“I don’t think we’re going to have any answers until he’s feeling better,” Amanda said. “If then. The doctor said that whatever drug Brad was given might have affected his memory-it will be some time before the lab tests come back to tell us what he was given. In the meantime, Tyler is going to ask Alex to look into who might have kidnapped Brad.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“You think she’s really a serious detective?”
She stared at him in surprise. “Ron, has anyone working here been less than the best?”
“I guess not.”
“What’s going on? Did she do something to upset you?”
He lowered his gaze. “No. Not at all.”
He was hiding something from her, and she felt a little dismayed by that, then realized that when it came to Tyler, she was hiding much more from Ron.
“So,” Ron said, as if reading her thoughts, “you and Tyler seem to be getting along better.”
“I don’t know what I would have done without him.” She paused, then added, “But it’s not just gratitude.”
Ron said nothing, but when he looked up at her again, he was grinning.
“What?” she asked.
“I can’t answer that without irritating you.” He stood up. “I’ll see what’s going on with Brad. You look as if you could use some sleep.”
“I was hoping to talk to Tyler when he gets back.”
“So at least take a nap. He doesn’t seem to sleep much, so I’m sure he’ll still be up if you conk out for an hour or so.”
“You’re right, I could use some sleep-but I hate to abandon you.”
He shrugged. “There’s always someone awake around here. Maybe Alex has learned something more from your cousin.”
The room she had been given was spacious, with access to the deck that ran all along this level of the house. Moonlight filtered in through the French doors that led to the deck, and she used that soft light to navigate her way to the maplewood desk, where she turned on a small lamp.
She had unpacked her bag earlier, before going to the hospice with Tyler. That seemed so long ago now.
She washed up in the large bathroom and changed into her nightgown. Turning off the desk lamp, she thought of closing the draperies against the moonlight but decided against it. Instead, she opened the doors and stepped out on the deck. The view from here was lovely, far better than the one from the secluded home her great-grandfather had built below. She could just see a corner of her house, and realized that from a little farther down the deck, one would have a fairly clear view of it. A breeze came up, bringing the scent of the nearby pine trees to her. She thought she heard the sound of an animal-the strange dog?-moving in the woods and hurried back inside. She nearly closed the French doors but told herself not to be ridiculous, there was no stairway from the deck to the ground level, nothing a dog could climb to reach these rooms. She discovered a mechanism to pull a hidden screen door across the doorway to the deck, and set the screen in place. The warm breeze came up again, and she moved toward the bed.
She turned the bedside lamp on and immediately saw what the moonlight had failed to reveal-a small sheaf of heavy paper had been laid against her sheets.
Heart hammering, she carefully lifted the pages. The paper did not seem fragile, despite its apparent age, but she handled it gently. It was thick and not quite smooth. She liked the heavy feel of it. The writing was in an old style, what seemed to her to be a sort of calligraphy, neat lettering flowing evenly across the page, in lines as precisely spaced down its length.
She lay down on the bed on her side, set the pages back against the sheets, and began to read. She soon became accustomed to the writer’s hand and made out the first line:
Think of this tale as an imagined story, if you must…
26
Think of this tale as an imagined story, if you must…I do not claim to understand all of the events that occur in it, and have little hope that any other will hold this story to be a truthful account. I have done nothing more than lived it, and if my living it could be changed by your disbelief. I would urge you with all my heart to be a skeptic. But if by any chance I can spare another from my fate by recording these events, perhaps it is best I do so, and in such case I would urge you not to doubt a word of it…
Three days after the Battle of Waterloo, I awoke in the absolute darkness of the blind, as I had every other day since the fighting had ceased. I did not-and could not-open my eyes as I awoke from what I knew to be a dying man’s dreams.
I did not need my sight to know that I was no longer listening to Miss Merriweather’s laughter. Nor was I on horseback, racing my father and my brother through the meadow just beyond the home wood. I was not watching soldiers take up hiding places in rain-soaked fields of maize.
Without being able to see my surroundings, I knew I was lying flat on my back, unable to move, pinned beneath the body of my own horse. Poor old Reliant. I assumed I must be hidden beneath the big trooper, because although both friend and foe had passed near me, I had not been noticed.
The dreams had formed from a patchwork of memories. Even before I had left England, Miss Merriweather had married and died in childbirth. Three years earlier, in 1812, my father had died, and my brother had inherited the title and estate. The memory of the field of maize was more recent-I had seen the soldiers taking this position just three days ago, in anticipation of the approach of Napoleon’s army.
Had my comrades or enemies seen me awaken, the watchers would have found it difficult to note any difference between my sleeping and waking states. Most would have assumed Captain Hawthorne was dead.
I could not see, could not move, could make no sound. My tongue was dry and swollen. I had, from the time I had fallen in the midst of fierce fighting, been cursed by my remaining senses.
I could feel my uniform, skin, and hair, all stiff with my own blood. I felt the mud drying beneath me, the weight of my dead horse crushing me. I felt relentless pain in my skull and chest and arms and legs. I felt hunger but, most of all, thirst.
The stench of the smoke and gunpowder of the battle had been replaced by the sharp-edged rot of the corpses strewn across the ground-the tens of thousands of men who had died at Waterloo.
I wasn’t sure how long I had lain there. I did not know the battle’s outcome. I was grateful to have been spared some of the sounds of battle, sounds I had often heard in previous engagements, but never at such a pitch, never so fierce in all my experience. Now I longed to hear an English voice. I prayed that Reliant had been killed almost instantly. The horse was cold and silent now.
For a time, after I first awakened, I had heard sounds that let me know the battle was not long over-the cries of injured horses, the moans and screams of the wounded and dying men who had fallen not far from me. I could then still smell the acrid smoke of rifle and cannon.
As the hours and days passed, the sounds changed, becoming softer and more piteous as men too wounded to walk or crawl cried out for water or food. Their cries weakened, those nearest me apparently succumbing, while from a little distance a murmur of prayers and pleas continued.
Now there were smaller sounds-flies buzzing, rodents scurrying. Birds, at some business I did not want to imagine. In the far distance, the sounds of carts and horses and men. But no artillery fire. It was the time of collecting the wounded and the dead.
I would most probably be numbered among the latter soon, expiring of thirst or starvation if not of my wounds.
Perhaps because of the wound to my head, I had no clear recollection of what had happened to me. I could remember very little beyond seeing my batman killed-a man who had been my groom at home and who had followed me when I left for the Peninsula. But he had been lost early on in the fighting.