day . . . She would have given him the world and then snatched it back in one swoop. She recalled – so vividly! – his face when she had gone to him, and her brother’s death had stood between them. How much worse for him to have her and to lose her forever, all at once. She herself would not place such a value on her own person, but every line of his letter, every character that he sketched out, spoke of his mind.
Previously, the thought that he might mourn for her had comforted her. Now it distressed her. The man she would once have gladly killed was now someone whose throat she unwillingly held a knife to. The world was upside down and it had all gone wrong.
Perhaps I should not write again.
Perhaps I should disabuse him of his affection, just to save him when the . . . end comes.
*
She had expected to be moved out of the infirmary by now, but there were no fresh wounded to take her place, and the colonel had impressed on Doctor Carling’s wife the importance of Emily’s well-being enough that she had yet to be discharged. The walking wounded had been returned to duty, the most hopeless cases sent to Locke, to come back when the surgeons decreed. Or not, like Captain Goss, who had finally let go, accepting death as the lesser evil. So it was that she found herself spending another night there with the sickbeds all to herself, as though she was royalty who could demand a seclusion not granted to lesser mortals.
If there had been others there recuperating with her, it might never have happened.
Doctor Carling’s wife bedded down in the back room, while Emily slept surrounded by the emptied beds of the dead, the ghosts of old wounds. For a long while now she had not dreamt. The havoc of the days, her fearful imaginings, had quite drained that part of her that looked into the future or examined the past. Now, though, some little part of it was again set free.
In her dream she was at Grammaine, and it was a good dream for once. She came downstairs to speak to Cook, talked of all the usual things with Alice, watched Mary feed little Francis. There was no war in that dream. Not even the spectre of it hung about them and when Tubal came indoors to embrace his wife, he had two feet to carry him.
But she knew. Watching them, she knew, and she was waiting for the stain of the swamp to discolour the walls, the heat to begin wilting her, the crack of muskets to break the peace.
And on and on trudged the dream, the happy little scenes. Shopping at Chalcaster, evenings by the fire, visits to friends, and always in the back of her mind she was looking for the greycoats of Denland to come creeping in, as she knew they must.
And then there was a dance, held not at Deerlings but at some friend’s townhouse in Chalcaster, and the band struck up a merry tune and she looked around for a dance partner. But of course, there was one man cutting through the crowd towards her, and she could dance with no other because he was her mate, her lawful husband. She knew, if she but looked up a little, she could see his face clearly, resolve him as one or the other of them, but in the dream she did not dare.
Then she was startled awake, clutching at her sheets and listening to her own breathing – and to the sound of someone else in the room.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked. She heard a man moving with quiet patience between the beds, not making much noise, but not trying overmuch to be silent. Was it the Denlanders come to finish her? An assassin would have had her by now, or would have frozen to stillness once she spoke. A friend, then; a nocturnal visitor?
Her heart skipped and she whispered, ‘Giles? Mr Scavian?’
The intruder stopped and let out a long sigh. ‘Always the same, is it not? What do you see, between us, that makes you take me for him, or is it just that it is always he you really wish to see?’
‘Mr Lascari?’ she hissed. A light was kindled in the dark, guttering low about his fingers, revealing his hawklike features to her. His eyes flared, reflecting back the flame as they fixed on her.