He carried it into his tent, stripped off his gloves, and sat. The lamp on his writing desk flickered low. He lit it properly before opening the letter. Not because he needed more light—he would have read it in darkness if he must—but because his hands were shaking, and the delay gave him time.
Charlotte’s handwriting was careful. Elegant. Nothing of urgency in the slant. But the words—they struck with the weight of a cannon fire.
Bloomsbury, May 6th
My dearest William,
You may thank your God—your wife lives, and your son is screaming lustily as I write this. She delivered him on the 3rdof May. But I won’t spare you the truth: you very nearly lost her. She bled so much I thought she would die in myarms. The doctor muttered, the midwife frowned, and I sat by helplessly with towels that soaked through faster than I could fold them. It was hours before her color returned—and even now, she drifts in and out, too weak to hold him for long, though she insists on feeding him.
The little rabbit is strong and well and already has a temper. He scowls like a general and eats like a foot soldier after a day’s march. I expect he’ll rule the nursery with an iron fist by Michaelmas.
She named him George, after the King, to please Father (it worked), and Sebastian, for her own father. If you had other ideas—or now have any objections—you may keep them to yourself.
Father came yesterday. He strode through the door looking as if he expected to find a goat in the cradle, but one look at the boy and he beamed like it was his own coronation. Declared him a true Strathmore and said no tradesman blood in the world could smother a noble lineage like ours. The baby apparently has your mouth and your hair, which delighted him—he took it as either a personal triumph, or at the very least, a direct compliment to himself.
You should prepare for a libel arriving soon about the house you selected. He was horrified. I quote: “A Strathmore and heir to my seat, born under a plaster ceiling and a leaking gutter. I’ve seen poultry kept in finer quarters.” I suggested he write to you directly, and he said he most certainly would.
As for the Duchess—she did not visit. She never came back to London after leaving in February, despite Father’s repeated summons. I don’t think it was a snub toward Jane or the child. She’s holed up in Hampshire with her latest paramour and, from what I gather, intends to stay there. Indefinitely.
We’re settling in well enough here. Mary has been a marvel, and Mrs. Scott wept over the baby like she’d hatched him herself. Jane is sleeping again—thank God—and she looks a little stronger each day.
But William—if Jane lives to be ninety, I will still remember the night of the birth. I truly thought I was watching her die. I don’t say that to wound you. I say it because it’s true, and I think you should know what it means.
Now write to her, you fool. Or better yet—try not to get yourself blown up by the bloody French, and tell her you love her yourself.
Yours,
Charlotte
William sat slowly on the edge of his cot. He didn’t feel the chill lingering in the air. He didn’t hear the sentry’s voice bleeding through the canvas. He only saw that phrase, burned into the page.I truly thought I was watching her die.
He had never known this—this fear, this regret. The thought of her dying alone, in pain. The tormenting idea that their last words would remain bitter, not tender. That her body might be laid to rest in some London churchyard, while he was here—mired in mud and war, never to say goodbye.
He had thought she no longer wanted him. That she had closed the door, and he had respected her choice—reluctantly, bitterly, but finally. But death wasn’t a choice.
And suddenly, the ache he’d lived with these past weeks—rage, rejection, resentment—felt like nothing at all. She might have died. And he would have never seen her again. Never held her. Never known her smile while she held their son.
A son. He exhaled sharply. His throat burned. George. Sebastian. He didn’t give a damn about the name. It could’ve been anything—so long as he lived. So long as she lived.
He stood, too quickly, and the tent swayed. He braced a hand against the table, chest tight. This was what his father had never taught him. What no regiment, no rank, no honor could prepare a man for.
Not war. Not death. But love—raw and terrifying and helpless.
And now that he knew how close he'd come to losing her forever, he could no longer pretend that what lay between them was finished. Not while she lived. Not while there was still time.
* * *
But war did not pause for joy or grief. The army was on the march again, never camping for long. The rain had turned the roads to ruts and the fields to sludge, but the orders from Field Marshal Wellington had come clear. William spent his days on horseback, his nights poring over troop placements, inventory manifests, and casualty reports. His tent smelled of damp wool and pipe smoke, the lanterns burned low, and every surface was slick with a sheen of perpetual mud.
And yet—every time he closed his eyes, she came. Jane, lost in a book, her fingers smudged with ink. Jane, laughing in the gardens at Westford Castle. Jane, her lips parted in sleep, one arm flung above her head. Jane beneath him in the dark, flushed and writhing, her fingers digging into his back. He remembered every sound she made, the way her body gripped his, the softness of her sighs when he held her afterwards. The feel of her, the taste of her, the way she had looked at him once—as though he were the only man in the world.
It haunted him. His chest ached—not from injury, but from something far worse: the fear of what might have been. The image of Jane bleeding out would come to him unbidden, in the middle of strategy briefings, in the split second between sword blows, in the lull before dawn.
He ground his teeth and focused on duty. There was no other choice. Not here. Not with the French advancing.
* * *
One night, a month after Charlotte’s letter arrived, he returned to his tent just after dusk, shoulders stiff from the day’s duties. They were camped outside Ligny, preparing for the next engagement. Napoleon had beaten the Prussians. The ground was still pitted with craters, the air thick with the stench of smoke and rot.
