Mary Balogh - Web of Love

His chest felt so swollen that he could hardly breathe. He could feel blood oozing down his side. He was lifted to a table eventually. He rather thought that the scream he heard had come from his own mouth, though it was not by any means the only one he had heard during his half-hour of returned consciousness.

The surgeon who looked down at him with weary eyes was splattered with blood from head to waist. Lord Eden closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and concentrated on not shaming himself any more, now that he was expecting pain and it was not to take him by surprise.

He was fortunate enough to faint while the flattened ball was cut from his chest, but the gush of clotted blood that came from the wound brought consciousness and relief from the terrible pressure at the same moment. He heard himself groan, and cut off the sound in the middle as hands lifted him from the table and set him on the floor again.

It was amazing how small the world became when one was in pain, he thought. He was shuttered and enclosed by it, an agony of knifelike pain. He must have broken ribs.

He did not know how long he lay there before hands were lifting him again and setting him astride a horse.

“It’s not the best, sir,” a voice said. “But the roads are so clogged up that it might take you days to get through on a wagon. You are one of the lucky ones.”

One of the lucky ones. The words ran like a refrain through his muddled, fevered, agonized brain for the rest of the night. He did not know where he was or who was with him. He did not know where he came from or why he was on this ride.

But there was something ahead of him. Someone. Someone he must reach, and then he would be safe. All would be well. Mama? She was in London. Edmund? Yes, Edmund. Alexandra would look after him, and Edmund would make everything right, as he always had done. A big boat, Christopher had said. A big boat. Edmund was gone.

Madeline? He had to reach Madeline. She would be worried. He had promised not to die. He mustn’t die. Madeline would be fit to throw hatchets if he did. He had to get to Madeline. Where was she? Not at Edmund’s. Edmund was gone. Where was she? Had she gone too? Was she in London? At Amberley? She shouldn’t have gone. He needed her. She should have stayed.

Charlie. He would go to Charlie. The Rue de la Montagne. He must remember that. Rue de la Montagne. He said it over and over to himself. He said it aloud. There was comfort there. He would be able to rest there. She would be there, and she would not fuss him or talk too loudly. She would look after him. Yes, she was the one he had to go to.

He had something to tell her. She would look after him, but he had something to tell her first. He couldn’t remember what. He would remember when he saw her. The Rue de la Montagne. The Rue de la Montagne.

And then he heard her voice. But he could not move. He did not dare move. Someone was touching him, pulling at him. They would kill him. Where had she gone? Was that him screaming again? Not again. He must not do that again. He would frighten her and disgust her perhaps. But who was making those sounds?

His body was on fire. It felt as if it must explode at any moment. He fixed his eyes on the only comfort there was. A face bending over him. Busy at something. And there was some comfort. The terrible pressure of his clothes and boots against his body had gone. And there were cool cloths against him. And was that a pillow beneath his head? She was there. He could relax now. She was there, and her cool hand was on his brow.

He had something to tell her.

“Charlie,” he heard someone say. And then he remembered.

And he told her.

Had he told her? She was looking at him with a calm marble face. She smiled. She told him to go to sleep. And then she lifted his hand to her cheek, kissed the back of it, laid it down on top of the blanket, and was gone.

But she was there. He was home now. He could not sleep, but he could retreat into his pain again. She was there.

MADELINE WAS AT A LATE BREAKFAST OR an early luncheon-no one bothered to give names to meals any longer-when she was called out into the hallway of Lady Andrea Potts’s house. At some time during the night-she had no idea when-Lady Andrea had appeared at her shoulder after having been absent for some time and ordered her to go to bed.

“I have just had a refreshing four hours of sleep,” she said. “Now it is your turn. You will be no earthly good at all to these men if you collapse with exhaustion, now, will you?”

Madeline had gone because she was too tired to argue. But Mr. Mason had already brought the news from somewhere outside the house that the fighting was over and the French in full flight and the Prussian army in pursuit. A great victory, he had announced heartily, to the faint cheers of the lesser wounded.

A great victory indeed, she had thought, stepping carefully among the living bodies strewn over the drawing-room carpet so that she would not step on an outflung arm or leg. Was this what a great victory was?

And somehow even more wounded had been carried into the house while she slept. They were in the salon by the front hall, with only one thin blanket apiece, a weary-eyed maid had told her, and no pillows. She had not been in there yet.

Who could be wanting to talk to her? she wondered, hurrying into the hall when she was summoned, her stomach lurching inside her at all the possibilities. But it was only a strange manservant with a note. He handed it to her and waited. There was no empty room to which to withdraw.

Dominic had been brought in earlier that morning, Mrs. Simpson had scrawled. He had a chest wound that she had not yet examined, though it had been tended on the field. He was in a high fever, but was safe and warm in a bed in her rooms. Nothing else. No indication of whether he would live or die. Madeline surprised the servant by laughing suddenly. How could one tell if any of these men would live or die? Two had died in this very house the day before, and one of those had walked inside without assistance. And there were a dozen at least for whom it was a miracle that this day had dawned. If it had dawned. She had been sleeping for five hours and had not yet checked on them.

“Tell Mrs. Simpson that I will be there as soon as I am able,” she said, folding the note carefully. She was surprised to find that her hands were quite steady.

She turned and walked into the salon, and was greeted by a chorus of requests for water. She was soon so busy that she abandoned her plan to ask Lady Andrea if she might be excused for an hour. How could she leave when there were so few hands to help? Dom was as safe as he could possibly be. Mrs. Simpson would care for him.

Before approaching the final silent bundle by the window, she opened the door and yelled at a servant who happened to be passing through the hallway to run up to her room and bring all the pillows and blankets from her bed and the cushions from the daybed. Then she turned back to him. She knew he was not dead; his hand was twitching. But his head and one side of his face were swathed in fresh bandages, and the single blanket draped over his body was flat to the floor where his right leg should have been.

She knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. “I shall have a pillow for your head and another blanket for you in a moment,” she said gently. “Would you like a drink?”

His one uncovered eye was closed. He did not answer her. But he clawed weakly at her hand. She turned and lifted the cup she had set on the floor beside her and slid her free arm beneath his head to raise it slightly so that he might drink. And as he did so and some of the water dribbled from the sides of his mouth and down his neck, she realized that he was Lieutenant Penworth. That vigorous, eager boy.

“Here,” she said as the servant picked her way over to her side, her arms laden, “I shall put a pillow beneath your head. And an extra blanket over you. You are shivering. It is Madeline Raine, Lieutenant. You are safe now. And will be more comfortable than you have been, I think.”

She touched the backs of her fingers lightly to his cheek and turned to look at the men about her and to decide which were most in need of the single pillow, two frilled cushions, and two blankets still piled in the servant’s arms.

Dominic was forgotten about. Or at least pushed to the back of her mind. There were more pressing concerns to occupy her for the moment.

THE DOOR THAT SEPARATED Ellen’s rooms from the rest of the house remained open as she and the other occupants shared the care of the wounded. But she did not go out into the streets again. She felt no more need to do so, and the house was as full as it could be. No one else that she knew came to the house until Lady Madeline Raine came that evening. But then, she was expecting no one she knew. No one at all.

Lord Eden was delirious with a high fever by afternoon and had not been quite rational even when they had carried him in. But he was right about that one thing. No one else came at all. And she felt that he was right. She had not doubted it from the moment he had told her. There was no lingering hope, no part of her that listened for footsteps even against reason.

She was not expecting anyone else. And it did not matter. She would not think of it. She had plenty to do. More than enough. The boy, though not nearly as highly fevered as he, was fretful. She had to make frequent calls on him to soothe him, to give him drinks and set his blankets straight, to smooth back his hair and kiss his brow.