Читать книгу Healing the Soldier's Heart - Lily George - Страница 11

Chapter Three

James Rowland had spoken. A single word, of course, and stammered to be sure, but he had spoken. ’Twas an excellent sign. Whether this development was due to her reading or some other mysterious aspect, she could not fathom. But it was progress. That much was certain.

She cast a sidelong glance at Rowland as they strolled back to the Crescent. If he was surprised or elated by his utterance, he kept his counsel. His face had settled into its usual angular lines, and he remained silent. Did he know that her entire purpose in reading to him was to help him overcome his infirmity? Did he know that Lieutenant Cantrill and Sophie had put her up to it? Oh, she was entirely willing to help, but their brief session together made her feel awkward. As though she had helped a child to win a race by holding back as she ran. It was a confusing emotion, because she hadn’t held anything back from him—other than the truth. It was time to tell him.

She paused, tugging on his sleeve. “Ensign, I would speak to you if I may.”

He stopped, and several passersby bumped into them. The ensign steered her away from the crowded sidewalk to a small side street where fewer people jostled along. As they reached the corner of a garden, she turned to face him, the warm sunlight touching her face as she spoke.

“Do you want to regain the power to speak, sir?” Her words sounded too harsh, too frank even to her own ears, so she rushed on. “The lieutenant thinks that if I read to you perhaps that can help you overcome your infirmity. But I don’t want to help you unless you wish for me to do so.”

A flush crept over his face, and his bright green gaze remained rooted on the ground. Oh, this was awful. She had hurt his feelings and made him feel ridiculous. And meanwhile, she didn’t feel so wonderful herself.

“I want to read to you, because I enjoy your company,” she continued hastily. “I have very few people with whom I can converse. I have no family and little acquaintance beyond the schoolroom. So reading to you was actually quite a bright spot in my world for me to look forward to this week. But...I shall stop if you don’t like it.”

He shook his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “C-c-continue.”

“Do you want me to continue meeting with you, then?” She wasn’t certain what that single word meant. Or did he want her to continue blathering away like an idiot? By the way he was nodding his head, he indicated that he wanted her to keep meeting with him. “Very well, then, sir.” She took a deep breath, unsure if she should go on. But then, if he wanted to recover, he would have to work as well. It was the same sort of agreement she offered the Bradbury sisters in the schoolroom. She would offer what help she could, but her pupils would also have to work hard.

“I will continue to read to you, but we will work together to help you regain your voice.” She looked up at him, willing him to look her straight in the eye. “You spoke to me today. Can you speak to anyone else, sir?”

“M-M-Macready and C-C-Cantrill.” His voice was rough, like sandpaper across her skin. She suppressed a shiver at his tone and continued in her same businesslike manner.

“If they are your brothers in arms and you are able to speak with them, then that indicates something profound, Ensign. I am not sure how we shall go about making matters better for you. I am sure we shall have to try several different methods. But I wanted to be honest with you. I wanted to make sure this is what you want. And if it is, then I shall help you in any way I can.”

The poor man—his eyes were cast down and his hair mussed, a flush still stealing over his face. Well, one could hardly blame him. It would be difficult indeed to admit to needing help for any particular weakness or to have anyone—especially a woman who was practically a stranger—question him on it. She took his arm again and allowed him to steer her back onto the main street from which they had deviated.

They plodded on in silence, a silence that Lucy relished. She was tired, too. And addled a bit. And rattled, if she were to admit the truth. She had just agreed to help the ensign regain the power of speech—the very thing he lost on a Belgian battlefield. It was no small promise and no small task. And what if she failed? She said a silent prayer for help and for hope. She would need a great deal of both in the coming weeks.

His lordship’s fashionable townhome—situated right in the heart of the Crescent—loomed up ahead of them. If his lordship saw her with the ensign, there might be trouble. Servants—even high-placed governesses—were supposed to conform to certain kinds of behavior. And even though her relationship with the ensign was entirely above-board, she wasn’t about to do anything foolish that might cause talk.

“We can stop here. The house is just about a block away, and I don’t want to get into any kind of trouble,” Lucy explained in haste, heat flooding her cheeks. “His lordship wants his female servants to remain unmarried, and so I don’t want to do anything to stir up gossip. Not that it would. Or that it should—” She broke off, feeling like an utter fool.

He patted her shoulder. “V-very well,” he responded. He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips for a brief, chaste kiss. “Th-th-ank you, M-Miss Williams.” He bowed, releasing her hand.

Butterflies chased themselves around her stomach, and she struggled to remain composed. Outwardly composed, that was. “Of course, Ensign.” She bobbed a curtsy. “And thank you for the pleasure of your company. I can assure you, I spend many of my days off traipsing around the booksellers, hoping to scout a new volume. It was a rare treat to have pleasant company with which to share my day off instead of being all alone.” Botheration. Now she sounded like a dried-up old spinster. If only she had as much gift for pretty speeches with Rowland as she did with Cantrill—but then, she didn’t care about Cantrill.

On the other hand, she suspected that she might be caring more about Rowland than she should.

* * *

Rowland stretched out on the settee in his humble flat, his mind spinning. On the way back from walking Lucy home and then for the better part of the afternoon, he had replayed their conversation—well, her conversation with him—in his mind. That she was willing to help him, that she cared enough about a fellow human being to offer assistance—that alone was enough to fill him with gratitude. But he couldn’t stop thinking of Lucy as she read and as she spoke to him.

She had a certain manner of flicking her glance sideways—a sharp look out the corner of her eye that sent his heart racing. There was no coquetry in this gesture. It was not practiced. It was simply part of who she was, but it was enough to send his heart pounding every time she did so. He was much happier concentrating on how this glance made his heart leap than in dwelling on her words from their walk to the Crescent. But, unbidden, they crept back into his mind. Her clear, dulcet tones asking, “Do you want to regain the power to speak, sir?”

No one had asked him that. Everyone assumed he did, but no one asked him in such a direct and forthright manner before. The doctors in Belgium had scratched their heads at his predicament, and after his superficial wounds healed, had sent him on his way. “He’ll speak when he’s ready,” they pronounced.

Back home in Essex, Mother threw her hands up in despair. “You’re just being stubborn,” she wailed. “Your sister Mary can’t find a match—not with her stammer. And you—you were our only hope. Be a man, like your other brothers in arms. Look at Captain Brookes, missing a leg. And now he’s married and running the family farm! Look at Lieutenant Cantrill, supporting himself in Bath. And you, barely wounded, can’t get a position anywhere because you won’t speak? James—our family is in desperate circumstances!” And so it had been until Macready, Rowland’s closest friend in the 69th, had invited him to share his flat in Bath as he recovered from his battle scars.

Among his brethren soldiers, his inability to speak was a given, as much as his green eyes or blond hair. It was a part of him, much as the others now carried more visible scars of the war. And yet none of them had asked him if he wanted to recover, just as they were recovering thanks to the curative waters of Bath. Cantrill had gone so far as to recruit Lucy for the job without asking Rowland if that’s what he wanted.

He brought his booted foot down hard on the floor, the force of the blow smashing a china plate as it fell from the mantel. He gazed at the fragments. They were as jagged as the pieces of his life. His lack of ability to flirt with Lucy, or even chat about mundane topics like the weather, drove him to distraction.

He grasped his head in his hands, willing his temper to stay controlled. No one understood what he wanted. No one had bothered to ask before.

No one, that was, but Lucy. She respected his privacy, acknowledged his right not to get well. And that spoke volumes about her character.

The front door banged open. “Rowland? Are you here?” Macready’s voice, hale and hearty despite his many wounds, echoed throughout the little flat.

Rowland grunted. Macready must be back from taking the waters.

“So, how was the meeting?” Macready limped in, discarding his jacket on a nearby leather chair. “You look like you are having a bit of a study. If your forehead had any more lines, you could compose music upon it.”

“Funny,” Rowland replied, keeping his tone sarcastic. He didn’t want to share everything about Lucy yet. Certainly not her beauty or her sparkling character. Macready, with his Black Irish looks and his gift with words, might find her beguiling. He could charm her in ways that Rowland lacked—until he regained his power of speech.

“I met Cantrill in the Pump Room. He mentioned that a certain Miss Williams read to you today and that you squired her back to her employer’s home in the Crescent,” Macready yammered on. He sank into a worn velvet chair, eyeing Rowland closely. Too closely. “He even said you spoke to the lady.”

“Nothing much.” He kept his face turned toward the wall. If Macready saw how deeply he was flushing, he’d never hear the end of it.

“But think of it, man! You haven’t spoken a word to anyone besides myself and Cantrill since La Sainte Haye. This is an amazing accomplishment. You are on the road to recovery. I think this Miss Williams is excellent medicine, you know.”

“She’s not.” She was much more than a pretty face or a pleasing diversion. Macready made it sound as though she had worked her feminine wiles on him and gotten her way. What transpired was much more profound and deeply shaking than that. But trying to say that aloud—why, it would sound beyond ridiculous. So he merely settled for shrugging his shoulders.

“You know, I think you’ve been much too hard on yourself, Rowland. Think of it. Most of us were far too young to be in the military. I was twenty. How old were you? Eighteen? We were green as grass and broke formation. That’s how the Frenchies were able to get the best of us.” Macready paused, rubbing his battered arm. “Hiding in the rye as we did, well, that was simple survival. We had almost no chance against the cavalry.”

Well, they had hidden. That much was true. But while Macready lay delirious from dreadful wounds, Rowland had been awake and fully alert when he played dead. Like a coward. He had feigned death to the point that the peasants who came to collect them after battle thought he had died. And he didn’t cry out for help but remained mute even as his body was loaded onto a cart bound for Brussels.

The shame of his deception burned strong, deeper perhaps than any physical wound he could have sustained at Waterloo. And there was nothing he could do to right the wrong. His inability to speak seemed as though no more than justice. There was, after all, nothing he could say to defend or excuse the cowardice he had shown. And if he regained the power of speech, would he ever find a way to express his disgust with himself? His profound disappointment at how little he had done to save his fellow men?

The silence between them stretched out, punctuated by the ticking clock on the mantel. At length, Macready cleared his throat. “That’s why I asked you to come to Bath, you know. You needed to recuperate as much as I did. And Cantrill, he’s looking out for your welfare, too. I think that this Miss Williams shall probably play a significant role in your healing.”

Macready knew everything. He knew about Mrs. Rowland’s tears and recriminations. He knew about the doctor in Essex who had told James Rowland that fear had tied his tongue. He knew about the shame and the anger and the horror of the battlefield. And yet, Macready sought only to offer help. Never once had he blamed James for his injuries. But he should.

James struggled painfully with his voice for a few moments. It seemed he couldn’t force the words over his tongue. “I—I—I...” He trailed off, and inhaling deeply, he began again. “I—I am s-sorry.”

“Whatever for, old man? We were all of us terrified. We did what we could under the circumstances.” Macready rubbed his hands together briskly. “How about some tea? I could do with a bit, myself. Not to sound flippant, but that Bath water tastes like rotten eggs. And, uh—” Macready nodded his head at the heap of broken china on the floor “—I’ll bring a whiskbroom so you can tidy up.”

Macready heaved himself up from the chair and made his way to the small kitchen. The rattle and clank of the kettle and dishes signaled that he was readying the tea and had no more wish to converse about the past than James.

James rubbed a weary hand over his brow. Of course he didn’t want to think about it. No one wanted to examine the unpleasant or foolish side of himself. But all the same, James had a driving curiosity to know the truth. What kind of fellow was he after all? There was a saying that the battlefield brought out what was genuine in a man. If so, then he had failed the test miserably. Sure, he was young. But then, they all were. What made a man suffer nobly, like Macready? And what made a man hide and cower with fear as he had? Where was the defect in his character? Would that he could root it out and tear it away, like attacking weeds in an overgrown garden.

He wasn’t sure he deserved the friendship of his fellow veterans, like Macready. That’s what made attending those veterans’ group meetings so difficult. Those men had sustained real injuries while defending home and country. Many men had given their lives, leaving wives and children behind. He couldn’t even look the widows in the eye, so riddled with shame was he. Their husbands had paid the ultimate sacrifice while he lay silent in the rye at La Sainte Haye.

If he wasn’t sure he deserved the friendship of those brave men, then he felt doubly undeserving of Miss Williams’s attention. She seemed to care about others quite a bit, judging from her conversation with Cantrill. Every mention of her charges or Sophie brought a merry twinkle to her eyes. She would never sit back and allow others to suffer in her place. Someone like her would recoil in horror at his cowardice. Not that he had a chance with her anyway, poor and mute as he was. It was just that, in general, a friendship with someone like her could be nice. It took the rough edges off of life.

How could he come to deserve friendship again? Perhaps he could begin by confronting his shame and his cowardice first. These twin emotions had robbed him for two years now, leaving him bereft of speech. Only by ridding himself of them could he regain what he lost.

It was going to be a difficult journey. But, like the soldier he should have been, he could take it battle by battle. He would regain his power to speak. He would find a way to support his mother and sister. And in doing so, he would become a man. Not, perhaps, the man he should have been had he not been such a quitter on the field of battle. But, perhaps, the man he was meant to be.

He sighed.

Would he ever become the kind of man who might, one day, deserve a pretty girl like Lucy Williams sitting by his side?

He certainly had his work cut out for him.