Office—” He shook his head. “You said you could become so caught up in the game you forgot the reason you were playing it in the first place. I realized, when you said that, how truly hollow my own reasons for playing the game had been. Like you, I could be caught up in the sheer challenge, but it was harder and harder to believe any good could come of the war. For a long time I told myself that as long as I had some sort of belief in myself, I could make a difference, at least on an individual level. After Kitty’s death—”
He turned his head, as though whatever his face might reveal was too intimate to share with her. She suppressed the impulse to take him in her arms. Kitty’s death was a scar too private for her to touch.
He looked back at her, his gaze a wasteland. “After Kitty killed herself, life seemed a farce without meaning. If I was destined to make any difference in the world, it seemed to be only to bring destruction on those I loved. I was going through the motions when I was sent after the ring. Then I found you.”
“And you couldn’t give up because you were needed. I know you, Charles. You’d never let down someone who needed you. If I hadn’t reminded you of it, something else would have.”
“Christ, Mel.” He took a quick step toward her, then checked himself. His eyes were angry. “Don’t cheapen what was between us. It may have been lies, but you can’t reduce it to something I could have found with anyone.” He scraped his hand through his hair. “I loved Kitty, but loving her scarcely brought out the best in me. You did. With you I found something in myself I thought I’d lost. How could I back away from life when you attacked it with every fiber of your being? How could I turn away from the future when the future was a legacy we’d bequeath to our child? Besides—” He paused for a heartbeat, his gaze steady on her face. “In a world where I could feel what I came to feel for you, anything seemed possible.”
For a moment she was robbed of speech or even breath. This was Charles talking, Charles who had not said “I love you” to her until they’d been married more than a year, whose feelings were more often expressed with a look or a touch than with words, who was more likely to quote someone else’s impassioned declaration than to frame one for himself. That he should make such a declaration now, when she had destroyed his trust, when the revelations about Kitty had made her question the very nature of his feeling for her, was at once so sweet and so painful it tore her in two.
He glanced into the fire. “You weren’t the only one who was disillusioned after Waterloo. I didn’t like the future Castlereagh and the others were shaping any more than you did. Even I eventually saw how futile it was to be—how did you put it? A lone voice arguing over a glass of port?”
“Charles, I didn’t mean—”
“No, you were right. That’s why I left the diplomatic service.”
“And you came home and you did stand for Parliament.”
“Where at least my lone voice is heard by the entire House of Commons, which gives me the illusion that my arguments might make a difference.” He looked up at her. The firelight sparked in his eyes. “But I’d never have had the courage to come home without you beside me.”
She closed the distance between them in one move and took his face between her hands. “You’re the best person I know, Charles. If I have any understanding of love or trust or compassion, I learnt it from you. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you thought I was. But however tainted your view of me has become, don’t let it taint the rest of life for you.” Her fingers trembled. She looked deep into his eyes. “I have no right to ask anything of you. But for God’s sake, try to love yourself.”
For a long moment he said nothing. Then he reached up and covered one of her hands with his own. “That’s a bit much to ask of anyone, don’t you think?” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m all right, Mel. Like you, I know how to survive. Colin’s the one who’s going to need us both.”
She said nothing, because to that there could be no answer.
Colin’s heart slammed into his throat at the approaching footsteps. He flung himself to the edge of the bed farthest from the door.
The door creaked open. “Brat? Are you awake? I’ve brought your supper.”
Meg came into the room, carrying a splintery wooden tray. No sign of Jack or of a knife. Colin was tempted to put his arm over his eyes, but that seemed cowardly, so instead he sat very still. If they grabbed him again, he’d bite.
“I got Jack to bring a meat pie and some lemonade back from the tavern,” Meg said. She set the tray down on the rickety, three-legged table by the bed.
The smell of the meat pie made him gag, but even if his stomach hadn’t been twisted in knots he wasn’t going to eat anything they gave him. “I don’t want it,” he said.
“See here, brat.” Meg folded her arms over the stained linen of her shirt. “You’ve got to eat something or you’ll make yourself sick.”
Colin pulled his hurt hand closer against his chest.
Meg grimaced. “Oh, poison.” She dropped down on the edge of the bed. The straw in the mattress crackled. Colin flinched. Fear shot up his spine like lightning.
Meg sat watching him. “Look, lad, I know it must hurt like the devil. But it’ll get better, I promise you. You’re lucky to still have the rest of your fingers. I know lots of children lost two or three fingers or even a whole hand to those new machines in the cotton mills. They learn to get on, one way or another.”
Colin drew his knees up to his chest. He wasn’t inclined to believe anything Meg said, but he’d heard Mummy and Daddy and their friends talk about how bad things were for children who worked in the mills. One evening when the grown-ups didn’t realize he was listening, he’d overheard a story about a little boy who’d got his scalp pulled off. So perhaps Meg was telling the truth. Daddy’s friend Fitzroy Somerset had lost his arm at the Battle of Waterloo, and he could do all sorts of things and even still be a soldier. Colin wondered how long it had been before Uncle Fitzroy’s shoulder stopped hurting where his arm had been.
“’Least you don’t need your hands to make a living,” Meg went on. “You can still hold a fork and ride a horse and fire a gun and all the sorts of things a gentleman does.”
She smiled at him, a real smile that made her eyes crinkle up and her mouth look less sour. Colin inched back against the iron headboard. She’d done something really beastly, like a bad fairy in a storybook, but when she smiled like that she didn’t look evil at all. And she sounded as though she was trying to be nice. It was very confusing. How was he supposed to know when he could trust her and when to be afraid?
“Anyways,” Meg said, “better eat up or you won’t grow. That’s what I used to tell my little boy.”
Colin was startled into speech, in spite of his determination not to talk to her. “You have a little boy?”
Meg’s face went pinched. “I had a little boy once.”
He stared at her in the flickering glow of the rush light. She looked like she was the one who’d just been stabbed. “What happened to him?”
Meg plucked at a thread in the frayed calico coverlet. “He died.”
“Was he sick?” Colin asked.
“He caught a chill.”
“Couldn’t the doctors make him better?”
“Doctors?” Her laugh was like sandpaper. “Christ, brat, do you think we could afford—” She shook her head. “No, no one could make him better.”
“How old was he?”
“Just past three.”
“I’m sorry.” It was true. Whatever he thought of her, he was sorry for her little boy.
Meg shrugged her shoulders. “I had ten brothers and sisters. There’s only two of us left and I can’t be sure about my sister. She went to work in a mill in Yorkshire and it’s close on two years since I’ve had word of her. Life’s cheap where I come from.”
Colin frowned, puzzled by this last. “But—”
“What the hell are you doing, Meggie?” Jack yelled from the other room. “Get back out here.”
“In a minute.” Meg stood and looked down at Colin. She started to lift her hand, then let it fall to her side when he jerked back against the headboard. “Eat your supper, brat. You don’t know how lucky you are to have it.”
She turned on her heel and left the room. Colin looked after her, mulling over the things she had said. He wasn’t sure how life could be cheap or expensive, since it didn’t cost anything to be born. He wasn’t sure why she was so worried about him eating when she’d helped cut his finger off. She looked as though she really missed her
