Someone knocked on my door, making my head throb with each rap. Only one person would think to pound on my door so late.
I called out, "Go away, Marianne. I don't have any candles to spare."
This was met with silence. Usually Marianne would make foul remarks about my stinginess and enter anyway.
The knock did not sound again. I supposed I should rise and see whether anyone stood on the stairs beyond the door, but I did not have the strength.
The handle moved, and the door swung open. Janet Clarke stood on my threshold.
The strength returned to my limbs in a rush. I was out of the chair and halfway across the room before she could step inside.
She smiled at me. "Hello, my dear old lad."
Chapter Ten
I caught Janet's hands and more or less dragged her inside. She drew a breath to speak, but I gathered her against me and held her in a crushing embrace. I had no idea whether she'd come to speak to me, or to say good-bye, or to talk over old times, but for that instant I needed her as she was, needed her to take me to the past where I'd been, for a brief moment, happy.
Janet raised her face from my shoulder. Her hair was mussed and her cheeks were flushed, but she still smiled. "That happy to see me, are you?"
I said hoarsely, "Yes."
She straightened the lapels of my coat. "Then I am glad I asked Mrs. Brandon for your direction. She was very gracious."
I smoothed Janet's hair. I had no right at all to hold her like this, to touch her, but I somehow could not let go. "Mrs. Brandon is always gracious."
"She told me about your injury. It hurts you, does it not?"
"The break never healed properly, but if I take care, it doesn't pain me too much."
Janet slid from my grasp and took a step back, looking at me with a critical eye. "I don't mean that. I was remembering the night I took ill and nothing would comfort me but coffee. You searched all over camp for some, and it was raining so hard I thought the sky would come down. You sprinted through the rain, holding that packet of coffee under your coat as though it were the most precious gold. I've never seen a man run so fast in all my life. But you did it, and you laughed. Someone took that liveliness away from you." She touched the hair at my temple. "Nor was this gray here when we parted."
"I was not an old man then."
Janet sat down on one of my straight-backed chairs, lacing her fingers. "You'd had better start telling me that story, if it's so long."
I sat in the chair facing hers. I stared at the flames on my hearth for a few moments, while I decided what to tell her.
In the end, most of it came out of me. I told her of the cold morning that Brandon and I had met one another with pistols drawn, until Louisa and several other officers from our regiment had persuaded us to settle our differences and shake hands. I'd thought the matter finished with, even if the topic of our falling out remained uncomfortable, and then had come Brandon's betrayal. I told her of the mission he'd sent me on, never meaning for me to return, glossing over our decision to leave the army behind to avoid disgracing ourselves, Louisa, or the regiment.
When I'd finished, I sat silently, as bereft as I'd been the day I'd left Spain to return to England. I made to smooth my damp hair and saw that my fingers trembled.
Janet reached across the space between us and caught my hand. "And what do you do now?"
I smiled. "Very little."
"Colonel Brandon ought to help you. He ought to find you a proper job."
I shrugged. "He tries hard to pretend nothing ever happened."
Her eyes glowed with anger. "You always told me how he was like a father to you, or a brother. Your years together should count for something."
"It is difficult for some to acknowledge a mistake."
Her face softened. "Oh, Gabriel. And you love him enough to let him do it."
She was wrong. I hated him. He had taken things from me, and I would not easily forgive him.
My anger must have shown on my face, because Janet squeezed my hand. "I'll not press you. You were always one for not knowing your own heart."
"You don't think so?"
Her brown eyes twinkled. "No, my lad, I do not. You have honor and duty and love all mixed up in that head of yours. That's why I'm so fond of you."
I leaned forward and touched her face. "And I am fond of you, because you are not afraid of the truth."
"I am sometimes. Everyone is."
We shared a look. A thump sounded upstairs, as though Marianne had dropped something to the floor. A few flakes of plaster wisped down and settled on Janet's hair.
"You have not told me your story," I said. "What happened to you after I sent you off with my smitten lieutenant?"
She smiled. "Your smitten lieutenant was a perfect gentleman. He only made three or four propositions and took it well when I turned him down."
"Poor fellow."
"Not a bit. We parted as friends when we reached England. I went to Cambridge and stayed with my sister until we buried her." She hesitated. "I met a gentleman there."
"Mr. Clarke," I said.
"He was my sister's neighbor. A kindly man. He succumbed to influenza three years gone now."
I suddenly felt shame for wallowing in my own self-pity, and pure compassion for her. Janet ever found herself alone. "I am sorry."
Her eyes softened. "He was kind to me to the end. He left enough for me to get by. And I have friends."
"Like Sergeant-major Foster?"
"I speak to him from time to time. He frequents a public house near the Haymarket, where I buy my ale."
"He is a good man," I said. "And a good sergeant."
The room went silent. Wind groaned in my chimney, and upstairs, Marianne dropped something else.
Janet rose and came to me. Her cotton gown smelled of soap and clean things. "I remember the first time I saw you. You were ready to murder those soldiers for playing cards for me."
"They had no right to."
"You had no right to break up the game before I found out who won."
I chuckled. She leaned down and brushed my lips with hers.
I put my arms around her waist. My mouth remembered hers, my hands remembered her body, and we came together as though the seven years between this kiss and our last had only been seven days.
I took her to my cold bedroom and stoked the fire there, putting to flight my plan of conserving the rest of that week's coal. We sat on the bed and touched and kissed each other, our hands and mouths discovering again what we had once known so well. I eased the hooks of her dress and chemise apart and slid my hands to her bare torso. She nuzzled my cheek, and my desire stirred, pressing aside my darkness.
Not long later, we lay tangled together in the firelight that spilled across the bed, the heat warming our skin. My senses embraced her-the smell of her hair, the sound of her breathing, the press of her body, the remembered taste of her mouth. I hadn't known how much I needed her. I lay for a long time in her arms, managing to at last find a small bit of peace in that stark bedroom in the April night.
The Beauchamps occupied a small house in a lane not far from Hampstead Heath, in a quiet turning with brick houses and tiny gardens. The afternoon sky was leaden as we approached, but a steady breeze kept mists from forming.
The sweet sounds of a pianoforte drifted from the right-hand window as Grenville and I approached and cut off when I plied the knocker to the black-painted door. A middle-aged man in butler's kit opened the door and stared at me inquiringly. I gave him my card.