Now would come reason since barking demands hadn’t worked. The wee fellow was nothing if not predictable. They had been round and round on this topic for days now as time drew near for them to ship home from the primitive hospital at Salamanca. He never let up. He’d find a new argument.
“If you refuse to go to Balmsley with me to recuperate, then what will you do? No point in returning to Kilamahew, is there?”
Alex stretched out and pressed back against the pillowless bed, willing the pain in his leg to subside. “I hadn’t planned to go there.” He had thought to secure a place in London and see if he could manage on his own.
His friend smirked. “Edinburgh then? And live with your uncle? You’re coming up on thirty, y’know. At least I can offer you employment.” Suddenly he turned earnest. “Please let me do this for you, Alex. You saved my life!”
Alex snorted. “If I had lain here and let you bleed out lying right next to me, how would I face myself in a mirror to shave?”
Michael waved that off with a flick of one hand. “You are coming with me, see if you don’t. If I have to pour laudanum down that tree-trunk neck of yours and have you hauled there unconscious!”
Alex wondered if the lad actually would go that far to have his way in this. What could it hurt to relent? It obviously troubled Michael to owe such a debt, though Alex had never considered it such. Michael had prevented the amputation of Alex’s leg. As far as he was concerned, they were square. Saving a life or a leg or anything else here in this misbegotten place where there were dead and dying all around them seemed a damned miracle.
There was another consideration in Alex’s decision to acquiesce. Maidstone would not be that distant, closer actually than London, and he did have fences to mend there if he could. “If you’ll leave off badgering me, I’ll come for a short visit. Until I’m back on my feet again.”
He hated the way Michael’s gaze slid away from his, the way his lips tightened.
“I know what they say, but I will be walking, make no mistake,” Alex insisted. He said it often and worked like the devil to make it so. It had been almost six weeks and he could feel his progress.
“You’ll see the best doctor in England when we get there,” Michael promised. “What do these leeches here know? You’ll be dancing by year’s end, I warrant.”
Alex grunted in assent. The new year was almost four months away. Surely by then…
Michael sat up, the flimsy cot creaking beneath him. “Until then, I could really use your talent with a pen. I’ll be doing my memoirs, y’see.”
Alex laughed out loud. “All twenty-two years of ‘em or just the important parts?”
Michael chuckled sheepishly at himself. It was one of the main things Alex liked about Harlowe. A man who could laugh at his own folly had learned the secret of survival. Sometimes laughter was the only defense a man had left.
It was late October when they finally arrived in London. Michael promptly and without a qualm sold his commission. Alex grudgingly followed suit. Though convinced he eventually would walk again, he also realized his army days were a thing of the past. He’d had enough of it and then some.
He admitted to himself that this visit was a delaying tactic. It was high time he faced what he must and set the past to rights, but he needed a few more weeks to prepare, to ease back into civilization and become human again.
Alex had not asked, but he wondered what Michael’s family, especially his father, the second Baron Harlowe, would think of the eldest son bringing home a Scot for a house pet. Not much, he reckoned, but it was to be a short visit anyway.
The day was wicked cold and sent a chill right through his bones as their carriage rocked over the twenty miles to Balmsley, the Harlowe family seat.
Alex thought of the fancy wheeled Bath chair Michael had insisted he purchase from a London maker. They had stayed nearly a week while it was modified so that Alex could wheel it himself. Odd they were not made that way to begin with, but Michael’s idea to set the seat back a bit and give access to the big wheels was brilliant. It tended to tip over backward if he wasn’t careful, but it did give him a small measure of independence. Of course it was merely a short-term necessity. It could be sold when he no longer needed it.
No crutches could be found to accommodate his height of well over six feet, but that could be remedied as soon as they got where they were going. He’d whittle them himself if need be.
Michael had grown unusually quiet as they rode. Alex knew he must be planning his strategy for explaining the unusual guest he had in tow.
If the family resented Scots enough to order him gone, at least he could afford to travel. His back pay amounted to more than he had figured and the fee he received from his captaincy was substantial. He could live on that for a while.
If all else failed, he could apply to his uncle for some sort of clerical work with the city commission in Edinburgh, he supposed. Whether it would be forthcoming was another matter altogether. They’d never got on well in the best of circumstances. Uncle William had resented Alex donning the Blackwatch and serving under the English flag. Called it running away and Alex guessed it was, but he knew naught else to do. The only thing he had trained for, he could no longer do.
“There!” Michael cried, pointing out the window. “See Balmsley’s towers above those trees?”
Alex sighed. “A castle, is it?”
“No! No, only a manor house. But it is big, isn’t it! I love the place. Who would have thought I’d miss it so much?” He shook his fair head in disbelief. “I was so bloody eager to get away. But Father will be damned glad to see me now, see if he ain’t! Glad to have you there, too, I’ll wager, since you saved my sorry hide. I’m all he’s got to carry on, y’see. Amalie’s just a girl.”
“How old is your sister?”
“Twenty-four,” Michael answered absently, his gaze still glued to the manor house looming closer every minute as the coach rolled down the long tree-lined drive.
“Two years older than you? Is that a fact? All this time I thought she was a child the way you spoke of her.”
“She is. Women never grow up.”
Alex shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Ah, Harlowe, but you do have a great lot to learn.”
His words went unheeded as the coach drew up in front of the enormous red sandstone edifice that boasted double-arched doors of stout dark oak. Even as he watched, one portal flew open and a short, white-haired gent dashed out to meet them. Hatless, his brocade waist-coat unbuttoned and his neckcloth loose and flapping in the stiff breeze, he shouted, “Michael!”
With a crow of delight, Michael threw open the coach door, hopped down and embraced the older fellow. They danced around like fools, slapping each other on the back. A rider had been sent ahead from Hartlepool to announce their arrival, but surely this could not be the baron himself.
Alex sat waiting like a piece of the baggage, watching through the open coach door until the excited Michael finally recalled he was there.
“Oh, Father, I’ve brought Captain Napier. Alex saved my life. Sorely wounded himself, he rolled
