Major Lord David

by Sherry Lynn Ferguson

  “No, Billie. As I told Hayden, I was quite without my senses. I even had his coat about me, but I don’t recall it at all.”

  “Yet he clearly assured your safety.”

  “I s’pose.”

  At that Billie jumped up from his chair. “You are quite abominable, Kit Caswell! Lord David saved your life, and you still resent him!”

  Kit looked suddenly sullen. “I don’t much care to be in debt to ‘im,” he muttered.

  “In debt to him? You don’t mind being in debt to everyone else!”

  Kit struggled to rise from the chair. Watching him, Billie felt instantly contrite. But he always made her feel so, and to no good end.

  “How long have you been perfect?” he asked crossly. “Has the idea of becoming a marchioness gone to your head?”

  “I am not `perfect,’ Kit. You know I do not think of myself so. And I shall never be a marchioness.”

  “Then what’s all this business with Hayden? I thought-”

  “I doubt you did think, Kit! I wouldn’t be engaged to Hayden were it not for you. If you hadn’t been so-so rolled up by Dumont, ‘twould never have been necessary! You must know the engagement was to keep Dumont from seeking my portion. And now I believe David would not be missing if it weren’t for you-running off and hoaxing, wheedling your way where you’d no business to be! He gave his horse to you, he gave his coat to you, and possibly possibly his life! If anything-if something has happened to him, I shall never forgive you!” Billie could scarcely breathe. Though all of it was the truth, she suspected it should not have been said.

  There was a long silence in their tiny room. Then Kit said distantly, “Well, that’s clear enough” He looked then so pale and thin, leaning on his crutches, that Billie almost apologized. But Ephie saved her from spoiling her own victory.

  “Shall we go on down to dinner? Everyone seems a bit peckish.”

  Ephie aided a hobbling Kit as they made their way to a table in the dining room. There were no private parlors; they had all been lent out as rooms. At the side of the table Hayden introduced Barton, a large, open-featured man of perhaps forty, who had been invited to join their dinner group.

  Billie reached to shake Barton’s hand. “I must thank you for all you have done, for Lieutenant Athington and my brother.”

  “That’s all right, miss.”

  “Is Major Trent’s horse doing well?”

  “Oh, nothing troubles Incendio, miss. He’ll be all to rights once the major’s back.”

  Would it were so, Billie thought, taking her seat. She did not recall when she had last eaten, but she had no appetite now.

  The others did not appear to share her listlessness. Neither was the table silent. Lord Knowles kept up his usual discourse, with sustaining additions from Ephie and Kit. Hayden refrained from speaking much, though the occasional hotel guest, seeing him, would stop by at their exposed table to greet him. Barton did not speak at all, until at one point Kit addressed her as “Billie”

  ” Ah you’re `Billie,’ then!” Barton exclaimed. He said nothing more but stole glances at her as he ate. When she caught him at it, he smiled.

  As the meal ended, Hayden surveyed the table.

  “We have no place to which to retire. So regrettably we must share our news here. Mr. Barton has been kind enough to join us” Hayden inclined his head to Barton at the opposite end of the table. “So I will ask him to relay to the rest of you what he told me before dinner.”

  That the Marquis of Hayden should have requested his brother’s batman, a servant, to speak so, was a measure of his concern. But Barton certainly did not appear overwhelmed by the unusual invitation. He thanked Hayden, then spoke of the last time he had seen the major, how he had later come upon Incendio and Kit, and his efforts to quiz survivors of the battle regarding the major’s whereabouts.

  “So you see, genelmen an’ ladies, as near as I can tell, he never made it back down to the farm, where he was to meet me. And the last person rememberin’ speakin’ to ‘im was an officer of the Hanovrins. So, if he did not move on with the advance-and I cannot think as he would’ve, havin’ mentioned the farm-he must have stayed somewheres on the slope behind it. The duke-that’s Lord Wellington-demanded lists last week before he went on to Paris-of all the wounded an’ those in hospital. And the officers was asked to list deserters. A stickler the duke was about it too! And the major weren’t on any of those lists.”

  “He is dead, then,” Billie said flatly. Even as she said it, she did not feel it. But she spoke to convince herself.

  Hayden regarded her steadily. “It is what we dread, Miss Billie. And thus, in this unfortunate circumstance, it appears the more likely. But we must rely on facts, not our fears, for the truth of it. Barton assures me that he covered the ground, looking among the dead…

  “They did have to bury many where they lay, my lord,” Barton inserted, at which Billie felt as though she had again crossed the Channel.

  Hayden glanced swiftly at her, then asserted, “Those cases were quite different, though, weren’t they, Barton? Now-” He looked to the others. “We have a horse, a coat, a watch, but no Major Trent. Barton last spoke with him just prior to the confrontation with the French Imperial Guard. However mad David might appear in the usual course, he is a most disciplined officer. He is unlikely to have joined the allied advance rashly and without a weapon, though we cannot discount that he might have salvaged one. His last known action was to aid Mr. Caswell, who remembers nothing.”

  “Except the Frenchman yelling,” Kit put in petulantly.

  “But the French cannot have been upon you yet, else David would never have spared the time for such elaborate careeven for you, Mr. Caswell. You must have imagined the Frenchman”

  “I know a Frenchie when I hear one!”

  As Billie winced at the term, Hayden granted Kit one singularly intent look, then smoothly opened a palm to Knowles. “Knowles, my friend, would you do me the honor and kindly educate our young guest?”

  “What? Oh! Delighted.” And Knowles, who looked so indisputably English, launched upon such a stream of perfect French that Kit’s jaw dropped.

  Barton laughed. “The major was always quick with the parleyvous’ as well, my lord,” he said.

  At that, Billie’s memory of David was so intense as to be painful. Had he been quick with the `parleyvous,’ as Barton said? She supposed so. He had ever been quick. And he spoke French with his lovely grandmere….

  She drew a sharp, comprehending breath as she leaned toward Hayden.

  “My lord,” she said urgently. “Your grandmere told me he will speak what he hears, habitually, without thought. We have been looking in the wrong army.” And by the light in his gaze, she knew that Hayden understood her.

  They found new inspiration and energy. The next morning, while Hayden, Knowles, and Barton fanned out across the countryside in search of a “French” David, Billie visited the hospital for the wounded French prisoners in Brussels. The good ladies of the city were engaged in ministering to all the luckless survivors of Waterloo, an endeavor that seemed, at least to Billie, to require not only great fortitude but great quantities of bandages for dressing wounds. The production of lint required most of their time.

  Volunteering to dispense refreshments to the patients, Billie viewed every man there but failed to find the one man she sought. And on her rounds she found it easier not to focus on the maladies of any particular soldier, to concentrate solely on her task, for some of the individual cases were heartbreaking.

  Hayden returned late that night with the news that, in the confused withdrawal toward Paris, the few prisoners the French had taken, most of them Prussian, had managed to escape. The French were said to have been in such disarray that they’d had difficulties looking even to themselves.

  This news left the possibility that David might have been wounded and collected by a local resident, either someone who had not had the means to transport him into the city or, perhaps, a sympathizer
with Bonaparte-a partisan who intended to see French soldiers returned to France. David had written of such sympathies among the country folk. But if he had been unable to leave within a week, whatever injuries he had sustained must be severe indeed.

  On the second day, Hayden borrowed Mr. Athington’s team. Hayden, Knowles, Billie, and Ephie drove out along the road toward Nivelles, in the southwest, where Wellington had moved his army the day after Waterloo. Barton took Incendio out separately, to circle toward Enghien, where David had been billeted before the battle.

  “‘Tis possible someone picked ‘im up and could not easily bring him on into town,” Hayden said, managing to coax Athington’s team temporarily to a trot. They skirted the battlefield, which Billie had no wish to see-the stories she had heard over the past two days had been sufficiently harrowing. The image of a muddy plain, thick with the dead, had taken root in her mind; she wondered whether a battleground took as long as its combatants to heal. As their party passed, they found that the stench of gunpowder, fire, and smolder lingered. Even the farms to the west of the site showed evidence of upheaval-the flattened fields of rye, crushed hedges and gardens, and abandoned, broken vehicles all spoke of the recent chaos.

  They had been traveling more than two hours out of town, the ladies with their parasols spread wide against the hot sun, and the open carriage-little more than a wagon-grew increasingly dusty, for the road was only partially cobbled and the remainder dry earth and ruts. Billie conceded that Hayden was certainly a fine driver, not only to elicit so much from such a team, but to make the ride tolerable. To spare the horses, they stopped frequently at farmhouses nearest the road, to show grandmere’s locket miniature of David and make inquiries. Knowles, whose facility with the language was so extraordinary, was tasked with asking after any guests in the vicinity. Billie suspected that Hayden’s French was almost as good, but for some reason he preferred not to speak it.

  In this plodding and discouraging manner, they moved perhaps two miles beyond the battlefield, following the sun, which had slipped into a hot afternoon blaze. They resorted to their canteens more than once.

  “Rather a shocking business for these farmers,” Knowles remarked. “Imagine the ill fortune to have just this spot chosen for such a contest-and their year’s crops just starting to thrive.”

  “And then to have their emperor bested,” Hayden added dryly.

  “Not all, Hayden. Not all! Why, some have told me they always supported the allies.”

  “Oh, I am sure they do-now.”

  “Not everything is politics, Lord Hayden,” Ephie said with spirit. “No doubt the state of their stomachs will convince them of much”

  “You have the way of it, Miss Caswell,” Knowles affirmed. “Once they have a few good years of harvests, these farmers will forget any indignities.”

  “One does not easily surrender a generation of glory,” Hayden said. “Why do you think Bonaparte received the welcome he did in March?”

  “Well, as to that-” But Knowles abruptly ceased talking, because as they crested a slight rise in the road, they looked down upon a trampled farmstead. And standing at its rickety gate, with his left arm in a sling and the other holding a package from which a crust of bread protruded, Lord David was apparently taking leave of a local farming couple.

  Hayden halted the team. As the Belgian pair scurried back into their home, David looked the few hundred feet up the road toward their wagon. To their astonishment, he turned his back upon them and calmly started to walk in the opposite direction.

  Billie wanted to scream. How dare he-after all of this! Her fists clenched, but when she glanced toward Hayden, his face was impassive. Billie thought he briefly shook his head.

  “Goodness!” Ephie exclaimed. “Isn’t that Lord David there ahead of us? Why do you not-”

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” Hayden interrupted. “I should prefer to see what he is about” And as they drove on past the farmhouse and yard, his gaze surveyed both most minutely.

  Billie could not take her attention from David, walking along ahead of them. He was booted but without a coat or hat. His dark hair looked longer and shone in the sun. He was much thinner, even rangy, which somehow made his shoulders appear even broader. His shirt and breeches were stained and torn. The rude sling tied in a knot at his nape, and the arm-what was wrong with his arm? Billie thought he did not walk briskly. But he was walking. He was whole. He was safe.

  Her relief was physical. Gratitude made her tremble. As their carriage came closer, she willed David to stop. When he did, and turned to face the road, Billie felt his gaze as a caress.

  The carriage pulled up beside him, and David smiled-a wide and beautiful smile that erased what must have been lines of pain from his pale face. For a moment he looked up at Billie, and from her height on the wagon seat, she looked down upon him. She thought the warmth in his eyes something wonderful. Then his glance sought out the other occupants of the carriage. He raised his package-laden right arm to point down the road before them, as though giving them direction.

  “If you would, Myles,” he said, and his voice delighted her, “just drive on up over this next rise, so that I might avoid being shot as a spy.” Again his gaze returned to her, his face alight with his smile-so much so that, despite the shock of his words, she could not heed him with any seriousness. Quickly she slipped from her seat and down into the dusty roadway, to block his body with her own.

  “Do stop playing, David,” Hayden said, “and climb up here with us. You see Miss Billie dares to protect you.”

  “I see that,” David said softly. He was looking not at Hayden but at her. “She is very brave.”

  “‘Tis foolish,” she breathed. His gaze mesmerized her. “As you’ve told me before”

  “Perhaps both, Billie dear, as I am fairly certain a musket is pointed at your back. My former benefactor has questionable aim and a rusty weapon, but I should hate to have him accidentally shoot Lord Knowles.”

  “I say, David! That’s awfully good of you… “And Knowles was still elaborating as David quickly tossed him the package before swinging Billie up into the wagon with his still-strong right arm. He was following up behind her as Hayden sprang the team. The ancient animals actually thundered ahead for fifty yards.

  Billie had to content herself with being jolted up against David’s side. As this was his injured arm, she could not think it equally agreeable to him. But still she sat as close as she could, and he did not protest.

  “I must be grateful to them,” he explained, his voice unsteady as the wagon bounced, “to the Beaulieus-whatever their aim in rescuing me. They troubled to house two others, French officers from horse artillery. I improvised and claimed to be one of my French opponents-of Colonel Cubieres’s troops at the farm. But I fear they began to suspect that I was one of the reviled English. Too much staring at my best boots-by Hobbs you know, Myles.” And Billie glanced at his dulled and dirty boots. “Had they been Beaulieu’s size … Well! I knew I had to convince them I was returning to service or else resign myself to slow poisoning. Tell me-pleased as I am to see you-how do you all come to be here? Hasn’t Boney closed the roads?”

  The question was greeted with such a profound silence that David’s eyebrows rose.

  “You mean you do not know”-Hayden’s voice cracked”that Wellington was victorious? That you won?”

  Billie could feel David’s stillness. She could also feel the constraint of being denied even the clasp of his hand.

  “That old fox!” he fumed. “Beaulieu and his invincible Bonaparte! He’s been feeding us the opposite-that the French had a great victory, that Bonaparte is in Brussels and collecting more troops at the border. I shall go back and pummel him!”

  “How can you look so happy, then,” Hayden demanded, “thinking that you’d lost?” At David’s slow grin, Hayden pointedly turned his attention to the road.

  “Monsieur Beaulieu thought you French,” Billie said, forcing the words. She recalled with some
impatience that David had never before been disinclined to kiss her. “Perhaps he only meant to buoy your spirits. Yours and the other two men”

  “You are too kind to him, Miss Billie.” David’s close attention warmed her like sunlight. “The man was out looting early. And you did not see the gleam in his eye! Tell me-the Imperial Guard-defeated?” And David listened as the other three narrated what they had heard: of Bonaparte’s vaunted guard falling into confusion, how the French had broken and run, how Wellington had signaled a general advance at dusk. The Prussians had since poured into France on a vengeful rampage, and Wellington was proceeding to Paris, having passed along this very road.

  “He will not let up,” David said with satisfaction. Again looking down at Billie, he asked seriously, “What of your brother?”

  “Kit does very well, thanks to you. He is walking, though he contends with crutches.”

  “And Lieutenant Athington?”

  “Less well. He is cheerful, though still bedridden. He speaks of frustration at not going on to Paris. Unfortunately, he may lose his arm”

  “I am sorry to hear it. His sister has my sympathies.”

  Billie did not know how to respond.

  “What of your own arm?” Hayden asked abruptly. “Shall you keep it?”

  “Oh, I hope so, Myles, as it’s my best boxing arm.” He sent Hayden a narrow glance. “‘Tis my shoulder that’s injured. Fortunately, Madame Beaulieu’s cousin, professing some medical training, stopped by for a meal on his way to Brussels. He removed a musket ball within that first day and left Madame enough laudanum to dose me into the next decadeat least, I fear I shall be reeling that long. Apparently I also suffered shock from a spent shell, though I’ve no memory of it. The shame is that Madame was a wonderful chef. Aromas from her kitchen kept me half wild with expectation. But the laudanum deprived me of appetite as well as pain. I doubt they’d have fed us much in any event, though the French officers endeavored to pay them…. That’s her bread you’re holding there, Knowles.”

  Knowles promptly broke off a piece and proffered it to Ephie, who pronounced it delicious.