Chapter 4
EVELYN BLACKWELL
His . . . wife?
He was married?
A strangled laugh rose from my throat and I dropped my head in my hands.
The man looked to be about thirty, perhaps even several years past it.
Of course, he was married. Most men were married by then, weren’t they?
There was no reason I should have assumed he didn’t have a wife, yet she was a surprise to me.
Did I think simply because I’d undressed a man he would be unattached? Ridiculous.
I dropped from my knees to a sitting position. It was better he was married, certainly. It wasn’t good to be stuck in this situation with any man. But if that man was married and obviously distressed about reaching his wife, our situation was safer, wasn’t it?
I snorted. His wife might disagree.
I stood and took several steps away from him, then curled up in a sitting position on the other side of the fire.
When the fire burned low, I added another log and then went back to my side of the fireplace.
The man, whose name I still did not have, continued to shiver and mumble and sometimes flail about.
Several times I had to rewrap my dressing gown over him.
And then, perhaps an hour after he arrived, he just . . . stopped.
He went still. Deathly still.
My heart did the same. For the second time that night, I creeped carefully near him and placed my hand upon his chest. I held my breath and only released it when I once again felt the rise and fall of his breathing.
He was still alive. I hadn’t managed to kill him yet.
I heaved a shaky sigh of relief and sat down on the ground next to him.
His skin had a strange sheen on it, and even though his shivering had stopped, he looked, if possible, even worse than he had when he crashed into the croft.
My eyes went to his chest again, watching for each rise and fall. He had a wife he was trying to get to, and I didn’t even know her name. I would have no way of contacting her if he died. I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.
“Listen to me,” I said, my tone as commanding as it had been when I’d told him to march. “You aren’t going to make that wife of yours a widow. Not tonight.”
He didn’t move.
He wasn’t going to die. Not if I could help it.
A few moments later, he jerked, one of his hands pushing out from underneath the dressing gown.
I reached for it to tuck it back underneath, bracing myself for the feverish heat of his skin, but his hand was cold.
As hot and stiff with shaking as he had been before, now he was only clammy and listless. I hurriedly covered him back up.
It couldn’t be a good sign, could it? That he was so cold now?
I continued my vigil, watching every breath, but each one seemed to come a bit quicker. After what seemed like hours but must have only been a few minutes, he started speaking.
But not as he’d been speaking before. He made no sense—it was all mumbling and halting, incoherent exclamations. And then the thrashing began.
He threw off my dressing gown and sat up.
His eyes found mine and widened, not in recognition of our inappropriate situation, but as if I were an enemy who’d come too close to him in battle.
“Hold the line,” he said with frantic distress.
He put both of his hands behind his back and crawled crab-like away from me, never taking his eyes off of mine.
What should I do? He was icy cold, and he’d thrown off the only dry piece of clothing he had.
He’d gone to the far side of the croft where the light was dimmest and the floor was damp.
His eyes were wild, darting about the room and searching for heaven knows what.
I picked up my gown and walked slowly and carefully toward him.
“You need to put this on,” I said softly, as if I were talking to a scared kitten.
He blinked at my words, but didn’t respond.
“It is cold, and you aren’t wearing anything but damp breeches. You need to put this on and come back to the fire.”
For a moment I thought I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes, but then it was gone and he crawled away from me again.
I muttered under my breath. How could the man be so stubborn?
I strode back toward the fire. He was still alert, as if not aware of who or where he was.
Perhaps he would follow me if I didn’t try so hard to force him.
If nothing else, perhaps the glow of the fire would beckon him.
Only a few steps after I turned from him, I heard a gasp. I spun around. His eyes were wide but his face a mask of despair. “Don’t leave me.” His voice cracked and the glazed look returned to his eyes.
“I’m not leaving you. Come to the fire.”
He didn’t move.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Come to the fire, now,” I ordered.
His shoulders drooped and he started to crawl toward me. I stood stock-still, wishing I could go to him and help him stand, but if I did, he would most likely run from me again.
When he was close enough I could have thrown my dressing gown over him, I knelt and looked him in the eye. “You need to wear this. It is too cold. You are too cold.”
He raised himself to a kneeling position, lifted a hand to my cheek and squinted his eyes as if he were trying to place me. “May?” he asked with an almost reverent hush.
His words had been so irregular and mumbled that one word shouldn’t have meant anything. But I knew immediately he was not asking permission to do something—he was speaking a woman’s name. His wife’s name.
“No,” I said softly. “I’m not your May.”
I ever so slowly inched the green velvet over his shoulders. He stiffened in shock at the touch of my fingers upon his skin but then tucked himself into it and sank down to the ground.
I sighed. Finally, perhaps he would settle again.
But the dressing gown was thrown off only a few moments later.
He shouted orders, pleaded for life, and murmured over and over about not leaving anyone behind. He was, as I’d guessed earlier, a soldier returning home after Napoleon's defeat.
Tears pricked my eyes. How often had Mama and I prayed for Papa’s safe return?
More times than I could count. No happiness could compare to the moments we saw his horse galloping up to our front door.
Somewhere along this road a woman was waiting at a window for this man. He had to make it back to her.
I resorted to begging and pleading and eventually settled into commanding him to put the dressing gown back on. He did, but once again, only for several minutes, and then he began to thrash and move about the room again.
Time passed slowly, and with each bout of delirium he weakened. I didn’t know how much longer either of us could keep up with this strange dance.
The seventh or eighth time he kicked my gown away, I approached him carefully, waiting for him to scramble away again, but this time he didn’t. He dropped down to the floor a good five feet from the fire and stilled.
His breathing stopped. I’d never stopped watching his chest whenever he was still, and it simply stopped.
I dashed over to him and put a hand to his cheek. It was hot again—hot enough to make me hiss. My touch must have jolted him for he took two gasping breaths and then stopped breathing again.
I shook him. Two more gasping breaths.
He turned to me. “I’m sorry . . . ” he choked out. His hand lifted only an inch or two off the ground, as if he wanted to touch my cheek again but he was too weak. “I miss you.”
Tears crept into my eyes. Papa had thought me as strong as any of his men, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t simply sit here and watch this man die alone and in despair.
I reached for his hand and the moment I wrapped mine in his, his breathing stopped again. “I’m here,” I said softly. “You made it.”
Those haunted eyes of his caught mine just as he sucked in two rasping breaths again. Those were not the breaths of a man who was going to make it through the night. His eyebrows furrowed. “You came back?”
I pulled my lips into my mouth to stop a jerking sob. “Yes,” I murmured in assent.
His frantic searching stopped and even though his breathing didn’t improve at least he seemed to settle. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I shifted closer and pulled his head off of the cold ground and rested it on my right leg.
His long limbs stretched out to my side.
When I was sick, Mama would hold my head in her lap and stroke my hair.
There was no better comfort in my childhood than that.
His breath caught and released and then stopped again just as it had so many other times.
I pushed the hair back from his head. “You are going to be alright,” I lied, running my hands through the tangles.
I hummed a low lullaby, the one Mama used to hum to me.
His eyes followed me in confusion as if he were trying to place exactly where I’d come from.
They weren’t clear, though. He was still in another world I couldn’t quite see.
“You made it home. Now rest. Rest so you can get better.”
His eyes fluttered closed and he stilled.
I stilled with him, my fingers anchored at the nape of his neck.
This time, something deep inside me whispered that his chest wouldn’t move again.
He was too cold, his face too motionless.
I counted the seconds and there were too many of them.
I stopped breathing, waiting silently for any sign of movement. Fifteen, sixteen . . .
Twenty counts in, he gasped for air.
I shuddered and a wracking sob made it past my throat.
I couldn’t contain my tears any longer. I dropped my head until it was almost resting on his.
I didn’t want to watch this hearty young man die in my arms. I wanted him to live, I wanted his May to greet him in their doorway and for his children, if he had any, to gather around his knees and welcome him home.
I let my tears fall. He was too far gone to notice, and at least with my vision blurred I could no longer look to the side and see clearly enough to watch his chest. I was so tired and heartsore and I simply couldn’t continue on with a brave face any longer.
Hot fingers touched my cheek and I opened my eyes to find his face much closer to mine. He’d lifted his head off of my lap. “Don’t cry.”
His eyes were so intense, so focused, I thought for a moment he was truly speaking to me, but he wasn’t, of course. He was still delirious. I tried to lift my head away from him, but I was so exhausted from fighting him all night my efforts were weak. I had no fight left in me.
His free hand slid up my arm, along my shoulder and onto my other cheek, cupping my face with such tenderness, I froze.
No part of him was thinking of me. He had no idea who I was, even though I had garnered a few things from him based on his ramblings.
He was a soldier, he’d been gone from his family, and he wanted nothing more than to reunite with his long-suffering and patient wife, May.
He was looking at me, but based on the tenderness in his eyes, he was seeing her.
And perhaps I could be her for a moment—believe that this man had fought wars and crossed countries in order to hold my face in his hands like this.
It was a thought born of exhaustion and heartbreak and the kind of yearning to belong to someone I only entertained when I was particularly scared or lonely.
And so when he pulled my face down to his and kissed me, I wasn’t Evelyn, I was May, and I allowed myself the small comfort of his touch.
I pretended this was a kiss of reunion, not one of loss.
But I was delusional. I didn’t even know this man’s name, I’d never been kissed before, and I certainly had never expected my first kiss to be alone in a broken-down shepherd’s croft with a dying, married man.
I was not this man’s wife. I wasn’t any man’s wife, a fact I’d been completely content with before I’d seen the way this man longed for his.
I pulled gently away and he didn’t fight me. He didn’t have the strength for it. Both of his hands fell to his side and his head landed once again in my lap.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, his speech slurred. “For staying. For not leaving.”
His words were too similar to something he could have said to me, about this night, and I shook my head trying to reorient myself to who I was. “I won’t leave you.”
I steeled myself and returned my fingers to his hair. If he wanted to believe I was his wife while he took his last breaths, that was something I could do for him. I would simply comfort him in ways that wouldn’t require any more kissing.
“I’m here. Rest now.” I kept my back straight, my face far from his. “I’ll stay with you.”
He shuddered and took one of the short, gasping breaths that echoed of dying. A tear escaped one of his eyes. He never reached for me again. He settled deeper into a sleep that I wasn’t certain would cure him.
I didn’t want this soldier to die, but I no longer wished he hadn’t stumbled into the croft. If he was going to die tonight, at least he wouldn’t be alone. Each time I thought he’d breathed his last breath, I reminded him that I was here and he would continue on.
Perhaps Papa was right. I was stronger than I thought.