Page 109 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

“They weren’t just imprisoned there, Helena. They were slaughtered.”

“I know,” she acknowledged softly. The newspapers had printed reports of what British soldiers had found when they’d finally arrived to rescue the women. It had been unspeakable. A gruesome, senseless tragedy the likes of which Helena couldn’t even imagine. “Oh, but Justin…that wasn’t your fault. How could it have been?”

“Because I sympathized with them,” he said with sudden fierceness. “I never thought we should be in India. Who could blame them for hating us? We disrespected them. Treated them like animals.” One of his fists clenched. “I had friends among them. Decent men and women. I did business with them. Even invested some of my earnings. When all hell broke loose, my judgment was called into question. And when I was tasked with escorting the women and children prisoners to safety…” His face contorted.

“But that’s…” Helena was horrified. “Surely no one could have thought…”

“That I didn’t fight as hard as I could have? That I didn’t do my utmost to protect them from harm?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His fingers raked through his already disheveled hair. “They did more than think it. Some of them said it. Though rarely to my face.”

“How could they even suggest such a thing? You were captured and tortured!”

“Yes,” he said. “But I wasn’t killed.” He looked up at her, his mouth twisted into a bitter rictus of a smile. “Unlike the other prisoners, my captors let me live.”

Justin rose abruptly from the bed and crossed the room to the marble-topped chiffonier. Mrs. Jarrow had brought up a bottle of brandy. There were no glasses. He supposed Helena had meant to pour it on his wounds or some such thing. But he didn’t really care what it was meant for. He uncorked it with his teeth and took a long drink directly from the bottle.

He was dreadfully conscious of his half-clothed state. With his scarred chest and arms exposed to Helena’s view, he felt oddly vulnerable. Like a raw lad with his first woman. But such feelings paled in comparison to the sense of hopeless despair that had descended over him as he’d recounted what had taken place in Cawnpore.

Helena stood near the bed, watching him as he drank. Her hair was bound up in a long braid, secured over the front of one shoulder with a black silk ribbon. He could see spots of blood on her dressing gown from when she’d cleaned his wounds.

There was something startlingly intimate about the two of them together in her bedroom, each in a state of undress. It’s what he’d always imagined married life would be like. A level of comfort with a woman. A sense that she accepted him. All of him.

Even so, he hadn’t planned to tell her anything about the massacre. Not now. Possibly not ever. It was a source of shame to him. A failure which had resulted in the deaths of countless people.

“You said you were just one of the soldiers tasked with escorting the women and children to the boats,” Helena said. “Which means there were others.”

“That’s right.”

“What happened to those soldiers? Were they all killed?”

“Not all.” He leaned back against the chiffonier, the bottle of brandy still in his hand. “Some managed to get across the river.”

“And where are they now?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” He took another swallow of brandy. He knew what she was getting at and he didn’t wish to hear it.

Not that that stopped her.

“I wonder if they take as much responsibility for what happened as you do?” she asked. “I wonder if they’re out there, enacting their penance somewhere, garbed in hair shirts and the like.”

“Helena…”

She folded her arms “Mr. Finchley told me that you take on everyone else’s burdens. That you would bear the weight of the world, if you could.”

“Did he.” It sounded like something Finchley would say.

“I believe he’s right. I’ve seen it myself. With Neville and the servants at the Abbey. With me. You take care of everyone. It’s in your nature to protect people. But a single soldier couldn’t have saved all of those women and children, Justin. You must know that. Not even if that soldier was you.”

He shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“Of course it is. You need only forgive yourself.” She moved toward him, her eyes searching his. “But you can’t, can you? You’re as unforgiving of your own failings as you are of those in other people.”

He flinched. It was the second time she’d mentioned his inability to forgive. Good God, but it was true. He had no forgiveness in him. He couldn’t remember if he ever had.

“I don’t count you among that group,” he said, his voice gone hoarse. “I never have.”

She stopped in front of him. The skirts of her dressing gown pooled about his legs. “Then why…” She hesitated a moment, looking endearingly uncertain. “Why did you stop wanting me?”

Her question rendered Justin temporarily speechless. Indeed, he couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d taken out a mallet and struck him over the head with it.