Written in My Heart (2 page)

Ethan just sighed and turned out his extra stockings and drawers, similarly stained. It seemed he wouldn’t be wearing clean clothing again for some time. In his small mending kit, the needles were already rusted to the leather. Everything in the pack was wet and ruined, even … he dug down deep, into the bottom, hoping against hope that the extra clothing and other things might have provided some protection….

But no. When he opened the small leather-bound journal, it was just as soaked as everything else. The ink bled off the pages, turning his fingers black as he carefully peeled them apart. And the packet of letters tucked in the back was now just a slick, slimy lump of paper, held together with a bit of ribbon.

His shoulders slumped. The one thing he’d truly cared about and couldn’t replace.

“Letters from the wife?” Morton gave him a sympathetic look. “A hard blow. After Corunna I started carrying my wife’s last letter in my coat. If something bad had happened to it there, why, it would have happened to me, too, and if I had to die or be carted off the field, I’d have it with me.”

Ethan touched the ribbon, once dark blue but now as black as the ink that had soaked into it. “She’s not my wife. But you were a clever man to keep one by you all the time.”

“Ah—a sweetheart.” Morton grinned, the expression somehow wild now that his black hair stood up in a ruff above the white bandage. “Mayhap she’ll forgive you, once she sees you return home alive and whole.”

“She’s not … precisely … my sweetheart.” He stared at the top letter. The ink had mostly washed away, but he could still make out the shape of his name in her neat, feminine hand. How the sight of it had made his heart leap, whenever a new letter arrived.

Morton turned away to rummage through another pile of baggage. “From the way you’re staring at her letters, she ought to be. Won’t she have you? Pretty odd, that, if she wrote that many letters to you.”

He blinked, then scowled. “What? No! I haven’t even asked her,” he muttered.

“Best get on with it, then.”

“Campbell! Is that you?” A tall, thin fellow in the uniform of the 52nd Regiment of Foot came limping through the confusion. “And Morton! Thank God you’re alive!”

Ethan gave a glad shout and lunged forward to clasp hands with Bingley, his dearest friend in the 52nd. “Bingley! I thought you would be confined to the ward!”

“I was.” Bingley grinned, clasping Morton’s hand in turn. “Once they dug the ball out of my leg, I stole a bottle of gin and took myself off to recover.” He extended his left leg, swathed in stained and dirty bandages, and the other two men gave it a somber regard. “I expect it will hurt like the devil when the gin wears off.”

“Aye,” said Morton. “O’ course, I hear the sawed-off legs hurt like the devil, too.”

“So I told myself, which is why I slipped out of the ward before they could find a saw.” Bingley grinned a little drunkenly.

“Well done.”

Bingley noticed what Ethan held then. “Don’t say Jane’s letters are ruined!”

“It seems so.” He undid the ruined ribbon, wondering if he could dry the letters out and salvage even a page or two.

“Blimey.” Bingley shook his head. “I loved her letters….”

Ethan’s mouth quirked. He’d read them aloud to a few of his closest mates. Jane had been a reliable and regular correspondent, relating all the ordinary events of life at home that suddenly grew so dear to soldiers on campaign. “So did I.”

“He says she’s not his sweetheart.” Morton grinned. “Looks devoted, to me.”

Bingley laughed. “Maybe she just took pity on him, then.”

“I did write and tell her about the other men in the regiment,” Ethan returned. “That would rouse anyone’s sympathy.”

“Quite rightly so.” Bingley held out his bottle. “Have a drink. I daresay it will be weeks before the army gets the post moving again and she can send you more.”

He accepted the bottle and took a long swig of the sharp, cheap gin. He passed it to Morton, and for a moment they simply shared the bottle in silence. He didn’t know Morton well, but was glad of any familiar face right now. They were far enough from the field not to hear the cries of wounded men, but the thin sound of wounded horses drifted to them. When the bottle came his way again, Ethan took a longer drink, trying to blot out the sound. He’d hear plenty of it, and worse; soon they would have to return to the battlefield to help the wounded and dig graves for the dead. “I hope it’s the last of that French devil,” he said with abrupt ferocity. “I’m sick of this.” He waved one arm around to encompass the battlefield, the wounded, the dead, the officers who’d led them into slaughter, the sickening cries of dying horses that would not fade from his ears. “All of it.”

“Been sick of it for three years,” agreed Morton, taking the bottle in turn.

Ethan turned back to his ruined journal and Jane’s letters. He peeled off the top one, grimacing at the slick sheen of mud coating the back side of it. His term of muster was almost up, thank the good Lord above. He was sick of battles, sick of gravedigging, sick of forced marches and rations and bivouacs in muddy fields. He was sick of dreaming of home, whose colors and scents and flavors he only remembered thanks to Jane’s letters. He would have run mad without that slender link to home, and now….

Once he’d been keen to flee the mundane little village of Caxby-on-Avon. It was a fine town, but life there had seemed so … routine. The thought of never venturing beyond its borders, of living there his whole life alongside the same people he’d known since he was born, and of practicing law with his father, had filled him with impatience and despair. He’d thought he would go mad if he didn’t see a little of the world beyond Warwickshire. Well, he’d got his wish; he’d seen plenty beyond Warwickshire, and now he couldn’t wait to get home to it.

He was going back, and damn the officer—up to and including General Wellington—who tried to stop him.

It was a week before casualty reports appeared in Caxby. The sheer numbers were horrifying—at least three thousand of His Majesty’s troops dead, with many more wounded or missing. No rank was spared, and Jane wondered if the many reports of bravery and valor by the slain men provided any comfort to the widows left behind. She scanned the lists with her own heart in her throat, praying not to see a single familiar name.

And she didn’t. Ethan Campbell wasn’t on any list.

“There are so many,” murmured Tamsin, peering over Jane's shoulder as Jane read the lists a second time to be sure.

“Too many.” Not even her relief at not seeing his name could blot out the horror. It must have been a slaughter, for so many to have fallen. Suddenly sick, she handed the paper to Tamsin and turned away. This list was only men killed, and it was so long. The list of wounded would probably be even longer.

“Jane,” said Tamsin, hurrying after her as she strode up the street toward the dressmaker’s shop, “it’s a very good sign his name isn’t on the lists.”

“I know.” She kept her eyes straight ahead.

“You mustn’t let yourself run mad with worry.”

“Of course not!” She forced a smile for her friend as they let themselves into Mrs. Lynch’s and climbed the stairs. “I won’t. I can’t. I can only keep praying every night that he’s unharmed, or at least not seriously harmed.”

Their employer looked up at their entrance. She knew they’d gone to read the casualty reports. “Any word?” Her face softened immediately at Jane’s quick shake of her head. “Thank heavens!”

“Any word on what?” Millie wanted to know. Tamsin whisked across the room and whispered something to her. Millie’s eyes grew wide, but she didn’t say anything else.

For a while work went on as usual in the shop. Mrs. Bellows came for her fitting, and Jane took down the nearly finished riding habit, pinning and adjusting until her customer smiled broadly. “Such a fine hand you’ve got, Miss Barton! Finding such a good seamstress here in Caxby is a stroke of pure good fortune, I always tell Mr. Bellows. I’d have to go to London to get anything this fine, if not for you.”

Jane smiled, even though her knees ached from crawling around the fitting stool to make all the adjustments to the hem. “I’m flattered, ma’am.”

“You should be, my girl. Mrs. Lynch knows she’s got a prize in you, I hope.”

“Indeed,” said the modiste warmly. She’d come in to oversee the last of the fitting. “Miss Barton is my right hand.”

When Mrs. Bellows had left, Mrs. Lynch helped carry everything back up to the workroom. “You may leave an hour early today, Jane,” she said kindly. “You’ve been working such late nights. This habit is almost done, you deserve a free evening.”

“Did my stitching hold?” asked Millie eagerly.

Jane smiled. “Every thread. Well done, Millie.” She turned to her employer. “Perhaps I’ll leave just a bit early. Thank you, ma’am.”

Mrs. Lynch smiled. “Take that dog for a long walk. It will do you both good.”

Everyone settled down to work. For a while it was quiet in the workroom, aside from Millie’s steps running back and forth to the cabinets for thread or ribbons or anything else needed. Jane bent over her work, taking only the quickest glances out the window when she had to rethread her needle. There was no chance Ethan would come strolling down the street so soon, and Jane knew it, but somehow her eyes went to the window anyway. She forced herself to concentrate on her stitching and tried to keep it from her mind.

Eventually Millie, as usual, had to say something and thwart her efforts. “I’m very glad Mr. Campbell’s not on the lists, Jane.”

“Thank you, Millie.”

“I didn’t even know he was your sweetheart,” the girl went on. “Mum was surprised to hear it, too. Why, she—”

“Millie,” cried Tamsin as Jane blanched. “Mind your tongue!”

“Why?” Millie looked alarmed. “What did I say?”

Jane cleared her throat. “He’s not my sweetheart.”

“No?” Millie cocked one brow. “You moved your chair to sit by the window to watch for him.”

Jane gave her a warning look. “I can sit wherever I want.”

“Of course you can,” put in Tamsin. “Millie, fetch my scissors. This pelisse isn’t going to make itself.”

“What did I do?” the younger girl exclaimed. “Isn’t it obvious she’s sweet on him? You even told me—”

“It’s not your place to talk about it!”

“But you talk about it!” howled Millie as Tamsin advanced on her, a furious gleam in her eye. “Why am I the only one who can’t know anything?”

“Stop it,” said Jane in a low voice that still halted Tamsin in her tracks. “It’s—it’s not any mysterious secret, Millie. I just….” She shook her head and sighed. “We don’t have an understanding. He wasn’t courting me.”

“Why not?”

She felt her face warm. Even Tamsin was listening with barely concealed curiosity. But Tamsin was older than Millie, nearly seventeen, with a sweetheart of her own; she had never asked, but divined Jane’s feelings on her own.

Or so she supposed. Jane certainly hadn’t told her; she’d never breathed a word to anyone about him. “We were children together,” she explained. “My father died when I was a small girl, and his father sent him around to help my mother after that. His mother had died about the same time, so my mother always sent him home with something she’d baked. Ethan was like an older brother, looking out for me.” She smiled wryly. “Tormenting me as well at times.”

Millie frowned. “So you’re waiting for your brother to come home?”

Jane’s smile faded. No, her thoughts had not been sisterly for some time now. Ethan had always been there, strapping and strong. She remembered holding his hand and walking to church on Sundays. She remembered him beating up a boy who teased her. She also remembered the day she first realized he was a man, how the sun had lit his fair hair to golden brilliance and highlighted how broad his shoulders had become. He’d been just twenty years old then, and she only fifteen, but she remembered how her heart had nearly burst at the realization that she loved him.

But Ethan never knew, never guessed, never gave any indication he might return that feeling. He’d still given her his arm to church and fended off anyone who bothered her, but he’d never looked at her with particular interest or awareness, let alone desire. At times she’d been on the verge of telling him; perhaps he’d never looked at her that way only because it hadn’t occurred to him, or because he thought she wanted to remain a sister to him. She had entertained more than one long daydream about him taking her hand, pulling her into his arms, and kissing her passionately on the lips….

As delicious as that daydream was, though, she knew a far more likely result would be shock and even alarm if she threw herself at him. She could tell herself that of course he wouldn’t notice her that way when she was fifteen … sixteen … seventeen … eighteen…. But at some point a girl had to face the reality that if a man hadn’t noticed her by then, he probably never would. That moment had come for Jane when Ethan went off to war three years ago. He’d told her good-bye and asked her to write to him, and then he’d done the same thing to Mary Windham and Lucy Mannerly and Josephine Evans. Jane had been just one of the many girls waving good-bye with tears in her eyes at his departure, and if Ethan had preferred any of them over the other, he gave no sign of it.

Her only solace was that she had kept her promise better than the other girls had. Josie Evans was now married to Squire Tatum’s son. Lucy Mannerly’s aunt had taken her to London for a Season and raised her expectations; a country solicitor was no longer good enough for Lucy. Mary Windham claimed she’d written to Ethan, but Jane doubted she’d written every week without fail, as she had done for three years now. Even if her letters were as dull as dishwater, at least she had kept her word.

Whether that would matter to Ethan was a complete mystery.

“He’s not my brother,” she finally answered Millie’s question. “But he’s very dear, just the same. Almost like family.” But not quite.

Tamsin gave her a long look, but said nothing. Millie’s face cleared. “Oh, I see. A very good friend.” She beamed at Jane. “And you’re such a good friend to him, to write so loyally and to care for his dog and wait for him. He must be a wonderful man.”