Chapter Ten
Three days had passed. Now, under a morning drizzle, the house was quiet, but Quinton was already awake.
He sat on the edge of the bed in Barrington’s guest chamber, running a hand through his hair as he stared at the patterns on the rug.
His back ached, not sharply, but with the dull insistence of old bruises and restless sleep.
The mattress was far too soft after months of stone and straw, and the silence in the room pressed in from every corner, too polite, too untouched.
Sunlight filtered in through high windows, casting long slats of light across the floor. The morning air carried the scent of lavender soap and the distant clatter of kitchen pans downstairs. Normal sounds. Comfortable sounds. And yet, they made him feel like a ghost walking someone else’s life.
A knock at the door, not too loud but precise, brought him back to the present.
“Come in,” Quinton called.
Kenworth stepped inside, offering a crisp salute before closing the door behind him. He carried a tray balanced neatly in one hand. “Tea, my lord. And a roll that appears not to have survived the journey.”
Quinton managed a faint smile. “Still saluting me, Kenworth? I haven’t worn the uniform in years.”
Kenworth arched an eyebrow. “Old habits. Also, you tend to sound more reasonable after caffeine.”
Quinton accepted the cup. “Thank you.”
Kenworth set the tray down on the writing desk and crossed to open the drapes fully. “If I may be so bold, you look slightly less like death than yesterday.”
“How comforting.” Quinton couldn’t help but smile. He and Kenworth had verbally sparred long before the war.
Kenworth tilted his head. “And you haven’t bolted yet. That’s something.”
“Tempting, though,” Quinton murmured, sipping the tea. “I don’t quite know what to do with myself.”
Kenworth’s dry voice didn’t miss an opportunity. “Perhaps start with putting on trousers. You’ll find conversations less drafty that way.”
That earned a short, rough, yet real laugh. Quinton shook his head. “You missed your calling.”
“I’m still hoping for a promotion to pastry taster, though it may kill me. One more sample of lemon sponge and I shall require an embroidered waistcoat in a larger size. Mrs. Bainbridge keeps sending cakes. It’s been a harrowing ordeal.”
Quinton chuckled again, but the sound faded. “Did Mary-Ann send word?”
Kenworth hesitated. “No, sir. Not yet.”
The silence that followed stretched a little too long.
Quinton looked down into his cup. “She knows I’m here. I sent word. She answered. But still… I don’t know what I’d say.”
“That you’re alive might be a decent start.”
Quinton huffed softly. “She has a life now. A future. I’d be stepping into it as the man she once knew, and I’m not sure I’m still him.”
Kenworth studied him for a moment, then moved to straighten the edge of the bed cover.
“The entire village knows you’re back. Letters are being written, hearts aflutter.
Mrs. Porter has commissioned a commemorative pudding, and someone has asked Barrington if you’ll be giving a speech in the market square.
I told him you prefer dramatic cliffside monologues. ”
“Bloody hell. I hope not.”
“But it did make me wonder,” Kenworth added lightly, “how the word spread so quickly. Barrington’s letter to the Lord Edward in the Home Office only went out two days ago.”
The thought lodged sharp and cold.
Quinton’s brow furrowed. “You’re right. We hadn’t even reached Dover when it was posted.”
A pause.
Then, quieter: “One of my captors said something strange once. During one of the prisoner exchanges. He told me, ‘The post is taken care of.’ I thought he meant the messages were being blocked.”
Kenworth’s gaze sharpened. “You think it meant something else?”
“I don’t know,” Quinton said slowly. “But it keeps echoing back. Especially after what you just said.”
Kenworth didn’t reply, but the air between them shifted.
He began to gather the breakfast tray then paused. “You’re not thinking of going to her, are you?”
Quinton didn’t answer at first. Then, very quietly, he said, “I told myself I would. But now, I don’t know.”
Kenworth’s voice softened. “You’re not the only one who’s changed.”
Quinton turned toward the window. The morning sunlight was bright on the stone paths. Too bright. Everything was orderly, gentle, and clean. It clashed with what he had carried back.
“She looked beautiful,” he said suddenly.
Kenworth didn’t need clarification. “She always did.”
Quinton smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. That smile, her smile. Not rehearsed. Not polite. And in that moment, the years he’d lost, the words he’d never sent, the ache he’d carried, it all surged back.
God, it hit him like a blow. There she was, the memory and the woman, converging in a single moment that made the distance between them stretch sharper than any prison bar.
Years he couldn’t get back. Words he never got to send.
All of it knotted in that smile. “She smiled at me. That’s what undid me. ”
“It usually does.”
Quinton leaned against the frame. “I don’t know what I expected. I knew she’d be changed. But I hoped… maybe I hoped I’d still see the way she used to look at me. That I could still be the man she saw then.”
“And do you think she still sees that man?”
Quinton shook his head. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But she was the reason I held on. I used to count the days, thinking she was counting them too.”
He paused, his voice softer now.
“When I was in that cell, there was a crack in the stone wall, just wide enough to see a strip of sky. Some days, it was gray. Some days, it burned blue. Sometimes, when the light shifted just so, I could see the shadow of birds passing overhead. It reminded me that the world was still moving, even when I couldn’t.
And I used to imagine what she’d say about it.
Sometimes, it was something trivial, her opinion on the sky’s color, the proper number of teaspoons for tea, or whether she’d ever seen a storm roll in like that.
But other days, she asked me how I was holding on.
And on the worst nights, I’d pretend she was reading to me.
That soft, steady voice kept the dark at bay.
I made up conversations with her. It helped me keep my mind from slipping. ”
Kenworth stepped back, gentler now. “You’re not the only one who’s changed.”
Quinton looked over. “I know. I saw it in her eyes. She’s not waiting to be rescued.”
“Which makes her worth the effort.”
The words struck deeper than they should have. Quinton nodded slowly.
“Eat the roll,” Kenworth said on his way out. “A man can’t win back a woman on half a breakfast and a brooding expression.”
But when the door clicked shut behind Kenworth, the quiet pressed in again. Quinton looked around the room, taking in the carved wardrobe, the patterned carpet, and the book left askew on the side table. All of it should have felt comforting.
None of it was his.
His mind circled the conversation, Wilkinson, the letters, the crack in the wall, and Mary-Ann’s voice in his memory.
She had been more than a beacon. Mary-Ann had been his anchor.
The way she tilted her head when she asked a question, the spark of mischief in her eyes when she teased him.
He had held on to those fragments like lifelines.
And now? Now she was real again. And real was not a memory or a prayer. It was messy, uncertain, and full of edges.
A knock came again, sharper this time, and snapped Quinton from his spiral of thought.
The moment dissolved. The room, the world, shifted.
He flinched before he could stop himself, his breath catching tight in his chest. Too many nights had trained him to brace for what waited behind a door.
But this wasn’t that place. Not anymore.
He drew a slow breath. This time, it was Barrington.
“We have something,” he said without preamble as he stepped in. “A message from one of Edward’s old contacts. Meet me in the study when you’re ready.”
Quinton nodded.
As he dressed, he moved slowly, not because of pain but because of what waited in the next room. The war he’d survived wasn’t over. It had only changed shape.
He buttoned his coat, catching sight of himself in the dressing mirror.
His reflection was thinner, his eyes shadowed, but his spine was straight.
The man in the mirror looked older. Not just thinner, not just tired, but forged.
Like something that had been through fire and returned harder, quieter.
Whatever this is, I’m not broken.
His hand paused briefly on the latch.
This battlefield would demand something else entirely, cleverness, patience, and the kind of courage that didn’t wear medals. And at the center of it all was…
Mary-Ann.