Page 3 of Her Unsuitable Match

He also knew what Moreton would say. You aren’t a cause, but you can help with one that benefits men like you.

The truth of that thought, imagined as it was in his friend’s voice, had kept Myles from tossing the invitation into the fire.

How different might things have been for him if there had been some place, and people, dedicated to helping men like him? Men so scarred, physically and mentally, from war that they hardly knew how to exist in a world of peace.

Myles dropped the letter and pushed both hands through his wild hair. He put his elbows on the desk—and it tilted. Again.

Muttering to himself about poor accommodations, Myles lifted the piece of furniture and felt around with one foot until he found the slim volume of sonnets he kept beneath the short leg to even out the plane of the desk. He pushed it back to where it belonged, and the desk settled evenly again.

What right did a man like him have to attend balls? Even charitable ones. He couldn’t even afford a desk with even legs.

He left the invitation and letter both where they were and went about his preparations for the day. He scrubbed himself clean with the pitcher and basin of water in his room, grateful for the cool water that brought him more fully awake. He rubbed at the whiskers on his face and sighed. He needed to find a barber, or risk looking like a madman let loose upon London’s streets.

Myles dressed with military-efficiency, the missing fingers on his left hand not slowing him at all. Then he found his eyepatch on top of the small bureau that held all his worldly possessions. He covered his left eye and completely avoided his reflection in the mirror above that same chest of drawers.

He put a hat on his head—an unfashionable tricorn that had seen better days—and took himself out the door.

London’s streets were already alive with people. He made his way northward to the more fashionable streets and addresses in search of breakfast. Along the way, he dropped pennies into cups and the dirty hands of orphans, never making eye contact with any of them. He had precious little to give, but the thought that the children begging or the women with the hollow cheeks and dark eyes might have lost their breadwinner to battle kept him generous.

And wasn’t that why Moreton wanted him to attend the Gillensfords’ ball?

Halfway through breakfast at a small tea shop on Fenchurch Street, Moreton himself appeared, standing beside Myles’s table. “Knew I’d find you here,” Moreton said in his confoundedly cheerful tones.

Myles squinted up at his friend. “That doesn’t say much for your intellect or powers of deduction, given that I always take my breakfast here.” Then he gestured to the single chair across the small table from his. “Sit. Have something to drink.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Moreton dropped into the chair with little grace. His wide grin nearly brought an answering smile from Myles, but the last threads of his nightmare still had hold of his mind. And he still blamed Moreton for that. At least partially.

“What are you wearing to the ball this evening?” Moreton asked immediately after giving his order to the kitchen boy. “And please tell me you’re going to get a haircut. You look like one of those woodsmen from America. As covered in hair as a bear.”

“Bears are covered in fur.” Not the cleverest response, but Myles didn’t have it in him to match wits with his friend. Not today. “I haven’t decided if I’m going or not.”

“Oh, you’re going. I am hiring a carriage for me, the missus, and you. All three of us will make a delightful party.” Moreton shook a finger at Myles. “You would disappoint Emmeline if you didn’t come, you know. She worries about you.”

Emmeline Moreton, his friend’s wife, was an angel in disguise. Nothing else could explain how easily she welcomed Myles into her life after her wedding, and despite the mess he had been at the time, so newly home from war. She had adopted him, the way one might adopt a growling mongrel from the street, and plied him with cake and kindness until he’d given up his growling. At least around her.

“She worries because you tell her to worry.” Myles took the last bite of his toast, then tried to decide if his sausages were worth finishing. They were slightly burnt. “If she knew how much I loathed the idea of being trotted about as an example of the poor wounded soldier, she wouldn’t want me to go.”

Moreton chuckled. “That isn’t your role in this at all. Believe me, if Gillensford wanted specimens of that sort, I never would have mentioned you to him.”

“How do you know this Gillensford fellow, anyway?” Myles speared one of the sausages and waved it at his friend. “I understand he’s from nobility and money.”

“He is. But his wife is from trade, and she is the one with the money. Or so I hear.” Moreton shrugged. “That’s neither here nor there. I met him November last, when he needed more lawyers to look over the paperwork for the orphanage on Basing Lane. My firm represented their interests, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner a time or two.”

“So Gillensford is a social reformer?” Myles hadn’t heard as much. But then, he ran in vastly different circles than someone with that much wealth and power.

“They both are—Mr. and Mrs. You’d like Mrs. Gillensford, too. Emmeline adores her. Mrs. Gillensford invited Emmeline to join a sewing circle. But again, beside the point.” Moreton’s tea arrived, and he spent the next several seconds blowing across its surface before daring a small sip. “Ahem. Where was I?”

“Social reform.” The response came out sounding more like a grumble than words.

Though his friend’s antics might have amused some, Myles knew well enough that Moreton had a sharp mind. He used his good humor on occasion to make people see things his way.

Moreton narrowed his eyes and put down his tea. “Listen, Cobbett. I know you’re wrapped up in pretending to be a calloused old codger, but I also know you want to help men in your situation to have a better chance at survival once the war is over. Did you even read the newspaper article I sent you three days ago?”

“I did.” He had read it with a sinking heart. The newspaper had reported on yet another soldier returned from war, found lifeless in an alleyway, done in by drink, and all alone. Some of the men under his command, wounded at the same time and from the same cannon fire that had left Myles scarred and half-blind, had met similar fates. Because they had nowhere else to go.

“This hospital the Gillensfords want to build—it isn’t merely to treat wounds. They mean it to be a place for recovery, where soldiers with similar experiences can speak with one another. Where they can prepare to reenter society again. Mrs. Gillensford hopes to partner with different trade guilds to offer work to men who need it. Truly, it sounds like a remarkable endeavor.”

Myles put his half-eaten sausage on the plate and took a drink of his long-cooled tea. The scope of the Gillensfords’ plans amazed him. Could such help for men like him be feasible? Parliament hadn’t managed to do more than approve the payment of pensions. The only government hospital for returning soldiers was overcrowded.