Storm of Love - A Historical Romance Set during the American Revolutionary War (11 page)

              She gazed down at the pocket watch, still enraptured by her own thoughts of the past, a past she ever so briefly wished she could return to. But then her mind came into focus and the present day was at hand. She knew her father would scold her for living in the past—at least as much as he could scold her, with a smile—and she looked up at Doc with a smile.
              "Doc, I don't know how to thank you for this. I don't know anyone else who would have bothered to keep this, and I just can't tell you how much it means to me. I have no words to express what you've done for me by giving me this. It's like you gave me my father back in some way. A piece of him. He carried this always and I thought it had been lost in some way or another. Either he had left it with my mother or lost it in battle. I never imagined he would have brought it with him. He always told me to leave things that were not essential behind when going out into the woods."
              A silence passed between them, and Doc seemed to be pondering what she had said, looking off to the right slightly and then back at her.
              "You were never non-essential, Abby," he said, and his eyes glistened with rebel tears that had escaped his carefully constructed wall of emotional neutrality. "When he carried this he was carrying you with him. You were the most essential thing he could have brought."

After spending a few more minutes in the room talking about her father and other things pertaining to the watch and the battle, their conversation ended and she went to the nurses' quarters, wearing her father's pocket watch around her neck. He had always kept it on a long chain and she remembered teasing him, saying that he was going to lose it someday because the chain was too long. But now she was glad it was so long.
              Not wanting to be asked about the watch, she tucked it inside of the front of her dress and decided she would wear the apron over it the next day and on through her working duties. She lay down and attempted to get a few hours' sleep, but part of her was afraid she would sleep for too long and not be able to speak with Edward.
              When the time was right, she got up out of bed and snuck over to his bedside. Gently patting his arm, she woke him from his sleep. His broad grin told her that it was perfectly okay to wake him.
              "Are you all right? I'm so glad to see you here and still breathing. I was so scared," she whispered.
              He reached up with his left hand, since his right shoulder was still so wounded, and touched the side of her face gently. She took his hand in hers and momentarily closed her eyes, enjoying this small but welcomed break in the horror of the day and relishing the chance to be close to him again.
              "I'm all right now," he responded. She opened her eyes and looked at him, feeling overcome with emotion. The entire night had been that way; she was growing tired of fighting the tears.
              "What happened?"
              "Oh, Abigail, it's a long story. They caught me, at first, you know. General Washington himself. They had me up in the holding rack in the forest."
              "No! How did they find out?"
              "My gun. Only the British use this gun. Washington saw it and knew right away that I had to be from their side and thought I was a spy."
              "How did you ever get out? Are you a fugitive?"
              She said it almost jokingly, with a twinkle in her eye, and he laughed.
              "I may have been, but I heard the British troops riding in. Nobody else could hear it because they were on the battlefield and it was too noisy. But from my vantage point in the woods, I could hear it. So I called out and warned them. Well, Washington thought that if I was going to do all that, clearly I was no spy, so he let me go. And then I was shot by one of my former friends. Called me a traitor and such. Last thing I remember, I passed out on the field and then woke up here."
              Abigail's eyes were wide with wonder listening to this tale he was telling her. She couldn't believe he had actually been found out—and pardoned—and then wound up there. It was almost unbelievable, but she knew it was too wild to be made up.
              "I don't want to say I'm glad you're here, because you have to be wounded to be here, but—I'm just so glad to see you. Are you feeling okay?"
              "I'm feeling much better, actually; just this pain in my shoulder. But the fever is gone. And I'm glad to see you, too." He smiled kindly at her and she smiled back. She had been holding his hand at his side through all of this.
              Looking around the room to ensure she was not going to be seen, she leaned down and put her arms around his neck. He embraced her with one hand in return, his shoulder in too much pain for him to raise his arm. As she pulled back, the pocket watch fell out of her dress. She gathered it quickly into her hand as though it would run away from its own chain.
              "What's that?" Edward said curiously.
              "A trinket Doc gave me. Much more than a trinket, actually. As it—" she was cut off by the man to Edward's left snorting in his sleep, and she lowered her voice. "As it turns out, my father…he passed away here. And he always carried this pocket watch. There's a picture of us inside, and Doc kept it after my father died. Said he just couldn't bear to get rid of it. And so he gave it to me, since now he’s found its rightful owner, as he said." She smiled.
              Edward seemed touched. "That's beautiful. May I see the picture?"
              She would not have opened the pocket watch for anyone else. She wanted to keep her father to herself and felt almost as if allowing someone else to see the photo would take him away from her. But for Edward she felt comfortable.
              As she opened it, she held the candle that was at Edward's bedside closer to it so he could see. She couldn’t understand his reaction. Shock and almost horror came over his face, and he instantly burst into tears.
              "Edward…Edward, what…Are you all right?"
              She couldn't understand his reaction.
It is a touching photo
, she thought,
but how could it mean so much to someone who has never even met my father? Someone who had never known us?
She reached out to embrace Edward and he pushed her away. Her heart sank and she felt as though he had reached through her flesh and broken it when he pushed her away from him.
              "What on earth is the matter with you? Why are you pushing me away…? Edward…darling, what is it?"
              A few moments passed before Edward could regain his composure. His hands were shaking like someone with palsy and his face looked ghastly. He struggled with the words for quite some time while she looked around the room, thinking his outburst must surely have woken someone, but mercifully it had not.
              "Abigail…do you remember…" His voice trailed off and he hung his head, then looked at her again. "Do you remember when I told you about the who begged me for his life? How…how I killed him, and how at that moment I knew I couldn't fight for the British anymore? How something about him—something in his eyes—told me that I wasn’t fighting a war but simply murdering my fellow man?"
              "Yes, I do. But…"
              He raised a hand to stop her from speaking.
              "That…" He pointed toward the pocket watch and began to weep once more, quietly this time, tears streaming down his face. "Abigail, that man you just showed me. That's the man. He's the one. He's the man I killed."
              Her world was spinning and she didn't know how to make sense of anything. What was he saying? She looked at him, hoping he would say something different, clarify it, make it better, but he just looked at her with sorrow and then hung his head again, putting his hand to his face and quietly sobbing violent sobs that shook his entire body.
              Suddenly, all at once, she realized what he was saying. He had killed her father. The man she loved had killed her father.

15
Truth And Pain

Edward was helpless. For the first time in his life, he felt completely and utterly helpless. When Abigail had discovered the truth, when he realized that the man who had haunted his dreams for so long was the father of the woman he loved, he couldn't help but cry. Emotions were never something Edward was comfortable expressing, but in this instance he didn't seem to have much of a choice. His tears came forth like rebellious forces of nature that broke through a long-secured dam.
              The necklace around her neck had made him curious, the pocket watch, but now he wished he had never asked. When she came to him in the night to see how he was doing, to talk, like they had on the battlefield under the tree, he had felt better than he had in days. Seeing her again brought joy to his heart, and her words and voice seemed to heal him better than any salve or ointment they had at the outpost.
              But here he was, alone in the cold darkness. It was to be expected, at least after the ugly truth had surfaced and all was laid bare. Abigail was shocked at first, and he wasn't sure whether she was going to throw something at him, cry, or run away. The look had pained him, her face aghast, washed clean of all color, not even seeming to breathe, waiting for the truth to change. Waiting for something. Perhaps she was trying to reverse time to a few moments earlier so that she would never have had to know. But once her expression changed again, she became frantic.
              Her hands were shaking, and she clutched the pocket watch back to her and put it beneath her dress once more, as though it had been stolen and violated and she had to return it to a sacred place. Her breath returned to her in gasps, short at first, and then in sobs, tears streaming down her face.
              "No, Edward, you're wrong, it can't be, it…it wasn't him," she stammered, trying desperately to keep her voice low, he could see, but he could still hear the words as she tried to make the truth a lie.
              "Abigail, I'm sorry…I didn't know…dear Lord, how could I have…I didn't know. I wasn't thinking for myself, I wasn't thinking on my own. We were told to kill and we killed, and it wasn't until him…not until then did I start wondering why. Not until then did I start wondering what I was fighting for. Your father, in some way, he changed me. I know this isn't easy and I know it doesn't make anything better, but you have to believe me. I never even knew you then, Abigail. I didn't…"
              "And I wish I had never known you!" she spat at him, horrified sadness being replaced by fiery anger. He wasn't sure which was worse, the anger or the sadness.
              "I don't blame you for feeling that wa—"
              "Don't patronize me, Edward. Don't you dare sit there and speak to me like someone who understands. You don't understand. You don't have any idea what you did to my family. What you did to me. You ripped the only thing I ever loved from my life, and now you want to tell me how you don't blame me for how I feel? Like Hell you can blame me."
              She stood to leave and he attempted to grab her hand, which she ripped away from him, whirling around to face him.
              "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me again. Your hands killed my father. You keep them to yourself, or God knows what you'll do to me."
              "Abigail, that's not fair. You know I would never hurt you!"
              "I know nothing! Nothing, Edward!"
              She stared at him, her whispering anger as loud as thunder in his ears, and he felt tears sting his eyes. He knew she was angry, he knew she was confused, but logic couldn't help him, couldn't make him feel any better this time.
              Now she was gone, back to the nurse's quarters, or somewhere else, he didn't know, and he was alone in the dark. Even though he was still surrounded by people, patients on either side of him and a field of others beyond the window, he had never felt more alone in his entire life. Even in the forest before he had met her he had never felt so alone. Perhaps it was missing the company that she had provided him for the past several weeks, but he knew it was more than that. It was the feeling of guilt.
              There was no way he could have known how his life would turn after he shot that man—her father. He remembered very clearly the day he shot and killed him, and he remembered that he didn't die slowly. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he himself had killed him, because Dr. Warren had passed out before he rode off but still had a pulse. He had checked.
              It had been a day like any other; he had been tasked with raiding the place where the patriot army was encamped. Certainly they had disobeyed some order or another from the King and had to be put in their places. Riding past the man he now knew to be Dr. Warren, he had aimed, shot his gun, and the man had fallen to his knees. But there was something different about that man. The way Dr. Warren had looked at him when he fell. A look had passed over his face, of knowing, of understanding, of wishing he could have said something before he was killed. It was then that Edward had felt the first twinge of pain for someone not of his own army.
              Edward remembered that he had been riding on horseback when he shot Dr. Warren, and after the doctor had fallen he went over to check on him. He didn't know why; he knew the man was doomed to die. But he had to know, had to see what the man had behind his eyes. As he approached the doctor, he noticed that he seemed rather calm in the face of death, as though he had already known what was going to happen to him.
              The doctor had asked him to stop shooting, to stop the fighting, and not to let him die, though the plea not to let him die sounded more like a statement made on behalf of an entire army than the begging of a man who did not wish to die. Other than that, no words passed between them, not until the very last. Just a gaze that seemed to last forever.
              And then Edward had asked the question he wished he never asked. Or maybe he was glad. He didn't know anything anymore. He asked the man why they insisted on fighting and what they were fighting for. Dr. Warren had looked him in the eye with kindness and a smile and said, "For freedom, sir. For freedom in what we do, freedom in who we are, and freedom to belong to ourselves. For liberty." After thinking about it some more, he said once again, "For liberty."
              The man had passed out right after that, and Edward had felt his pulse. He was still alive, if barely, and Edward knew that Dr. Warren must have been transported to the outpost where he now lay in the dark, a broken man with a broken life, his spirit following suit.
              The darkness seemed to envelop him and almost suffocate him, and he didn't know how to fight it. The face of Abigail's father still haunted him, how someone so close to death could be so calm. It was as if he knew he was fighting for something bigger than himself, that it wasn't about him. That was the moment Edward had decided that the rebels were fighting for more than just whiskey and the chance to annoy the King. This was something more. And suddenly, in a single moment, he understood.
              It was then that he had slipped away behind the tree line into the forest and gone on his quest to—well, he didn't really know what. To do something. To find something. To go somewhere away from the British army. It was all too much; he had become overwhelmed with the notion and the belief—yes, the belief—that he had been fighting for the wrong side the entire time. Seeing the world through the patriots' eyes, he realized that being owned was not a natural thing, even though so many thought it was, that it was easy for the British to dismiss these patriots as nothing more than rebellious children because the British were the ones with all the power and freedom. At least, they were the people making the decisions. And what about he himself? Wasn't he just obeying orders? Had he even thought about what
he
believed in?
              Not at all. He hadn't thought of it at all. And it was all he could think about in that dark room. He could feel his heartbeat in his chest, and it pounded, not from the wound or the fever, but from something resembling panic. It was as though he was being torn away from something he loved and was fighting desperately to get it back.
              But there was nothing he could do about it. The deed had already been done, even though he couldn't have known it, and now what could he do? There was nothing to do but wait for morning and perhaps pray he didn't make it that long. What was left to live for? Yes, he still believed in freedom and wanted to live there, with the patriots, fighting with them, fighting for their cause. But he wanted to live out his days with Abigail. And now what could he do? Live a lonely life in a lonely place?
              It was more than that, though—it was beyond him. He had broken the heart of someone he loved before he had ever met her. How was it even possible to understand something like that? He wanted to hold her, to make her feel better somehow, to take away the pain, to try to make her happy again, to give back something he had no way of replacing. His heart was breaking for Abigail more than it was for himself for losing her.
              But then he realized that perhaps there was something he could do. He had taken something precious from her, but now she had to spend her days looking at him, tending to him, caring for him. How could he ask her to take care of him, the man who had taken so much from her? He couldn't. He realized there was only one thing left to do. He had to leave.
              Even though he was still in pain, he was much improved from the day before and felt that he could make it on his own. After all, he had gone into the forest originally, from the outset, not knowing what he was looking for, and had been given Abigail. Abigail, who made everything so simple and clear, who had shown him so much and breathed life back into his heart and soul.
              Maybe the empty woods and his directionless soul would turn up something else once more. Maybe he could go back there and find the answers again. But even if he died alone in the woods, he knew it would be for the best. At least he had given what he could to the cause he had finally found to be his own. In his current state, there was no way he could go back and fight, he knew that. But at least he could leave and not be a burden to those he now saw as his people and countrymen, or to the woman he loved.
              Abigail was better off without him. In fact, she had probably always been better off without him. He was the only thing holding her back. Perhaps things would have been different for her if he hadn't been there. How, he didn't know, but nothing was clear and all he could feel was an overwhelming sense that he was intruding on the life of someone who didn't deserve to be intruded upon.
              Two candles were still burning on the center table, and from their light he could make out his bag of belongings, limited though they may have been. In fact, most of them weren't even his. They were the clothes Abigail had given him, some of which he still wore. Her father's clothes. The clothes of the man he had killed.
              Slowly, he sat up and silently got down from the table and picked up his belongings. As he did so, he realized that it was his final good-bye. The nurses could see anyone leaving, but he knew they were all asleep. Some nurses were on shift at night, but they left every so often to tend to the people outside. They had just done this an hour prior to Abigail's visit, and he knew they wouldn't be doing it again for a few more hours, since morning would break soon.
              Without making a sound, he walked over to the door and tried desperately to keep the hinges quiet as he opened it. Nobody stirred. The night air struck his skin like jumping into a river on a hot day, and he felt chilled for a moment and shuddered.
              He crept slowly along the side of the building. Toward the wooded area, away from the road, the candles that lit the exterior where the men were being treated disappeared and it was dark. He knew he would not be noticed if he slipped behind the building and off into the tree line. His heart was beating heavily in his chest and felt heavy, as well, knowing that he was leaving behind the thing he had loved for so long—Abigail.
              But she was better off without him. How could he ever ask her to forgive him after all he had done? How could he ever expect her to understand or let his ignorance simply excuse what he had taken from her? He couldn't, he knew, and that's why he had to leave. Where he was going, he couldn't say, but he knew it had to be somewhere far from there so that nobody would find him. Least of all Abigail. But something told him that she would not come looking for him, anyway. And why would she? He was now her enemy.
              As he reached the tree line, he heard something behind him and allowed himself to turn just slightly to see what it was. The door of the outpost had opened and Doc came out, peering from his left, toward the road, right, toward Edward, and back again. Edward knew there was no way he could see him from that far away, so he froze and stayed still. Finally, Doc went back inside. He wondered if Doc had realized his bed was empty or simply heard the door open. Either way, it didn't really matter. He was gone, and, at least for the moment, it seemed that nobody really seemed to mind or care.
              When he reached the trees, he disappeared behind them, but within a few steps he knew something was terribly wrong. He felt something tear in his shoulder and his side simultaneously. Thinking he had brushed up against a branch, he looked down to see what it was, but there was no branch within several feet of him. At least none that would have been long or sharp enough to cause pain in his side and shoulder at the same time.
              And then he saw it.
              His stitches had torn open and he was bleeding from his side profusely. The shoulder wound had opened, as well. He knew he needed rest, but he didn't know how touchy of a situation his physical state was in until that moment. Feeling dizzy, he reached in front of him to touch a tree for balance and fell forward, missing the tree entirely with his hand but finding it with his head as he fell forward onto the ground.