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Hugh asked, looking John up
and down with a sneer.
    "Indeed," John replied.
    "Well," Hugh said, as he kept going up the
steps. "Be careful with the food. I hear a lot of men don't even
make it to battle, for shitting their guts out."
    John kept descending. "As elegant as ever,
Montrose," he said dryly.
    A groom brought his horse to the front of the
castle, and Ned came running from the lawn to say goodbye. His
cheeks were permanently flushed, and seemed redder than usual as he
exclaimed, "I say, John, take care, will you? And bring me
something back!"
    "What, a Frenchman's skull or an Indian
bride?"
    Ned spluttered with laughter. "I'd rather
have the skull."
    John was on his horse already. "Who knows, by
the time I return you might like the bride better."
    He touched his brother's head and rode off,
taking the path through the woods, as he always did, and as a
girl knew that he did. And sure enough, there was a horse blocking
the road with Miss Georgiana on it, looking as beautiful, in John's
opinion, as any creature had any right to.
    He dismounted and walked over to her, picking
her up by the waist and setting her down in front of him.
    "John, you are so magnificent in that
uniform, though I hate it more than anything!" she cried.
    "You are ever full of contradictions!"
    She put her gloved hands on his chest. Her
eyes had filled with tears.
    "What's this, George? If you weep you'll be
made quite ugly, and I shan't want to come back."
    But her tears had spilled over in spite of
her efforts and John had lied, because he was already holding her
close and kissing her.
    "If someone should come by..." she said with
a small sob after they had kissed for a while.
    "They can be hanged."
    She laughed. "True! There are many trees here
from which to hang them, too!"
    Georgiana lifted her face to be kissed some
more: this was all she would have of John for months, perhaps
years.
    "John...Will you write?"
    "I think I won't have time to fight, as
everyone keeps asking me to write!"
    "Good!"
    "But I shan't write very long letters to you,
as you are no reader. And I am not sure I will understand anything
you write to me, with that shocking spelling of yours."
    John saw Georgiana's eyes go up and to the
right, and he realized that she was trying to spell the
word  shocking  in her head. He began to laugh, and
to kiss her face, "It is very hard to leave, when you are so
adorable..."
    "Then don't leave!" She put her cheek against
his neck, not wanting to see the regret on his face.  "I can
tell you what my letters shall say: that my older sisters are
hateful, and my younger ones adorable, that papa is the dearest
papa in the world, that I visit your mother often to talk of you
and to sneak into your room and look at your things, that I visit
the Earl to comfort him and that..."
    He waited; he would make her say it.
    "...and that I long for nothing but you!"
    John rocked her a little. "And my letters to
you will always be the same as well. I shall write that I have
survived another day, that army food is terrible, that I had a
fever or a chill but recovered, that India is very hot. I shall
never tell you battle stories because they are the most tedious
stories that a man can tell. I shall write that no one has more
beautiful eyes than you, or creamier skin, or lips that I long to
kiss, and that I want to come back and keep kissing you."
    "And be married, please," she asked, like a
little girl.
    "And be married, please," he agreed,
laughing.
    He had already  defyled  her
by kissing her on the day of the race, and a few times since then,
so Georgiana stood with her arms around his neck and her lips to
his until he had to go. Then, unlike his mother, since she hadn't
yet lived long enough to disguise her strongest emotions, she stood
weeping on the path as he rode away, and this time he didn't look
back, because he didn't want to see his girl crying.
     

Five. A Letter

    A letter was dispatched to India two years
later. It read:

    June 17th,