Introducing Mrs. Collins
Dearest Charlotte,
We arrived at the port of Lisbon yesterday.
It is as dirty and crowded and noisy as I remember it, and I greeted it like an old friend – an old friend whom you would not wish to see too often.
It is run down but it still thrives: traders, labourers, soldiers, gentry, bustle in the streets, and if I wished to, I could attend a card party every day and a ball every night.
It will not surprise you to know; I do not wish to.
I must look a little more like a colonel now and try to behave as one.
With every salute and paper signed and route decided, I feel myself transforming once more into a soldier.
I do not find the satisfaction in it that I once did, beyond the unimaginative relief of a return to the familiar.
And yet even my jacket does not feel like a good fit any more.
I used to find comfort in the manners of the army, in the rough company of men away from home, in the simplicity of being told where to go and whom to point a musket at.
I asked to return because I hoped to find comfort in that once again.
I do not thus far. I only find comfort in remembering you.
I know it is foolish to write, and a risk – to you, not to myself. I have always seen the threat I pose to your reputation and your future, even if I could not find the strength to break it off with you. But you, Charlotte, always stronger than I, did.
You asked me once what point there was in being together since our future was already written. I wish now that I had said to you: it is not written. It is not easy, but it is not without any choice. I should have said, ‘Let us go, now, away from here! Together.’ I wish I had fought harder for you.
Yours, always,
RF