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How dreadful for him, to have to try to relax and enjoy himself, to be a tourist.
She finished her breakfast and went to the window. Yes, there was that dark head, just visible through the screen of bushes. She poured another cup of coffee, filled up her own and went out across the terrace, carrying them in steady hands to the steps down to the dock, just above where he was watching the Douro’s relentless flow.
Gray was sitting on the boards, left leg drawn up, supporting his weight on his right arm, the other resting casually on his knee. She felt a fleeting regret that she could not draw. All it would take would be a few economical lines to catch that long, supple, relaxed body.
‘Good morning.’ He did not turn his head and she was certain she had made no sound.
‘You have sharp ears.’
‘I can smell the coffee.’
She came down the steps, set the cups down and sat beside them, an arm’s length away from him. ‘It might have been Baltasar.’
‘Not walking so softly.’ He turned his head, then smiled faintly. The lines bracketing his mouth deepened, and his eyes narrowed as he looked at her and then he went back to studying the water. ‘Thank you.’
‘You have shaving soap on the angle of your jaw.’ She extended one finger, almost close enough to touch, then he turned his head and the tip of her finger made contact with smooth skin. Gaby jerked her hand back.
He was freshly shaven, his hair slicked down with water, but the rest of him was casual, relaxed. He put up his free hand, scrubbed along his jaw.
‘That has got it.’ Her voice was quite steady, considering that she felt as though she had been stung.
She leaned back on both hands, her legs dangling over the water as she watched him from the corner of her eye. A loose linen shirt, a sleeveless waistcoat, a spotted kerchief tied at his neck like a coachman, loose coarse cotton trousers tucked into a battered pair of boots, a broad-brimmed hat discarded on the planks by his side. He was dressed like a man who understood the heat of this valley in summer, one who had fought through the dust and the baking sun while wearing uniform. Now, in the milder warmth of October, the costume was still practical for wandering about the countryside.
‘Is it strange being back here in peacetime?’ she asked, following through her train of thought.
Gray was silent and she wondered if she had been tactless and he would not answer her. She had no idea what his experience of war in this country had been like. For some, she knew, it had been hell. For others, luckily placed, a jaunt. But he was simply marshalling his thoughts, it seemed.
‘It is a pleasure to see the country tranquil, to watch children playing, people working, young men flirting without having one hand on a weapon,’ he said. ‘But it feels like a dream. There are moments when I hear gunfire and have to remind myself that it is hunters, when I smell smoke and tell myself it is a farmer burning rubbish, when the birds stop singing for a moment and I have to stop myself looking around for the ambush. It is hard to spend nine years fighting and then shrug off the habits and the reflexes that have kept you alive all that time. I look at this river—’ He broke off with a shake of his head.
Ah. So he has seen the hell, ridden through it.
‘And watch for the bodies being carried down,’ she finished for him, repressing the shudder. There had been too many to retrieve for a decent burial. Many must have found their graves in the sea. Certainly no one had ever reported finding the body of Major Norwood that she knew of.
‘Yes. One of the things I like about England is the absence of vultures.’
Gray picked up his cup and looked directly at her over the rim. Dark grey eyes like water-washed steel.
‘I should not be speaking of such things to a lady.’
Gaby looked away from those compelling eyes. They saw too much. She shrugged. ‘I lived through it, too, I saw the bodies, the wounds, the hunger. Most times it is better not to remember, but sometimes it is hard when you need to talk and you cannot, because other people cannot bear to listen.’
Gray made a soft sound. A grunt of agreement. He understood, perhaps, although he would have fellow officers to talk to, men who had been through it and knew, men he could be silent with and yet feel their support and empathy. She had no one she could speak to about the things that had happened. But that was probably the burden that most women who had been through war carried: no one wanted to admit that shocking things had happened to them, had been witnessed by them. It was much easier to pretend nothing had sullied their sight, nothing had disturbed their ladylike lives.
Gray had been married. She recalled Aunt mentioning it in a letter in the days when she did not simply toss them aside unopened. A good marriage, apparently, by Aunt’s definition of good. But his wife had died some years ago. A tactful woman would not refer to it, but then, she wanted to understand him for some reason and that was more important than tact.
‘Did your wife ask you about it? Or did she want to pretend that it was all beautiful uniforms and parades and glory?’
‘We were married for three years. We were together for, perhaps, six months in that time. I was home wounded for three months after Talavera. She noticed it was not all parades then.’ His hand went to his left shoulder as he spoke. Gaby doubted he realised he did it. She had seen no awkwardness in the way he moved that arm; it must simply be the memory of old pain.
‘Was it serious, the wound?’ The way he spoke about his wife—or, rather, the way he did not—made her wonder what kind of marriage it had been.
‘Bad enough to send me home. Not bad enough to prevent me getting her with child while I was convalescing.’ Now he sounded positively cold.
‘You have a child?’
‘Twins. A boy and a girl. James and Joanna.’ He was looking out over the river again, his profile stark and expressionless and she suddenly understood. Twins, but his wife dead, presumably in bearing those children. What must the guilt be like for a man who had left a pregnant wife behind to bear his children and die doing so? A wife, it seemed, he hardly knew and, she suspected, had not loved at all.
‘So they are about five now. Where do they live?’
