The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding. Amanda McCabe

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СКАЧАТЬ had become a precious commodity to him in the last few years. In Spain, and then at Waterloo, noise had been ever-present. The cacophony of military camps, drumbeats and shouted orders, and drunken laughter at night as men tried to forget their fears and loneliness around campfires. The explosion of shot and shell, the screams of people and horses as they fell, the sobbing afterward. No—quiet had no place in war.

      Nor, it seemed, in a world after the war. Harry had returned to England thinking he was coming home to a world of green and rain and peace, the world he dreamed of in canvas tents at night. It had taken him years to return, but he had always been determined he would.

      But it was not like that at all once he returned to London. There were parties all the time, dinners and teas and dances, with everyone clamouring for tales of the glorious heroics of war. He could hardly tell them the truth of it all, of the mud and blood and dying, so he said little at all. Charming social conversation had always been Charles’s forte, not his.

      Yet his silence only seemed to make him more sought out. Made more invitations arrive at his lodgings, more ladies want to sit beside him in drawing rooms or ride in the park. ‘Like a corsair warrior in a poem,’ he had once heard a lady whisper to her friend as they watched him at a musicale.

      The memory made him laugh all over again. Him—a poetic corsair. If only they knew. He was just a rough army man, riding behind the drum, ever since he was a lad with his first commission. An army man with dreams of being a country farmer one day, of sitting by his own hearth after a day of watching his fields ripen and his sheep grow fat. A house where there was quiet all the time, except perhaps for a toddler’s giggle or the sound of a lady playing at her pianoforte.

      It was a dream that would have to be postponed again, at least for a time. His regiment had called on him once more, to go to sun-baked Sicily this time to put down a rebellion. There was only time for this one visit home, to his father’s house at Hilltop Grange near Barton Park.

      He hadn’t wanted to go to the party at Barton. Yet more noise, more clamour, more stares. But Jane and Emma Bancroft were old neighbours, kind people, and he let Charles persuade him to attend. Now he was rather glad he had.

      He closed his eyes and there he saw something most unexpected—the face of Miss Rose Parker. She had the sweetest smile he could remember ever seeing and even dancing, which he normally loathed, was a pleasure when he talked to her. She seemed almost like no lady, no person, he had ever met before. So calm, so serene—she made the very air seem to sigh with relief around her.

      After so long in the rough world of war, he had almost given up ever glimpsing pure sweetness in anything again. Yet there it was, in Rose Parker’s smile.

      Until Helen appeared. Helen—one of his oldest friends, the daughter of his late mother’s best friend, a lady of such beauty she was called in London The Incomparable. The lady everyone had always expected he would marry.

      ‘How changeable you are tonight, Harry,’ Charles said. ‘Laughing, then scowling—one hardly knows what to expect next.’

      Harry opened his eyes to study his brother, who lolled on the opposite seat. His golden hair gleamed in the moonlight from the open window, the perfect aquiline features that had always made him their late mother’s copy, her darling, were outlined like a classical cameo. Charles was the perfect Apollo wherever he went to Harry’s Hephaestus, always laughing and easy-tempered, making everyone around him feel easy as well. But now that the party was behind him, even Charles looked almost—sad, as he had rather often since Harry returned to England. Harry couldn’t help but wonder what was plaguing his brother.

      Perhaps it was because Charles had been left all those years to deal with Hilltop and their father while Harry was at war. And their father was not a kind man at the best of times. The house that had been their mother’s pride, the glowing name she had loved, had been tarnished by him.

      ‘I laugh because the party went better than I could have expected,’ he said.

      ‘Ha!’ Charles answered. ‘So you see I was right to make you attend. The Bancroft girls are always kindness itself.’

      ‘They are hardly girls now, are they? Jane a countess, Emma a widow.’

      ‘Poor Emma. Remember when Mother made us go to the children’s tea parties at Barton and we all ended up climbing trees instead?’ Charles said with a laugh. ‘Father was never happy at all when we came home with our best new coats torn and muddy. He said Mother was raising monkeys.’

      ‘And the switches would come out.’ The switches so often came out with their father, especially after their mother died. ‘But it was always worth it to visit Barton Park.’

      ‘Wasn’t it, though? Like a different world.’

      Harry nodded. A different world. He thought of Miss Parker’s tales of searching for lost Royalist treasures there at Barton and wondered why they had never crossed paths as children. What would it have been like if they had?

      ‘La belle Helen was in fine looks tonight,’ Charles said. ‘If only we had a thousand ships that needed to be launched...’

      Harry frowned at the reminder of Helen and her elegant face flashed in his mind, erasing Miss Parker’s gentle smile. The weight of expectation, the weight of what had been and what was expected in the future, fell once again. ‘Helen has always been lovely.’

      ‘Did Miss Lily Parker’s sweet little engagement not inspire you, Harry? No ring for Helen’s pretty finger yet?’

      Harry wasn’t sure he liked something in Charles’s tone, something dark and hard beneath his smile. ‘Helen knows this is no time for an engagement. I am to re-join my regiment soon and I would not tie her down to someone like myself.’

      ‘You may think that, but does she? The betting books in the London clubs were full of speculation about when she would snap you into the parson’s mousetrap. Everyone’s expected it since we were children.’

      Harry frowned as he stared out the window, at the summer moon shining on the silent hedgerows. ‘You have picked up some ridiculous slang in those clubs of yours, Charlie.’

      ‘Well, a man has to find distractions, you know. Hilltop Grange is not exactly a haven of merriment. And everyone says you and Helen were made for each other. Any man would give his right arm to be in your position.’

      Something in his brother’s voice caught Harry’s strict attention, something sharp and jagged that was quite unlike Charles. He swung around to face him, but Charles’s face was hidden in the shadows.

      ‘Made for each other?’ Harry said. Perhaps it was so—they had been friends for so long, bound by the long ties of their families, by their mothers’ wishes. He had thought of her when he was gone, dreamed of her, carried her miniature with him to inspire him. She was like a dream, just as all that green English quiet had been a reason to come home.

      And by Jove but she was beautiful. The most beautiful lady in London, just as all those silly, betting-book dandies declared. For some reason, though, she seemed to prefer Harry to all those other men, at least for now.

      But would Helen ever like that farm life he so envisioned? The quiet evenings, the small community? He was not at all sure. Perhaps that was what really held him back now.

      Again he saw Miss Parker’s sweet smile, felt her gentle touch on his hand, but he pushed such thoughts СКАЧАТЬ