The Waltzing Widow (24 page)
She lowered her eyes and went quickly through the door. As she went down the hall to her bedroom, she knew without glancing around that Lord Kenmare stood watching her retreat until she had closed the bedroom door between them.
She crossed the room slowly toward the bell rope hanging beside the bed to call her maid. The unmistakable crash of a slammed door made her jump nearly out of her skin. Lady Mary stood in the middle of her room, her unblinking gaze fixed on the undisturbed bed. She suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. “What an utter fool I have been,” she breathed.
Abigail heard about the wounded Highlander from the maid lent to her by Lady Cecily. When she heard his name, she gasped and the color was driven from her face. She flew from her own bedroom to that where she had been told Captain McInnes had been settled.
She started to knock on the door, but thought that the noise would waken him if he were asleep. So instead she stole inside quietly, strangely afraid, though of what, she was not certain. No one was then in attendance and Captain McInnes still lay unconscious.
Abigail looked at his white, haggard face. She hardly recognized him as the same young officer who had kissed her so sweetly. She reached out to touch his hair, and her hand froze. She had at last seen his shoulder, wrapped tight with white bandages through which had seeped a thin streak of bright blood.
Abigail couldn't breathe. Her heart seemed to be pounding in her ears. She backed away one hesitant step after another, nearly to the door, before she whirled and ran out of the bedroom.
Abigail ran downstairs to the drawing room, instinctively seeking her mother, but the room was empty. She sank down on the settee, trembling. She was deeply shaken by her abortive visit to Captain McInnes. Seeing him lying there had set up a chain of thoughts that she would far rather have done without. She shuddered, hugging herself.
It had been so difficult for her to help tend the wounded on the street. Time and again she had had to swallow back her nausea. But that had been quite different from what she was now feeling. She had not known those wounded soldiers. But she did know the unconscious gentleman lying abovestairs, and when she thought about what must be happening to others that she knew, she was certain that she must faint with horror.
Lady Mary came downstairs and entered the drawing room. She stopped short at sight of her daughter sitting so still and pale on the settee. She went swiftly across the room, exclaiming, “Abigail! What has happened?"
Her daughter's face was abnormally white and strained in appearance and Abigail clasped and unclasped her hands in an uncharacteristically nervous fashion. Lady Mary sat down beside Abigail and took her fidgeting hands into her own, trying to still them with the comfort of her grasp.
But Abigail hardly noticed. Her whole being was concentrated on the man lying upstairs. “I had heard that Lord Kenmare brought in Captain Bruce McInnes. Surely you recall him ... must have guessed how I felt about him."
Lady Mary was astonished. Certainly she had known that her daughter liked the young officer, but she had not known that there was anything deeper between them. She suddenly recalled how affected Abigail had been when the Highlanders had marched out of Brussels, and again when word had come of their valiant stand against the French. “Oh, Abigail..."
Abigail shuddered, caught up in her own thoughts and deaf to the sympathetic inflection in her mother's voice. “He was so proud, so beautiful. And now...” Her entire body shook violently. “Now he looks as though he is dying! I tell you, I don't know that I can accept it. No, I won't, I won't!” Her voice climbed to the edge of hysteria and broke on a sob.
"Abby, my dear!"
Abigail turned and threw herself into her mother's arms. She sobbed as though her heart would break. “Oh, Mama! I was stupid, so very stupid! But I did not know! I assumed that they would all come back, every one of them."
Lady Mary drew her weeping daughter close. The drawing-room door opened and Briggs appeared. Lady Mary quietly requested of the staring butler that tea be served in the drawing room and then she said, “Now, Abigail, you will tell me what has passed through your mind that has so upset you."
Abigail raised her head. Her eyes were swimming with tears. “I know it was improper of me, but I ... I had gone in to see Captain McInnes. I knew he had been hurt, but I didn't know how he would appear. I was so shocked. Oh, Mama, it was perfectly horrible! I saw Captain McInnes lying there, as though at his own wake, and the blood! And then all of a sudden I was thinking about William and all the rest."
The tea was brought in and at a sign from Lady Mary, the ladies were left alone. Lady Mary handed a cup of hot tea to Abigail. “First of all, it is true that Captain McInnes has been gravely wounded. But I have hopes that he will not die. As for the others, you must simply keep faith for William and for the rest.” She saw Abigail shudder and she said gently, “I know it seems an impossibility to do so, Abby. Believe me, I wrestle with my own fears for William hourly. But I truly believe that he must be alive and well."
"Mama, do you truly think so?” The color was beginning to return to Abigail's face with the dual comforts of the hot soothing tea and her mother's quiet confidence.
"Of course I do,” Lady Mary said staunchly. She pushed deep her own conflicting emotions in her effort to reassure her daughter. Nothing must be allowed to show in her expression or her manner that might hint at her own fear to Abigail.
"I so wish that I could cut out this faint heart of mine,” Abigail said with self-revulsion.
"I doubt that is the sort of catharsis which would best soothe your exacerbated feelings,” Lady Mary said dryly.
"Oh, Mama! I was not speaking in a literal sense,” Abigail said, the shadow of a smile beginning to creep back into her eyes.
Lady Mary was glad to see the easing of her daughter's bleak expression. A faint smile flitted across her face. “You are braver than you know, Abby."
Abigail leapt up to throw her arms about her mother. “I do thank you for that, Mama.” When she had straightened up, she said hesitantly, “I shall try to stop hanging about your apron strings so tightly, Mama."
Lady Mary's eyes misted with tears. She smiled at her daughter and said quietly. “Already you have loosened your fingers, my dear."
Abigail left her mother than, her spirits already recovering.
Lady Mary was not nearly so sanguine. She was glad that Abigail was attempting to take such a responsible attitude about her own fears. It boded well for the maturing tenor of her character, and to that extent the war and its horrible consequences had been beneficial. She had watched Abigail hourly casting aside a bit more of her frivolity and selfishness.
But as for herself, after the earlier trauma of dealing with Captain McInnes's wound and the buffeting by a riot of emotions engendered by Lord Kenmare, being brought face-to-face with Abigail's realization of the nightmare very nearly completed the fraying of her own control. The constant fears that she held at bay swelled to an almost unbearable clamor. She still did not know how her son was faring. She could do no more than sit anxiously awaiting news of him.
Her thoughts were still so full of William that when Lord Kenmare entered the drawing room with an expression more somber than she was used to seeing upon his countenance. Lady Mary immediately leapt to the conclusion that he had had bad news of her own. Her face paled and she jumped up from the settee. “My lord! What is it? You appear so grave."
Lord Kenmare looked at her in surprise, and the heavy frown between his strongly marked brows eased slightly. “Do I, my lady? Forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you. I have been out again. These nearly hourly conflicting reports have me in such a suspended state that I scarcely know how to respond to them anymore."
Lady Mary sent a startled glance at the mantel clock, and was shocked at how late it had become. She had apparently sat idle, without awareness of the passing time, for more than an hour.
As Lord Kenmare had spoken, he had gone to the side table to open a decanter of wine. He offered to pour a glass for Lady Mary, but she declined it. Instead she watched him with sharpened eyes, seeing how deeply the lines had become carved in his face and how the grim set of his jaw seemed to have settled into permanence. “Is it worse?” she asked quietly. Some part of her mind wondered at her lack of embarrassment in facing his lordship, but what had passed between them seemed totally irrelevant beside the news that it was obvious he had brought back with him.
The earl waved her back to her former comfortable position and seated himself opposite. Before replying to her question, he swirled the wine in his glass, observing it with a peculiar concentration. He said abruptly, “The alarm is so great this evening that I have myself witnessed one hundred napoleons offered in vain for a pair of horses to leave Brussels. In addition, I have heard that numbers of our friends and acquaintances have actually set off in this weather on foot to walk the nearly thirty miles to Antwerp or else have embarked in boats upon the canal."
"My God, has it come at last, then?” Lady Mary whispered. Her hand rose to her throat in a betraying gesture. Her thoughts sped swiftly, and she gasped, appalled by the enormity of the situation that they faced. “But what of Lady Cecily? She can scarcely be expected to flee in her condition. It would be certain to bring on the babe. And those poor young men lying wounded upstairs and in your garden house—they cannot be left to the French!"
Lord Kenmore threw himself almost violently out of his chair and dashed his wineglass into the open fireplace. Glass splinters flew, and wine sizzled in the heat of the fire. “Dash it, do you not think I know it?” he asked savagely. He smashed his fist against the mantel. “I have gone over it a thousand times. We've horses and carriages enough for ourselves, the servants, and perhaps three of the wounded men. We should have to leave most of the baggage behind at that, and all of it if we are to accommodate any more of the men under our care."
"Then that is what we must be prepared to do."
At the perfect calm in Lady Mary's voice, Lord Kenmare looked around at her. He was held astounded by sheer amazement, and then he threw back his head to laugh.
When he met her gaze again, his expression had lost its awful savagery. “As usual you have cut to the chaste of the matter, Lady Mary.” He went over to raise her fingers to his lips. “Thank you, my lady. You are an anchor in this cursed maelstrom,” he said somberly.
Lady Mary's face suddenly flushed with soft color. She was made unusually agitated by his praise, especially as she felt it was undeserved. “I am hardly that, my lord! Indeed, I would not be quite sane if I were unaffected by this experience. But I hope that I am practical enough to do what must be done.” She found that he still held her hand, and she gently withdrew it from his warm clasp. “I should see to things now, my lord."
He stepped back immediately. “Of course, and I shall see that the carriages are made ready in the event that we shall need them.” He walked her to the door of the drawing room.
Lady Mary hesitated a moment before going through the door. She looked up into his lordship's handsome face with a certain stillness in her expression. “Shall we be going away tonight, my lord?"
Lord Kenmare was on the point of answering in the affirmative when he was stopped by the near-pleading look in her eyes. He realized that she still did not know what had happened to her son, and nor did they know what had occurred to his brother-in-law, Wilson-Jones. “I think not, my lady,” he said slowly. “The French, if they are victorious, as is so greatly feared at this hour, will hardly enter Brussels in this weather and at night. If the news is no better in the morning, we shall leave then."
She smiled, a blazing expression of relief and gratitude. “Thank you, my lord,” she said in a low voice. She started to go then, but turned back to his touch on her elbow. “Yes, my lord?"
"I think it best that you and Abigail lie down in your clothes,'’ he said soberly.
Lady Mary swallowed, and then she nodded. “Of course. That is eminently practical, my lord. We shall do so."
The morning of the eighteenth of June was an anxious one, and the scene in the Place Royale surpassed all imagination. There were thousands of wounded French, Belgians, Prussians, and English. Carts, wagons, and all types of other attainable vehicles were continually arriving heaped with sufferers. The wounded were laid, friends and foes indiscriminately, on straw, with narrow avenues between them, in every part of the city.
The humane and indefatigable exertions of the fair ladies of Brussels greatly made up for the deficiency of adequate numbers of surgeons. Some women strapped and bandaged wounds; others served out tea, coffee, soups, and other soothing nourishments; while many occupied themselves stripping the sufferers of their gory and saturated garments and dressing them in clean shirts and other habiliments.
Despite their unceasing ministrations, however, the ladies could not banish from their thoughts their fear for the ultimate outcome of the battle still raging.
That Sunday morning the general terror and confusion in Brussels reached its highest point. One common interest bound together all ranks and conditions of men. All other subjects, all other considerations, were forgotten. All distinctions were leveled, all common forms of courtesy were thrown aside and neglected. Ladies accosted men they had never seen before with eager questions. No preface, no apology, no ceremony was thought of. Strangers conversed together like friends. All ranks of people addressed each other without hesitation—everyone seeking, everyone giving information. English reserve seemed no longer to exist.
News arrived of the French having gained a complete victory, and it was universally believed. A dreadful panic seized the men left in charge of the baggage in the rear of the army, and they ran away.
