One Night with the Major Read online

  ‘The Earl,’ her father went on, ‘is prepared to offer Lithgow money, land, a seat in Parliament and a pretty debutante wife if he’ll end the marriage, which he will. He’s no more used to living in hovels like this than you are and no more suited to it. Whatever money the Major has will run out and then what will he do? He will be desperate for his grandfather’s help.’

  He pulled out a gold pocket watch and studied it, clapping it shut with satisfaction. ‘We’ll be able to catch the five o’clock back to London. You’ll sleep in your own bed tonight.’ The last was said with an unbelievable amount of good humour, as if she would also find that prospect welcome.

  Emotions roiled through Pavia: anger and no small amount of fear. In all her life, she’d known her father to be a man who got what he wanted. What would he do? How far would he go to get what he wanted now? How far had he already gone? He must be very sure of himself indeed if he’d ordered her trunk packed. ‘No, I will not. You may take my clothes, but I am going nowhere with you.’ Pavia folded her arms and stood her ground. ‘My place is here.’

  Her father grabbed her arm. ‘It is not. You embarrass us by lowering yourself to this station. Now, be a good girl and come with me. I do not want to have to force you.’

  Her back spasmed, followed by a sharp pain to her stomach. She wanted to sit down, but she couldn’t show weakness, not now when so much was at stake. ‘No, Father. I am not your little girl to order around any more. My place is here.’ She hoped Mrs Bran had the good sense to find Cam. She needed him.

  Boots clomped in the kitchen door in welcome relief as Cam filled the hall, sweaty and dirt streaked, his eyes narrowing as he took in the scene, divining the situation immediately. Cam fairly bristled with protectiveness. She’d never seen a more handsome sight. Cam wiped his hands on a towel and tossed it aside. ‘We were unaware you planned to visit, Honeysett, or we would have made preparations.’ A sweet sense of peace swept her. Cam would put a stop to this nonsense. Just his presence brought a swell of easement to her. She could see anything through as long as he was beside her. It was a stunning revelation made at a most difficult juncture. Slowly, steadily, he had become an integral part of her world.

  ‘I just came to collect my daughter,’ her father announced, his eyes challenging Cam. It was a bold move. No one would miss the tension of Cam’s body, a soldier’s body wound tight for a fight.

  ‘Is that so? It doesn’t seem to me that she is interested in leaving. She’s made it clear her place is here, with me.’ Cam moved to stand beside her, his very presence lending her strength. ‘Yours, however, is not. I must ask you to leave. I don’t tolerate uninvited guests bothering my wife.’ He locked eyes with her father, answering her father’s challenge with a stare that sent corporals to do his bidding. ‘I do not want to force your departure, Honeysett. But I will. I am sure you understand.’

  Her father held Cam’s gaze a moment longer, then picked up his walking stick from the corner where it leaned and levelled it at Cam. For a moment, Pavia thought he meant to strike him. ‘Do not mistake this for a surrender, Lithgow. This is merely a retreat. The field is yours. Today. But you cannot hope to sustain the advantage.’ He strode past Cam with a snap of his fingers. He called up the stairs, ‘Margaret, come. Leave the trunk.’ And Margaret came, like the servant she was.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The peace so carefully restored in the night hadn’t lasted long. One look at his wife’s pale face was enough to tell him that. The sight of Pavia’s trunk at the bottom of the stairs, and the snatch of conversation he’d caught, was enough to tell him the rest. Her father had threatened her. The man should be called out for such an action. ‘Are you all right, Pavia?’ He kept his temper in check and focused instead on her. He helped her to the sofa.

  ‘How dare he come in here and attempt to abscond with my wife!’

  Pavia leaned on the arm of the sofa. She looked frighteningly unwell, but there was still fire in her voice. ‘He dares because he has the support of your grandfather, the Earl.’

  ‘What?’ Cam furrowed his brow. ‘That makes no sense. No offence, but my grandfather would not lower himself to do business with a Cit like your father. That’s his objection to the whole marriage.’

  ‘Not entirely his only objection, Cam. But dislike of our marriage is the one thing the two of them have in common.’ Pavia drew a sharp breath.

  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend?’ Cam mused with a cynical chuckle. ‘So the two of them are in bed together now. But what for? Neither of them needs money.’ A rather humorous picture came to mind of Oliver Honeysett and his grandfather trying to buy each other off with money neither was interested in.

  ‘We are, apparently, more valuable to them than money. We are their keys to advancing their influence, but not when we’re together.’ Pavia outlined her father’s offer. ‘It’s not that much different than your grandfather’s letter. I go to India, have the baby, come back in a few years and try to marry for a title once more. Meanwhile, you go back to London, run for Parliament, have your grandfather settle an impressive estate and allowance on you, and pick up where you left off with Caroline Beaufort.’

  ‘And our marriage?’ The plan sickened Cam. His grandfather and Oliver Honeysett were attempting to dismantle his life: his career, his wife, his child.

  ‘Annulled at worst, forgotten at best.’ Pavia shifted on the sofa, trying to find a comfortable position.

  ‘And our child?’ A child could not be dismissed as easily as a marriage. A child was flesh and blood, a marriage was just paper.

  ‘The child would be passed off as the product of a fictional marriage in India where I was widowed. With my father’s money, no one will look closely at that claim. At any rate, record keeping in India is not as accurate as records are here. There are a hundred reasons there might not be record of anything: water damage, fire, monsoons.’

  A knot of primal possession tightened in his stomach. ‘My child will not be passed off as the child of another, fictional or not.’ Rage simmered. His grandfather and Honeysett not only sought to erase his marriage, they sought to separate him from his child, to make arrangements that did not allow him to claim his child, to raise his child. Cam leaned forward and reached for Pavia’s hand, his eyes steady on her. ‘There is no amount of money, of land, of position in this world that would ever tempt me away from my child. They are not men who can understand that. If they did, they wouldn’t bother asking.’

  Pavia gasped. For a moment, Cam thought it was in reaction to his vow, but the shock on her face disabused him. She gripped his hand tightly, her other hand cradling her belly as another cry escaped her.

  ‘Pavia, what is it?’ Her sudden fear fed his. He followed her gaze down to the floor where blood dripped from her leg. ‘You’re hurt!’ If that bastard father of hers had harmed her, Cam would chase down the train and call him out.

  ‘No, Cam. Get Mrs Bran. I’m afraid I am losing the baby.’ He rose to fetch the housekeeper, but Pavia held his hand, giving a contradiction of commands. ‘Don’t leave me, Cam. Oh!’ A sharp pang took her. The sight of Pavia in distress galvanised him into action.

  Cam lifted her into his arms, calling for Mrs Bran as he took the stairs to their bedroom. ‘Send for the doctor, Mrs Bran! We need hot water and towels, as fast as you can!’ He elevated Pavia’s legs on pillows, as if he were treating a battlefield wound, and talking all the while. Voice contact kept the wounded calm, kept them focused on the next step and the next step after that—it gave them hope. That’s what he wanted to give Pavia and, in truth, himself in the long minutes before the doctor arrived. How many soldiers had he done this for?

  ‘Here, have some water, it will ease the pain...once we get a bandage on this, the bleeding will stop, we’ll get you to the field hospital. It’s not as bad as it looks. You will be fine.’

  He hoped Pavia would be fine. He had never expected to
use those skills with his own wife.

  Cam sat on the edge of the bed beside her, Pavia’s hand in his. ‘Mrs Bran says babies shift positions and that can cause bleeding. Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about and this is quite normal.’ He tried to soothe her, tried to reason with himself. The doctor would fix this and they would move on.

  ‘No, Cam. It’s too soon for that kind of shifting. Letty says babies shift much later. Besides, there’s not much of him to shift, certainly he’s not of a size to cause any discomfort or stretching.’

  ‘Aha! You do think it will be a boy. You called it “he”.’ Cam tried for levity to take her mind off the negative. He wished she wouldn’t argue with him. His soldiers never did. If he told them to drink, they drank. If he told them the wound wasn’t as bad as it appeared, they believed him. He wanted Pavia to believe him now. She looked so frightened and pale on their big bed and he felt helpless in a way he’d never felt before. On the battlefield there were plans to make, men to rally. He could do that. He’d turned defeats into victories countless times with strategies and quite often with nothing more than bravado. But here, he could do nothing. Pavia was suffering and he was helpless. Impotence curdled in his stomach.

  * * *

  Mrs Bran brought the doctor up the stairs at last. He shook Cam’s hand, looked at Pavia with kindly eyes and patted her hand. ‘It won’t be long now, my dear, and it will be over.’ Pavia sobbed and the dam of restraint in him began to crumble.

  ‘What do you mean, over?’ Cam challenged the doctor. ‘Can’t you save the baby? There has to be a way.’

  The doctor fixed him with a pityingly stare. ‘Major, leave us please. Your wife is in good hands.’

  ‘That is not acceptable!’ Cam grabbed the doctor’s sleeve, but Mrs Bran’s hand was on his arm, leading him out of the room.

  ‘Vicar Danson is downstairs. Go and have a drink with him. Let the doctor do his work.’

  ‘I don’t want a drink, damn it, I want my wife, I want to be with her, with our child!’ The old madness leeched into his blood. ‘I have to save them!’ He knew this madness—it was the madness of losing Fortis, of not finding him, only now it was Pavia he was losing, his child he was losing and the pain was so much worse.

  ‘Your wife will be fine.’ Mrs Bran ushered him downstairs. ‘She is young and healthy. She’s not the first young woman to lose a child, although I know that’s little comfort to you at the moment,’ Mrs Bran counselled. She handed him off to Vicar Danson, who waited at the foot of the stairs, a knowing look passing between them. More pity. It was the way Lord Cardigan and Raglan had looked at him before they sent him home, mad and helpless.

  Cam drew a deep breath. He had to get a hold of himself. He would be of no use to Pavia if he gave in to the madness. ‘Vicar, so good of you to come.’

  ‘My son, come and sit. It’s never easy.’

  The words broke him. Cam felt his body begin to tremble, the sobs welling up from deep inside him, somewhere unknown, somewhere heretofore untapped and unexplored. Lithgows never cried. Never grieved. Lithgows went on.

  ‘That’s right. It’s best to get it out now.’ The Vicar’s fatherly arm was about him, drawing him close as if he were a beloved child, like Uncle Elliott used to do. ‘You do your grieving here, so you can be strong for her later when she needs you.’ It was all the permission Cam needed. There, in the front parlor, Cam Lithgow, who hadn’t cried when Fortis had fallen, wept for all the things he’d ever lost. But most of all, for the child he’d never know, never raise. There would be others, perhaps, but not this one. The knowledge of that loss hurt like a knife to his gut. He’d built his future on the hope of that child. Now that future was gone. What did he and Pavia have without that child? Would she still want him if she didn’t need him?

  * * *

  People respond to others’ grief in different ways. Some want to give hope, some want to find justifications for it, others search for blame. The people of Little Trull did all three, Cam noted as villagers greeted them quietly after church on Sunday. He had argued to stay home, but Pavia had insisted they go and get it over with. It had been almost a week since the accident, as she referred to it, refusing to name it for what it was: a miscarriage. There was no reason to hide away in the manse. She didn’t look any different, she’d argued. She’d hardly looked pregnant then and now she wasn’t, so what did it matter?

  The doctor had offered his medical opinion that it was far better to have lost the child now instead of later when Pavia would have been at greater risk, too. After all, the pregnancy was hardly out of its first trimester. Cam knew what that meant. That the baby was hardly a baby at all. Not true. Not to him, not to Pavia. That baby had been everything, the dream of a life full of love, a far better one than the one he’d lived amid the opulence of his grandfather’s house.

  The Vicar had called it God’s will, confident that there was a purpose for this. Letty and the ladies offered the consolation that there would be other babies when they brought meals to the house. There were others who were less kind in their intentions. Mrs Browning had passed them in the churchyard with her head held high, a smug smile on her face as if to imply they’d got precisely what they’d deserved. In her mind, like should stay with like. Englishmen didn’t wed half-breeds from India. Others offered their own stories of loss as proof that the Lithgows, too, would rise up from the ashes of this setback. Cam wasn’t so sure.

  Pavia was distant. She refused to discuss it, saying there was nothing to discuss. The first few nights, he’d slept elsewhere out of deference for her, but in hindsight, he thought that might have been a mistake. When he went to hold her, she moved away, always discreetly, always politely, never an overt rejection of his touch, but the rejection was there all the same. She allowed him only cursory, necessary touches. She found a reason to move out his reach and he had not gone back to their bed, feeling unwelcome.

  * * *

  ‘Do you think we are cursed? Is Mrs Browning right?’ she asked as he ushered her into the house after the service.

  ‘No, absolutely not,’ Cam said firmly. ‘That old besom doesn’t know anything.’ He followed her into the kitchen, where Mrs Bran had left cold meat and bread for their Sunday lunch.

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t, but have you ever thought maybe we don’t belong together? We never would have met in that tavern if I had obeyed my father and married Wenderly. It’s not the difference in our races. It’s the difference in us. We were never supposed to meet.’

  Pavia laid out the bread and Cam sliced the meat, choosing to ignore her remark. ‘Ham, just like old times.’ Old times that had happened not so long ago. A honeymoon, where they’d lived for a week on ham sandwiches and passion. How he wanted it back: the excitement, the uncertainty of being on their own, of looking forward to the future. Not just for the passion, but for the companionship they’d started to build. When she didn’t respond to his jest, a thought came to him. Perhaps she wasn’t interested in a male’s companionship at this time, but maybe a female friend would help. ‘Would you like me to send for Sofia? She could come and stay for a while.’

  Pavia looked at him as if he’d just suggested they fly to the moon. ‘No, I could not bear it, to see her with her son, so small and so perfect, while...’ She drew a breath, unable to complete her sentence.

  ‘While what?’

  ‘While we’re being punished for defying karma.’ Pavia hacked viciously at the loaf of bread. ‘Our baby died because of us, because we created an imbalance in the universe.’

  Cam slammed down his knife. ‘Enough of that talk! Do you really think there’s such a thing as karma? That the miscarriage happened because we did something wrong or evil? I can’t believe you’d set such credence in the ideas of a woman like Mrs Browning, a woman full of hate and prejudice.’

  Pavia’s eyes snapped, some of their usual fire returning. ‘I’m not talking about Mrs Browning.
I’m talking about karma. My uncle’s court believes it. Don’t you dare make fun of it.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned any particular attachment to such beliefs until now.’ Cam sliced the ham with a fierce stroke. At this rate, he was butchering the pig all over again in his frustration. He forgot too easily the differences in their backgrounds, their childhoods. They might have both been raised Protestant, but their experiences were very different. His was the experience of Anglican England, while hers was a Protestantism presented amid a backdrop of Hinduism and local Khasi religion, where it had to be flexible in order to be persuasive. And it hadn’t been all that persuasive. He knew from his own experience in other parts of India that conversions to Christianity were slow in coming.

  ‘Just because I was raised Anglican doesn’t mean I don’t have those influences in my life. Did you know my name was chosen because of its association with the Hindu concept of completeness and perfection? It was a compromise between my mother and my father. He wanted to give me a good, strong European name. Pavia actually comes from northern Italy. It has a “respectable” medieval history to it, according to my father. But my mother wanted her heritage represented, too. The astrologer agreed to Pavia.’ She spat out the information with a hint of pride as if it were an argument. It was a wedge, Cam thought. A reminder of all they didn’t know about each other, of the walls that remained between them and were growing taller every day. ‘I was born healthy and safe, perhaps because of that compromise, perhaps because of my father’s concession. Maybe we should take karma more seriously after all that’s happened. I defied my parents, you defied your family, we defied society and now our baby is gone.’