Lady Silence Read Free Page A

her. When he recovered enough
to put her from him for a good look, Damon discovered she had
changed very little. The countess had always been slim and was now
perhaps even more so. And, yes, her hair showed more gray than
brown, but her eyes were filled with pride and joy. (He made a
silent vow not to disillusion her.) His mama’s gown, the colonel
noted, was in the first style of elegance, not unlike the day gowns
of the highborn ladies in Vienna and Brussels. Obviously, living in
the wilds of Wiltshire had not cut his mother off from the world of
fashion.
    Colonel Farr endured the formal welcome of
his staff with far more aplomb than he had tolerated his long-ago
farewell, for Wellington’s officers had had to put on a good front
no matter how they felt, no matter what conditions they faced. And
then, finally, he was alone, staring at the walls of his room as if
he had never seen them before. On the Peninsula Old Hooky and his
entire staff would have considered themselves blessed to share a
suite of rooms the size of his personal apartment. And, now, it was
all his. As was Farr Park, an inheritance from his Uncle Bertram
for which he had never been more grateful.
    Supper was a quiet affair, exactly as he
wished. Damon paid little attention to his mother’s apologies for
the absence of her companion, the oft-cited Katy, until Lady
Moretaine added that she feared the dear girl did not wish to
intrude. Nonsense, of course. Dear Katy would never be
encroaching.
    Dear girl? He
must have misheard. For years he had pictured Katy as an elderly
cousin or maiden aunt. No matter. He’d find out soon enough. For
the moment, he was content to eat Mrs. Huggins’s welcome-home
feast, a compilation of his favorites, including pea soup with
bacon and fresh herbs, dressed crab, asparagus in white wine and
cream, minted lamb, and a Florentine of oranges and apples. Grandly
topped off, after his mama left him in solitary splendor, by a
generous sampling of the port he’d had shipped home from
Portugal.
    With each sip Colonel Farr’s foreshortened
world seemed to take on a more rosy hue. At Farr Park, the problems
of the world beyond Wiltshire would not intrude. In the morning his
new life awaited him. And tonight he need only fob off his mama
with some of his more humorous tales. Strangely enough, there were
more than a few. Somehow—yes, somehow—he would manage to get on
until the shadows went away.
    During the weeks after Waterloo, with his
duties down to seeing that his wounded were tended, letters written
to the families of the dead, and his able troopers sheltered and
re-equipped, Damon had had time to select a method for the exorcism
of the shadows—the ghosts, if you will—that haunted him. Some men,
he knew, could put the war behind them, as if dropping the handle
of a pump, shutting off the rush of water on the instant. He envied
them, but he could not emulate them. He would, therefore, make an
effort to record his experiences. Not that anyone would ever read
what he wrote, but if a man were going to crawl into a box and pull
down the lid, he must have some occupation, must he not?
Concentrating on the memoirs of Colonel Damon Farr should do the
trick.
    Or should he write something people might
actually want to read? Perhaps a comparison of Wellington’s
maneuvers to great commanders of the past, a treatise that would
appeal to not just military officers and trainees, but to the many
Englishmen who were grateful to those who had rid the world of the
overly ambitious Little Emperor.
    After spending the morning with his
long-suffering steward, Elijah Palmer, Damon sat at his mahogany
kneehole desk, frowning at the blank paper centered in front of
him. He glanced at the quill sitting in its standish, then back to
the paper. His frown deepened. He raised his eyes to the tall
windows to his right, felt a slight amelioration of his gloom as he
noted that the gardens did indeed still flourish. He reached for
the quill . . .