Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
To say that the Field Marshal was angry was probably an understatement.
He was pale with fury, his jaw was clenched, his nostrils flared, and a vein throbbed visibly in his left temple.
But what Evie found most alarming was that expression in his eyes, so dark and terrible, and colder than the hardest steel.
She shrank in her chair.
“Y-your wife insisted on accompanying me, Your Excellency, together with the Countess L-Lindenstein. They were most insistent, it was impossible to talk them out of it.”
“Lindenstein’s wife, too! You have deliberately disobeyed orders, Schneider,” he said in an awful voice, and Schneider wilted like a tulip in the Sahara Desert.
He gave his aide-de-camp such a thorough dressing-down that even the highest officers paled and pulled out their handkerchiefs to dry their own sweating foreheads, relieved that they were not the object of His Excellency’s wrath.
A cold fury, hot as fever, rushed through Evie’s veins.
She had not seen her husband since their wedding day.
She had travelled nearly a week to be with him, braving the worst roads, the most terrible kind of weather, and the most badly sprung beds in the shabbiest of inns.
She was exhausted, hungry, and weepy, and so ridiculously relieved to finally see him alive and well, and not dead in a sea of blood.
Tears were springing into her eyes because that absurd sensation was unfurling in her chest again.
She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and kiss him senseless, but he was busy scolding his aide-de-camp, who looked increasingly as though he was about to burst into tears himself.
“Enough,” she said quietly, but it was sufficient to startle him into pausing his castigation.
“Schneider is not to be blamed because I did order him to take us along; he had no choice. And even if he had not taken us along, we would have stowed away somewhere in the luggage on the roof or in the trunks in the boot. We would have dressed up as boys and joined the next regiment on the way north. Would you have preferred that? I can think of at least another five different ways we could have managed to come here, none of them as safe and reliable as travelling with Schneider. So instead of taking him to task, be grateful that he did bring us, for we arrived safe and sound, when things could have taken a worse turn.”
The jaws of the officers dropped as they stared, in awe, at Evie, who had dared to talk back to their commander in this extraordinarily saucy way.
“Precisely,” he said in a clipped voice. “It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened, especially in times like these. Have you no sense at all, Evie?”
“No, I do not.” She lifted her jaw mulishly.
“I have neither sense, nor patience, nor understanding for any of this,” she waved at the map on the table, and her overall surroundings, “this nonsense that is currently happening, and I am very, very angry. Oh! You have no idea how angry I am.” She looked around for something, anything to get her hands on, and since there was, alas, no vase conveniently within her reach she could hurl at him, she clenched her hands into fists, so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
She said it with such force that even Georg paused, and the officers took a cautionary step back, so that the two faced each other in the middle of the room.
“What on earth do you have to be so angry about?” he asked, curiosity lacing his voice.
“This is beyond the pale. You are truly asking me that, you blockhead?”
Schneider coughed into his fist and retreated strategically, clearly overwhelmed with relief that he was no longer the object of Hartenberg’s attention.
“Indeed, I am.”
“After everything that has happened, or not happened? We were married, in case you have forgotten that tiny detail.” She took a threatening step forward.
“I did not.”
“We had a wedding breakfast.” Another step. Georg held his ground.
“So we did.” That came out after a pause.
“We were supposed to leave for our honeymoon.” She growled and tapped a finger against his chest, between two of his medals.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes. Well. I believe I see now where this is heading.”
“You barely had the decency to bid me goodbye before you left.” She tapped her finger against his chest with every word. “Just like that.”
Some elderly officers tutted and shook their heads at their superior’s grave error.
Georg rubbed his forehead. “In case it has escaped you, I believe something rather unanticipated happened which made it necessary to postpone, err, our honeymoon.”
Evie’s hands trembled at her sides. “I don’t care! Nothing and no one in this world, no Bonaparte, no war, no event, however momentous, is as important as our wedding night!”
There, it was said.
Her words rang in the air and settled into the stunned silence that followed.
A monocle fell, Schneider nearly dropped to his knees, and more than one officer’s mouth fell open.
A muscle jumped in Hartenberg’s cheek.
Then, with a disquieting glint in his eyes, he bent forward and scooped Evie into his arms.
She squealed.
“If you will excuse me, gentlemen, it appears my wife and I have some unfinished business to see to.” And with those words he swept her out of the room.
“It was a good idea you came after all,” Georg finally admitted, a wonderful eternity later, an eternity that had included some more arguing, and tears, but also sweet whispers, bashful laughter, and a good deal else besides.
“Just a good idea?” Evie snuggled into his shoulder.
“A most excellent idea.” He kissed her eyes, her nose and finally, her mouth. “The best idea of the century. My brave and brilliant wife.”
Evie smothered a yawn. “I told you so.”
He rested his head on hers.
“Georg?”
“Hmm?”
“Can’t you just postpone this stupid war?”
“By all means. Let us cancel it altogether. Do you think sending Napoleon a missive will suffice? If I send it by special courier, he should receive it by tomorrow morning.”
She pondered it as though taking his words seriously. With a sigh, she shook her head. “It might not be enough.”
“I fear you are right. Perhaps we will just send in our secret weapon.”
“What is that?”
He turned to his side and propped his head on his hand as he regarded her lovingly. “You. He will take one glance at you and surrender. No one stands a chance against you, after all.”
Evie snorted. “It is worth a try. I am certain I could devise more creative ways to send that terrible man to where he belongs.”
“Hm.” He pressed a kiss on her head. “It is tempting, but I prefer to keep you all to myself.”
Evie wove her fingers through his. “You won’t get hurt though, will you?
I don’t want a husband with holes shot through him.
” She looked at him with deeply troubled eyes.
“I have had nightmares, you know. In Vienna. I would wake up at night, all alone in that big house. And I dreamt of the war, and that you—that you—” Tears filled her eyes.
He drew her to him and held her tight. “I have every intention of coming back to you, Evie. In one piece.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Evie?”
“Hm?”
“This isn’t easy for me to say.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat. Then, after a few false starts, he mumbled something into her hair.
A beautiful smile lit up Evie’s face. “What did you say? I could not make out a single word. Say it again, louder.”
“Making me say it twice, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Three, four, five times and a hundred times more. My ears aren’t the best, you know, maybe I am growing old. So you must repeat it again, and loudly, and slowly, so I can clearly hear.”
“I do love you, Evie,” he finally said gruffly.
Evie stared at him for a long time. “I thought you did not believe in love.”
“It took me a while to admit it to myself.” He cleared his throat.
“Since when? Wolfsthal Castle? The Embassy ball? Or…ooh…can it be?”
“I admit it. That very moment you exited that carriage at the inn.”
She squealed. “Love at first sight! How absolutely splendid! Back then, you would have made the earth revolve the other way rather than admit it was possible.”
“Another thing I was dreadfully wrong about, evidently.”
“Yes,” Evie said, snuggling into him, blissfully happy. “Dreadfully wrong.”
He drew her to him and kissed her deeply.
A wonderful eternity later, Evie whispered, “Georg?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you too.”
There was silence.
Then, gruffly, “I know.”