Page 31 of Under the Champagne Moon
“I say to myself, ha, not only a marriage offer, but a declaration of love. And the girl, she cries. She loves you too.”
“She doesn’t love me.”
“No? What was that rag you handed her? Her heart, it was in her eyes when she saw it.”
Was it? All he remembered was her tears. Tears. From his Petal. What was he to do?
“I had no notion you were so… so… I say to myself, c’est un véritable romantique. I should have known, eh bien, the way you... you whipped the Veuve around your small finger. You’ve done the same to the granddaughter.”
Gareth drained his glass again, letting Marceau babble on.
“Tonight, my friend, you get drunk. Tomorrow, we shall go visit my cousin again.”
Gareth reached for the bottle, but Marceau pulled it away from him. “But first, before you are too… too… How do you say it, bosky? First, we must make a plan for how you will win the hand of your lady and whip the Veuve again around all of your fingers and your whole hand.”
CHAPTERNINE
“It’s the whole bloody business of war,” Gareth said. He’d listened to a litany of bad memories, and now it was his turn to speak.
His head pounded like the devil and the breakfast Marceau forced on him threatened to come up. He was damnably hungover, and this hastily assembled meeting of Reabridge veterans at Doctor Wagner’s surgery wasn’t helping his disposition. “We do our duty,” he said, “they do theirs, and in the midst of all the dutiful are the madmen who enjoy it.” He’d seen that in the eyes of all stripes—French, English, and Spaniards; men and women; soldiers and civilians. “Not that I don’t enjoy a good fight, God knows, but…” He took in a breath. “Not just what they did to us, or what we did to them, but what they did to each other.” What they’d done to Fleur, who like other children bore the wounds of abandonment.
He rubbed his scraggly jaw. Marceau’s razor had been dull by the time he’d borrowed it. “I’m not making sense I guess, but when I close my eyes I see that last battle and what came after...”
He straightened and prayed that this damn meeting would end soon. Pain settled about the men and one woman gathered there, as thick and stifling as the smoke they’d all fought through in Flanders and every other bloody battlefield.
Still, discipline held as they listened to stories, all different and yet the same.
Finally a desperate knocking at the door brought a pause. Dr. Wagner went to the door, spoke to someone, and turned back to the room.
“I must go deliver a baby,” he said.
Gareth stood. “Whose?”
Wagner gave him a long look.
“Is it Mrs. Bicton-Morledge?” Gareth asked.
Wagner nodded.
“I’m coming with you.”
Gareth arrivedat Bicton Grange to find George Sherington on the doorstep. The maid greeting them said the doctor was upstairs with the ladies of the house, the little girls were in the nursery under Cora’s care, the footman had gone for the family’s solicitor, and Mr. Morledge was in the parlor.
They were in for a long afternoon, and Gareth offered to check on the Morledge girls in the nursery and fetch tea. When he returned with a tray, he found Sherington deep in conversation with a stout man, dressed all in black, as if attending a wake. So this was Morledge.
“About time,” Morledge said. “I’ve pulled the bell three times. Who are you, and why don’t you have a decent shave?”
“Captain Gareth Ardleigh,” Sherington said, “Meet Mr. Jedidiah Morledge. And thank you for doing footman work.”
“All in the name of duty,” Gareth said. He sent Morledgea terse nod. “There’s a baby being born here; the staff is busy with more important things than your bell-tugging.”
“Are the girls well?” Sherington asked.
“Yes. Cora enjoyed the harvest ball last night.”
Morledge harrumphed. “Made a spectacle of herself with that bumpkin, the Lord of the Harvest.”
Gareth straightened to his full height, six inches taller than the other man. “How so?” he asked.
