With This Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the soldiers obligingly set a basin of water close to
her hand. The men—they must have all come from the major’s unit, or
company, or whatever they called themselves—regarded her with some
interest. She observed them right back, noting their obvious
concern for their officer. One of them who could walk found a
blanket and covered him.
    “ He’s a game’un, miss, but a bit
weary he is,” said one of the men. The others looked at her
expectantly, as though wondering if she would address a strange man
so far from her own class.
    “ I think he must be weary. What
happened to him?” she responded calmly. The man whose hand she held
opened his eyes, as though startled from his coma by a female
voice. “It’s all right. Your major’s over there, and I won’t leave
you,” she told him, even as her stomach revolted at the odd
sweetish odor coming from the bandage that bound his
chest.
    The men looked at each other, as if
wondering, after their initial success, who should speak next. The
same man cleared his throat. “Oh, t’major thought ‘e was Jesus
Christ and tried to save us all, ‘e did.”
    The others looked at each other and
nodded. “But … what happened?” she asked.
    The same soldier continued the
narrative. “Nosey played his cards a little far away from his chest
at Toulouse, and we got rolled up.” He grinned at his mates,
pleased with himself.
    Lydia frowned. “Why didn’t you run?”
The men stared at her, and she wondered for a second if she had two
heads instead of one sitting on her neck. “Well, I would,” she
finished lamely.
    “ Pardon me, ma’am, but you don’t
just leave your guns,” he said, with a certain primness that told
her she had committed a grave military error.
    “ And besides, we were surrounded.
Nowhere to run to,” said another man with one eye and a thick
bandage where the other one should be. “The major, he tried to be
everywhere, and got a saber smack across his shoulders for ‘is
pains.”
    Lydia flinched. “He can’t stand up
straight anymore?” she asked.
    “ Oh, he’s fine in the morning, but
by the afternoon, it’s all he can do to stand on his pins.” The man
laughed. “What with that and arguing every day with Horse Guards
that he won’t leave until we’re all assigned, he’s had a merry
time.”
    She looked at the dying man in front
of her, who still regarded her with amazement in his sunken eyes.
“And this man?” she murmured as she smoothed the hair across his
forehead and wished she had enough water to wash him. A person
shouldn’t die dirty.
    “ He’s my gunnery sergeant,” the
major spoke up from his cot across from her, his eyes still closed.
“He followed me, or maybe I followed him, from Oporto to Toulouse.”
His voice trailed off. “Too full of ginger to die.”
    “ You’ll miss him, won’t you?” she
asked softly of no one in particular.
    “ Miss Perkins, I have missed each
man I have ever lost, every foot of the way. Yes, of course,” the
major said. He looked up as the surgeon bent over him. “Oh, it is
you. All I need is a little rest. It has been a long
day.”
    Unmindful of his protests, the
surgeon raised the bandage from the major’s shoulder and took a
long look at his back. I hope it is nothing serious, Lydia thought
as still he stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels,
regarding the wound.
    “ Sir?” she asked finally. “Will he
do?”
    She must have startled him. “Oh,
yes, ma’am. I was merely wondering why it is that one man can begin
to heal so nicely, and another ….” He glanced at the gunnery
sergeant, who was muttering to himself now. “And others, no.” He
returned his attention to the major. “You, sir, are a hiss and a
byword around here. If I receive another evil communication from
Horse Guards asking me why on God’s earth you are still here and
not invalided home, I will personally smite you.”
    Major Reed still didn’t open his
eyes, but to Lydia’s amusement,