At those words, any vestige of remorse fled. “I remember the stories you told me–when you believed me to be a man–of making love in hay lofts, carriages, fields, and wasn’t there one incidence involving a table?”
Guy laughed. “You have changed me.” He shook his head. “I am not that man anymore.”
Guy was an honorable man, one of the things she respected and loved about him, but she didn’t want him to change from the passionate and thrilling lover described to her in the woodland hut. She was determined they would do all those things together because she wanted to eradicate the memories of his past lovers. Lords were known to take mistresses, but he would never wish for anyone but her.
She tied her bonnet ribbons firmly beneath her chin. “I’ve yet to see the dining room. I fancy a long table, with enough room for all our friends and family.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Guy leftHetty at her aunt’s home, he considered how his attitude to so many things had changed. He’d come to England with the somewhat arrogant intention of finding a bride to fit his station. He was even prepared to set up a mistress if he had no real affection for his wife. He’d suffered so much loss and heartbreak, he believed himself incapable of deep feeling for anyone and impervious to further hurt. Now his happiness depended upon an amber-eyed, willowy young woman who was far too spirited for her own good.
Hetty filled his mind, heart, and soul. It had been a great struggle not to take her as she lay there on the carpet inviting him to do so, her lush mouth made for kissing and her lovely body bared to his gaze. He didn’t fully understand why he hadn’t. Perhaps, because he sensed what lay behind her determination.
Hetty was troubled. Guy had been unable to fool her when he attempted to reassure her that that all was well. He was worldlier and far more conversant with the tragedy their making love might cause, and he would not take advantage of her vulnerability. As a young man, these thoughts would not have troubled him, but, now they did.
After dinner, Guy joined John in the library, where they discussed John’s time spent with Wellington during the Peninsular Wars, or at least what John would reveal. Much of what John was required to do during those years he’d probably never repeat to anyone. War left men scarred. Although John was a stalwart friend, Guy could only get so close until he came up against the wall John had built around himself.
There was much in Guy’s past, too, that he’d rather forget. After downing his third whiskey, Guy relaxed enough to talk of his years spent on the Continent before coming to London.
“In Paris in ’08, I had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was arrested and thrown into the Conciergerie.” He threw down the last of his drink to obliterate the bitter taste in his mouth. “Most don’t emerge from that prison alive, but for some reason, I was released. I didn’t wait to find out why. Over a million men, women, and children died in France during that time. Many in that prison. I left France, sick to my very soul.”
“And you took up arms against Bonaparte.” John raised his glass to him.
“Another million souls perished under Napoleon. Spain was in an even worse state than France. The land was scattered with the corpses of dead soldiers and horses. Villages ransacked and burned. The women raped and murdered. Stock and grain destroyed leaving those left to starve to death.” He took a deep breath. “I ended up at Girona, with such anger I wanted to kill, but instead, I acted as aide and secretary to Colonel Anthony O’Kelly from Roscommon, preparing dispatches, and translating documents into English, and working with the women. I refused to kill my countrymen. My hatred for Napoleon didn’t extend to the men who served him, although I was ashamed of their atrocities in that country.” He sighed.
“But in Girona, I witnessed so much foolish bravery, against enormous odds. Some six thousand French troops of Napoleon’s army laid siege to the fortress of Monjiuch, demanding the surrender of the Ultonia Regiment. Colonel O’Kelly refused. The blockade went on for eight months.”
To speak of it tightened Guy’s throat. The words took him back to that grim time in his life when, as a despised aristocrat, he’d tried to help desperate people, but there were so many and so little he could do. Before the Revolution, his father had helped all those on his estates. Guy had helplessly witnessed these people being overrun and dying where they stood. And he reached a point where he didn’t know or care what would become of him.
“Those were troubled times, my friend.” John broke into his thoughts as he refilled Guy’s glass from the crystal decanter.
“I grew fond of those whose lives I shared. Mrs. Lucy MacCarthy, wife of Colonel Patricio Fitzgerald MacCarthy, sought permission from the Spanish Army High Command to organize a women’s unit. The Company of St. Barbara, they came to be called. They carried ammunition to the troops and risked their lives to care for the wounded.”
“Yes, they were indeed admirable.” John lit a cheroot and puffed a cloud of smoke into the air.
“Heroines to the last.” Guy looked down at his glass, as his thoughts took him back there, amid the thunderous barrage and the confusion, the groans of the men, their blood running over the stony ground. He aided the women. “They ran the gauntlet of shells raining down, bombs and grenades, carrying the wounded in their arms to the hospital.” His voice broke, and he took another deep sip from his glass. The whiskey rolled over his tongue, thick and smoky with a hint of peat, warming the chilled knot in his chest. “When thirty-three thousand more French troops arrived and demanded O’Kelly surrender, he allowed the citizens a democratic vote.” He gave a hopeless shrug. “They voted no.”
“Brave, but foolish.”
A long, heartfelt sigh escaped Guy’s lips. “Over six hundred soldiers, along with Colonel O’Kelly, perished.”
“How did you get out alive?”
“After Lucy died by her husband, Fitzgerald’s side, I organized an escape with those civilians left. We slipped away at night amid the chaos.”
Guy had walked for miles despite the wound in his thigh where a bullet had grazed him. After parting company with the others who wished to make their way farther west, he found a tiny hamlet untouched by Napoleon’s forces. A peasant family took him in and cared for him until he was well, generously sharing their few provisions.
“As soon as I was able,” Guy told John, “I returned to offer them aid. The house was a smoldering ruin. Soldiers had taken their livestock and destroyed the crops, they had murdered the farmer, stripped, and violated the wife. She’d been taken in by relatives and was like a ghost.”
Guy left what money he had. “I ended up in Barcelona, where for a time, I lost myself.”
There was a long silence as they stared into the flames remembering lost comrades.
John stretched. “Tomorrow, we need to make a plan.”
Guy raised his brows. “Oui, tomorrow.” He hoped those days in Spain had helped him hone his instincts for danger, and to trust his gut feeling. He would need those skills now.
“It might be wise if I move into a hotel, John.”
