well, my lady. I will send Jackson and one of the maids along to assist you.’
‘No need for that, thank you, Pritchett. I do not expect to have to change anything around. I just want to familiarise myself with that room.’
* * *
It took an hour of procrastination before Laura finally shut the door behind her and went to sit at the writing table that faced the fireplace and Piers’s portrait. This was the table where Avery had kissed her with such passion, the place where she had learned the truth about Piers’s return to Spain and his death.
Laura folded her hands on the blotter and made herself look steadily at the picture until she felt her calm return. He looked so young, so unformed in that flamboyant red jacket. Had he really loved her or was it simply a boy’s first calf love? If she had refused to make love with him, would they have drifted apart naturally?
Yes, she thought, sadly. Yes, what we had was sweet and strangely innocent. Or perhaps naive is the better word. If he had lived, we would have married because of the baby and by now we would have outgrown each other and yet be tied together for life.
She got up and went to lift down the heavy cavalry sabre from its stand on the mantelshelf. It was not even scratched, Piers had owned it for such a short time. A bullet in the chest had killed him before he was able to raise his sword in anger at the enemy. Laura touched the tassel that hung from the finger guard, then set the weapon back in place.
It felt as though she had said goodbye, finally. Laura went back to her seat at the table and straightened the blotter, the paper knife and the inkwell automatically, unable somehow to leave the room yet. Presumably there should be writing paper and sealing wax in the drawers, she had better check that was all in order.
She opened the shallow right-hand drawer and found expensive paper, a knife for trimming pens, a taper and a coil of wax. All as it should be. She pulled at the left-hand drawer and it stuck. When she bent down to check she realised it was locked, although the wood of the drawer had shrunk so that the tongue of the lock was visible. Impulsively she picked up the paper knife and pushed it into the gap. The flimsy lock popped open and the drawer slid out.
It was empty except for a tattered, much folded, piece of paper. Curious, Laura picked it up and flattened it out on the blotter. It was not even a full sheet of writing paper, just a torn quarter of a page, ragged at the edges, covered in a brown stain with only a few words visible.
Then she realised she was looking at her own handwriting and that this must be part of that desperate letter she had written to Piers when he had left for Spain and she had realised she was carrying Alice.
These brown stains must be blood, Piers’s blood. She snatched her hand back, then, ashamed at her squeamishness, traced the few faintly legible words with her fingertip, seeing again the full message she had tried to send. Her fear, but her trust in him despite his apparent desertion. Her anxiety and her desperate need for reassurance.
She had no idea how long she sat there or when the realisation came to her that he must have kept her letter beneath his uniform against his heart, and that was why it was rent and bloody, just as his body had been. He had died knowing she loved him, knowing he was to be a father. She hoped he had been happy at the news, even if, like her, he would have been apprehensive.
Something dripped onto her hand and she realised she was weeping, the tears sliding silently down her cheeks. Laura found her handkerchief and mopped her eyes.
‘How very touching.’
She started and the paper fluttered to the desk, as brown and tattered as a dead leaf. Avery ducked under the raised window and stepped down into the room, just as she had all those weeks ago when she had found him here.
‘This is the last letter I wrote to Piers.’ Why was Avery’s face so set and hard? Because she had opened the locked drawer? She answered the unspoken accusation. ‘I know the drawer was locked. I did not intend to pry, it must have been instinct.’
Avery shrugged. ‘I wonder you care to touch it.’
‘Because of the bloodstains? If he was wounded and in my arms I would not care about the blood.’ She looked down at the scrap again, away from her husband’s hard, inexplicably accusing, eyes. ‘Piers must have carried it against his heart.’
‘A strange thing to do, considering what you wrote.’
‘I do not understand.’
* * *
Why did she sound so confused—surely she recalled what she had written in that last letter? Avery reached across and picked up the fragment and stared at it again. ‘It was how I found you, and Alice,’ he said absently as his mind grappled with the puzzle. ‘Your name is not common.’ It was like trying to read the occasional coded message that had come his way when abroad, the sort where individual words and the spaces between them had to be shuffled and...
The spaces between. God, had he been so blinded by his own guilt and grief, the need to blame someone? ‘Read me what you wrote.’ He thrust the paper at Laura.
She stared at him as if he was drunk, but she was prepared to humour him, so took it and laid it in front of her. One rounded nail traced the first line as she read, hesitating out of forgetfulness or emotion, he was not sure which.
‘I feel such a coward. It seems...like a betrayal of everything I told you I could be as a soldier’s wife. I hate to...worry you, but I am pregnant with our child. Please don’t blame yourself, we were both at fault, but write, I beg you, tell me what to do... Please look after yourself, with all my love, Laura. There was only the one page. The beginning of the letter was me thanking him for his note and hoping he was safe.’ Her voice trailed away.
‘You really did love him, didn’t you?’ He was trying so hard to stop his voice shaking that it came out harder and more abrupt than he meant. What had he done? Instinct should have told him to look deeper. To have trusted this woman. Prejudice, guilt and fear. What a toxic mix.
‘Yes, of course. I told you how I felt about him, I would never have made love with him if I had not.’ Laura’s hands clenched into fists. ‘I am sorry, but the fact that I loved Piers does not mean I cannot be a faithful wife to you.’
‘That is not why I asked.’ Hell, this was difficult. ‘I have a confession to make.’ He made himself meet her startled gaze. ‘When I found that letter all I could read were isolated words, negative, angry words. Together they sounded like a diatribe from a woman who felt bitter and betrayed, who was writing to accuse Piers of abandoning her. I thought those were the last words he received from England, that he had gone to his death not with a message of love over his heart, but one of furious rejection.’
Laura gasped and stared down at the letter. ‘Coward, hate, blame. But...you condemned me on those isolated words alone? How could you!’
He almost said it aloud, spoke of the grief and the guilt, the awful guilt, but how could he excuse himself when he had done Laura such an injustice? It would sound as though he was trying to justify the unjustifiable. ‘I am sorry. I was wrong and I was prejudiced.’ I love you. How am I ever going to be able to say those words to you now? How will you ever accept them from me?
‘I should have been open with you from the start. Told you what I thought, asked you to explain.’ He was unused to being in the wrong so completely. The great diplomat, the man who can read faces, delve into minds. Look at you now. ‘I should
