Page 23 of The Lady's Companion
“You owe her your life,” Susan said finally, when the silence was too big to ignore.
“Yes. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her or the colonel,” he said simply. “He made me a regimental master sergeant a year later before Talavera, and I always kept him in sight in all our battles together.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t help him on the march across the Pyrenees, and it pains me to this day.”
“Was that when he died, he and his daughter?”
The bailiff left his perch on the table, as though only by walking back and forth could he finish the story. “It happened so fast. It was raining, pouring, more like. Lady Elizabeth’s horse slipped off the trail and down a gorge.” He snapped his fingers, and Susan jumped. “Just like that she was gone. I was on the far side of the colonel, and he beat me to the edge of the path. It was deadly slick, and he went over, too.” The bailiff shook his head as though he still could not believe it, after all that time. “We went through so many years of danger, and there we were, on the road to Paris ...” His voice trailed off and he looked into that far distance again.
“And Lady Bushnell?”
“She saw it all.” Wiggins turned his back to her, his hands on his hips, staring out at the moon on the snow. “She sent me down the gorge with a rope and two pistols. Told me to make sure they were not suffering.” He tightened his lips and looked at Susan over his shoulder.
“The horses or the people?” Susan asked quietly.
He shrugged. “I never asked her. And don’t ask me. Not now, not ever.”
Susan was silent then, her chin in her hands. The only sound was the purring of the cat at her feet as it wriggled around to find a comfortable spot. Absently, she rubbed its swollen abdomen. And I have the effrontery to think that I can be Lady Bushnell’scompanion? she asked herself. A woman so strong has no need of my puny efforts. She is right, after all.
“I took the three of them home to Bushnell—it’s about twenty miles from here—then rejoined the regiment, and served with the next Lord Bushnell. And after Waterloo, I brought his body back and stayed,” Wiggins said as he extinguished the lamps. “I don’t know that it was anybody’s idea that I remain, but it happened that way.” He smiled at her. “Another story for another day.”
Susan followed him down the row. “She lost everyone to the wars.”
“Yes. The Bushnells—father and son—may have earned the gratitude of a nation, but that’s cold comfort to the widow.” He was at the draftsman’s desk again, where he looked at the ledger one more time, an expression of satisfaction on his face.
“What on earth can I do for someone like Lady Bushnell?” she asked, voicing her fear. She looked back at the long rows of Waterloo wheat, the green sprouts motionless now, as the furnaces cooled. The color was gone, too, with the light from the lamps, changed to gray. “I wish it were spring,” she murmured, more to herself than to the bailiff. And now you will think I am whining, she thought. Well, I am.
“It will be spring soon enough,” he said, his voice gentle, as though he were advising a grumpy child. “Then I will be too busy to come here so often. You ask what you can do for Lady Bushnell. Well, what would you like someone to do for you?”
Susan looked at the bailiff. He had extinguished the last lamp, and the color was gone from him, too. “You’re as trying as Joel Steinman, exchanging question for question!” she exclaimed, then remembered the employment agent’s last words to her. “And tell me how you know Mr. Steinman,” she demanded.
He laughed. “That can keep for another day. Seriously, what would you like someone to do for you?”
Susan leaned against the stool and considered his question. I would like someone to love me, she thought, but knew she could never say that out loud. “When I was a little girl, I liked someone to read to me, and brush my hair, and make sure I was tucked in at night.” That was true enough. No matter how old I get, a part of me will always long for my mother, Susan thought. It was a foolish notion. She was afraid to look at the bailiff. You must think me an idiot, she thought. “You know, those things mothers do. It can’t be far different from a lady’s companion, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said as he finished buttoning his coat. “My mother either died when I was bom, or just abandoned me at a workhouse. That’s where I grew up. No one read to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. How strong you must be to have survived that, she considered as he carefully lifted the cat into a box lined with soft rags. And then the army, and war. I wonder you are not out of patience with my silly problem.
“Why be sorry? What you never have you can’t miss.” He laughed, but she couldn’t hear much humor in it. “And the matron shaved our heads, so she wouldn’t be bothered with lice. I think we had very different upbringings, Miss Hampton.”
“I suppose we did,” she agreed.
He took her by the elbow and steered her from the dark succession house. The cold made her gasp out loud. The bailiff tightened his hold on her as he walked her to the kitchen, then released her when they were inside. Susan took off Mrs. Skerlong’s coat and hung it on the coat tree, her mind full of Spain and soldiering.
“And yet reading—it’s not a bad notion,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “You might try that. I’ve come in on her several times and seen her staring down at a book in her lap.”
“She likes to read?”
“She did once, I’m thinking. More and more now, I’ll see herwith the same book in her lap, but no pages turned. Could it be that her eyes are not what they once were?”
“It is a good idea,” Susan agreed, “but what should I read to her? I feel as though I know her better, but that I am no closer to solving my problems. And would she ever let me read to her?”
He opened the door. “I suggest that you read to her whatever it is that you …”
“I know, I know!” she interrupted, exasperated with the bailiff. “Whatever I would like someone to read to me!”
The bailiff closed the door and she heard his laugh recede, as his footsteps crunched on the icy path. “You are remarkably shortsighted yourself,” she told the closed door. “Anyone can see that Lady Bushnell and I are nothing alike. How will I know what she likes?” These people are giants, she thought, sitting in Mrs. Skerlong’s chair and breathing in the fragrance of spices overhead and tomorrow’s yeast bread, a lump of covered dough on the table. I feel young and foolish and out of my sphere, and yet, I have to try, because I have been given a chance.
Mrs. Skerlong’s tom jumped into her lap, startling her. He turned about several times, as if testing her lap for solidity, then settled down to purr and groom himself. Absently, she scratched around his ears, smiling a little when he turned to oblige her fingers. “And I suppose you are the father of that forthcoming litter in the succession house?” she murmured, her fingers gentle now on his back. “I trust you’ll do right by your family.”
