The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  Her heart leaped to her throat when she recognized Armand standing in the shadows. He gave her a brave, encouraging smile. Her eyes wandered to the man beside him, and she gave a start. Guy Landron, whom she had not seen since she left London, greeted her with a very grave, assessing look. She read concern in the directness of his expression, and returned a reassuring smile. It took her a full minute to register that the fair-haired gentleman on Armand’s other side was Tony Cavanaugh, the Earl’s cousin. She had not known that either man was in Brussels.

  She made a move toward her brother but was stopped by Rathbourne’s steady grip on her elbow. “The minister is waiting,” he said curtly. “And time is of the essence.”

  It was over in a matter of minutes, and Rathbourne’s ruby betrothal ring with a slim wedding band of gold lay snug around her finger. She managed only a short word with Armand before he left with the others, and even then, they said nothing of significance. But his smile was quite unrepentant as he wished his sister joy.

  The ride back to the hotel was made in almost total silence. Deirdre found it very unnerving. It seemed to her that the Earl was already regretting that he had made her his wife. It was not until they had crossed the threshold of his rooms on the third floor of the d’Angleterre that she voiced the question that had revolved in her mind.

  “Why was it so important for me to marry you?”

  She could see that her question had angered him and she tried to pass over it lightly. “You see, I don’t suffer from a surfeit of false modesty. I know my worth, and I cannot imagine why you should have settled for me when you could have done so much better for yourself. And I did not demand it of you.”

  She watched as he eased himself out of his scarlet tunic. Deirdre had not begun to undress and stood in the middle of the room feeling more awkward by the minute. She looked at him through the sweep of her dark lashes. For a man who had rushed her into marriage less than an hour before, he seemed to be uncommonly cold and unloverlike. She became conscious that her new husband had no intention of making things easy for her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and fumbled with the buttons at the back of her gown.

  His expression was impenetrable. “I thought you might have guessed why I settled on you for my wife. At all events, there can never be any question of why you accepted me.”

  He was down to his pantaloons and glanced at her irritably. “I have to be gone in an hour, you know. It’s imperative that this marriage be consummated. You see, I’m leaving no loophole—no chance later for an annulment, if you should ever take it into your head to seek one.”

  “You don’t want me,” she said in sudden enlightenment.

  “You’re wrong—which I shall very soon prove to you. Now get undressed.” There was a suggestion of impatience in his voice.

  The last button gave way under her fingers, and she stepped out of her gown. “Then you want me against your will,” she observed.

  “And you married me against your will,” he retaliated.

  “Is that it? Is that the reason for this show of temper?”

  “Yes, that’s it! Now get your drawers off before I help you take them off. I don’t think I could stand the caterwauling that that act would occasion.”

  She gave a little crow of triumph and his eyes narrowed on her. She twisted her body suggestively and wriggled demurely out of her white linen drawers and threw them with a feminine flounce on the nearest chair. He felt his blood, hot and thick, begin its familiar surge to every pulse point in his body, and was embarrassed to undress further and give her all the proof she needed of how much indeed he did want her.

  “Douse the lights,” he said harshly.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she drawled. “I’m not the innocent I once was, you know. I don’t frighten easily.”

  She left him no choice but to disrobe fully. His eyes were dark and turbulent as Deirdre’s mischievous green eyes slowly assessed every naked inch of him.

  “You’ll do!” she said on a throaty laugh, and quickly crossed the distance between them.

  She spread a hand across his bare chest and turned her head aside to evade his hungry kiss. “Gareth, listen to me,” she said, and her eyes were shining and unguarded with a depth of affection he had often hoped for but had never dared expect to see in them. “Can’t you tell why I was so reluctant to give my consent to our marriage this evening?”

  “You’ve made your sentiments known before. I should have heeded them.”

  “Cawker!” she said with a sigh. She brushed his lips with the tips of her fingers, and kissed him lightly when he opened them to her. “I had already made up my mind to have you. It was this business with Armand which made me obstinate. How could I let you become involved with a couple of traitors? I thought you would hate me if you knew.”

  A look of something Deirdre could not quite name came and went in his eyes. He drew her firmly into the circle of his arms. “Does this mean you are finally admitting that you love me?” he asked against her ear between nips and nibbles of her earlobe.

  “I thought I said as much in the carriage.” Her hands slid over his shoulders. She pushed him slightly away, and spread them over his chest, testing the hardened muscles with the soft pads of her fingers. His breathing altered, became slower, deeper, less regular.

  “I wasn’t listening the first time you said it. Say it again,” he managed raggedly, and his hands cupped her hips to fit her more snugly against the length of him.

  “I love you.”

  “Is it so hard to say?”

  “It must be,” she murmured indistinctly as she nipped at his shoulders with her sharp teeth, “for I have yet to hear you say those words to me tonight.”

  He said them, and kissed her deeply. He repeated them and cupped her head with both hands, swinging her round and round as if leading her to the slow tempo of some music that only he could hear. When he pulled her down on the bed, he made to remove her chemise.

  “Gently,” she warned him as he slipped it over her head.

  “You never told me what excuse you gave your abigail for the torn stays and drawers.”

  “I told her a half-truth.”

  That got his attention. “What did you tell her?” His glance was wary and slightly disbelieving.

  “That my horse fell on me when I tried to mount it.”

  He fell on top of her. “Lady Rathbourne, you think you have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well, you’d better have an answer for this.” He pulled her hand down to his groin and rubbed himself suggestively against it. “Well?” She gave him the answer he wanted.

  “I don’t want to go to Antwerp,” she told him peevishly as he dressed an hour later. “I want to stay here, close to where you will be.”

  “Nevertheless, you’ll do as I say. My cousin, Tony, will escort you. At least I can trust him to follow my wishes.”

  “Why is that?”

  “For one reason, because I am the head of this family.”

  “And for another?”

  “I hold the purse strings.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t say as much to him. I find that attitude very arrogant and quite out of place. We’re in the nineteenth century now, you know.”

  “That’s as may be, but some things never change. Tony is not obtuse, like some I could name.”

  The time had come to part, and they spoke at random, reluctant to say the final words that would begin their separation.

  He drew her into his arms and laid his cheek against her hair. “I hope you are pregnant.”

  “I thought you might.” Her fingers absently smoothed the gold lace at his throat.

  “Would it please you if you were?”

  “Only if you can guarantee to give me babies with red hair.” She was trying very hard not to cry, but the tears overflowed in spite of herself.

  He kissed her swiftly and covered her hands with his, drawing them reluctantly away from him. “Deirdre, I want you to know that whatever I have done, I
did because I love you. No, don’t interrupt. Try to understand and…be generous and forgive me.”

  He tore himself away and left without a backward glance. Deirdre rushed to the bedroom windows and opened them wide. The Rue de la Madeleine was milling with people, and the noise of drum and bugle rose steadily as soldiers in uniform and heavily laden supply carts passed over the cobbled streets toward Grand’ Place.

  Rathbourne strode out of the hotel, and out of the blackness came a mounted O’Toole leading the Earl’s gray. Another rider remained in the background. A lump caught in Deirdre’s throat as Rathbourne swung himself into the saddle. He looked up and caught sight of her. After a heartbeat of a pause, he touched his fingers to his lips. A moment later, he dug his spurs into the gray’s flanks and rode off with O’Toole into the night.

  She looked at the clock on Rathbourne’s dresser. It was four o’clock in the morning. She had been married for two hours.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Deirdre awakened to what she at first supposed were the distant sounds of a severe thunderstorm, though sunlight was streaming into her bedchamber. She looked at her bedside clock and remarked that she had slept till well past noon. The thunderstorm persisted, but the rhythm was disturbingly regular, and for a long disoriented moment, she was at a loss to explain such a phenomenon. Then it came to her. Gunfire!

  She leaped out of bed and dressed herself with trembling fingers and hastened downstairs. The corridors were choked with English patrons and their servants who had spent the night packing up their belongings and were frantic to remove themselves from the battle zone lest the city fall into French hands. The clamor of their panic-stricken orders and counterorders rose to an alarming pitch as Deirdre stumbled past an assortment of trunks and valises which were strewn around the halls.

  She found her aunt, Mrs. Dewinters, and Tony Cavanaugh in the public dining room calmly consuming a late luncheon, and she was given to understand by Tony, who held a chair for her, that the sound of the big guns probably came from the vicinity of Quatre Bras, the crossroads which fell somewhere between the villages of Waterloo and Charleroi.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said soothingly as he tucked her chair under her knees. “It will be a long time before anything major happens. The two sides are just feeling each other out.”

  “But how can you be certain that it’s Quatre Bras and not closer?” asked Lady Fenton, the treble in her voice clearly showing the strain of a long, sleepless night.

  “Well, I’m not certain, of course, but all units are under orders to make for Quatre Bras, so it was a natural assumption to make.”

  Conjecture, however, could not be stifled by Tony’s protestations to the contrary, and it was soon evident that nothing would placate Lady Fenton but a speedy removal to Antwerp. When Sir Thomas arrived, however, he soon scotched that notion. The roads throughout the city, he told them frankly, were choked with the carriages of fleeing visitors and native Belgians who knew what it was to endure the ferocity of a French occupation. To make matters worse, there were many units of soldiers still in the city and trying to rejoin their regiments in the south.

  “Even a rider on horseback can’t force a way through.” He saw an expression of alarm cross Lady Fenton’s face, and went on belatedly, “It’s much safer to remain where we are for the present, my dear. We might easily get stranded in the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow is time enough to make the journey.”

  A glance out of the dining room windows, which gave out back and front, confirmed the truth of Sir Thomas’s logic. Loaded carriages with angry coachmen, shouting passengers, and cursing ostlers, all at odds with each other, had blocked every exit to the hotel. If such scenes were repeated throughout Brussels, they would be lucky to make the outskirts of the city by nightfall. Tony said as much and continued, “Sir Thomas is right, and I, for one, have every confidence that Wellington will give Napoleon his just deserts.” His words seemed to calm Lady Fenton, and Deirdre flicked him a grateful glance.

  Mrs. Dewinters had said very little after her politely tendered congratulations to Deirdre on her nuptials, and Deirdre felt a wave of sympathy for the actress. Whatever Mrs. Dewinters’s past relationship had been with Rathbourne, Deirdre knew without a doubt that she, Deirdre, was in sole possession of her husband’s heart. She tried not to let the pity she felt show in her eyes.

  As it happened, the arrival of Mrs. Dawson with her children helped raise the spirits of all the ladies. It gave them something to do. Only Mrs. Dewinters showed a calm acceptance of the young woman’s decision to leave her children in the care of strangers and follow her husband to the field of battle. Lady Fenton had, of course, heard rumors of such things happening in Spain, but it had always seemed to her to be a romantic fabrication put about by those disreputable periodicals which would stoop to anything to boost sales. She did everything in her power to dissuade the young wife and mother from a course of action which filled her with horror, but nothing she said made the least impression. In the face of so much determination and pluck, she felt vaguely ashamed. It helped her get a grip on the sense of panic which had been rising steadily since the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.

  Solange and Mrs. Dewinters took charge of the children, and for something to keep her hands and thoughts busy, Deirdre went out to the stables to give Lustre a good rubdown. As she brushed the powerful, glossy back and flanks of the whinnying filly with smooth easy strokes and made vaguely soothing noises, Deirdre traced the route to Bois de la Cambre and beyond that to the Forest of Soignes in her mind. It was on the way to the village of Waterloo, although Deirdre had never ridden so far. She remembered the night of the reception, just a week ago, at the beautiful Château de Soignes and wondered if Rathbourne was at that moment anywhere near it.

  The rest of the day passed in a nightmare. The sound of the big guns could be heard intermittently well into evening, and there was constant turmoil outside the doors and windows of the hotel as rumor of first victory, then defeat, sent shock waves throughout the city. When the sound of the guns finally stopped as darkness descended, the citizens enjoyed their first respite of quiet in many long hours until a savage thunderstorm with torrential rain suddenly burst upon them, lasting well into the night.

  The natural rhythm of their days was disrupted to such an extent that no one thought, throughout the hours of that long Friday, of having meals at regular intervals or going to bed at dusk. One ate when the mood struck and caught a nap at odd moments, fearful lest one miss any report of how things were faring with Wellington and his armies.

  Thus it was that the Fenton party, along with other tardy guests of the hotel, were sitting down to a late supper shortly after midnight when they heard the ferocious clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones outside. There was a rush to the windows and they watched as the remnants of a Belgian and Dutch cavalry unit approached. The men were battle stained, their uniforms were torn and covered in mud; many of them were wounded and half falling off their mounts, and some of them were shouting the words “Quatre Bras,” and warning the citizens to leave Brussels on the instant since Wellington had fallen and the road to the city was open.

  It started a new wave of panic. The streets which had gradually quieted during the day were soon thronged with terrified Bruxellois and the remnants of the English making a desperate attempt to escape imminent disaster. Sir Thomas refused to be panicked, and he and Tony Cavanaugh left the hotel to try to discover if the report of Wellington’s defeat was a fact or if the Belgians, as he suspected, had deserted the field of battle. They returned an hour later and calmed the fears of the few remaining hotel patrons by informing them that although some panic-stricken Belgian dragoons were fleeing to the north, many British units were still in the city with their officers and were under orders to make for Quatre Bras.

  In face of the renewed activity of carts, carriages, and mounted horses outside the hotel, evidence that the news of Wellington’s defeat had spread like a forest fire, it was
difficult to accept with equanimity Sir Thomas’s calm assurances, but to venture out and become part of the mad mêlée on such a night was a fate that not even Lady Fenton would contemplate. They waited anxiously for further news.

  Toward two o’clock in the morning, cartloads of wounded began pouring in. Most of the wounded were Dutch and Belgians, but there were a few British among them. Several such cartloads came to a halt outside the Hotel d’Angleterre and Deirdre’s heart jumped when she recognized Dr. Shane McCallum.

  Sir Thomas went to meet him, and within minutes, the wounded were being carried from the loaded wagons and the hotel had been taken over as a temporary hospital. Dr. McCallum gave them the first reliable intelligence they had received of how things stood with the allies.

  “We still hold the crossroads, thank God. Things could be worse, but we’re a long way from any decisive action.”

  There was little time for further talk, for many of the wounded were in urgent need of medical treatment, and Dr. McCallum let it be known that he expected the ladies to don their plainest frocks and assist him with the care of his patients. They worked through the night, tending wounds, sitting with the dying, soothing the nightmares of the shell-shocked victims, administering doses of laudanum, and generally making themselves useful. But the worst task of all was in assisting with amputations.

  When Deirdre unhesitatingly obeyed Dr. McCallum’s summons to assist him with a young British soldier who lay stretched out on a table, she had little idea what was expected of her until she looked with horror at the shattered arm and the implement in Dr. McCallum’s hand. She swayed on her feet, and Mrs. Dewinters quickly stepped in and took over. The actress, dainty and dazzlingly beautiful, put on a performance somewhere between flirtation and cajolery which soon charmed the young patient into submission. His protest that he would be only half a man with the loss of his arm was laid to rest by a few softly spoken words in his ear. Mrs. Dewinters held a glass of brandy to his lips as the young man, a boy really, who hailed from Somerset, gulped it back. It was the only aid to blur the pain of surgery.