Page 83 of A Lady of Means
I know this: you will be safe in my memory until there is nothing left of me.It isn’t the same as the kind of heralding infamy promised a warrior, but it’s all I have.You used to say that you didn’t have much to give me and I wish you’d seen how much the reverse of that was true.I was never much of an offering for your hand, but a devoted one.
Your silent soldier,
M
* * *
ChapterThirty-Five
All roads lead back to you.The footpaths and the highways too.The sea lanes.All of them.You are the journey and the destination.There is nowhere else but you.
My lady.
-Captain Devyn Winter
(message foundamong uncovered personal effects)
* * *
“Out of the way!”A voice called that sounded like someone’s father and brother at once.
Was it Devyn’s father or Devyn's brother?
His eyelids felt too heavy to hazard a glance.At least two Army orderlies carried a stretcher up what felt like a lifetime of stairs.The canvas at his back had started to chafe against the sweat of his linen-wrapped skin.
The labored rise and fall of his chest took so much of his concentration.If he was back home in England, where wasshe?Was there a pair of ocean-colored eyes and a golden head of hair waiting for him at the end of all those stairs?
The familiar smell of expensive brandy hit him, with it so many memories.
Peregrine.His brother.The man who gave him his first brandy when he’d had to have stitches when he was nine for fighting another boy who made a crude comment about the same older brother who’d rocked Devyn to sleep, who’d taught him how to climb a tree, how to take all their father’s jibes and threats and lay them down.Peregrine had been born serious and Devyn had been born careless, and together, they’d survived all the shit that shit parents do to children they didn’t really want but were supposed to have.
The man who had placed a hand on Devyn’s temple, who was ordering the servants to move his things to his own room, who had tears in his voice, was all the father that Devyn had ever known, without having ever had much of one himself.
“Lord Clairville,” that would be the doctor, following behind.
“Tell me,” the rasped voice said, one that sounded scratchy from excessive drink, lack of sleep, and hope that felt more like fear.
“Bullet to the hip, he’s made it through the worst,” the doctor explained.
Devyn had been barely conscious for so long that his brother’s house felt like another world, another life away.
She was still another world away too, probably.
“An Army postillion roused me from sleep in the early hours for transport.He was liberated at Bamiyan and General Dennie had him sent back to England to recover, given his rank, as their surgery was spread too thin.He’s been given enough laudanum to fell a tree to get him here due to the pain.He isn’t able to walk at the moment; but with assistance, he will get there in time.”
Peregrine ran his hands over Devyn’s face, pushing back the too long hair in his eyes.
“I knew you’d never leave for good,” Peregrine said.
Devyn clutched his brother’s hand.Devyn was weak, a feeling he’d never been familiar with even as his father had tried to tell him that he was.
Moria’s name sang through him on a tide of longing, he wanted to go to her.
God, I’m always missing her.Was she missing me too?Does she know where I am?
Devyn wasn’t even sure he knew where he was until he heard Peregrine giving directions.
“Take him to my rooms.I’ll move to a smaller one down the hall.He’ll need the one at the top of the stairs.It’s got a servant’s entrance at the ante chamber as well.Corbett!”Peregrine’s authoritative voice called for the housekeeper, “Have my things moved to a smaller room.And get the doctor whatever he needs.”
