“Erm, yes, that’s it, I do believe,” the man said. “He’s right through there if you’re looking for him.” He gestured with his good arm, clearly hoping to be well rid of the very high-ranking gentleman who was acting so incredibly strangely.
Aaron felt certain that he should say something else, but decided that the lapse in propriety was more than fair recompense for the man getting what he wanted in terms of Aaron’s absence. He drifted off in the direction that the former soldier had indicated and found Jacob, sitting in a sitting room with a man in a wheeled chair, both of them laughing uproariously at some story.
“And then she—” Jacob was saying as he made a rather indelicate gesture with the arm with the stump. “And so, I’m more than happy to—oh, Warson. Good day. What are you doing here?”
Aaron watched as the other soldier’s mirth faded with his appearance, the laughter disappearing into a polite, proper gesture, and he thought with a real sense of loss about how much simpler his life had been before he had inherited his family’s title. He would have said life had been better back then, but recently, he was wondering if that wasn’t entirely true.
He didn’t have to look far to wonder what—or, rather, who—inspired this change of heart.
He tried to instill some cheer into his voice even though a greater part of him assumed that it would be pointless to try to hide his true feelings from his closest friend.
“I might better ask what you’re doing here, Jacob,” he said, hearing the falseness of his good humor even to his own ears.
As Aaron had expected, Jacob frowned then murmured an apology to the other soldier, who waved off his words with a friendly ease that Aaron had never experienced with the men who lived in this facility.
Then, his friend crossed to Aaron’s side and grasped him by the arm to drag him over to a long corridor that connected two parts of the building. One side of the corridor was still structured like a medieval arcade, though Aaron had had glass put into the arches, rather than leaving them open to the elements.
It was a lovely place to stand—or sit, as was the only option for many of the men. Aaron sank into one of the well-used chairs placed strategically along the arcade and was reminded, for thethousandth time, of the horrors of war and how far they reached beyond the battlefield.
Jacob didn’t rush him. For a while, they just sat. A few errant snowflakes drifted past the window from time to time, but they all melted the instant they touched the muddy ground.
Aaron wondered if his marriage would be like that—drifting, beautiful, and all too brief. Then, he scolded himself. What a wretchedly poetic thought.
“Warson,” Jacob said eventually, his voice gentle and probing, “what is it?”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Aaron said in lieu of answering. “It’s… It isn’t right that I should come here to flaunt how I walked away from battle unscathed while so many others did not.”
An uncharacteristic silence from his friend made Aaron turn in Jacob’s direction. His friend’s brows were high on his forehead in a picture of incredulity.
“What?” Aaron asked, a note of defensiveness in his tone.
Jacob shook his head like he was shaking off a stupor. “Nothing. It’s just… that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
“I… beg your pardon?” Aaron asked, stupefied into politeness.
Jacob gestured back toward the main room with his injured arm, and Aaron imagined that his friend was more comfortable with the lost limb here, where people didn’t gawk and stare.
“Those men,” he said, “see you, and theyhope.”
Jacob said this in a voice that suggested that this was meant to make Aaron feel better, but Aaron felt as though his friend couldn’t have twisted the knife better if he had tried.
“How can they not hate me for that?” he asked. “They will never be uninjured as I am.”
Jacob reached behind himself and pulled out the pillow that had been thoughtfully placed by one of the matrons. Then, he used the pillow to wallop Aaron over the head.
This was fitting. Surprising but fitting.
“You numpty,” his friend said with a fond sort of irritation. “They don’t envy you—or hope to be like you—because you don’t wear your scars on the surface. Trust me; men like them—men likeme, we know that there’s more than bloody meets the eye when it comes to injury, and none of us made it out of those wars without bearing wounds. No,” he continued, looking Aaron pointedly in the eye, “you give them hope because of Phoebe.”
“What?” Aaron asked. He’d been asking this a lot today, he realized.
Jacob heaved a put-upon sigh.
“When I got here today, half the bloody house was talking about her,” he informed Aaron. “And do you know why?”
“The fellow out there said something about cards?” Aaron knew this couldn’t be the right answer.
“Jesus Christ,” Jacob muttered. “No. It’s because—and I must have heard it a dozen times already today—they wonder if their old admiral can find a woman, a beautiful, kind woman who doesn’t look at them with pity, who treats them likepeoplenot objects of scorn… They wonder if you can find a woman like that, can they not perhaps do the same?”
