mind either. I might have if it was someone else, but—” She caught herself before she confessed too much. “Anyway, if you want to be so stubborn, you can pay yourself back after a few years of hard work and good management.”

“That’s fustian. What do I know of managing an estate, much less hogs? All I know about pigs is bacon and gloves, Sparrow. I’m a soldier, dash it, not a farmer. There’s no place for me in England.”

She brushed a dark curl from his brow, tried to smooth out the frown lines there with a hesitant kiss on his forehead. He looked up into those incredible blue eyes, so serious now and troubled.

“Forgive me, my dear, I suppose I am just feeling sorry for myself,” he said, reaching to touch her soft cheek. “It’s just that you did not have the luxury of choosing where you and your fortune landed. You should have had a chance to look over the eligibles, fall in love, make a choice. You could have had your pick. You should not be tied to an invalid.”

Emilyann tried to make light of it. “But, Smoky, I am the one who forced you into the marriage, remember? You should have been free to return home as the conquering hero and find a beautiful heiress to restore your fortunes.”

“But that’s what I did.” He turned away, knowing that was how all of London looked at the marriage.

“You ... you really married me for the money?”

“I may as well have.”

Devastated at the crumbling of her dreams, Lady Stokely rushed back to town. She looked so stricken, Nadine assumed Stokely had taken a turn for the worse and started weeping.

“Stop that yammering, you peagoose. He’s fine and he is your brother, so you can go keep him company for a change. Tell him I am tired and need a rest. Tell him I have to see about travel arrangements home now that he is improving. Tell him anything you blessed well please, because he will believe only what he wants to anyway.”

So Nadine went, and Stokely shouted at her; Aunt Ingrid went, and Stokely claimed a headache. He threw his breakfast pap at Rigg one day, and when the batman sent in Merced’s wife with lunch, the major scandalized the farmwoman by refusing to wear his nightshirt. The farmer himself Stokely cursed—for being a farmer. After a few days only old Jake the coachman would volunteer to sit in the room with him sometimes, and Jake hardly said a word, just sat mending a bit of harness or polishing a piece of brass, and chewing his tobacco.

Just to make conversation, the thoroughly bored and sullen convalescent finally asked Jake about a noise he heard at night sometimes. “I thought it was a dream, my coffin being nailed shut. But I hear it repeatedly, even when I waken. Who the hell is hammering when a sick man is supposed to be resting?”

Jake kept polishing. “I ‘spect you mean a little tappin’ sound.”

“It’s not so little in the middle of the night, dammit.”

Jake spit into a bucket he kept handy. “I ‘spect you mean Pug, then.”

“What, that ugly little mutt of Sparrow’s? Why in the world did she bring him to Belgium with her?”

“Couldn’t leave him, he was that poorly.”

“Blast it, man, will you finish the story! Heaven knows I’ve got nothing better to do than listen, lying here in this miserable bed. What happened to the dog and what’s he doing, learning drumrolls for the infantry?”

Jake looked at the major, and saw the same resty youth he’d always been. He put down the leather and the rag, spit again while Stokely fumed, and told how the pup had fallen off the carriage one day and gotten his leg mangled by the coach wheel.

“Gotta be put out of his misery, I says. Pup looks up with big brown pop-eyes and missy looks up with those pretty blue ones of hers all misty and says ‘Can’t you fix it, Jake? Please, can’t we try to help him?’ ”

He shrugged. “What’s a body to do? So me and the boys did what we could, stitchin’ and sewin’ and feedin’ the little mite brandy. Recovered, too, he did. ‘Course he’s only got three legs now. So the boys renamed him Peg. I made him a brace from harness leather, and whittled him a new leg when you was sleepin’.” Jake spat again. “Little fool was fallin’ over when he tried to show the other males his territory, if you know what I mean.”

Smoky did, and got the point. “This mightn’t be a moral lesson, like the prodigal son or something, would it?”

Jake went back to polishing. Smoky went back to brooding. That little bleater was standing on his own legs, no matter how many. And Jake was likely here because Emmy had begged him to “fix” her peevish husband. And if that tapping went on at night, she must still come to see him.

“Old man, can you whittle me a cane? One with a donkey on the handle maybe.”

Stokely called for newspapers, stationery, and his clothes. He was going to see about a position with the Foreign Office, or perhaps the War Office in London, to avoid any more travel. He was going to make investments to repay his wife as soon as possible, and he was damn well going to stand on his own two feet to woo her back.

They traveled home by slow stages for Stokely’s sake, and the journey was still agonizing for him, even when he rode in the second coach with Rigg instead of the carriage containing his prattlebox sister, his wife, whose dimmed spirits were a reproach to him, and Lady Aylesbury, whose tombstone, he felt, should read:
She Meant Well.

They were all happy to halt the trip in London rather than continuing on to Stockton, which would have taken three or four more days at their current rate. Geoff came down and enlivened the household, and Aunt Adelaide fussed. Thornton did his best to depress the high spirits of the younger members of the family as unsuitable for Stokely’s recuperation, but Geoff and Nadine reestablished their contacts in the ton and began the rounds of routs and assemblies, morning rides and afternoon promenades.

The regent’s own physician ordered Stokely to bed for at least a week, and he was glad to go, albeit the room he was given was on the ground floor for his convenience, and not attached to his wife’s suite for his comfort. The faithful Rigg was in attendance and the household staff stood ready to cater to his every whim. His siblings were good for a few minutes of gossip or talk of pigs, depending on which was coming or going, and his wife breezed in and out of his room with brittle courtesy. She did not want to tire him, she said.

Emilyann did not want him to see her hurt. He had his pride about the money, she had her pride in wanting to be loved for herself. She knew Smoky was fond of her in an offhand, brotherly way at least, and he had shown definite interest in sharing her bed, but she wanted much more. So she started racketing about town to show him—what? That she did not need him, that others found her desirable, that a woman grown did not die of shattered dreams. She felt like a china shepherdess broken by a naughty child and glued together clumsily. She was afraid that if she moved too fast, pieces would crumble; too slowly and everyone would see the cracks.