Royal(16)

“Of course not. He’s just a child, and so is your sister. If she was in love with him, she’d have mentioned it before. She’s barely said two words about him until now. I do feel sorry for his mother, though. It must be very hard to see your only child go to war. They sound like lovely people from the correspondence I’ve had from his mother. Charles said they’re older, and the countess has suggested her husband is in poor health. I do hope Charlotte isn’t a burden to them. Maybe she’ll cheer them up once their boy is away.”

“He may be barely more than a boy, but that’s who’s fighting this war, Mother,” Victoria said tartly, but she decided that her mother was right. Charlotte had hardly ever mentioned him, and she certainly would have if he mattered to her, which made a romance seem unlikely, and Victoria always thought her younger sister childish and overprotected by their mother because of her asthma, which had apparently improved in Yorkshire, or so she said in her letters. Victoria had enjoyed the last four months without her younger sister afoot, although she was starting to miss her, not acutely, but she admitted to Alexandra that she missed arguing with her, which seemed perverse.



* * *



—



The Hemmingses took Henry to the station on the appointed day with the train warrant the army had sent him. Charlotte and Lucy came too, to see him off. Lucy looked longingly at him, and dared to kiss his cheek when she said goodbye to him, and then Henry took Charlotte in his arms and kissed her in front of everyone, as though they had nothing to hide, which made Lucy furious, although she didn’t show it. She would have liked him to kiss her that way, but he never had. She silently blamed Charlotte for stealing her rightful place in his affections. She had caught him by sleeping with him and being a whore.

“Take care of yourself,” he whispered to Charlotte. He was hoping to come home on a brief leave before he shipped out, but he had no idea if they’d allow him to or if there would be time. This might be the last he saw of them for a very long while. He kissed his mother’s cheek, shook hands with his father, wished Lucy well and kissed Charlotte again, and then boarded the train, and stood waving from the compartment. He opened the window so he could lean out and see them until they disappeared from sight.

They were a somber, silent group when they went back to the house, each of them lost in their own thoughts about him. Lucy went into the kitchen as she did every night, with tears in her eyes now, thinking of Henry, and Charlotte went to lie down. All she wanted to do was think about him and keep the image of him in her mind.

His parents retired to their room, and the countess looked red-eyed when they came down to dinner a few minutes late. The earl was subdued and barely talked. Life at Ainsleigh Hall was going to be very different without Henry. The vitality seemed to have slipped out of the place. Everyone went to bed right after dinner that night.



For Lucy, it was a relief not to see Henry hovering over Charlotte, or know that he was next door in her arms at night. She could cherish her fantasies again, now that he was gone, and hoped he missed her. She and Charlotte hardly spoke to each other anymore, just to chat. The rivalry between them, for Henry’s affections, had been too strong. Lucy had never been in that race, no matter how hard she tried, but she chose not to see it that way. She still believed that Henry would have fallen in love with her eventually if Charlotte hadn’t come along. As she saw it, Charlotte had stolen her dreams from her.

For the next six weeks, their days were spent waiting for letters from him, which were brief and to the point. He said the training was arduous and he was exhausted every night, but he was well and hoped they were too. He wrote to Charlotte separately and told her how much he loved her, and how happy he was to be her husband. She put his letters in a drawer tied with a ribbon, and his parents shared the letters they’d had from him. They were proud to have a son serving the country. At the end of his training, he was allowed to come home for two days, before he shipped out. He still had no idea where he was going, and couldn’t have told them anyway.

Henry looked tall and handsome in his uniform when he came home on leave. His hair was short, and had been shaved at the beginning of his training, he had trimmed down, his shoulders looked broader, and every moment he spent with them was precious. He managed to share himself equally with his parents and his wife, and even spent a few minutes chatting with Lucy, and asked her to take care of Charlotte, which stung. Henry had no idea that Lucy still cherished romantic fantasies about him. She hid them well.



They shared an early Christmas with him, and his mother gave him a few things he could take with him. Then forty hours after he’d arrived, he was gone. Charlotte stood freezing on the platform in frigid weather, watching him go. His eyes never left hers as the train pulled out, and she watched him until he was only a tiny speck in uniform, and then she got in the car and went home with his parents. Charlotte was four months pregnant by then, and it was starting to show, but it didn’t really matter since no one knew who she was, and she hardly ever left Ainsleigh Hall. All they could do now was wait for his letters and pray that he was alive and well. Charlotte never mentioned the pregnancy to Lucy and the others, but they could see it now.

Christmas was quiet and dismal without him a few weeks after he left. Charlotte had three letters from him in January, and she guessed that he was somewhere in Italy or North Africa, but he couldn’t say, and there were several lines blacked out by the censors when he said too much. The days seemed interminable without him, and Charlotte was homesick for her family now too. Yorkshire suddenly seemed a long way from home. And as her pregnancy became more pronounced, she missed her mother and sisters, although they knew nothing of what was happening to her. Only Henry spoke of their baby in his letters, and then in the beginning of February, his letters stopped. His father suggested that his division was probably on the move from one location to another and reassured his wife and Charlotte that the letters would start again soon. They believed him for several weeks, and then the dreaded telegram came, informing them that Henry had died a hero’s death, in battle with the enemy. They regretted that it was impossible to bring his body home. He had died and his body had been lost at Peter Beach in the Battle of Anzio. The War Office extended their sincere sympathy to his parents. His father was inconsolable, and took to his bed immediately. Charlotte felt sick when she read the telegram again and again, and it sank in that her baby would have no father. She was bereft. She reported his death to her parents, and they wrote a personal letter of condolence to the earl and countess.