finally decided to live—almost as if he had total control over his own fate—when he overheard one of the surgeons and Miss Nightingale discussing the desirability of shipping him off back home. Home was the very last place on earth he wanted to be. If he must live in order to avoid going there, then he would live.
He was back with his regiment in the Crimea soon after Christmas and was able to suffer with his men and fellow officers all the indescribable horrors of the winter there without adequate clothing or housing or food. He
32Mary Balogh
almost welcomed the suffering. During the coming year he distinguished himself in action time and again, acquiring for himself a reputation for daring and stern devotion to duty. He also acquired one of the new and coveted Victoria Crosses, a medal awarded for extraordinary valor.
Captain Sir George Scherer had been sent home, an invalid, after the Battle of Inkerman. Captain Sir Julian Cardwell, buried with so many other officers and men on the Inkerman Heights, was remembered as a hero and as something of a lovable rogue.
David found his grave. He went there only once—with dragging footsteps—soon after returning from Scutari. It was a mass grave.
Someone had bungled and buried officers and enlisted men all together. It was customary to bury officers in individual, carefully marked graves. But Julian had been piled under with everyone else—with all the others of all regiments and ranks who were known not to have returned alive up the Kitspur.
All had been confusion and inefficiency after the battle as well as during it, it seemed. David grieved that he had not been there to identify the body, to give Julian a decent burial befitting his rank. He stood looking down, stony-faced, at the large, snow-covered grave.
Julian was there. Julian, his brother. The man he had killed.
He never went back.
Major Lord Tavistock carried his secret and bore his guilt alone.
Chapter 3
Craybourne, England, July, 1856
The Peace of Paris was signed in the spring of 1856, ending what came to be known to history as the Crimean War, one of the hardest and most devastating wars in which the British had ever participated.
The survivors of the army that had left Britain more than two years before, including the maimed and the wounded, began to return home.
Rebecca Cardwell still wore black. The veil and the heavy crape had been set aside with reluctance after the first year, but she continued to wear mourning just as she continued to mourn. She had loved him. He had been light and gaiety in her life for so long that she could not remember a time when he had not been. Julian had been her life. She still did not know how to live without him.
Now the pain had become sharper again. And the guilt. She stood in the window of her private sitting room at Craybourne, the Earl of Hartington's country home, staring along the driveway to where it turned into the trees half a mile away. She had stood thus each afternoon for the past four days, waiting for the carriage to return from the station, and supposed she would do so each day until he finally came as he had informed his father he would this week.
David.
She had wished David were dead. David instead of Julian. She had cried bitterly about the unfairness of it, about the fact that it was Julian who had died and David who had survived. She had read somewhere that the good die young, that the evil live on. It was a thoroughly silly idea, but even so—why had it had to be Julian who had died? He had been so full of life and love and laughter.
It had not taken long for rationality to return to her
34 Mary Balogh mind. And guilt. How could she wish for another man to be dead only so that her husband might live? As if one change in reality could effect the other. She did not wish it. She did not wish David dead.
She only wished Julian alive. She wished they had both survived.
It was just that she had known as soon as the grim-looking soldier
He was back with his regiment in the Crimea soon after Christmas and was able to suffer with his men and fellow officers all the indescribable horrors of the winter there without adequate clothing or housing or food. He
32Mary Balogh
almost welcomed the suffering. During the coming year he distinguished himself in action time and again, acquiring for himself a reputation for daring and stern devotion to duty. He also acquired one of the new and coveted Victoria Crosses, a medal awarded for extraordinary valor.
Captain Sir George Scherer had been sent home, an invalid, after the Battle of Inkerman. Captain Sir Julian Cardwell, buried with so many other officers and men on the Inkerman Heights, was remembered as a hero and as something of a lovable rogue.
David found his grave. He went there only once—with dragging footsteps—soon after returning from Scutari. It was a mass grave.
Someone had bungled and buried officers and enlisted men all together. It was customary to bury officers in individual, carefully marked graves. But Julian had been piled under with everyone else—with all the others of all regiments and ranks who were known not to have returned alive up the Kitspur.
All had been confusion and inefficiency after the battle as well as during it, it seemed. David grieved that he had not been there to identify the body, to give Julian a decent burial befitting his rank. He stood looking down, stony-faced, at the large, snow-covered grave.
Julian was there. Julian, his brother. The man he had killed.
He never went back.
Major Lord Tavistock carried his secret and bore his guilt alone.
Chapter 3
Craybourne, England, July, 1856
The Peace of Paris was signed in the spring of 1856, ending what came to be known to history as the Crimean War, one of the hardest and most devastating wars in which the British had ever participated.
The survivors of the army that had left Britain more than two years before, including the maimed and the wounded, began to return home.
Rebecca Cardwell still wore black. The veil and the heavy crape had been set aside with reluctance after the first year, but she continued to wear mourning just as she continued to mourn. She had loved him. He had been light and gaiety in her life for so long that she could not remember a time when he had not been. Julian had been her life. She still did not know how to live without him.
Now the pain had become sharper again. And the guilt. She stood in the window of her private sitting room at Craybourne, the Earl of Hartington's country home, staring along the driveway to where it turned into the trees half a mile away. She had stood thus each afternoon for the past four days, waiting for the carriage to return from the station, and supposed she would do so each day until he finally came as he had informed his father he would this week.
David.
She had wished David were dead. David instead of Julian. She had cried bitterly about the unfairness of it, about the fact that it was Julian who had died and David who had survived. She had read somewhere that the good die young, that the evil live on. It was a thoroughly silly idea, but even so—why had it had to be Julian who had died? He had been so full of life and love and laughter.
It had not taken long for rationality to return to her
34 Mary Balogh mind. And guilt. How could she wish for another man to be dead only so that her husband might live? As if one change in reality could effect the other. She did not wish it. She did not wish David dead.
She only wished Julian alive. She wished they had both survived.
It was just that she had known as soon as the grim-looking soldier
Similar Books
The Humans
Matt Haig
The Legend
Kathryn Le Veque
The Summer Invitation
Charlotte Silver
Cold Case
Kate Wilhelm
Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries)
Rosie Claverton
Unseen
Nancy Bush
The Listening Walls
Margaret Millar
Ghost Aria
Jeffe Kennedy
Nights of Villjamur
Mark Charan Newton
Flesh for Fantasy
Kelex