Hanover Square Affair, The by Ashley Gardner Page A

a step back, looking at me with a critical eye. “I don’t mean that. I was remembering the night I took ill and nothing would comfort me but coffee. You searched all over camp for some, and it was raining so hard I thought the sky would come down. You sprinted through the rain, holding that packet of coffee under your coat as though it were the most precious gold. I’ve never seen a man run so fast in all my life. But you did it, and you laughed. Someone took that liveliness away from you.” She touched the hair at my temple. “Nor was this gray here when we parted.”
    “I was not an old man then.”
    Janet sat down on one of my straight-backed chairs, lacing her fingers. “You’d had better start telling me that story, if it’s so long.”
    I sat in the chair facing hers. I stared at the flames on my hearth for a few moments, while I decided what to tell her.
    In the end, most of it came out of me. I told her of the cold morning that Brandon and I had met each other with pistols drawn, until Louisa and several other officers from our regiment had persuaded us to settle our differences and shake hands. I’d thought the matter finished with, even if the topic of our falling out remained uncomfortable, and then had come Brandon’s betrayal. I told her of the mission he’d sent me on, never meaning for me to return, glossing over our decision to leave the army behind to avoid disgracing ourselves, Louisa, or the regiment.
    When I’d finished, I sat silently, as bereft as I’d been the day I’d left Spain to return to England. I made to smooth my damp hair and saw that my fingers trembled.
    Janet reached across the space between us and caught my hand. “And what do you do now?”
    I smiled. “Very little.”
    “Colonel Brandon ought to help you. He ought to find you a proper job.”
    I shrugged. “He tries hard to pretend nothing ever happened.”
    Her eyes glowed with anger. “You always told me how he was like a father to you, or a brother. Your years together should count for something.”
    “It is difficult for some to acknowledge a mistake.”
    Her face softened. “Oh, Gabriel. And you love him enough to let him do it.”
    She was wrong. I hated him. He had taken things from me, and I would not easily forgive him.
    My anger must have shown on my face, because Janet squeezed my hand. “I’ll not press you. You were always one for not knowing your own heart.”
    “You don’t think so?”
    Her brown eyes twinkled. “No, my lad, I do not. You have honor and duty and love all mixed up in that head of yours. That’s why I’m so fond of you.”
    I leaned forward and touched her face. “And I am fond of you, because you are not afraid of the truth.”
    “I am sometimes. Everyone is.”
    We shared a look. A thump sounded upstairs, as though Marianne had dropped something to the floor. A few flakes of plaster wisped down and settled on Janet’s hair.
    “You have not told me your story,” I said. “What happened to you after I sent you off with my smitten lieutenant?”
    She smiled. “Your smitten lieutenant was a perfect gentleman. He only made three or four propositions and took it well when I turned him down.”
    “Poor fellow.”
    “Not a bit. We parted as friends when we reached England. I went to Cambridge and stayed with my sister until we buried her.” She hesitated. “I met a gentleman there.”
    “Mr. Clarke,” I said.
    “He was my sister’s neighbor. A kindly man. He succumbed to influenza three years gone now.”
    I suddenly felt shame for wallowing in my own self-pity, and pure compassion for her. Janet ever found herself alone. “I am sorry.”
    Her eyes softened. “He was kind to me to the end. He left enough for me to get by. And I have friends.”
    “Like Sergeant-major Foster?”
    “I speak to him from time to time. He frequents a public house near the Haymarket, where I buy my ale.”
    “He is a good man,” I said. “And a good sergeant.”
    The room went silent.