* * *
—
Charlotte had given up her morning rides on Pharaoh ever since she realized she was pregnant. She missed riding him, and meeting Henry along the way.
A week after his birthday, Henry received the notice he’d been expecting for months. He had to report for training in five days, at Catterick Camp in North Yorkshire, the largest training camp of the British Army. He’d already had a physical exam in Leeds, with an A1 designation. His training would last six weeks, and at the beginning of December, he would ship out, and he had no idea where. It was suddenly very real, and Henry and Charlotte spent every night wide awake, making love and talking until nearly dawn. His going to war terrified them both, especially now that they were married and had a baby on the way. The whole house was subdued, with the prospect of Henry leaving for the army. His mother looked panicked, and his father seemed to have aged overnight.
Charlotte’s letters to her parents and sisters were brief during Henry’s last days at home. She explained that the Hemmingses’ son was reporting for duty, as had been expected, and that they were all upset to see him go. Her mother wrote back sympathetically and wished him well. It was the first time Charlotte had mentioned him in any detail and Alexandra commented to their mother that Charlotte sounded sad about his leaving too.
“You don’t suppose Charlotte is in love with him, do you?” Victoria commented to them when they got her most recent letter, which sounded extremely serious. The queen brushed it off as an absurd idea.
“Of course not. He’s just a child, and so is your sister. If she was in love with him, she’d have mentioned it before. She’s barely said two words about him until now. I do feel sorry for his mother, though. It must be very hard to see your only child go to war. They sound like lovely people from the correspondence I’ve had from his mother. Charles said they’re older, and the countess has suggested her husband is in poor health. I do hope Charlotte isn’t a burden to them. Maybe she’ll cheer them up once their boy is away.”
“He may be barely more than a boy, but that’s who’s fighting this war, Mother,” Victoria said tartly, but she decided that her mother was right. Charlotte had hardly ever mentioned him, and she certainly would have if he mattered to her, which made a romance seem unlikely, and Victoria always thought her younger sister childish and overprotected by their mother because of her asthma, which had apparently improved in Yorkshire, or so she said in her letters. Victoria had enjoyed the last four months without her younger sister afoot, although she was starting to miss her, not acutely, but she admitted to Alexandra that she missed arguing with her, which seemed perverse.
* * *
—
The Hemmingses took Henry to the station on the appointed day with the train warrant the army had sent him. Charlotte and Lucy came too, to see him off. Lucy looked longingly at him, and dared to kiss his cheek when she said goodbye to him, and then Henry took Charlotte in his arms and kissed her in front of everyone, as though they had nothing to hide, which made Lucy furious, although she didn’t show it. She would have liked him to kiss her that way, but he never had. She silently blamed Charlotte for stealing her rightful place in his affections. She had caught him by sleeping with him and being a whore.
“Take care of yourself,” he whispered to Charlotte. He was hoping to come home on a brief leave before he shipped out, but he had no idea if they’d allow him to or if there would be time. This might be the last he saw of them for a very long while. He kissed his mother’s cheek, shook hands with his father, wished Lucy well and kissed Charlotte again, and then boarded the train, and stood waving from the compartment. He opened the window so he could lean out and see them until they disappeared from sight.
They were a somber, silent group when they went back to the house, each of them lost in their own thoughts about him. Lucy went into the kitchen as she did every night, with tears in her eyes now, thinking of Henry, and Charlotte went to lie down. All she wanted to do was think about him and keep the image of him in her mind.
His parents retired to their room, and the countess looked red-eyed when they came down to dinner a few minutes late. The earl was subdued and barely talked. Life at Ainsleigh Hall was going to be very different without Henry. The vitality seemed to have slipped out of the place. Everyone went to bed right after dinner that night.
For Lucy, it was a relief not to see Henry hovering over Charlotte, or know that he was next door in her arms at night. She could cherish her fantasies again, now that he was gone, and hoped he missed her. She and Charlotte hardly spoke to each other anymore, just to chat. The rivalry between them, for Henry’s affections, had been too strong. Lucy had never been in that race, no matter how hard she tried, but she chose not to see it that way. She still believed that Henry would have fallen in love with her eventually if Charlotte hadn’t come along. As she saw it, Charlotte had stolen her dreams from her.