A Rose for Major Flint
Louise Allen
‘I FIGHT DIRTY, I KILL FOR A LIVING AND I’M NOT CAPABLE OF BEING FAITHFUL.’The words might come straight from Major Adam Flint’s mouth, but they certainly don’t describe the man who saved vulnerable Rose’s life. Yes, Flint is illegitimate, a roughened soldier and an incorrigible rake – but Rose has never met a man so defined by honour.Who else, when faced with a lady rendered memory-less by the traumas of war, would resist the intense attraction that burns between them? Rose might not know her own name, but she knows her heart – and her heart wants Flint!Brides of Waterloo: Love Forged On The Battlefield…
BRIDES OF WATERLOO
Love forged on the battlefield
Meet Mary Endacott, a radical schoolmistress, Sarah Latymor, a darling of the ton, and Catherine ‘Rose’ Tatton, a society lady with no memories of her past.
Three very different women united in a fight for their lives, their reputations and the men they love.
With war raging around them, the biggest battle these women face is protecting their hearts from three notorious soldiers …
Will Mary be able to resist Colonel Lord Randall? Find out in
A Lady for Lord Randall by Sarah Mallory
Discover how pampered Lady Sarah handles rakish Major Bartlett in
A Mistress for Major Bartlett by Annie Burrows
What will happen when Major Flint helps Lady Catherine ‘Rose’ Tatton discover her past? Find out in
A Rose for Major Flint by Louise Allen
AUTHOR NOTE (#uc7aabf29-c920-55a2-969b-d6d8006770f9)
The opening scene of this book has been with me for some time—as has a mental picture of Adam Flint. But I was not sure exactly who he was or why the girl he rescued was on the battlefield. When I began to explore the world of Brides of Waterloo with authors Sarah Mallory and Annie Burrows I knew immediately that Flint would fit perfectly with the other two Randall’s Rogues to make a perfect trio of hellraisers, and so I set out with him to find out who ‘Rose’ was.
Working with fellow authors is always a wonderful opportunity to create an even deeper and richer world than is possible with just one book. Each of the Brides of Waterloo novels stands alone, but if you read them together you’ll catch glimpses of all our heroes and heroines in each book.
The realisation of who Rose is presents a challenge to Flint’s honour, but also to the heart he does not believe he possesses. I hope you enjoy discovering how one hard, scarred, self-sufficient man finds happiness with a woman who is prepared to risk everything she is, everything she has, for love.
A Rose for Major Flint
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk (http://louiseallenregency.co.uk), @LouiseRegency (http://twitter.com/louiseregency) and janeaustenslondon.com (http://janeaustenslondon.com)
To Sarah Mallory and Annie Burrows. It was such a pleasure exploring the Rogues and their world with you both.
Contents
Cover (#u613010ac-9014-5e71-93be-69c886588119)
Introduction (#uec547bf7-9971-5d2e-ae7f-d93f908fb6b9)
AUTHOR NOTE
Title Page (#uf3075f1a-cd6a-5244-aa6f-c65ef57c4f2f)
About the Author (#u4d48599c-b614-56be-9bc7-1a921155af07)
Dedication (#u0c7c4431-d350-53b3-9ba9-3522eff39a1f)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#uc7aabf29-c920-55a2-969b-d6d8006770f9)
19th June 1815—the battlefield of Waterloo
The briar rose caught at her with grasping, thorny tentacles as she backed away. The pain was real, so this must all be real. The screaming inside her head made it difficult to think, but it hadn’t stopped, not since she had found Gerald. What was left of Gerald. He had seemed untouched until she had grasped his shoulder and turned him over.
The noise in her head hurt so much. She lifted her hands to try and clutch at it, squeeze it out, make it stop. Then she could think, then she would know what to do about...them. Her arms wouldn’t move. She looked down to the imprisoning briars, then up at what was coming towards her across the muddy, shell-ripped ruin of the spinney. This was real and this was hell and so those were demons. They laughed as they came, four of them, blood-soaked and mud-smeared, wild-eyed and ragged, baying like hounds on the hunt. She knew what they wanted, what they would do to her, even if she knew nothing else. Not her name, not how she had lived before this nightmare had begun, not how she had come to be here.
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing happened. Go away. Help me, someone. Help me! Nothing. Only the sound of her heartbeat racing. Only the sound of their laughter and the words that made no sense as they hit her like fistfuls of slime.
And then he came. He pushed aside the shattered, wilting branches, strode through the mud and the nameless, stinking filth. The Devil himself. He was big and dirty, bare-headed, stubble-jawed, blood-soaked. He had a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other and a smile like death on his blackened face. He roared at the demons and they turned, snarling, towards him. He shot the first and came on, stepped over the body and waited, waited until they were on him and then...
She closed her eyes, stayed in the darkness with the screaming in her head, the screaming from the demons, the Devil’s roars. She would be next. She had sinned and this was hell.
* * *
‘Open your eyes. Look at me. You are safe, they have gone.’ Gone to a much worse place, the scum. Flint looked down at the pistol in his left hand and the blood-streaked sword in his right, thrust one into his belt and pushed the blade of the other into a tussock until most of the gore was gone. He sheathed the sword and tried again. ‘Open your eyes.’
The woman was tall and slim and her hair, where it was not wet and matted, was a dark brown. Rose petals had fallen from the briar that held her. They were fragile, pale pink, incongruously beautiful on the ripped, soaking fabric of her gown, the tangle of her hair. Long lashes fanned over white cheeks and her mouth was slightly open. He could hear her breath coming in short, desperate pants like a trapped animal in a snare. She had bitten her lips and the sight, amidst so much carnage, touched him despite his defences. Angered him.
‘Let’s get you untangled.’ Flint kept his voice calm, used the firm tone that would steady an injured man. The briars tore at his hands, added to the bruises and cuts, the little rips of pain reminding him he was alive. After three days of hell, who would have thought it?
When he got her free she just stood there, swaying. Flint touched the back of his hand to her cheek, leaving a smear of blood on the cold skin. She flinched but her eyes opened, wide and dark, the pupils so distended he could not see the true colour.
‘What is your name?’ She stared blankly. Shock, certainly, and perhaps she did not speak English. He tried French, Dutch, German. No response, not a flicker. ‘My name is Flint. Major Adam Flint. Are you hurt?’
They hadn’t raped her, he had been in time to stop that, at least. The sound of their laughter had brought him here at a run. He had heard that unmistakeable excitement too often when men had poured into a besieged, defeated city and found the women and the girls. Children. Sometimes you could be in time. Often, not. Badajoz...
Still she stood there, a breathing statue. She must be a camp follower, but he couldn’t leave her, not here. Her man, if he was still alive, would never find her, but others would. Flint put his arm around her, ignored the way her body shuddered at the touch, bent and swept the other arm under her knees to lift her against his chest. Pain stabbed from the sabre cut in his right side. The blood must have dried into his shirt and lifting her had ripped the wound open. He ignored it.
After a moment her arms slipped around his neck and she clung as he crossed the glade, stepped over the bodies. She was a reasonable armful, Flint thought as he found the track again and made for where he had left the men. Slim but not skinny, curved but not buxom. Feminine. Any other day he’d enjoy the feel of her against his body, but not now. Not here.
The men had sorted themselves out while he’d been away searching for that last missing private. Sergeant Hawkins looked up from the back of the ammunition wagon they had managed to patch back together that morning. ‘Any luck, Major?’ His right eyebrow—the left had been burned off in some half-forgotten skirmish when a gun had exploded—lifted as he saw Flint’s burden.
‘Jakes is dead.’ There was a chorus of muttered curses from the back of the cart. ‘I buried him.’ He’d rolled him into a shell hole and kicked earth on top of him, to be exact. Not a decent burial, even for an alley rat like Jakes, but it would keep the looters from his body.
‘We can all go then.’ Hawkins knew Flint would never leave a man alive on the field, even if it meant staying back himself until he’d exhausted all hope. ‘Get a shift on there, Hewitt! Get everyone stowed.’ He jerked his head towards the woman. ‘Not one of ours.’
‘No.’ Their camp followers were all safe back at Roosbos where they’d been stationed before the call to Quatre Bras, three days ago. Flint counted heads. ‘Thirteen.’ He’d lost the tally of the injured they’d sent back already, the dead they’d scratched graves for, but Hawkins had been jotting numbers down as they went. This was the lot.
‘Aye, thirteen including us, Major. She hurt?’
‘Don’t think so, I can’t see any wounds, but she’s not talking.’ In his arms she was as limp as a stunned hare. ‘Found her cornered by a pack of deserters back there.’
The one tattered eyebrow lifted in question. Hawkins knew what happened to lone women in the aftermath of battle. Flint shook his head. ‘No, I got there first.’
‘They won’t be troubling anyone else, then.’ Hawkins didn’t bother to ask how many constituted a pack, he’d seen Flint deal with scum like that before. ‘Wonder if she’ll scrub up any better than the last thing you picked up, Major.’
That had been Dog. Flint hoped the great shaggy beast had got out of this in one piece. Lord, but he must be tired if he was becoming sentimental.
‘I’d got ’em all packed in tight,’ Hawkins said. He shoved his shako back to scratch his thinning scalp. ‘Llewellyn and Hodge can walk. Where’ll we put her though?’
Flint went over and studied the cart. Two men leaned against it, one, with a rough bandage round his leg, sat on the shaft. Three men were laid out on the boards and the rest perched on the edge, fitting their feet and weapons in around the prostrate men as best they could. ‘Potts, you can ride well enough to manage one-handed. Get up on my horse, I’ll walk and we’ll squeeze this lass in your place.’
The man shuffled out awkwardly and jumped down, swearing under his breath as he jarred his wounded shoulder. The others moved up to make room and Flint swung the girl up on to the edge.
She turned her head, stared wide-eyed into the cart and then fastened her arms around his neck in a stranglehold. Where did anything so fragile and helpless get the strength?
‘I know they aren’t the prettiest sight you’ll ever see, but they’re good lads and they won’t hurt you.’ He tried again, but she clung like a burr, her breath panting in his ear. He could use force, but there was enough pain to wade through here without adding to it.
‘She looks terrified out of her wits, Major,’ one of the men said. ‘I don’t think it’s us, more like the blood an’ guts an’ all. We’ve done our best with Jimmy, but he’s no sight for a slip of a girl.’ He nodded towards one of the men on the floor, unconscious and, if there was any more mercy to spare for a scoundrel artilleryman, likely to die without waking up.
Flint reached into reserves of patience and kept his voice level. ‘Back you go, Potts, I’ll take her up in front of me.’ The sooner they got going, the more chance they had of getting everyone back alive. Except Jimmy. But at least he’d die with his mates round him. Randall’s Rogues didn’t leave their comrades behind—not if they were breathing, at any rate.
Potts was hauled back in. Hawkins mustered his two walking wounded, went to the head of the nag between the shafts and urged it forward while Flint studied the logistics of getting on to Old Nick with a woman attached to his torso. The big black Spanish stallion rolled an eye and curled back its upper lip to reveal yellow teeth.
‘Don’t even think of it, or I swear I’ll have your bollocks off,’ Flint said. How the damned animal had the energy to even contemplate biting anyone after the past few days he had no idea. ‘Come on, over here.’ There was a shattered wagon and he used it like a set of steps to get high enough to fling a leg over the saddle and settle down with his burden uncomfortably in front of him. ‘Stand!’ Old Nick shuffled his feet, but obeyed while Flint arranged her as best he could across his thighs. ‘Walk on.’
The rickety caravan set off on the twelve miles to Brussels. No distance at all when they rode with the guns. No distance at all to march on a reasonable road—but this was going to take a long time. He’d sent their guns with the fit officers and men of the unit back to muster behind the ridge for the return march to Brussels while he brought in the wounded and they’d be back well before his ragtag bunch.
Randall would be with them. Strange that he hadn’t seen the colonel since mid-afternoon the day before, but he’d have heard if he was seriously injured and certainly if he was dead. Same went for Bartlett, the unit’s wild man and resident rake. He was probably drinking claret and nursing his superficial cuts with his boots propped up on a gun carriage by now. Bartlett could find a decent claret anywhere and Dog would be there, too, waiting for his dinner.
That accounted for the officers and gentlemen. Which left him, an officer and definitely not a gentleman, the bastard in every sense of the word, to pick up the messy pieces.
Young Gideon Latymor was dead, cut down at Quatre Bras. He’d avoided thinking about Gideon and he wasn’t going to start now. He had more immediate matters than one dead half-brother on his hands. Literally.
He tried again. ‘What’s your name?’ The woman in his arms made no response. ‘Votre nom? Wat is je naam? Wie ist dein Name?’ Nothing. ‘My name is Flint. Adam Flint.’ Silence. A rose petal fluttered down from her hair, brushed his knuckles in the ghost of a kiss and fell to the mud. ‘Very well, then, I’ll call you...Rose.’
They rode on at walking pace, limited not so much by the two soldiers on foot but the decrepit horse pulling the cart. Lord only knew where Hawkins had stolen it from, some peasant’s stewpot probably, but horses were as rare as hens’ teeth after that carnage and they knew from bitter experience that trying to get Old Nick between the shafts would result in more casualties than they had already. The stallion was trained to fight and to kill and it regarded being a carthorse as grounds for murder.
It was like a traffic jam in Piccadilly, Flint thought with unaccustomed whimsy. If, that is, one imagined Piccadilly knee-deep in mud and water-filled ruts, and the other traffic consisting of groups of exhausted troops, rough carts jolting along full of men biting back cries of pain and staff officers, their elegant uniforms filthy and torn, directing carts here, men there. And all along the margins of the road soldiers were lying where they’d dropped, dead or dying amongst the fallen horses, their bodies swelling, already turning black in the wet heat. The stench was an almost solid thing, clogging nostrils and throats.
They got to a particularly boggy patch and Flint kicked his feet out of the stirrups so the two artillerymen on foot could grip the leathers and swing themselves through the mud. Old Nick was used to this, the standard way of getting unhorsed men off the field in a hurry, and ignored the extra weight.
* * *
Waterloo village, when they finally got that far, was jammed. Hawkins forced the cart on through the road between high banks and Flint saw the parish priest on the steps of the church, his head in his hands, as more and more bodies were piled up at his feet. On the other side of the street men were chalking names on doorposts where senior officers had been carried in. Ponsonby, he read. Damn, another good officer wounded. He hoped he was going to make it.
‘Rose?’ They cleared the village and struggled on. Her back, beneath his arm, was still rigid, her face still buried in the frogging of his uniform. He wouldn’t want to get that close to himself, he thought with a sour smile. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d washed, he must stink of sweat, black powder, wet wool and blood. A cautious sniff confirmed it and brought a hint of her own scent. Hot, terrified, wet woman. Mud. The faintest hint of herbs and lemon.
Puzzled, he lowered his head until he was almost nuzzling the tangled brown hair. She had rinsed it in rosemary and lemon juice. It seemed such a harmless, feminine thing to have done just before plunging into hell. He imagined her humming to herself as she brewed the rinse, washing her hair over a bucket somewhere in the lines of tents, pouring the decoction over her hair and combing it through. Her man would have been cleaning his weapon, polishing his harness perhaps, his preparations all directed at killing while hers took no account of battles at all.
‘What you going to do with her, sir?’ Flint jerked out of the daydream. Peters, hanging on to his stirrup leather, looked up at him, bright blue eyes bloodshot in his dirt-smeared face.
‘God knows. She needs women to look after her, but these peasants have too much on their hands to leave her with them.’ Flint tried to think. His side ached like the devil, the bangs and bruises and minor wounds were coming to life, his guts were empty, his thighs were getting pins and needles, and the men depended on him to get them back to Brussels more or less alive. He could do that, or fight another battle if he had to, but safely disposing of unwanted women, now that was another kettle of fish.
He shifted the girl into a more comfortable position, for him at least. ‘There’s a nunnery a couple of miles ahead. That’ll be the place.’ Problem solved. Cheered by the prospect of getting the stray off his hands, he said, ‘We’re almost at the nunnery, Rose. You’ll be better there, the sisters will look after you.’ She made no movement. Was she deaf as well?
‘Jimmy’s gone, Major,’ Potts called from the back of the cart.
Hell. Scurvy little sneak thief. And damned good artilleryman. This had been a very expensive battle. They would leave him at the convent, the nuns would bury him and he’d end up as close to heaven as any of the Rogues were likely to get.
‘Rest stop at the nunnery,’ he called and grinned, despite everything, at the chorus of coarse jokes that provoked.
* * *
‘Here...Rose...nuns...get down...safe...’ The Devil was talking to her, but the words jumbled in her head, half-drowned by the never-ending scream.
She tried to listen, to understand. Finally she managed to raise her head and focus. One of the tattered, bloody scarecrows was walking towards a high wall with a great gate in it. A bell clanged, jumbling the words in her head even more, and then a flock of great black crows flew out of the gate, flapping, waving hands, not wings. One of them came close, reached for her with long, pale claws.
‘Pauvre...monsieur...pauvre petit...’
She huddled closer into the Devil’s grip. He would stop them pecking her. They had one of the dead men now, bloody and limp as they carried him through the great gate. Like Gerald, only this one had all of his face. Perhaps they were going to eat him, peck at his eyes... Her fingers locked into the strap across the Devil’s back. No...no... The words stayed closed in with the scream.
She felt the Devil shrug. The black crows chattered and flapped, then they rode on, her and the Devil on the great black hell horse. He said something, low, in his deep voice. It rumbled in his chest, against her ear, and this time she understood the words. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rose?’
Who is Rose? It wasn’t her, she knew that. Her name was...was... It had gone. He had told her his name. Adam. That could not be right, the Devil was not called Adam. Beelzebub,Lucifer, Satan. Those were the Devil’s names.
Why wasn’t he hot? He should be burning hot, instead he was warm. And hard. He’d said he was made of stone... Flint, that was it. That was why he was hard, his thighs under her were rock that moved with the hell horse. His chest was solid, like holding on to an oak tree. His eyes were the blue of flames deep in the heart of a log fire, and he smelled of blood and smoke and sulphur.
Dare she sleep? It had been so long since she had slept. There had been a ball... Memory shifted, blurred, focused for a moment. The night before she had been too excited to sleep. Then the night of the ball she had lain awake with Gerald in her arms, stroking his hair, trying to give him some comfort for his fears. How long had it been since then? Two battles, a rainstorm... Why was I at a ball? Who was Gerald?
Could she sleep with all the noise in her head? She clung tighter to the Devil. He would keep her safe. It made no sense, but then nothing did any more. Nothing ever would again and all because she had sinned.
Chapter Two (#uc7aabf29-c920-55a2-969b-d6d8006770f9)
‘Oh, my Gawd, look at you!’ Maggie Moss stood in the doorway, apron covered in flour, hair straggling out of its bun, elbows akimbo. ‘That’s a fine sight for a respectable Brussels boarding-house keeper to find on her doorstep of an evening.’ The tears poured down her cheeks.
‘We’ve been in a bit of a scrap, Maggie,’ Flint said, knowing better than to notice the tears. Something in his chest loosened at the sight and sound of her. Maggie meant warm practicality, a sanctuary of normality after a voyage into chaos. ‘Is there room? Twelve of us. Sergeant Hawkins, nine of the men and me. And Rose here.’
‘Of course there’s room, I made sure there would be, and never mind what those commissariat officers wanted when they came round. This house is for Randall’s Rogues and no one else, I said. Moss! Where is the man? Come on in. Tracking mud and worse all over my floors... And the noise! Those guns. Through here.’ Her hands were gentle as she helped the men through into the kitchen, scolding all the time like a mother making a child believe his scraped knee was nothing to make a fuss about.
Her husband came stomping through from the back on his wooden leg. He’d been Flint’s sergeant for three years until a spent ball had taken his leg off at Badajoz. Maggie had followed him through the hell of the Peninsular campaign and then, when peace had come and the English had flocked to Brussels, they’d come, too, to open a lodging house.
‘I’ve got palliasses laid out in the outhouse,’ Moss said. ‘It’s cool and dry out there and no need for stairs. Doesn’t look as though it will be too crowded, either,’ he added, low-voiced, to Flint. ‘Fewer than I expected. Butcher’s bill bad—or did you get off easy?’
‘Could have been worse. Could have been a damn sight better. The ones I sent back earlier were with the rest of the non-commissioned officers under orders to go to the hospitals or nunneries. Hawkins, can you manage here for a bit? I can’t do a thing with my arms full.’
‘We’ll manage, Major,’ Moss said with a sharp glance at Flint’s burden. ‘The missus had best help you with that one. Hawkins, I’ve got hot water in the boiler, let’s get them cleaned up and we’ll see what’s what.’ He turned to one of the privates. ‘Hey, lad, the pump’s in the yard, you fetch everyone a drink, right?’
‘Come on, Major, bring her through here. Hawkins and Moss will manage without us.’ Maggie urged him towards the stairs. ‘Up you go. How’s your broth—Colonel Randall?’
‘All right as far as I know. Gideon’s dead,’ Flint said. ‘At Quatre Bras.’ His younger half-brother had been a cavalry officer, full of courage and with, Flint thought bitterly, the brains of a partridge in shooting season. Gideon shouldn’t have been with the guns, and he, Flint, was a fool to feel that somehow he should have stopped him, saved him.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Poor lad, he was only a boy.’
‘Hardly knew him.’ He’d stayed out of Gideon Latymor’s way all his life—until those last minutes. What did an ambitious young cavalry officer want with one of his father’s countless by-blows, even if their elder brother had, for some inscrutable reason of his own, promoted the by-blow’s career? What did the bastard in question need with either of them, come to that? Randall was his commanding officer, that was as close a relationship as Flint wanted.
‘Room on the left, the one you had before.’ Maggie didn’t make any further comment about Gideon, but he could feel her glare of disapproval at his words like a jab in the back from a bayonet. ‘So who’s this?’ she demanded when he reached the middle of the bedchamber and she could look properly at the woman clinging to him like a burr to a blanket.
‘No idea. Found her after the battle trapped by a gang of deserters.’
‘Had they hurt her?’
‘No. But something’s wrong. She won’t speak, doesn’t seem to understand what I say to her in any language and she won’t let go. Which is becoming uncomfortable,’ he added, aware now he’d got where he was going that certain basic needs required attention.
‘Come on, lovie, down you get now. You’re safe here. I’m Maggie, I’ll look after you.’
It took five minutes, and they had to unbuckle Flint’s belt and peel off his jacket, before they had Rose huddled on the bed in the dressing room off Flint’s bedchamber. ‘Quieter in here and snugger,’ Maggie said. ‘Poor little creature.’
‘Not so little,’ Flint said, stretching cramped shoulders. But she looked fragile. Not childlike, for even like this her womanly curves were obvious, but vulnerable. Something in Flint’s chest twisted. Damn it, he was not going to get sentimental about one waif and stray. She’d probably been following the drum with some man or another since she was sixteen. ‘I’ll bring hot water up so you can get her clean.’ This was women’s work and Maggie, thank the saints, was the woman to do it. If anyone could bring some terrified camp follower to her senses, she could.
He lugged the tin bath along from the cupboard on the landing. The last time he’d used it was the afternoon before the Duchess of Richmond’s accursed ball.
‘I need you there,’ his commanding officer had said. Justin, Lord Randall, who just happened to be his elder Latymor half-brother, had sighed as he’d looked at him, the sigh of a man whose butler has just spilled the best cognac on the Chinese silk rug. ‘Get yourself cleaned up and try, just try, to look like a gentleman for a change.’
So Moss and Maggie had trimmed his hair, nagged him into the closest shave he’d ever had in his life, dumped him in a bath with some fancy soap, dabbed at him with infernal cologne and eased him into his scarcely-worn dress uniform. He’d had to fight with ghosts from the past to make himself cross that threshold, but it had been worth it to see Justin’s face when Flint stood there brooding in the corner, surrounded by the interested and predatory ladies who had deserted his handsome half-brother to simper at his scowls and stare unabashedly at his tight breeches.
‘I forget that you scrub up quite well,’ Randall had said, a smile on his sculpted lips, his blue eyes, so like Flint’s, chill and unamused by what he had unleashed on the ballroom.
Flint had shown his teeth in response, knowing his smile and his eyes were identical to Randall’s. ‘I know,’ he’d replied in the upper-class drawl he could produce when he could be bothered. ‘Worried I’ll cut you out with the ladies, sir?’ And he could, they both knew that from their time in the Peninsula. Ladies who’d want him for one thing only. Randall, of course, was always too much on his dignity to allow his amours to be seen in public.
Focus. He could not let his mind drift, not stop being a damned officer. Not yet. He stuffed the unpleasant memories away, dumped the tin bath in the bedchamber and went for hot water, leaving Maggie crooning reassurance in the dressing room. When he came down again Moss was tending to the worst of the injured while those who could stand were naked in the yard, sluicing themselves off under Hawkins’s watchful eye.
‘We’ve sent a lad with a note to HQ, sir,’ Hawkins said. ‘Let them know where we are. I’ve asked for the surgeon to call, but I think we’ll be all right for now. They’re checking each other over and washing the wounds out. Maggie’s laid in plenty of bandages and salve. How’s the girl?’ he asked as Flint studied the battered bodies.
Yes, unless loss of blood or shock caught up with any of them, or a wound began to fester, they’d do. It had been, against all the odds and late in the day, a victory, and their tails were up as a result. ‘The girl? I’ve called her Rose. We got her on to a bed and Maggie’s doing what she can. Women’s work, not our problem any more.’ He began to strip. ‘You, too, let’s see what exciting holes you’ve acquired this time.’
‘Nothing.’ Hawkins stripped and grabbed for some soap. ‘I’m filthy as a cesspit digger, but not a scratch on me.’ He jerked his head at the slash over Flint’s ribs. ‘That needs cleaning.’
Flint grunted, splashed soapy water into the wound, swore and scrubbed the rest of himself mostly clean. The men were limping and hobbling back to the straw beds, wrapped in bits of sheet for decency.
‘Lie down, the lot of you, and get some rest,’ Moss ordered with the authority of the sergeant he had once been. ‘I’ll bring you more water and there’ll be stew in bit.’ He began to gather up the torn and filthy shirts, muttering over the state of the uniforms. ‘The girl will get the linen into the copper and do her best with it.’ He stomped into the house, shouting, ‘Lucille!’
‘You rest, too,’ Flint said to Hawkins. He reached out to steady the other man as he balanced on one foot to scrub at the other. Hawkins grasped his hand, returned the momentary pressure without meeting his eyes. There was no need for more words. We’re alive. Hundreds aren’t. We won. ‘Rest. That’s an order.’
‘And you, Major.’
‘Aye.’ Flint looked round at the yard and the outhouse. Nothing more to be done now for a bit except sleep. Immediately after a battle no one wanted to let their eyes close and risk it, the oblivion was too much like dying. Now they could all finally let go. He slung a towel round his waist, picked up his clothes. ‘I’m upstairs if you need me.’
The dressing-room door was closed, but the tub was full of scummy grey water and a pile of damp towels were heaped on the floor. So Maggie had got Rose into a bath, at least, which meant she would have checked her for any injuries. He got rid of the dirty water and put the tub back in the cupboard, then stood in the middle of the room and eyed the bed. Yes, he could let go now for a while at last. He dropped the towel, climbed between the sheets and sank straight into a sleep as dark and still as death.
* * *
Light, softness and blissful quiet. The scream was still there, an echo in her head, but she could hear faint sounds from somewhere below and a rhythmic purring rasp like a big cat. Something had woken her. Footsteps? Voices? Whatever it was had stopped now.
She opened her eyes on to whiteness. Clouds...? Heaven? No, a big white puffy eiderdown, linen sheets, a lime-washed wall. She was in bed in a small, very simple, very clean room.
She sat up and looked down at her body. Someone had put her into a vast white nightgown. The plump woman with the big hands and the soft voice had bathed her and talked all the time with words that made no sense, but that soothed. Now she ached in every muscle as though she had walked a hundred miles, but that could not be right.
Where am I? Once there had been a house somewhere far away over the sea and then another one, smaller. Smiling faces. Love and arguments. What about? A man? A ball and a beautiful gown. Then kisses and a tent and tears and rain and mud and noise. The worst noise in the world. And then searching, searching and being afraid and then... The scream became louder and she fought back the memory, the images, until she huddled into the pillow, shivering with effort, and it was quiet enough for her to think again.
The demons had come and then the Devil who took her and all the other damned souls he was sending to hell. He had carried her off on his great black horse and she had felt safe, even though he was the Devil. And he had brought her here, to the soft woman and the warm water and peace.
None of it made any sense, because this was not hell, unless it was a cruel trick. Perhaps if she opened the door there would be flames and demons and mocking laughter. Perhaps that sound was a sleeping hellhound. But she had to get up. Surely if you were dead you did not need the chamber pot any more? That was encouraging. She made her way on shaky legs to the screen in the corner and emerged feeling a little better.
Now for the door and what lay beyond. It opened without a creak on to a bedchamber, another white room with muslin curtains drawn over early-morning light and the only flames those safely enclosed within a pair of lamps, burning low. There was a cold fireplace, a rag rug, a chair and a bed. A big bed with, in it, a big man. Her Devil. And he was snoring. That was the sound she had heard. Her face felt strange and she lifted a scratched hand to touch her mouth. She was smiling.
She stood beside the bed and studied him. His shoulders and one arm were above the sheets, muscled, brown, bruised, battered, marked with fresh cuts and old scars. His face was half-hidden under dark brown stubble, darker than the brown hair that partly covered the scar on his forehead. His nose was straight and imperious. He should have seemed vulnerable in sleep, instead he looked dangerous and formidable, a smouldering volcano.
Her Devil. He had saved her, so she was his now and she should be in bed with him. She eased back the covers and slid under, half-expecting the movement of the feather mattress to wake him, but he only muttered, shifted and threw one heavy arm across her, trapping her against him. He was naked, she could tell even through the sensible cotton nightgown. Naked and warm and big. Safe. She closed her eyes and slept, the rumble of his snores drowning the scream.
* * *
‘Rose? Bloody hell, what are you doing here?’
Rose? Who was Rose? She snuggled closer against the solid bare body, into the warmth and the security, then had to clutch the edge of the bed as it shifted violently. She opened her eyes and found the Devil was sitting up, glaring at her.
She stared back, wondering why she was not afraid. There was no one else here, so she must be the Rose he was talking to. He was angry with her. What was she doing there? Foolish question, this was where she belonged. She laid her hand, palm down, on his chest and felt his heart beating hard and steady under it. He was very handsome, her battered, fallen angel. She had thought angels were sexless, perhaps feminine, all purity and light. He was dark and male and made her think of carnal, hidden, wicked things.
‘Rose, you must go back to your own bed. You are perfectly safe there.’ He muttered something that sounded like, ‘But not here.’
No. She shook her head.
‘You understand me? You are English?’
Yes. Two nods.
‘Then talk to me, woman!’
Talk? But she couldn’t do that. She had tried to scream when she had found Gerald, but nothing had come out of her mouth. All the words, all the screams, were trapped inside now. She spread her hands and shook her head.
‘You can’t?’ He seemed to understand. ‘That is a pity. Do you remember me? Adam Flint?’ The intense blue gaze focused on her face.
I remember you. Yes, he read that easily enough.
His heart beat under her palm. His chest, his broad, solid chest, rose and fell with his breathing and the realisation came to her that he was alive and human. He wasn’t the Devil, she wasn’t dead. She had not, for all the sins she couldn’t remember, gone to hell. But she had walked through it and he had shown her the way out.
Rose felt the smile coming back. It felt strange, as though she hadn’t smiled in days...weeks?
Adam laid one hand over hers as his frown deepened. ‘Rose, you need to go to your room.’ When she did not move he said, ‘If you won’t shift, then I must. And I’m stark naked.’
It was obviously a threat as well as a warning. She should be shocked, she seemed to recall from somewhere. Even his words were shocking. But she wasn’t alarmed. She was curious. Curious about him or curious because he was a naked man? Both, she realised. So I am not used to sleeping with a man.
‘Damn it,’ Adam muttered. He gave her a look that could have curdled milk and, when she did not move, got out of bed on the far side. He turned away from her for the sake of his modesty, or perhaps hers, but Rose stared nonetheless.
Broad shoulders, muscled, scarred back tapering down to his waist, the strong lines marred by a stained cloth twisted around his ribs. Narrow hips and a backside that was tight and smooth. She wanted to touch him, curve her hand over those neat, firm buttocks. Long, strong horseman’s legs furred with dark hair, big feet. He was male, beautiful, fearless. Hers.
Gerald. The image of a handsome face flickered into her memory. Blond, smooth, unmarked by life or trouble. So young and so unformed and, at the end, so very frightened. He had been hers, hadn’t he? Had she loved him? She couldn’t remember. All she could recall was holding him while he sobbed, and she tried not to tremble with fear and the realisation that everything was wrong. And then he had been... No. The scream began to build, shrill in her head and she pressed her hands to her temples to try and stop the pain. She focused on Adam and felt her breathing calm.
He had reached the chair and was pulling on the trousers of his uniform, filthy and ripped. Then he turned and she saw the cloth was a bandage and the skin around it was reddened and inflamed. He was hurt.
Something in her head cleared and came into focus. He was wounded and she knew what to do about that. Rose slid out of bed, tugging down the nightgown that had risen to her thighs. Adam glanced away and she saw the colour come up over his cheekbones. She had shocked him? She swept the clothing from the chair to the floor and pointed at the seat, then poked at his chest for good measure. He sat down, eyebrows raised. Apparently Adam Flint was not used to being pushed around.
The bandage was knotted tightly and she broke a nail undoing the ends. It had hardened over the wound and she went to the washbasin, poured out water and wetted a cloth to soak it off. Adam sat still while she worked, not flinching when she peeled off the bandage, even though it must have hurt. She shook her head at the sight of the long slash. It had lifted a flap of skin and that, she supposed, was full of cloth fragments and sweat and goodness knows what else that would irritate and fester. He made to get up and she shoved him hard in the chest. Stay there! It was like pushing a wall, and when he got to his feet despite her efforts she stumbled and fell against him.
‘Bossy little creature, aren’t you?’ he said and put his arms around her. Instinctively Rose stepped closer, laid her forehead against the flat plane of his bare chest above his right nipple. He had washed after a fashion last night, she realised, inhaling the scent of just-woken man, plain soap and a lingering tang of black powder and sweat. She turned her head and rubbed her cheek against him and her lips brushed his nipple. It hardened and he became instantly still.
She did not know what to do, only that she had never felt like this before. Adam sat down abruptly, his hands on her forearms. Those blue-flame eyes narrowed as he studied her. Gradually her breathing steadied.
‘Why won’t you speak to me?’
Didn’t he understand that she could not? Rose shrugged.
‘You can trust me.’
She glanced down to where, even in her ignorance, his arousal was very plain. Of course I can. I know that. Although why she knew was another mystery. If he wanted to take her, then she would have no chance of resisting him.
With the knowledge came some confidence. She wagged a finger at him and pointed again, sternly. Stay. It worked with dogs. It worked, so it seemed, with big men. He narrowed his eyes at her, but did not move. She suspected he was amused.
The kind, soft woman would be somewhere below. Rose shot Adam one last look, then opened the door and went down the stairs. She followed her nose to the kitchen, her stomach grumbling. When had she last eaten?
The room was full of men. Men in trousers and no shirts, men in shirts and no trousers, men draped in blankets.
‘Gawd!’ someone said and there was a mass scramble for the back door.
Rose was left with the kind woman, who was at the range stirring a pot of something that smelled delicious, and a thin man with a beak of a nose and a wooden leg. He glanced at her enveloping nightgown and looked away out of the window.
‘You shouldn’t be out of bed, lovie,’ the woman said. ‘I was going to bring up some tea in a minute.’
The place seemed as familiar and comforting as a childhood memory. Rose smiled. It was getting easier now she had remembered how to. There was a kettle steaming on the fire. She pointed to it and then looked round the kitchen until she saw a bowl of salt on the table next to a pile of neatly rolled bandages. She picked it up and took two of the bandage rolls.
‘You want the hot water for the major, lovie? He’s hurt?’ the woman asked. ‘Keep an eye on the stew, Moss, I’ll see what’s going on.’ She wrapped a cloth around the handle and hefted the kettle off the hook as though it was a teacup. ‘Come along, then.’
Adam was sitting where Rose had left him, his expression somewhere between amused and resigned. ‘Caught her, did you, Maggie?’
‘Caught her? Your lass here came down and made it quite clear what she needs.’ She dumped the kettle on the nightstand and came to peer at the raw wound on Adam’s side. ‘And no wonder—although how she got a good look at it is best not to ask, I’d guess.’
‘I woke up and there she was.’ He did not smile, but there was a rueful twist to his lips.
‘Seems as though you’ve got yourself a woman, then, Major.’ Maggie winked at Rose. ‘You know what to do about that?’ From the jerk of her head towards Flint she might have meant either the injury or the man.
Yes. Rose nodded, sure about one and not at all certain about the other.
‘I do not need a woman,’ Flint growled, scowling at Maggie’s retreating back.
Yes, you do, you need me. Rose poured hot water into the basin and ignored the way his brows drew together and his fingers drummed a rhythm on the arm of the chair. You have to need me, because otherwise who am I and where do I belong if not with you?
Chapter Three (#uc7aabf29-c920-55a2-969b-d6d8006770f9)
‘You seem to know what you are doing,’ Adam remarked. Rose could feel his gaze on her as she swirled salt into the water. ‘Did your man get wounded often?’
No. She shook her head and tried to work out why she was so sure of that. Of course, she had not been with Gerald long enough for him to be hurt...only killed. There were memories of bandages and salves, of pouring medicines, but that seemed to be in domestic settings. Humble rooms. Children, old people, a presence she sensed was her mother instructing her. Our tenants, our duty.
Wounds must be cleaned, salt water helped healing, she knew these things as she knew that her eyes were hazel without having to look in a glass.
Rose glanced at Adam, frowning with the effort to recall something more, something useful about who she was, and his gaze sharpened. ‘I’ve seen you before. Where the blazes? Yes, after Quatre Bras, with the Seventy-Third’s camp followers. Is that your man’s regiment? I’ll help you find him.’
No, he is dead. And he was never my man, not really. I was a fool who thought herself in love. How did she know that when everything else was a blur? How to make Adam understand? Rose gestured to the floor, then covered her face with her hands in a pantomime of grief.
‘Dead? You are certain?’
She nodded and busied herself with the cloths and water, the memory coming back in frustrating flashes. His name had been Gerald and the belief that she loved him had lasted as long as it took to realise she did not know him at all. But after that there was no going back. She had made a commitment and she must stay with him, give him her loyalty even as his courage dissolved into the rain and mud and the dashing officer turned into a frightened boy in her arms. But how had they met, where had she come from? Who am I?
That could wait, she thought, surprising herself with the firmness of the intent. The traumatised, clinging creature of the day before was retreating, although she had no idea who would emerge in her place. Whoever she was, her true self was stubborn and determined, it seemed. Rose put the bowl on the floor beside Adam and set herself to clean the wound.
He sat like a statue as she explored the slash with ruthless thoroughness. Under her hands she felt the nerves jump and flinch in involuntary protest, but all he said was, ‘There’s some salve in my pack.’
Rose found it and smoothed the green paste on, wondering at Adam’s stoicism. Was he simply inured to pain after so many wounds or was it sheer will power that kept him silent and unmoving? She rested one hand on his shoulder as she leaned over him to wind the bandage around his ribs and felt the rigid muscles beneath her palm. Will power, then. She knotted the bandage, touched her fingers to his cheek in a fleeting caress and sat back on her heels. Finished.
* * *
The soft touch on his bristled cheek was both a caress and a statement. Finished. Did she think he needed comfort? It was a novel sentiment if he had read it aright: no one ever thought Adam Flint in need of tenderness. He had believed he had acquired an inconvenient waif and stray, much as he had acquired Dog. Now he wondered if both animal and girl thought they had adopted him.
‘Thank you.’ Her eyes were asking a question. ‘Yes, it feels much better.’ In fact, it hurt like the very devil, but in a good way. It would not fester now. ‘You go back to your chamber. I’ll have hot water sent up for you and I’m sure Maggie can find something for you to wear. I need a bath and a shave.’ He wasn’t used to soft dealing, to people who needed gentle voices and kind words, but he would try for her.
Damn, but those wide hazel eyes were enough to make a man want to forget everything and just talk to her, find out what was going on behind that direct gaze. Pain and fear and stubborn courage, he would guess, and behind that there was doubt and uncertainty. But he had neither time nor inclination to explore her feelings. Rose needed a woman to look after her, not a man for whom a female in his life had only one purpose.
‘Go on,’ he said, his voice harsh with command, despite his resolve to be gentle. ‘Back to your room.’ If he spoke to Dog like that he got a reproachful look from melting brown eyes, accompanied by a drooping tail. Rose merely lowered her lashes and nodded. Yet somehow the gesture was anything but meek. She had assessed his mood and he suspected he was now being humoured with obedience while it suited her. Rose got to her feet in one fluid motion and walked to the door, the oversized nightgown swishing around her slim body, one moment cloaking it, the next caressing an almost-elegant curve of hip and thigh.
Flint cursed under his breath, low and fluent, as he dragged on his shirt, welcoming the distracting stab of pain as he tucked the tails into his trousers and looped the braces over his shoulders. His feet wanted to go straight to the dressing-room door, but instead he went downstairs.
The men had slept, it seemed, like the dead, but all of them had woken up in better shape than before. Maggie and Moss between them had sorted them into bed cases, the walking wounded who could care for their fellows and two who were in not much worse condition than Flint.
Maggie despatched those two upstairs with hot water for Rose—‘And just knock and leave it at the door, mind!’—and for Flint’s bath. ‘Good thing you left a spare uniform here,’ she grumbled at him when he handed her the wreckage of his shirt. ‘Most of this is fit for the rag bag.’
‘I know,’ Flint said, straight-faced. ‘Anyone would think I’d fought two battles and been in a rainstorm in it.’ He dodged the cuff she aimed at him. ‘Can you do anything about fitting Rose out, Maggie?’
‘Aye, that I can. My sister Susan leaves clothes here for when she visits, saves carting too much baggage back and forth. The size’ll be about right, I dare say.’
‘Anything else she needs, just give me the bills.’ He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back. ‘Her man’s dead, Maggie. She’s shocked, but I can’t say she’s grieving exactly. I don’t know what it is, she doesn’t seem the sort to just shrug that off.’
‘Likely he knocked her around,’ Maggie said with distaste. ‘She’s happy enough with you, by the looks of it.’
If he, a big, murderous bastard, made Rose feel happy, then her last man must have been a brute, Flint concluded as he stood in the bath and did his best to scrub off the dirt that had escaped last night’s dowsing under the pump, without soaking the fresh bandage. The thought of unkindness to Rose made him angry, he discovered as he climbed out, feeling completely human again for the first time in days.
As he ran the razor through four days’ accumulation of beard he heard the faint sounds of splashing from the little room. His memory, with inconvenient precision, presented the memory of Rose’s body in his arms, in his bed against his naked chest, of her walking away with the wary grace of a young deer. Tension gathered low in his belly, heavy and demanding. With an inward snarl at his own lack of self-control he finished shaving, scrubbed a towel over his face.
She needed time and the last thing he needed at the moment was a woman. Sex, yes. He could certainly do with that, but a man could manage. His body protested that it always needed a woman and was firmly ignored while he rummaged in the clothes press for his spare uniform. Women were demanding, expected emotions he did not have to share. This one was tying him in knots and she wasn’t even his, whatever Maggie said.
Maggie had brushed his dress uniform and he shoved it aside, smart, expensive, reeking of officer and privilege. It reminded him again of the confounded Duchess of Richmond’s confounded ball where he had stood around, under orders to do the pretty, pretend to be a gentleman and generally give the impression that the nickname of Randall’s Rogues that attached to their irregular unit of artillery was a light-hearted jest and not a mild description for a bunch of semi-lawless adventurers.
He’d even had to let Moss cut his hair, he thought with a snarl as he stood in front of the mirror and raked the severe new crop into order. Fashionable, Maggie had said with approval. Damned frippery, more like. Flint buckled on his sword belt, grabbed his shako and ran downstairs for his breakfast.
* * *
‘Hawkins! With me.’
‘Sir.’ The sergeant came in, buttoning his tunic. He’d shaved and found a half-decent shirt from somewhere.
‘We’ll go and report in and see who is where.’
They walked out into the crowded cobbled streets where men lay on piles of straw under makeshift awnings with townswomen, medical orderlies and nuns tending to them. They kept their eyes skinned for familiar faces or the blue of an artillery uniform jacket.
The news on the street was that Wellington had left his house on Rue Montagne du Parc for Nivelles, where the army was bivouacked. ‘We’d best start at HQ, see what staff he’s left behind and get our orders, then locate the colonel,’ Flint decided as they began the steep climb up from the lower town. It was slow progress.
‘How’s Miss Rose, sir?’
‘Miss?’
Hawkins shrugged. ‘She behaves like a lady, Major. So Maggie says.’
‘She was living with a man from the Seventy-Third, now no longer with us, poor devil. I doubt that makes her a lady.’
‘I think she’s got a nice way with her, what I’ve seen,’ the sergeant said stubbornly as they stopped to help a nun move a man on to a stretcher without jarring the bloody stump of his leg. ‘Pretty little thing.’
‘Most you’ve seen of her is a filthy waif glued to me like a kitten stuck up a tree. Her nice ways got her into my bed this morning,’ Flint snapped. ‘Not what I’d call ladylike.’
‘Needs a cuddle, most likely,’ Hawkins said, impervious to Flint’s sudden bad temper. ‘Women do when they’re upset. Useful that, I always think. You know, you give her a cuddle, bit of a squeeze, buss on the cheek, the next thing you know she’s stopped crying and you’re—’
‘You can discuss your techniques of courtship with the duke when we catch up with him,’ Flint suggested as they returned the salute of the sentry at the gate of what had been Wellington’s house. ‘They say he’s got about as much finesse as you have between the sheets.’
The scene was somewhat different from the weeks before the battle when the house had been mobbed by every person of fashion—or pretentions of gentility—hoping to gain access to the great man. Now it was all business, with red-eyed adjutants, scurrying orderlies and groups of weary men consulting notes and maps as they dealt with the aftermath of the Field Marshall’s departure.
‘Major!’ Flint turned to see Lieutenant Foster, their brigade surgeon. He looked bone-weary, but he’d managed to change and shave. ‘I was coming to find you. I’ve a list of which of our men are where, I just need the names and locations of any you brought back yesterday.’
‘What’s the butcher’s bill?’ Flint demanded.
‘Eighty, unless any more go in the next few days, and that’s always possible.’ Foster shrugged philosophically. ‘I’ve got as many of the badly wounded ones as I can with the nuns, they’re better at offering comfort and the wards are cleaner and quieter.’
‘Hawkins, take the lieutenant down to see the men at Maggie’s, then get a list from him of where everyone is. We can add a few more to the dead list, Foster. Let me know what needs doing when we both get back to the house. And you, Lieutenant, when you’ve seen those last few men, you get back to your lodgings and sleep until this afternoon at least. That’s an order.’
‘But, Major, the colonel—’
‘Go!’ To hell with Randall, he could wait until Flint had reported in here at HQ before he started throwing out his orders.
The adjutant at the desk consulted a sheaf of papers. ‘Your guns and the fit men have joined the line of march towards the border, sir. Any who recover in the next ten days are to be sent to muster at your base at Roosbos to await onward deployment. You, Major, and your sergeant, have orders here.’ He rifled through the mass of documents on his desk and produced a sealed letter. ‘They are not secret. His lordship has directed that for every hundred men who must remain in the city through wounds, sickness and for assigned duties, one officer, one non-commissioned officer and three men will also stay to keep order and look to their welfare and deployment. There is a list of the other officers included.’
Flint stared at the packet in his hands. This was the end of his war. No more marching, deploying, fighting—the work he was trained for. Now it would be administration, paperwork, policing—the stuff he hated.
‘...news of Lord Randall’s condition when you’ve seen the colonel.’ The adjutant was still talking.
‘His condition? Randall is wounded?’
‘Why, yes, Major. He has a chest wound and the blow to his head, of course. I assumed you were aware?’ Something in the quality of Flint’s glare must have penetrated. ‘Ah, obviously not. There’s no danger, sir, at least, not as far as the surgeon can see at the moment. I don’t think he wants to operate to remove the bullet if it can be avoided.’
Lord, no, Flint thought with an inner shudder. Bullets in the chest were nasty enough, digging the damn things out was usually fatal.
The other man was still talking and Flint closed off the memory of having a ball cut out of his own shoulder. That had been bad, but at least it hadn’t been rattling around his lungs.
‘Concussion is always difficult of course, so they are keeping him in bed and flat on his back for a few days.’
‘Where is he?’
‘His usual lodgings, the house he took in Rue Ducale, sir.’
‘Right.’ Flint turned on his heel and strode out of the house. Damn it, his commanding officer wounded and he had not known. When had that happened? There were two rules: look after your men and watch your commander’s back for him. He swore silently all the way across the Parc to the smart street where Randall had established a base for his frequent visits into the city.
He banged the knocker, strode in past the faintly protesting servant and up the stairs, guided by the sound of voices. Conscious at least. ‘Laying down the law again, sir?’ he asked as he pushed open the door.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ The question came on the merest thread of a breath. Flint made his face poker straight and his voice wooden to keep the shock from both as he advanced to the foot of the bed. ‘Picking up the bodies, sir. Where was yours?’ God, but he looks bad.
There was a movement behind him and a hand closed around his arm. ‘Outside, if you please.’
Flint turned. A diminutive brunette in a gown that could best be described as sensible, with a hairstyle that was fighting a losing battle against escaping wisps of hair, regarded him with severity. A lady from her accent, a spinster of either Quakerish habits or a restricted budget to judge by her modest attire. Apparently a female fallen on hard times and taking employment where she might and a pocket battleaxe to boot, under that demure appearance. She turned towards the open door and, short of wrenching out of her grip, he had no choice but to follow her.
‘Lord Randall was found in an old barn to the west of La Haye Sainte,’ she whispered as soon as they were out on the landing with the door closed. ‘Just at the moment, as he has a concussion in addition to a bullet wound in his chest, we are unable to establish exactly why he was there. I must ask you to leave immediately, sir. Lord Randall must rest.’
‘Ma’am, I must report to my commanding officer. I follow his orders, not those of a hired nurse. With respect.’
‘I am not a hired nurse.’ Her lips thinned. She obviously knew just how genuine his remarks about respect were. ‘I am Miss Endacott, a friend of the family.’
‘The governess Randall escorted over from England?’ And the lady he danced every single dance with at the Duchess’s ball, Flint realised. Only she hadn’t been dressed like a schoolmarm then. What the blazes is going on? Surely not an affaire?
Her expression became, if anything, stiffer. ‘I own and run a school here, Major. I assume from your uniform and your likeness to Lord Randall that you are his half-brother Adam Flint? I believe I saw you at Roosbos.’
‘Yes, I’m Flint. And I must report to him.’
She hesitated. ‘I could use your help to give him the saline draught the doctor left. He is not a good patient. It is critically important that he lies still and does not get excited.’
Randall become excited? That would be the day they were ice skating in hell. But he would say whatever was necessary to get past this schoolteacher. ‘Of course.’
‘In that case you may have five minutes, no more.’ Miss Endacott appeared to place little value on his word, even less when he showed his teeth in an approximation to a smile.
She shot him a glare that would obviously paralyse recalcitrant schoolboys—fortunately he had never been to school—reopened the door, moved to the bedside table and poured a clear liquid into a glass with brisk competence. ‘I will administer the draught. You will please support his head, but do not allow him to sit up. Kindly do not jar his head when you lower it back to the pillow.’
Adam slid his right hand under the other man’s neck and felt him stiffen in rejection. It was probably the first time they had ever touched this intimately. Put up with it, Brother, Flint thought as Miss Endacott lifted the glass to Justin’s lips. She tipped the draught efficiently down his throat, then nodded to Flint to lower Randall back to the pillow.
His half-brother lay, eyes closed, white around the lips. His hands were clenched into fists as they lay on top of the covers.
He is in a great deal of pain and doesn’t want her to see it, Flint thought, recognising the reaction. Expressions of sympathy wouldn’t help.
‘HQ are asking after you. I’ll tell them to leave you in peace for a day or so. Everything’s under control. I’ll find Bartlett and we’ll carry on. Any orders?’
There was no response from the man on the bed, then, ‘Adam...look after the Rogues.’ It was the first time his half-brother had ever used his first name.
‘Of course, sir.’ That was the closest Flint had seen Randall come to a display of emotion. Perhaps the effort of keeping every trace of his natural reactions under control when Gideon had died in his arms was having its effect on Justin now. Flint had thought he had no feelings for his legitimate family, but standing there watching his brothers in those final moments had been harder than he could have imagined. ‘I’ll fetch the body.’ There was no need to say whose.
‘Thank you.’ Randall did not open his eyes.
Miss Endacott almost pushed him out of the door and closed it in his face without another word. She was worrying unduly, he told himself as he ran downstairs. Randall looked bad, and was suffering a lot of pain, but he was tough. He would pull through. But her protective attitude was interesting. Surely she and Randall were not...? No, of course not. Lord Poker-Up-the-Backside Randall fall for a schoolteacher? Never.
Chapter Four (#ulink_16eefa14-d08b-513b-803f-c40ad30d509b)
Rose opened the kitchen door, uncertain of her welcome. Was she supposed to stay out of the way of the soldiers after their reaction when she had sent them scattering into the courtyard? On this, the second morning in the warm, cheerful house, she was beginning to feel stronger and the scream in her head had grown quiet, almost as soft as the buzzing of a field of drowsy bees on a summer’s day. She had slept in the little dressing room and waited until Adam had left the bedchamber before venturing out.
Maggie was at the hearth, stirring something in a big pot, and Adam and Hawkins were slumped in chairs either side of the table, their backs to her, relaxed like two great hounds after an exhausting chase.
As Rose hesitated on the threshold, Maggie jerked her head towards a battered armchair beside the fire and poured a mug of tea. Rose took it with a smile of thanks and snuggled quietly into the patchwork cushions as Hawkins picked up what was obviously a thread of conversation.
‘If Boney’s beat, then the war’s over, surely? They’ve got the French king all ready to come back, the nobs in Vienna will carry on negotiating and drawing lines on the maps, and what’ll happen to us?’
‘West Indies?’ Adam said.
‘They say it’s a death trap. Getting killed in battle’s one thing, don’t fancy going all that way to die of yellow fever.’
‘Might get ordered home.’ Adam drained his mug and set it down with a thump on the table. ‘We could be Hyde Park soldiers, firing off guns for Prinny’s parties. That would be fun.’
‘Or we’d be harassing rioting industrial workers up north. Not what I call soldiering,’ Hawkins muttered.
‘Me neither, Jerry.’ Adam slumped lower in his chair, his accent roughening. They were like two sergeants together, Rose realised. Mates, not officer and NCO. ‘I’ve been a soldier half my life. This is family.’
There was a brooding silence. Maggie lowered herself into the chair opposite Rose and picked up a sock and darning wool from the basket beside her.
‘East India Company looks the best bet to me,’ Hawkins said. ‘They’re using more artillery, so I hear, and there’s a chance of good money.’
‘I’d been thinking about that.’ Adam sat up straighter and reached across the table to rip a crust off the loaf. ‘Or there’s the Continental princelings. All those German states with standing armies, they need good artillerymen and they’re prepared to pay.’
‘You’d end up a general,’ Hawkins said.
Adam snorted. ‘You’d make major,’ he countered, dragging the crust through the butter and biting into it. ‘And think of the fancy uniforms.’
Hawkins snorted. ‘Yeah, that’s you all right, prancing about like a circus ringmaster, all gold braid and plumed hats.’
‘East India Company, then. Sensible uniforms, a real army with real fighting, good money.’ Adam sounded cheered. ‘That sounds fine to me. Hate not having a plan.’
Rose’s heart sank. India? But why am I upset about that? He isn’t mine... It is so far away.
‘You’ve always got a plan, thank goodness,’ Hawkins said. ‘Puts the wind up me, not knowing what’s happening next. What the hell would we do if we had to leave the army?’
‘Damned if I know.’ Adam dropped the remains of the crust on the table as though his appetite had suddenly deserted him. ‘The army’s who we are, not what we do.’
The door to the yard swung open as he spoke and Moss stumped in, bringing the smell of fresh air and stables with him. ‘What are you two brooding about? Spouting philosophy by the sound of it.’
‘East India Company,’ Hawkins said as he got to his feet and caught the door before it closed, Adam at his heels. ‘The major’s got a plan.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Moss said to Maggie as the door banged closed behind the two men. ‘Suppose that makes sense. It’d break the major, being a peacetime soldier.’
‘He could sell out,’ Maggie suggested, biting off a loose end of wool and rolling the socks up.
‘Flint? You’re joking. He made himself an officer and a gentleman from nothing. He belongs in the army, heart and soul. Not like me, I’d had enough by the time I got out. And I’d got you.’ He winked at Maggie. ‘Him, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.’ He glanced across and saw who was in the other chair. ‘Well, Miss Rose. You’re blooming this morning. You want to give me a hand with the lads?’
* * *
Rose filled the mug with water again and looked across to the one remaining soldier she had not yet taken a drink to, the one with the head wound. He lay quietly on his straw mattress, some of his fitter mates playing cards at his feet. Occasionally one would look at him, murmur a few words of encouragement, touch his leg as if to reassure him they wouldn’t leave him.
She had been avoiding him quite deliberately. Now, as she made herself look at the soldier’s shrouded head, the scream in her head grew louder.
Coward, she told herself. It had helped to come downstairs, to make herself smile and work alongside Maggie and Moss, Lucille and the men. They had accepted her silence and treated her with more respect than she had expected from common soldiers. Their gratitude for anything she did for them seemed genuine.
Now she crouched down beside the still figure and forced herself to touch his arm. He started and turned his head with a jerk and the bandage slipped to reveal the mess of torn flesh beneath. From across the yard came a loud bang.
Gunfire. Then her head was full of the scream, her silent scream.
‘Miss Rose!’ someone shouted. Men jumped to their feet, people ran out from the kitchen. Hands seized her, shook her. She found she was on her feet, trembling violently, held by fingers so tight they hurt.
‘Hysterical,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I’ll have to slap her. Fetch cold water.’
‘Don’t touch her.’ It was a snarl, a familiar, fierce growl. Rose found herself in Adam’s arms, held against his chest. Safe. ‘Rose, what happened?’
‘Dixon’s bandage slipped,’ someone volunteered. ‘And then that shutter on the loose hinge dropped off and she jumped up, white as a sheet, and started shaking. Don’t know why Miss Rose is so upset, sir. She was fine with some really nasty sights—Dan’s leg, for one.’
‘Facial wounds seem to distress her,’ Adam said. ‘It’s all right, Rose. Lieutenant Foster is looking after Dixon, he’s going to be fine.’
He made her walk and then pushed her down and she landed with a thump that jerked her out of the nightmare a little. She was in the kitchen, sitting on one of the hard wooden chairs. Not on the battlefield, not surrounded by mangled bodies and the screaming, twitching wounded.
Rose blinked and the now-familiar faces swam into focus. Adam, Maggie, Sergeant Hawkins, Moss. Little Lucille, the maid-of-all-work, her eyes wide and shocked.
‘Best get her up to bed, Major,’ Maggie said. ‘Look how she’s trembling.’
‘No.’ Adam hunkered down in front of her. ‘Rose, this is not your nightmare, this is here and now. No more shooting, no more dying. The surgeon is here to look after the men. Take a deep breath and see.’
His voice was firm, without any sympathy or softness in it. Adam expected her to be calm and he would not ask anything of her that she could not do. Rose closed her eyes and took the deep breath, then another, and opened her eyes again. That poor man, Private Dixon. She got to her feet and saw Adam wave the others, who had tensed when she moved, back into their seats. The door to the yard seemed a long way away, but her feet took her there, and through and across to the outhouse where the surgeon was bandaging the private’s head.
She knelt down beside Dixon, took his hand and held it until he was lying back down again. His one-eyed gaze stayed on her face. ‘Sorry, Miss Rose.’
He was sorry? She lifted his hand to her cheek, then put it down and cupped her palm gently around his bandaged face, smiled and shook her head. I’m sorry.
The surgeon got to his feet and picked up his bag. ‘Are you steadier now?’
Yes. She frowned at him. He was the one who had wanted to slap her, the one who had shaken her. She held out her hand and was pleased there was no tremor now. Can’t you see?
‘Are you dumb?’ he asked, as he took her elbow and steered her towards the kitchen door.
Rose shook off his hand. I can’t speak. I can walk.
Adam was standing by the window. He was watching me. The unsmiling nod he gave her was like a hug.
‘Is this a congenital condition?’ the surgeon demanded of the room in general. Rose found herself pressed down into the chair again. The man tipped up her chin. ‘Open your mouth.’
No. She gritted her teeth and shook her head.
‘There’s a deformity of the palate perhaps. She can hear normally?’ His fingers pressed against the hinge of her jaw.
‘I suspect you are in a good way to having your fingers bitten, Lieutenant,’ Adam said. ‘Leave her be. Rose will speak when she is ready, not before.’
Thank you. She could tell that he could read her expression and the hard mouth just kicked up at the corner into a suspicion of a smile. She could understand the look on the men’s faces when he spoke to them. They’d follow him into hell—they had followed him into hell—because they knew he had confidence in them and they knew he would never abandon them. He was not going to abandon her either, those blue eyes told her.
‘If you say so, sir,’ Lieutenant Foster said and, to Rose’s relief, he left her side and went to take the mug of tea Maggie held out to him. He cleared his throat and flicked open his notebook. ‘As I was explaining to the sergeant, everything is pretty much under control, Hawkins will fill you in with the details, sir, but I’m rather concerned about Major Bartlett.’
‘What about him?’ Adam demanded. ‘He’s not wounded, is he?’
‘He is. It must have been a nasty blow to the head. He seems to have significant memory loss, he’s not exactly rational and the circumstances under which he is being nursed... To be frank, sir, I am not sure what to tell the colonel.’
‘If he’s in some hovel, then we must get him moved. Damn it, are there any more of our officers wounded that no one’s bothered to tell me about?’
He looked furious, Rose thought, glad those hard blue eyes were not looking at her.
‘Er...no, none, sir. And Bartlett’s in very comfortable lodgings in the city. Perfectly clean, plenty of water, decent kitchens. A lady’s um...residence.’ The lieutenant appeared fascinated by something in his notebook.
‘Stop stammering, man. So Major Bartlett has found himself yet another lady friend. This is hardly a novel scandal to rock Brussels’ society, now, is it?’
‘I couldn’t...er...comment, sir.’
‘Give me the address. I’ll go now.’ Flint extended a hand and the surgeon scribbled a few lines and passed the note across. ‘Rue de Regence? Respectable area.’
‘Quite. Very.’ The surgeon was red around the ears.
Adam slapped his shako on his head. ‘I won’t be long. Rose, you keep busy and don’t tease Lieutenant Foster while I’m gone.’
‘Well, and what are you blushing like a maiden for, Lieutenant?’ Maggie demanded as the door banged behind Adam. ‘He’s not ended up in a brothel, has he?’ She grinned at Rose. ‘A bit of a lad is our Major Bartlett.’
‘A brothel? No, far from it! I really do not consider it my place to say, Mrs Moss. I must be going. I will come back tomorrow and Moss knows my lodgings in case anyone needs me urgently.’
‘If it wasn’t that Randall’s Rogues never ran from anything, I’d say the lieutenant was in full retreat,’ Moss remarked. He stuck a taper in the fire and lit his pipe. ‘Now what’s Tom Cat Bartlett up to?’
* * *
Flint found the address easily enough. Foster had been correct, the house was in a respectable street, well kept and as quiet as any at the moment, given the state the city was in.
The door was answered by a woman as well kept and respectable as her house. ‘Sir?’
‘Major Flint. I am calling on Major Bartlett.’
Her lips thinned but she made no move to stand aside. ‘Indeed, sir.’
‘I assume, as he is wounded, he is in?’ Don’t say he’s died. We’ve lost too many.
‘Oh, he’s in, sir, but her ladyship said I wasn’t to admit anyone but the surgeon, sir.’
Ladyship? Bartlett had found himself very cosy lodgings indeed by the sound of it. Presumably he was languishing on the snow-white bosom of some high-ranking officer’s wife while her husband was otherwise engaged chasing a fugitive emperor back to Paris. ‘I am that surgeon’s senior officer.’
‘Oh, in that case, sir, please to come in.’ She had decided he was another surgeon, it seemed. ‘Top of the stairs on the right, sir. Can you find your own way? Only I’ve left the bread rising—’
‘Thank you.’ Flint was halfway up the stairs, too irritated with Bartlett to worry about interrupting a tender tête-à-tête. If he was well enough to be taking an interest in women, then he was well enough to get up and share some of the workload.
He gave a cursory rap on the door and strode in. ‘Bartlett. They tell me you’re—’ Languishing certainly, and on a bosom which was probably snow-white, but which was, thankfully, covered by tumbling blond tresses. The owner of the tresses was curled up on the bed, her arms around the wounded major, her expensively simple muslin gown rucked up to her knees and her blue eyes glaring at Flint.
His own blue eyes, Randall’s blue eyes, the eyes of his half-sister, Lady Sarah Latymor.
Of all the circumstances to meet his half-sister for the first time. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Bartlett closed his eyes in a reasonable imitation of a manly swoon. Lady Sarah laid him tenderly on the pillows and bounced off the bed like a mother cat defending its sole kit. Flint averted his gaze while she wrestled her creased gown into some sort of order.
‘You!’ she uttered in tones that would have done credit to Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth. ‘You’re Adam Flint. Justin wouldn’t introduce me to you at the review.’
‘He wouldn’t introduce you to any of the Rogues,’ Flint snapped. ‘And for very good reason.’
‘I know the reason he wouldn’t introduce me to you. You’re my natural brother and I’m not supposed to know any of you exist, let alone associate with you.’
‘None of the Rogues should be associating with you—let alone him.’ He stabbed a finger at Bartlett. Damn it, now he had to worry about his sister’s morals on top of everything else. Half-brothers were bad enough, but at least they were fellow soldiers, there was a connection there, an understanding. Sisters were another matter. He had never been responsible for a respectable lady in his life and he did not want to start now.
She swept her hair over one shoulder and began to braid it into a rough plait. ‘And stop shouting. Poor Tom’s head hurts.’
‘Poor Tom’s head is going to be ripped from his shoulders just as soon as he’s on his feet,’ Flint threatened. And his balls are doomed as well, just as soon as Randall’s halfway fit. ‘Now get your cloak and bonnet and I’ll take you home this minute. You can’t stay here.’ He shouldn’t feel anything other than irritated, he thought, but he did. Or was that just because he’d felt so unaccountably churned up over Gideon?
‘I am home. This is my lodging.’ She glared at him.
‘Well, then, I’ll take you to your brother.’ He glared back. I really do not like this chit.
‘You can’t do that. Mary Endacott says Justin’s too ill to be disturbed.’
‘Then don’t disturb him.’
‘I will, if I could only get to him! They told me that Gideon’s dead, and I feel it, but I can’t believe it somehow.’ Her voice trailed off and she looked young and hurt and vulnerable.
‘Believe it.’ He couldn’t cope with another female on his hands and he was damn sure he didn’t want to revisit that tableau amidst the shrieking chaos of Quatre Bras as Randall held his dying brother. Their dying brother. ‘What’s wrong with Bartlett? If you won’t leave, then I’ll take him out of here.’
‘You can’t, he has a head wound. Lieutenant Foster said it would be dangerous to move him.’ She shifted to stand between Flint and the bed. He took her by the waist and moved her bodily out of the way, then, before the first of her blows landed on his back, bent over the other man.
‘Bartlett! Tom! Open your eyes.’ He was very white, the bandaging was extensive and there was bruising everywhere Flint could see. There was, he realised, quite a lot of the major to be seen. The man was naked.
Slowly Bartlett’s eyes opened. He stared up at Flint without any sign of recognition. ‘Sir?’
‘Don’t Sir me, Bartlett, we’re the same rank, damn it.’
‘We are?’ he asked dully. His eyelids closed before Flint could answer, as though this was of no interest to him at all.
‘Have you shown him his uniform?’ Flint demanded.
‘He had been stripped by looters when I found him.’ Sarah’s angry colour faded. She compressed her lips for a moment as though fighting back nausea.
She had found him? This drawing-room darling had ventured into that hell and come back with Bartlett? No wonder she looked queasy—it was a wonder she could sleep at night. Perhaps his half-sister had her share of the Latymor backbone, after all.
‘They had taken everything except his breeches and one boot,’ she added. ‘The vultures.’
‘Vultures...?’ Bartlett’s voice trailed off.
‘You see?’ Lady Sarah tugged at Flint’s arm. ‘Leave him alone. He has no idea who he is, what happened. He doesn’t know you. He seems to think he’s a lieutenant. Perhaps in his mind he is back when he first joined the army.’
It looked genuine enough, and the man was no coward, nor a shirker, despite his overactive social life. On the other hand, it would be just like Tom Cat Bartlett to spot a good thing—and a lovely young woman—when he came across them. Something unexpected, something suspiciously like brotherly protectiveness, stirred. ‘Have you seen the head wound?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She swallowed hard. ‘It was dreadful, you could see the skull—and I had to stitch it. When Lieutenant Foster saw it later he said it must have been a cavalry sabre because nothing else could slice like that and give such a heavy blow at the same time.’ She bit her lip. ‘Tom is going to get better. He must.’
He probably would, unless there was internal bleeding within the skull. That could kill almost without warning, days after a blow, but there was no point in telling her that, she would only cling tighter to the man.
Something scratched at the door and Sarah hurried across the room. ‘Oh, Ben, shush! You know Madame le Brun doesn’t want you upstairs.’ She opened it and staggered back as a great black hairy dog hurtled into the room and flung itself on Flint.
‘Sit.’ It subsided on to his feet, panting, its tail thrashing the carpet. ‘How the devil did Dog get here?’
‘His name’s Ben. I found him tied to a baggage wagon, the poor thing. I recognised him from the review. And he led me to Justin. And Tom. And helped me fight off the deserter who tried to steal my horse. So I had to take care of him after he’d done so much for me.’
Flint snapped his fingers and the dog sat up, leaning against his leg. ‘Good boy.’ He scratched it behind the ear, obscurely comforted that the beast was safe. ‘Dog is coming back with me, now. And so are you. Pack a bag. I’m taking you to Randall’s house.’
‘I won’t go.’ She sat down on the end of the bed, one hand possessively on Bartlett’s leg. ‘You’d have to carry me kicking and screaming.’
‘It can be arranged,’ Flint muttered.
‘I don’t have to do what you say. You’re only my half-brother and if Justin won’t introduce you to me, I’m sure you’re not fit company for me.’ She glared at him, full of fierce bravado and not far from tears, he thought. ‘How are you so sure Gideon is dead?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Because I was there,’ Flint said, caught off balance before he could think.
‘Are you certain?’
‘Certain I was there or certain that he’s dead? Yes to both. You don’t get up after wounds like that.’
‘Was...was he shot? Was it quick? In the head...?’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Sabre wounds, several.’ The angry colour ebbed out of Sarah’s cheeks. She had been on the battlefield, she must have seen the slashed bodies. Her imagination was doing the rest. He though she was going to faint, or be sick, but it seemed he underestimated his sister.
‘Get out.’ She sprang to her feet and pointed at the door. ‘Get out and if you come back here again disturbing Tom then I’ll use his pistols on you.’
Chapter Five (#ulink_db79d5a2-d905-5270-bf4a-d6e9f026d414)
Adam crashed into the room like a sudden clap of thunder. The door slammed back against the wall as he strode in swearing and came to a fulminating halt in the middle of the room.
Rose dropped the shirt she was mending and stared. He appeared not to have seen her sitting in the corner. ‘My own damned sister! The—’ then something in French that Rose did not understand ‘—lascivious sod! I’ll gut the swiving, good-for-nothing, fornicating—’ Rose clapped her hands over her ears. ‘And her, blast her, looking down her nose and announcing that as we’ve never been introduced she can’t see why she has to obey me! I’ll give her obey...’ He unbuckled his sword belt and tossed the weapon on to the bed. ‘And she tries to steal my blasted dog. I’ll...’
Something cold and wet nudged against Rose’s hand and she looked down to find a huge black dog watching her fixedly. It look a fold of her skirts in its jaws and tugged. Rose stood up. Adam was still swearing. The dog released her skirt and pushed her with its big head. When she stood her ground it growled softly.
‘Dog?’ Adam turned and saw them. ‘For heaven’s sake! Friend. This is Rose and she does not need herding.’
The creature gave her hand a swipe with a tongue like a rough red flannel and collapsed on her feet.
‘I’m sorry. He’s a Bouvier des Flandres and he’s used to herding his flock. We rescued him and so he decided the Rogues were his.’
Rose raised her eyebrows and pointed a finger at Adam. He believes you are a sheep?
‘Me? He seems to think I’m the shepherd. He rounds up strays which is what seems to have happened with the search party looking for the colonel. God, I am going to kill Bartlett, just as soon as he’s fit enough. She’s a wilful, irritating brat, but she’s my sister. Randall can get in line behind me.’ He began to pace again. Dog whined softly, lifted his head and followed Adam’s movements with mournful brown eyes. His tail stopped wagging.
Rose took a step into Adam’s path and shook his arm. Tell me.
‘You want to know what I’m ranting about?’ He shrugged. ‘Sit down, it’s a long story.’ She went back to her chair and folded her hands in her lap. ‘You look as though I should begin, Once upon a time, as though this was a fairy tale. Well, once upon a time there was Earl Randall, the father of our present colonel. He was a great man who thought that he could take anything he wanted, especially women.
‘He had a large family—Justin, his heir; Gideon, who was killed at Quatre Bras; a pair of twins who’re at school now; Augusta, now Marchioness of Blanchards, who was in Paris with her unmarried sister Sarah, Gideon’s twin; and Harriet, who married some rural dean or another.
‘And then there’s the rest of us, the bastards.’ He stopped pacing and drew a finger down the line of his nose. ‘You’ll see this nose and these eyes across every parish for miles around Chalfont Magna. My mother was a chambermaid. He forced her, used her and then when she fell pregnant, he tossed her out.’
The very calmness of his voice warned Rose just how angry he was, even after a lifetime of knowing the story of his own birth. She stayed quiet and still, out of his line of sight.
‘The head groom took her in, gave her a room over the stables out of the old devil’s way. She earned her keep cooking and looking after the lads and the grooms. I became one of them, learned to ride, learned to read and write, learned to mimic my betters.’ His voice changed from the neutral accent with its faint country burr to an aristocratic drawl. ‘“Hitch up my chaise, lad. Saddle the bay. Clean up my hounds. Here’s a penny for you.”
‘I stayed while my mother needed me, although I didn’t take well to being a servant. Too bloody minded,’ he added with a twist of his lips. ‘Then when I was fourteen she married one of the grooms and the recruiting sergeant came to the village. I was a tall lad and they didn’t ask about ages. I joined the army. Square peg, square hole.’
He fell silent and Rose stood up and went to stand in front of him, running her hands over the marks of rank on his uniform jacket. As an officer? Adam grasped her meaning as he always seemed to.
‘Hardly, at that age and from that background. As a private at first, then a corporal. I learned my figures, found I was good at the mathematics you need for gunnery. Then I became a sergeant in charge of a gun crew, like Hawkins.’
He looked down at her as she stood there, her fingers still stroking the gold braid.
‘And one day, after a particularly hot fight, I stood in the middle of what was left of the position, looked up and there was this officer on a big grey horse staring down his nose—this nose—at me. “Who are you?” he said. And I said, “Adam Flint, one of your father’s gets, I’d wager,” and he laughed and rode on. A week later I found myself with a field commission to lieutenant and a transfer to a unit they were beginning to call Randall’s Rogues, under his command. One thing about artillery, officers are promoted on merit, not by purchase, which makes all of us not quite gentlemen in Wellington’s eyes. So here I am now, a major.’
He shrugged as though that was an ordinary career path, not a climb from poverty and bastardy through skill and courage and sheer determination.
Just as Hawkins said, Adam had remade himself into the man he was now. The officer, the gentleman. The soldier. And Sarah? she mouthed.
‘My esteemed fellow officer, Major Tom Bartlett, drinker, gambler and highly qualified rake, got himself hit on the head. Apparently Dog here found Sarah wandering about amongst the wounded—although how the devil she got there I do not know because she was supposed to be safe with our sister Gussie—and herded her over to him.’
But that is good, surely? Rose frowned up at him. He’s safe...
‘The idiot girl gets him back to Brussels and sticks him in her own bed—and that’s where I find them. In bed. She says she’s soothing his fevered brow and he doesn’t remember who he is and I’m a brute to shout at an injured man. He lies there looking like the perfect wounded hero and calls me sir, as though he hasn’t a clue who I am. Then when I order her out of there she announces it is her lodgings and that as Randall has never let her anywhere near my polluting and illegitimate presence I have no authority over her and she can do what she likes.’
Adam flung himself down in an armchair and Dog came and butted him anxiously on the knee. ‘The only creature in that damned house who’d do what I told them was Dog.’
Rose repressed the smile tugging at her lips. The poor man was furious and frustrated, but it was somehow touching to see the confident officer brought to a stand by one concussed major and a defiant young woman. She perched on the arm of the chair and raised an eyebrow in question.
‘What am I going to do now? I told Randall, managed to get past that dragon of a woman who is guarding him for a second. It seemed to bring him round, at least. He’s sending a note to order her home. But if there’s a hope in hell of getting the silly chit out of there before she’s ruined, we’ve got to try. She won’t listen to me, but perhaps she will to him.’ He rested his head back and closed his eyes.
Rose slid to the floor and curled up against the chair and Dog’s solid, furry bulk. Ruined. I’m ruined, just like she will be, and that is my sin. I ran off with Gerald. She looked at her hands, soft and white under the bruises and scratches. I was a lady once, like this Lady Sarah, I must have been. It explained the flashes of memory of big houses, it explained why she had been at a ball. It must have been the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, the one that Maggie had been gossiping about.
She studied Adam’s profile, aloof and severe, even with the piercing blue eyes hooded. I saw you before, I was at the ball and so were you. She’d looked in the closet while he was out and found a dress uniform, fine dark blue broadcloth and gold lace. I was at the ball and then I ran away with Geraldand now I am ruined.
Something brushed over her hair, Adam’s hand, stroking it as though it was Dog’s rough black coat. She shifted until she could feel his leg against her back. A shiver of desire ran through her. I want this man.
‘And what the blazes am I going to do with you?’ he enquired. ‘I suppose I’d best find out where the Seventy-Third’s camp followers are and get you an escort there.’
No! Rose swivelled round and came up on her knees so fast that she bumped her head against Dog’s massive jaws. Ouch. He gave her a pained look and lay down, his muzzle on Adam’s left foot. Rose shook her head emphatically at Adam.
‘No? Then what do you want to do?’ He was being patient, far more patient than she had any right to expect him to be when he had so much to think about, to do, to take responsibility for.
Rose got up, sat on the bed and looked Adam straight in the eye. She waved her hand to encompass the room, the house, then pointed a finger at him. Stay with you.
Rose had thought she was beginning to be able to read Adam’s expression, but now she might as well have been staring at a statue, so impenetrable were the strong, immobile planes of his face, the hard mouth, the steady blue eyes. Was there a flare of heat in the sapphire gaze? Something flickered and was gone.
‘Stay with me?’ He glanced at the sewing basket and the discarded shirt. ‘I don’t need a maid, Rose. I’ve got a batman at Roosbos.’
No. She stroked her hand over the coverlet, trying not to blush as she met his gaze.
‘As my woman?’ There was that flare of heat again. He was not indifferent to her.
Something very basic, very female, stirred inside her. Something she had never felt with Gerald. She had admired his looks, liked his sunny temper, enjoyed his kisses. Those memories were coming back and she had never fantasised about being naked with him, she was sure. She was reasonably certain she had never had fantasies like that about any man.
‘You are too young for me, Rose.’
She gave a huff of exasperation. Men were supposed to want sex, weren’t they? What was so wrong with her that Adam was fighting her off? She held up her hands, opening and closing them rapidly, confident about this at least. Ten, ten and three. Twenty-three. And you? She pointed at him.
‘Twenty-eight. You don’t look more than twenty-one, not that years have anything to do with it. I’m not a nice man, Rose and you deserve a nice man. No, don’t look at me like that.’ That half-smile put a crease in his left cheek that hardly qualified as anything so soft as a dimple. ‘I might have rescued you back there on the battlefield, but I’m a bastard, a professional one. I fight dirty, I kill for a living and I’m not capable of being faithful to one woman for any length of time.’
You don’t kill for a living, she wanted to protest. You fight for your country. She stretched out her hand, then let it drop back into her lap. No, of course she couldn’t expect him to be faithful to her. What had she got that could hold a virile, experienced man like this?
‘Rose, I’m not the marrying kind.’ It was as blunt a warning as she could ever expect to receive. ‘There are lots of good lads out there who’d take care of you, want to wed you, give you a family. Isn’t that what you want?’
Was it? She’d thought Gerald a good lad. She’d thought she was in love with him and that they would marry and everything would be perfect. The daydream was as clear as if it were fresh minted. But life wasn’t perfect, she’d mistaken infatuation for love and now she was ruined. Why not snatch what happiness she could?
Although why I think this big, hard, weary man would make me happy, even for a few weeks, I don’t know. He obviously doesn’t want me, not like that.
‘Rose, don’t cry.’ It was the nearest to alarm she’d heard in Adam’s voice.
I’m not crying. Then she realised that she was. She put up her hands to shield her face, ashamed of the weakness.
‘You think I don’t want you?’ Adam stood up and pulled her to her feet. He tipped up her chin so she could not avoid his gaze. ‘Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?’ One blunt thumb caught the tears under her eyes, rubbed them away. ‘You’re beautiful, brave, sweet. But we need to talk about this and you can’t speak. I’m too old for you, Rose. Not in years, just in living. Don’t mistake the need for comfort for something it isn’t.’
She shook her head, helpless to explain her feelings when she hardly understood them herself.
‘I’ve got to go and see Randall now, and then I must get to the battlefield. I won’t be back until tomorrow, late.’
She caught his hand and brought it down to her lips, kissed it, tasted the salt of her own tears.
‘Hell, Rose.’ She felt the control snap as Adam pulled her to him hard and his hands slid into her hair, held her fast as his mouth took hers. She had never been kissed like this, not with unconstrained masculine desire. Gerald had been respectful, aware she was a lady and a virgin. In the tent he had been clumsy, inept and afraid, too frightened for kisses.
She doubted Adam Flint had ever been clumsy or inept with a woman. She clung to the shreds of rational thought as he plundered her mouth with ruthless expertise. It was like riding a wild horse, she could only clutch at his shoulders and hope to survive the experience.
His tongue was in her mouth—when had she opened to him? She could not remember. His teeth nipped and pressed, his lips tormented and then soothed. His taste filled her senses: coffee, a hint of brandy, man. Adam. His hands stayed locked around her head and she found she was pressing against him, her breasts aching for his touch. Her thighs tingled and a compelling ache between them throbbed in counterpoint to the movement of Adam’s mouth on hers. She snuggled closer and felt the evidence of his arousal hard against her stomach.
He released her suddenly and she sat down with a thump on the bed, one hand to her mouth, staring at him.
‘You see?’ His voice was harsh. ‘I shock you. Maggie thinks your last man was a brute, but he wasn’t, was he? He was a nice lad, I’d guess, just not around enough for you to get attached.’ He grinned, without humour, when she nodded. ‘I’m not a nice lad. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow. While I’m away, think about where you want to go.’ He opened the door and snapped his fingers at the dog. ‘Come.’
It took time for her to recognise the trembling, the confusion of feeling, for what it was. Not fear, but simply desire stoked higher than she could have imagined. Rose got to her feet after a while and made her way on unsteady feet to the washbasin to splash cold water on her face, but even when she had done that, and stood with the linen towel in her hands, she could not do more than stare at the closed door, her mind a jumble of thoughts.
It took the sound of Maggie’s voice to jerk her out of her trance. ‘Rose! Tea!’
She made her way downstairs into the crowded kitchen, took her tea and perched in a corner while Maggie and Moss dispensed mugs and slabs of heavy cake for the men to carry out to their less-mobile comrades in the yard. There seemed to be fewer of the walking wounded than earlier.
The heat of the liquid penetrated the thick earthenware, a comforting, real sensation. Rose curled her fingers tight around it and listened to Maggie and Moss talking about Adam.
‘What did the major want with those picks and shovels and the fitter men?’ Maggie asked as she sank into her rocking chair.
‘Gone to collect coffins. Lead-lined ones. Then they’re off to the battlefield to bring back the officers,’ Moss said and blew gustily on his tea. ‘Bad job that, having to go back. I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, not now, and I don’t mind confessing it.’
Maggie shuddered, the ample flesh quivering. ‘Poor man. And one of them his brother as well. That’ll hurt, for all he pretends the boy was a stranger to him.’
Rose’s imagination made a sickening lurch into thoughts of mud and heat and... No. Stop it. Think of Adam. He’s strong and he wouldn’t ever admit weakness, but he must be so tired and sick of this. No wonder he didn’t want some needy, helpless female tagging along, however convenient she might be for bed. And if he did want a woman, there must be plenty of tough, resourceful, experienced ones who understood a soldier’s life and how to support their man.
And I’m useless and inexperienced and he knows it, she thought as she took a bite of solid fruit cake. I’m less use to him than that great shaggy beast that comes to heel when he snaps his fingers. I’ve no voice and hardly any memory, so he thinks of me as a responsibility, another problem for him to deal with.
‘Aye, it’s a nasty business, war,’ Maggie said. ‘Still, there’s some good in it, too, even where you least expect it. Lieutenant Foster told me one of the infantry bandsmen found a French drummer boy, no more than a child, near where the colonel was lying. He says the regiment have adopted him and they’re taking him back with them into France. Perhaps that’s one boy who’ll be going home to his mother.’
Rose found tears welling at the thought, blew her nose briskly and made herself focus on putting her few facts together. What did she know about herself? Unconnected memories flitted in and out, confusing, impossible to link up and make sense of. The sound of the scream was still there, almost unnoticed now until she tried to focus, then it swelled and clamoured. This is impossible.
‘I’ll just make a shopping list,’ Maggie said. ‘Pass me the pen and ink and some of that scrap paper, will you, Moss?’ She began to scratch a list on the rough paper, muttering under her breath. ‘Eggs, tea, butter, starch...’
Of course! I can write, I can put down all of the memories and then I can sort them out, like a puzzle. When Maggie had finished Rose gestured towards the pen and paper. Excitement and hope fizzed inside her. She’d been lost in a maze and now, finally she could glimpse how to get out.
‘You can write?’ Maggie pushed them over to her. ‘You’ve found your memory?’
Yes and no. She waggled one hand. So-so.
The other woman seemed to understand. ‘Look, there’s more paper on that shelf. You take the things upstairs where you can be quiet, lovie. Your man won’t be back today.’
My man? No, he’s not. I doubt he is anyone’s man but his own.
Chapter Six (#ulink_da0a43cf-3118-5b9f-ad52-deba2448733d)
Flint rode at the head of his sombre little cavalcade of carts, his mood as black as the cloths they’d covered the coffins with. Corporal Pitts, who’d been a clerk in some far-off life, had written the names in a large copperplate hand on each box and the carpenter had done a good job with sturdy elm and lead. These few dead, at least, would wait in decent order until their grieving families could decide where to lay them to rest. It took more of an effort than it should to shut out the thoughts of the many whose final grave was a mass burial pit or a pile of burning corpses.
I’m getting old, Flint thought. Twenty-eight and bone-weary with this.
It wasn’t the fighting, it was the aftermath. They said that Wellington had wept over this victory and he could understand why. But this was the life he knew, the profession he had made his own. Peace was coming, surely—and then what? He’d been confident the other morning, talking to Hawkins about the East India Company. The armies of the Continental princelings sounded like toy soldiers from all accounts, but there was real fighting with the revolutionary armies in South America. If that was what he wanted... Hell, where had these doubts come from?
With an effort he dragged his mind from the future and thought about his errant half-sister. Randall had gone white with rage when he had reported where, and with whom, he had found Sarah and it had taken the concerted efforts of Flint and Randall’s batman to keep him flat on his back in bed. Flint had left him dictating a furious letter.
‘Report back the minute you have delivered the coffins to the Chapel Royal,’ the colonel had called after him on a gasp as he’d left the room. ‘If she’s not here, then you’ll go there and fetch her!’
And that was likely to get a positive response—one involving a slammed door in his face. Sieges were always tiresome and boring and he had an unpleasant premonition that he was going to have to remove Lady Sarah bodily, and probably end up answering a challenge from Bartlett into the bargain. Always assuming his fellow officer regained his conveniently scattered wits and considered him enough of a gentleman to challenge in the first place.
Whilst he was sunk in gloom he might as well worry about Rose while he was at it. He wanted her. Wanted her rather too much for comfort or for decency. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t remember who she was and he ought to leave her alone, find somewhere, someone, to take responsibility for her. As it was she was disturbing his sleep, making him ache and ruining his concentration.
Perhaps one of the officers’ ladies... He passed the next few miles reviewing those he had some knowledge of. The do-gooders who would take Rose in and find her a respectable job were enough to stifle any spirit the girl had. The frivolous and the pleasure-loving wouldn’t be bothered. Perhaps Randall knew of someone, but whatever the outcome, he was not keeping her, however much he was coming to feel she somehow belonged to him. A stray dog was one thing, a stray female, quite another.
* * *
It was past midnight when Flint returned to the lodging house. A grim day that had begun with disinterring corpses had ended in something very close to a theatrical farce, with him hammering on the door of Sarah’s lodgings and the infuriating chit hanging out of the window heaping insults and defiance on his aching head.
His temper had snapped. ‘You are behaving like some Billingsgate doxy,’ he’d roared. ‘And I have just come from leaving your brother’s coffin in the Chapel Royal.’
It was inexcusable, he knew it as soon as he said it. Gideon had been her twin and, from the little Randall had said, they’d been as close as twins so often were. He’d wondered at some point on that funereal journey whether her behaviour with Bartlett was not a reaction to that loss. Here was a wounded man she could tend to as she had been unable to tend to her brother.
‘You...you bastard,’ she’d screamed at him, hurled a potted geranium to crash on to the cobbles at his feet and slammed the window closed. The pretty blue-and-white-striped pot shattered along with any thoughts of empathy and the last shreds of his patience.
Now he walked through the deserted kitchen, dumped his sword belt on a chair, stripped off his clothes, grabbed soap from the stone sink and went out into the yard. Behind him he heard the click of claws as Dog made his way to his water bowl and then a gusty sigh as the animal sank down in his corner.
The cold water from the pump made him gasp, but it was clean, washing away the stink of death that had hung around him all day. Hawkins poked his head out of the stables, nodded, then closed the door again, his survival instincts sharp enough to recognise Flint’s mood, even in the gloom.
He scrubbed himself roughly dry with his shirt as he climbed the stairs. Bed, sleep, oblivion. A woman would be even better, bringing the sort of oblivion that did not contain nightmares. Flint kept his back to Rose’s door as he padded across the room in the almost-darkness of the midsummer night to the big white bed, dropping clothing behind him as he went. That way lay temptation. He knew he would not be able to resist her once he’d set foot in that room.
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