Chapter 15

While struggling to suck air into his locked lungs, Julius barely heard the words Louisa was speaking. Images from the fight—that damn musket, they never left his mind.

Louisa came closer, her hand resting over his heart. "Tell me, please. Unburden yourself, please."

Julius pulled away from her to hunch over and rubbed his eyes. His hesitation was pronounced then, when he spoke, his tone held a note of tired defeat.

"At Waterloo… there was an incident. I cannot tell you what happened because I do not fully know. I only get…glimpses through my dreams and I cannot dare use my dreams as a steady reference because they shift by the night."

She looked contemplative. "If you put the sum of them together, what does it boil down to?"

"I may have killed another solider by accident," he said hollowly, his laugh then was just as empty. "I have killed many, hundreds by a rough estimate, but knowing I might have fatally injured one of mine tears me to my core."

"I'd woken up briefly while they carried me off the battlefield, but I was in hospital after that. It was three weeks after I'd awakened with amnesia of that day. Physically, I was healed, my skin a collection of scars that reminded me of where I had been, and I wear them like badges of honor. Any man who experienced what I did, do the same."

"Why, do you suspect, made you forget?" she asked.

"Not why, but what," he replied, "A cannon went off at that very moment, hitting me with shrapnel and whatever debris that was inside. I suppose the trauma of that hit closed that day off from my mind."

You poor man. How long have you been carrying the weight of that guilt?

Pain and horror mingled in her. "I am so sorry," she said helplessly. "I had no idea such a thing happened."

"You could have never known," he replied.

"This man," she asked. "Do you know what happened to him after the war? Was there a funeral? Did he survive?"

"I do not know," Julius admitted, heaving a sigh. "I should have done my due diligence and found out, but I trusted the words of my superiors that the matter had been handled. I had a lot on my shoulders since then, dealing with the aftereffects of the war, the night terrors and trying to care for Rose. It slipped through the crack, I suppose."

"I think you should find out what happened to him," Louisa said softly. "It might give you some measure of closure and ease the guilt resting on your heart."

"I—I should do that," Julius agreed. "Especially now that some intractable bureaucrat from the Crown is looking into the actions the higherups in the ranks did during the war, me included. He wants a pound of flesh."

She grew cross. "Does this man have a vendetta against you?"

"No," Juluis scoffed while gently getting to his feet. "He is just a petty peon who had been given too much power and thinks it means something."

Rising as well, Louisa asked, "Are you going to join me?"

"I'm going to my study with a cup of coffee, a pen and paper to make a plan about what I will do," Julius gave her a regretful look while pulling on a robe. "Go back to sleep, Louisa, I will be fine."

Concerned, she asked. "Is there anything I can do?"

He cupped her cheek, his eyes no longer empty but burning with determination. "Thank you, but no. I will most likely be away by the time you wake, so please do not be alarmed. I will return."

He brushed his lips against the side of her neck. She let out a shuddering sigh, raising her arm so that her fingers brushed his nape, before he pulled away. Sinking to the edge of the bed, she could only watch as he walked away.

By the time she woke, Julius' warning was made true; he was gone but assured that he would return, she made in impromptu visit to her parents in St. John's Wood.

The Claimond Mansion in the town was new, as far as upper-crust houses went. It had been constructed barely twenty years before in the place of an older, Georgian building, and held all the modern conveniences a man of as much wealth her father, Nicholas Payne, the Viscount Claimond, could buy.

The carriage rolled to a stop in front of a columned fa?ade and an footman in fine livery came to open the door and helped Louisa stepped out first, and up the gleaming white marble front steps.

"Is mother home?" Louisa asked, then mentally castigated herself for not writing first. "Father?"

"Both Lord and Lady Claimond are home, Your Grace," the footman said as he opened the door for her. "Welcome home, Madam."

Bypassing the foyer, with its subtle damask wallpaper and walnut furnishing, she climbing the sweeping stairs and headed to her mother's main parlor and heard the tinkling of spoons against delicate china.

"Is that cooks orange cake, I smell," Louisa said as she walked into the room. "Hullo Mother, please, don't get up." She leaned in to kiss the older lady's cheek. "How are things?"

"Louisa, darling," Bridget, a masterful painter smiled, "I didn't know you were coming today."

"It was a spur of the moment," Louisa replied while nodding to her mother's friend, Lady Delphine. "Good to see you, my lady. I apologize for dropping in on you so suddenly."

"Nonsense," the Frenchwoman smiled, her accent still pronounced even after living half her life in England. "I am happy to see you, my dear. Marriage seems to have done you well."

"Speaking of marriage," Bridget said. "Are the rumors true? Is your darling husband back home?"

"He is…I—" Louisa replied, her spirits plummeting. "I…need your advice, mother. Lady Delphine, I must apologize but?—"

"You need your maman, my dear," Lady Delphine reached for her shawl. "No matter how old a girl get, she always needs her mother. Don't be sorry for interrupting, Louisa, we were about finished with our tête-à-tête anyway."

The slender lady, clad in a simple but exquisite dress of peach silk, French kissed her mother cheek and said her goodbyes. After she left, Louisa dropped her eyes to her table, sighed then made a cup of tea.

"What is bothering you, dear? I can there is something that is weighing heavily on your mind." her mother asked. "I would have thought you would be over the moon at having your husband back home."

"Julius is home, but Julius is not… he is not well, mother," Louisa said quietly, while starting into the depths of her Ceylon tea. "When we did court, I was not aware of the demons he was fighting. The war changed him, mother and I was not aware of…any of it."

"Soldiers returning from wars are seldom the same as the men and boys who set out to fight," her mother said. "What they have seen and what have done, those macabre experiences change them. Sometimes it is as though a different being inhabits the face and form of the men who have returned."

"I never knew the man he was before though," Louisa replied. "Which makes it just a little harder. We were never a love match mother, you know this, but… I want to give him more than just the bare mutual convenience, respect, and honor our sort of marriage affords us."

"You want to love him," Bridget concluded.

"But I am not sure he will be receptive to it," Louisa confessed. "I think the war has hardened him beyond what I expected."

"I have heard tales of men from the war who become angry about odd things, little things that should not appear to matter. He may have nightmares, he may be sensitive to other stimuli, loud noises, shouts, unexpected touches or tactile provocations," Bridget added.

"I have seen the nightmares," Louisa confessed. "He wakes screaming at time, unsure of where he was, confused and seems to be back in the battlefield. He masks his emotions well, too well at times. It is like there is a wall between his eyes and his soul."

"There are ways to break down walls, dear," Bridget patted her turban.

"I doubt an explosive would work in this instance," Louisa said dryly.

"Perhaps the poor man believes that he does not a single soul on this earth to trust," her mother opined. "Show him he has your trust, and it might spur him on to lay his trust with you. It might take time, but if you want your marriage to work."

Thinking about the deadline for the annulment, Louisa shook her head. "I don't know if I can be the woman he needs."

"You sell yourself short, darling, I doubt another woman such as you exist on this earth," her mother blithely added a sugar square to her tea. "Then again, men are not the brightest sparks, sometimes we have to show them the way. Do you remember your vows?"

"Of course I do."

"You promised to care for one him in both sickness and in health. Treat this ailment from the war as a sickness, dear. Where he once only saw chaos, be his tranquility, where he once lived in hate, show him love and when he learned to distrust, show him loyalty. Marriage is not always about love, dear, there is also duty.

"Shakespeare wrote that love is not love which alters when alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove . . ."

"O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken… it is the star to every wandering bark," Louisa recited without preamble.

"There you go, dear," Bridget said. Unflappably, she asked, "Have you two consummated the marriage yet?"

"M-Mother!" Louisa blurted, her face aflame. "Please, do not ask me that!"

"Why not?" she buttered a crumpet. "I am sure I had educated you on what married people do behind closed doors."

Mortified, Louisa stared at her tea, then, in a strangled voice admitted, "No, we have not."

"Seeing those prudish nightgowns of yours, I am not surprised," Bridget sipped her tea with a pinkie lifted. "Seduction is a game most me think they have the authority on, but we women are much subtler, intentional, and calculated.

"Maybe your husband doesn't know he wants to become intimate until you show him you desire it. And the first thing you need to do it to remove those horrid nightgowns with entire bolts of fabric and flounces."

"And replace them with what?"

Bridget set the cup down, her lips pressed in thought, "I have a certain dressmaker that I need you to see. She specializes in intimate apparel, sheer nightgowns, garters, corsets things of that nature."

Louisa wondered where this was coming from; when had her mother decided that she needed a new wardrobe, and one designed for seduction as well. The only conclusion she could come to was one that made her chest roil in discomfort.

"Mother, are you telling me… you've purchased these things?"

"Of course," Bridget replied, "Your father is old but not dead and neither am I. If only you knew the benefits that come when your monthly courses have natural ceased, the urge to copu?—"

"Enough," Louisa shot to her feet, embarrassed right down to her toes. "I'll probably die from mortification speaking about this with you, mother. I must go."

"Not before I give you the address," Bridget said calmly. "Believe me, you will thank me one day."

Stepping into the home of Wickham Knight, the newly minted Earl of Everdon, a fellow solider, who had come home to find his older brother Walton had died and sold his commission to take up the title.

The man had not been there to witness the incident Julius was being hunted for, but he knew the bookkeeper who had reported it.

Wickham sat a cup of coffee before Julius, then eased himself into the other chair, his gait a bit uneven because of his prosthetic leg. "The bookkeeper, a William Nelson, eh? As far as I can remember, after his decommission, he retired to Windsor."

Julius rolled his neck, "I have to clear my name."

"But if the witnesses are dead, how would that work?" Wickham asked. "It would be your word against a dead man's."

"I need it for peace of mind," Julius said. "I am a haunted man, Knight, at night all I see is confusion. My mind twists my memories into making me believe I was innocent and at other times, I am the red-handed deviant guilty of the crime. I cannot rest knowing the truth, and honestly, I should have done my due diligence and cleaned that issue up from the moment I returned home."

"Why didn't you?" the Earl asked.

Gazing to the window over Wickham's head. Julius admitted, "In the scale of things, I never found it pressing. I had to care for my sister and I was not fit for normal daily life; sleepless nights plagued me, I reacted to every sharp sound, the smell or burning flesh sends me right back to the battlefield. I had to heal my mind to function enough."

"Oh, my belated felicitations on your marriage," Wickham added. "Was that another complication in the situation?"

"Not at that time, because our marriage is a convenient one," Julius admitted, "But that was before. I'd need us to switch focus back to finding this clerk."

"I have an old address for him in Windsor, but I doubt he is still there," Wickham said. "You are a duke, aren't you? Can't you simply wave your hand and give an order and make this debacle goes away?"

"I can," Julius said, "But when words get out, and it will, my honor will be in question, and I will not have that. I will do everything by the book and not cut any corners because of my privileges."

"How far are you willing to go to get this done?" Wickham asked. "Because it might be never-ending."

"If worst comes to worst, I will have the body resumed and examined by a professional mortician to prove I didn't kill him," Julius vowed.

"And would happen if it is proven you did?" Wickham asked.

Julius wished he had an answer for him.