For the Love of a Soldier (33 page)

Alex opened her mouth to protest his use of the possessive before Captain, but then closed it. He only stated what her heart already knew. Garrett wasn’t hers, but she wished it otherwise.

Garrett was a decent bloke, and she was head-over-heels in love with him
.

Despite her valiant attempts to draft a growing list of Garrett’s faults, she had worked in vain. She had dismissed Garrett as a philandering rake, with his mistress and dispensable women. She had believed him a gambler who had stolen her fortune, another member of the spoiled aristocracy who cared little for the welfare of others.

She had wanted to believe these things of Garrett because it made him into a man like her father, a man whom she could not respect. More important, one she could dismiss and forget. Garrett used his watch to remind him that his stepfather was not the man he wished him to be, and she had drafted her list to protect herself from seeing Garrett for the man he was. This had enabled her to ignore the inexorable tug of her heart toward this brave, wounded, enigmatic man. She blinked at the moisture filming her eyes. She had been a fool and a coward, but no more.

It was time to lift that white flag and surrender.

She lifted her face to the afternoon sun. She may not have forever with him, but she could enjoy today. She remembered Garrett’s words about dealing with his nightmares.

Let it be enough for now.

She turned to smile at Gus. “Yes, he is a decent bloke, and so are you.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

A
FTER
checking on Will with the kittens, Garrett went to locate Beau. He found his nephew set up in an empty stall beside his pony. Beau had cleared the straw from a space on the ground and lined up a battalion of his toy soldiers. Kneeling before them, Beau recited aloud.

“Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them. Volley’d and thunder’d; Storm’d at with shot and shell.”

A roaring exploded in Garrett’s head, and he lifted his hand to grip the stall’s railing.

He’d be all right. He just needed a minute.

He closed his eyes against the images assaulting him, giving his head a hard shake to shrug them loose.

He had been caught off guard. Alex’s questions about Arthur’s bloody watch had thrown him off balance.

Arthur and now this.

Bloody hell. The walls of the barn were closing in on him. He needed air. He shoved away from the stall and staggered out the back exit, trying to put distance between himself and
the darkness reaching for him. He had come so far. He would not retreat.

He drew a deep breath and released it, recalling another veteran’s advice on the calming effects of doing so. The roaring in his ears receded, and he lifted his eyes to drink in his surroundings. The warmth of the breeze and what remained of the afternoon’s waning light soothed him.

His breathing regulated.

He felt his shoulders loosen, and his tension gradually eased.

A
LEX LOCATED
W
ILL
with the kittens and Beau with his soldiers, but no Garrett. She turned to Gus, who shrugged at her unspoken question. She moved to join Beau but froze when fragments of Tennyson’s poem drifted to her.

“They that had fought so well came through the jaws of Death, back from the mouth of Hell.”

Had Garrett heard?

She spun around, a sense of urgency propelling her search. Finding the last stall empty, she stepped outside and shaded her eyes to scan the paddocks. Garrett stood at the farthest end of the field. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets, his head tipped back, and the wind combed through his hair. He looked so alone, like the lost boy he had once been, and her heart pinched at the sight.

She hurried toward him but stopped a few yards away, unsure of her approach. Unsure of him. “Garrett?”

“Did you know Lord Raglan had never commanded men in battle?” He spoke with his back to her.

Lord Raglan was the commander of the British army in the Crimea. “No, I didn’t.”

He turned to her. “He saw action, serving as an aide to Wellington for forty years, but he never commanded men in battle. Most of the officers in the Crimea had no battle experience or training. They knew nothing of military tactics, strategy, or organization. When Raglan landed in the Crimea, he didn’t even own a map of the peninsula.” He paused and his gaze roamed over the horses grazing inside the fence.

Alex stepped closer as he continued speaking. His voice was quiet.

“There were more qualified men to lead, career soldiers who had served in India, but they weren’t given command because they weren’t of aristocratic birth.” His attention returned to her and his smile was like his words, bitter and rueful. “The English aristocracy believe bravery and chivalry are the only qualities needed to lead men in battle. Through our blood, our noble birth, we possess the innate ability to command.”

He snorted. “I knew damn well my birth wasn’t providing me with any courage or leadership, and I knew if I wanted to live, I had best listen to my men with military experience. In those early days, I wanted to live. I was responsible for the lives of the men under my command.” He crossed to the fence.

“It took me a while to gain my men’s trust and eventually respect, but by God I fought to do so. If I was leading them into battle, I wanted to make damn sure I was worthy to do so and not from the rights garnered through the purchase of my commission, but by rights of my own merit.

“But it didn’t matter what I did or any of the junior officers did because they placed Lord Lucan and his brother-in-law Lord Cardigan in charge of the cavalry brigades, and our fates were sealed.”

Alex moved to stand beside him, wanting to reach out and touch him, to offer comfort, but he held himself with such a detached stillness that it frightened her. She feared that like fragile glass, he might shatter if she stepped too close. So she did what she had done time and again for each of the wounded men who had been under her care. She listened. It was all she could do.

The wind whistling through the trees was the only noise to break the silence. After a few minutes, he continued. “To say my horse had more intelligence than Lucan and Cardigan combined is an insult to Champion. But they were placed in command of two cavalry battalions, a total of twelve hundred men. I served under Cardigan in the Seventeenth Lancers. Neither possessed much battlefield experience or any training but they were
earls
. If that’s not perverse enough, they detested each other, fought like rabid dogs, and more often than not, weren’t on speaking terms.”

He wiped a hand down his face. “Lucan didn’t know the proper military commands to lead our men, while Cardigan
held nothing but contempt for those who earned a living as a career soldier. His men suffered in horrific camp conditions, while he slept on his yacht with a French cook on board. My men called Lucan the ‘cautious ass’ for his inability to commit his troops to battle, while Cardigan was the ‘dangerous ass’ because he’d commit his men under any circumstances.”

His voice became harsher. “By God they lived up to their names. Cardigan sent more than six hundred men riding to certain death in the wrong direction because he and Lucan were too arrogant to clarify Raglan’s orders or ask a subordinate to do so. Afterward, Cardigan retired to his yacht to have a champagne dinner. Lucan provided no backup to the charge, and whether it was due to his enmity toward his brother-in-law or not, we’ll never know.”

Silence fell again, the only sound the furious pounding of Alex’s heart. Garrett turned his back on the horses and faced her, and she bit her lip at the despair in his expression.

“The guns Raglan wanted captured to prevent them falling into the hands of the Russians weren’t at the farthest end of the North Valley, but on the left side of Causeway Heights. Lucan and Cardigan argued about the order, but neither man deigned to ask Captain Nolan, Raglan’s quartermaster general who had delivered it, to clarify which guns Raglan meant. You see, Nolan was one of the men Lucan and Cardigan scorned for earning a living as a professional soldier.

“So blind, unmitigated arrogance sent over six hundred men and horses on that suicidal charge. The Russians had a battery of guns at the end of the valley before us with batteries and riflemen flanking both our sides. If you survived the three-fronted barrage, you then had to turn around and ride back to our lines. One hundred forty-seven of my men rode into battle, thirty-eight made roll call the next day.”

Garrett took a deep breath and blew it out; he lifted his eyes to the distant horizon as if he could no longer meet her gaze. “I saw a horse carry one of my men’s headless body down the length of the valley and back. I went to assist another of my wounded men, but he lost his seat and like so many others, tumbled to his death in the stampede of riders coming from behind.

“My men rode with arms and legs being shot off until they
fell to their deaths. Others used their swords like a sickle to carve a path through our own soldiers in their flight.”

Alex struggled to suppress her horror, knowing he needed to get it all out.

“In the midst of that madness, I no longer cared about living because I thought I had already died and gone to hell. I don’t remember my injury or Champion carrying me back to our lines. I awoke in Havers’s care, and later Brandon arrived and transported me home.”

Alex yearned to wrap her arms around him, but seeing him swallow as he fought for control, she held back. She understood he needed to unleash these festering memories. She had heard similar tales from the soldiers, and the
London Gazette
had published Raglan’s dispatches as well as his blame of Lord Lucan for the whole debacle. But it did not compare to witnessing the raw pain the story in all its horror inflicted on Garrett.

He rubbed his forehead, dropped his hand, and continued in a resigned voice. “Do you know Cardigan’s main concern after the battle was not over the bloody carnage or the loss of his men but to lodge a complaint against Nolan for trying to ride in front of him? Nolan had ridden out in vain, brandishing his sword toward the correct guns we were to take, but we were already under siege and he was killed.”

He looked at her then, his features haunted. “The charge down the valley and back took less than twenty minutes. But for every man who participated, it will never be over because each one of us has to live with the question of our survival. They were my men, and I couldn’t save them, so why did
I
live?” He lifted his arms as in supplication, then dropped them to his side and straightened.

“That question hangs over me like a guillotine, and I’ll never escape it because every breath I draw serves to remind me. And so I drank. I drank not just to forget the carnage, but to forget I lived when so many other men under my care had died.” He turned and walked away, wiping unsteady hands down his trousers legs.

His body was strung so taut Alex feared a strong breeze could snap him in two. Garrett’s words had chilled her to the bone, the horror of them, of what he had carried all these
months. Of the guilt he wore like the Grim Reaper’s bloody cloak of death.

But he was wrong.

By God, she’d be damned if she would let this wretched battle continue to bleed him. Unlike Garrett, she spoke distinctly, hoping her words would reach him.

“I can answer that,” she said, struggling to suppress the tears that choked her. She waited until he turned to face her before she went on. “I know damn well why you lived. For them.” She gestured to the hops fields. “For Stewart and Gus and every single one of those wounded men who would have no place to go if not for you. For those veterans who gave everything to England but received nothing in return. You stand for them. Had you died, where would they be? And for Kit and Brandon. You are the only family they have.

“You couldn’t save your men, but you didn’t kill them. Their fate was sealed when the English nobility chose blood lineage over military competence and put Cardigan and Lucan in commands they never should have held. You listened to your men, provided for them out of your own pocket, and rode beside them into hell. They could ask no more of you.