"Oh, well, all right then." Betsy spoke before he had time to withdraw the offer. "Jest a stroll to the village… but on the main road, mind." She took his arm with a confidence that caused Henry to doubt the earlier maidenly blushes. Perhaps these country folk were less simpleminded than they appeared.
While Henry was strolling down to the village with Betsy, the peddler was walking around Webster's Pond. The ducks were settling down for the evening, sitting on the water or hiding in the tall marsh grasses. It was, indeed, a likely hunting spot.
From which direction would a man appear from the manor? The stranger walked the circumference of the pond, decided the most natural approach would be from the south, and pushed through the undergrowth looking for likely positions for his man traps.
A man picking his way through the wet undergrowth on a misty early dawn, a gun over his shoulder, a game bag at his belt, wouldn't be looking for the evil teeth of a trap, particularly on his own land.
Chapter Twelve
"Theo… Theo! Theo, where are you?" Emily burst through the front door two days later, her urgent cry ascending the stairs to the long gallery where Theo was waiting for Sylvester to join her. He'd agreed to a friendly bout of unarmed combat, but with some reluctance, and she was beginning to suspect he was looking for a way to postpone the engagement.
At Emily's cry, however, she ran from the room, her heart thumping with sudden premonition. It was the first visit by any of her family since the wedding, and as her mother had said the duration of the honeymoon was hers to dictate, she knew that only something desperate would have brought Emily in this unceremonious fashion.
Her sister's face confirmed her fears. Tears poured down Emily's distraught countenance, and her appearance was a far cry from her usual crisp elegance. It had rained heavily in the night, and she was hatless, her hair disheveled, her linen gown splattered, her shoes muddied from where she'd splashed through puddles on the drive.
"What is it?" Theo hurtled down the stairs.
"Edward!" Emily gasped. "It's Edward -"
"Killed?" Theo felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and a sick, leaden dread settled in her belly.
Emily shook her head, but she was crying so hard now that she couldn't speak.
Theo seized her by the shoulders and shook her with desperate urgency. "What happened to him, Emily? For God's sake, tell me!"
"Easy now." Sylvester strode across the hall from the front door. He'd been talking to the head gardener in the shrubbery when his sister-in-law had pelted past them up the driveway, her distress so obvious that he'd followed immediately.
"Easy, Theo," he repeated, taking her waist and moving her to one side. "What's happened?"
"It's Edward," Theo said, now almost as distraught as her sister. "Something's happened to him, but Emily won't tell me."
"Well, screaming isn't going to do anyone any good," he declared, taking Emily's arm and ushering the sobbing girl into the library, leaving Theo to follow.
His firm authority for the moment had a calming effect, and Emily struggled to control her sobs, accepting the large handkerchief he pressed into her hand.
Theo was hopping from foot to foot in despairing impatience as her sister finally controlled herself sufficiently to be coherent.
"Edward's been wounded," Emily at last managed to blurt out.
"Seriously?" Theo was white beneath the sun's bronzing, and the scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out in sharp relief. Her eyes were so large with distress, they dwarfed her other features.
"His arm… they amputated his arm," Emily gasped before collapsing onto the sofa in a renewed burst of uncontrollable sobs.
"Oh, no." Theo stood in shock, trying to imagine Edward crippled – a man who loved all physical sports; the friend who'd taught her unarmed combat and how to fence; the friend with whom she'd swum in the cove as a child, scrambled over the cliffs, climbed trees in search of birds' nests, ridden to hounds.
Sylvester moved to the weeping girl on the sofa. Her sobs were beginning to catch in her throat in an alarming fashion, and he was afraid she was about to go into strong hysterics.
"Emily!" He took her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. But her eyes were wild and unseeing. She opened her mouth on a soundless scream.
Sylvester slapped her cheek with calculated force, and the wildness in her eyes was replaced with shock and then recognition. "I do beg your pardon, Emily," he said. "But you were about to go into hysterics."
"Mama always does that," Theo said, her own voice shaky as she struggled with her own distress. "Emily's of a nervous disposition, she can't help it." She sat beside her sister, wrapping her arms around her. Her sister needed her support at the moment more than she herself needed time to come to terms with this news. "Poor sweet, what a terrible shock for you. How did you hear about this?"
"Lady Fairfax." Emily's voice still trembled, but it was clear she was in control of herself again and obviously didn't resent Sylvester's swift intervention. "She came to the dower house. They'd received a letter from Edward's colonel."
"How did it happen?" Sylvester asked calmly, going to the sideboard and filling a glass with ratafia. It wasn't what he would have chosen for shock, but he knew his sister-in-law's tastes.
"A sniper," Emily said, accepting the glass with a tearfully polite smile. "He was shot in the shoulder. But why would they have to amputate his whole arm?"
"To prevent mortification," Sylvester explained, pouring sherry for himself and Theo. "Instant amputation may seem an extreme move, Emily, but it saves life." He saw the blood-soaked tables in the hospital tents, the bins overflowing with amputated limbs, the flickering candlelight, the exhausted, blood-reeking surgeons with their great smoking knives; the anguished screams filled his head.
He kept his voice matter-of-fact. "The French do much better than we do with their wounded, because they discovered early that the sooner an injured limb is removed, the better the chance of survival. Before any battle, or even skirmish, they have hospital tents set up and an army of carts and limbers to remove the wounded from the field the instant a truce is declared. We're learning from them slowly, getting our wounded off the field faster, but still not fast enough. Our butcher's bills in the hospital tents still exceed theirs."
Edward Fairfax, although he probably wouldn't acknowledge it at the moment, was a lucky man if an enlightened surgeon had taken drastic action in time.
"What else did the letter say?" Theo took a gulp of her sherry, fighting to keep the horrifying images from overrunning her mind. Edward in agony, biting a bullet as they sawed through bone and sinew…
She glanced at Emily and realized that her sister's imagination hadn't stretched to those horrors. She told herself that that agony was over for Edward now, so there was no point in morbid imaginings, but the dreadful pictures still played behind her eyes.
"He's coming home," Emily said. "Obviously he'll never be able to fight again."
There were small mercies, Theo thought resolutely, even in tragedy. A crippled Edward was not a body lying inert on a battlefield. "He'll manage," she said. "You know how strong-minded he is. He won't let something like this ruin his life."
Sylvester perched on the edge of the table, regarding the sisters, hearing Theo's struggle to comfort Emily, understanding her struggle to believe in her own reassurances. He knew better than they the devastating effects of amputation. A young man learning to accept that he was no longer whole. How would this Edward Fairfax handle the card that fate had dealt him? Most men were embittered and filled with self-disgust, seeing in the words and gestures of love and support the patronizing charity of people who pitied them. If Emily was expecting her fiance to run into her arms as if nothing had happened, she was in for a rude awakening when the wounded man returned.