Louisa tried in vain to think of some way to obtain the full story of this incident. No wonder none of the travelers had been willing to answer questions about what had happened. She gave the other woman an encouraging smile.
There was a pause. “Perhaps you are wondering about Diana,” said her visitor. “In connection with your nephew, that is. He does call quite often, but I cannot say that I have seen any signs of a serious attachment. If something does come of it, it might reassure you to know that the Harts acknowledge Diana as a full member of the family, and have been very courteous to me as well. You need not fear that my divorce will harm her prospects in any way, in spite of the unusual circumstances.”
Another tantalizingly incomplete piece of information. “What unusual circumstances?” Louisa wanted to ask. But her question was never spoken, because at that moment the door opened and Meyer came in, closely followed by her nephew Anthony.
“I beg your pardon, Louisa,” Meyer said. “I know you have company, but when you have a moment Anthony has something rather urgent to tell you.”
Then he saw who was with her.
It was hard to say who was more shaken. Abigail turned pale and half-rose from her seat. Meyer stopped so quickly that Anthony nearly ran into him. Glancing back and forth between her visitor and her brother-in-law, Louisa sighed. Something had indeed happened in France. She was looking at it. For once, Eli's matchmaking had produced some results; they were, unfortunately, not happy results.
Meyer recovered first. He gave the smallest possible inclination of his head, as though he were afraid to move more than a fraction of an inch.
Abigail answered with an equally restrained nod. “I stopped by to return the book,” she said. Louisa could see her swallow. “Itâit was very kind of you to think of me, but perhaps you should offer it to someone who will enjoy it more.”
Louisa glanced down at the volume on the chair and recognized it at once. As clumsy as her husband was at matchmaking, her brother-in-law was evidently even clumsier at the rituals of courtship. What had he been thinking, to give such a gift to a woman like Abigail Hart? But then she suddenly realized what must have happened.
“Nathan,” she said. “Did you
read
those poems before you gave Mrs. Hart the book?”
“No,” he confessed. Alarmed, he asked, “Are theyâunseemly ? I thought Byron was very widely read. The bookseller assured me that the ladies who patronized his shop admired him greatly. And I was told that everything in this collection is based on the Bible.”
“The poems are not improper, or not very much so.” Louisa was groping for words to describe what happened when scripture and Byron were mixed. “It is just that the allusions to the Bible are very free. And it is all quite morbid; doomed love and battles and exile and death.” Typical Byron, in other words. Obviously Meyer had never read him. “It might not be to everyone's taste,” she added diplomatically.
“You found it offensive.” Meyer addressed Abigail.
She hesitated. “Perhaps I did. I do not read very much poetry. I suppose I took Lord Byron's sentiments as representing yours. After what happened at Pont-Haut, to read about pure maidens and armies and dead patriots was not pleasant.”
“Obviously I do not read much poetry either.” His eyes caught hers. “I meant no insult,” he said. “Please forgive me.”
The silence that followed was so charged that Louisa almost expected Abigail to be drawn across the room to Meyer, like a piece of iron caught by a magnet.
Instead she wrenched her gaze away, turned, almost blindly, and picked up the book. “I am unused to modern verse,” she said. “Fanny was right; I should not have been so quick to condemn what I did not understand. That is a far greater fault than offering someone an ill-chosen gift. Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Roth.” And before anyone realized what she was doing, she was already at the door.
“Abigail, wait,” Meyer said in a low voice, catching her arm. “The book is nothing. I should have sent you a note, but I was afraid you would not read it.”
“I must go,” she said faintly. She looked down at his hand on her sleeve as if not quite understanding what it was doing there.
He released her at once. “At least tell me that you are well.”
“Yes, quite well.” She did not, Louisa noticed, ask Meyer how he was.
“If I can do anythingâif you need anythingâ”
“Thank you. You are very kind.”
“Allow me to see you out,” he said.
“No, pleaseâ” Her voice was trembling slightly.
He stepped back and held the door for her. After she had left he closed it again and stood leaning against it, his expression unreadable.
Louisa glanced at Anthony. He, too, was wearing the implausibly bland face males use to signal that questions on a certain topic are not welcome. She sighed inwardly and made a mental note to add “roadblock” and “Pont-Haut” to her list of items to be investigated. Then she turned her attention to her nephew. “You had something to tell me, Anthony?”
He shot a worried look at Meyer.
“Go ahead,” said her brother-in-law. “I am not endorsing your decisionâMiss Hart still looms a bit too large in the background for my comfortâbut I do not oppose it either.
Frowning, she looked at Anthony. “What decision ?”
“I am enlisting,” Anthony said with an odd mixture of embarrassment and defiance. “In an infantry regiment.” He added, half under his breath, “And it is
not
because of Diana.”
Louisa was beginning to wish that Eli had never heard of Joshua Hart's beautiful cousin and her daughter. Abigail Hart was making Nathan so unhappy that he had resigned from the army, and now her daughter had provoked Anthony into joining. At least, she thought, this latest news would cure her husband of interfering in Nathan Meyer's love life. Permanently.
22
The sky on this sixth day of June arched in a cloudless blue band over the parade ground behind the Horse Guards, and the assembled soldiers looked very impressive as they stood at attention under the midday sun. Their trousers were pristine white, their boots and tall hats gleaming black. Weapons, carefully polished, were held at precisely the same angle by doll-like men in neat rows.
“They are nearly all recruits,” said Martha to Diana in an undertone. She sounded disappointed. Diana had learned more about the British army in the half hour they had stood here than in her entire lifetime. As they had watched the latest batch of troops muster for transport to Belgium, Martha had issued a series of pronouncements. Veterans were good; recruits were bad. Infantry were good; cavalry were bad (this in spite of Martha's brother Charles, who was in the Light Dragoons and was the family black sheep as a result). Officers promoted on the field were good; spoiled aristocrats who bought commissions were bad.
“How can you tell?” Diana thought the men looked magnificent. They looked, in fact, exactly as she thought soldiers
should
look. Orderly. Disciplined. Nothing like the patrol of Frenchmen who had stopped their party on the road to Gap: unshaven and dirty, wearing bits of old uniforms.
“All their gear is new.” Martha nodded towards a sergeant standing to one side. “That man is a veteran. Look at his uniform.”
Diana had not even realized the man was in uniform. His red jacket had faded to a rusty brown; his trousers were gray with dirt, and his hat was a different shape from the tall shakos of the men beside him. “Where is your brother, then?” Charles Woodley was most definitely a veteran.
“He's just come in, at the back, with the cavalry.” Martha pointed to a line of horsemen at the far end of the parade ground. “Second to last on the left. He's hoping to make captain this time. He was almost promoted last spring, but then Bonaparte abdicated and they put everyone on half pay.”
“He does look a bit shabby,” Diana conceded, accepting her friend's strangely inverted notions of proper military appearance. “Why is he blue instead of red?”
“He is a Light Dragoon,” explained Martha. “They wear blue. The regular Dragoons wear red. And the infantry. You can tell which regiment by the trim. Charles is in the 19th; they have yellow trim.”
“Are those men in your brother's regiment, then?” Diana indicated a group of foot soldiers in red coats with yellow trim standing nearly opposite them.
“No, no, those are infantry,” Martha said, very patient with her new pupil. “Infantry and cavalry are never in the same regiment. It is just a coincidence thatâ” She stopped, peered more closely at the line of men, then turned to Diana. “Isn't that your friend Mr. Roth?” She was pointing to a soldier in the second row. He was difficult to see clearly, because the man in front of him was taller.
Diana looked, more out of curiosity than out of any real belief that Anthony Roth would suddenly appear in a scarlet jacket in the middle of a battalion on parade. “It does look like Anthony,” she admitted. “But of course it cannot be him.”
Her friend raised one eyebrow. “So, it is Anthony now? Does he call you Diana?”
“Sometimes,” Diana said, adjusting her parasol to give Martha more shade. The parasol was, in fact, a gift from Roth. He had given one to both her mother and Fanny at the same time.
Martha frowned. “Are you sure it is not him? He is looking at you as though he recognizes you.”
It was an absurd notion, that Roth could be here in that mass of soldiers. But as the line of men shifted slightly, she caught a glimpse of the fine-boned face beneath the shako. For a moment shocked blue eyes met hers, and she suddenly understood with a sick lurch of her stomach that however absurd the notion might be, Anthony Roth was in fact standing in front of her and was about to be shipped off to Belgium.
Panicking, she clutched her friend's shoulder. “Martha! It
is
him! What shall I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“He's going to Belgium! You said they were sailing this evening!” Her imagination immediately presented her with a picture of Anthony lying on a battlefield, breathing her name as he expired in a pool of blood. “He called yesterday and I wasn't even
home
,” she said frantically. “Can we not stop him from going? I am sure he should not go!”
“He is an enlisted man,” Martha pointed out. “He can't leave now; that would be desertion. Besides, he must want to go, or he would not have signed on.” She gave Diana a sympathetic look. “It is hard to watch them march away, though. My mother stopped going for a while; she said that if anything happened she wanted to remember my father at home and not in the middle of a line of men in uniforms. But then she decided she was being morbid.”
The men were wheeling in crisp, angled movements. A band had started playing. In a moment the troops would be marching off through the archway. “What if we wanted to say good-bye? Can we go and find them somewhere before they leave London?”
Martha looked over at the elderly manservant who had accompanied them. “Samuel, is there someplace Miss Hart might be able to go to speak with one of the enlisted men?”
He shook his head. “They're being taken off by barge, Miss Martha. I reckon most of the womenfolk said their farewells this morning outside the barracks.”
“Can I write, then?” Diana was a terrible correspondent, but it suddenly seemed very important to her to say somethingâanythingâto Roth before he met the doom she was sure awaited him. Even if it had to be in writing rather than in person.
“You can if you know how to direct your letter,” Martha said. “What regiment is that?” she asked the servant as the long lines of scarlet-coated men filed past.
“Those first two ranks? The 44th.” He eyed the lines disapprovingly. “Not a very promising lot, as your pa would say, miss.”
“The 44th,” Diana muttered, trying to memorize it. Two fours. That was not hard to remember. She had no idea how one sent a letter to a soldier serving abroad, but evidently the regiment number was important. Then she realized that she had the means to get Anthony at least one letter right away. “Martha!” She tugged on her arm. “Will you take a letter with you? When you go to Belgium next week?” Mrs. Woodley, like many army wives, had hired a house in Brussels for a month. No one expected Napoleon to attack before the middle of July, and Martha's mother had decided that it was worth the inconvenience of moving the household across the Channel and back to maintain some semblance of family life for another four weeks.
“Of course I will,” Martha said warmly. “Even if Mr. Roth's regiment is not billeted in Brussels, it will be far easier to send it on from headquarters there than from here.” The last columns were filing off the ground now, and the two girls started to walk back towards the park. Martha paused as another possibility occurred to her. “Eleanor is coming with us,” she said hesitantly. “You don't suppose your mother would let you come as well? Just for a few weeks?”
At once Diana knew that the dearest wish of her heart was to go to Brussels with Martha Woodley. Abigail, of course, would chain Diana in her room if she so much as mentioned the idea of stepping on the same continent as French troops. But Diana did not say anything of the sort. “Oh, I am sure she would agree,” she said promptly. “She has always wanted me to travel.” That, at least was true. Or had been true, until their ill-fated stay in France. “But do you think your mother would be willing to invite me?”
“I don't know.” Martha frowned. “Perhaps if I told her about Mr. Roth. She followed my father to India, you know, when they were first married, even though both her parents and my father's parents had told her not to go.”
“You mustn't tell anyone this, but Anthony and I had hoped to be engaged,” Diana said, allowing a small tear to form in the corner of one eye. Another lie. She had sometimes, it was true, wondered whether Anthony Roth would make a good husband. She had also wondered whether he even liked her any longer.
“Oh my,” breathed Martha, completely swept away by this image of doomed romance. She seized Diana's hand. “I will ask her,” she promised. “Tonight. And if she says yes, I will come and tell you tomorrow morning.”
“Not tomorrow,” said Diana quickly. “We will not be at home. Come Thursday.” Thursday morning, as it happened, her mother was going with Fanny to call on an elderly relative of Fanny's late husband. Abigail did not even bother to ask Diana to accompany her to Miss Asher's any longer; she disliked her quite as much as Diana did and only went out of affection for her longtime companion.
If Abigail could have seen Diana now, could have seen the narrowing of her eyes and the slight jut of her chin, she would have known that her daughter was planning mischief. But Martha, walking beside her friend, saw only what Diana wanted her to see: the patient, wistful face of a girl hoping to embrace her beloved one more time before he went into battle.
Â
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Louisa Roth had also gone to see the troops assemble for departure, with very mixed feelings. Her husband was still furious about the whole enlistment affair, and alternated between blaming Anthony, Meyer, and himself. She had not even ventured to suggest that he escort her; instead, she asked Meyer, who seemed to think she was imposing this duty as some sort of penance. He stood at her side through the entire ceremony, answering her questions courteously but making no conversation otherwise. The only time he showed any sign of real interest was at the very end, when he suddenly turned to stare after two girls who were walking away in the opposite direction, arms linked.
“I might have known,” he muttered.
Louisa squinted at the receding figures. “Who are they?”
“I don't know who the taller one is, but the shorter one is Diana Hart.”
At that distance, in the glare of the open field, Louisa could form only a vague impression of a slender, fashionably dressed young woman. “What is she like?”
“Very pretty, but otherwise not at all like her mother,” he said dryly. “Capricious, theatrical, well aware of her own beauty and its effect on men of all ages.” He paused, then added, “No, I must amend that. She is a bit vain and spoiled, but she is also fearless and she is surprisingly capable of sympathy for someone as indulged and sheltered as she has been. On the worst day of our journey, when we were crossing the Col Bayard, Anthony would not have made it over the pass if not for her.”
The two girls were almost out of sight now. “Do you suppose she was here to see Anthony off?” Louisa asked.
“I am sure of it. And if you are about to ask me what her feelings are for Anthony, or his for her, I can only say that I believe they are no more capable of answering that question than I am, at least at the moment.”
“He has been calling to see her quite often,” Louisa observed.
“So he told me.”
“And what of you? Have you seen Mrs. Hart recently ?”
“No, not recently.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we go and find the carriage?”
The first part of the ride was accomplished in silence, but Meyer was clearly holding some sort of internal debate. He kept glancing at Louisa, then looking away. Finally, when they were nearly home, he said abruptly, “Louisa, may I ask your advice on something?”
She had been lost in her own reflections, but now she looked up. “What sort of advice?”
He frowned down at his hands, which were clenched in his lap. “On etiquette.”
She did not think he wanted to know about the correct forms for place settings at a formal dinner. “General advice? Or advice about a particular problem ?”
“Both. Neither. Perhaps etiquette is the wrong word.” He was now examining the door handle. “You saw how Mrs. Hart reacted to my imprudent attempt at a gift.”
She made a small, neutral noise.
“I have made a mess of things, Louisa,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the door handle. “And I don't know how to go back and start over.”
She remembered his face when he had caught Abigail Hart's arm. She remembered Abigail's desperate reaction. She asked herself whether she wanted to encourage her brother-in-law to pursue a woman like Abigail Hart and found, to her surprise, that the answer was yes. “Nathan, you cannot start over,” she said gently. “You have to go on from where you are.”
“I don't
know
where I am.”
Louisa asked the question that no one, so far, had been willing to answer. “What happened? What happened after you met the Harts in France?”
He gave a small, unhappy smile. “Would you like the long version or the short version?”
“Short.” She sat back so that she could look at him more easily. His dark head was bent in profile against the window. She noted with detachment that a haggard, confused Nathan was just as good-looking as the self-possessed version more normally on display.
“I followed my usual program of lies and manipulation, and Mrs. Hart took exception.”
“That was a bit too short,” she said, her voice dry. “I suspect your answer needs to be at least detailed enough to contain the name Pont-Haut, for example.”
Startled, he looked up. “You know about that?”
“Only what Mrs. Hart said.”
He sighed. “Pont-Haut is the site of an important bridge south of Grenoble. I tried to blow it up ahead of Bonaparte's troops, although doing so would have placed Mrs. Hart and her daughter at considerable risk. Even before that, I had been using the two women as camouflage while I reconnoitered and sent off dispatches. At any rate, when the French caught me at the bridge, they forced meâand everyone in my partyâto proceed under military escort the rest of the way to Grenoble. Picture Mrs. Hart traveling with her eighteen-year-old daughter in the midst of fifteen hundred soldiers, and you will have some idea of the consequences of my actions.”