“I obeyed. Because that is what soldiers do—even when instinct tells them they walk into a trap.” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows upon his knees, his gaze fixed upon his scarred hands. “We set out at midnight. No moon. The ravinewas narrow—scarcely wide enough for three men abreast. I placed William on the left flank. Took the lead myself. Standard formation.”
“Dominic.” Her voice was soft as breath. “You need not—”
“I do.” He swallowed hard. “I must. I have never—” His voice faltered. “I have never told anyone the whole of it. Not Julian. Not the physicians. Not the officers who wrote the official report. I have carried it alone for four years, and Julian is right—it is killing me. So please. Let me finish.”
Silence. Then, softly: “I am listening.”
He closed his eyes, and the darkness behind them became the darkness of the ravine.
“The firing began from three sides at once. They had us surrounded—above on the ridgeline, ahead at the mouth, and behind where we had entered. Crossfire. The worst possible position.” His voice dropped to nearly nothing, the words dragged from him like stones from the earth. “Men began to fall. Screaming. I could hear them calling for help, calling for their mothers, and I—”
His hands trembled. He clasped them tightly together, as though he might force them into stillness.
“I froze. The sounds—I had been in battle before, had fought hand to hand, had killed at close quarters—but this was different. This was chaos. Utter, unrelenting chaos. And my mind went blank. Empty. As though someone had reached inside my skull and stripped it bare—every thought, every instinct, every scrap of training. I stood there in the dark while my men died around me, and I could not move.”
“How long?”
“Three seconds. Perhaps four.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Three seconds. That is what the official report states. That is what I tell myself in the daylight—that it might have happened to any man, that it was the shock of the ambush, that anyone might have faltered.”
“But in the dark?”
“In the dark, I know it was longer.” The admission seemed to cost him something vital—some final fragment of the fragile illusion he had clung to for years. “It felt like hours. As though I stood at the bottom of a well, watching the light diminish, inch by inch. And by the time I came back to myself—by the time I could think, could move, could give the order to retreat—”
He stopped.
“Twenty-one,” he said at last. “Out of thirty-two.” His voice broke. “I brought eleven out. I fought to the mouth of the ravine, dragged them through, carried those who could not walk, and I—
” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, as though he might stem the burning there. “They gave me a commendation. For the eleven. They called me a hero.”
“Youwerea hero. You saved eleven men.”
“I lost twenty-one.” He lowered his hands. His face was wet, and he no longer cared—had no strength left to care. “William was the last. He had been hit—a gut wound. The worst kind. There was nothing to be done. I found him against the ravine wall. He was… trying to hold himself together. Quite literally. His hands were pressed to his abdomen, there was blood everywhere, and when he saw me, he smiled. He smiled, Lorraine. As though he were glad to see me. As though I had not just condemned him.”
Lorraine’s hand rose to her mouth. Her eyes shone in the firelight.
“He spoke to me while he died. Told me about Thomas, about how clever he was. Told me to make certain his wife knew he loved her. And then he caught my hand, and he said—” Dominic’s voice fractured entirely. “Take care of him. Promise me. Promise.”
The words lingered in the air, raw and unbearable.
“And I promised. I held his hand while the life left him, and I promised. And then I carried him back to camp, and they pinned a medal upon my chest, and I came home a hero.”
He gave a hollow, broken laugh. “A hero. I dream of it every night. I drink more than I ought. I can scarcely meet the eyes of the child I swore to protect. I write letters to the families of dead men and never send them, because there are no words sufficient for what I have done. I am the furthest thing from a hero a man could ever be.”
The silence that followed was vast. It filled the library, pressed against the walls, stretched to every corner of Rovewood Hall.
Then Lorraine rose. She crossed the space between them and knelt before him. She took his hands—shaking, burdened—and held them gently between her own.
“You froze for three seconds,” she said, her voice steady as stone. “And you have punished yourself for four years.”
“It was longer than that. I told you—”
“I do not care if it was three seconds or three minutes.” Her grip tightened, not harshly, but with quiet conviction. “You were human, Dominic. In the worst moment of your life, you were human. You froze because you were afraid—and then you returned, and you fought, and you saved eleven men, and you held your friend as he died. That is not failure. That is not cowardice. That is a man doing all that could be done in an impossible moment.”
“The best I could do was not enough.”
“It never is,” she said softly. “Not for anyone. And that is no reason to cease living.” She lifted his hands and pressed her lips to his knuckles—the battered knuckles that had held William’s hand, and Thomas’s small toys, and the woodenhorse carved by his grandfather. “You are not broken, Dominic. You are wounded. There is a difference.”
The words undid him.
