Page 71 of The Lady's Companion
“True. Actually, I felt more like a daughter, Lady Bushnell.” Susan dug deep within herself. “I love you, you know.”
“I know.” Lady Bushnell straightened herself. “Thank you for these letters. Now, go on. Take the sergeant somewhere for a stroll.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you might tell him what I’ve been suspecting, if you haven’t already.”
“How did you know?” she asked, suddenly shy.
“I’ve had two of my own, and I know the signs, my love.”
Susan led the bailiff away, and to her relief, he did not protest. She tugged him farther up the slope and over to the trees beside the road.
“Tell me what?” he asked when she finally allowed him to stop. They leaned against the fence beside the road. “I think I know, but please, let’s hear it.”
“Maybe someday you can write ‘Waterloo Seed Farm, Wiggins and Son,’ on the top of your order books,” she said quietly. “Or maybe ‘Daughter.’ Women are good at growing things, too.”
“Obviously you are,” he said after he kissed her. “Thank you.”
She rested against the fence, then turned to face him. “Now you owe me the truth, David.”
“I already told it. You heard me.”
“You did, but not all, I’m thinking. Charlie was killed by his own. You told me that before. Even in the end you could not tell her all the truth.”
He looked back at the hill as though he could see Lady Bushnell through it. “I do not think an old woman needs that much truth. She had enough information now to square herself with her son—and he with her.”
Susan placed herself in front of her husband and pulled him close to her, hooking her thumbs into the back of his trousers so he could not move away from the fence. “I know you.”
“I should think so,” he temporized, his expression cautious.
“I know you,” she repeated more firmly. “Who are you protecting still? I want to know. Is it... is it Colonel March?” She leaned her forehead against him for a brief moment. “Is it you?”
He hesitated, then looked down at her. “I can’t lie to you, can I?”
“No, you can’t. Your lying, stealing, thieving, poaching days are long gone, Sergeant, and you know it.”
He waited, and thought, and she did not press him further. Finally he put his arms around her. “It wasn’t anyone in the regiment, so there’s no shame there.” He sighed. “He had to die, Susan; we all knew it. This wasn’t the same regiment that fought in the Peninsula. We had green troops. You could see them weaken with each charge of French cavalry up that slope.”
He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of the memory. “And there was poor Charlie, screaming and scurrying around inside the square, trying to burrow under corpses.”
She shuddered, unwilling to imagine the horror.
“The person who killed him didn’t belong to the regiment.”
“Who?” she demanded.
“Joel Steinman,” he said simply.
“God, no!” she breathed. “But... but you said. His arm...”
“It wasn’t all the way off then. That came later at the fieldhospital.” The bailiff’s arms tightened around her. “Joel watched Charlie through one charge, and how Major March and Sergeant Mabry and I worked like Turks to plug holes here and there, draw the men in, keep them battle ready, tell them to aim and fire. It just happened that I was watching him when he did it.”
“How?” she asked, barely breathing out the question.
“After that charge, he took a pistol from Lieutenant Chase’s body, propped it on his knee, and drilled Charlie right through the forehead.”
David spoke more freely then, as if the confession released him. His tone became almost conversational. “It was the neatest hole you ever saw, Susan. An engineer couldn’t have spaced the thing better, right there between his eyes.”
