Captain of Her Heart
“Sophie? Sophie darling, he is here.” She dared not raise her voice, for fear of waking Mama.
Her sister collided with her at the top of the stairs. “You meet him, open the door—I can’t!” Sophie whispered fiercely. She stayed rooted on the landing, out of sight of the entry hall.
Harriet inhaled deeply to calm her nerves, but still jerked the door open with a lightning-fast motion. Captain Brookes, hand poised to knock on the door, fell back a step in astonishment. “C-Come in, Captain,” Harriet stammered.
He wore a heavy greatcoat that emphasized his broad shoulders, his Hessians still polished to a gleam even after the long ride from Brookes Park. Harriet opened the door wider, casting a tentative smile his way when he crossed the threshold. He stood in the hall, raindrops rolling down in rivulets from the brim of his hat, and gazed up. Sophie stood on the landing. How beautiful Sophie was, her lovely curls tucked up and glowing like a burnished cloud of gold in the dim hallway light. But when Sophie’s gaze fell on Captain Brookes, the color drained from her face. Two bright red patches glowed on her cheeks.
Why was Sophie behaving so strangely? Why did she stand so still on the landing? She must be in shock—of course, that was the only answer. To cover for Sophie, Harriet sprang into social action. “Please, Captain,” she burst out, in a voice a shade too loud. “Let me have your hat and coat. I’ll spread them out so they can dry by the fire.”
Captain Brookes, rooted in place beside the door, started at the sound of Harriet’s voice and tore his gaze away from Sophie. He allowed Harriet to guide him into the parlor, where a fire burned brightly.
“Sophie dear, tell Rose we will take some tea,” she called, in that same unnatural tone. She spread his coat over a chair and laid his hat on the warm hearth to dry. “It’s the shock, you understand,” Harriet whispered to him urgently. “Until we received the word that you had survived, she thought you were dead. She must feel like she is seeing a ghost.”
Captain Brookes graced her with a solemn expression. She too had met him yesterday, but her reaction was very different. At the memory, her cheeks grew warm, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.
“Yes.” His tone was frosty. “I am sure it is a great shock.”
Harriet ushered him to one of the chairs near the fire, a spindly one included with the original cottage furnishings. He sat, his tall frame dwarfing the chair. Sophie entered with Rose and the tea service, but her face still had the stunned expression of one recently slapped. Harriet drew a table near the fire and helped Rose and Sophie with the teapot and cups. Those few rapid domestic chores jolted Sophie out of her trance. She even managed a pale smile for the captain.
The little mantel clock chimed the quarter hour, and Harriet peeked at it in startled confusion. Surely an hour had passed already? Carrying the social niceties was exhausting. For the fifteen minutes since his arrival, Sophie refused to speak to the captain. Harriet was primed to cheerfully throttle her baby sister the moment he left. She took a small sip of tea. It tasted bitter, like stewed dandelion leaves, and a wave of nausea hit her.
Despite the tense atmosphere, Brookes responded to her stilted questions and followed the social rites like any good soldier would when confronted with a changed situation. Harriet burned with shame. When the clock chimed the half hour, he rose from his chair, nodding briefly at Sophie. Harriet helped him gather his greatcoat and hat, and showed him to the door, leaving Sophie sitting like a graceful wooden statue on the settee.
“Please, Captain.” She grabbed him, ignoring the tingle that ran through her fingers when she clasped his muscled forearm. “Forgive my sister. I am sure it is the shock of seeing you again that has affected her so. I beg you, please call again soon. Sophie will rally, of that I am sure.”
“Please do not distress yourself, Miss Handley.” He put on his hat with careless assurance. “I had a pleasant afternoon and am most happy to see your family again. I shall be delighted to call on you soon.” He closed the door behind him with a decisive click.
Harriet grasped the cool brass doorknob for a moment, her head bowed. What a bitter reception Sophie offered the captain. He deserved better. A lump formed in her throat when she pictured him riding out into the rain, returning to his lonely home. How humiliated and angry he must be. She longed to run after him, and beg his forgiveness on Sophie’s behalf. She closed her eyes, praying for strength. Then she lifted her head and trudged back to the parlor. Assuming her best “elder sister” expression, she prepared to take Sophie to task.
Sophie raised her tearstained face when Harriet entered. Her beautiful curls were no longer tucked up neatly, but instead cascaded down her back, giving her the look of a Botticellian angel. She twisted her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, Hattie,” she whispered. “He’s changed so much…” Her voice broke and she wept anew. “Sister, I don’t love him. I don’t love John Brookes.”
She glanced at the spindly chair that Captain Brookes had occupied earlier. It looked so insubstantial without his tall frame pressing it into the rug.
“Oh, Hattie, he is not the man I remembered. He is so strange.”
“Sophie, he went to war. He was dreadfully wounded and lost his leg. Surely you expected some change?” Harriet sat on the settee beside Sophie, drawing her sister’s head down on her shoulder.
“But oh, Hattie! He used to be so wild, so dashing. And now…his hair is gray!” With that, Sophie pushed Harriet away and draped herself over the opposite end of the sofa, weeping in earnest.
Harriet laughed at her sister’s dramatic display. “He has a few gray streaks here and there, but I vow you make him sound like Father Time.”
“Don’t laugh at me! Of course you can feel coolly about it. He wasn’t your young man.” Sophie balled up her handkerchief and flung it at Harriet.
“True.” Harriet looked daggers at her sister, not caring to discuss her spinsterly state.
Sophie raised her head. “True,” she echoed. “But you handled him very well, didn’t you? Since you are comfortable with him, you can help me. From now on, when John comes to call, you must entertain him.”
“But he will be coming to see you.” Harriet flushed deeply. The thought of spending hours in Brookes’s company was too enticing to even consider.
“Oh, please, Hattie, be a darling. Can’t you see? If you are sociable to him, no one will think anything of it, because we’re sisters. And it will give me time to get used to him. Perhaps I can fall in love with him again.”
Harriet winced. She would agree to help Sophie, but not out of sisterly loyalty. She dared not admit her thoughts, even to herself. But a small, insistent voice piped up, refusing to be shushed.
You would enjoy spending more time with the captain, wouldn’t you?
Chapter Three
Wounded men moaned on every side of him. He struggled to sit up and fell from weakness. His hands sank into the mire, catching his weight. Sophie’s lock of hair still clung to his right palm. Brookes tried to pray but his brain refused to form any words. God wouldn’t save him. No one else would, either, unless he made it through the night. Wellington himself ordered that no man be carried off the field until daybreak.
A bark of laughter filled the air. Brookes raised his head enough to see. Two soldiers—Prussians, by their uniforms—looted the dead and finished off the dying. “Kurpi! Kurpi!” whispered one urgently, while the other removed the dead soldier’s boot. “Ja! Ja!” He held up a miniature portrait in triumph, flipped it in the air like a coin, and then stuffed it in his pocket.
They moved through the corpses, picking them clean like vultures after carrion, stabbing through the wounded with expert precision, then looting them as well. By the sound of their voices, they were less than two yards away. It was only a matter of time until they found him—
Brookes jerked to awareness, bathed in cold sweat. Had he screamed out loud? He grasped around under the settee until he found what he sought. There it was—the decanter of brandy and an empty glass. He poured a tall measure with shaking hands. He was grateful that Stoames agreed to return to Brookes Hall with him after the war. Stoames was the one who set up his sofa so Brookes could sleep sitting bolt upright near the fire, and thoughtfully placed the brandy decanter within close range. Good man. He deserved a raise in pay.
On cue, his batman emerged from Brookes’s dressing room, where he slept on a cot. “Everything all right, Captain? Thought I heard something.”
“I was pouring myself a drink. Care to join me?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He ducked back into the dressing room and brought out his shaving mug. “A short one.” He politely held out the cup.
They drank in silence for a moment.
“Dream?” Stoames asked shortly.
“Yes. Same one. The looters. Before you found me, and stopped them.”
They drank again, staring at the fire.
Stoames sighed. “Let’s talk of something else. Your visit to Miss Sophie—how did you fare? Is she as beautiful as ever?”
Brookes hesitated. He refused to think about Sophie since returning from his disastrous visit to Tansley Cottage. But now, prompted by Stoames’s question, he tried to wrap his mind around her reaction. Among other soldiers, his wooden leg wasn’t even worthy of comment—a sharp contrast to the blank expression of horror in Sophie’s eyes. For the first time it dawned on him that a young and pretty woman might find him unattractive, repulsive even. “She is lovely as ever, but I think she found me sorely altered.”
“Surely she expected some change in you. After all, you went to war.”
“I don’t think many people can comprehend what happened, unless they were there.” Brookes swirled the brandy around in his glass. If he wanted to capture Sophie’s attention again, he needed to prove the changes the war wrought were merely superficial. That meant proving himself as lively and charismatic as he had been before he left for the peninsula—but was he? Pondering this, his thoughts drifted to Harriet, and he surprised himself by adding, “Her sister was looking well.” Not that it mattered, of course. Only Sophie’s opinion of him counted, since she would be his wife some day.
“Miss Harriet?” The edge of Stoames’s voice was sharp as a saber’s edge.
“Yes. She seemed…” He paused for a moment, searching for the elusive words. “She took the changes in stride.”
“Ah, well,” replied Stoames. “I’ve only seen the two lasses on occasion, but from what I recall, Miss Harriet was a steady girl. Quiet like. Not like Miss Sophie at all.”
“No.” Brookes stared into his brandy. “Not like Miss Sophie at all.”
Sophie and Harriet put their plan in action the next day, in the event that the captain called later in the afternoon. After luncheon, Sophie hitched the family’s one faithful nag, Esther, to the gig and drove off to call on Mary in Riber. As the gig beat a squeaky retreat, Harriet took her few remaining books outside, to read until the captain came to call. One had to take advantage of the brief break in the rain for a bit of fresh air.
Harriet’s mouth went dry as she watched Captain Brookes approach. With shaking hands, she picked up a book from the stack at her feet. She forced herself to gaze at the pages, even though the words blurred into a single black line. When it was polite to look up, she saw the captain dismounting with care, and striding toward her.
“Captain Brookes, so happy to see you again.”
“Miss Handley.” He bowed over her extended hand.
“You find me alone this afternoon, Captain. Sophie is in Riber, and my mother is resting.”
“I don’t wish to intrude upon your solitude,” he replied stiffly, waving a hand at her stack of books.
“Oh, no, Captain, join me. It’s a pleasure to have conversation. Mama says I read far too many books.”
“So I see.” He stooped and picked up a volume. “Homer? You read the classics?”
She smiled. “I read anything I can get my hands on. These are a few I managed to salvage from Papa’s library…before we lost it all.”
He looked at her sharply. “I have a library at Brookes Park. Not grand like your father’s, but you are welcome to it.”
Harriet leaped out of her chair. “Can we go right now?”
For the first time since his return, Harriet saw Captain Brookes smile. It changed his whole expression, causing a tingle of awareness to flash through her being. Then she grinned in entreaty. “Please, Captain?”
“Of course. Get your horse and we will ride over together.”
“Oh!” Harriet’s excitement deflated. “Sophie took our horse to Riber. We only have the one.”
“Then we’ll walk.” He offered her the crook of his arm.
Harriet glanced down at his leg, then up at the grey sky. It looked like rain at any moment. She couldn’t ask him to walk that distance, especially in a downpour.
She swallowed her disappointment and shook her head. “I shall claim the horse for tomorrow and ride over when the weather is fine.”
“The weather is never fine. I vow I have never seen such a chilly and wet summer. I have a better idea.” He smiled down again and Harriet’s heart leaped with joy. “We’ll ride together on Talos.”
“Together? How on earth?”
“You can ride pillion. Surely you’ve seen it, if your father had any medieval manuscripts.” Then he added, with a soldier’s air of authority, “It is the most sensible solution.”
Harriet nodded reluctantly. “How do we manage it?”
“I’ll get on first. Then you can put your foot on mine and swing yourself up behind me.”
Harriet swallowed. “All right.” She made a mental apology to her mother and Sophie, who would be horrified if they ever found out. When Captain Brookes was settled, she placed her foot on his in the stirrup and he tossed her up behind the saddle. Riding astride left nothing to the imagination, she realized in embarrassment. Her skirt hitched up much too high.
“Ready?” he called over his shoulder.
“Y-yes,” Harriet stammered. He wheeled Talos around and started back up the hill.
Harriet’s cheeks flamed. She leaned forward a little, against the taught smoothness of his back. Though she was precariously perched on Talos, Harriet was cherished and safe, like Mama’s jewels nestled in their leather boxes at Handley Hall. She closed her eyes, relishing the security that radiated from Brookes’s broad shoulders. Mercifully, he could not see the expression on her face.
A light rain began falling. “Hold on tight. I’m going to speed him up so we can get out of this wretched weather,” Brookes called.
Obediently, Harriet tightened her hold on his waist and squeezed her legs around Talos’s flanks. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest. She must stop any nonsense right away. Any affection she felt was simply because she had never been this close to any man. He was her sister’s intended, after all. Remorse washed over her, and a heaviness settled in the pit of her stomach. Once, when she was a little girl, she had taken one of Sophie’s hair ribbons without asking, and then lost it when she was riding. The mortification she felt long ago was nothing compared to her shame today. A hair ribbon could be replaced. A man such as Brookes—well, he was one of a kind.
Harriet bounced from one shelf to the next, exclaiming in delight. Brookes watched her closely, folding his arms over his chest. This room, so isolated and lonely before her arrival, now burst with vivid life. Harriet had completely ignored the sumptuous tea tray pulled near the fire. Apparently, tea meant little when she was faced with stacks upon stacks of books.
“I have never seen you so animated.” Brookes chuckled.
“You have hardly seen me at all.” She laughed.
As their gazes locked, a need to make her happy suffused him. Her smile intrigued him most—he wanted to see it again. “You can borrow them all, if you want.” A mischievousness threaded through his voice, designed to provoke a response.
“Oh, Captain, thank you!” Unshed tears filled her eyes. “Truly, you have no idea how happy you’ve made me.”
“Think nothing of it. Come have some tea.” He unfolded himself from his deep leather chair and pulled a velvet wingback closer to the fire. “What do you like to read, Miss Handley?”
“Please call me Harriet. Miss Handley sounds ridiculously formal.” She sat gracefully.
“Very well, then, Harriet. What do you like to read?”
“Anything I can,” she replied. “Before Papa lost his library, I had so many to choose from. It was his weakness, you know, collecting books. It led to our downfall, I’m afraid. I gravitate toward the classics. I salvaged the few you saw today. They are my old friends.”
“Homer? What do you like about his works?”
“‘Wherefore I wail alike for thee and for my hapless self at grief at heart, for no longer have I anyone beside in broad Troy that is gentle to me or kind, but all men shudder at me,’” Harriet quoted promptly. “Helen, Paris, the fall of Troy—it’s all so heroic and romantic.”
Brookes gazed deeply into her dark eyes. “Not all wars are heroic or romantic. After all, thousands of innocent people were slaughtered because of Helen’s fickleness and her beauty.”
She colored under his gaze, staring at the floor. “I suppose that’s true,” she said quietly.
He had gone too far, blundering and lecturing like a stern schoolmaster. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“No, I am the one who should apologize.”
“Not at all.” He studied her a bit longer, mesmerized by the pretty flush warming her cheeks. He attempted a lighter tone. “After being in battle, one realizes there is very little romance in war.”
“I’m sure.” She looked up at him, her eyes darkening to a deep, fathomless blue. “Someone should write a realistic novel about war.”
Drowning in those dark eyes, he had to tear himself away. “I doubt anyone would read it.” He cast a rueful grin her way. They sat together in silence, which was broken only by the chime of the mantel clock.
“I should be going. Mama will be wondering where I am.” She stood and brushed off her skirts with a practical air.
“Let me order my carriage,” Brookes replied, and pulled the bell pull. “It’s raining in earnest. Do take a few books home.” She selected a volume of John Donne, he noted. He would read the book when she returned it.
“This should keep me occupied.” She smiled again, and a warm glow flowed through him.
“Come back whenever you wish.” Then, remembering his manners, he added, “Bring your sister, too.”
Her smile faded. She was all business and practicality again. “Of course. Thank you for a lovely afternoon.”
The carriage was ready; in an instant, Harriet was gone. Brookes stood at the window, mulling over his daily obligations. His afternoon was completely wasted. He was late to see his mill manager, and he needed to speak with his steward about this spring’s crops. But it was worth it. He hadn’t enjoyed himself this much in years.
He prided himself on his reputation as a career soldier, not easily flustered by anything, especially a pretty face. Rarely did anyone cause him to change his purpose or his mind. But the trained tactician in him sensed a problem.
What if he had chosen the wrong sister?
Chapter Four
Harriet stabbed her spade savagely into the dirt. She reached into the moist earth and tugged, pulling out a small potato. Shaking the dirt off the vegetable, she tossed it into the basket by her feet. She promised to help Sophie, but she found herself in dangerous territory. If only she could dig out her devotion to Brookes as easily as she dug out roots here in the family garden.
Harriet shifted from kneeling to squatting back on her heels. Falling in love with Brookes simply was not allowed. Ridiculous, too. After all, he was the first young man that she had come into close contact with. That was the reason for the attraction, and nothing more. Her visit to his library, and the warm companionship that had settled between them bespoke nothing more than a friendly acquaintanceship. So just like a spinster perilously near to the shelf, she attached too much significance to her visit. He provided her with the first challenging conversation she shared in ages—that was all.
She needed a plan. If there were some way she could keep her promise to Sophie while keeping the captain at arm’s length, she could protect her own heart. A strictly platonic arrangement, one that would allow her to enjoy Captain Brookes’s companionship, but kept any romantic nonsense at bay. What could she do?
“Hattie? Where are you?” Sophie called from the kitchen window.
“Garden,” Harriet hollered back. Sophie’s blonde head disappeared from between the curtains. She popped around the corner of the cottage, picking her way across the muddy garden rows.
“Oh, good. You’re alone. Where’s Rose?”
“She’s in the village, doing the marketing. Help me, I am digging potatoes. Rose thought we could boil and mash them for our supper.” She handed Sophie her spade, but her sister remained standing.
“Hattie, I am worried about Mama.”
Harriet sighed. She slanted her gaze up at Sophie. “I am worried about her, too. But what in particular is causing your alarm?”
“I don’t think the laudanum is helping. Or rather, it’s helping too well. Mama sleeps all day long, and all night, too. It can’t be good for her. Perhaps she should call on old friends, or go back to Matlock Bath for a day to see home again…”
“Sophie, if Mama were to see someone else living in our home in Matlock Bath, it would kill her. And none of her old friends will see us anymore, not since Papa lost his fortune.” Harriet grabbed the spade away from Sophie’s useless hands and began digging again.
“Still, there must be something we can do.”
“Dr. Wallace did say that a change in her situation might help. But you know none of the family will have her.” Harriet sat back on her heels and tossed another potato into the basket. “I will think of something, Sophie. Don’t fret. I am sure there is a way to help Mama.”
“I know you’ll find a way, Hattie. That’s why I always come to you.” Sophie patted Harriet’s shoulder. “I’ll go look in on Mama.”
Harriet gazed after her sister’s graceful back as Sophie wove her way across the garden. She stripped off her gloves, slapping them against her knee. The damp earth smelled sweet where she had been digging, and it calmed her jangled nerves. Time to think clearly.
She had three problems now: her infatuation with Captain Brookes, her promise to Sophie and her need to help Mama. Surely she could find a way to solve all three at once. Harriet’s mind flashed back to the day they lost their home. Her own copybooks were burning. Flames licked the pages, and every now and then, a single word flared up from the page while the paper was consumed. While the duns combed through Handley Hall, she fed the fire in the great hall with her manuscripts, watching every single one smolder in the hearth. Writing about nonexistent people seemed such an extravagant waste of time, when one’s own world was collapsing.
But what about now? Women could write books and sell them for money, could they not? And she wouldn’t have to leave home to seek work if she became an authoress, would she?
She rose, dusting the dirt from her backside.
She had the solution.
Picking up her skirts, she dashed from the garden. Her solution would only work if she had Brookes’s help.
Brookes’s eyes glazed over as he stared at the ledgers piled in front of him. Henry kept meticulous records, in a tiny and cramped script that left Brookes cross-eyed after hours of reading. He spent the morning studying the mill’s profitability. After examining the ledgers closely, he decided to look at making adjustments to the spinning mules. A few tweaks here and there could save valuable time and labor. He resolved to formulate a plan with the mill manager for increasing the mill’s profits and saving labor. He needed to prove himself as twice the man he had been before the war, as though gaining more wealth from the mill could make up for his lost leg. Maybe it would impress Sophie, anyway.