The Return of the Prodigal

Damn! It was about time!

He looked down at the leather-bound journal Lisette had found for him a few weeks ago. He’d written only three lines today. What a lazy creature he was, or else he’d become sick of his own maudlin scribblings.

Once he’d written of a brave adventurer, a man of spirit and daring traveling the world, slaying dragons, dazzling all the beautiful women. Even Fanny, who thought she knew everything about him, had never known of the journals he kept hidden beneath a floorboard in his rooms, of the poetry, the supposed epic he had been writing for years. His brothers had jokingly called him a poet, but they also had never known how right they were.

They had also called him a dreamer, and he did once have dreams. Lofty. Soaring. Full of ideals and promise. He would go to war, he would have grand adventures, and then he would write about them. He would become famous, like Lord Byron. He would go to London, be fêted, even honored by the Prince Regent.

Oh, what ambitious dreams he’d had!

Now? Now, when he forced himself to write, he wrote of silly things; the shapes he saw in the clouds, the many names he could give the color of Lisette’s hair, the beauty of peas, floating in a sea of gravy. Insane things. Or else he’d write of stormy nights, lonely walks through tangled forests, demons and dangers behind every tree. Despair, hanging like low clouds over every horizon.

Mindless rambles, or melodramatic drivel. That’s all he could muster. All because he’d lost his arm? Was that something to be maudlin about? Probably…

What had he written today?

Alone in a world of strangers; unfit, unknown, no longer whole;

Does the world go on without him?

Lovely ladies, where are your smiles and sweet simpers now?

Dear God, how pathetic! Pathetic, self-pitying nonsense. A waste of ink and paper.

He crumpled the page in his hand and tried to rip it from the journal. But that was an exercise that took two hands, and the journal only slipped from the arm of the chair and went flying across the grass.

“Damn!”

“There is a problem? And what bee has flown in to your bonnet today, Mistress Becket?”

Rian closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. “Go away, Lisette. I’ve been working on a way to choke you using only one hand. I may soon perfect it.”

“Not the silly clown today, I see, but the dour-faced malcontent, threatening mayhem. I tremble in my shoes, truly.” Lisette bent down to pick up the journal, smoothing out the rumpled page and reading it before she closed the thing and slipped it into her pocket. “Where have all the ladies’ smiles gone now? Yes, I can see why the ladies would have smiled at you, Rian. When you’re asleep, I can see it, for then both the too-silly smiles and the scowls disappear, and the hopeful poet emerges. I should like to see the poet awake. But for now, my impatient patient, it’s once again time for your medicine.”

“Hang my medicine,” Rian said, getting to his feet, tucking what was left of his forearm into the buttoned front of his jacket. “I don’t want to shock you with such a revelation, but I’m as whole as I’m going to get, Lisette.”

“So you say. For months, throughout the hot summer, I despaired of you, for so many wounded turn putrid and die in the summer. And for these past weeks I’ve waited for the questions. But they never come, do they? ‘Where am I, Lisette? Who has taken me in? Why has this person done so? What is his name? When will I be strong enough to return to my own home? Who won the battle, Lisette?’”

Rian turned to her at that last question. “We took the day, Lisette. I know that, at least.”

“And how do you know that? I told you the name of the battle in which you were wounded, but I have a great memory for all that we’ve spoken of, you and I, and we have never really spoken of the battle. You never told me what you did there, or even asked who won the day.”

God, she could drive a man to distraction. Pushing at him, always pushing, pushing.

He frowned, trying to remember how he knew they’d won the battle. But thinking too deeply was beyond him, and caring to think was a nebulous thing, something he felt he should be able to master, but a desire that always seemed somehow just beyond his grasp for more than a few moments. “I don’t know. But we won that day, just as we won the war. You told me we won the war, so it stands to reason we won such an important battle.”

“So many thoughts strung together. Very good, Rian. I had begun to think that feat beyond you. But are you correct? Or I have lied about everything, and you could be a prisoner of war, Rian Becket. Perhaps we have cared for you, plumped you up like a Christmas goose, in order to ransom you back to your family. War has made France desperately poor, and we needs must find money any way we can. Your uniform bespoke of the officer, and officers are often beloved sons of rich families,” Lisette pointed out, holding out the small silver tray on which sat a tumbler filled with a liquid that smelled of cloves but, he knew, tasted of filthy socks. “Perhaps I am in fact your gaoler.”

“No, not my gaoler. Just my tormentor, always trying to confuse me.”

“No, Rian Becket. Not confuse. Wake you up. Make you angry. Make you do something.”

“There’s nothing I want to do, Lisette, except perhaps to kiss you. It’s the most pleasant way I can think of to shut you up.” Rian looked at her, looked at the tumbler, and said, “And I don’t want that, thank you. I’ve had enough of your potions.”

“Oh, please, Rian, not this same argument again. The draught is necessary. Do you want the fever to return?”

“You could drive a man to another sort of drink, you know.” He hadn’t drunk the medicine yesterday. She’d left it with him and gone to answer a summons from one of the other maids, and he’d poured it into the ground. But today she was standing here, staring at him, and he saw no escape. He looked at the tumbler again, and then grabbed it up and tossed the vile liquid to the back of his throat, so he wouldn’t have to taste it. “There? Have I pleased my gaoler now?”

“What a good little soldier.”

Rian felt an unexpected stab of what had to be homesickness. “What did you say?”

“Excuse me? What did I say about what, Rian Becket?”

“Never mind. You just reminded me of someone for a moment.”

“And who would this be? A lady love?”

Rian smiled, shook his head. “A female, yes, but no, not a lady love. A pest.”

“Ah, then we will dispense with your memory of her.” Lisette took the empty glass from him and placed it and the tray on the grass. “Walk with me, Rian. We won’t have many more days this warm and pretty. It’s already October.”

“Don’t you have other duties?” he asked her, his mind still half on Fanny, on the last time he’d seen her. At the Duchess of Richmond’s ball? Yes, she’d looked so young and beautiful, and so very frightened as the Call to Arms rang throughout the city. But Brede would have ordered both her and his sister out of Brussels, to somewhere safe. He shouldn’t worry about her. Besides, Fanny always landed on her feet.

“I do have other duties, yes, but they’ll still be patiently waiting for me when I turn to them. Come now, exercise that leg with a stroll around the gardens. You must be stiff from sitting and pouting for so long.”

He shoved thoughts of his sister to the back of his brain, where they rested comfortably, as he really didn’t wish to be bothered with anything even resembling serious thought. As Lisette said, the day was beautiful. Too beautiful for deep thoughts. “You’re attempting to goad me into getting better, aren’t you? You’ve grown tired of being my faithful nurse.”

“Weary unto death, yes. And is it working? My goading?” she asked, smiling, her clear blue eyes twinkling mischievously as she slipped her arm through his.

“I’m not dead, so I suppose so.”

They walked in silence for a good ten minutes before Rian felt himself beginning to flag, his thigh aching, and they sat down side-by-side on a stone bench in the shade.

“So you’ll ask me no questions?”

“Questions?” He blinked several times, attempting to marshal his thoughts. Did he have questions? Of course he did. Something about this house? The man who owned this house? Was that it? Damn, he really should care more. Shouldn’t he? “No. No questions. Yes. One question. Will you come to me again tonight?”

“If you want me, yes,” Lisette said, boldly sliding her hand onto his sore thigh, the warmth of her palm bringing him a strange comfort. “I feel safe when I’m with you, Rian Becket.”

“Safe? Of course you’re safe. I’m weak as a kitten, and couldn’t possibly harm you. And what is there to fear here, Lisette? Flowers, trees, birdsong. Good food and soft beds—you in my bed. We could be in Heaven, Lisette, in Eden. I float through days and weeks of Paradise.”

Or I’m in Limbo, he added silently, fighting the comfortable fog that seemed to roll stealthily into his mind every afternoon, eventually sending him back to his bed. He’d been better, yesterday. Better today. But perhaps he’d done too much, been thinking too much? Oh, look, a butterfly….

“My employer,” Lisette told him quietly, lowering her gaze to her shoe tops. “He returns in less than a week. I know he was a friend to my parents, and I thank him for his kindness in taking me into this place during a time of war, hiding me. I am, after all, considered to be English. But lately he…he looks at me. He says things. That there is no need for me to insist on being a servant, earning my own keep. He suggests…things. I will leave here before he returns this time, and I wish you gone by then as well. The others have gone, and yet you’re still here. My…my employer may have grown weary of being your benefactor, Rian Becket, and when I am gone there will be no one to care for you. If he shows you the door, where will you go, what will you do?”

Rian turned on the bench, looking at Lisette just as she quickly wiped a single tear from her cheek. The rapid turn made his head spin, and he fought to refocus his eyes and his thoughts. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Lisette he was weak as a kitten, and still obviously unable to spend a full day out of his bed. A walk in the gardens had sapped all of his strength, all of his will. “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Tell…tell me more about this man.”

Lisette shook her head, let the curtain of silky sunlight hide her face as she looked down at the hands now demurely clasped in her lap. “What else is there to know?”