The Major's Faux Fiancee by Erica Ridley Page B

to Daphne and Bartholomew. Mr. Blackpool did nothing.
    Bartholomew didn’t breathe. His fingers clenched and unclenched, his posture stiff, his cheekbones touched with pink.
    This was killing him, Daphne realized. How could it not? His mother wasn’t thinking of him as a survivor. She thought of him as a baby, a burden. A disappointment. All her grief was due to her own pain. She hadn’t yet spared a thought for how her son must feel. What he might need. Daphne brushed the back of her fingers against Bartholomew’s fist.
    After a long, tense moment in which the only sounds that could be heard were the halting sniffles of Mrs. Blackpool and the clink of Captain Steele’s glass of port against the desk, Mr. Blackpool nodded slowly. He crossed the room with the jerky gracelessness of an automaton and folded himself into the wingback chair nearest his wife.
    “Why didn’t you visit?” Mrs. Blackpool burst out sobbingly, wringing her handkerchief and casting huge, beseeching eyes at her son. “Three and a half years since last I’ve seen you, and when you finally come home, it’s to visit… the vicarage?”
    “Oh, that,” Captain Steele put in pleasantly. “’Twasn’t to visit the vicarage . He and Miss Vaughan are to wed later this month.”
    Mrs. Blackpool sucked in a shocked breath, her pallid face a mixture of hurt and despair. “You couldn’t have mentioned this?”
    Bartholomew gazed back at her stoically, his spine straight, his shoulders rigid, his tongue as silent as that of his father’s. The poor man. Daphne doubted he wished his first words after all this time to be lies. This was her fault.
    She took a deep breath and faced his parents. Before discussing a fake wedding, they needed to address the more important issue. His mother. She directed her gaze at Mrs. Blackpool. The woman needed to acknowledge that she was not the only one who had suffered a loss. Families needed to support each other.
    “Three and a half years since you’ve seen your son?” She edged closer to Bartholomew’s side and faced his mother squarely. “Why didn’t you visit him in London, when he was recuperating from having his leg blown off?”
    “And leave Edmund?” Mrs. Blackpool gasped. “Never!”
    “He’s not there,” her husband said dully, his eyes focused somewhere above his wife’s head. “’Tis an empty grave, so there’s no sense you sobbing upon it, all hours of every day.”
    “He will be there,” Mrs. Blackpool countered staunchly, “just as soon as the army returns his body. We shall have a fine ceremony. You shall return home where you belong, Bartholomew. It would ease the emptiness in my heart to have both my sons back.”
    “Even if one of our lads is in his grave?” her husband asked dryly. “You must know it cannot be the same. Edmund is dead .”
    “Then Bartholomew’s presence alone will have to fill the void.” Mrs. Blackpool’s lip trembled as she turned to her son. “Stay by my side and keep me company whilst we await your brother’s remains. Will you not do that for your mother?”
    Bartholomew’s voice was strained. “They’re not going to find a body. Even if they did, how would they know who it was or where to send him? He’s not coming home. If it makes you feel any better, I never found the rest of my leg. That doesn’t mean it’s not gone .”
    “I know he’s gone,” Mrs. Blackpool snapped. “Why do you think I haunt his gravestone? I’m trying to spend all the time with him now that I failed to do back then.”
    “And ignore the son that survived?” Daphne blurted indignantly. Dear heavens. Was the woman blind to Bartholomew’s pain?
    “He’s the one who got Edmund to join.” Mr. Blackpool’s gaze sharpened and focused directly on his son. “He promised they would both be fine.”
    Bartholomew nodded slowly, accepting the blame. “I only brought half of us home.” He lifted his false leg and let it thump to the floor. “Less than half.”
    Daphne