XXI:

16 December, 1916
Coxcomb Cottage
London
England

It was well past dinnertime when Harry final stepped through the door and he felt a pang of guilt – but not too much guilt. After all, he had managed – only just – to thwart an attempt on the King's life. His knee was buggered and he'd been shot in the shoulder, but…

"My lord," the butler greeted, "may I –"

Harry frowned. "No, you may not. Please pour me a glass of whiskey – a tall one, no water." He flinched and cringed in pain as he struggled to remove his coat. "Where is Lady Pearce?"

"Abed, my lord. She has been unwell today, and did not wish to take supper until you arrived."

Damn fool woman, Harry found himself cursing inwardly. Of course she would wait for him all night, even when it was obvious he was detained. It only made sense because it was Ruth. If he didn't love her so much, he would be affronted by her lack of self-preservation since she'd returned from France.

"Put some bread and cheese on a board and bring it up," Harry instructed brusquely, accepting the glass of whiskey. He drank it, glad of a different kind of fire to suffuse his limbs. The risk of infection and sepsis was all too real, and he was all too familiar with the kind of pain that blood infections could cause; he was just going to have to be on the look out for any changes at all over the next few days. "She's been ill, you said?"

"Unwell, my lord."

"Is there a difference?" Harry grumbled.

"There is, but I should let my lord decide for himself which is more accurate," the butler said with a delicate cough. "My lady has been insisting on unwell."

"Then unwell it shall be," Harry said with a heavy sigh. "Will you send someone up to attend to my dress shortly? I cannot very well do it on my own," he pointed out, gesturing at his useless arm in its sling. "After that, we will not require waking in the morning. I am not to work until this is healed."

"If I may inquire –"

"I took the full brunt of a madman with an old dueling pistol," Harry said dismissively. "It's a wonder he could aim at all. Long live the King, because the rest of us sods don't stand a chance – if we're not being shot at in France, we're being shot at in Buckingham Palace." He tried to keep his tone light, but he had had no qualms in wrenching the pistol from the man's hands and bludgeoning him with one well-appointed blow to the head that had killed him instantly.

There would be no assassination or revolution on Harry's watch.

That was why he was there: because he knew things and seemed so unassuming, just another rotund Army man gone to seed. And yet…

Harry heaved a heavy sigh and took the steps slowly, trying not to show just how much pain he was in. He didn't want Ruth to worry when she saw him, though that was most likely a futile hope. She fretted more than anyone else he'd ever known.

The moment he opened the door to their bedroom, Ruth was on her feet. "Do you have any idea how worried I've – Harry, what happened to you?" Her voice trembled and she was gently touching him in a flash, trying to ascertain the extent of his injuries.

"Don't worry so," he said, gritting his teeth when her touch found his collarbone where the bruising was severe. "I stepped between His Majesty and a bullet. Nothing that a few day's rest won't cure, according to the doctors."

Her lips were trembling as she whispered, "Oh, Harry… how could you be so stupid? Your life is not – you are not dispensable." She was shaking with the effort of not giving in to her emotions, of letting loose and crying, and he found himself even more in awe of her strength and courage. "You cannot just –"

He kissed her very gently, the feather-light breath of a kiss against the satiny texture of her lips. "Ruth, who else, if not me?" he asked very softly. "It is my duty."

"And what about your duty to us – your family?" she asked.

He sighed. "Ruth…"

"No," she murmured. "You're right. Your loyalty to the crown above all else is… it is who you are." Her smile was sad, pained. "I know that, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have – I know I shouldn't make you choose."

He exhaled heavily. "They're bringing up a cheese plate and someone is going to help me change," Harry said softly. "I'm afraid I'm going to be very little use to anyone for a few days, at least."

"George is all right?" she asked softly.

Harry nodded. "He will live to see another attempt at treasonous murder another day," he commented wryly. "These men are bold as brass – they forged invitations to the investiture, then made themselves scarce until very few people were present." Harry shook his head and sighed. "There has to be a better way. If I'd not been there, conferring with Queen Mary about security for her shopping excursion tomorrow, I dread to think what might have happened."

Harry was tired, exhausted, and beginning to get a bit of tunnel vision from a combination of weariness, lack of food, and blood loss. Ruth propelled him to the bed and made sure he sat down as the world spun around him dizzily.

When the servant came to undress him, Harry helped as much as he could, but it was a losing battle. By the time he'd managed to eat a couple pieces of cheese and a chunk of bread, he was far too tired to protest when Ruth tucked him into bed like a child.

"You've been unwell," he stated as she pulled the counterpanes and duvet up over him.

"Servants gossip," she sighed, but didn't deny it. "It's nothing, Harry; I'm fine."

His eyes narrowed. "Ruth –"

"It is nothing compared to being shot," she amended upon hearing his warning tone. "I'll be all right, Harry. I just felt very dizzy and ill to my stomach after taking tea with your father after luncheon."

His frown grew. "Why was my father here?"

"To inspect your new wife; why else?" she said with a sad smile. "I'm afraid he has judged us both and found us wanting – but none of that matters right now. Are you in pain? Shall I get another pillow to help you get comfortable?"

"I want you to come to bed," he said. "You don't look at all well, darling… eat some of my dinner, will you please?"

She paled even more, and he could see the strain in her neck as she swallowed. He was not blind: she was decidedly ill, and turning away her food was an act of self-preservation. "I don't think I can, Harry, I am sorry," Ruth said very quietly.

"Sweetheart, come tell me what's the matter." He patted the blankets with his good hand, trying to entice her. He had a suspicion, a nagging suspicion that grew louder in his head by the moment, but he needed her confirmation.

"My traitorous body is the matter," she huffed.

That was all the confirmation he needed. "Oh, Ruth," Harry sighed, torn between the urge to proudly thump himself on the chest in caveman style for having gotten her into the predicament – again – and the urge to hold her close because of what she felt was an inevitability: the loss of another child. "We were so careful…"

"It's very early," she said, nervously chewing on her thumbnail. "We shouldn't make plans." The look on her face tore him apart; she was already mourning, already planning for a funeral for their next child. "I've lost two pregnancies since France," she reminded him very quietly.

"Then you'd best rest," he advised.

She snorted and waved her hand dismissively. "And then you go and get yourself shot and make me worry more –"

"Ruth," Harry said firmly, "my injury will heal. Don't fret so – I am used to pain. You don't need to fawn over me. But you do need to take very good care of yourself right now."

She shook her head and sighed. "I… the one thing I'm meant to do is to give you an heir and I may not be able to –"

"I didn't marry you to be my brood mare," he huffed. "To be frank, I don't care if we ever were to have another child between us, Ruth. My father worries about passing on a legacy, and I just do not give a tinker's damn."

"You don't?"

"I am a selfish man," he said, uncertain how to put his feelings into words.

"I think the word you are looking for is 'selfless'," she contradicted, her smile tight and sad, obviously still mindful of the fact that only just that day, only a few inches from death, he'd still stood on the wall, protecting them – King, country, family…

"No," he said softly. "I am a selfish man, the worst kind of a selfish man, Ruth. I have been patient, I have given my all for so many years with no hope of honor or return of said fealty, but now that I have you… I will give anything not to lose you. Anything at all. And if that means denying my urges in order to protect you, to keep you safe –"

"Bit of a moot point now," she said, a hint of her Scots accent creeping in around the edges of the words. "And that does not make you a selfish man. It makes you a man like any other, Harry – I know you care to see yourself as uncaring, unfeeling… but it simply is not so. And I know you're in pain right this moment, but you won't say anything because you think it will distress me more. Is there anything at all that I can get for you?"

"No," he grunted. He wasn't about to medicate himself, to float away on a cloud of oblivion. He needed to be present and grounded and there. "Christ, I'm too old for this," Harry muttered.

"Then retire."

"It isn't that simple."

"I know," she murmured, joining him in bed beneath the blankets. "I know."

Just the simple act of sharing the edges of his dark fears was enough to calm him into restful repose. She curled up against his good side, holding him loosely in a way so as not to impart more pain, and together, they slept soundly for the first time in days.

19 December, 1916
Coxcomb Cottage
London
England

Harry's cheeks were still flushed pink with fever, sweat breaking out in angry rivulets that dribbled from his forehead to his chin, but he did not complain about the pain as the doctor lanced his skin and drained infected pus and fluid from around his shoulder wound. He met Ruth's gaze with a kind of confidence that she envied, as if this were just another thing, when they both knew that he was not at all well.

The doctor stitched the new, smaller, wounds, and administered a wicked vial's worth of penicillin to Harry, who didn't flinch, only continued to stare at her as if to say, "this will not be the end of me".

"Lady Pearce, you must call again if the fever gets worse, or if more pockets of infection appear," the doctor said, jarring her abruptly back to the hard planes of reality. "General Pearce is doing quite well, considering."

Ruth nodded and said, "He is stubborn."

"Perhaps too stubborn – he has refused all pain medication."

"I know," she mumbled, glancing at her husband again. "Bloody awful man." Her words were tinged with unhampered devotion and gentle emotion, despite their vernacular to the contrary.

"And as for you – how is your nausea?"

Ruth shook her head. "I'm more worried for his sake than my own. I'm keeping down tea and toast."

"Well, do try to eat a bit more than that," the doctor sighed. "You cannot care for your husband very well if you are weaker than he is."

"Yes," she agreed simply as he packed up his tools and took his leave. Once they were alone in the room, she moved back to the chair at Harry's side, watching him intently. "You stupid fool of a man," she whispered, stroking the bedcovers. "Why can you not but behave in a way that isn't noble to a fault?"

"You're worse off than I am," he rasped weakly.

"I cannot keep food down, but you're delirious from fever," she objected.

"Not delirious, just muddled." The parts of his face that weren't flushed were a stark white, a reminder that he was in more dire straits than he cared to admit. "Woke up and thought I was in the jungle; I don't know how long I sat here, thinking the blankets were a snake."

"That isn't funny at all," Ruth said, her voice cracking. "Oh, Harry –"

"I'll be fine," he grumbled. "You eat something."

"I can't at the moment," she murmured.

He sighed heavily. "It won't do to have both of us under the weather."

"You call this under the weather?" she countered.

"I don't intend to die from this minor inconvenience, if that's what you're inferring," he said with a stoically laughable haughty dignity that made her bite her lip to keep from laughing at him. "You, on the other hand, my dear, will waste away to nothing at all if you don't eat to keep up your strength."

"Harry, I would eat if I was certain I can keep food on my stomach – but your child is making me quite ill. More so than Marie and Elena ever did."

He raised a brow. "I assume Henry was the same?"

She frowned, then nodded. "I had constant migrims and could barely eat a crust with him," she admitted. "Then one day, it stopped and I was suddenly out of my corset." She didn't remember the time with any fondness, as distraught as she had been emotionally, so laid bare and to absolute waste, coupled with such illness. She had been sick during her own wedding – though, bless him, George had been extremely good to her and had done everything in his power to help.

Harry exhaled shakily, nodding. "I am sorry."

"Don't you dare," she scolded gently, stroking his good hand before clasping it between her own. She kissed his knuckles, giving thanks that he was at least there and not in the middle of the trenches again, where an infection like his was a death sentence. "It is not your fault."

"How can you say that when I am the architect of our unhappiness for so long?" he asked. His cheeks were bright red now, the skin around his eyes and lips both sallow yellow and white, his eyes glassy from his fever which raged unchecked. "If I had never sought you out –"

"If you had never sought me out, I would not know how love is meant to be," she said softly, pulling his hand gently to place it over her heart. "It is worth it, in spite of the heartache, the… everything. In spite of everything we have endured, I would not wish it away for the world."

He grunted, closing his eyes for a long moment. "Come lie with me," Harry pleaded softly.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't – you can't," he sighed.

"Can't I?" she asked softly.

"Ruth, come here," he insisted. She finally did as he bade, curling up beside him and relaxing ever so slightly, which had clearly been his intent. "I have survived worse illness than this. And I have so much to live for; don't think that I will be cowed so easily." He hugged her around the waist and smirked. "Besides, love, I think His Majesty would be very cross if I expired before he could honor me some more."

Her lips twitched into a smile despite her worry. "Oh, Harry…"

"Let me tell you about malaria – yellow fever," he amended. "It is a nasty disease. You will get more and more unwell and either you die or you live. And it doesn't just go away: I had a recurrence right after I almost lost my leg. And every time I've had the bloody nightmare, I've been unable to stop myself from dreaming about you. You saved my life, Ruth, in your own way. I wanted to keep going so I could tell you off to your face."

"I've already apologized," she murmured.

"I know you have," he whispered, pressing a kiss into her hair. "And the words were magic to my ears. Will you stay with me until I am well enough to –"

"You don't even need to ask," she murmured.

"Ruth, Ruth, my beautiful Ruth… however could I have managed without you for so long?" His words were soft as he drifted back into fitful sleep.

12 September, 1915
France

Bodies everywhere, piled high. They were fools; they were all fools to have left the trenches. But the order had been to push forward, to try to drive the Germans back even just a few feet. The trenches were full of wounded, dead…

Harry was on his belly in the mud, praying that darkness would fall quickly, so he could make his way back to the trenches. His knee was shattered and moving was an agony, but if he so much as made a sound, he would be shot by a sniper, so he gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw, and prayed for death – or nightfall, whichever came first.

He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he did, by some miracle, manage to survive long enough to get away. Would he be sent to the wolves? Would he be treated as a hero or as a traitor?

The pain was nearly overwhelming; his knee was exposed to the mud, and he could feel the ooze beginning to clog his wound. He closed his eyes and held absolutely still, emptying his mind of everything but her.

Every moment they had spent together played in his mind over and over again, and he felt a pang of such dismay and anger in the pit of his stomach that his eyes snapped open again.

The darkness was thick, cloying, and he used it for cover like a blanket, dragging himself back to camp before keeling over completely, giving in to the oblivion that he was desperate to feel.

He did not allow himself the luxury of any thoughts of her at all during his recovery.

She was married and he was alone.

Alone and so tired of being the one to stand on the wall.

So tired.