With This Ring Read Online Free PDF

he grinned. “I told the general
that as soon as he saw to my men, I would go quietly back to
Northumberland and never trouble this end of the realm again. Where
is the difficulty?”
    The surgeon sighed and sat on the
major’s cot. “Lord Laren, I appeal to your good
nature ….”
    “ I have none, sir,” the major
snapped, opening his eyes and fixing the surgeon with a level
stare. “I want my men who are here in hospital taken care of to my
satisfaction, and then I will consent to leave. There are no other
conditions.”
    The surgeon tried again. “Sir, other
officers ha—”
    “ I am not other officers, and this
is no ordinary battery,” said the major, biting off each word as
though he intended to chew it. “When my men are taken care of, I
will leave. Picton’s Own Battery deserves nothing less.”
    “ You are difficult, my lord,” said
the surgeon.
    “ I am. Now, sir, if you will look at
this charming lady, I believe she has something to ask you. Am I
right, Miss Perkins?”
    You must have eyes in the back of
your head, she thought. She glanced at the soldiers around her. No
wonder they trust you. “Yes, actually,” she said. “This poor man
deserves to be clean before he dies. Can you at least change his
bandage and bring me some water and a towel?”
    The surgeon opened his mouth, looked
at the major, and closed it. “Very well. Orderly!”
    The gunnery sergeant died two hours
later, during which time he called her his mother, and Grandmama,
and then Teresa, who was, one of the men assured her, a good girl
who followed the army. I am not that naive, she thought, but she
made no comment. She wiped his face, glad that he was clean to her
satisfaction. Changing the bandage had been a trial, but she clung
to his hand throughout the whole ordeal, and when it was over,
vomited with what she hoped was ladylike demeanor into a bucket
that the major thoughtfully pushed her way.
    To her relief, the gunnery sergeant
was deep in another world during the last hour of his life. It
remained to her to wipe his face, and then when he died, to be
amazingly touched as his hand had gripped hers, and then relaxed
completely in the peace that death brings. She held it another
moment, marveling at the mystery before her, even as she cried for
a soldier she did not know.
    The men were silent, some looking
away. She dried her eyes on a handkerchief that someone gave
her—probably the major—blew her nose, and looked around her. “I’m
sorry to have distressed you with my tears,” she said as she stood
up, feeling far older than her twenty-two years.
    “ Ah, no, miss,” said the one-eyed
man, who seemed to have appointed himself the spokesman. “I thinks
I speaks for all when I say that gunner there would have been
flattered to have a pretty mort cry all over him.” He looked around
at the others, and they nodded in agreement, with a certain shyness
that touched her almost as much as the dead man.
    So I am a pretty lady? she asked
herself. Either the light is more dim than I thought, or you have
not seen Englishwomen in years and years. “I could cry more,” she
said simply. It sounded stupid to her ears, but again the men
nodded.
    The major had said nothing, and she
had assumed he still slept. She looked at him, and his eyes were
open, regarding her with a curious expression of relief. It
surprised her at first, wondering what she could have done to
occasion such an emotion. She gazed back at him with a question in
her eyes, and then it dawned on her that what she had done through
this interminable afternoon had lifted some of the burden from his
own painful shoulders.
    She surprised herself further by
resting her hand on his arm as he lay there, leaning close so no
one else could hear, and whispering in his ear. “Major Reed, I
truly think this is too much for you right now.”
    He nodded, and she was chagrined to
see tears in his eyes, too. “I also think the men would feel better
if you returned to your own