Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 (25 page)

Saturday 1 July 1815

It has been days since I last wrote anything in this book. Partly because I have scarcely had a free moment. But I think it is partly also because I have not wanted to.

Edward is alive--and getting stronger every day. Even Mr. Powell the surgeon proclaims him officially out of danger now.

But he is blind. His eyes are open and undamaged. And yet he can't see anything at all. Which is an occasional side effect of a blow to the head, according to Mr. Powell.

Mr. Powell said a great many other things, too, that when condensed meant that he has no real idea why Edward is blind and can do nothing at all to help.

But what he cannot say is whether Edward will ever recover his sight. His vision may clear. Or it may be gone forever.

For myself, I would not care if Edward lost both arms and both legs as well as the use of his eyes--just so long as he came back to me still alive. And the fact that he is still alive after he came so near to dying feels like a miracle, every moment of every day.

It's Edward I mind for.

Mrs. Metcalfe--meaning well, of course, and trying to comfort me--said, "Never fear, your young man will bear it--as we all bear what we have to in this world. As my granddaughter's husband bears the loss of his arm."

She
did
mean well. It is not her fault that right now, all those sorts of statements make me want to scream or smash something.

Sergeant Kelly has had to return to his regiment now that his arm is healed. He was grieved, of course, over Edward's condition. But he clasped my hand before he left and said, "The colonel's alive. That's the main thing."

And when I asked what I ought to do for Edward, he considered and then said, "He'll need time. Don't push him. Just be there when he's ready to let you help him find his way."

Sergeant Kelly promised to write to me. Or rather, he promised that he would find someone to write for him, since he does not read or write himself. And I said that I would write him letters that he could find someone else to read. I miss him--more than I would have believed, considering how short our acquaintance was.

But he was so confident that I could help Edward. And I could desperately use that confidence right now.

The first time Edward woke--really woke enough to speak and to be aware of his surroundings--was the afternoon after he had half-woken for that very first time. I had my back turned to the bed, straightening up the room. And Edward suddenly said, "Georgiana." The first word he had spoken since we carried him into the house.

My heart leapt and I whirled around and took Edward's hand. "I'm here. I'm right here."

And Edward's hand squeezed mine and he let out a breath and said, his voice raspy and hoarse with disuse, "You're really here? I thought ... I thought I must have only dreamed you."

And then I felt his muscles tense and his head turned against the pillow. He said, voice tightening, "But I can't see you. Why can't I see? Everything's dark."

But ever since that first moment of panic, Edward has been so stoically accepting. He faces each day with a kind of battle-hardened calm, and he has not complained or been impatient or angry even once. He is able to sit up, now, and to stay awake for longer and longer periods. And he asks to hear everything I or the other soldiers can tell him about the outcome of the battle. He only remembers the beginning of the fighting, and nothing at all about how he was hurt.

He drinks the broth and the milk that the surgeon prescribed with apparent grim determination to regain his strength. But he never speaks of how he is feeling or whether his head aches--though I know from watching his face that it must.

And I know--I can feel it twisting inside me like blades all the time I am with him--how much he must hate being blind and helpless. Even if he never lets himself speak of it.

Save for that first moment, though, he has not asked for me, either. He allows me to sit with him, and he will answer when I speak to him--perfectly calm, pleasant answers. And sometimes when he is sleeping, he will toss and turn restlessly, and only settle when I take his hand or touch his cheek.

But he never asks for me when I am not there.

Sunday 2 July 1815

Today I went downstairs for almost the first time in the last three days. I spent a short while this morning sitting with Edward. Helping him to eat his breakfast. Which I know he absolutely hates. Though the only sign of it is the play of muscle along his jaw when I have to put the spoon into his hand and guide it to what's on the plate.

Soon after he finished eating he told me he wanted to sleep awhile.

"Do you need me to--" I started to say, but Edward interrupted.

"No. I can at least manage to sleep all by myself." His voice was rough, clipped. But then he drew in a slow breath and groped for my hand. I moved it closer, and he took it, fingers closing around mine. "I'm sorry. I'm just ... tired. I couldn't sleep last night."

The flash of anger had gone, and his lean face was set in a look of pain and sadness both. His dark eyes--blank and sightless, now--stared ahead without seeing anything at all.

My heart twisted up tightly and I said, "I could stay if you like. I don't have to say anything."

But Edward shook his head, his expression flattening and hardening once again. "No. I--I think I'm better off on my own for a little while."

I left him. I didn't--I still don't--know what else to do.

Downstairs, I found that nearly all the wounded men we had been caring for are gone. Those who are able to travel are being sent back to England. Harriet and Colonel Forster had gone out to walk in the
Parc
--Colonel Forster is well enough to go outdoors and take a little exercise now--and Mrs. Metcalfe was alone with the three injured men who are left.

She was spoon-feeding gruel to a fair-haired boy who was shot through the abdomen, but miraculously seems to be recovering from the wound. I asked whether I might do anything to help. And Mrs. Metcalfe slid the last spoonful into the boy's mouth, then got up and crossed the room to me. "I think we are coping tolerably well, thank you," she said. "How is your young man this morning?"

"Edward is ... he's fine," I said.

Mrs. Metcalfe gave me a keen look. But thankfully she did not ask anything else. Instead she lowered her voice and said, "You could see if you can get a word out of our officer friend over there." She nodded to the corner, where the dark-haired officer was lying staring straight up at the ceiling. His face was unshaven, stubbled with several days' worth of beard. But someone--Mrs. Metcalfe, I suppose--had at least managed to get him into clean shirt and trousers. The empty right leg of the trousers was pinned just above the knee.

"He's not dying." Mrs. Metcalfe kept her voice to the same near-soundless murmur. "Not unless he manages to starve himself to death. He will barely touch a bite of food. And I have not managed to get him to say two words to me. Not even to tell me his name." Her gaze travelled to the nameless man and she shook her head. "He has been like that ever since he woke up in his right mind enough to realise that his leg was gone. Just lies there, staring at the ceiling all day."

I felt dread curling in the pit of my stomach as I crossed the room. If I have no idea what to do for Edward, I felt still more inadequate to try to help this man. But anything was better than going back upstairs. Where Edward was either asleep, or would pretend to be as soon as I came into the room. So I knelt down by the nameless officer's mattress and said, "Good morning."

He did not answer or even turn to look at me, but instead stared straight up, his gaze almost as blank as Edward's. A part of me--the selfish, cowardly part--wanted to give up right then and there and leave him to himself and whatever dark thoughts were lurking behind his eyes. I am glad we have been able to care for as many wounded men as we have these last weeks. But just at that moment I was utterly sick of illness and sadness and the grim shadow of war and death.

I stayed where I was, though, and said, "Is there a name I can call you by?"

There was a long moment's silence when I thought that he was simply going to ignore that question, as well. But then his head turned on the pallet and his eyes, golden hazel-brown, glared into mine. "Why?" His voice sounded hoarse and creaking, but thick with a kind of contained fury all the same. "Do you want to read me a sermon like the priest who came in here did? Tell me I should bear my wounds like a Christian and give thanks to God for sparing my life, even at the cost of my leg?"

I held very still. At least he had spoken to me. That felt like a victory of a kind. "No," I said. "I was going to ask you whether you would like milk or sugar in your tea."

The man glared at me a moment more. But then a slow, unwilling smile started to twitch at the corners of his mouth--though I saw him try to fight it. Now that the gauntness and pallor of illness have gone, it is clear he's a very handsome man. His hair is very dark, and falls across his brow, and his features are lean and a little hawk-like. That was what he made me think of, lying there with his angry, hazel-gold eyes: a tethered hawk, furious at being restrained.

He was silent again. And then he said, "Neither. Thank you."

He looked away from me again, and I could feel that I was losing him. So I said, quickly, "Is there anyone you would like to write to? Anyone you want to contact to let them know that you are out of danger and alive? I can find you paper and pen--or write the letter for you, if you would like."

"No." His answer came so quickly it was spoken nearly on top of my last words.

"There must be someone--some family waiting for you back in England," I said. "Someone who will wish to know that you are safe."

The man's jaw hardened. "I told you--there's no one."

"Still." I am not sure what kept me from giving up and walking away. I think part of it was that he was on the verge of making me lose my temper. Which is not a very creditable reason, perhaps. But I am glad that I pressed on. "You ought to give me your name, at least," I said. "You're an officer. A captain by your uniform, isn't that right? You must have men--fellow soldiers--who will be asking all over the city for you, wanting to know what has become of you."

The man started to shake his head, but I stopped him, catching hold of his hand. "You're thinking right now that I know nothing about you--that I can't possibly know what you have faced or seen or what you're feeling now. And you are right. I don't. But I
do
know about the bonds men form while fighting a war. I know that fellow soldiers are willing to die for each other, if need be."

I was thinking of Sergeant Kelly and his search for Edward. And of the other soldiers I have seen--many of them gravely hurt themselves, but somehow summoning the strength to drag or carry their mortally injured fellows back to Brussels from the fields of battle at Waterloo.

I kept my hand on the nameless man's, holding his gaze. "Somewhere out there in the city are the men who were willing to die for
you
in battle. They must be searching for you, wondering whether they failed in their duty to you, since you've vanished without a trace. Your life is your own, and you can do with it as you chose from now on. But you can at least ease their minds."

Something--pain and anger both, I think--flickered at the back of the man's hazel-gold gaze. But then he let out his breath in apparent defeat and closed his eyes. "It's Tomalin," he said. His voice was quiet and suddenly more tired-sounding than angry. "Lord Giles Tomalin."

At the time, the name struck a vague chord of familiarity in my mind. But I was too much focused on the victory of having got him to tell it to me to sort out where I had heard it before. It was only when I went upstairs to my room that it struck me. Lord Giles Tomalin--that was the man who was once secretly involved with Ruth Granger, the man I met once when I was eight.

Of all the tens of thousands of men in the British army, I have somehow stumbled on the man Ruth once loved.

The question is--do I tell him that I have met him before? Do I tell him that I know about him and Ruth?

Monday 3 July, 1815

You would think that these last weeks would have completely cured me of any last lingering vestiges of romanticism. But apparently I have not yet been cured after all.

I lay awake last night, thinking about Giles Tomalin and Ruth. When I wasn't listening to Edward pacing up and down--but never coming to my door or asking for me--in the bedroom across the hall.

Now that Edward does not need care at night, I have taken over what used to be Harriet's dressing room for my own bedchamber.

I finally decided that I ought to tell Lord Tomalin the truth. It felt dishonest not to. And besides, I suppose--this is where the romantic illusions come in--that it seemed to me that there ought to be a
reason
that he'd been carried here, to the house where I was staying. A reason that Kitty and I had found that old letter of his.

So this morning I went downstairs and sat down beside his mattress in the sickroom and told him everything. I didn't say that I thought Ruth still loved him, of course--I might think it, but it is not for me to say when Ruth has never said it herself. But I did tell him about Ruth's illness and her recovery. And that she has never married anyone else.

Of how she is in Antwerp, even now.

I don't know what I was expecting. That Lord Tomalin would determinedly push his blankets back and say, his eyes kindling with sudden fire,
Now I have a reason to go on living
?

I suppose if I am completely truthful, I must have been at least hoping for something like that.

What really happened was that his hawk's features settled into an expression even more stony and angry than before and he said, "She can congratulate herself on a lucky escape. If she'd married me, she'd be saddled with a cripple for a husband now."