Page 35 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)
When it was dark, the sounds of cannons suddenly ceased.
Everyone helping in the house in which she worked stopped and looked at one another as the world fell silent apart from the groans of the men in the room. Her heart skipped a beat. Was it over? Had the Allied forces won? Was Paul alive?
But she had no time for such thoughts – the men here needed help, and more wounded came every minute.
It was very late at night when an uninjured rider raced through the city gate.
‘Napoleon is defeated!’ he shouted repeatedly as he rode.
Ellen rushed to look from the window, as did all the women in the house as people cheered in the street.
Even the wounded men lying on the street, waiting to be moved to houses, hollered with joy.
Ellen’s heart filled with hope.
‘Back to work, ladies,’ a doctor called. ‘These men need us.’
The first light of dawn showed on the horizon when Ellen heard the footsteps of the first regiment marching back into the city. She looked from the window; it was not the 52nd.
Numerous times she rushed to the window to see another regiment arrive, to the cheers and applause of the occupants of Brussels. None were the 52nd, and each regiment brought more wounded with them.
She asked soldiers who were brought into the house for wounds to be cleaned and bandaged if they knew where the 52nd were. But the numbers of men fighting were so many, no one she asked had seen or knew the fate of the 52nd Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot.
‘Mrs Harding, go and rest.’ Ellen turned to face Mrs Beard. She was the wife of a Colonel from another regiment. It was her house that had become a makeshift hospital in the last four and twenty hours, like a dozen more along the street.
Now Ellen wished she had socialised more during their time in Brussels. Not at the parties but among the officers’ wives.
She had judged all the women by those who’d fled, but now she had discovered another society. These women were also resolutely waiting for their men, while fighting to save those who had served beside them.
‘You have done enough now, and you will only be able to do more if you sleep.’
Ellen looked at the woman. There were no beds left in the house and there was no space to rest. If she was to sleep, she would have to go back to the lodgings she shared with Paul – perhaps he would be there, waiting for her.
She had not even thought of that. ‘Yes. I will return when I can.’ She turned away to fetch her pelisse, leaving Mrs Beard to help the wounded man she had been attending.
Ellen’s heart pounded hard as she hurried through the streets full of men in filthy and bloody uniforms. As she opened the front door, though, she knew he was not within. She did not feel him here. Desolation struck her, and with it came the exhaustion from the hours she had worked.
Too tired to stand anymore, she climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, and washed her hands and face in the warm water that had stood in the jug for days.
She took off her pelisse but did not lie on the bed; instead she took up her vigil on the window seat, clutching her knees.
Her head rested against the windowpane as sleep crept closer.
She woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door below the window, her body jolting awake. She stood hurriedly. But it could not be Paul. Paul would not have knocked.
She heard a man’s pitch. Outside she saw a horse and two men in the uniform of the 52nd. In an instant she was running from the room.
When she opened the door, the lieutenant colonel stood before her. Behind him the two soldiers stood beside his horse. They all looked weary. Even though she had never liked the lieutenant colonel, compassion burned in her chest. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Where is my husband? Where is Paul?’
She saw the answer in his eyes before he spoke. ‘Captain Harding died on the field.’
‘No!’ The word was screamed; she was unsure if it was aloud or in her head. ‘No!’ She would not believe. She could not… Darkness crowded in on top of her, stealing her vision, then she dropped.
When Ellen woke she was lying on her bed.
The lieutenant colonel was sitting beside her, while the two men dressed in the uniform of Paul’s regiment stood across the room with Mrs Peeters.
The room stank of burning feathers. The lieutenant colonel held her hand and rubbed the back of it with his other. ‘Madam…’ he said quietly.
Ellen’s heart raced as the memory of what had been said rushed back. How? How had it happened? How would she live?
‘You have no relatives,’ the lieutenant colonel said. ‘Am I right?’
Ellen nodded. Paul had always insisted they did not speak of her father.
‘Have you some money?’
She shook her head. The lieutenant colonel must know Paul’s wages had remained unpaid for weeks.
‘Do you have anywhere to go then?’
Emptiness and loneliness opened a void inside her. There was not even grief – just an empty space that belonged to Paul.
‘You must come with me then, Mrs Harding.’
Ellen looked at him, unable to think. But then her mind filled with the images of the wounded she had seen over the last few hours. ‘How did Paul die?’
The lieutenant colonel let go of her hand. ‘At the end of the battle the 52nd broke the last surge by the French. In only four minutes of gunfire, I lost one hundred and fifty men. Captain Harding was among them, shot by the French. I believe his death would have been quick.’
She needed to hold Paul – she wanted to feel his strength and warmth, and breathe in the scent of him. But she would never be able to.
‘Paul said I am to seek Captain Montgomery’s help.’
‘I am afraid Captain Montgomery also passed away,’ the lieutenant colonel answered.
Cold horror chilled Ellen’s chest. So many men dead, and – Paul . He was alive in her head, saying goodbye to her, kissing her. How could he never come back? His face hovered in her mind’s eye, youthful and smiling, alive and elemental…
‘Let me take you to my accommodation. Where is your woman? She should pack your things.’
‘She left.’ Ellen’s voice had lost its strength.
‘Then I shall find you another. But for now…’ He looked at Mrs Peeters. ‘Would you pack Mrs Harding’s possessions? I will take her with me and send for them later.’
‘I shall. I will be happy to help you, Mrs Harding.’
‘Come, Mrs Harding. Let me take you under my protection.’ He held out a hand.
Ellen rose, but it was in the guise of a ghost. It was not her who moved. She walked outside with him as though she were in a dream – no, a nightmare.
She was leaving the place she and Paul had lived for weeks – their home. She was deserting him. In the street, she looked back, longing to refuse to leave, but if she did not go with the lieutenant colonel, what else would she do? She had no money.
‘Let me lift you onto the horse, you need not walk.’ The lieutenant colonel’s hands embraced either side of her waist, not waiting for her consent.
He lifted her onto the saddle, so swiftly, she had to grasp his shoulders.
He smelt clean, and she noticed for the first time he was clean.
He must have washed and changed his clothes before he had come with his hideous news.
The lieutenant colonel led the horse through the streets himself, at a walk, as Ellen held the saddle’s pommel and tears flowed down her cheeks. The two soldiers walked beside her, at either side of the horse, making this an odd sort of procession.
When they reached the house which she and Paul had visited several times over their weeks in Brussels, he lifted her down, his eyes asking questions he did not speak. When he did not release her waist, she stepped away, pushing his hands off her, her emotions in turmoil.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. The front door was opened by a servant. The lieutenant colonel held back, his hand gesture encouraging her to enter first. ‘Find the maid and ask her to help Mrs Harding,’ he told the servant. ‘She is to stay.’
‘You may go,’ he told the soldiers who had accompanied him.
He led Ellen into the drawing room where she had stood with Paul when they had attended a dinner or a party here.
Memories wrapped about Ellen’s heart, strangling it with pain.
She did not believe he was gone. The lieutenant colonel spoke, but she did not hear what he said as he moved to pour a drink; she could think of nothing but Paul now.
When the maid came, after only a few minutes, Ellen went willingly, following her upstairs to a room at the rear of the house. It was a small suite of two rooms. A sunny sitting room decorated in pink, with a door into the bedchamber beyond it.
‘May I do anything to help you, or fetch you anything, ma’am?’
‘No. You may go.’ Nothing could bring Paul back, and that was all she needed.
When the maid had gone, Ellen walked into the bedchamber, climbed on to the bed, crawled into the middle, curled into a ball, and wept, with her knees hugged tightly to her chest as her heart broke.