Mary Balogh - Web of Love

But there was something ahead of him. Someone. Someone he must reach, and then he would be safe. All would be well. Mama? She was in London. Edmund? Yes, Edmund. Alexandra would look after him, and Edmund would make everything right, as he always had done. A big boat, Christopher had said. A big boat. Edmund was gone.

Madeline? He had to reach Madeline. She would be worried. He had promised not to die. He mustn’t die. Madeline would be fit to throw hatchets if he did. He had to get to Madeline. Where was she? Not at Edmund’s. Edmund was gone. Where was she? Had she gone too? Was she in London? At Amberley? She shouldn’t have gone. He needed her. She should have stayed.

Charlie. He would go to Charlie. The Rue de la Montagne. He must remember that. Rue de la Montagne. He said it over and over to himself. He said it aloud. There was comfort there. He would be able to rest there. She would be there, and she would not fuss him or talk too loudly. She would look after him. Yes, she was the one he had to go to.

He had something to tell her. She would look after him, but he had something to tell her first. He couldn’t remember what. He would remember when he saw her. The Rue de la Montagne. The Rue de la Montagne.

And then he heard her voice. But he could not move. He did not dare move. Someone was touching him, pulling at him. They would kill him. Where had she gone? Was that him screaming again? Not again. He must not do that again. He would frighten her and disgust her perhaps. But who was making those sounds?

His body was on fire. It felt as if it must explode at any moment. He fixed his eyes on the only comfort there was. A face bending over him. Busy at something. And there was some comfort. The terrible pressure of his clothes and boots against his body had gone. And there were cool cloths against him. And was that a pillow beneath his head? She was there. He could relax now. She was there, and her cool hand was on his brow.

He had something to tell her.

“Charlie,” he heard someone say. And then he remembered.

And he told her.

Had he told her? She was looking at him with a calm marble face. She smiled. She told him to go to sleep. And then she lifted his hand to her cheek, kissed the back of it, laid it down on top of the blanket, and was gone.

But she was there. He was home now. He could not sleep, but he could retreat into his pain again. She was there.

MADELINE WAS AT A LATE BREAKFAST OR an early luncheon-no one bothered to give names to meals any longer-when she was called out into the hallway of Lady Andrea Potts’s house. At some time during the night-she had no idea when-Lady Andrea had appeared at her shoulder after having been absent for some time and ordered her to go to bed.

“I have just had a refreshing four hours of sleep,” she said. “Now it is your turn. You will be no earthly good at all to these men if you collapse with exhaustion, now, will you?”

Madeline had gone because she was too tired to argue. But Mr. Mason had already brought the news from somewhere outside the house that the fighting was over and the French in full flight and the Prussian army in pursuit. A great victory, he had announced heartily, to the faint cheers of the lesser wounded.

A great victory indeed, she had thought, stepping carefully among the living bodies strewn over the drawing-room carpet so that she would not step on an outflung arm or leg. Was this what a great victory was?

And somehow even more wounded had been carried into the house while she slept. They were in the salon by the front hall, with only one thin blanket apiece, a weary-eyed maid had told her, and no pillows. She had not been in there yet.

Who could be wanting to talk to her? she wondered, hurrying into the hall when she was summoned, her stomach lurching inside her at all the possibilities. But it was only a strange manservant with a note. He handed it to her and waited. There was no empty room to which to withdraw.

Dominic had been brought in earlier that morning, Mrs. Simpson had scrawled. He had a chest wound that she had not yet examined, though it had been tended on the field. He was in a high fever, but was safe and warm in a bed in her rooms. Nothing else. No indication of whether he would live or die. Madeline surprised the servant by laughing suddenly. How could one tell if any of these men would live or die? Two had died in this very house the day before, and one of those had walked inside without assistance. And there were a dozen at least for whom it was a miracle that this day had dawned. If it had dawned. She had been sleeping for five hours and had not yet checked on them.

“Tell Mrs. Simpson that I will be there as soon as I am able,” she said, folding the note carefully. She was surprised to find that her hands were quite steady.

She turned and walked into the salon, and was greeted by a chorus of requests for water. She was soon so busy that she abandoned her plan to ask Lady Andrea if she might be excused for an hour. How could she leave when there were so few hands to help? Dom was as safe as he could possibly be. Mrs. Simpson would care for him.

Before approaching the final silent bundle by the window, she opened the door and yelled at a servant who happened to be passing through the hallway to run up to her room and bring all the pillows and blankets from her bed and the cushions from the daybed. Then she turned back to him. She knew he was not dead; his hand was twitching. But his head and one side of his face were swathed in fresh bandages, and the single blanket draped over his body was flat to the floor where his right leg should have been.

She knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. “I shall have a pillow for your head and another blanket for you in a moment,” she said gently. “Would you like a drink?”

His one uncovered eye was closed. He did not answer her. But he clawed weakly at her hand. She turned and lifted the cup she had set on the floor beside her and slid her free arm beneath his head to raise it slightly so that he might drink. And as he did so and some of the water dribbled from the sides of his mouth and down his neck, she realized that he was Lieutenant Penworth. That vigorous, eager boy.

“Here,” she said as the servant picked her way over to her side, her arms laden, “I shall put a pillow beneath your head. And an extra blanket over you. You are shivering. It is Madeline Raine, Lieutenant. You are safe now. And will be more comfortable than you have been, I think.”

She touched the backs of her fingers lightly to his cheek and turned to look at the men about her and to decide which were most in need of the single pillow, two frilled cushions, and two blankets still piled in the servant’s arms.

Dominic was forgotten about. Or at least pushed to the back of her mind. There were more pressing concerns to occupy her for the moment.

THE DOOR THAT SEPARATED Ellen’s rooms from the rest of the house remained open as she and the other occupants shared the care of the wounded. But she did not go out into the streets again. She felt no more need to do so, and the house was as full as it could be. No one else that she knew came to the house until Lady Madeline Raine came that evening. But then, she was expecting no one she knew. No one at all.

Lord Eden was delirious with a high fever by afternoon and had not been quite rational even when they had carried him in. But he was right about that one thing. No one else came at all. And she felt that he was right. She had not doubted it from the moment he had told her. There was no lingering hope, no part of her that listened for footsteps even against reason.

She was not expecting anyone else. And it did not matter. She would not think of it. She had plenty to do. More than enough. The boy, though not nearly as highly fevered as he, was fretful. She had to make frequent calls on him to soothe him, to give him drinks and set his blankets straight, to smooth back his hair and kiss his brow.

And late in the morning she sat with the other man, the one who always watched her with his eyes though he showed no other sign of consciousness or of life. She held his hand and smiled at him and said a prayer over him and told him that he was safe with her, together with a dozen other murmured consolations, until he died. And she closed his eyes, covered him with the sheet, and sent a manservant to find someone whose job it was to take away the dead.

But it was he who drew her constantly. Lord Eden. Dominic. She was frightened, but she would not admit to her fear. He was going to die. The fever raged in him. He did not sleep, but he knew nothing. He did not know her. She changed his bandage when the boy had sunk into an uneasy sleep and the other man had been taken away. And she winced at sight of the wound and the purple-and-green bruising around the broken ribs. And her hands trembled slightly when he began to groan with every labored breath.

“I will have a clean bandage on you in a moment, my dear,” she said. “Bear with me for one minute more. Soon you shall rest again.”

She sat with him whenever she could and bathed his face with a cool cloth.

No surgeon came all day long, though they had sent for one the day before, and again that morning.

Lady Madeline came in the evening, a shawl thrown over her hair, her dress crumpled and none too clean.

“Where is he?” she asked as soon as she set eyes on Ellen. “I could not get away before now. Is he…?”

“He is in my room.” Ellen took her visitor’s arm and guided her in the right direction. “He is still alive.”

“Still?” Madeline’s voice sharpened. “You did not expect him to be? Oh, but how foolish. I know how it is. Was ever anything more dreadful? Is it always like this, or is this worse? Oh, Dom!”

She was into the room and across it and bending over the bed without even thinking to wait for an answer.

Ellen stood in the doorway and watched the other woman take up his hand and hold it to her cheek and talk to him. But although his eyes were open and bright, he did not know his twin. His breathing was labored.

“He needs a surgeon,” Ellen said quietly, “but I am afraid they are all far too busy to come. I have changed his bandage and tried to get him to drink. There is precious little else I can do.”

“I know.” Madeline straightened up, though she continued to gaze down at her brother. “I know. One is so helpless. Dom, you must not die. Do you hear me? You fought out there. Now you must fight in here too. You must. You mustn’t die. I don’t want to be the elder twin, Dom.”

She set his hand down gently at his side eventually and turned to Ellen. “It was kind of you to send,” she said. “And I can see that you have been giving him the best of care. He is clean. I cannot stay. It would be selfish of me to move here merely because my brother is here. There are so many thousands…and so many in Lady Andrea’s house, and so few to tend to them all. Lieutenant Penworth is there. He has lost a leg. And an eye. I must go back.”

She was surprised to hear the sob in her throat. She had thought herself past feeling.

“Yes, you must,” Ellen agreed. “I have help here in the rest of the house. And I will care for him, you know. He has been like part of my own family for the past three years.”

“Yes,” Madeline said. And then, as she took one agonized look back at her brother and pulled her shawl over her head again: “Your husband? Have you heard? Apparently they are all gathering at Nivelles and pushing on to Paris.”

“Is the battle over, then?” Ellen asked. “Yes, I have heard. Lord Eden brought word. He is gone.”

“To Par-?” But Madeline had looked into Ellen’s face. “Oh, no. I…”

“Don’t!” Ellen spoke sharply. “You must go now. Lady Andrea will be looking for your help. And I have a boy in the other room who will have kicked his blankets into knots by now. He is just a child. A frightened, hurt child. I am going to fight the surgeon when he comes, for his arm is swollen, you know, and they are bound to want to take it off. But it is clean, and I am sure the swelling will go down. I am going to fight for his arm.” She laughed. “Do you think I should have a sword to wield?”

Madeline had turned very pale. But she drew back her shoulders and smiled in return. “A pair of scissors perhaps?” she said. “And a very ferocious frown.”

“I will try it,” Ellen said, standing in the doorway to watch her guest run lightly down the stairs. “I shall send word if there is any change, you may be assured.”