With This Ring (4 page)

“
Perkins,” she replied. “It appears
that my sister Kitty has fainted.”

“
Yes, Miss Perkins. Lord Harwell and
I would like to return her to your home.”

You fop, she almost said. You
thought to come here and amuse yourself, but it is not a pleasant
sight. “Oh, so kind of you,” she replied. “But I shouldn’t think
that task will require two of you, sir. You may stay and help
here.”

“
Oh, no! I mean … well, I
mean ….”

Someone clucked like a chicken, and
the gentleman blushed as he backed up into a slop jar and the
contents dribbled onto his shoes. “Please come with us, Miss
Perkins. This is no place for a lady.”

“
Yes, by all means, go,” the major
said, leaning forward as if attempting to alleviate the pain.
“You’ve had sufficient diversion to qualify as a regular angel of
mercy, Miss Perkins, is it?” He spoke softly enough, but the
challenge was unmistakable. His men looked at each other, as if as
surprised as she was. No one snickered.

She thought a moment, then shook her
head. She looked up at the gentleman, who was staring down at his
pants in real dismay. “Sir, if you and Lord Harwell will please
take Kitty home in our carriage, I will be grateful to you. Tell my
coachman to return for me in an hour or two.” Provided Mama isn’t
so furious that she makes me walk, she thought.

“
You heard the lady,” the major
said. “Make yourself useful and scarce.” The order was delivered
firmly, as though the major spoke to one of his privates, and not a
bright one, at that.

Without a word, the gentleman
retreated down the row. He gathered up the others like chickens
before a storm, and herded them toward the foyer. The major turned
himself enough to watch them go. “Men, I think that will end our
exhibition visits.” He wrinkled his nose. “Sterling, have we you to
blame for that slop jar? Do move it somewhere before Miss Perkins
changes her mind and declares us past redemption.” His last words
came out in a gasp, and she was grateful to see one of his men
motioning for the surgeon.

“
I’m not going anywhere,” she
assured them all as she clung to the dying man’s hand.

“
Then, Miss Perkins, I think you’ll
do,” said the major as he closed his eyes against the pain. “You’ll
do.”

H
e let one
of his soldiers swing his legs up, and another soldier help him lie
carefully on his side. He closed his eyes. “Mind you hold on to my
gunner,” he murmured.

She did as he said, holding tight to
the man as she wiped his face again and looked around for more
water. One of the soldiers obligingly set a basin of water close to
her hand. The men—they must have all come from the major’s unit, or
company, or whatever they called themselves—regarded her with some
interest. She observed them right back, noting their obvious
concern for their officer. One of them who could walk found a
blanket and covered him.

“
He’s a game’un, miss, but a bit
weary he is,” said one of the men. The others looked at her
expectantly, as though wondering if she would address a strange man
so far from her own class.

“
I think he must be weary. What
happened to him?” she responded calmly. The man whose hand she held
opened his eyes, as though startled from his coma by a female
voice. “It’s all right. Your major’s over there, and I won’t leave
you,” she told him, even as her stomach revolted at the odd
sweetish odor coming from the bandage that bound his
chest.

The men looked at each other, as if
wondering, after their initial success, who should speak next. The
same man cleared his throat. “Oh, t’major thought ‘e was Jesus
Christ and tried to save us all, ‘e did.”

The others looked at each other and
nodded. “But … what happened?” she asked.

The same soldier continued the
narrative. “Nosey played his cards a little far away from his chest
at Toulouse, and we got rolled up.” He grinned at his mates,
pleased with himself.

Lydia frowned. “Why didn’t you run?”
The men stared at her, and she wondered for a second if she had two
heads instead of one sitting on her neck. “Well, I would,” she
finished lamely.

“
Pardon me, ma’am, but you don’t
just leave your guns,” he said, with a certain primness that told
her she had committed a grave military error.

“
And besides, we were surrounded.
Nowhere to run to,” said another man with one eye and a thick
bandage where the other one should be. “The major, he tried to be
everywhere, and got a saber smack across his shoulders for ‘is
pains.”

Lydia flinched. “He can’t stand up
straight anymore?” she asked.

“
Oh, he’s fine in the morning, but
by the afternoon, it’s all he can do to stand on his pins.” The man
laughed. “What with that and arguing every day with Horse Guards
that he won’t leave until we’re all assigned, he’s had a merry
time.”

She looked at the dying man in front
of her, who still regarded her with amazement in his sunken eyes.
“And this man?” she murmured as she smoothed the hair across his
forehead and wished she had enough water to wash him. A person
shouldn’t die dirty.

“
He’s my gunnery sergeant,” the
major spoke up from his cot across from her, his eyes still closed.
“He followed me, or maybe I followed him, from Oporto to Toulouse.”
His voice trailed off. “Too full of ginger to die.”

“
You’ll miss him, won’t you?” she
asked softly of no one in particular.

“
Miss Perkins, I have missed each
man I have ever lost, every foot of the way. Yes, of course,” the
major said. He looked up as the surgeon bent over him. “Oh, it is
you. All I need is a little rest. It has been a long
day.”

Unmindful of his protests, the
surgeon raised the bandage from the major’s shoulder and took a
long look at his back. I hope it is nothing serious, Lydia thought
as still he stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels,
regarding the wound.

“
Sir?” she asked finally. “Will he
do?”

She must have startled him. “Oh,
yes, ma’am. I was merely wondering why it is that one man can begin
to heal so nicely, and another ….” He glanced at the gunnery
sergeant, who was muttering to himself now. “And others, no.” He
returned his attention to the major. “You, sir, are a hiss and a
byword around here. If I receive another evil communication from
Horse Guards asking me why on God’s earth you are still here and
not invalided home, I will personally smite you.”

Major Reed still didn’t open his
eyes, but to Lydia’s amusement, he grinned. “I told the general
that as soon as he saw to my men, I would go quietly back to
Northumberland and never trouble this end of the realm again. Where
is the difficulty?”

The surgeon sighed and sat on the
major’s cot. “Lord Laren, I appeal to your good
nature ….”

“
I have none, sir,” the major
snapped, opening his eyes and fixing the surgeon with a level
stare. “I want my men who are here in hospital taken care of to my
satisfaction, and then I will consent to leave. There are no other
conditions.”

The surgeon tried again. “Sir, other
officers ha—”

“
I am not other officers, and this
is no ordinary battery,” said the major, biting off each word as
though he intended to chew it. “When my men are taken care of, I
will leave. Picton’s Own Battery deserves nothing less.”

“
You are difficult, my lord,” said
the surgeon.

“
I am. Now, sir, if you will look at
this charming lady, I believe she has something to ask you. Am I
right, Miss Perkins?”

You must have eyes in the back of
your head, she thought. She glanced at the soldiers around her. No
wonder they trust you. “Yes, actually,” she said. “This poor man
deserves to be clean before he dies. Can you at least change his
bandage and bring me some water and a towel?”

The surgeon opened his mouth, looked
at the major, and closed it. “Very well. Orderly!”

The gunnery sergeant died two hours
later, during which time he called her his mother, and Grandmama,
and then Teresa, who was, one of the men assured her, a good girl
who followed the army. I am not that naive, she thought, but she
made no comment. She wiped his face, glad that he was clean to her
satisfaction. Changing the bandage had been a trial, but she clung
to his hand throughout the whole ordeal, and when it was over,
vomited with what she hoped was ladylike demeanor into a bucket
that the major thoughtfully pushed her way.

To her relief, the gunnery sergeant
was deep in another world during the last hour of his life. It
remained to her to wipe his face, and then when he died, to be
amazingly touched as his hand had gripped hers, and then relaxed
completely in the peace that death brings. She held it another
moment, marveling at the mystery before her, even as she cried for
a soldier she did not know.

The men were silent, some looking
away. She dried her eyes on a handkerchief that someone gave
her—probably the major—blew her nose, and looked around her. “I’m
sorry to have distressed you with my tears,” she said as she stood
up, feeling far older than her twenty-two years.

“
Ah, no, miss,” said the one-eyed
man, who seemed to have appointed himself the spokesman. “I thinks
I speaks for all when I say that gunner there would have been
flattered to have a pretty mort cry all over him.” He looked around
at the others, and they nodded in agreement, with a certain shyness
that touched her almost as much as the dead man.

So I am a pretty lady? she asked
herself. Either the light is more dim than I thought, or you have
not seen Englishwomen in years and years. “I could cry more,” she
said simply. It sounded stupid to her ears, but again the men
nodded.

The major had said nothing, and she
had assumed he still slept. She looked at him, and his eyes were
open, regarding her with a curious expression of relief. It
surprised her at first, wondering what she could have done to
occasion such an emotion. She gazed back at him with a question in
her eyes, and then it dawned on her that what she had done through
this interminable afternoon had lifted some of the burden from his
own painful shoulders.

She surprised herself further by
resting her hand on his arm as he lay there, leaning close so no
one else could hear, and whispering in his ear. “Major Reed, I
truly think this is too much for you right now.”

He nodded, and she was chagrined to
see tears in his eyes, too. “I also think the men would feel better
if you returned to your own cot so you could rest.”

His reply was a long time coming,
and she feared she had overstepped her bounds with him. “You’re
right,” he said finally. His voice was so soft, she was compelled
to lean closer. “Miss Perkins, have you any idea how wonderful you
smell?”

Sir, you are a rascal, she thought,
amused that he would keep her so close just to breathe her
fragrance. “It is merely good milled soap, sir.”

“
It is far more.”

He closed his eyes, and she
straightened up. She spoke to the one-eyed man,
“Sir ….”

“
Corporal Davies, mum, not sir,” he
replied in a hurry, his cheeks flushed at her social
gaffe.

“
Corporal, could you help me take
the major back to his own bed?”

“
I am far away from my own bed,” he
commented a trifle breathlessly as the corporal and a private
helped him to sit up.

“
Nonsense. You said you were
quartered in the lady chapel. I can see it from here,” Lydia
replied. The private paled under the major’s weight, and Lydia took
a good look at him. “Private, why did you not mention your own
wound? Do sit down.” She replaced the private’s shoulder with her
own, lifting up the major and draping his arm around her. Corporal
Davies took a firm grip on the other side, and they walked him
slowly down the aisle of silent men.

“
I mean Northumberland, where I
live,” he managed to say as they walked him along. “Just beyond
Hadrian’s Wall.” He stopped, and they stopped. “Miss Perkins,
perhaps you would like it there.”

She laughed. “I doubt it! A place
where the sun never shines, sheets and blankets are always damp,
and where people eat oatmeal three times a day?”

He smiled at her as they started in
motion again. “I have a very good cook, and we only have oatmeal
twice a day! Corporal, what are you grinning at?”

“
You, sir,” the man
replied.

“
Insubordination,” Reed muttered,
and then said nothing more. The perspiration stood out on his
forehead, and Lydia knew how much this effort at nonchalance was
costing him.

They laid him down on his own bed,
and Corporal Davies went for the surgeon again, over his protests.
“I just need to sleep,” he insisted as she wiped his
face.

“
And perhaps a small serving of
laudanum,” she added, pulling his blankets up to his shoulder. “To
go with your oatmeal.”

She sat beside him to await the
surgeon, noting how at some point during the afternoon, the sun had
gone down. How long have I been here? she thought in alarm. Surely
the coachman would have come in for me. She sighed. If Mama has
allowed him to return. Perhaps I am to be punished for not
accompanying Kitty home. She frowned, wondering how far she would
have to walk.