His uniform marked him as a soldier from the war, but little else did. He did not come in and stand at attention or announce his rank, but moved like a shadow to hang his cloak. He carried no saber, but she had learned many of the officers had abandoned these in the face of the artillery.
That new invention of the battlefield must have left its mark on him as she had no other explanation for his face. Nearly half of it had curdled into a terrible pink scar, the eye misshapen, what remained of the nose pulled into deformity by the new restrictions of his skin.
She had never seen such a thing before, causing her to pull the sheets to her. Her reaction stopped him, the toes of his boots just at the line of light the room’s narrow window threw across the floor. She expected her reaction to anger him, but if any was there it passed quickly. With felt bicorn in hand, his eyes fell to the floor. “My apologies, mademoiselle. I had heard you were a woman of great compassion. I will not trouble you if my appearance is as monstrous as I feared.” He stood there a long moment, then moved to return to the coatrack.
“Wait,” she commanded him. When he looked back at her, she studied him for a time. Finally, she pulled the sheets away, revealing her nakedness and making room for him on the bed. “Take off your clothes and lie with me,” she ordered. “We will talk and tell the truth like children. What is good. What is bad. Most of all, we will speak of our loneliness.”
See the author’s published work here.
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