remember his friend, the major, who visited last year and took such a shine to me? He wrote the recommendation, and I received news only yesterday that I am to leave this very afternoon.”
He saw her face blanch white. “You’re going away? To fight?”
“I am.” He stopped and she did as well, her arm still linked through his. “Maggie, I’m a man now – sixteen years old and brave enough to fight for my country. Your father has given me a chance to rise above my station. Not far, mind you. But if I stay here, I will only ever be the gamekeeper’s son.”
“If you go you may very well die,” Maggie said. She pulled her arm sharply back out of his grasp and turned to look at him, her grey eyes filling with tears. “You’re leaving me? You know that I cannot do without you, Nigel. Why would my father agree to this? Why did no one tell me?”
Nigel suspected that her father was more than happy to see him slip out of Margaret’s life, but he didn’t say as much. There was no need to upset her further. I cannot do without you, Nigel. He wondered fleetingly if she was speaking out of love. But in the next moment, she seized his hands and said, “You are my very best friend, and I shall never know another like you.”
Of course. “Our friendship will not change,” he said quietly.
“I will be able to write to you?” she said, her eyes wide.
“I don’t think there will be any reliable communication available to us,” he said. “I have heard that we will be stationed on the front, and I do not think letters will often make it to and from the camp.”
The tears broke free from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She took a shallow, shuddering breath. “Nigel, I don’t want you to go.”
He wanted to take her in his arms, and he knew from the look on her face that she expected him to. It’s what he would have done when they were children. But they were not children anymore. She didn’t yet understand it, but he did – love had taught him where the lines of propriety were drawn, and the fact that she still didn’t see a reason to avoid his embrace showed him the safe and miserable place he held in her heart. He took a small step backwards.
“I’m sorry, Margaret, but I have to. I don’t have any other choice. You’ll be fine without me – you’re about to enter the season, after all. And I’m sure you’ll have many new beaus…and friends, of course, to fill my place and distract you.”
“Don’t speak like that,” she snapped, fire in her eyes. She always grew angry when she was the most devastated. “You have to come back to me. You have to promise.”
He thought of all the war stories he’d heard when the major was hunting alongside his father and knew that he had no guarantee of his return. Fleetingly, he thought to tell her of the danger again in the hope that it would waken in her a sympathy akin to love. But he cared for her too much to earn her affection by manipulation. Instead, he did what he’d always done. He reassured her.
“I promise, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I’ll come back. You will be quite different when I return. You will be all grown up, a lady.”
She looked at him seriously and then said, “I don’t think I noticed it until now. But you’ve already gone and grown up without me. You’re leaving me behind, and I hate you for it.” She took a few steps away from him and stood for a while with her face turned towards the house and her arms crossed in front of her. Then she turned around again and looked at him with the tears running down her cheeks. “Nigel?”
“I know,” he said quietly. “You don’t hate me.”
She nodded, an apology and an acceptance passing between them as it always did, without words needed. They walked in silence to the stables, not speaking again until the separation demanded it. Margaret handed her horse over to the groom and then turned to leave. Nigel reached out and touched her shoulder fleetingly before dropping his hand back to his side.
“I won’t forget you, Queen Medb,” he said, harkening back to their childhood games where he knew she would feel the safest.
She turned around, and he saw that this