HUGH
“I am not the problem.” I muttered these words in French to Charlemagne, who responded with a flick of his hairy ear as he plodded along the lane to the village. “Is this a good thing, that I am not the problem, or a bad thing? If I were the problem, I could fix me. But if I am not the problem…”
That meant Ann was the problem, and yet, nothing about my wife struck me as problematic. She was quick-witted in ways I was not. She was a devoted mother, and the staff at Belle Terre respected her. She was honorable—too honorable, perhaps, but no, one could not be too honorable.
She was attractive to me. She always had been. The years had added gravity to her Celtic good looks, and I had learned to value women for more than their strong stomachs in the infirmary or friendly smiles elsewhere.
Not just yet, she had said.
Charlemagne shied at an invisible rabbit, as was his habit when my attention wandered from the important business of riding my horse down a lane we’d both traveled dozens of times. He enjoyed a brisk morning hack, but trundling about in the afternoon heat tried his equine nerves sorely.
Or so he would have me believe.
“What tries Ann’s nerves?”
Crowds, bigotry, dishonesty, musty wardrobes, disloyal staff, drunken excesses, public lasciviousness, injustice. Ann had enjoyed our marital romping—as best I could tell—but she’d never been comfortable with the ribaldry that passed for soldierly good cheer.
Neither had I. I had seen that ribaldry become a loathsome evil when sieges broke, to the everlasting shame of the entire British Army.
A disquieting thought leaped out from the hedges of my musings. “Could Ann love another?”
Marrying me had been an alternative to what would have amounted to serial rape, a lowering recollection. Having been all but forced into marriage with me, wouldn’t Ann—thinking herself again a widow upon my supposed death?—relish the chance to choose a man on her own terms?
“I will have to ask her.”
Charlemagne snorted—at the dust of the road, of course. Summer was a dusty season.
When was a good time to ask one’s wife if her affections were fixed elsewhere? And what mental infirmity had prompted me to announce that I would voluntarily surrender my cot in the dressing closet for the pleasures of solitary insomnia?
The answer to that question was obvious: Arrogant stupidity had prompted my decision. I had been desperate for Ann to instead invite me into the marital bed, and she had called my bluff.
As the arched bridge came into view, I offered up a prayer for Lady Violet and Lord Dunkeld. May the good God spare them from stupidity. The child, which I was coming to think of as our child in a general sense, needed parents and step-parents in charity with one another.
The village appeared to be enjoying a peaceful afternoon nap. Mrs. Fletcher was watering the salvia that grew so prettily beside the livery barn, a sole equine hanging his head over a half door to watch her. She refilled her can at the livery pump and moved on to the beds edging the green itself.
Other than her placid progress, the village was somnolent in the heat of the day. I left Charlemagne at the livery and took myself to Herr Rutherford’s shop. According to Ann, Frau Rutherford claimed her black eye had been an accident, one supposedly unrelated to Herr Rutherford’s ire at his wife’s betting. However the injury had occurred, I wanted to see that the eye was healing.
When I arrived at the shop, I found the lady behind the counter, tending her ledgers.
“Guten Tag, monsieur.” She had a pretty smile, but her gaze was wary. “May I help you find something?”
An infant of perhaps eighteen months fussed in a low cradle set by the window. She kicked at her blankets, but wasn’t upset enough to climb from her cradle.
“Somebody doesn’t care for the sun directly in her eyes,” I said. “Or perhaps she’s teething?”
“Fredericka has a difficult nature. Sie ist unzufrieden. And yes, her teeth are e-rupting. I learn this word from Madame St. Sevier.”
My German was rusty, but I’d acquired the rudiments of necessity in Spain. Most of the German states had been England’s allies at some point during the war, and many of my patients had hailed from German-speaking regions.
Frieden meant peace. Frau Rutherford had described her daughter as fussy, dissatisfied, unpeaceful. In my experience, very young children often mirrored their mother’s state of mind. I smelled no evidence of a soiled nappy, and the little girl was in good weight, but she was audibly unhappy.
“How is the eye?” I asked, nudging the cradle out of direct sunlight with my boot.
The child grew quiet and focused on me.
“My eye is ugly, monsieur, but it does not hurt. If you are here to accuse my Johann of smacking me, then you must not.”
When I had no idea where her Johann lurked, I would not broach that topic. “I am here to pay for my wife’s yarn, if you’ll let me know the amount due?”
The child resumed fussing in a tentative, tired fashion.
“Ach so, the yarn. Yes. We say Garn auf Deutsch. A pretty blue.” She consulted her ledger and quoted me a modest sum.
I passed over the coins as Fredericka gave up fussing and closed her eyes with a small sigh. “You might try a little oil of clove on her gums,” I said.
“Oil of clove?” Frau Richardson spoke the phrase carefully.
I rooted through my limited store of German. “Nelkenöl. Oil of clove. On the gums.” I made a motion as if brushing my teeth with my finger. “Some mothers prefer whisky, but I have found the clove more effective.”
“I did not know of this. We have some oil of clove with the remedies.” Frau Richardson came around the counter and bustled down the aisle. “I will try this. Fredericka fusses because she is tired, and she is tired because her sore teeth give her no peace. I thought she might like the breeze by the window, but you are right. The sun is too warm.”
“Or too bright. Your eye does appear to be healing. How is Herr Rutherford’s arm? I’d be happy to look at it while I’m here.”
Frau Richardson began sorting through tins and bottles arranged on a display table. “I change the dressing, and Johann fusses worse than Fredericka. They are alike, those two. Johann’s wound heals.”
“Do you know how he came by it?”
“He goes to the inn when the dog Löwenherz wins, and somebody pushes Johann against the steps. He falls and cuts himself on the thing for scratching mud from the boots. It is very dirty, so I make Johann go to you at the vicarage, and you clean the wound carefully.”
“As long as the wound bled freely for a time, and you are keeping it clean, all should be well.” I’d doused his arm thoroughly with cask-strength whisky, one of the best disinfectants known to medicine—if a bit painful upon application—then poulticed the gash with honey.
“Oil of cloves,” Frau Rutherford said, uncorking a small blue bottle and sniffing the contents. “Ja?”
I sniffed too. “Oui. Rub a drop or two on her gums, and she might quiet down. I would not advise the patent remedies, though. They can be very strong.” I picked up a bottle of Harbuckle’s Heavenly Helper. “This one, for example, would send a grown man to sleep and leave him with a sore head.”
“Old Mrs. Fletcher swears by the Harbuckle’s. We stock it for her, though we sell an occasional bottle for sore joints or Schlaflosigkeit. Sleep-lackingness. I forget the English word.”
“Insomnia. Harbuckle’s will send a patient to sleep, but much like strong drink, it can cause other miseries.”
“Madame sniffs and says it is brandy and laudanum. Johann forbids it for the children.”
“Wise man. In a dire emergency, perhaps, but not for a child who’s merely fussing. Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Rutherford.”
She beamed at me for offering a farewell auf Deutsch. “I will tell Johann that you asked after him. Adieu, monsieur.”
We parted with the mutual good cheer of foreigners on English soil. I was proud of my ability to retrieve a few words of German, though I was also puzzled. Why, when a mob had been threatening to riot, had Johann Rutherford abandoned his shop and nipped over to the inn, where the worst of the drunkards would have been found?
That question plagued me as I looked in on Mrs. Cooper, who was healing adequately, if feeling a bit worn out by the heat. Before she could ply me with tea—why did the English insist on drinking hot tea in oppressive weather?—I put a question to her.
“You and Mr. Cooper have been married for some time,” I said as my hostess escorted me to the door. “Have you any advice for couples who face… difficulties?”
She turned a potted fern that sat on the sideboard. “Advice such as trust in the Lord and all shall be well? If you want that sort of advice, you must apply to Mr. Cooper.”
“I want helpful guidance.”
Mrs. Cooper gave me the sort of patient look she’d probably been aiming at her spouse for years.
“Ann and I became separated in Spain,” I said, though I assumed our past was common knowledge. “We each believed the other to have been a casualty of war. We are only recently reunited, and there is… awkwardness.” Estrangement between spouses who’d been sharing a bedroom, if not a bed.
Mrs. Cooper muttered something genteelly profane about that dratted war. “Your wife adores you, monsieur. When Madame St. Sevier came to tell Mr. Cooper to get out his pistol, she was most upset. ‘Hugh cannot abide gratuitous violence,’ and ‘Hugh will try to patch them all up, but nonsense like this cannot be patched up, and they won’t thank him for trying.’ She was concerned for you, sir, beside herself with worry.”
Ann had not been beside herself. A much younger Ann had watched a pack of louts dicing to see which one of them would be the first to rape her. Had I not known what the stakes of the game were, I would have said—based on her expression—that she’d been bored.
“She was not beside herself.” Concerned, perhaps. Vexed, more likely.
“How well do you know your wife, monsieur?”
Interesting question. “Apparently not that well.”
Mrs. Cooper handed me my hat. “Perhaps that is the difficulty? You expect a woman who has been through war to take a near stranger to her bed. You are not the young husband she agreed to marry. She is not the wife you knew on the Peninsula. Many couples marry on little acquaintance, but that is their choice, and they usually have family to help them get off on a good foot. Do I take it Madame St. Sevier followed the drum?”
“She did.”
Mrs. Cooper patted my arm in a manner that suggested I was the one recovering from a blow to the head. “War is awful for men, but it’s never-ending purgatory for women whether they are on campaign or merely praying for husbands, sons, and brothers. Perhaps Madame St. Sevier has known too much of hell and not enough of earthly joy? Befriend your wife, monsieur, and the rest might sort itself out. Importune her for her favors, and you could reopen a wound no lady wants to acknowledge. She loves you, of that I am certain.”
On that bewildering little homily, Mrs. Cooper gently shooed me out the door and into the merciless afternoon sun.
Who was Mrs. Cooper to assure me that my wife loved me? The vicar’s missus was recovering from a head injury, which made her mental faculties unreliable at best.
Mrs. Fletcher waved to me from the flower bed opposite the smithy, and I waved back.
As I crossed the green, I returned to my musings. I would ask Ann if she pined for another. Perhaps a laird’s son had caught her eye—or perhaps the laird himself. The Scots had charm, they were hard workers—Ann set great store by a willingness to work hard—and they would appreciate Ann’s pragmatism and her beauty.
She might well be madly in love with a kilted laddie, while I spent my nights waiting for her to summon me from my cot.
I paused on the steps of the lending library and decided that before my decree regarding separate bedrooms could be implemented, I would rescind my decision. If Ann and I were to struggle on, we’d do so as husband and wife.
Farther down the green, Herr Rutherford swept his spotless steps. The rhythmic ping of a hammer on hot metal sounded from Purvis’s forge, and a tabby cat lolled about on the drystone wall surrounding the graveyard.
A peaceful village, to appearances.
The interior of the lending library was cool and shadowed, sitting as it did in the shade of enormous maples. The space was a simple rectangle, with windows on three walls and plank flooring. The broken window had been boarded over from the outside, adding to the gloom. Bookshelves ringed the room at waist height, and a pair of reading chairs were arranged before a cold, well-swept hearth.
Miss Fletcher sat behind a battered desk, glasses perched on her nose, a book in her hand. Her brows were knit, and she did not look up when I walked in.
“Just put the books on the return shelf,” she muttered. “I hope you enjoyed them.”
“That must be a fascinating tale,” I replied, mindful that I was alone with an unmarried young lady. Doctors occasionally found themselves in such circumstances of necessity, but I was hardly paying my call in a medical capacity.
“Monsieur!” She popped to her feet and curtseyed. “I do apologize. I’m struggling through The Doctor in Love in the original French, and I must admit, the humor is slow to dawn when I’m trying to recall an irregular participle.”
The play had other translated names. Some referred to it as Dr. Cupid or The Love Doctor, but I’d also seen Molière’s little comedy flying under the banner of Love Is the Best Physician. The doctors cast in the farce were a lot of posing, argumentative buffoons, though the play had a happy ending for the young lovers.
“May I assist with any vocabulary in particular?” I asked.
She closed her book without marking the page. “I should be assisting you. Are you searching for any particular sort of book?”
No, I was not. My objective was to warn the young lady about the addictive properties of Harbuckle’s Heavenly Helper.
“My pride has sent me in search of a particular sort of book. One hopes for your discretion.”
“Of course I can be discreet. We haven’t many medical books, though, if that’s what you seek.”
“I am looking for a manual about how to care for hounds. English country gentlemen are supposed to be experts on canines of many stripes—harriers and lurchers and spaniels and so forth. I have no interest in blood sport, but with a male patient, what does one discuss to put the fellow’s mind at ease? A man may be too poor to own a horse, and yet, he will have a loyal hound. The Faraday sisters know more about canines than I do. This is embarrassing.”
She peered at me as if I were a small boy who’d spun some tale involving highwaymen and a school assignment gone missing.
“You want to know what could poison a dog, don’t you? I have wondered that very thing myself. I weed all the beds of salvia that Mama so conscientiously plants and waters about the green, and weeding gives one an abundance of time to think.”
She and Ann would get on famously. “I hope we have had our last hound race in St. Ivo’s, Miss Fletcher, and our last riot.”
She returned Molière to a shelf behind the desk. “The races won’t stop, monsieur. If we get a rainy night on Saturday, the next meet will be postponed, but the beasts need exercise, and until the hard frosts start, the men need their entertainments.”
“What has frost to do with anything?”
“Once the ground freezes, and damage to cropland is less likely, the fox hunting begins.”
“There, you see? I am such an ignoramus about country life, and Belle Terre’s library is no help. If I seek improving tomes, I may bury myself in them by the hour, but practical information is not to be had.”
None of this was bringing me around to the topic of Harbuckle’s hell brew, nor did I appear to be convincing Miss Fletcher of my sincerity.
“Mama and I love animals,” she said, “and Mama says poisoning a hound would be an act of desperation. She was most of the reason why the hare-coursing stopped. Those poor little beasts, chased without hope of escape. Hardly sporting. Papa agreed, and he talked the aldermen around. So we have the races now, and I doubt the aldermen will give them up.”
The aldermen were a trio of self-satisfied Squire Lumpkins, though their authority over the village was apparently real. Dreyfuss struck me as the most sensible of the three, and he was ever convinced of his own wisdom.
“Do you know what will poison a hound, Miss Fletcher?”
“Grapes. I know not why, but Mama swears it is so. Beer, wine, ale, and spirits are bad for them. They get drunk as we do and on much smaller quantities. Milk can give them diarrhea.”
Who in his right mind would give a dog milk? But then, dogs were dogs. A country-dwelling canine in the vicinity of a dairy might find a pail of fresh milk on his own and ingest it without human prompting.
“I would not have thought milk bad for anybody,” I said, “though I’m aware that some older people avoid it. Perhaps poison was not the right word. Do you know how to sedate a dog?”
A large gray slate had been hung against the library’s front wall, and upon this slate was a rendering of the cursive alphabet. Miss Fletcher used a rag to rub the letters away.
“I have been racking my brain on that very topic,” she said, “but midwifery and tending small wounds doesn’t provide much education regarding sedatives, much less the sedation of hounds. Mr. Purvis might know because he does some animal doctoring. Mr. Faraday is probably our best source on canine husbandry. He is our master of foxhounds, and he does dote on his pack. Thetis likely knows as much about hounds as her father does, and Elizabeth Bellamy has her father’s love of dogs.”
Miss Fletcher dusted her hands and crossed the room, brushing past me. “This discussion reminds me of a pair of volumes old Mr. Bellamy donated. Not Nigel, but rather, his grandfather. The old fellow went to his reward about five years…”
She tiptoed her fingers along a row of bound books, going title by title. “That’s odd.”
“We’re having a sudden flood of interest in hound management?”
She went to the desk, boots thumping on the hard plank floor. “I can understand why one title might be loaned out. Some squire is thinking of keeping a pack or breeding his bitch, but both at the same time…”
She leafed through a ledger book, apparently as curious as I to know who had borrowed those books.
“I stopped in the dry-goods store before I came here,” I said.
“That place is amazing.” She flipped another page and ran a finger down a column. “They have something of everything. Mama and I agree that Rutherford would do better in a larger town, or even London, but we’d be lost without him. Acquiring goods through the mail is expensive and time-consuming, and then one never quite gets what was promised.”
“I noticed that they stock a number of patent remedies. Frau Richardson says that your mother is partial to one in particular.”
“Mama’s joints do pain her.” Miss Fletcher flipped the ledger forward a few pages. “If she’s in too much pain, she cannot sleep, and then the lack of sleep makes everything worse. She sometimes naps through the worst heat of the day, and it can take a dose of Harbuckle’s to send her off. I would hate to think of winter without that remedy on hand, monsieur.”
“Be careful with it. The ingredients are powerful, and they can cause a state similar to inebriation. Your mother uses a cane, suggesting she’s already unsteady on her feet. Old bones break too easily and don’t heal well.”
“I am always careful where Mama’s health is concerned. She spent too many years haring over hill and dale from this sickroom to that lying-in, and she deserves a few years of ease.”
Miss Fletcher turned the ledger around for me to read. “Thaddeus Freeman has had both books. He took them out two weeks ago. He’s allowed to keep them for a month. I have looked over the entries for the past three months, and he’s the only person to borrow those titles. They are quite venerable.”
“Too venerable to be of use?” I asked.
Miss Fletcher returned to the gray slate and began writing out simple French words. Bonjour, adieu, s’il vous plaît, merci.
“I have been on the library volunteer staff for ages,” she said, “and I am in great demand as a reader too. The elders in particular like for me to read to them, and I know our collection well. I cannot recall Mr. Freeman ever borrowing another book on so bucolic a topic, and he is not a man to treasure a book for its historical value.”
And he had borrowed these two before Lionheart’s victory. “Mr. Freeman enjoys an expansively curious mind,” I said. “Like me, he might be trying to address a gap in his squirely skills. Why the French words, Miss Fletcher?”
She added a few more phrases. Je suis d’accord—I agree. Bon voyage. Bienvenue.
“Because there is more to life than St. Ivo’s blasted hound races, monsieur, and more to learning than samplers stitched from Proverbs for the girls and proper handwriting for the boys. The better families send their sons to Mr. Cooper for some Greek and Latin, but the poorer children have only my feeble efforts.”
She put down her chalk and remained facing the slate. “I’m sorry. I ought not to complain. I like teaching the children, and it’s only for a few months each year.” She dusted her hands again and faced me. “I’ve been meaning to raise a topic with you, but haven’t found the right occasion.”
To my horror, Miss Fletcher appeared near tears. Fortunately, Ann had given me the benefit of her discussion regarding the cottage repairs.
“I have been negligent,” I said. “I do apologize. As the owner of your cottage, I have not kept up with the maintenance. I am most sorry for that oversight, but I did not realize that dwelling was part of Belle Terre’s holdings. The land steward recently retired, and he doubtless meant to bring the matter to my attention, but it must have slipped his mind. Do you have a list for me?”
She blinked. “A list?”
“Of repairs. Repairs are the exclusive responsibility and right of the landlord. I grasp that much English law, at least.”
I watched integrity war with practicality in Miss Fletcher’s pretty blue eyes. Integrity carried the day on a tired sigh. “Monsieur, we pay no rent. We are little better than squatters.”
“The situation has been explained to me. Belle Terre’s tithes are reduced to compensate for the use of the cottage. All is in order in that regard. You owe no rent, but I have been remiss about the repairs.”
My announcement should have occasioned relief, a smile, some manifestation of good cheer. Miss Fletcher balled her hands into fists and stared hard at the slate. Good day, goodbye, please, thank you. She might well have been counting to ten in French.
“I was not privy to the negotiations,” she said. “The aldermen and your steward worked something out, or claimed they did, but I doubt any documents were signed. You are within your rights to turn us out.”
If I behaved with that degree of barbarism, Ann would desert me all over again, and this time, she would stay gone.
“You and your mother care for the cottage and keep the drunkards and vagabonds from making free with it. You will set my mind at rest if you stay.”
That much was true. The notion that two women should somehow make their way in the world without income or property, friends or neighbors… Nobody with any honor wanted that on his conscience, even less so a gentleman of means.
“Mama and I have only each other,” Miss Fletcher said, “and she considers this village home. We have good memories here.” That recitation bore little warmth, though it was, again, probably true. How honest we were, Miss Fletcher and I.
“Then you and your mother must make a complete list of needed repairs, and I will see to them before cold weather arrives.”
Miss Fletcher returned to her desk and put the ledger away. “Mama will be relieved. Thank you, monsieur.”
Her thanks bore an air of martyrdom, or… shame? Shame seemed more likely. I put on my best jovial physician’s smile and bowed my farewell to her.
Charlemagne was happy to return home, despite the later afternoon heat, though I kept him to a walk. I wanted time to ponder what I had learned on my jaunt to the village.
The cause of Frau Richardson’s black eye remained a mystery.
Mrs. Cooper believed Ann loved me. Another puzzle.
I must ask Ann if she had left a dear friend of the kilted variety in Scotland.
Freeman had taken a sudden interest in the care and raising of hounds.
Miss Fletcher believed in education for the village children.
I was back at Belle Terre and handing Charlemagne off to a groom before it occurred to me what detail among the orts and leavings of my excursion bothered me the most: Any man who sought to borrow a book from the lending library would find himself alone with Miss Fletcher, however briefly.
And that state of affairs apparently troubled nobody, though Miss Fletcher was unequivocally the daughter of a gentleman.
Ann had supper served on the terrace. We kept country hours, not only out of consideration for the staff, but also because this afforded us time with our daughter. Fiona joined us for our outdoor meal, a very great privilege in the eyes of the nursery staff.
For Ann and me, Fiona’s presence had become an assurance that no difficult topics would be raised. I was thus prevented for the duration of the meal from countermanding my decision to sleep across the corridor from my wife.
“Will you take me to France one day, Papa?” Fiona asked as I sliced off a bite of cheese for her from the selection on the tray. “Mama says France has montagnes gigantesques et beaucoup de beaux châteaux.”
Ann reached for her wineglass, hesitated, then drank.
“Your mother is correct,” I replied, serving Ann a portion of her preferred Stilton. I chose the cheddar we made at Belle Terre. “France is very beautiful, as are her mountains and castles, but lately, France is also very poor.”
Fiona’s gaze bounced between her parents. “We are not pauvres, are we?”
Had Fiona experienced poverty in Scotland? I had so few details about my daughter’s early years. I knew only that Ann had been lucky to find her way to a Scottish regiment, after a period of imprisonment at the hands of Spanish irregulars and the French military. As Napoleon’s defeat by the massed European armies had become inevitable, informal prisoner exchanges had occurred, despite official policies to the contrary.
Nobody had wanted to put food in the mouths of the enemy, or slow military movements by coddling captives.
“We are not poor,” I said, “and your mother and I will always look after you, but one is discreet about financial matters, Fiona. We discuss them only with family.” A silly point on my part, because Belle Terre itself shouted of wealth and privilege.
Fiona held her piece of cheese up to the westering sun like some sort of gustatory sextant. “You did not take care of us in Scotland, Papa. Cousin Donald said you were as worthless in death—”
Ann muttered in Gaelic about discussing the topic later. I had taken to closeting myself in the estate office with a Gaelic primer, and one of our grooms was an Ayrshire lad. I tried out my faltering Erse on him, and he corrected my pronunciation with ruthless good cheer.
In Spain, better than half the enlisted men had been Irish or Scottish. Commands had been given in both English and Gaelic, lest a battle be lost in translation. I had also studied medicine in Edinburgh, where I’d picked up a fair amount of both Lallans and the Highland tongue. My Gaelic was coming back to me, though I allowed Ann the fiction that she and Fiona retained a private means of communication.
“I am sorry I was not with you in Scotland,” I said, “and I am very glad that you have come to England to be with me now.”
“I like England.” Fiona shifted her cheese to sight on the mares’ paddock. “Benedict Purvis says summer doesn’t end here until An Dàmhair.”
“October,” Ann said. “Child, do you plan to wave that cheese around all evening, or shall you eat it?”
“Both.” Fiona grinned and flourished the cheese like a scepter, then popped it into her mouth. “I love cheese.”
“I love you,” Ann replied, “but a meal is more pleasant when shared with a supper companion who isn’t speaking with her mouth full.”
Fiona made a face, though she did finish chewing without offering further comment.
Ann and I exchanged a parental smile, and the moment took on a piercing sweetness. The soft light of the summer evening, the humor any parent needed to keep close at hand, the good meal enjoyed with my wife and child at our own table…
I had been the worst kind of idiot to insist on a separate bedroom.
“May I be excused?” Fiona asked when she’d finished another slice of cheese.
“You may,” I said. “I will be up to read you a story later.”
She would have scampered off, but Ann caught her eye.
Fiona flung a curtsey at us. “Good evening, Mama, Papa. Thank you for a very fine meal.”
“Well done,” Ann said. “I will tell Miss Prather that your manners are most impressive.”
I watched Fiona walk back into the house, then topped up Ann’s wine. “She is so young to be learning all the proper touches. I hate to think of her growing up so quickly.”
“Good manners are an asset,” Ann replied. “You want her to learn her wines. I want her to learn… so much.”
I had taken to allowing Fiona a sip of my wine at our noon meal, one sip only. “My father and my uncles taught me and my brothers about wine one sip at a time. Wine remains one topic all Frenchmen, regardless of creed or political leanings, can agree upon: Ours is the best.”
“We Scots agree about whisky too. Ours might not be the best, but it’s ours. My granny started every day with a wee nip, and so did I, until I left for Spain.”
Off in the woods, the birds had begun their evening chorus. Such a beautiful sound, and yet, it reminded me of the times I’d wandered a former battlefield looking for survivors as the birds sang the sun and many a fallen soldier to their rest. Women had wandered those battlefields as well, and all too often, their searching had ended in sorrow.
“Why did you follow the drum?” We had never discussed this. Ann had interrogated me at length about why a Frenchman would patch up Wellington’s soldiers—I’d patched up Napoleon’s injured as well—but I had not bothered to ask my young bride about her own motivations.
“I was in love,” Ann said, her tone ironic. “I was enthralled with the notion of getting out of Perthshire and away from my family. Life on a farm is brutally hard work and endless worry, even on a prosperous farm. Life on campaign would be hard too—I knew that—but I would be free, a married lady, privy to all the mysteries of adult womanhood. More fool I.”
“You did not love your husband?” I could picture him, a tall, grinning, bonnie laddie, with all the exuberance and blockheadedness of very young manhood.
“I was determined to get out of Scotland. He was determined to get under my skirts and willing to marry me to achieve his objective.” She gazed off at the vast green canopy of our home wood. “I was more than happy to let him under my skirts, too, once we’d said our vows. Young people are idiots. He should not have died so soon. I should not have married him. Regrets are pointless, but that doesn’t stop them from taking up residence in the heart.”
I mentally kicked myself again for having quit my cot in the dressing closet. “I do not regret marrying you,” I said. “I would very likely have worked myself to death but for your influence.”
She swiveled her gaze to me, eyes glinting with either remembered ire or unshed tears.
“And the damned English officers would have left you for the scavengers. Somebody had to take you in hand. Those officers were more protective of the regimental cobbler and blacksmith than they were of you.”
She had been protective of me. I had not understood at first why Ann had been so enraged at me for collecting the wounded from a battlefield or keeping endless hours in the infirmary. My initial thought had been that widowhood had put her at risk for a dire fate once, and she wasn’t about to let a second husband slip through her fingers, lest she face that fate all over again.
In time, I’d come to see that the meals she’d brought to me, the lectures she’d delivered to my orderlies, the camp stool that she’d carried to the infirmary herself, had been purely for my benefit.
“I never thanked you for marrying me,” I said. “I am thanking you now, Ann. The crows lost a feast when you spoke your vows with me.” I kissed her hand, and she found it imperative to study the stable yard at the bottom of the hill.
“You were too good a man, and too skilled a physician, to be allowed to die of stupidity. I’ve been thinking about that list of bettors Freeman gave us.”
At that moment, I did not give a shovelful of horse manure for Freeman’s damned list. “Our past makes you uncomfortable.”
She slipped her hand free. “Our past is complicated. I’m not sorry I married you, Hugh. But we deserved a better start.”
I gathered up all my courage and prepared to announce that I would not be leaving the dressing closet after all.
What came out of my idiot mouth? “Ann, when you and Fiona were living in Scotland, was there somebody else?”
She looked honestly confused. “What kind of somebody else?”
“A man, a possible husband. A lover, a fellow who needed to be taken in hand and had the sense to enjoy that privilege?”
Her expression suggested that I had concatenated languages, as Fiona often did. “Another man? I didn’t want another man. I wasn’t much of a wife, but I could be a devoted mother, so that’s what I did. Fiona would not have understood what another man was for, and my cousins… There was no other man, Hugh, but I have asked myself if expecting you to disentangle yourself from Lady Violet wasn’t grossly unfair of me. I could have sent you a letter, but the post is unreliable, and I… I wanted to see you. For myself. I wanted Fiona to at least know what her father looked like.”
Now I was the one left trying to parse half-comprehended fragments of meaning. “A part of my heart was given to you in Spain, Ann. Not in the usual way, over poetry and flowers, but over hot meals, shared blankets, and strong coffee. Violet could never have that part, no matter how much I cared for her or she for me. I do not pine for her.” I no longer pined for her, a result of both the passage of time and the challenge of trying to rebuild a life with Ann and Fiona.
“You don’t miss her?” Ann asked.
I considered the question. “I find I do not, not in the sense you mean. She would have pounced upon your comment about the bettors list, for example, and this very significant conversation you and I are having instead would again be put off.”
“About that list…”
To blazes with the perishing list. “All men, I know, and mostly men who lost money.”
“Purvis didn’t lose, and Rutherford didn’t lose.”
Both names provoked a mild, reluctant curiosity. I had declared my love for my wife—more or less—and she was maundering on about St. Ivo’s wagering fools.
“Purvis claims to hate the hound races,” I said, “and Rutherford is purported to be no fan of betting.”
Ann finished her wine and stood before I could hold her chair. “Rutherford is no fan of his wife placing bets, according to Frau Rutherford, and Purvis is canny. He’d place a small bet to appease appearances, while muttering into his beer at home about the folly of it all.”
“I’ll have another look at that list later,” I said, rising and offering Ann my arm, “though it occurs to me that the whole problem will soon be moot. Colder weather will see a return of the hounds to the hunt field, and then nobody will care that the races were rumored to have been fixed.”
“Perhaps, but I have the sense something larger is afoot here, Hugh. A few of our neighbors conspired to send you to the assizes. Others have broken the law for coin. Something is yet amiss in St. Ivo’s.”
Ann and Lady Violet had this much in common—a tendency to see the truth, however inconvenient. St. Ivo’s appeared to be a pretty, unremarkable English village, but such villages did not have riots over hound races. Rather than admit that, I remained silent.
“Let’s make a pass through the stable,” Ann said. “Charlemagne will appreciate a carrot.”
I took her hand, to which she did not object, and we made our way slowly down the hill.
“I spoke without thinking,” I said, “when I informed you that I’d be sleeping across the corridor. I spoke out of frustration and pique.”
“Our situation would frustrate a saint, Hugh, and you are not quite a saint, though I have seen you work miracles. If you wanted to remove to Berkshire to oversee the fruit harvest, I’d understand.”
Having exiled myself to a guest room, I wasn’t about to compound my folly by leaving for Berkshire, and bedamned to wifely understanding.
“I am sorry for my outburst, Ann, and if it’s all the same to you, I will maintain my present quarters.”
She was silent as we approached the stable yard. The lads were occupied with putting the older horses out for a night at grass and bringing in the young stock that had grazed through the heat of the day. Charlemagne was yet in his stall, because I often went for an evening hack.
“I’ve set Purvis to finding you a mare,” I said, “though I assume you aren’t averse to a handsome gelding if I come across one of those first?”
“Geldings do not come in season,” Ann said. “The convention of putting women on mares, when mares are periodically rendered distracted and out of sorts by the demands of nature, makes little sense to me. Find me a sane, sound equine of any stripe, and I will be grateful.”
I was grateful for my sane, sound wife. For her devotion to Fiona, for her patience with me. “Then you don’t mind having me sleep in the dressing closet?”
She fished a pair of carrots from the box outside the saddle room and fed one to Charlemagne. “I mind, Hugh. You cannot get proper rest on a cot that’s too short for you. I think of you there, night after night, when I know what a lack of sleep does to the nerves. You used to carp on that very theme.”
Charlemagne consumed his carrot and made sheep’s eyes at my wife. She stroked his nose, and I was jealous of my horse.
“I want you to be comfortable,” Ann went on, and my hopes rose like doves on the wing. “You need your rest, particularly if you are to resume doctoring the ailing and infirm. A healthy body resists disease more effectively than one that is run down, or so you claimed, and regular sleep is the bedrock of all good health.”
“So it is.” This was the power of a humble and sincere apology. A man willing to set aside his pride and admit an error in judgment was not only freed from his cot, he was permitted the very great comfort of slumber in the marital bed. From there, possibilities multiplied in my imagination like stable cats.
Late-night chats as Ann and I aided each other to disrobe.
Reading to Ann by the fire before bed.
A glancing touch beneath the covers…
“I should never have let you spend all those nights in the dressing closet,” Ann said, “and today I had your things moved into the blue guest room. I’m sure you will sleep much better there, and I won’t feel as guilty thinking of you tossing and turning on a hard cot.”
Charlemagne craned his neck and pulled back his lips in that undignified equine maneuver that looked like an equine having a good laugh.
“I am blessed with a most considerate wife,” I said. “If we might return to the house, I will spend some time in the estate office reviewing accounts.”
Ann fed Charlemagne the second carrot and then accompanied me up the hill. We did not hold hands. We did not walk arm in arm. I felt like a very great fool, in part because I had no idea what my wife was thinkinng.
Was she relieved to have me out of her dressing closet? She’d said no other man had caught her eye, and I believed her.
I did repair to the estate office, and to the comfort of some good French brandy. I stared at the list of bettors, though my mind refused to focus on St. Ivo’s riots and races. By morning, I was thoroughly out of sorts, because I had added one more insight to my store of eternal verities.
A man—a husband—could toss and turn in a fluffy, lonely four-poster just as miserably as he ever did on a wretched little cot.