Page 18 of Miss Dignified
“Somebody probably already has. Tremont was inexperienced, too thickheaded to do anything other than follow orders, and assigned to a horror of a commanding officer. I resigned my commission prior to the Hundred Days and only rejoined shortly before Waterloo. I lost track of Tremont, thank the Almighty. Despite commendations from his superior, the men regarded his lordship as no credit to his uniform.”
Mrs. Lovelace’s hands went still in her lap. “Could he have deserted?”
“Tens of thousands did, on both sides. Why would an earl desert, though? Of all men, he would expect himself to serve loyally, wouldn’t he? Nobody accused Tremont of cowardice or disloyalty, not that I recall.”
“But if military life did not agree with him, might he have chosen to leave it behind?”
Dylan considered a third apple tart and decided he was, much to his surprise, satisfied with what he’d consumed thus far.
“If Tremont had not yet put an heir and spare in his nursery, nobody would have begrudged him a return to civilian life.” God forbid all the wealth amassed by a titled family should revert to the crown.
And whatever else had been true about Tremont, he’d been young. Pathetically, desperately young, in both years and experience. Barely shaving, his voice still prone to cracking at the worst times. Too young, by aristocratic standards, to have left legitimate sons behind, but not too young to die for his country.
“Enough talk of military matters, Mrs. Lovelace. Tell me something about you that only a smitten man would know. What is your favorite sweet? What is your favorite book?”
Mrs. Lovelace resumed winding her yarn. “I ought to say the Bible, but I do enjoy the Waverley novels. What about you?”
“You must make free with my library, then,” Dylan said, rather than admit that he hadn’t read enough novels to have a favorite. He generally fell asleep before he’d completed the first chapter. “I am more inclined toward agricultural treatises, poetry, and shorter works.”
Mrs. Lovelace finished with her ball of yarn. “Tell me of your sisters. What are their interests?”
Dylan wanted to know why Lydia Lovelace had dodged his questions about her home, why she liked Walter Scott’s drivel about Highlanders and knights and the Young Pretender. But if Dylan had to prattle on about his siblings to gain Mrs. Lovelace’s trust, prattle on he would.
“My sisters. Very well. Bronwen, the youngest, is as bookish as ever. Marged is the family harper, and Tegan, the oldest, has raised her needlework to a high art. Any one of them could run Tragwyddoldeb in her spare time, but I am not about to allow them that honor.”
“Duty matters to you a very great deal, doesn’t it, Captain?”
“Some duties. I learned in the army that not all duties are equal. A duty to my men does not eclipse my duty to my sisters, but I will rely on you to keep a particularly watchful eye on the back door should my siblings visit.” Which they would. Dylan’s instincts, which had saved his life more times than he could count in Spain, assured him of that much.
“You’ve alerted your cousins to the coming invasion?”
“Both Goddard and MacKay have been warned.”
Mrs. Lovelace fished around in her workbasket, refolding this, rearranging that. “What of Mrs. Dorning?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mrs. Sycamore Dorning is sister to Colonel Goddard and thus also your cousin. She is the widow of a marquess. If your sisters are in Town, then their lady cousin will be well placed to show them around and introduce them to eligible parties.”
Dylan absently petted the kitten and realized he’d committed a tactical blunder—an oversight, rather. Jeanette Dorning was married to an earl’s younger brother and counted among her in-laws and marital connections roughly half of Mayfair.
“Excellent suggestion.” Though how did a man ask his lady cousin to protect him from matchmaking sisters? “Does Lord Tremont matter to you, Mrs. Lovelace?”
She closed the lid of her workbasket, picked up Dylan’s half-full cider glass, and took a sip without seeming to realize her error.
“He is family and titled. If he died in battle, that should have been remarked.”
Scenes rose in Dylan’s memory, not of battle, but of the stinking, dazed, wretched, moaning aftermath. Thousands lying injured among the dead, and each man calling out in his own language for the same thing:Help me, please. Please, help me.
“You’ve heard the term ‘missing in action’?” Dylan asked.
She nodded. “I suspect it’s a euphemism for ‘presumed dead.’ Horse Guards claims Marcus was not killed in battle, and he did not go missing. He was assigned to a transport bound for England after Waterloo, and he boarded the ship, but nobody seems to know if he remained in London, was set upon by footpads, or came home with some injury to his mind.”
She was on first-name terms with an earl, another puzzle piece.
“You are correct that any of those outcomes should have been properly documented in the normal course, but demobilizing tens of thousands of men is not the normal course. Some officers stayed on in Paris, some came home, some went traveling on the Continent. Some men married wives on campaign who would not be accepted back home. Some soldiers were so badly disfigured in combat or deranged by violence that they no longer sought a return home.”
And the military allowed those men the dignity of a quiet retreat to the French, German, or Italian villages of their choice, where many such men from many nationalities were living out their days.
