Page 15 of Twelve Drummers Drumming

“I like your boldness,” said Captain Rotherham in a low voice, his hand moving slightly so that it rested gently over hers. “Yet I can see this is not something that you have ever done…ever wanted to do before. Walking with a gentleman, I mean. Am I right?”

Jemima nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. How was it possible for such a man to see right into her heart?

Her hand was covered in his, a weighty yet welcome presence.

What was she doing?

“Interesting,” mused Captain Rotherham, “I must admit it surprises me. You are so beautiful.”

“I?” Jemima spluttered, drawing her fingers away ever so slightly out of the reach of his own. “I think whatever damaged your leg must have damaged your eyesight, too!”

As soon as the words had escaped her mouth, she regretted them. Curse her blasted tongue! It was always too hasty to speak, with none of the softness and care her sisters displayed.

“I apologize,” said Jemima swiftly, her face now burning for the dual reason of embarrassment and the yearning to further examine Captain Rotherham’s physique. “Please do not heed my words, I speak without thought, and it is most disgraceful that—”

“Now, you can stop that,” said Captain Rotherham, nodding at a passerby in a similar uniform to his own. “Miss Fitzroy, it is my deepest wish that you do not feel you have to be shy of talking to me about anything.”

“Anything?” Jemima arched an eyebrow suspiciously. She leaned back into the bench so that the distance between them was minutely increased.

This was not a good idea. She should have gone with Caroline to the dratted engravers, followed Sophia and Arabella into town to examine gloves and such things.

She should not be seated here on a bench, speaking plainly to a man she had just met!

But it did not feel wrong. It felt right, more right than anything else ever had.

Even if her imagination was offering her images of Captain Rotherham, pressed up against her, covering her body on the bench as he rained kisses down her neck…

The real Captain Rotherham laughed, his black hair falling over his eyes once more.

Jemima was tempted to push it back from his eyes but resisted the temptation. It was scandalous enough that she was even here. It would never do for her to start being intimate with him.

“Anything,” repeated Captain Rotherham. He shifted himself slightly on the bench, and Jemima found to her surprise that he had moved marginally toward her. His hand brushed hers on the bench. “For example, I do not wish you to try to ignore my crutch, nor be embarrassed by it.”

Jemima nodded slowly. “I can see how that could be unpleasant—for all involved. How did your injury occur?”

Darkness, and not just his dark hair, now swept across the face of Captain Rotherham. It was such a sudden change, Jemima was startled, and she cursed her own bluntness for offending a man who must have seen worse things in battle than she could possibly imagine.

“Forgive me,” said Jemima hurriedly, “I misspoke, I forgot myself—”

“No, no,” Captain Rotherham said gently, but with a degree of tension in his voice. “You were bound to ask, and I do not blame you for it. I would rather your thoughts be voiced to me than you be forced to self-censure.”

He paused for a moment, and as that moment lengthened, Jemima wondered whether or not he was actually going to speak again, or whether he was merely gazing out into the distance.

But when he spoke once more, she realized that Captain Rotherham was not seeing the lake before them lined with spindly trees, nor the children playing with their governesses as they fed the ducks. No, he was seeing a much darker picture of a land far from where they sat.

“It is a terrible thing, war,” Captain Rotherham said finally. “It is not something I would wish on anyone, especially a young lady like yourself, Miss Fitzroy. War can rip humanity from a man’s very self and forbids him to act in charity and gentleness. The man who did this to me,” and he used his crutch to point at his left leg, immobile and awkward, “had clearly seen just as much war and devastation as I had, but it had…affected him slightly differently.”

“Affected him?” Jemima whispered, barely aware that she had spoken aloud. She unconsciously leaned toward him. “I have read much about the war, but never having met a soldier before, it has been impossible for me to tell whether or not the newspapers have done what they always do and exaggerate beyond the credence of truth.”

Captain Rotherham raised an eyebrow. “Your quick intellect does you credit. But they are right, in the main. Many of us have injuries beyond that which one can see, and his was one that affected him greatly. I was considered an imminent threat, and so he acted accordingly. I had gone down to a village in search of water, and he happened to be standing near the village well.”

Jemima could picture it, a French village, shutters at the windows, and brightly painted houses lining the roads. A well, a bucket waiting patiently beside it, to be used by whoever required water. And a man in a crimson jacket approaching a man in a navy jacket…

Captain Rotherham’s words returned her to the present. “And that was that. My injury was severe enough to remove me to a hospital, but not severe enough to return me to England before my regiment was scheduled to winter here. And so, I waited for five months in a chair whilst my comrades went out and defended our country.”

It was not difficult for Jemima to detect the bitterness in his words. “But you survived,” she said quietly, unable to hide her true thoughts, her feelings of relief and gratitude that he had lived, and so had been able to meet her on that dirty street. “Many did not.”

“A shell of me survived,” said Captain Rotherham candidly. “Not as I was.”

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