Trusting Miss Trentham

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Letty followed Reid across the cobblestones. The beggar looked up as they approached. He was a thin man, with leathery skin and a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard. “Spare a penny for an old soldier?”

Reid gave him a handful of coins.

“Lor’ bless me!” the man said, almost falling off the bench. “Thank ’ee, sir.”

“What regiment were you in?”

The man squinted up at him. “Twelfth Foot, sir.”

“Twelfth Foot? You’re a long way from home. East Anglia, isn’t it?”

“Come down ’ere to be with me sister.”

“She lives in Hampshire?”

“Used to. Dead a few years back.”

“Were you at Mallavelly?”

“That I were.”

Reid looked at Letty, a question in his eyes. She nodded; the beggar was telling the truth.

Reid glanced at the beggar, and at the bench, and then back at her. She read that question, too, and answered it by stepping closer to the bench and sitting down.

Reid sat next to the beggar. “I was at Mallavelly.”

Letty half-listened while the two men talked, exchanging military reminiscences. You don’t understand soldiering, Reid had told her. We’re not blackguards and murderers.

And then he’d admitted that some soldiers were.

Letty plucked the fingertips of her gloves thoughtfully. What had happened to Reid in Portugal?

She knew what she suspected had happened to him.

Letty glanced at Reid, seeing the way his clothes hung on his gaunt frame, seeing the hollows of his cheeks. He and the old beggar were now talking about Seringapatam, during which battle the soldier had injured his foot. “Nothin’ more’n a scratch. But the gangrin came in. Fair stinkin’ it were.”

Reid grimaced. “I know the smell.”

“Had to take off half me leg. Took three men to hold me down,” the old soldier said proudly.

After a few minutes, Reid turned the conversation back to England. The beggar talked of his sister’s death. “Fever, she ’ad.”

“Fever? I had the fever in Portugal. Almost c****d my toes up.”

The beggar nodded sagely. “You don’t look none too spry, sir, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

Reid shrugged agreement and asked further questions. The beggar described his slow slide into destitution.

“What about the workhouse?” Reid suggested in a neutral tone.

“Workhouse?” The old soldier spat expressively. “Don’t never want to end up there. I’d rather die in a ditch!”

Reid turned the conversation again, told a story about a man he knew who’d unexpectedly come into five hundred pounds—and run through it all in less than a year. Letty listened intently; Reid was lying.

“What a looby,” the beggar said with disgust.

Reid shrugged. “Who wouldn’t do the same?”

“I wouldn’t,” the old soldier said indignantly. “I’d go ’ome to Sudbury and buy meself a cottage and live there quiet-like. Five hunner quid! I could live the rest of me life on that—and ’ave some to spare!”

Reid glanced at her, his eyebrows lifted in query. Letty nodded; everything the beggar had said was the truth.

“Well, soldier, you’re going to have the opportunity to do just that.” Reid pulled out his pocketbook, extracted five banknotes, and held them out to the man.

The beggar’s mouth fell open. He was missing several teeth.

Reid closed the man’s fingers around the bills, and stood. “Good-bye. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

Letty stood, too, and watched the old soldier’s face. His mouth worked, but no words came out. He groped for his crutch, and tried to stand.

“No, don’t get up,” Reid said, reaching down to grip the beggar’s hand. “Put that money away, man. Else someone will take it.”

The old soldier fumbled the bills into an inside pocket of his threadbare coat. “Sir,” he said, tears standing out in his eyes. “Sir . . .” He swallowed audibly. “Sir, how can I ever thank you?”

Reid smiled down at him. “By buying that cottage.” He touched a finger to his brow, almost a salute, and turned away.

Letty matched her stride to his. On the far side of the square, she glanced back. The old soldier was still sitting on the bench, scrawny and grimy and dumbfounded. She looked at Reid. “Do you do that often?”

“I’ve done it a few times.” Reid walked several paces, and halted abruptly. “That man risked his life for England—gave his leg, for Christ’s sake!—and now he’s reduced to begging?” He was fierce, impassioned, glaring at her from beneath lowered brows.

Letty met that silver glare steadily.

The animation drained from Reid’s face, leaving him haggard once more. He turned away and began walking again. “I beg your pardon. It’s a sore point with me.”

Letty said nothing. She matched her stride to his again.

Reid glanced at her. “I made my money soldiering—prize money. It seems only right that I share it with those who were less fortunate than I was.”

Letty nodded. Her mother had expressed almost that exact same sentiment on a number of occasions: Our wealth doesn't make us better than other people; it makes us luckier. It behooves us to share that luck with those who’ve not had our good fortune.

She examined Reid’s bony face. “And when you die? What happens to your money then?”

The blunt question didn’t appear to shock Reid. “Veterans’ charities,” he said. “All of it.”

Dinner that evening was muggety pie, and apple fritters.

“Muggety pie?” Letty said, eyeing her plate.

“Made with muggets,” Reid said.

“Yes, but what are muggets?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Muggets were offal, Letty discovered, but exactly what part of an animal’s entrails—or indeed, which animal they came from—she had no idea. The pie was well-seasoned with herbs and surprisingly tasty, and the apple fritters were delicious, golden and crisp, dusted with sugar and served with thick cream. Letty had no difficulty persuading Reid to eat his dessert.

“You had the fever in Portugal?” Letty said, while she debated whether to have a third fritter.

Reid nodded.

“You almost died?”

Reid shrugged. “So I was told. I wasn’t aware of it at the time.”

Letty decided to have a third fritter. She doused it with cream. “How long were you ill?”

“Long enough.”

Another of his evasions. “How long, Mr. Reid?”

“I was six weeks in my bed.”

Her gaze jerked to his face. “Six weeks?”

Reid nodded again.

Letty stared at him. Six weeks in bed with the fever. No wonder his clothes hung on him. “How long have you been out of your sickbed?”

“Nigh on a month.”

“You should have stayed there!” Letty told him. “You shouldn’t be traipsing about the country. You should be resting.”

“I don’t have the time,” Reid said flatly.

Letty pushed her dessert away and leaned forward on her elbows. “What exactly are you dying of, Mr. Reid?”

Reid’s face stiffened.

Letty met his affronted stare. Yes, it was an unpardonably rude question, but she wasn’t going to apologize for it, or retract it.

“That is none of your business, Miss Trentham,” Reid said, after a moment.

Letty examined his face—the skin stretched tautly over jutting bones, the stony expression, the flat, silver stare. “You’re not dying of the fever, are you?”

Reid made no reply.

“And you’re not dying of an injury, as far as I can tell.”

Still, Reid made no reply.

“And you’re not dying of your nightmares, are you?”

“Good night, Miss Trentham.” Reid pushed back his chair, thrust his napkin on the table, and walked from the room.

The door shut quietly behind him.

Letty sighed. Stupidly, she felt like crying. She looked at the chair Reid had sat in, and the balled-up napkin, and the half-eaten fritter stranded on his plate. Couldn’t he see that she was trying to help him?

That night, Mr. Reid slept until one o’clock before becoming ensnared in his nightmare. Letty half-expected his door to be latched, shutting her out, but it opened to her touch. She hurried to the bed. “Reid! Wake up!”

He wasn’t thrashing and flailing so wildly tonight; he was twisting beneath the bedclothes, choking and gasping, weeping in his sleep.

“Icarus!” Letty grasped his shoulder and shook him hard.

Reid woke with a jolt.

He didn’t strike out, didn’t lunge up in berserker fury; he gave a hoarse, wheezing, desperate gasp, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time, and then turned his head into the pillow with a groan. His body trembled violently. His breathing was short and sobbing.

He was crying.

Letty bit her lip, and turned away to grant him privacy. Her heart ached sharply in her chest. The brandy was where she’d left it last night. She walked across to it slowly, uncorked it slowly, poured a large glass slowly, giving Reid time to compose himself. When she turned back, he was wiping his face roughly with his hands.

She spent another minute fiddling with the brandy bottle, pushing the cork back in, and then crossed to the bed. “Here.”

Reid sat up, moving as if his bones ached, and took the glass. Their fingers brushed.

Letty busied herself rearranging his pillows. “Lie back.”

Reid obeyed. He looked like a man who’d been to Hades and back, haggard and utterly drained. Tremors ran through his hands, making the brandy tremble in the glass. His breathing was hoarse, catching in his throat with each inhalation.

Letty sat on the bed and watched him sip the brandy. Reid had parted from her in anger that evening, but either he’d forgotten or he no longer cared. He didn’t ask her to leave, didn’t speak to her at all, just slowly sipped. Gradually the tremors stopped. His breathing quieted. The faint hitch was no longer audible.

When he’d finished the glass, Letty measured out a teaspoon of valerian.

Reid swallowed it without protest. He didn’t even grimace at the taste. He was utterly passive. It was as if the nightmare had drained him of himself—his essence, his spirit, whatever it was that made him Icarus Reid—and left a half-alive husk in its place.

Perhaps the nightmares were what was killing him?

Letty fetched The Odyssey and sat on the end of his bed to read. Reid didn’t object. She wasn’t sure he even noticed. He lay limply, his gaze unfocused. If she hadn’t seen his chest rise and fall, hadn’t seen the slow blink of his eyes, she’d have thought him dead.

Letty read in a low voice, glancing at him often. His eyelids lowered by increments.

It took half an hour for Reid to fall asleep. Letty continued reading for another ten minutes, and then stopped. She closed the book and sat quietly, watching him. Icarus Reid. A complicated man—driven and dangerous, tough, obstinate, evasive—and yet also disarmingly kind.

And damaged. Deeply and terribly damaged.

Letty sighed, and climbed down from the bed, and put the book back where she’d found it.

She tiptoed over to look down at Reid. He was soundly asleep, his breathing slow and even. The candlelight cast shadows over his face, making his cheeks seem even more hollow than they were.

A painful emotion stirred in her breast. It’s pity, Letty told herself. But she knew it wasn’t. She grieved for Icarus Reid, but she didn’t pity him. Reid was not a man to be pitied.

Letty reached down and stroked his hair. “I wish you would tell me,” she whispered, and then she bent and pressed her lips—lightly, daringly—to his.

Reid didn’t stir.

Letty sighed, and picked up her chamberstick and left the room.