THEY MARRIED VERY early the next morning.
William roused a priest who objected that the banns had not been read. William’s response was to cut two of the silver buttons from his uniform to offer as payment, and the priest kept his silence. The padre did not even question the bride marrying while wearing breeches.
Pippa knew that they would have to remarry in the Church of England, but that morning, in the shadowy knave of a Catholic church, she spoke her vows and meant them with all her heart.
Together they rode to join William’s men. Her maid, Lilly, was furious over her running away and had a few words for William when she learned they’d married. But they were happy ones.
“She will make you dance to a merry tune,” she predicted.
“I pray that she does,” William answered.
The rest of the trip to Lisbon was uneventful and yet perfect. William had sent Sergeant Larson back to his superior officers with a report on the French supply train.
Pippa and William rode beside each other for the trip, talking about everything and talking about nothing. They didn’t dawdle. William was anxious to return to his company before the fighting, but they didn’t waste this precious time together, either.
All was good . . . until they reached Lisbon’s port—where Pippa found her father waiting anxiously for her in the British port office.
He rushed up to her. “Pippa, my God, I have been worried to the point of illness over you.”
“Didn’t General Wellington or someone on his staff tell you where they’d sent me?” she asked, a bit overwhelmed. She hadn’t yet thought of how she would break the news of William to her father. She wasn’t certain how he would react. He could be so possessive.
“They said they sent you here with an escort.” Her father looked past her shoulder. “Thank you, Captain, for seeing her safe. You are done here. Carry on.”
Pippa drew a deep breath. “Father, there is something I must tell you. This is Captain William Duroy—”
“Duroy?” her father repeated, interrupting her. “The nabob? Up in Yorkshire?”
“My sire, sir,” William answered. She was grateful that he was letting her handle this, although she sensed his impatience in her breaking the news. It was as if he understood her concerns.
In such a short time, they knew each other that well.
“Father, William is my husband.” She took William’s arm. “And he is the best, most wonderful, bravest man I know, except for you, Papa.”
Her father took a step back as if she’d struck him. The color left his face. “No.” He shook his head. “You cannot have married. Not without my permission.”
William spoke. “I would have asked it, sir, if there had been time . . .” And that was when the story of her running away and blowing up French ammunition wagons was shared.
Her father did not take it well, and even though Pippa didn’t speak of the lovemaking, he seemed to understand that more had happened than just a bit of fighting the French.
When he did find words, his voice was dark, guttural. “I shall have this marriage annulled. Immediately. And I shall see you stripped of all command and rank, Duroy. Come, Pippa, to the ship.”
In the past, Pippa would have hurried to obey.
She didn’t this time. She couldn’t. She realized she was no longer the same woman who had left Wellington’s headquarters.
“I can’t,” she said, quietly. Suddenly, Pippa saw her father not as Sir Hew, the British envoy, but as a man who’d been hurt by love.
She’d never understood that before. She did now. Loving William had opened both her heart and her mind. Her world was no longer black and white, correct and incorrect. She now saw the nuances of life and how not releasing the pain of her mother’s abandonment had hurt both her and her father.
“I don’t want you angry,” she said to her father, placing a hand on his arm. “My care and devotion for you is as strong as ever, but William is my husband. I chose him, and I beg you to consider him like a son.”
For a moment, she thought her father would soften. In the end, he turned and walked out the door.
Pippa took a step after him and then stopped. She turned to William.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“He doesn’t understand yet that a heart can hold love for more than one person. He’s shut that part of him off.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?” he asked. “I will, for you.”
Her William, always so ready to take up a cause. “It would be of little use. I just pray you don’t hold this against him. I do want him in my life.”
“As he should be.”
William made the arrangements for her then. He booked passage for her and Lilly to England and prepared a letter introducing her to his family.
Their parting was the worst moment of Pippa’s life. She didn’t want to let him go.
She also knew he had to go to battle. It was what a soldier did.
JUST AS WILLIAM had predicted, his family welcomed her with open arms. Pippa and his mother became great friends. Mrs. Duroy was more outspoken than any woman Pippa had ever met, and she adored her.
She also liked his father, brothers, and their wives.
What was interesting was that she discovered that the women in her own family—such as her aunt, Lady Romley--were more caring of her than she had originally imagined. Pippa wondered if her father’s distrust had carried over to her, so she didn’t see other women as they really were.
One thing she did not like about her new life was making the trip after major battles to the center of York to read the rolls of the dead posted on the Cathedral door. And every time William’s name was not on the list, she went into the church and knelt in prayer.
She wrote him every day. He wrote her when he could, and she valued every connection to him.
She also wrote her father at least twice month. There was no response.
It was during this time when books once again became her allies. Reading was not a way to stave off living, but to help blunt the edges. True to his word, William had seen that her library left behind at Wellington’s headquarters was sent to her. She hated to think how much transporting them had cost him.
And then one day, William returned. Colonel William Duroy.
Pippa was so proud of him. In a very private service, and with a special license, Pippa and William married in the Church of England. That very night, they conceived their first child.
William had to return to the fight, but he promised he would be home for his son’s birth—and he was.
Holding her baby in her arms for the first time, Pippa felt a sense of completeness she had not known could exist. And in that moment, she pitied her mother. The woman who had abandoned her husband and her child had given up so much. Pippa could not, and would never be able to understand her.
Her only sadness was the loss of her father.
Christian Nelson Duroy was christened on the third Sunday of October.
The sky was clear and blue, the wind brisk. The church was filled with the Duroy family, all proud to welcome this newest member to their number.
As the priest began the ceremony, William leaned over and whispered, “Look in the back of the church.”
Pippa turned, and there was her father. He looked older, sadder.
And she was glad he was there.
Afterward, father and daughter didn’t waste time discussing the past. To Pippa, all that mattered was the present, the here and now. A soldier’s wife learned to think that way.
Yes, William would be leaving again. There would be many times she would fear for his life, but now she understood how full and encompassing love was. It defied the simple explanations of poets, and no novelist could ever give it full justice. Not with mere words on a printed page.
No, living life fully was the only way to understand love, and so she loved well.