“That coat is in such a state I would be ashamed to let you be seen wearing it, Lieutenant Colonel,” she informed him, “when you would be coming from this house, where we have maids who know how to use an iron and turn people out right and proper with not a crease or a wrinkle in sight. Give that here.”
In vain did he protest that he would do it himself, as he was perfectly capable of doing, if she would just point him in the direction of an iron. He was asked, rhetorically, he guessed, if he supposed the irons would heat themselves, a question that was followed by a not particularly complimentary remark about men. While she spoke, the cook was kindling the fire in the stove from the embers and banging down upon it two hefty irons and dragging out the board from some inner sanctum. She clucked her tongue over a few faint stains that were quite indelible and had been onthe coat for as long as Gil could remember. She went in search of cloths and cleaning potions and the Lord knew what else.
“You are not going to do it all yourself, are you, ma’am?” he asked her, seriously embarrassed. By now it must be perilously close to midnight.
“I am not dragging one of the maids out of her bed just because amandoes not know how to treat his property with the proper respect,” she said. “And what, Lieutenant Colonel? Do you think I am capable only ofcooking?”
He wisely refrained from answering and watched meekly while those few faint indelible stains became delible, if there was such a word. The army wives who had used to clean his uniform very creditably would have been put to shame. He continued to watch while she ironed the coat. He dared not bring his boots down to brush and polish while she was busy or she would probably have insisted upon doing that job too. And he dared not prepare to polish the buttons on his coat...
“I’ll get them buttons and them other taradiddles on the shoulders and cuffs shined up proper too,” Cook said as she replaced one iron on the stove top and picked up the other. “It’s a disgrace you would have been to this house and yourself and Miss Abigail, Lieutenant Colonel, if I had not happened to be up late on account of your wedding breakfast. All spots and creases.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, standing in the middle of her kitchen, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back. She could not see his grin. She reminded him a great deal of those camp followers, who had bossed and sassed and coddled the men—husbands, lovers, officers, grizzled old veterans, new recruits, and all the rest of them alike.
“And you needn’t just stand there pretending like you are doing something,” she said without looking around athim. “You can get yourself out of my way and off to your bed for your sleep. And if you don’t look after Miss Abigail proper, you will have me to answer to next time you come here, lieutenant colonel or no lieutenant colonel.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Good night, ma’am, and thank you.”
His coat and the shirt—fortunately clean—and other items of his uniform that he had set out ready in his dressing room before lying down were all hanging up when he went in there early the next morning to get his boots, which he planned to take out to the stables to clean. All—not just the coat—were freshly cleaned and ironed. Even his shako, set neatly on a side table, had been brushed and cleaned and its metalwork polished to a high gleam. And—the devil!—his boots, placed neatly side by side beneath the hanging clothes, were spotless and defied their advanced age by being so shiny he could almost see his image in them.
Good God, he must have been deeply asleep not to have heard all the nighttime traffic.
Only his sword had escaped attention, for which fact he was profoundly grateful. It had been generally known within the regiment that no one—and that meantno one—touched Lieutenant Colonel Bennington’s sword unless he wanted his ears blistered. He bore it off now to the stables to put a fresh edge on the blade and to oil it and shine both it and the scabbard until they met his exacting standard. More exacting than usual this morning. It was his wedding day.
He had not allowed himself to think too deeply about that fact. It was a mental discipline he had acquired during the war years and had stood him in good stead. Never borrow trouble from the future and never lament the past unless there was something one could do to fix its effects. Thepresent offered quite enough with which to occupy oneself. It was not a simple system, of course. One could not, by a mere effort of will, eliminate the past and ignore the future. There was that prebattle terror, for example, which he had never been able to avoid.
And now, suddenly, there were prenuptial nerves. And second and seventeenth thoughts. And the terrible clutch of fear at his stomach that he was possibly putting himself through all this for nothing. He might never see Katy again. And if he was putting himself through it for nothing, what did that say of what he was doing to Abby?
Andthiswas the very reason one needed to stop letting one’s thoughts roam where they would. Roaming thoughts were a menace. They were forever trying to destroy or at the least annoy their host.
When he was dressed, unaided, despite Harry’s offer to send his valet to him, he looked at himself in the full-length pier glass in the dressing room and was satisfied that he would be making an appearance that would be respectful to both his bride and the occasion. Women, he believed, set great store by weddings. For a moment his mind touched upon the farce of his first wedding, which Lady Pascoe had insisted upon making into a grand regimental affair so that no one would suspect that it was aforcedwedding, but he pushed the memory aside.
Of course, he still looked like a savage beast, which he had been called on more than one occasion, not always as an insult. But Abby had not been blindfolded when she agreed to marry him.
Good God, he could still not understand why she had done it.
Harry had insisted that his breakfast be sent up to him since it was imperative that he not see the bride until shejoined him in church. So, after he was dressed, far too early, he had nothing to do but pace his room like a caged animal. He was to ride to church in the carriage. He had protested that it would look a bit ridiculous when the walk to the village and the church was not a long one and the day was fine after the rain of the last few days, but Harry had been adamant. Gil wasnotgoing to arrive at the church in mud-spattered boots and frightening the villagers by looking as though he were marching to battle.
So he rode to the village in the ancient carriage, which had been ruthlessly cleaned and polished after its muddy return from London last evening, and stepped inside the church, which had been starting to look familiar to him. It did not look so familiar this morning, however. The altar and the wall sconces were overflowing with flowers, and fresh candles burned everywhere except on the altar, where new tapers were nevertheless ready. It looked also as if the pews had been polished and the floors swept and mopped. The old church smell, which he rather liked, had been overlaid by the mingled perfumes of flowers and polish and wax candles.
The vicar’s wife—she was to be the second witness to the wedding, with Harry—dressed surely in her Sunday best, was moving one of the vases on the altar to a position half an inch to the right of where it had been. She turned to smile at Gil and scurry to her seat in the second row of pews, as though the service were about to begin.
The vicar came bustling out of the vestry, his face wreathed in smiles, his hand outstretched for Gil’s.
“This is a joyous occasion, Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” he said. “A wedding is always joyous even when the couple chooses to celebrate it quietly, without any noise or fuss.”
“It looks as ifsomeonehas certainly been fussing,” Gil said, looking about the church.
“Well,” the vicar said, “Mrs. Jenkins has always been particularly fond of Miss Abigail. And of Miss Camille too—now Mrs. Cunningham—and Mr. Harry.MajorHarry, that is. And since their dear mother is not here to fuss over Miss Abigail herself, then Mrs. Jenkins insisted upon doing it in her place, at least in her own little domain here at the church.”
“Everything looks and smells wonderfully festive,” Gil said, raising his voice so that Mrs. Jenkins would hear him too. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Everything also felt suddenly very real indeed.
And so he awaited his bride. And his future—which he tried not to think of. Today, this moment was what mattered now.
He was about to deprive Abigail Westcott of her freedom, he thought as he studied, without really seeing it, the stained-glass window that pictured Jesus surrounded by little children. She had waited patiently for six years to use that freedom in the pursuit of a life that would bring her fulfillment and happiness. And now she had chosen to gift him with it.
He contemplated the vast responsibility he was about to take on.
