“I am aware, sir. Nevertheless, I judged you a more probable recipient for this missive than Lord or Lady Tallant, who have suffered no such unfortunate injuries,” Sowerberry sniffed, bowing himself out.
Henry hardly noticed his departure, because the letter itself was the third surprise. The manner of its delivery had led him to expect a note from someone who had known him in the army. Maybe one of the men who had fought under him, God help the poor fellows. But this letter was on heavy linen paper, faintly cross-hatched from the netting on which it had been dried. A quality such that a soldier would never have dared scrawl on a single sheet.
The folds of the paper were sealed with a generous blob of red wax dropped in a deliberate circle and pressed with the image of a hill topped with a cross.
The seal of the Graves family. Of Caroline Graves, Lady Stratton.
Another surprise; by now Henry had lost count of them. He could not imagine why she would write to him. Apart from giving her violets, he had surely done nothing to make an impression on her this afternoon.
Henry pressed the letter against his body and worked open the seal with one awkward thumb.
The handwriting was feminine but bold and clear, the lower loops angular, as if dashed off in haste.
Dear Mr. Middlebrook,
I hope you’ll forgive the impropriety of a private correspondence. I wanted to say more to you earlier today, and I must now resort to paper rather than speech. It is a poor substitute, but I shall imagine your face as I write. Did you know you are positively transformed when you smile? You seem to carry a heavy weight inside, yet I know you are a young man. Several years younger than I, since I can be strictly honest on paper.
A note might be better than a conversation, after all. You are a soldier—or were until very recently—so I know you require proof, facts, evidence. Here, then, is the evidence of my friendship. I believe that your own is well worth having, and I hope you will grant it to me.
I thank you for your call earlier today. The beau monde can, I know, be unmannerly, and that is their misfortune. But do not let it be yours. We all hide our wounds here, but that does not mean they do not exist. Some are very deep indeed. Your wound is simply visible to everyone. For that, you must be even braver than the rest of us. I know you have lived in this world before, and you shall again with great success.
Your company has given me great pleasure, and I would like to see you again, often. I would appreciate your assistance in keeping this correspondence a secret, but if you wish, I will write to you again. Often.
Sincerely,
Your friend
Good lord.
Lady Stratton had noticed him. Even more unexpectedly, she sought his company. Without pitying. With “great pleasure.”
His left hand felt as nerveless as the right, and he sank into a convenient chair. The letter dangled from his hand as if trying to escape, and he made himself hold it in front of his eyes again to prove that it was real.
It was real. The ink had bitten into the heavy, soft paper, and the words were dark and clear. They were proof, facts, evidence that he had made more of an impression than he thought. That he had succeeded in some small way.
She wanted to see him again.
She, the most desirable woman in London. Caro, the foundation for rebuilding his life.
Before Quatre Bras, the day that changed everything, Henry had made a habit of stretching out on the ground during his few leisure hours. He and his men were accustomed to long hours of work and long hours of monotony: ninety-nine days of drudgery for each day of terror. As soon as fires were lit and shelters built from whatever brush or wood was at hand, Captain Middlebrook always sprawled on the ground, looking as though there was nowhere in the world he would rather be.
His soldiers thought nothing of it, then, when they brought him terrible news—orders gone astray, enemies drawing near, no sleep again tonight—and Henry was leaning on one elbow or lying with his hands clasped behind his head. Leaning, sitting, or lying down, he took the unexpected from them as easily as the everyday.
Henry alone knew that when the unexpected hit, it shook him like an earthquake under water, deep within until he felt he’d crumble. So he used the ground as his support, ever ready. He had been only twenty-three when he went to war, and he had neither seen bloodshed nor learned courage.
Now he was twenty-six, and he had seen much bloodshed, and he still felt shaken to his marrow when he was struck by the unexpected. And he had not expected this letter.
He hoisted himself from the chair and sat on the floor, leaning against the bed with its ivory damask cover. A carpet was as apt a surface for sitting as was dirt chewed by hooves and marching boots. It reminded him that his world was different now—this familiar society, which had so suddenly tilted askew.
Caro’s letter itself was not much more than a friendly note, but it set the world straight again.
He ran his fingers through the loops of the Brussels carpet. Jem’s carpet, in Jem’s house. He was even wearing Jem’s clothing today. Everything he had was Jem’s, really, except for Winter Cottage. Henry could slide out of London without leaving a trace of himself behind.
But no. It was no more right for Mister Middlebrook to turn tail and run now than it would have been for Captain Middlebrook to do so in Bayonne or Brussels. Or Quatre Bras.
Very well, he would answer the letter. He would take her confidence for his own. And with enough letters like this, she might make herself dear to him yet, and he might become so to her. Caro.
He would compose his reply right away. He stood and reached for pen and ink from the compact desk in his bedchamber.
Except he didn’t. His right shoulder flexed inward from his collarbone, the ghost of the movement he’d commanded, and his numb arm jerked and swayed like a pendulum.
Damn it. He had forgotten again, in his anticipation. He stared at his disobedient limb, hand, fingers. They would not act; they could not flex to hold a pen.
His insides tipped, sudden and watery as a ship sliding down a wave.
He clasped the back of his chair and breathed in and out slowly. This was nothing nearly as serious as Quatre Bras. This was simply putting ink to paper in a comfortable house in London. He could do this.
He sat at the desk, and with his left hand, he wrenched open the inkwell. Ink spattered onto the painted wood of the desk and speckled his hand.
“Damn it,” he muttered. This blunder slightly damped the pleasure of answering Caro’s letter. Ink was the devil to clean up.
He dipped a quill that felt wrongly shaped against the curve of his hand. His unpracticed fingers shivered once the pen took on its load of ink, and black blobbed onto the page.
No matter. He was just writing a short note; he could cut off the damaged section of the paper.
But his fingers slipped, dropping more spatters of ink, and filling the D he’d tried to write—just Dear, that was all—in a misshapen circle. And he’d gotten ink on his shirtsleeve too.
He glared at the paper for a moment, as if the force of his gaze would move the particles of ink where they ought to belong. But the few letters he’d scrawled stayed stubbornly malformed, impossibly childish. Illegible, really. And his sleeve was still ruined.
He scratched away determinedly for half an hour, shaping letters until he had managed to write “Dear Caro” in handwriting at least as good as that of a five-year-old child. It took seven full sheets of writing paper, and his cuffs were completely ruined.