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Hot air. Acrid smoke. Suffocating him, burning his eyes and nose. Filling his mouth. The roar of cannons, constant crack of musket rounds, screams and shouts. And the humming beneath it all, like a million angry hornets.
The mud sucked at his boots, dragged at his legs. His thighs burned. He took sight down his rifle, aimed, fired. Before his adversary finished falling he was reaching back into his cartridge box. Then, so quick but never quick enough, like an automaton: tear the paper with his teeth, half-cock, pour gunpowder in the pan, close, spin upright. Gunpowder down the barrel, cartridge follows. Ramrod out, tamp it all down tight. Make ready. Full cock. Present. Tight against shoulder…
Only this time, when he would have fired, a body slammed into him. Spinning, a face in his vision, for the briefest of seconds. One of their own. Fleeing the battle. He hardly had time to understand it before he was in the mud. Not just mud. Water, too, a puddle, churned up into a thick sludge beneath a thousand marching feet. It filled his mouth, a foul refuse he spit out.
On his feet again in an instant. No time to waste. If he delayed he would be trampled or shot. Pull the gun up again, take aim, pull the trigger.
Another of theirs stumbled in the way. Too late to stop. In horror he waited for the telltale spark of the flint.
But no spark, only smoke in his eyes again. From his gun or another’s? He hadn’t shot the boy. Relief. When the smoke cleared, however…
A pale face, hand at his chest, stumbling toward him. He caught the boy as he fell. Blood foamed from his lips.
“Pearl…”
Daniel awoke with a gasp. No battlefield, no death and pain and fear. Well, perhaps fear. He ran a shaking hand over his face, looked up at the ceiling in the dim early-morning light. Rough plaster, nothing he recognized. Confused, he tried to throw off the damp sheets. But they were twined about his legs. There was a horrible moment of panic as he fought against them. Finally free, he lurched to his feet.
Pain tore through his thigh. Gasping, he fell back to the bed. His fingers dug into the twisted flesh, the burn in the muscle dulling to a sharp ache just as the realization of where he was came to him. An inn. On his way to London.
Away from Margery.
No. He shook his head fiercely. He could not go down that path, or he would go mad.
A light knock at the door. And then Wilkins was entering, a freshly brushed jacket slung over his arm. His eyes flared wide when he spied Daniel, and he put the jacket aside, hurrying forward.
“Your Grace, are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Daniel muttered, then immediately regretted his dismissive tone. He and the valet had made such progress lately. And he found, after their sudden bond over the situation with Gregory, over their shared grief over Nathaniel—and after having experienced a closeness with Margery—he had missed having someone to lean on. And he no longer wanted to keep the man at arm’s length.
But no matter his curt words, Wilkins, it seemed, was through being cowed. He dropped to his haunches and brushed Daniel’s hands away, as if they were mere flies. “I’ve done a fair amount of research on wounds of this sort,” he said as he pulled Daniel’s nightshirt up to reveal the puckered wound on his leg. Before Daniel had time to react the valet’s fingers were pressing into it.
Pain, though this time a good kind of pain. Daniel hissed as the man found a particularly tight area.
“I received a recipe for a liniment from the physician back home. Once we get to London I’ll have the housekeeper at the townhouse assist me in mixing it up. In the meantime, we’ll massage and stretch your leg twice daily, and apply ice when we’re able. And no more long stretches of road; we’re to take breaks and often, to make certain you’re able to exercise it to prevent it from stiffening.”
Despite himself Daniel smiled. “Thank you, Wilkins,” he said gruffly.
“Of course, Your Grace.”
The man worked for a time in silence, alternating massaging and stretching the abused muscle. Just when Daniel was about to close his eyes from exhaustion, however, the man spoke up again, this time with the same hesitation that used to highlight their time together.
“You were having a nightmare, Your Grace?”
Daniel paused. And then, “Yes.”
“You haven’t had one for some time.”
Daniel blinked in surprise. “You knew about the nightmares?”
Wilkins gave him an apologetic look that nevertheless conveyed what Daniel should have guessed all along: servants quite often knew much more about a household than those living in it. No doubt the man had been aware of the nightmares from the moment Daniel began having them upon his return.
“Do you know what might have brought them on again?” Wilkins queried.
Something tugged at his memory then, that same sense of recognition and anxiety as that day on the beach with Margery when they’d met with her veteran friends. Though a face flashed in his mind now from that day at Waterloo, that boy who’d pushed past him just before he’d shot Aaron. Before he could make sense of it, however, panic reared, and his mind closed off against it, an instinctual defense.
Wilkins had seen something in his eyes, however, that gave him pause. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Daniel muttered. He let loose a sigh, frowning in frustration. “I met some veterans of the Waterloo conflict on Synne recently. I suppose it brought it all back again.”
