After the War Is Over by Jennifer Robson Read Free Book Online

wasn’t . . . how could it be possible that he had done such a thing? For months
     she had grieved for him, had agonized over his brutal end, and all the while he had
     been alive and perfectly able to relieve her suffering, and that of everyone else
     who loved him.
    “How could you? Have you any idea what it did to Lilly? To all of us?”
    He met her gaze steadily, unflinchingly. “I know. But I was certain I would die, sooner
     rather than later, and I didn’t want anyone to know the whole of it.”
    “She didn’t care. None of us cared about that. We only wanted you back.”
    “And here I am,” he said, his mouth twisting into a fine imitation of a smile.
    “Edward, I—”
    “No more, please. Not today. I haven’t slept for days, and I may just collapse in
     a heap if I’m forced to talk about this much more.”
    “Will you at least talk to Robbie?” she pressed.
    “He’s been grumbling to you, hasn’t he?”
    “I think he’s right to be worried.”
    He sat up straight and looked down his fine, proud, aristocratic nose at her. “You
     think he’s right ? Whatever can you know of it?”
    “I was a nurse. I took care of men like you. I saw how they suffered.”
    “Men like me ? You mean the crackpots, shaking and stammering, covering their ears whenever a door
     slams shut? You think I’m like them ?”
    “There’s no shame in it—”
    “Of course there is. Everything about it is shameful, beginning with the way people
     like you talk about it. As if you know. As if anyone who wasn’t there can possibly
     understand.”
    “I didn’t say I understand.”
    “ Don’t . Don’t even think it. Your problem, Charlotte Brown, is that you believe you can
     fix everything. But you can’t fix me. Nothing can, save oblivion. The same oblivion
     I was desperate for, but was denied by well-meaning doctors and nurses like you. So
     save me your concern and your pity. They’re wasted on me, and we both know it.”
    “Edward,” she whispered.
    He heaved himself to his feet and walked away, his limp achingly pronounced, and though
     his mother caught at his arm, he shrugged free of her grasp and continued on, leaving
     the reception behind, it seemed, for good.
    If she had thought herself uncomfortable before, it was as nothing compared to now,
     when every last pair of eyes in the room was focused accusingly on her. She knew what
     they were thinking. Who was that drab little nobody in the corner? And what had she
     said to upset Lord Cumberland so thoroughly?
    Lilly came to her then, took her arm, and, with Robbie, led her away. Soon they were
     in a carriage and en route to Mrs. Collins’s boardinghouse in Camden Town.
    Her friend tried to be reassuring. “Don’t look so upset. Edward has been like this
     for months. I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve been speaking about something
     and he takes offense and stalks off.”
    “I did upset him. That’s the problem. I pressed at him about the war—it was so crass
     of me, so unfeeling. I ought not to have said anything.”
    “If none of us says a thing, though, how will we get to the bottom of what’s troubling
     him?” asked Robbie. “If we care about him at all we have to press on.”
    “I suppose you’re right. Although I won’t be here to help. Perhaps if I were to write
     to him . . . ?”
    “Let him stew,” Lilly insisted. “In the meantime, we have ever so much to talk about.
     I want to hear all about your new friends at the Misses Macleods’, and all about work,
     and your parents, too. And especially I want to hear what it was like when you cast
     your vote. I’m terribly envious, you know.”
    Robbie had to return to work, so it was just Lilly and Charlotte and Mrs. Collins
     at table that evening. Though it washeavenly to be with her friend again, and to hear of her wedding plans and her hopes
     for university and her happiness with Robbie, Charlotte’s thoughts were never far
     from Edward. The brother and