Angelline clasped Emily’s hand. ‘See you on the line, Marshwic.’ And then she was gone.
‘What is it, Brocky?’
The big man grimaced. ‘Right, well . . . I reckon I’m probably not supposed to show you this, but I don’t know the man, so it doesn’t make a pox of difference to me. I thought you’d want it, anyway.’
He handed her a folded letter, the wax seal on it broken. She recognized the handwriting immediately and looked up at him in surprise.
‘Oh, we’ve had quite a correspondence on, your Mr Northway and I,’ Brocky confirmed. ‘That messenger girl of his’s been running herself ragged up and down the line from Chalcaster to Locke.’
She opened out the letter and read it carefully, and then again.
If I were a hero, I would set off myself, he had written. If I were a soldier . . . ‘Oh,’ she said.
Brocky shrugged. ‘You, er . . . Your man, is he, this Northway fellow . . . ?’ and she knew he was thinking about her and Scavian.
‘I don’t know, Brocky. He and I used to . . . I used to hate Cristan Northway more than anyone alive: history, family history. But since the war, things have been different.’
‘War does that,’ observed Brocky sagely.
‘It’s difficult,’ she said.
‘Your life, your choices,’ he said. ‘Besides, all bets are off in wartime. After all, there’s no guarantee you’re going to see this Northway again, and all the letters in the world aren’t going to change that.’ At least Scavians here, followed the unspoken words.
‘You and Angelline seem to be . . .’
A broad, lewd and automatic leer split his face. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes indeed. I’ve no complaints there; her neither, for that matter.’ The leer stayed put, most of it, but something retreated behind it. ‘I’ve my eye on a little practice in the capital, if it all works out. Or maybe I’ll go travelling with her players. You make plans, you know . . . despite everything.’
‘You’ll be well set up for whatever you do, you and Mallen both,’ she observed. ‘Cristan – Mr Northway is good, I think, for his promise.’
‘Not that Mallen would know what to do with the money. He’d probably try and eat it or something, damned savage.’ Brocky stood up at last, stretching, then wincing as he felt his scar pull. ‘You get some rest now. Your country’ll be calling on you soon enough.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘I won’t say anything about the letter to . . . well, you know what I mean.’
‘I’m obliged, Brocky.’
*
And now here she was, one day away from enjoying the freedom of the camp again; just one day standing between her and the war.
She took out Mr Northway’s letter and read it again; she had lost count of how many times she had done so.
Too long, too late, too far. It was all wrong, she knew. There must have been a point where she could have relaxed into the idea of his love. Perhaps that point had occurred before she left for Gravenfield. Certainly it was before she had left for the front. All that time, slowly stripping herself of her hostility; all that time under his careful, sardonic wooing, and he had come close, so close. She had overshot his love, somehow. She looked back on it from her current vantage point, looked back into her past. What I might have had.
Perhaps that moment had come and gone while she was Doctor Lam’s prisoner. Perhaps if she had returned with the others, been present at camp for it, she would have met the moment and embraced it. But now . . .
Mortality was at her shoulder now. Her brush with the enemy had brought it into focus, where before had been just a blur. She stared down at his neat handwriting, seeing in it a tremor, a hurry, that had not been there in his earlier communications.
What would he have done, had I not returned? Such a calm man, such a clever man. Had she not seen this letter she might have believed he would turn his affections elsewhere, and gone on with the cold precision of his life. Now . . .
There was a fire inside him. He was not master of it, or of himself, any more.
If I die . . .
If she wrote back now, acknowledged his love, accepted his love, and then some Denland sharpshooter made an end of her the next