With This Ring by Carla Kelly

papers on his cot. “Sir, do you need some help
with this?”
    He opened his eyes. To her surprise,
he looked feverish, so she put her hand on his forehead. “You are
hot,” she said, looking around for the surgeon.
    He covered her hand with his own.
“Just keep your hand there, Miss Perkins, and I will improve in
minutes.”
    She leaned closer. “May I finish
your paperwork for you?” she asked. “Will that help?”
    “ You cannot imagine, Miss Perkins.
Words fail me,” he said as he released her hand. “Draw yourself up
to the table, madam.”
    She laughed and took the papers to
the table. In a moment he was standing beside her, pointing out
what needed to be done. “It appears that you want me to copy these
documents onto these sheets.”
    He nodded, as he leaned heavily on
her chair. “If things do not come to them in twos or threes,
accountants get all tight about the mouth and … and diddle
themselves behind bushes, for all I know.”
    “ Major,” she began, blushing. “You
must become less colorful with your phrases, if you have plans to
retire from the army and ….”
    “ I know, I know,” he interrupted.
“Find a wife in a week or so.” He lay down again. “Did my men fill
you in on that exploit?”
    “ No, they did
not ….”
    “ Such restraint on their
part.”
    “…  which I thought rather
beastly of them, since it sounds like an interesting story,” she
said as she dipped the pen in the inkwell and began to
copy.
    “ It was a good story three years
ago, I don’t doubt,” he said, his voice wistful with remembering.
“Somehow, I never thought I would live long enough to have to make
good on it, Miss Perkins.”
    She put down the pen. “Well, tell
me, or I will leave you to the mercy of the
accountants!”
    He shuddered. “It is not a pretty
story.”
    “ Major ….”
    He turned carefully onto his side.
“Miss Perkins, in May of 1809, during the first siege of Badajoz,
my father died and left me a title and an estate. I am the Earl of
Laren.”
    “ So I should have been ‘my lording’
you,” she said as she continued copying.
    “ Please don’t start now. I don’t
like it; never have. The estate is good enough, but it needed an
immediate infusion of cash to make it much better.” He made a face.
“Especially since I have neglected it, and my father, too, only he
did not have Napoleon for an excuse.”
    She turned to look at him, unable to
hide the merriment that she knew was in her face. “Major, you not
only need a wife, but you need a rich one, too? All this in less
than a month?”
    “ Lydia, you are a trial,” he said
mildly, using her name again. This must be the tone he uses with
his sisters, she thought, unoffended.
    “ My Aunt Chalmers lives with my
mother, and she is richer than the Almighty,” he continued. “In the
same letter announcing my father’s bad news and my title, she wrote
that I would inherit her wealth. If I married, and soon, she would
even let me draw on the principal to begin improvements
immediately.”
    She frowned and put down the pen.
“Why is marriage so important?”
    He sat up and leaned forward. “My
back still itches where the sutures were,” he grumbled. “Miss
Perkins, do I ask too much or could you ….”
    “ Scratch it?” She put down the pen
and sat next to him on the cot. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she
said dubiously.
    He lifted up his shirt, exposing his
back, and rested his elbows on his knees. “Just rub the skin
lightly with your fingernails. Oh, God, that is perfection. Miss
Perkins, you should be patented, duplicated, and issued to every
hospital ward in the army! If you stop, I will cry.”
    If Mother sees me, she will make me
cry, she thought as she gently ran her fingernails around the ugly
wound. “Why didn’t the Frenchman who did this sever your spine,
Major?”
    “ I believe he was thinking more on
the terms of parting my neck from my shoulders,” the major replied.
“One of my men