Callander Square - Anne Perry [46]
“Of course not. I couldn’t—speak—to her of it. It would be—” he held out his hands helplessly.
“No.” Balantyne had no idea why he agreed. He was agreeing for Carlton, not for himself—he would have had a blazing row about it—but he could see that this quiet man, with whom he had thought he had so much in common, was utterly different. “I’m awfully sorry, Robert. I wish I knew what to say.”
For the first time Carlton smiled very faintly.
“Thank you, Brandon. There really isn’t anything to say. I don’t know why I bothered you with it, except that I felt like speaking to someone.”
“Yes,” Balantyne suddenly found his awkwardness again. “Yes, yes, of course. I—er—”
Carlton drank the last of his whisky and put the glass down.
“Better get back home. Must be toward dinner time. Got to change. Give my regards to Augusta. Good night, and thank you.”
“Good night—” he let out his breath again. There was nothing to say.
He thought several times of mentioning the subject to Augusta, but somehow could not bring himself to do it. It seemed a private matter, between men. For another woman to have known would have compounded the injury.
It was still at the back of his mind when Miss Ellison arrived on Monday morning to continue with the papers. He was surprisingly pleased to see her, perhaps because she was outside the family, and knew nothing of Callander Square or its wounds. Added to which she was cheerful, without being in the least coquettish. As he grew older he found coquettish women increasingly offensive.
“Good morning, Miss Ellison,” he smiled without thinking. She was a pleasing creature, not conventionally beautiful, and yet there was a richness about her, the wealth of mahogany-colored hair, the clear skin, and the intelligence in her eyes. For a woman, she talked remarkably little nonsense; funny, she was probably not more than four or five years older than Christina, who seldom spoke of anything but gossip or fashion, and who might marry whom.
He realized with a start that she was waiting for him to instruct her as to what he wished her to do.
“I have a box of letters here,” he fished it out, “from my grandfather. Would you please sort them out, those that refer to military matters from those that are purely personal.”
“Certainly,” she took the box. “Would you like them categorized?”
“Categorized?” he was still not concentrating.
“Yes. Those from the Peninsular War, those written before Quatre Bras and after Waterloo, and those from the military hospital and during the hundred days? Do you not think they would be interesting also?”
“Yes. Yes, please, that would be excellent.” He watched her remove them and go to sit at the far side of the room, by the fire, her head bent over the old paper and the faded, youthful handwriting. He saw in her, for a moment, his grandmother as she must have read those letters, sitting in an England at war with the Emperor, a young wife with infant children. He had no idea what she had looked like. Had she the same long curve of cheek, slender throat, so very feminine, and the tiny wisps of hair soft on the nape of the neck?
He shook himself strongly. The thought was ridiculous: she was merely a young woman who had an interest in old letters, and was competent to sort them.
Charlotte, on the other hand, was quite unconscious of the general. She forgot him as soon as she read the first sentence in the round, faded writing. Her imagination took her to lands she had never seen, and she tried to feel with the young soldier the emotions he described, his terror of the pressed men in the ranks, which he knew he must hide, his friendship for the surgeon, his awe at meeting the Iron Duke himself. There was humor in them, and unconscious pathos sometimes, and a lot of things he did not say about cold and hunger, aching legs, wounds, and fear, long monotony and sudden confusion of action.
She went down to luncheon in a dream, and the afternoon slipped by before she thought of time. It was dark when she got home, and less than a half hour later Emily arrived at the door, her coach horses