By the time Charles came in, Victoria had washed and changed into a fresh dress, full of the knowledge that Hugo could be as easily distracted by the Divine Huntress as any other man. Did he also visit the French lines or some house in Kamiesh? She closed her eyes against the image, just as Charles pushed aside the blanket and limped toward her.
“Rayne is dead,” he said harshly. “I am now in command of this regiment.”
Her eyes flew open. “Poor man. He fought if off for so long.”
“There is no rhyme or reason in a valuable man like Rayne being lost while others appear to have nine lives,” he cried savagely. “I begin to believe Satan himself has put his deadly grip around this army.”
Ignoring the inference in his first sentence, she said, “The regiment must be thankful it has such an experienced and capable man to step into Colonel Rayne’s shoes.”
“Must it?” He swung around, eyes blazing. “How little you know of the situation here. You think a few hours spent mopping the brows of the sick qualifies you to comment on a disaster such as this. You are here to see to my comfort, that is all. You can forget all this nonsense of hospitals.” He was shaking convulsively by now. “I will tell you what this means. My whole time will be spent fighting the authorities. Do you know, ma’am, that I have been attempting to get adequate stabling for the horses of Number Three Squadron for four months? Four months!” He put out on arm with finger pointing. “The wood is down there in the dockyard rotting away from disuse, yet I am told there is none available. Half the regiment’s saddles are falling to pieces, and yet my repeated requests to send an officer to Kemiesh in search of replacements have been continually turned down. A shipload is on its way from Scutari, I am told, but where is it?” He raised his voice. “Where is it? Oh no, Victoria, you know nothing of where Rayne’s death places me.”
“I thought you always wanted to be colonel of the regiment, Charles.”
He sagged and put his hand to his forehead. “Yes…colonel of a regiment such as we had in England. What have I now? Five hundred recruits, half of whom cannot ride in a straight line, led by officers who laugh at the word duty and prance around like lovesick poodles behind any female in sight.” He swept her full-length with a pitying glance. “I see why you returned from Constantinople. In the company of ladies of undoubted breeding and beauty, he was unable to resist his nature. It was not you who tired of him, but he who washed his hands of a drab creature who can speak of nothing but cholera and bandages. How does it feel to see him jumping through hoops at her command?”
She drew in her breath. “About the same as it feels to see you at the feet of a French wanton.”
His hand caught her across the left cheek, the power of the blow sending her backward a pace or two. The shock was comparable to that on her wedding night when he had used violence against her. This time he was quite as horrified as she, for it showed in his expression just before she turned and fled from the hut.
“Victoria…”
His cry floated into the approaching dusk, but the devil was on her heels now and nothing would have halted her. Seizing the bridle of Charles’s horse as it was being led away, she ordered the trooper to assist her into the saddle, then set off at a gallop through the lines, scattering soldiers as she went.
The horse was fresh and flew like the wind across the open hillside. Something inside Victoria had snapped with that blow. Reason had been swept aside. As she let the great creature take her where he would, the wildness that comes with a complete breakdown set her crying with great racking sobs until the sound of it filled her head.
She leaned forward to ease the agony in her stomach brought on by her sobs. “God have mercy on me. God have mercy on us all,” she shouted to the wind, in a voice that echoed the cries of all those she had watched through their death throes.
On and on she rushed, the thudding hooves reminding her of that October day when she had seen all the glory and obscenity of battle. A long wail left her as she despaired for all those who had gone — Harry Edmunds, Cornet McKay, Trooper Pitchley and cheerful friendly Stokes. Her cheeks were drenched with tears for all those who had dragged themselves up the beach at Scutari to enter the indescribable horror of the hospital; for poor Jack Markham and brokenhearted Letty; for Zarina Stokes, who could not face the thought of those abandoned women in the cellars; and for the fresh-faced Rupert Marshall, who had seen only five minutes of the war in the trenches before surrendering his life. She sobbed for Hugo, her one eternal love, who had suffered so deeply and still suffered from one night when he had removed a blindfold and saw her standing before him.
But her most anguished tears were for herself. For her own humiliation and pain; for her dearly bought dignity that had been demolished in an instant by a man who had struck her as he would strike a slut. Had compassion debased her? Had humanity so low a value that those who practiced it were thought to be of no account? Her friends had drifted away to those pale useless creatures who demanded all and gave nothing. Visitors looked askance at Colonel Stanford’s wife when they heard she spent most of her time bandaging the limbs of common soldiers and writing letters for those who were illiterate, and they turned their well-bred attention elsewhere.
Her husband had been contemptuous of her fear of his love-making, had considered her useless because she could not produce children, and now, when she had achieved so much that was worthy, he showed that the work she did reduced her to the lowest of creatures — lower than the one he had defended with that blow.
In near darkness she galloped on, knowing nothing would make her return and nothing would stop the spring that was welling up inside her and flowing from her eyes. The wind rushing past her ears was cold with approaching night, and the grayness ahead was studded with stars. If she could only reach one of those she need never come back to earth. It should be possible. Alone out here with the great striding creature beneath her, why should she not leap from the summit of this hill right up to one of those beckoning lights? They were almost on the summit, she noticed, and urged the horse on with a fevered cry. With her eyes on the stars she was not aware of anything but her desire to escape. She did not hear a sharp challenge from several yards ahead.
“Who goes there? Who goes there, I say? Halt!”
Victoria gathered herself for the tremendous leap into the sky as the horse took off. There was a deafening report and the animal stumbled as it landed on the other side of a small water course, then continued on its way in a broken halting rhythm that gradually slowed until it stopped, flanks heaving and whinnying with pain. For a few moments Victoria sat motionless, then slid from the saddle to bury her face in the warm glossy neck in despair. She would never get away now.
Hooves thundered up and someone catapulted to the ground behind her.
“Victoria, you are not hurt? Tell me you are not hurt!” He seized her shoulders and forced her around to face him. He was white, and the hands that held her shook.
She gazed at him while her heart cried out against this cruelest of blows. Of all people to be here at this moment of her complete humiliation! With a moan she pulled free and began stumbling over the grass turned emerald by the enchanting glow of dusk, but he was after her in a second, pulling her to a halt and raising his voice from the depth of his fright.
“What do you mean by riding out here beyond our lines? Dear God, do you realize my trooper could have killed you?”
Shaking off his restraining hand, she turned away again. When she spoke it was in a defeated monotone. “It would not have mattered. I am nothing. I have always been nothing.”
“How dare you say that when, to me, you are everything?”
She spun back to face him, the memory of Charles’s words raging through her. Her great need was to hurt — to break him on the wheel of her own love, to scourge him with the lash of her jealousy. He stood before her, tall and strong with the scar of courage upon his cheek, but she wanted to topple him in the dust beside her and witness his suffer
ing. The thickness of tears in her throat forced the words out in jerky contempt.
“And what of her? Is she everything to you also? Your proud talk of love and honor has been trampled in the mud with her arrival. You are no better than all the rest who form her languishing retinue.”
He covered the distance between them in two strides. Even in the gathering darkness it was clear he was ablaze with a passion she had never before seen in him.
“What do you want from me? What would you have me do? You will never be free, and I am only human.”
“Then take her!” she cried. “Take her into your life and into your very soul. Let her diminish you day by day until your life is colorless and your soul is no longer your own. Trot in her shadow like a bondsman, if that is what you want.” The wetness on her cheeks grew chilled by the night. “Your mama always held her above me, so do your duty and take her!”
“I cannot, Victoria,” he said with an effort. “You are there between us all the time.”
The very night held its breath as they exchanged their pain, their joy, their helplessness in a long glance.
“I…I am so sorry,” she whispered.
He took her against him in a swift movement and held her there. “No…no,” he murmured in anguish against her mouth. “Never apologize to me.”
Sweet rioting pain beset every limb as she was drawn against him in the crashing surrender of all they had tried to fight for so long. His mouth touched her hair, cheeks, throat and closed her eyelids before returning to take her lips with gentle savagery. She moaned softly as the pain in her thighs overwhelmed her and her breasts burned beneath the pressure of his body. Her hand went up to twist in his hair, and the fur busby fell to the ground, where it rolled slowly down to the waiting horses.
His head was thrown back as he took in a great sighing breath, and Victoria found herself swung up in his arms while he began to walk into the darkness with the erratic steps of a man in a daze. Her fingers stroked the scar on his cheek and went on to trace the outline of his lips, until they parted and teeth bit gently against her flesh. Her hand dropped to tear open the gold-encrusted collar of his jacket to expose his throat. It was fever-warm beneath her kisses, and the pulsating thud of his heartbeat sent a wild message through her, to set her whole body throbbing in time to it.
With a groan he brought her face up to meet his once more, letting her feet slide to the ground, crushing her against him in an embrace that washed away her subjugation to Charles and put her very life into Hugo’s keeping forever. There was so much of her that should belong to him, the weight of the burden brought small cries of pain that he tried to silence with his mouth, then with trembling fingers. Snatching his hand away she pressed it against her breast, arching backward in her agony and driving him deeper into the realms of passion.
Drugged with desire, he gathered her up in his arms once more and began walking away from the horses into the cloaking darkness. A shadow rose up ahead and broke his progress.
“Captain Esterly…is that you, sir? Is everything all right?”
“What…who is that?” he asked like a man coming out of sleep.
“Bramble, sir,” said the trooper, and a hint of anxiety touched his voice when Hugo drew close enough to be visible in the darkness. “Oh lor’, is Mrs. Stanford all right, sir? Did I hit her?”
Hugo barely heard him. “I shall have to take her back. She cannot go alone.”
“Is she hurt bad?” he asked, voice unsteady.
“For God’s sake stop behaving like a girl and pull yourself together.” Vicious anger was his only outlet for an emotion he had been denied. “Thanks to your bloody atrocious marksmanship you have only hit the colonel’s horse. Get down there and bring the beast up to the post with mine.”
“Yes, sir. I…I’m sorry, sir.”
“Get those damned horses!”
The man went, and Victoria began the long journey back to reality with Hugo as he carried her to the piquet post. Leaving his men under the command of a sergeant, he took her up in front of him on the gray horse and led the wounded charger by the rein for the half-hour ride back to camp. Neither spoke as the gray took them at a steady walk through the dark night toward the faint glow of campfires.
Victoria knew there would never be another night like this when a skyful of stars witnessed their love. She was reluctant to pull herself from the soft mood of submission as she leaned back against his solid strength, his left arm encircling her as he held the reins. She was still wrapped in the joy of surrender. She could feel Hugo’s tenseness in the way he held himself in the saddle. She longed to turn her face up to his and caress his mouth with hers; she dared not. Did he blame her for forcing a surrender that had made a mockery of his sense of honor? After tonight, how could they go back to nodding acquaintances? He would find it either impossible to forgive her or resist her.
At the outskirts of the camp Hugo suddenly pulled the horse to a standstill, where it shook its head restlessly and fidgeted from leg to leg.
“How can I take you back to him?” he demanded in despair. “It was something he did that drove you out there in such distress, I am certain.”
She said nothing, only pressed closer against him.
“Did he hurt you?”
Against the blue cloth of his jacket she said, “It was nothing to what I felt when I saw you with…that girl.”
He put back his head in an impotent gesture while his breath came out in a long sigh, then he set the horse forward again in silence.
Outside Charles’s hut Hugo lifted Victoria down and held her still for a moment. In the starlit darkness his face was a rigid shadow.
“How can I take you back to him?” he repeated in a soft groan. “It is too much to ask of any man.”
She knew he was asking the question more of himself than of her. “How can you not take me back to him?”
The gleam in his eyes vanished as he closed them momentarily. “Dear God in heaven, how will this all end?”
The groom appeared from the shadows and took the reins of the two horses. Victoria began to move into the hut, forcing Hugo to accompany her.
Charles was sitting in a chair by the light from a lamp, but he stood up when they entered side by side, a flush dyeing his face darker in the pale glow. For a moment there was silence, then he said to Victoria, “So you ran to him. Have you no pride whatsoever?”
“Are you inhuman that you can sit here while Victoria is exposed to all kinds of danger?” Hugo blazed. “She could have been killed, but the bullet ended in your horse’s rump.”
“Get out of here!”
“By God, Charles, if I had not been commanding the piquet and recognized your charger, she could have been fired upon by every guard along the Tchernaya River. Do you care nothing for her safety?”
“I told you to get out.”
Victoria began to tremble. She could only guess what had passed between the brothers in the past; it frightened her to see such naked aggression now. The air inside the hut was full of tension as they stood, two powerful men, ready to spring at each other’s throats. It occurred to her that love and hatred were conceived in the same womb, that a caress could destroy as surely as the sword. Putting a hand on Hugo’s sleeve, she said, “Please go,” but he was past listening and was as white as Charles was flushed.
“You had a right to order me out of Wychbourne, Charles, but this hut is not your legal property.”
“My wife is…and you have been ordered to stay away from her.”
“Victoria is a woman…a warm human creature who is entitled to your care and protection. She is not part of your legal property.”
Charles gripped the table to steady himself. “She is my wife!” He was shouting now. “If you still refuse to accept that she is, I shall have to drive the lesson home in such a way that you will…and I shall break you in the process, Hugo, I swear it. Do you think I shall tolerate your dragging my name through the mud? Everyone was buzzing with the sordid fac
ts when you flaunted your amour in the face of Constantinople society. My wife was discussed in every mess and cookhouse in the Crimea.”
“That is a damned lie,” roared Hugo. “She commands nothing but the deepest respect from every man who knows her.”
“Then, by thunder, it is about time you joined their ranks. This is a little out of your style tonight, is it not?”
Hugo clenched the hilt of his sword until the sinews stood out in his hand. “What do you mean by that?”
Up went Charles’s chin in the Stanford gesture. “You normally avail yourself of my wife’s generosity when I am safely distant.”
There was a paralyzing moment while Hugo took the full force of the words in his face, then Charles burst into a flood of abuse. “You dare to lay down the law to me when you have been amusing yourself in the hills with Victoria! I have been right all along. You have no strength of character, no sense of duty, no sense of honor. I have no need to ask what happened out there, for it is written all over you.” He was fighting unsuccessfully for command of himself. “You shall pay for it this time, believe me.”
Victoria watched him take two steps toward Hugo and ran between the two men. “No, Charles. No!”
He pushed her aside so roughly that her foot twisted and she fell across the table with a sharp cry. It grew unnaturally quiet, and she just had time to see the brothers staring in horror at her as she lay there, before Charles said, “Now will you get out?”
Victoria felt she had reached the limit of her endurance. “Please, for all our sakes, go,” she begged Hugo through a torrent of tears.
He gave her a long look from a face grown haggard, then turned to Charles. “I swear, if you ever harm her again, in any way whatever, I shall take her from you. I shall forfeit my future, my profession, my honor…but I shall take her as surely as if she had never borne your name.” He spun on his heel and strode out, his sword swinging against his leg.
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