Scandalously Wed To The Captain. Joanna Johnson

conceded as she watched her friend’s laboured breaths.

      To lose the husband she’d adored, followed by a son just six years later, was a devastating blow—only compounded by her remaining boy turning into somebody she barely knew. Her failing health was the final piece of a tragic puzzle, so sad it hardly seemed possible.

      ‘You’re right, of course. Only...’ Another sigh came from the skeletal figure beneath the blanket. ‘The change in him, Grace. Of course he grieved when his father passed, but since we lost William he’s been a man I simply don’t recognise. You must have seen that he takes no pleasure in anything, not even pursuits he used to feel passion for. There was a time when he sketched every day, you know, and showed great promise; he hasn’t so much as picked up a pencil these past two years, as if the very spark of inspiration has been snuffed out like a candle.’

      A sudden cough racked her frail body and she pressed her hand to her heaving chest until the spell passed, leaving her cheeks ruddy and breath coming hard.

      ‘As time has gone by I find myself grieving less for William. I will be seeing him and my dear Richard again very soon, I am sure of it, and then I need never feel sorrow for them ever again. It is Spencer who now pains my heart the most when I think how he will be left alone with his secrets and the suffering he thinks I do not see in his face. He would never tell me exactly what happened the day Will died, but I am no fool.’ She wheezed for a moment, papery eyelids closed. ‘The idea of what he will become when I am gone—it haunts me.’

      Bony fingers found Grace’s arm, grasping at the sleeve of her gown in a twitch of distress, and she immediately covered them with her own. Her heart swelled with pity and powerful sorrow—Dorothea looked so small in her grief and fear, and the sight pained Grace more than she could say.

      ‘If I’d as much as suspected what damage it would do for my boys to go off to war, I would never have allowed them to enlist. You know my faith prohibits all kinds of violence, but I agreed with Richard on his deathbed I would let the twins carry on the military tradition of his family. If they had only stayed in England, Grace... I curse the day they left for Belgium, and I hate the very name of the Battle of Quatre Bras with a passion I feel in my bones.’

      A tear slipped down one sunken cheek and Dorothea cuffed it away, although not before the glitter of it sent ice piercing Grace’s insides. For the family she had known since childhood to be ripped so cruelly apart seemed the worst of injustices and from the tumult of her emotions a new thought arose to make Grace wonder...

      Had Spencer seen his brother die, cut down in front of him in some battlefield across the sea? Wouldn’t that go some way to explaining why he seemed so closed off, so strangely emotionless? She could only imagine with a powerful shudder what kind of effect such an experience might have on a man’s soul. It was a startling possibility, yet one that seemed so blindingly obvious, and Grace felt a suddenly overwhelming rush of compassion for the man who had previously inspired such wariness and confusion.

      ‘None of what has befallen your family is your fault. I hope you know that, despite your regrets.’

      Dorothea shrugged a thin shoulder beneath expensive linen. ‘Regrets are one thing I have no shortage of. The reason I sleep so little every night is out of worry for my only remaining son. If only there was something I could do, some way I could rest easily, knowing he won’t be left so alone when I am gone—and yet I fear nothing can turn him from the path he has chosen.’

      Grace nodded gravely, the truth in Dorothea’s words plain. ‘I can only imagine how such thoughts must trouble you. I wish there was something I could do to ease your cares.’

      Her sad gaze was fixed on the white hand that held her arm, lost in the world of compassion that gripped her—so she entirely missed the slow movement of her friend’s eyes in her direction and the look of dawning contemplation that crept in to brighten them.

      ‘Do you truly mean that?’

      ‘Why, yes.’ Grace forced her lips into a small smile despite the sorrow growing ever heavier in her chest. The image of Spencer’s grim face crowded out all other thoughts, the most obvious reason for his tightly drawn expression suddenly clear to her in terrible understanding.

       He has suffered so much and with his mother so ill surely there can only be more heartache to come for him. I wish for his sake, and for the friendship we might once have had, that things could be different.

      ‘Believe me—if there was any way I could help you or Spencer with the unhappiness that plagues you, all you would have to do is ask.’

      ‘Any way? Any way at all?’ Dorothea reached for a glass of water standing beside her bed, turning away so for a moment Grace couldn’t see her face. ‘Even if it were in a way you never would have dreamed? Even if it seemed the most unlikely thing imaginable?’

      ‘Even then, to repay your kindness and ease your cares, I give you my word.’