An Infamous Marriage (25 page)

“No. I did not. But nor did I go about confiding to all and sundry that I’d never wished to be a soldier’s wife, or complaining that you were shorter than Giles and not nearly so handsome.”

Her eyes flashed and her lip curled with contempt. She made him feel sixteen again, five foot four and covered in spots, and he was fairly certain that was her precise intent.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have lain with Bella again, and I should never have spoken to her as I did. It was a moment’s impulse, and even at the time I knew how wrong it was. I’ve changed, I swear it. I love you now. Don’t you know that? Does all we have, here and now, mean nothing to you?”

“It meant everything to me. But it was based on a lie.”

“Not a lie. You
are
my truth, Elizabeth.”

“You swore you’d told me about every woman after our marriage, and yet you held back the worst, the most blameworthy.”

“That’s why. I was afraid it was too much to forgive.” The music had just come to an end, and his words echoed too loudly. The three nearest couples turned to gape at them. There had been a time when Jack would’ve been humiliated by a public quarrel, but tonight all that mattered was finding a way to make it right with Elizabeth.

“It might have made my forgiveness slower in coming, yes,” she said, pitching her voice low for the suddenly quieter room. “But now, after everything, to learn you had lied? That you spoke of me in such terms? How can you expect me to forgive you
now?
”

He sighed and closed his eyes. There would be no persuading her, at least not tonight. “What do you want to do?”

“As soon as it’s safe, I want to go back to England. After that—we cannot go on as we have been.”

Good God, he’d been such a fool. If only he hadn’t lied—or even if he’d told the truth once Liddicott had appeared in Brussels. He couldn’t bear to lose her, the greatest treasure he had ever found. Yet he couldn’t fight for her, not now with another battle calling him away. “We’ll talk after this is over,” he said. “But now, I must go.” Behind them, the ball was beginning to break up, with the men in uniform hurrying away. Jack could hear Lord Uxbridge urging the officers to leave to join their regiments as soon as their next dance was done.

“Good luck,” Elizabeth said. “I hope you’ll find this glory that’s so important to you.” She shook her head and stared unseeingly at the crowded scene, at all the officers bidding farewell to weeping wives and sweethearts. “I never wanted to marry a soldier. Not ever.”

That stung him into speech. “Really? You gave me the impression you liked the look of me in uniform well enough.”

She raised her hand as if to slap him, then drew it down with a hiss. “Damn you. Damn your army and damn your war.”

Jack took a deep breath, then a second and a third, before he trusted himself to speak. “Very well, madam. I shall walk home and leave you the carriage. As soon as I have changed these slippers for boots, I shall join my brigade, so you will not be troubled with this soldier’s presence. I only beg of you, do not let your enmity toward me cloud your judgment. No matter how much you wish to be in England, you must not leave until it is safe.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“I bid you a good night, then.” He turned his back on her—beloved Elizabeth!—and rushed out into night and war.

* * *

Only when she at last sat alone in her carriage on the way home from the shattered remnant of the ball did Elizabeth realize the true import of what she had said. She had given a soldier on his way to war against the greatest military mind since Alexander the Great a curse in place of a blessing. She shuddered and prayed harder than she ever had in her life that her curse would go unheard, that Jack would be spared, that Britain and her allies would prove victorious.

If only she could arrive home before Jack left, she could at least take back her damnation, tell him she had not meant
that
part of her words. But when she hurried through the door she was met only by Louisa.

“Is Jack still here?” she asked.

Louisa shook her head. “He left a quarter of an hour ago. He can’t have been in the house for more than ten minutes.”

“Oh, God.”

“He only stopped to change his shoes for his riding boots and for his sword and pistols. He was still in his dress uniform when he left.”

Elizabeth wanted to laugh and cry at once—her Jack, riding out to battle in evening dress. But she couldn’t call him
hers
any longer, not knowing what she’d learned tonight. “What about Colonel Lang? Is he still here?” she asked. She didn’t care to keep talking of herself.

Louisa smiled sadly and drew her into the parlor. “If he were, I wouldn’t be down here. He left about an hour ago.”

“I’m glad you had the chance to spend a quiet evening with just him. You didn’t miss anything, with that ball.”

“Oh, Elizabeth.” Louisa sat on the sofa and patted the place beside her.

Elizabeth perched on the edge of the sofa. She had nothing to do but sit and wait, but she’d never felt more impatient for action in her life.

“What happened between you and Sir John?” Louisa asked. “Don’t tell me nothing, or you would have come home together, and he would not have raced from the house in such a tearing hurry.”

“We quarreled,” Elizabeth admitted.

“So I gathered,” Louisa replied drily. “But tonight, of all nights? I wouldn’t have thought it possible of either of you.”

“Nor would I.” Elizabeth bit her lip and stared at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. “You see, I learned he’d lied to me about—about something important. I meant to keep quiet, and save the quarreling for after the fighting is done, but he said something, all unknowing, that reminded me of what I’d just discovered, and I...I snapped.”

“Oh, dear.”

Despite her best attempts to hold herself in control, a tear slid down her cheek. She’d thought she had everything, but it had all been a lie. If only she’d stayed behind in England. She never would’ve met Liddicott, and she could’ve gone on believing herself happy.

No. She couldn’t wish that. It would’ve been better if Jack hadn’t arrived at Giles’s bedside at just the wrong moment to make that deathbed promise. She would’ve survived somehow, and she wouldn’t be here in Brussels, waiting while a man she loved at least as much as she hated rode into battle. She swiped at her wet cheek with an angry hand. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk of it, not now.”

“I understand.” Louisa rested a gentle hand on her shoulder, then stood. “We should probably try to sleep. The next few days won’t be restful, and at least tonight we know nothing has happened yet.”

Elizabeth nodded gratefully, and they left each other to their solitude.

Chapter Nineteen

Even if the bed she’d shared with Jack hadn’t been filled with so many associations she now wished she could forget, Elizabeth couldn’t have slept. All through the darkest hours of the night, the sound of drums, bugles and bagpipes echoed through the streets, calling the army to war.

As dawn’s faintest light began to infuse the sky outside her window, she gave up the attempt. She dressed in a simple old dress, one that she could get into without a maid’s assistance, and crept downstairs, where she found Louisa, also bleary-eyed but alert.

“Oh, good, you’re awake, too,” her friend said. “Please, I know it’s early, but I want to watch them march out. Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

Wrapped in cloaks against the early-morning chill, they hurried to the city gates. They were far from the only ones who had gathered there, but some of their friends recognized them and got them places at the front.

Elizabeth held Louisa’s hand and watched the ranks of redcoat troops march out. All those pale young faces, on the way to deal out and receive death. She didn’t know whether she feared or hoped to see Jack among them, but each time a bay horse walked by she looked for Menelaus’s crooked blaze and her husband’s strong profile. But she never saw them, and could only conclude he had ridden out with the vanguard, before she and Louisa had arrived.

They stayed for hours. Elizabeth’s feet ached, her stomach rumbled and her bladder complained, but she couldn’t tear herself away until at last, around eight o’clock, Wellington rode by at a canter, surrounded by a cluster of aides.

“I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait,” Louisa said as they turned away from the gate.

“Wait, and pray,” Elizabeth agreed.

They walked back to the house slowly, arm in arm. With her free hand, Louisa stroked her pregnant belly. “He’s kicking more than usual today,” she said. “I suppose he can hear the drums, too.”

“That must feel so strange, to be kicked from the inside.”

“It’s only little flutters, at first. One grows accustomed. You’ll see, when your time comes.”

Elizabeth shook her head. Since February, she had spent the days of her monthly courses in disappointment, worrying something was amiss, for surely any woman as busy as she’d been in bed should’ve conceived by now. But now she was relieved that she didn’t have the added complication of a child as she considered how best to separate—good God. She stopped in her tracks.

Louisa perforce halted, too. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve just realized...” She swallowed, unable to form the words.

Louisa looked at her stomach, then met her eyes. “You, too? I’d wondered.”

“I think so. I hadn’t thought, since I haven’t been sick like you were at first, but I must be.” In fact, she’d last had her courses just before they’d sailed from England. Sometime in the last six weeks, she and Jack had finally managed to create a new life between them in all their frantic, hungry passion. Suddenly she couldn’t stay calm and restrained a moment longer. There, on the street, she burst into tears.

Louisa put her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. “It will be all right,” she murmured. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t see how,” Elizabeth said, then cried harder. What was she to do? She couldn’t push Jack out of her life now. If he lived and the child lived, they were bound together no matter what. And if he were to die or she were to miscarry—but she didn’t want a freedom bought with so dreadful a coin.

“You’re stunned, that’s all. Let’s get you home. This is no place for tears.”

But at least on this day, the sight of a lady sobbing unceasingly in the street was no surprise to anyone they passed. Elizabeth was dimly aware that Louisa waved away a few of their friends and acquaintances as they walked by, but no one stared or exclaimed at them. When at last she stumbled through the door, Elizabeth shrugged off all Louisa’s attempts to soothe or feed her and shut herself away where no one could see her weep.

* * *

The advancing French column was a more daunting prospect than anything Jack had seen in America. But he was unafraid, filled with a strange calm coupled with bounding energy he’d last experienced when he took over command at Queenston Heights. Here at Quatre Bras he commanded a larger force, but one that was only a part of a still larger whole. It was as it should be; here he would prove that his Canadian experience meant something.

His men were steady, too, advancing to meet the enemy in a broad two-deep line through a field of rye as tall as Menelaus’s withers and up to the heads of the soldiers. Incongruously Jack thought of the prairies of America, of when he had hunted buffalo with the Sioux. Oh, to have those warriors alongside him now. As yet the British had only infantry in the field. The battle had opened with a large French force against a tiny Dutch-Belgian garrison guarding the crossroads, and Wellington was deploying reinforcements as they arrived.

For now they remained outnumbered by the French, badly so, and the enemy must surely have the cavalry and artillery the British lacked. While he rode to and fro at the head of his advancing line, Jack scanned for French cavalry. So far none were in view, but if that changed he meant for his battalions to have ample time to get into square to receive them.

None appeared, and the brigade continued its silent, steady advance to meet the noisy column with its chants of
Vive l’Impereur.
At last, the moment came—Jack swore he saw the column recoil a little at the sudden appearance of the thin red line out of the swaying grain—and the redcoats fired a mighty rolling volley that shattered the head of the column.

Now the French fell back and the British pressed onward. Jack watched the line, ready to halt them if they tried to make their advance into a charge. They only needed to hold the crossroads open to maintain communication with the Prussian army, and they lacked the numbers to attempt more. But his troops stayed steady until they reached a brook. Even as they slowed, preparing to ford the small obstacle, the French artillerymen spotted them, and cannons roared.

Just to Jack’s right, two men fell—one dead instantly, the second screaming and clutching at what remained of his left arm. Down the line, a scattering of other men were hit, but the battalions held firm. He didn’t doubt they would maintain their line to the last man, but there was no reason to let them be mauled.

“Back!” he called and brought up the rear as the line withdrew to where the tall grain and hedges gave them a little shelter again. As they were finishing the maneuver, Wellington cantered by and gave him a curt nod, from which Jack concluded he had made the right choice. Satisfied, he took out his telescope and scanned the horizon for cavalry.

* * *

He’d been right about the cavalry. Throughout the long day the British and their allies managed to hold their ground and eventually push the French back a little. By the end of the battle they hadn’t been outnumbered, as reinforcements had continued to reach the crossroads and were fed into the battle wherever they were most needed at that moment.

Jack’s brigade had been one of the first to arrive and had fought valiantly throughout the day. They’d managed to form squares in the face of cavalry charges, which saved them from the troopers’ sabers but had the unfortunate effect of rendering them more vulnerable to artillery fire. The casualties were higher than any commander could’ve liked, but he knew his men had fought well and he’d done his own part.

Now they must simply await the morning. The Prussian army had fought that day, too—Jack had heard the roar of that battle, just a few miles away, during the lulls of their own. No one yet knew how they had fared, though rumor held they’d been defeated and driven into a retreat. If they had, Jack supposed the British must withdraw, too. The thought of giving up ground so dearly held rankled, but without a nearby ally they would be left badly outnumbered in an unconscionably exposed position.

For the first few hours of the night, as during the battle, he thought nothing of himself or his own troubles. He walked among his encamped men, encouraging and praising, and met with General Picton and the other senior officers of their division.

It was after midnight before he got to the farmhouse room that was his assigned quarters for the night, and only then did he allow himself to think of Elizabeth as he leaned against a narrow bed and rubbed his aching leg. It filled him with horror to think of how they had parted, that he might fall while she hated him and he burned with bitterness against her.

The bitterness, at least, he could manage, he realized, because it was his own. Alone in the night, he admitted how badly he had treated her, how wrong it had been to swear to the whole truth while holding back that part he thought was too much for her to bear. It had been cowardly, and he knew of no worse failing than that. A truly brave man, a true soldier, ought to have either told her the whole truth and trusted her forgiveness or admitted there were a few incidents he was too ashamed to speak of.

Now it might be too late. But Jack vowed to at least make the apology he owed her, for the sake of his own soul and his honor as an officer and a gentleman. He took out the little store of paper and writing materials he kept in his kit, sat at a rough table lit by a single candle and began.

* * *

With the army gone, Brussels was strangely quiet. Elizabeth knew that many of the British residents she’d dined with and danced with over the past six weeks were streaming out the northern gates, fleeing to Antwerp in readiness to leave the country altogether should Wellington and their army fail. But Elizabeth would not join them. Jack had told her to stay. After an hour’s storm of tears, she ventured out of her bedroom to sit with Louisa, who fed her tea and toast and ordered her to keep her strength up.

That afternoon, tired of a silent house and no information, they walked in the park. While there they heard a sound like distant thunder, so odd on a still day that at first neither knew what to make of it, though they felt themselves fools when they heard another stroller identify it as cannon. They climbed the ramparts onto the city walls and stared out to the south, as if anything they could hear ought to be discernible with their eyes.

She and Louisa spoke but little throughout the day. There seemed nothing to say—they knew nothing of what was passing in the battle, and they had parted from their husbands with such different feelings that even speaking of their hopes and fears or attempting consolation felt odd.

Elizabeth was afraid, too, that if she said too much she would dissolve into hysterics again. Too much had happened too quickly, and her power of self-command had already deserted her once. Jack had lied to her, and that knowledge tainted every happy moment they’d shared since consummating their marriage. He had lied to her, and she had given him in exchange complete honesty, total surrender and utter trust. She’d let herself be naked to him, body and soul, over and over again. Now everything in her wanted to armor herself and flee far away to some safe place where she would never be in danger of yielding herself to him, nor to anyone else, again.

Yet as she listened to the distant thunder of battle she could never forget that she’d sent a soldier, a commander, out with words of anger and hate ringing in his ears, and that whatever his sins, a soldier going out to fight deserved blessings and not curses. So she prayed that God would have mercy on his soul and preserve his life. But while she trusted God would hear her, she couldn’t trust his answers. She had after all prayed with all her earnest young faith five years ago that Giles be spared, and heaven had ignored
those
pleas—and a blessing given when its object was miles away and unable to hear it seemed hardly worthwhile at all.

Again and again throughout the long June day she found her hand drifting to her still-flat abdomen. The cautious part of her hardly wanted to think about it—such a chancy thing, so much could go wrong—but she couldn’t help wondering and calculating. At one point she simply said, “February?” with a hand on her stomach, but Louisa instantly understood. She expected her own child to make his appearance sometime in September, and the change in her figure was becoming obvious despite the fullness of her skirts.

“That sounds right,” she agreed, “though I’m hardly an expert.”

“You know more than I do.”

“I wish I knew more about
that,
” she said with a significant glace southward, and they sat silently again for a long time.

As the afternoon drew toward evening, wounded soldiers began to trickle into the city. First came men with slight injuries who could stay on their feet, but they were soon followed by wagons filled with maimed, broken men.

The sight awoke Elizabeth from her paralysis. “We must do something.”

“Yes.” Louisa shook off her own torpor and nodded firmly. “We have room for dozens. Food, water—”

“Anything and everything we can.” Already they were hurrying along the wall, back toward the nearest steps leading down into the city.

Upon returning to their house, they discovered one of the maids had fled, but the other servants were all there and as impatient to be doing something as they were. They sent the footman out, and he soon returned with a score or so of lightly wounded men. The more severe cases were going to the city hospital, he reported, though from the look of things they would run out of room soon.

Elizabeth and Louisa went to work alongside the servants, improvising bandages and serving out water, brandy and soup. Elizabeth didn’t ask the men how the battle had gone, but they volunteered the information freely, terrifying her with the news that it was bad indeed, worse than anything they’d known in Spain.

But a blond Rifle officer with a ball lodged in his shoulder who introduced himself as Major Matheson told the soldiers to stop frightening the ladies. “It’s not so bad as that, you’ll see. We were the first ones on the spot, and it was only bad because we had barely enough men to hold the position. We met reinforcements going south all the time we were coming back here, so it will have been improving all along.”