Chapter 8 #2
Henry almost said yes because it would preserve an ordinary arrangement.
A valet assisting an injured man required no explanation.
A wife remaining in her husband’s private rooms might require several, especially when separate bedrooms had been prepared and observed from the first night of their marriage.
He turned to Margaret. “Do you wish to stay?”
Her gaze sharpened. “That is not the same as asking whether you want me to.”
“No.”
The direct question cost more than the pain had. “I want you to stay.”
“As trustee?”
“No.”
“As the person who discovered you could not remove a coat?”
“No.” Henry kept his voice level, though the answer left him feeling less defended than the open seam had done. “I want your company.”
Margaret looked toward the valet. “I shall ring if His Grace requires further assistance.”
The valet bowed. “The bell is beside the bed, Your Grace. Her Grace knows where the fresh linen is kept.”
He took the scissors and medicine case but left the camphor, water, and used cloths. At the dressing-room door, he paused.
“The laudanum should begin to act within half an hour. If the breathing changes, the pain increases, or Your Grace becomes difficult to wake, send for me and Dr. Langley.”
Margaret nodded. “I understand.”
The door closed behind him.
Silence entered differently after a servant left. It did not create privacy by itself. It revealed that the people remaining had chosen not to end it.
Henry looked toward Margaret. “You may still go.”
“I know.”
“You owe me no attendance because you ordered the coat cut.”
“I know that also.”
“The assembly succeeded.”
“I have the figures.”
“You need not stay to discuss them.”
Margaret crossed to the dressing-room table and moved the laudanum bottle farther from the water, though the valet had already stoppered it. “I am not staying to discuss subscriptions.”
The knowledge settled low in Henry’s body, distinct from the shoulder’s pain and no less capable of altering judgment.
He stood carefully.
Margaret did not move to assist until he raised his left hand. Then she offered her forearm rather than reaching for his injured side. He used it only to steady the turn into the bedchamber.
The room was warmer than the dressing room, though the fire had burned low. Hot linen and camphor followed them through the open door. The bed curtains had been tied back, and one lamp stood upon the table beside the water glass and bell.
Henry sat upon the edge of the mattress. His knee had stiffened during the treatment, but the shoulder made lowering himself the greater difficulty. Margaret remained near until his weight settled, then moved the straight chair from the dressing room and placed it opposite him.
She sat.
The distance between them was less than the width of the inspection table at Rothbury House and greater than the space behind the musicians’ screen. Henry found it more exposing than either.
Margaret folded her hands in her lap. “Does the shoulder often seize so completely?”
“Less often than it did.”
“That answer contains no frequency.”
“Twice this year before tonight. More frequently last winter.”
“What causes it?”
“Cold. Strain. Repetition. Occasionally nothing I can identify.”
“The dance?”
“The dance contributed.”
“The bow afterward?”
“Yes.”
“The hours standing before it?”
“Yes.”
She considered the list. “You knew before the final guests left.”
“I knew it was tightening.”
“And decided to wait.”
“I believed it would ease.”
Margaret’s expression remained calm. “Do you still believe information improves when concealed?”
“No.”
“Good.”
The rebuke should have angered him. Instead, Henry experienced the obscure comfort of being corrected by someone who had remained after the immediate usefulness of correction ended.
Margaret looked at his right shoulder. “Was the wound made at Waterloo?”
“Yes.”
“You need not tell me.”
“I know.”
She waited.
The choice to speak remained his because she did not fill the room with encouragement.
Henry set his left hand beside him upon the coverlet.
“We had been ordered to reform behind the ridge late in the day. The ground between us and the new position had been crossed too often by cavalry and guns. Horses were down in the lane, and the hedges forced the remaining riders into a narrow passage.”
Margaret did not interrupt. Her attention stayed upon his face rather than the scar hidden beneath his shirt.
“Four of my men had been unhorsed behind us,” he continued. “One could walk. One was pinned beneath his horse. Two were farther along the hedge where the ground dipped and the firing continued.”
“You went back.”
“With three riders. I believed we could retrieve them before the next advance reached the lane.”
“Could you?”
“One.”
The word entered the room without ornament.
Henry looked toward the dying fire. “We lifted a cornet onto another man’s saddle. The pinned trooper could not be freed quickly. His horse had fallen across his thigh, and the saddle was caught beneath the hedge roots. While we were cutting the tack, a ball crossed the upper shoulder.”
Margaret’s eyes moved once toward the scar and back.
“I could still use the arm,” Henry said. “Not well, but enough to remain mounted. The firing came nearer. Another horse went down beside us. I ordered the riders away.”
“What of the pinned man?”
“We left him.”
“And the two beyond the hedge?”
“We left them also.”
The remembered lane contained no grandeur. It held mud, leather, frightened horses, and a trooper insisting through clenched teeth that Henry should take the others first. Henry had spent years removing the sound of that voice from every account of the wound.
Margaret asked, “Were they found?”
“One was dead when infantry reached the lane. The pinned trooper lived until the following morning. The fourth man was taken to a French dressing station and survived. He wrote to me once after returning to England.”
“What did he say?”
“That I had made the correct decision.”
Henry had preserved the letter and distrusted it from the day it arrived.
Margaret’s gaze did not soften into absolution. “Did he know the others were lost?”
“Yes.”
“Then he was entitled to his judgment.”
“He was entitled to it. I was not obliged to believe it.”
“No.”
The answer relieved him because she did not argue him toward forgiveness he had not asked for.
Henry adjusted his right forearm upon his thigh. The laudanum had begun to take the sharpest edge from the pain. Warmth spread beneath the camphor, and the bedchamber lamp seemed slightly farther away than before.
“I had ordered them to remain in formation,” he said. “Then I broke my own order to return. I lost men in both decisions.”
“You might have lost more in either.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know which choice would have saved everyone?”
“No.”
“Then you remember the cost, not an answer that never existed.”
Henry looked at her. “You make mercy sound severe.”
“Mercy that requires a false account is too expensive.”
The sentence belonged to the woman who had refused to call Croft’s selected figures an honest schedule. It did not erase the lane. It restored its boundaries.
Henry’s shoulder shifted with a small involuntary spasm. Margaret half rose, then stopped herself.
“Do you want the hot linen again?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Water?”
“Yes.”
She poured without placing the glass in his hand until he held out the left. He drank slowly. The laudanum’s bitterness had faded, but the water carried a faint taste of metal from the ewer.
Margaret returned to the chair. “My husband was ill for six weeks during our second year of marriage.”
Henry lowered the glass. She had spoken of the man before, but chiefly through money, decisions, and the boundaries his admiration had consumed.
“What illness?” Henry asked.
“A fever contracted while travelling with the regiment. He recovered. Three other men did not.”
“You nursed him.”
“I organized his nursing. The surgeon came when he could. An orderly sat nights until the orderly fell ill, and then I sat nights because no one else remained.”
Henry heard the distinction. She had not spent six weeks in devotional attendance. She had arranged food, medicine, linen, and watches because the work required performance.
“When he recovered,” Margaret said, “he thanked me repeatedly. Before other officers, he called me the reason he lived. In private, the gratitude acquired terms.”
Henry’s hand tightened around the water glass. “What terms?”
“He believed my care proved a depth of feeling that should make refusal impossible. If I was tired, he reminded me how grateful he was. If I asked for solitude, he said illness had taught him how little time happiness might have. When he wanted my labor, my agreement, or my body, gratitude became the account from which he expected to draw.”
The fire gave a soft fall as one coal broke apart.
Margaret continued without looking away. “He did not force me by strength. He made refusal evidence that I had not meant the tenderness he praised. After a time, I could not tell whether kindness belonged to me once I had given it.”
Anger moved through Henry with enough force to sharpen the room despite the drug. He restrained the right shoulder before the reaction tightened it again.
“He was wrong,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You owed him nothing for surviving.”
“I owed the marriage certain duties according to law and custom. He preferred to call them affection, because affection sounds ungenerous when it refuses.”
Henry looked at the water in his glass. “And tonight?”
“Tonight I directed a coat to be cut because leaving it upon you would have caused harm.”
“You stayed because I asked.”
“I stayed because I chose to answer yes.”
“The choice may change.”
“It may.”
He set the glass upon the bedside table. “Care does not purchase intimacy.”
“No.”
“Marriage does not purchase it.”
“No.”
“A title does not improve the bargain.”
Margaret’s mouth curved slightly. “A title rarely improves arithmetic.”