The Soldier's Poisoned Heart

She directed the last question at John Paul, who pressed himself up with some difficulty from the bed. His legs hurt.

"Absolutely."

He hobbled a little way behind them, except for Lydia, who slowed purposefully to match his pace. He didn't tell her how thankful he was for it.

The night passed uneventfully.

Rather, John Paul returned home and Mark helped him back up the steps. He didn't go all the way to the third floor; it seemed a bridge too far, and there were plenty of empty bedrooms, seemingly all of them having been filled piecemeal over the past few months. He slipped into one of the beds and fell asleep near immediately.

He woke feeling surprisingly rested. He had been so exhausted from the trip the day before that he fell asleep readily, effortlessly. He didn't dream; he was too exhausted for it.

His bones still hurt; he rose earlier than he would have otherwise preferred, but the throbbing of his knees was such that he couldn't have gone back to sleep. So he rose. There was a sound of working downstairs, much to his surprise.

He reached out for the cane he'd left on the bed-side table and used it to push himself up, and then took his time in walking to the stairs. He leaned hard on the bannister; he was glad for the renovations, because the structure bore his full weight, though it was much less than when he had moved in.

He saw the carpenters working on the floors. They were installing a dense parquet pattern; for a moment, John Paul was puzzled. He certainly hadn't cleared any such work, and they had come to him for nearly every step of the operation before this. Further, such a complex pattern almost certainly had to be more expensive than simply laying down lumber; that was an expense that he had by no means cleared, and there they were incurring it.

And then he saw Henry. He was leaning against the wall, standing in the hallway opposite the stairs. He hadn't seen his uncle yet, but he feared it was only a matter of time, Eventually the boy had to notice him.

He slid down to the ground and started to drag himself across the floor. Using the cane was noisy; he couldn't afford to risk being heard by using it, but neither could he afford to stay there. There were too many questions.

He had always been clear with Henry; he was the head of the house, and as such he needed to be consulted before money was spent. Particularly additional expenses, particularly household expenses. That he hadn't been was a surprise.

He thought for a moment before he decided that it was probably innocent, however. He was becoming paranoid as his illness spread, that was all. He had blamed even Lydia for it, for a brief period. He sat back against the wall.

More likely he wasn't doing anything dubious whatsoever; he was probably just finishing the work for his uncle as a present, knowing how much his condition had deteriorated in the past few months.

With that in mind, John Paul found himself feeling very foolish indeed. What sort of madness was taking his mind that he was blaming anyone, on any evidence whatsoever, for his malady? He frowned. There was a good deal he had done in his life that he had come to regret, and more than likely this was his just

reward for those misdeeds.

He stood back up and slipped back into his bed. There was nothing he could do when he was hardly able to stand up. It was only a few weeks until the wedding. Then he could turn his attention in the days that followed toward putting every effort into recovering from whatever had laid him so low. He only had to make it a few more days. And the best medicine, he thought, was to sleep.

Chapter 19

For a few hours in the morning, John Paul had seriously been considering the notion of going into town with Mark and greeting his old army mates properly. It would have been a nice gesture, and even when he'd come to his senses, the colonel was frustrated by the fact of his own absence. It was rude, to say the least, and he had been looking quite a good deal forward to seeing them; even still, it was hardly any sort of problem if he couldn't meet anyone.

They would, after all, be coming straight to the estate. He had rooms and food enough to keep a half-dozen men for a few days without much difficulty. He let his nephew talk him out of it, trying to keep up the show of disappointment and annoyance. He would let them talk him out of going, but he wouldn't make it seem as if he were happy about it. First because he wasn't happy about it, of course, but also because it was shameful enough being barely able to stand for a prolonged period. To have accepted it…John Paul shuddered. He hadn't, though, so it was better not to dwell on it.

He pushed himself up out of the chair when they had left to lean against the door frame and watch the carriage trundle down the road. They would be back in a few hours with his old friends. He was worried what they would say when they saw him. Perhaps no one would comment on it at all; he had seen men balloon to twice their size after getting out of the army, so perhaps deteriorating as he had was simply the outside case and they'd seen his like before. Not that it was especially likely.

He pushed himself away from the wall and caught himself with his cane, moving slowly to the north wall. They'd had a bookshelf put there, and he had asked Henry to move his books down to it after bringing his supper a month ago. He had the boy bring him books on occasion, and then take back down the ones he had finished, but he hadn't been in a mood for reading. It seemed as if he were too exhausted for all of it; his mind too foggy and too preoccupied with the wedding.

He wasn't any less preoccupied, but he needed a distraction, and it would be several hours without going back up the stairs to nap the afternoon away, so reading seemed the best way to pass the time. He stood there trying to decide which book to read when Thomas joined him from the kitchen.

"Oh, sir, you're still here."

"Of course," John Paul replied grouchily.

"I just assumed you would be going into town."

"Yes, well. My nephew says I'm 'too ill' to take the trip; he would rather I stayed here, and I'm in no position to argue with him, am I?"

"I suppose not, sir. Would you like something to eat?"

John Paul didn't answer for a moment, examining the shelf again before he started hobbling back over to a chair. Thomas rushed to help him, grabbing his arm and helping to prop him up.

"I can make it myself, Thomas! Don't coddle me like an old man." The colonel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I have a few hours to spend here; I don't suppose it would be trouble to prepare something to eat?"