“You must think I do not care,” she said to Ellen. “I cried so hard when I received your letter last evening that Lady Andrea misunderstood and launched into a speech about how Dom was better off where he was than suffering on unnecessarily. And I cried and laughed all night long. I would have come early this morning, but Lieutenant Penworth needed me again. The poor man. He has no will to live, you know, and no one can do anything at all for him but me. He refuses to eat or drink or even move for anyone else. He needed me this morning. His leg was paining him again, or rather the stump of his poor leg. And I knew that Dom was out of danger and in good hands. I am prattling, am I not?” She burst into tears.

Ellen put her arms about her and hugged her. “Yes, he will live,” she said. “And it is only after a long period of anxiety is over that one realizes how much of a strain one has been under. I have never doubted your devotion to your brother. Not for one moment. He is sleeping. Go and see him.”

“You have shaved him,” Madeline said with a laugh when she came back out of the bedchamber. “And did not cut his chin even once. How clever of you.”

“I was allowed to do nothing for him this morning except bring him a food tray,” Ellen said. “If he had had his sword beside him, I believe he would have held me off with that.”

Madeline laughed again. “Oh, you do my heart good,” she said. “Dearest Dom. And I suppose he was demanding kidneys and ale for breakfast?”

“Beefsteak and porter, actually,” Ellen said.

Both women giggled and felt strange doing so, as if they were performing some long-forgotten skill. They looked at each other in some embarrassment, and both ended up with tears in their eyes.

“I do wish Lieutenant Penworth were roaring with such discontent,” Madeline said. “Oh, I do wish it. But then, his injuries are in many ways worse than Dom’s, though I do not believe he was ever as close to death. He has to learn to live without a leg and an eye. It is bound to take longer, is it not?”

“He is fortunate to have someone who is willing to spend her time and sympathies on him,” Ellen said with a smile.

“And Dom is fortunate,” Madeline said. “But I cannot help feeling that we are imposing upon you now, Mrs. Simpson. Perhaps you would like to be free to leave here. Shall I make arrangements to have him moved to Lady Andrea’s? I am sure she will not mind. I was hoping to have heard from Edmund in England by now, but still there is nothing. I suppose the mails have been disrupted in the past two weeks.”

“I have no plans,” Ellen said. “And I would not want Lord Eden moved before he has regained some of his strength. Please leave him here.” Her voice shook a little. “I believe I need something to keep me occupied for a while yet.”

Madeline bit her lip and looked away. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I shall leave him here, then. And thank you. Will you tell Dom that I have been? The lieutenant was asleep when I left, but he does not sleep for long. He will be needing me again. I shall call again tomorrow if I may.”

She hurried away again soon after, eager to return to her main patient. She felt so very sorry for him. He was very young to have lost both his looks and his fitness. And he had been a vigorous young man who had enjoyed exercise and outdoor activity more than anything. She tried to imagine the same thing happening to Dom, and she knew that he would rather be dead. As Lieutenant Penworth would. He had told her that more than once.

He needed her now. She was the only person he would respond to, the only one he would listen to. She sat by his bedside sometimes for an hour or more, chattering away about her childhood, her girlhood, Amberley, the strange circumstances that had brought Edmund and Alexandra together, anything she could think of to distract his thoughts for a few minutes. And talking was something she had always been good at.

It felt lovely to be needed. Although she would many times prefer that the lieutenant had not been so wounded, since he had, she was glad that chance had brought him to Lady Andrea’s house and her. For the time, at least, purpose had been given to her life. It would be many weeks, perhaps months, before he would be fit enough to return to England. In the meanwhile, she would stay with him. Lady Andrea had no intention of removing from Brussels while her husband was with the army in Paris anyway.

She herself had nothing to return to England for. Even when Dom was well enough to travel, he would have Mama and Edmund to go back to. She would not be essential to him. She would be her old restless self again. Here she would be needed, perhaps for the rest of the summer.

And it was good to be needed.

She wondered why Edmund had not written. She wondered if he had yet received any of the three letters she had sent. But it did not matter. Dom was safe. And she was so busy that she had very little time to fret for family and home.


LORD EDEN MADE A determined effort over the next few days to regain some of his health and strength. His chest wound was healing nicely now that the abscess had broken, and his ribs were knitting together again. But there was still an annoying amount of pain. He could not move without wincing and gritting his teeth.

He was appalled at his own weakness. Just the effort of standing to wash himself in the mornings exhausted him. He could not walk without leaning heavily on Ellen’s shoulder, and the ten steps to the doorway of the bedchamber and back were almost beyond his endurance. After sitting up in bed for a meal he would slide gratefully back to a lying position again. And he seemed to be sleeping his life away.

He offended the doctor the afternoon after his abscess burst by flatly refusing to be bled, and added insult to injury by laughing at the man outright when he had turned to Mrs. Simpson and recommended a continuance of the diet of toast soaked in weak tea for another two weeks at the least. The surgeon washed his hands of him there and then and did not return after.

He determinedly ate whatever was put in front of him, and would several times have asked for more had he not had the uncomfortable feeling that he was living on Mrs. Simpson’s charity. She had not answered his question about whether he had any money or not. He had no idea where his clothes and gear were. His coat at least, he supposed, must be in sorry shape if the appearance of his chest was any indication.

But he did not worry a great deal about anything except regaining his strength. Those days seemed almost suspended beyond time, and he was not sure that he craved the day when he would be ready to leave those rooms and return to normal life.

They were alone together. Only once-on the morning after his first full day of returned consciousness-did a manservant appear from the other part of the house to stay with him while she went out, presumably to buy more provisions. He told her afterward that he had felt decidedly uncomfortable with the man standing silently just inside the door of the bedchamber, just like a large and humorless jailer. She laughed and left him alone after that during the few spells when she was out of the rooms. Madeline, of course, made whirlwind visits about every second day.

Most of the time, however, he and Mrs. Simpson were alone together. But his self-consciousness disappeared after the first day, once he had taken over looking after his own bodily needs. And he found her a cheerful and gentle companion. She spent most of her days in the room with him, sitting quietly sewing much of the time.

They talked. He told her-at her request-about his childhood and all the numerous scrapes he and Madeline had almost constantly been in. She even told him something of her own childhood, a happy one, she claimed. The man she had called father had always been kind to her, though as the years went on she had seen less and less of him, and sometimes when he came he had been in his cups. He had never mistreated her even then, she said, but she had not liked his glittering eyes, the smell of liquor on his breath. Her mother had always been a lovely, vivacious, seldom-seen presence, admired and adored from a distance.

“It is only looking back from an adult vantage point that I can realize what an unhappy household it was,” she said quietly, stitching at her embroidery. “Children very readily accept almost any kind of life as normal. I used to hate to hear them quarrel, but I did not hear it so very often. Tell me more about your own parents. It must have been dreadful to lose your father when you were only twelve.”

And so he talked on and sometimes even brought a smile to her eyes and a laugh to her lips.

But they did not always talk. Sometimes she sat quietly, her head bent to her work, and he watched her until he fell asleep. And sometimes he would open his eyes to find her sitting watching him.

It should have been embarrassing, the silences, the meeting of eyes in a quiet room in an empty house. But it was not so. Not at all. Sometimes their eyes would hold for several seconds before one of them would say something or smile or before he would close his eyes. There was never any feeling of discomfort.

She was an amazingly strong woman for someone so slender and of no more than average height. She never stumbled, though he leaned heavily on her at first when he walked. And she could take much of his weight on her arm as he sat up in bed or lay down again, so that he would not have to put so much strain on his chest muscles.

Often when she thought he slept, he would hear the rustle of her skirts and feel the coolness of her hand on his brow, checking for a return of his fever. He would never show her at such moments that he was not sleeping. He liked the nearness of her, the touch of her.