Page 1 of The Baron Takes a Wife (Rogues Fall First #1)

Outside of Balaclava

Summer, 1855

He caught a soft singing on the edge of his consciousness in a language he had never heard before. A melody somewhere between a lullaby and a funeral dirge, it was light and airy but still tinged with a shade of sorrow. He slowly opened his eye. Something bright and warm filled his line of vision as he took in a figure of gold bathed in light. It was as if the figure was pulling him toward something. As their features grew more defined, he saw it was a woman silhouetted by the light, singing quietly to herself. Heaven, his mind told him, though he felt no jolt of panic or regret. He watched the woman he assumed to be an angel for several moments as she appeared not to notice him. He had never seen a woman like her before, certainly not in England, which only increased his sense that he was no longer of the world. Her hair was in some sort of braided crown, and, while brown, it seemed to be trimmed with gold. Her skin was darker than an English woman’s, a hue of rich bronze that complemented her hair. He couldn’t see her eyes, but for some reason, he was sure they would be gold of some form as well. Death might not be so bad if he could sit here and watch this golden angel for eternity. He must have made a sound, for the angel suddenly stopped singing and looked over at him.

“You are awake.”

Perhaps he wasn’t dead after all. The end of her song made him realize he was in rather substantial pain and that his vision was obscured on his right side. The angel walked over and inspected him carefully, her golden-brown eyes scanning his body. Up close, she was no less angelic, all lush curves and full lips, but he noticed one flaw to her golden beauty. On her left side, from her hairline through her eyebrow, almost to her eye, ran a jagged white scar against her dark skin. It rippled as she swallowed.

“You want to know where you are, what happened?”

He recognized that she was no angel but some kind of nurse as he registered her plain, faded dress and apron. However, she did not wear the distinct crimson cape of a British military nurse. She also spoke English with a heavy accent, with pauses between words, as if she was thinking through what she was saying next and trying to anticipate how to answer him. He could not place her accent. It could be from anywhere in the Ottoman Empire, as he was not very familiar with the region. He had not thought to come here before… He finally comprehended that he did not know where he was, and then panic really did begin to set in as his heart beat unsteadily. The last thing he remembered was—

“It will be all right. Here, drink this.”

The angel helped lift him from his pillow and pressed a cup to his lips. He was only able to swallow a small bit of the lukewarm liquid before he began to cough. She then took the cup away and helped him settle back down.

“You are in a hospital outside Balaclava. In Kadikoi.”

He remembered being in the trenches, then the charge, and then nothing. He looked at her, tilting his head, as he only now discerned that his vision was limited. He could still talk, even though his voice felt like a croak.

“My eye—”

“Your eye is not damaged. You are bandaged because you have a burn on your face.”

He tried to raise his hand to feel it but was too weak.

“I will go get a doctor.”

“No!” He realized he had almost growled his request. “Sorry. Will you sit with me? For just a moment.”

She looked at him, then gave him half a nod, sitting on the empty bed to the right of his own. He did not want to dwell on why it was empty.

“Would you talk to me?” He felt ridiculous as her eyes widened, and he went on quickly. “I haven’t heard anyone talk for the longest time. I can’t remember the last time.”

“I do not know how long you were asleep. Unconscious, I mean.” She looked away and back to him. “I am not a nurse. My friend, she has a hotel across the way. We come every day to help treat the soldiers.” She gestured around. They seemed to be in a larger room, or maybe a hut, sectioned off by shoddy cloth screens for privacy on his left side, but he could still see two unconscious men through a crack in the screen. He supposed he had been just like them.

“What should I talk of?” she asked. “My English is limited,” she added self-consciously.

“How did you come to know English?” Despite everything, David could not help his curiosity about this woman. As long as he leaned into his curiosity, perhaps he could distract himself from everything else.

“My father is…was a merchant in Dobruja. He wanted his children to learn the languages of trade. The English have been trading in the empire for many years.” She began speaking of her family, especially her merchant father, still pausing between words as if to think them through.

As she went on, he studied her. He had thought her angelic before, but when she spoke of her family, she lit up with a fire from within, a glow much more powerful than her outward beauty. He regarded the dimples on her cheeks and smiled a little to himself that he had come a long way to see this angel. That thought sent him back to his own painful situation. How long had he been unconscious? As the angel spoke, he tried to remember the last day he could recall. His name, he remembered his name. David Pierce. He was a peer, the fourth Baron of Grayston. Why had he joined the army? He was not a younger son. All of a sudden, the fit of idealism that drove him to purchase a commission washed over him, but then another memory became clearer. He remembered charging, then a cacophony of noise, pain, then nothing. The angel had noticed he was no longer listening to her.

“I went on too long. I really should fetch a doctor to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

He watched as a flash of something passed across her face. She looked at his legs and back to his eyes. She swallowed. Then, it quickly dawned on him. He had been so distracted by the golden angel that he did not realize he could not feel his legs.

****

“Is he?”

“He will be fine. He merely lost consciousness. His head wound is superficial, and he should wake up shortly. He’s lucky he’s been out so long he missed the madness after the battle.”

“I think he realized—”

“You should have come to get me right away. I could have explained to him—” In his mind’s eye, he heard a man scolding the angel. Even though he did not know her name, he could not allow the man to speak to her that way. Summoning all his strength, he opened his eye. In his line of vision, he saw an older man with red-gray sideburns and a thick mustache, whose head quickly snapped over to him. The man, whom he could now see was wearing the golden sleeves of the physician’s uniform, walked closer to him.

“You remember your name?”

“David Pierce.”

“The year?”

“The year of our Lord 1855.”

“What monarch sits on the throne of England?”

“Why, that would be the good Queen Bess.”

The man looked simultaneously concerned and unimpressed at David’s weak attempt at diffusing the tension.

“Queen Victoria,” David muttered.

The man appeared to weigh upbraiding him but decided to look stern.

“Lieutenant, you are at a hospital at Kadikoi outside of Balaclava. I was told you received a serious injury, as I was not here when you were brought in. The burns on your face were treated, but I found some injury to your spine and, thus, your legs.”

“Which is why I cannot move them.” He swallowed. He knew this moment might be coming but wasn’t sure he was ready to face it.

The angel looked between them.

“I need to go find Mrs. Raeburn. Excuse me.” She did that half nod again to both of them, as if unsure how to address them, and left, vanishing behind one of the shoddy screens. As she left, David felt as if all the warmth had gone from the room, even though the day was hot.

The doctor cleared his throat. “It is unclear if this will be a lasting injury. Your spine appears to be damaged, but not by a bullet or shrapnel, thankfully. Your body likely landed at an odd angle during the blast or explosion that burned your face. Do you remember anything that might provide me with more information?”

All David could remember was the charge and then nothing. He was fortunate that his head was not otherwise injured from the blast. One small mercy. He shook his head.

“Would you happen to know of my men or Major Rattison?”

“I believe that most of the injured from the assault were transported to Scutari, though some might be at Castle Hospital, and the uninjured are regrouping. I do not know of others from your company still at this hospital. I will need to examine you now that you are awake. Then, I will be able to judge your condition better.”

David nodded absently. He wished he could return to when the angel was telling him about her family less than an hour before. Before he knew what he could never not know.

****

The doctor, whom he learned was called Dr. Austin, thoroughly examined David, and his diagnosis was inconclusive and not particularly hopeful—he had heard of other patients with spinal contusions recovering, though not many. Because he would not likely walk any time soon, if ever, David would be invalided out and transported to Plymouth, not Scutari, when transport was available, which was also unclear. Thinking back to what he knew of the geography, Kadikoi was near the railway lines, so he hoped that would eventually take him to Balaclava Harbor and away from this dismal place. Many questions and very few answers just clouded David’s already muddled head. Dr. Austin attempted the awkward conversation that David knew might be coming—that if he could not move his lower body, he would not have use of anything below his waist. For a moment, David was in relatively good humor for a gentleman who had just learned that he might never enjoy that particular pastimeagain.But suddenly, a wave of anger and self-loathing drowned out his rational mind. He was no longer a man if he could not walk, ride, or make love to a woman, a hateful voice in his head goaded him. What good was he to anyone? He warred with himself as the sanguinity that had always gotten him through life and the utter hopelessness of his situation fought a bitter battle, and he drifted off to sleep in a mix of laudanum and self-pity.

****

He woke to the same soft humming and a gentle hand leaving his temple. He slowly opened his eye,watching as the angel pulled back the makeshift window curtain, and light again flooded the wing as he faced a ramshackle window much too muddy to see out of. When the muted light shone behind her, it illuminated the gold in her hair and skin. It was funny when he thought of a golden girl before he would have envisioned a shrinking blonde debutante. But this girl, this woman, was golden and warm, like a late afternoon sun, and something about her was her keeping him from complete despair. As she turned and saw him watching her, he attempted to school his expression to blankness. She cocked her head.

He couldn’t hold it in any longer. He had to talk to someone about it. "I don’t know if I shall ever walk again.” He hated the self-loathing he heard in his voice, but instead of pity, the angel just nodded solemnly.

"I’m so sorry, I was worried about that. I will pray for you.” She seemed to reach to her chest reflexively but checked herself when she realized what she was reaching for wasn’t there. A cross, perhaps? Even in his state, he could not ignore the warmth she had worried about him brought to his chest, but grief swiftly overshadowed that pleasure. He could not bring himself to tell her the rest.To say it out loud when he hardly knew her, a gentleman did not discuss such things with a lady. Though, he knew those in the drawing rooms of London might not consider her a lady. Truly, he knew almost nothing about her, just that she helped keep him from delirium.

“What is your name, my lady?”

Her golden-brown eyes widened in surprise as if she was unused to being addressed so formally. “Elena, I am called Elena.”

“Elena, a version of Helen. Were you named for Helen of Troy?” He smiled, or at least tried to smile. This kind of conversation was his forte, and he needed familiar ground. “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships…” he began to quote, then stopped himself at the blank look on her face. “Marlowe, he was a playwright, like Shakespeare? Never mind.”

“I do not know this Marlowe, but I do know Helen. She ran away with Paris, which started the great war. I always rather pitied her. One bad decision, and all that death and destruction.”

He looked up and pressed his lips together. It still hurt to smile, but the familiar story made his lip curl up a fraction. He had always loved stories of the Greeks as a boy. True, the gods were often petty and cruel, but it made the heroics of men all the better. What an interesting lady she was. While many women might be pleased to be compared to Helen of Troy’s beauty, she was concerned about being connected to a wake of death and destruction. For the first time since he had woken up, he felt like his old self for a moment, even as the strangeness of this conversation, discussing the causes of the Trojan War with a foreign woman he had just met, did not escape him.

“I’m not sure Helen had much choice in the matter. In most versions, it resulted from a contest amongst the gods,” he offered.

She looked unconvinced. “Well, I do not think I was named for that Helen, but the mother of Constantine. I have—” She seemed to catch herself as something like resignation covered her features. “I used to have a beautiful icon of her. She had a crown and a scepter and the deepest red dress.” She looked away.

He realized he had not introduced himself, “I’m Bar—I’m David.” Here, his title would not really matter. Here, he felt he could just be himself.

“I know,” she said, and he caught a hint of a smile as her eyes returned to meet his own. “Like the Hebrew king?”

“Yes, though I did not hear the call to fight Goliaths until recently. Before I got through life on my silver tongue.” Seeing her confusion as she tried to puzzle through the expression, he clarified. “An ease with words. Back before, when I was something of a fribble.”

Her brow crinkled in greater confusion still, and her dimples appeared as if she was trying to hold in a laugh. “What kind of word is fribble? Is that a title? Like sultan? Truly, English is so strange!”

“Yes, I do believe it was devised to confuse.” It was so wonderful to talk like this with her and forget his horrible reality for a few minutes. He felt himself genuinely smiling now, however painful. “No, a fribble is not an honorific, more someone of no great worth or import.”

He grimaced, as his face did really hurt now.

“Are you in pain?” She moved toward him. “Your bandage has been changed. It is looking much better.”

He thought to ask her for a mirror but could not muster the courage. In his previous life, he had not thought much of his face, as being relatively handsome was something he had taken for granted. He felt like the worst coward, but he wanted to put off thinking about his face for as long as he could—the possibility of losing the working of the lower half of his body already devastated him. He did not think he could handle learning that he was now a monster. The angel gently touched his bandage. Elena. She had a name now.

“Does it hurt?” she asked softly.

Her hand felt so gentle that he wanted to lean into her palm for her to cup his face. As if sensing his intention, she drew her hand away and straightened.

“I think you must resemble the David who fought Goliath much more than a fribble.” She shook her head while she said the word as if she couldn’t believe she was saying it, as if the words and letters were never meant to blend in such a way. “You have the scars to prove it.”

“Yes.” He suddenly began to feel weary from the day, from everything. “Well, there must be some truth in names.” His eyelid grew heavy. He could barely hear her reply as he drifted away to sleep, but he couldn’t miss the bitterness in her voice.

“Yes, yes, there must be.”

****

David did not see Elena for several days. Orderlies and nurses came by, and occasionally Dr. Austin, who would just prescribe more laudanum. The minutes turned into hours, turned into days, but no one compared to her vibrancy. He somehow sensed a great sadness in her, but one that he inherently felt was matched by a great capacity for joy. He longed to see her again. For some reason, he did not feel so completely hopeless in her presence.

He was able to drink a little beef tea, but not much, and he recognized that he was rapidly losing weight. He felt sweaty and restless, waking up from dreams of cannons, from lifeless eyes staring up at him.His perspiration reminded him of the mingled smell of dirt and blood and sweat in the trench, of being cramped, and the waiting and waiting on end. He would try to stretch his legs, but they would not move, and then, in despair, he remembered they would not work at all. He fell into this cycle every time he woke up, unable to decide what was worse, the dreams or the reality. Often he heard distant booms from what he imagined was Sebastopol, and the sounds permeated his nightmares. He would wake up in a frenzy, then realize where he was, far enough from the battlefield to be safe but close enough to hear the reminders of war. Sometimes, the screens were down, and he could see the other cots throughout the ward. Most of the other men were unconscious or sleeping most of the time, but occasionally, he saw movement or others trying to sit up. The worst were the moments when the sounds of someone begging to spare their limb drifted over him, and then he heard the unmistakable sound of cutting bone and flesh. He supposed in some odd way that he had indeed been lucky to be unconscious after the initial battle, as he had likely missed most of the immediate amputations. It was strange to think of himself as lucky in such a place as this.

Finally, after several days, he caught a hint of gold out of the corner of his eye and smelled a faint vanilla and amber.It was an unusual scent for such a clinical place, where the smell of alcohol and ether seemed to war with the overwhelming odors of injury and sickness, often fighting a losing battle. He knew it was the angel. Elena. She was regarding him with an expression he could not quite name.It was not pity, for he did not think he could have withstood pity.It was a more dispassionate observation, which he appreciated.

"You should try to move your toes,"she ordered gently.

"My toes?"

"My bunica, or, uh, grandmother, she has—” Elena paused as something shot across her face and quickly vanished. Her scar rippled as she swallowed and began again. “She had trouble walking, she had pain. Sometimes, her legs would not move.But she knew the old ways, my grandmother, so she had me rub her legs with herbs she made me gather, and she would practice moving her toes, then her feet, then her ankle…and after time, she could move her legs again."

"That does not sound the same."

"No, it is not, but it is worth trying, no?"

He felt his lip curl up, unbidden, at her stern expression, which he realized that she likely had to put on to set down the other officers.In the hours she was gone, he worried about how she was treated both at the hospital and the hotel, as rowdy English soldiers would see her as an exotic woman to cater to their needs, all golden and voluptuous. When he saw her with the doctor, she seemed like she wore a mask of cultivated reserve. But he had seen that reserve crack when he got her to talk about her family or made a joke about himself. It warmed him immensely that she could show him this side, and the melancholy he had been feeling began to ebb away as warmth filled the room, not stifling like the dead summer heat but soothing, like sinking into a bath after a long day. All at once, he felt the need to come up with a reason for her to visit him more often, to have her nearby.

“Do you read?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Read?”

“Yes, read, you know, letters, words?” He did not want to insult her, but he had been surprised that she spoke English at all. He knew so little about where she was from.

“Yes, of course I read. My father made sure we could all read.” She looked as if she

wanted to roll her eyes at him but restrained herself.

“In English?”

“I am learning.” She crossed her arms warily. “It’s entirely different letters. My friend is teaching me.”

"I'll make you a deal.I will practice moving my toes…and you will practice reading to me in English."

Her gaze darted around."I cannot now. I have others to tend to.” He was about to kick himself and nod in defeat, but she spoke again. “However, later, it might be possible.”

“Only if you can. I know there are a lot of…” With some effort, he gestured around. He did feel rather ridiculous asking her to read to him in the middle of a war, but he needed something to look forward to if he was going to survive.

“No, it is all right. Mrs. Raeburn, my friend, she wants her hotel to be a space of comfort, so she keeps as many books as she can find. As much as there is a need to heal the body, she says we must also start healing the spirit, so she started a book collection. There are some books I can bring. I’ll see what she recommends.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “I am not one of the British nurses, so no one looks over my shoulder. Mrs. Raeburn will not mind as long as I am doing something of value.”

She went to leave when he suddenly asked, "And you did say you rubbed your grandmother's legs, you could do that as well?"

She slowly turned back to look at him, her expression stricken.A spasm of something like fear flashed across her face, and then her features went blank. He realized his mistake instantly.

"Only if you wanted to.” He quickly followed, “Not if it makes you uncomfortable."

She nodded impassively, the warmth gone from the room and from her face.

"You will return later today?" he asked with some uncertainty.She nodded again with some distraction, then hurried away.

Idiot, he thought. He had only wanted to see her, hear her again, because when she was around, he felt he could pull away from his legs and his thoughts and his memories. He had to make her understand that she was safe with him. He slammed his head back in frustration. This really was the most damned existence.

****

He stared at the ceiling for the rest of the day.Did she know he had previously been a much-in-demand man about London? And here he was, waiting on a woman for the time of day.He grimaced, suddenly overcome with a deep shame with himself.This young woman did not owe him anything.Hadn't the battlefield taught him how little distinctions of class or circumstance ought to matter?And besides, he was hardly the handsome young man of London anymore.Summoning all his energy, he reached up and touched the bandages on his face. Most of the time, he almost forgot his face in his anxiety over the lower half of his body. He still had not yet looked in a mirror.He was not a vain man, but he now recognized certain privileges that life created when one was relatively pleasing of face and form.He felt another pang of fear that he was now a monster.

"I can return tomorrow if you wish." Elena walked in hesitantly, pulling back a curtain, which had been put up again. His face must have shown his thoughts as she watched him with a furrow on her brow. He shook his head, trying to release some of the fear and anxiety he had been caught in.

"No, I was lost in my thoughts. I would much prefer your company."

She gave a small smile and brought with her a chair.“I brought a book from the small library Mrs. Raeburn put together. She recommended it. She runs the hotel across the way.” She waved her hand toward the window, which as ever, was much too muddy to see anything out of. “Have you heard of her? She has many friends among the British officers. That is how she came to be here.” He thought the name sounded familiar but could not recall where he had heard it before, so he shook his head.

“She gave me a French novel, but she said it is translated into English.” She held it up to read stiltedly. “It says it is called The Hunchback of No-Notre Dame. "

She shrugged. "Those words do not make sense to me."

"Notre Dame is a cathedral or church in Paris. A hunchback is a man or woman who is somewhat deformed."

"Oh." Her eyes widened briefly as she tripped over her words. "I did not bring, that is—she gave it to me."

Her reaction only exacerbated his fear.He took a breath. He needed to do this first.

"Before you begin, could you bring me a looking glass?"

She regarded him and nodded with purpose.His pulse began to race as a pounding began in his ears. She left for several moments, then returned with a small mirror. She gently held it up for him to see. He closed his eye and then opened it. It had been so long since he had seen his face that he hardly recognized it. His jaw was covered in a beard, growing scratchy in the heat. Uneven bandages covered his right eye and that side of his face.He pointed to the bandages.

"Could you?"

Leaning toward him, she gave him the mirror to hold, and then she carefully peeled back the bandagethat ran from his temple down his cheek.Beneath the bandage, his skin was red and smarting, with a clear burn from his hairline to the top of his cheekbone. He supposed he was lucky not to lose his eye. He wished he could remember how he had gotten this burn, but he only remembered the charge. He took a moment to look at his whole face. While he was not a monster exactly, he could notreconcile the face in the mirror with the man he had seen the last time he had looked into one. However, he did not want her to think him weak or vain, so he swallowed and looked up.

“Well, it’s not as if I was Adonis before.”

She did not smile but seemed to touch her own scar absentmindedly.

He stilled. “You know what it is to look in the mirror and see a different face.”

She froze, her hand in midair as if unaware of her actions. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

They stared at each other for a moment. In that instant, he began to feel a thread of something stronger than admiration take hold in his chest and weave through the heavy air. He did not know what it was, but he knew that she understood something about him that not even his oldest friends would comprehend, and that was not insignificant. Even though she knew nothing of his life, and he knew almost nothing of hers.

He felt drained from the revelation of his face and set the hand mirror down. She turned back to the book.

“My reading is very slow.” She bit her lip. If he wasn’t so distracted by his own misery, he noted that he would have appreciated the fullness of her lips. “My apologies.”

He shook his head and gestured with his hand as if to brush the thought away as she began to read.

“The good people of Paris were awakened by a grand peal from all the bells in the three districts of the city,” she began to read, then stopped. “So Paris is a large city with different sections, like Constantinople?” she asked, looking up at him.

He nodded, not really registering what she was saying, and she went back to her reading, which was, admittedly, a bit slow. He tried to watch her and listen to the words, but the pain and dread of his future, of his face, his legs, everything, kept creeping back. Fortunately, sleep overtook him before the panic could completely take hold.