Page 48 of The Lady's Companion
“So am I,” he agreed. “Go to bed, Susan. I’m sure Kate Skerlong will hold our porridge until the noon hour.”
She nodded, shucked off her robe, and crawled into bed, tootired to object when the bailiff tucked the covers around her and then sat on her bed. “You need to know something,” she began as her eyes closed.
“H’mm?”
He sounded so close, and then she realized that he had flopped back on her bed and was lying draped across it, his feet dangling over the edge. She was so fuddled that it seemed perfectly logical. She wiggled her toes down until they met the resistance of his body outside the covers, then stopped.
“She can’t read anymore. She’s been fooling us with those letters on her lap,” Susan said as she turned onto her side and tucked her legs closer to her, since she couldn’t stretch out with the bailiff lying there.
“What?” The bed jiggled as he turned over. She could feel him flop back again, and his voice sounded disgusted. “And here I think I am so clever and take care of her so well! I had no idea.”
She opened her eyes and raised up on her elbow so she could see him in the faint light of earliest dawn. “She had me read some of her letters to her while we waited for you to return with Dr. Pym. Oh, David, her son’s letter from New Orleans is a study in anguish! Charles was so desperate to not ever command men again, and I know she forced him into it.”
“And that is why we got Charles at Waterloo, I suppose,” he finished. He reached out and rested his hand on her ankle as it lay outlined by the covers. “She was the warrior and he was not.” He patted her ankle.
“I don’t want to be alone like that when I am her age, with nothing to comfort me but letters I cannot read,” she said, offering no objection when his fingers remained on her ankle. He didn’t really need to rub it that way, but it would take too many words to object.
“You could have accepted my offer,” he said.
“But I didn’t,” she reminded him as she closed her eyes. “I readabout Jesusa on the withdrawal from Burgos. Oh, David.”
His fingers were still then, but remained resting on her ankle. His sigh was so huge she felt it through the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He was silent so long she thought he had fallen asleep, except that his fingers were massaging her ankle again. “Never mind. It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” she said, drowsy again with the rhythm of his fingers.
“Long enough. Jesusa was a wonderful part of my life.”
She knew he was near sleep, too, because his voice was slow and heavy. She shifted her foot, wondering if he would let go. He did, but she discovered that she missed his fingers. “Did you love her?” she asked.
He nodded, moving himself farther onto the bed and raising up on his elbow. “She could love me cross-eyed, Susan,” he said frankly. “I cannot begin to express what a relief she was to me after the terror of a battle. I could forget everything but reveille in her arms.”
My blushes, she thought. Why is this man so blunt? The gentlemen she was acquainted with would perish with mortification before they would describe a relationship with a woman in such terms. Then again, a woman would never have to wonder what was on David Wiggins’ mind. She thought of her own kind—the bows, the simpering, the smirks, the quizzing, the games—and smiled. I could ask this man anything, and he would tell me. He would even tell me if he loved me, if I asked him. I do not know if I am that honest. Or that brave.
“Was she pretty?” she asked instead.
Ha lay down again, but he did not touch her. “No, not really,” he said finally, having given the matter some thought. “She was a bit full-blown to be English-pretty, like you, but her eyes were simply matchless.” He laughed softly. “It is enough to say that Iloved her.”
“But you did not marry her,” Susan pointed out, wondering where her boldness came from. It was as though I have a stake in this, she thought, even though I know it cannot be so.
“No.” He sat up then and rested himself against the footboard of her bed, crossing his legs and watching her. “I wanted to. I even asked little Charlie Bushnell for permission—he was his father’s adjutant then—but he only laughed.”
His voice sounded hard to her ears. She sat up, too. “How mean of him!”
The bailiff shrugged. “Maybe not, Susan.” He sighed again and got up, stretching, then went to the window to peer out at the coming dawn. “Soldiers and camp followers—older than time. When wars end, they go away to other bivouacs.”
“But you have come here,” she reminded him, lying down again, this time on her back, so she could watch him at the window.
“I have.” He sat by her again and looked into her eyes so long that she wanted to squirm, except that they were hip to hip and he would have felt her nervousness. If nerves it is, she considered. Nerves never gave me a warm feeling. “I have made so many promises to so many Bushnells that here I remain.” His eyes went to the window. “I am tied by my own wheat. And now you are here. I cannot leave.”
She knew he would kiss her then, and he did, but it was only the briefest of kisses. “Go to sleep, Susan,” he murmured when his lips were just a little above hers. “And if you think of anything,” he said at the door, “share it, please. I’m fresh out of ideas, and I think the doctor has us over a barrel.”
Susan did not see the bailiff again for three days, and she wondered what kept him away. She went quietly about her own duties, practicing on the harpsichord in Lady Bushnell’s room as the widow kept time with her cane on the floor by the bed. Shelistened to Lady Bushnell’s advice, whispered softer now, and took it, practicing downstairs in the evenings when she wanted to run to the succession house and watch the bailiff measure, weed, and record the wheat’s progress.
Or it could be that he has no more ideas than I do and cannot bear to see his defeat mirrored in my own eyes, she considered one night over dinner. I could ask Mrs. Skerlong right plainly where he is, she thought, and try not to blush if she winks at me.
“Mrs. Skerlong, where is David?” she asked point-blank, putting down her fork, which had been shifting food from one side of the plate to the other, in imitation of eating. “Sometimes I see a light very late at night in the succession house, and I think I heard him walking to Lady Bushnell’s room this morning, but I do not see him.”
