Epilogue
Susan didn’t try to force David to go to the funeral at Bushnell, the family estate. It was enough that he prepared the coffin, spending hours at it and coming to bed red-eyed and in need of great solace. She and Mrs. Skerlong dressed the body and tucked the letters around her feet. Susan kept the reminiscence. The sergeant put the medal around her neck again before he nailed the coffin shut.
In silence, he watched the carter take Lady Bushnell away to the family vault to lie in peace at last beside husband, daughter, and son. “Suzie, we’d better pack. I can’t see any of Lord Bushnell’s relatives who inherit keeping us on here to play with wheat and shear sheep.”
He turned his attention to the slope as he did so often. “I wish I could have bought it, of course, but Lord Hackingham by Gloucester did promise me employment. It may take a few years, but we’ll do all right.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder as the cart moved over the hill and out of sight. “I’ll write him in a day or two.”
David still hadn’t written by the end of the week, but Susan did not press him. She was content to stay close, resting her head against his shoulder during the long evenings when time was painful, and holding him in her arms as he tried to sleep.
By the next week, the bailiff seemed to have turned a page in his own book of life. He woke up one morning to tease her about her familiarity with the washbasin as she retched into it, then glared at him. After a half hour’s consolation of a more tender nature, he whistled his way down the stairs, and her heart was glad again.
They were finishing lunch and going back to the inventory that the Bushnell estate had requested when Colonel and Mrs. March pulled up to the front door in a barouche.
“Colonel, how nice to see you,” the bailiff said from the front steps. “And Lady Bushne... no, no, Mrs. March!”
Susan joined him, and welcomed them in for tea in the sitting room. As they sipped their tea, the Marches spoke of their honeymoon in France and Belgium.
“Sergeant, you wouldn’t believe what’s happened to the battlefield!” the colonel exclaimed, setting down his cup with a click.
“Oh? What can you do to a battlefield?”
“It chaps my thighs,” March said. “You know the tree...”
“Who could forget?”
“Gone. Tourists!” He spit out the word like a bad taste. “And damn me if the Belgians—-the damned Belgians!—aren’t building a monument bigger than Babel! Chaps my thighs,” he muttered again.
Susan rolled her eyes at her husband, and he winked back. “It was just a battle, sir,” he said.
Colonel March glared at him. “Sergeant Wiggins, that’s almost blasphemy!” He muttered something into his teacup. “But I’ll overtook it.”
He smiled at his wife then, and reached into his coat. “Here’s what I really came to give you. The Bushnell family—Lord Bushnell had some distant cousins— thought I should give this to you. Here. Read it.”
The bailiff took the letter and opened it. He read it through, swallowed several times, and handed it wordlessly to Susan.
She took the letter, feeling light-headed and knowing it had nothing to do with the baby. She sat on the edge of David’s chair and he put his arm on her leg, as though in serious need of her presence. She read the letter, then folded it quietly and tucked it in her heart.
“Quilling Manor? And the whole farm?” she asked when she could speak.
The colonel nodded. “She also willed you two an annuity for ten years so you can get the Waterloo Seed Farm into full production. I think you both meant more to her than you knew.”
Susan kissed the top of her husband’s head. No, Colonel March, she thought, we knew.