Brussels was a different city on their return. It was as if the field hospital had simply overflowed by twelve miles. Wounded soldiers were everywhere. In the Parc. On street corners. In shop doorways. Even in the Hotêl de Flandre where they were lying in the dining room and the hall.
Grant left almost immediately to march out with the regiment, but Rhys arranged leave to stay with Helene and help with David. Helene sent word to Louise and Wilson that David had been injured. When Louise saw the conditions of the hotel, she immediately insisted Helene, Rhys and David stay at her house. Mrs Jacobs, who cared for several of the injured, visited there often to change David’s dressing and to see him through the inevitable fever from his wounds. Always full of news and gossip, Mrs Jacobs told them even the mansions of the town’s wealthy were commandeered as hospitals. Everyone was pressed into service.
Louise put David in a cot in a little sitting room off her drawing room. Helene and Rhys shared her second bedchamber on the floor above.
Besides her nights with Rhys, Helene’s favourite times were spent with Louise and Mrs Jacobs in the kitchen where they treated her as a friend—and a very uneducated friend indeed. They taught her how to make bread, how to cook meat, how to clean and launder, things never required of her before.
Her friends were also very watchful for signs she might be carrying a baby, but Helene soon told them there would be no baby. Helene tried to tell herself it was for the best, but, in truth, she was deeply disappointed. Neither Louise nor Mrs Jacobs had any children and Helene wondered if they had yearned for a child with the men they loved. Louise was past the age of childbearing, but at least she and Wilson were to be married as soon as Brussels returned to normal.
This morning Helene, Louise and Mrs Jacobs sat around the kitchen table drinking tea.
‘Now it is not any of my business,’ Mrs Jacobs said. ‘But are you and your Captain planning to get married?’
‘He has not asked me,’ Helene admitted.
It puzzled Helene why Rhys had not spoken of marriage. She understood why he had not done so before the battle—how could any promises be made at that uncertain time? But now the war was over. Napoleon had abdicated a second time.
Mrs Jacobs slapped her hand against the table. ‘He needs to marry you.’ She shook her head sympathetically at Helene. ‘I know how it is when two young people are in love, but he needs to be marrying you. I ought to give him a piece of my mind.’
‘Please do not!’ Helene cried.
Mrs Jacobs crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Well, he’d better hurry or I just might.’
Helene tried to change the subject. ‘How is your husband, Mrs Jacobs? Is he still feeling well?’ Her dear Hulbert had recovered and was back to work.
‘Fit as a fiddle.’ Mrs Jacobs then shook a finger at Helene. ‘Now what must we do to make your Captain come up to snuff?’
‘Nothing!’ cried Helene.
Helene was gloriously happy to be with Rhys every day, to be sharing his bed every night. It seemed that they’d put the past thoroughly behind them, but why did Rhys not speak of the future?
‘Helene!’ David’s voice reached all the way into the kitchen.
Her brother took up the rest of Helene’s time and she was very worried about him. At first, he was in a great deal of pain and the infection from his injury made him feverish, but now, after four weeks recuperating, he was more afflicted with nightmares and often woke in a panic.
‘Helene!’ he cried again.
She finished her cup of tea. ‘I should go to him.’
Mrs Jacobs stood. ‘I can see what the lad wants if you like.’
Helene motioned for her to sit again. ‘No, I’ll go. You have your other patients to see. Finish your tea first.’
She walked out of the kitchen, up the stairs and through the drawing room where she and Rhys had first spoken to Louise, to the small room behind it.
‘Helene!’ David’s voice became more hysterical as she reached the threshold of the room.
‘I am here.’ She tried to sound calm, but she was alarmed at this mania he seemed unable to shake. ‘What is it?’
David sat upright in bed, his body trembling, his eyes wide with fear. The swelling in his face had disappeared, but his bruises had turned various colours, now a sort of yellowish brown. ‘I—I had a dream!’
She walked over to him and brushed his hair with her fingers. ‘It was only a dream.’ She did not have to ask what of. She knew he’d returned to the field of the dead and dying. ‘We should do something.’ Something to distract him. ‘Would you like to get up? Play a game of cards? I’ll play cards with you if you get out of bed and come sit in the drawing room.’
It was not good for David to spend too much time in bed, even though he required a lot of sleep to recover. It was sleep, though, that brought the nightmares. Helene needed to get him home to Yarford, to familiar surroundings where he could feel safe again.
But home to Yarford meant leaving Rhys.
Rhys was, at this moment, out looking for transport to Ostend and passage to Ramsgate for her and David. It was no easy task. So many wounded men were travelling home to be cared for by loved ones. David was by no means healed, but Dr Goode, who looked in on him from time to time, pronounced him fit enough to travel.
Rhys, however, would be re-joining his regiment soon. Helene and David would be travelling alone. Helene could bear it if only she knew Rhys would eventually return to her.
David groaned as he turned to swing his legs over the side of the bed. ‘Help me.’
She picked up his crutch and brought it to him.
He took the crutch and walked very unsteadily with it.
Rhys had gone to a great deal of trouble to find that crutch in a city where perhaps more than a thousand crutches were in demand. David had been afraid to walk with it and Rhys very patiently worked with him until he could manage well enough.
Helene followed close, in case David lost his balance or feared he would. He settled into a chair and she brought him a banyan to cover his nightclothes. He winced while she helped him put his arms through the sleeves. He’d been trampled on by horses and men and there were not many parts of his body that did not still hurt from it.
‘What would you like to play?’ Helene brought over the card table and placed it in front of him. She seated herself in a chair on the other side.
He stared past her. ‘I don’t care. Whatever you want.’
Piquet, the game they played together at home, would require more thinking than David was up to at the moment. ‘Two-handed whist?’ she suggested.
He shrugged.
There were times David would lose that distant look and return to his normal self—almost. Sometimes Helene merely needed to persist in pushing him to do normal things to make the old David return—almost.
She shuffled the cards.
From outside a man shouted and the sudden sound of a galloping horse reached their ears. David flinched and his arms flew up to protect his face.
Helene jumped from her chair and came to him. ‘It is nothing, David. A horse going by, that’s all. You are safe.’
She grasped his trembling hand until she felt him calm down.
‘I want to go home,’ he cried, sounding like a little boy. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Rhys is trying to arrange it,’ she assured him. ‘We’ll go home as soon as he can find us passage.’
He glanced away from her and nodded.
She tapped on the cards she dealt him. ‘Pick up your hand. Let’s play.’
Helene returned to her chair and sorted her own cards. ‘Would you like me to send word to William Lennox to call upon you again?’
Lennox and his sister Georgiana had called a few days before, but David refused to see them. Helene was sure he would perk up from such a visit, but he would not allow it.
‘No!’ David covered his face with his hands as if suddenly feeling shame. ‘I lost the Duke’s horse and William’s clothes! How can I ever face him again?’
‘I’ve already arranged payment,’ she reminded him. ‘They did not even ask for it. I think William was simply worried about you.’
‘I do not want to see him,’ David insisted.
Very well, Helene would not press him. It only distressed him more.
They played out the hand, which Helene easily won, because David forgot what suit was trump and put down the wrong cards.
She shuffled again. ‘Another?’
He stared into space again. She wanted to shake him, as if that would restore him to himself.
The door opened on the ground floor and footsteps sounded on the stairs. Her heartbeat quickened and she looked towards the doorway, knowing who it would be. Rhys had returned.
‘I am back.’ His eyes smiled at her.
Sensation flared through her body at the mere sight of him. ‘I am glad.’
‘Let me go upstairs and brush some of the dirt from my clothes. I’ll be right back down.’ He turned and Helene could hear him taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
‘Was that Rhys?’ David asked, although Rhys had plainly been within his view.
‘Yes.’ What did David see when his thoughts took him away?
She dealt another hand.
Helene doubted David realised she and Rhys were lovers, that they shared the same bed every night. David had never been upstairs, so he would not know there were only two bedchambers up there, one for Louise and Wilson, one for her and Rhys, but mostly she thought David was caught too much in his own misery to notice the heat in every gaze she and Rhys shared. Or much of anything else, for that matter. Helene was desperate to shake David out of this miasma he was caught in. Bringing him home was the only way she knew to help him crawl out of it.
They played another hand of cards and she won again. David seemed not to care. He normally detested losing.
Rhys entered the room. He brushed his hand against hers as he sat in a nearby chair.
‘Hello, David,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘It is good to see you up. How are you feeling?’
David barely looked at Rhys. ‘I am well.’ His words were automatic.
Rhys shared a glance with Helene.
He took a breath before speaking again. ‘There is a packet leaving in two days from Ostend.’ A ship that would take them home. ‘I booked you passage on it and I was able to hire a carriage to take you there. But you would leave tomorrow.’
Helene’s heart sank. ‘Tomorrow?’
His gaze met hers and she felt her pain mirrored there. ‘So many people are trying to leave Brussels. I do not know when you’d have another chance to leave, so I seized the opportunity.’
She turned to her brother. ‘David? Did you hear? Rhys said we could leave for home tomorrow.’ A moment ago she’d been thinking it urgent to get David home, but not tomorrow.
‘Home,’ David repeated in a flat voice. ‘I want to go home.’
‘There is more.’ Rhys turned to David. ‘I also hired a valet to travel with you, David. A man of experience whose employer was an officer killed in the battle.’
David’s expression turned pained at the mention of the battle.
Helene hurried to speak. ‘A valet, David! He will be able to help you in ways I cannot.’
David turned his eyes to Rhys but did not appear to really see him. ‘Thank you, Rhys.’
Her brother was not the only one struggling with emotions at the moment. Helene’s were churning inside, as well. Her heart was pounding at the idea of parting from him. Tomorrow! Nothing was settled between them. How could she go back to Yarford House when Rhys would be so far away from her without knowing when—or if—they would be together again?
‘Helene?’ Rhys asked, his voice low.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Yes.’ Her voice shook. ‘Thank you, Rhys. You have thought of everything.’
She placed her cards on the table and left the room, too unsettled to stay another minute.
Rhys put his head in his hands. Did Helene think he wanted them to leave so soon? It was tearing his guts out to part with her.
These four weeks were the most idyllic he could remember, spending each day with her like when they’d been young, making love with her each night. Only when he ventured out in the streets did reality shake him out of this reverie. The city was still filled with the wounded, still reeling from the aftermath of battle. There was more work to be done, even though Napoleon had abdicated. His regiment was heading to Paris, if not there already. Their job would be to ensure that the peace held. The French had so quickly welcomed Napoleon’s return that no one knew how they would react to his final defeat.
Rhys’s duty was to be with his regiment, to protect his men from the new dangers that could arise. He’d gone to the Allied headquarters at Place Royale and learned it was requested he re-join his regiment in two weeks’ time.
His idyll with Helene was at an end.
‘Rhys?’ David’s voice broke into Rhys’s misery. ‘Where is Helene?’
Rhys rubbed his face. ‘She went upstairs.’
‘I thought we were playing cards.’
At least the boy’s eyes focused on him now, although there remained something distant about him. Rhys had seen such detachment before in soldiers after a battle, as if they had one foot in the present and one foot still caught in the battle’s horror.
Rhys glanced away. ‘Helene was upset. At the thought of leaving for home so soon, I expect.’
‘Upset? At going home?’
Rhys thought it would be obvious, but David was not attending to much going on around him. ‘Because Helene and I will have to say goodbye to each other,’ he explained.
David still looked puzzled. ‘Why would that upset her? I mean, I know you and Helene were friends, but that was a long time ago.’
Rhys peered at him. ‘Do you not know of what happened between Helene and me? About why I left Yarford?’
David lifted his shoulders. ‘You bought a commission in the army and left; that is all I know.’
David had been at Westminster School in London at the time. Apparently, no one told him what happened while he was away.
The boy averted his gaze. ‘I once wanted a commission in the army...’ His voice trailed off.
Best to lead David away from those thoughts.
Rhys took a breath, deciding to tell David about him and Helene. ‘Your sister and I were going to be married—to elope to Gretna Green.’
David turned back, eyes widened. ‘Married? How could she marry you? Our father was an earl.’
And Rhys was the vicar’s son. At least the old David was still inside him somewhere.
Perhaps Rhys would not tell him the whole story. ‘Well, we did not marry and I did leave for the army, but being apart from each other was—’ How to say it? ‘—difficult for each of us. Finding each other again has—has brought us happiness. That is why it will be upsetting to part again.’
David shook his head. ‘But you can’t marry. Helene is the daughter of an earl.’
Rhys gave him a disgusted look. ‘The thing is, David, your father’s title and my lack of one never made a bit of difference to Helene and me.’
David’s brows knitted and his eyes flashed in worry. ‘Are you going to marry her now? You can’t! She needs to take me home! I need to go home.’ He was quickly becoming overwrought.
Rhys lowered his voice. ‘Do not worry, David. Helene will be taking you home.’ Because Rhys could see no other option for them.
Rhys had spent a couple of hours walking the streets of Brussels thinking about his future with Helene, never mind all the time it filled his mind these last four weeks.
Rhys rose from his chair. ‘Do you need anything, David?’
David had picked up the deck of cards and was absently shuffling it. ‘No. Just to go home.’