That Kind of Woman (22 page)

He passed her on the stairs, and Emma whispered a naughty word under her breath. He was impossible, really!

*

Later that evening, just before dinner, Andrew laid a hand on his daughter’s cool brow. “I think a little dinner would be just the thing for you. You’re not warm. Probably just overexerted yourself with your music.”

Emma lay limply on her pillow, her face turned away. “No,” she ventured weakly, “music never makes me so tired. I feel as though I couldn’t eat a bite and keep it down.”

“I’ll have my meal sent up here and keep you company.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as if in pain. “Oh, Papa, even the thought of smelling food…” She swallowed hard and seemed on the verge of gagging.

Andrew stood up and looked down at her. He had to smile. The child wasn’t even remotely ill, but she was doing a damned fine job of acting like it. It was quite admirable, actually, that she was willing to go hungry to assure him time alone with Miranda. “I’ll have Mrs. Applebee send up bread and broth, shall I?”

Emma licked her lips. “Perhaps a bit.”

“It’s Tuesday, baking day; the bread should be quite soft and fresh.”

She swallowed with no sign of distress. “I might be able to eat that.”

“Alas, you’ll miss the flummery for dessert.”

He detected a subtle sigh of resignation. “Too sweet for the way I’m feeling.”

His grin spread. “Of course. Well then. Get some rest.”

“Yes, Papa.”

He left her room and headed to the informal dining room without a care. Miranda wasn’t the only one who could detect when Emma was up to a charade. He joined Miranda at one end of the table, holding her chair for her before taking his own.

“Where is Emma?” Miranda asked as the servants stepped forward to fill plates and wineglasses.

“Upstairs. She’s feeling a bit queasy.”

Worry made little lines between her brows. “Is it serious?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Should one of us be with her?”

Andrew glanced around at the people who attended them, then back at Miranda. Her eyes followed his, and she didn’t say anything more until most of them had withdrawn and the two who remained had retreated to the far end of the room.

Andrew leaned forward and whispered. “It is a shame that Emma was born to the
ton
. She will miss her calling in the theatre.”

This bit of news didn’t seem to make Miranda feel any better. If anything, she only looked more worried. “She is malingering?”

“Hmm. I rather imagine that you and I, here, relatively alone, is just what she had in mind.”

“Andrew, didn’t you tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

She glanced over to the servants. “Leave us,” she commanded. As soon as they were gone, she continued. “Did you not tell Emma that there is nothing between us?”

“My private life is none of her concern.”

“She
is
your private life. You mustn’t allow her to go on believing that we might…”

“She knows we cannot marry.”

“So you told her that much, at least.”

“Henry did.”

Miranda sighed. “Henry. Well, that’s a good sign.”

“Is it?”

“I was worried about him. It’s just as well that he should know the law. But if he’s told Emma, then whatever is she about?”

“I do not think my daughter feels as adamantly as you that two people must be married.”

Miranda’s eyes widened in shock. “
What?
”

“After all, she spends every Christmas with your mother.”

Miranda set her fork firmly on her plate. “Lettie was right. I should go to London.”

Andrew reached out and took her hand, and she felt the electricity between them spring to life. He turned her hand over and rubbed his thumb over her palm, and it was only after several seconds of feeling entirely entranced by the sensation that she remembered where they were. Surely the servants would have to come back with the next course. She yanked her hand from his and nearly upset her wineglass.

Andrew moved the glass to the side. “The damage is done. Perhaps Emma knows more than she should, but she’s a sensible girl. She isn’t going to do something to jeopardize her own reputation or future because of anything that happens between you and me.”

“You don’t understand. She needs a
real
family.”

“And what is that? Is it more real if we never touch each other? Is it somehow better if we go on living just as we are? How? What’s the difference if we quietly give ourselves to each other except that I will no longer feel this unbearable emptiness when I look at you knowing I cannot have you.”

She stood, her food nearly untouched. “Please, do not do this to me.”

He stood, too, more out of habitual good manners than anything else. “Do what? Speak the truth?”

“I
hate
the truth, Andrew!” She no longer cared what the servants might overhear. “I hate it as you will never know! Every time I turn around, some nasty little truth rears its ugly head. But lies are no better! Because the stupid,
stupid
truth always comes out in the end! You may think you have a family, but the truth is no one else seems to think so. You may hope your parents love you, but the truth is they hardly know you’re there. You may believe you have found the right path, but the truth is that it’s a sham, too!”

She turned to leave, but Andrew reached across the table and grabbed her wrist in a grip that was insistent but not hard. “George loved you. That was real.”

She couldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes down and whispered. “Yes, he loved me.”

“He wanted this.”

And then she looked up. God, he was so like George, and yet nothing like him at all. “What?”

“Us. Together. He told me so.” He released her wrist.

Her throat constricted so tightly that she felt a stabbing pain. Her eyes burned, and the moment she blinked, tears coursed down both of her cheeks. “Yes, he would have.”

“He didn’t want you to be lonely.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted that for you, either. He wanted everyone to be as happy as he was.” For a moment, she thought of Reggie, on the Continent, all alone, and the tears came faster. “He tried so hard…to take care of me.”

“I would, too.”

A sloppy giggle escaped her, and she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her nose. “I do not think it would be quite the same.”

Andrew pressed his fingers to his eyes so that his own eyes could not tear as hers did. “No, of course not. I don’t mean to take his place.”

There it is again,
she thought.
The truth, hovering in all the dark corners.

“I think I’ll go home now. Tell Emma if she tries this again, I shall be forced to take all my meals there.”

Andrew cleared his throat and sniffed softly. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Whatever may be happening between us, you loved him.”

She smiled just a little. “Yes, I did.” That was the truth, if only half of it.

“I did, too.”

“I know. Good night.”

She left, and Andrew sat back down in front of his cold meal. He ate without tasting while the servants crept back in and quietly cleared the place across from his, their faces showing no sign that anything was amiss.

A good army officer knew when it was time to change strategies. He knew when to give the order to retreat because an advance was resulting in more losses than gains. To that end, Andrew called Emma into the library and told her in no uncertain terms that she was to cease and desist in any and all attempts to trap him and Miranda into being alone.

“But Papa, I would never—” she began.

“Emma, I am telling you this once and for all. We are respecting Miranda’s right to mourn her husband. He was a good man, the very finest. We are respecting her privacy and her preferences. Any failure to do so on your part will result in the immediate employment of a new governess.”

He doubted she was aware that she had snapped to attention. “Yes, Papa.”

Papa. She never called him “Father” anymore. The thought made him smile.

He stepped forward and took her small hands in his, enveloping them completely. “I do, however, give you my permission to do anything within your means to convince your aunt to give a concert with you as soon as possible. I, alone, may make a poor audience…”

“You, alone, shall make a perfect audience!” Emma’s blue eyes danced, and she skipped out of the room to seek her fellow performer.

And so the days fell into a routine not unlike the one that had been established before Henry and Lettie had left: meals together, morning rides, music lessons in the afternoon, and concerts in the evening. The only difference was that they had become an inseparable trio. While Andrew was careful never to be alone with Miranda, neither did he leave her alone with Emma. While Emma practiced with Miranda, he sat in the music room and worked on accounts or correspondence. He never touched Miranda, never spoke the words he wanted so to say to her, and tried with all his might to keep his heart out of his eyes.

And all the while, Miranda felt increasingly torn. More than once, she wished he would force himself on her, give her some excuse to slap his handsome face and storm off to her parents’. But he never did. Instead, he raced his daughter when they rode, and Miranda would drink in the sound of his rich, hearty laughter. He joked with her and Emma during meals. He read aloud in his deep voice, and it was almost tangible, like something warm and delicious melting against her skin. His gaze never wavered while she or Emma did the reading, as he gave them his rapt attention.

But the music was hardest of all. Emma played the piano, and Miranda stood before him, her violin tucked under her chin. The notes resonated sweetly through her, sent her body vibrating softly, and she felt as though she stood there naked, trembling with desire while he watched but never touched. It was maddening, excruciating, exquisite. And when she finished, he could never keep the hunger from his eyes, his intensity whetting her own carnal appetite.

In time, she knew that if he were to come to her some night, after the music between them, and knock softly on her door, nothing else would matter.

*

The first gray light of dawn tints the sky, and mist rolls across the green, green grass. Each blade springs from the earth filled with life and vitality, reaching up. Here and there, bright flowers in yellow, white, and purple nod their heads in gentle approval of their brethren.

But life is a fragile thing against thousands of thick-soled boots, boots that march in endless, perfectly straight rows. Gray wool gaiters encase fine, strong, young legs clothed in gray breeches; left knees, right knees, all rising and falling simultaneously to the sound of the drum. Around wool-covered ankles, the gossamer mists swirl and dissipate, absorbed into the coarse fabric. The tender blades of grass are crushed flat; the bright petals of flowers are ground out of existence. The boots march on.

Line after endless line of stalwart, scarlet backs remain straight and proud, despite the heavy black knapsacks with straps that cut into shoulders too young to bear the weight of war. None of those whose feet first touch the virgin meadow will leave alive. It is the duty of these brave, foolish, invincible young men to die for those behind them. Their nearly hairless bodies will absorb artillery for those who come after.

Their commander knows all of this, of course. It is he who has trained them to march to the drum. March, march, march…for God and country and glory.

None of which amounts to a pile of horseshit while the lead balls rip through their tender flesh and they scream out for their mamas.

But there is no time for this—wishing things were some other way. Sometimes there is simply no choice but to fight. Someone has to listen to the drum, take the bullets, or step over the bodies and keep on marching. Someone has to tell these boys about God and glory. Someone has to be willing to live with their deaths. This is something else the commander knows as the battle unfolds.

Acrid smoke sears his lungs. Bullets whistle through the air and raise the hairs on the nape of his neck. Cannons thunder while boys cry out and die. The flattened grass becomes mottled. The dirt beneath turns to mud made of earth and blood. Someone’s son has an arm, and then he doesn’t, and he goes down shrieking. Someone’s husband has a whole head, and then he doesn’t, and he doesn’t make a sound. Even if he had, no one would have heard as the gunfire drowns out the worst of the agony but increases the worst of the fear. No one
wants
to die.

And every rational thought yells, “Run, run, run!” But the cold, hard, unyielding voice of insanity says, “Stay, stay and fight, you bloody coward.” So the men stay. Most of them. The sane ones run—bloody cowards.

The commander grits his teeth, and madness locks the voice of reason in a cage deep inside his chest. The battlefield is no place for reason.
No one’s dying; this isn’t real,
the madness assures him. Then he slips in something that was once a man, and it’s more real than anything ever was before or has been since.

Andrew woke, his body bathed in sweat, his heart pounding, his throat clogged with pent-up cries of fear and revulsion. The dream was nothing new. It haunted him in his tent on foreign soil and then hopped into bed with him in his childhood home. Still, it left him gasping for breath.

Actually, this was among the kindest of his nocturnal phantasms. In this version, the men were faceless, anonymous. Sometimes they were his friends or boys he had come to like and admire, men whose deaths he had actually witnessed. Sometimes they were Henry, every last one of them. Inexplicably, sometimes their tall, round hats would topple from their heads as they fell, and Emma’s shining blond hair tumbled out, matted in blood. In that dream, Caroline stood amid the bodies, glaring at him, accusation in her eyes.

It didn’t matter. They could be faceless or bear the likenesses of those he loved. No matter what, the dream signaled the last sleep he would get that night. He could not will himself back into the arms of slumber when he knew the horrors that awaited him there. Exhaustion was annoying, grinding, abrasive. Sleep could be downright evil.