In His Eyes(25)

“Then what?”

She drew her lip through her teeth. An oddly feminine motion, Westley decided, for one who often acted more akin to a man. “Then perhaps you would not be so bothered by your condition.”

Westley straightened, fear he could not acknowledge stiffening his spine. “What say you?”

She fingered the frayed hem of her apron. “Well, nothing for certain, I think, but it’s just that with your leg—”

“Which will heal.”

She glanced away. “Not as well as we’d hoped.”

His jaw tightened and he had to force his teeth to unclench to push out a nervous laugh. Surely she only worried for him. “Do not fret. I will see to it that I am well on my feet once more.”

Mrs. Preston rose from the bed and twisted her hands. “I did not want to tell you just yet.”

Westley growled. “Speak!”

She flinched, and he might have felt poorly for it if not that she withheld information from him.

She pinned him with a steady gaze. “The doctor thinks you will forever more walk with a limp.”

Westley let the matter-of-fact words settle upon him, for given without an ounce of pity, he deemed them truthful. He cleared his throat. “And when did you learn this?”

“Upon his visit two days past.”

Westley exuded an outward calm that did not match the turmoil within. “He did not speak of it to me.”

“He feared your emotional state.”

Emotional! Westley snapped his jaws tight before words best not said escaped him. When he composed himself, he tried once more. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Preston, could you perhaps be a bit more specific?”

Understanding, then compassion lit her warm eyes, and when she next spoke, her words were gentle. “What he referred to has nothing to do with your memory lapses, Major.”

A comfort of sorts in that, at least. “That is good.” He’d thought the doctor meant to declare him unfit for duty and pronounce him soft in the head.

“But the doctor and I have both seen what injuries can do not only to the body but to the soul as well.”

Not liking the turn of the conversation, Westley chose silence and stifled his impatience over the woman taking too long in coming around to the point.

“I’ve seen it time and again. Men who have lost their limbs enter into a place of sorrow they cannot easily be roused from. They become disinterested in their meals, they lose hope for the future, and soon they let themselves become hollow.” She drew a long breath. “The doctor did not wish for any such despondent thoughts to affect your healing.”

The doctor? More likely Mrs. Preston spoke her own concerns. Army doctors were nothing if not completely unconcerned with men’s feelings.

She straightened her cap. “Therefore, we thought it best to wait to say anything about your leg until you had more time to heal.”

Westley pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “There is still yet hope I shall fully recover,” he said, more for his own benefit than to convince her.

“It pains me to tell you so, but the bone does not seem to have set straight.”

Her meaning slithered to him, but he refused to let it sink its fangs just yet. “But I have both legs. I can still sit a horse.”

She shook her head, becoming nearly as exasperated as he. “You will be whole, but for the rest of your days you will require a cane to walk.” She stood firm before him, the compassion in her eyes warring with the harsh words that came clipped from her tongue. “Therefore, I don’t think it wise you try to go to the western territories.”

Westley forced strained words from his lips. “Leave me.” He closed his eyes, hoping that sleep might overtake him and deliver him a momentary reprieve from this sentence of uselessness.

Instead of doing as he instructed, Mrs. Preston whispered something he couldn’t decipher and then crossed to the hearth. A moment later a weight settled upon his lap. “Hope, dear boy.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You will find it in there.”

Westley cracked an eye only enough to peer at the heavy book in his lap. How he longed to throw it across the room. But knowing that she would persist unless he offered pretense of acquiescence, he fabricated a smile instead. “Very well, I shall try.”

Mrs. Preston patted his arm. “There now, that’s better.”

When he didn’t respond or make a move to open the book, she gave him a small squeeze and left him to his shadowed thoughts once more.





As Ella ventured farther from the house, a breeze picked up and ruffled strands of her hair that had escaped their pins. Sibby had tried to form some kind of fancy design of it, pinning some pieces and leaving others in little ringlets about her head. She’d found herself to be pleasantly presentable, if not even passing pretty. But now she wished she could let her hair down, constrained only in a long red plait that fell down her back.

She stepped over dried bits of cotton stalks, wondering why the land had not been furrowed and prepared for the planting. Already they were behind. These fields should have been put to seed. No wonder the Yanks had not believed her claims about working the land. No evidence gave validity to her words.

Ahead, a line of scraggly oaks broke the flat lines of the field, and Ella made her way there. She would like to see what lay beyond and perhaps get a better feel for this land she now called home. If she were to stay, she would need to figure something out soon. Sibby had resisted her requests to discuss planting the crops, though Ella couldn’t fathom why. If the crops were planted and Sibby’s people earned a share of it, that would satisfy the army and cover their needs. What could possibly cause the woman hesitation?