The Sentimental Soldier

by April Kihlstrom

  “How the devil should she have any theories?” Lord Darton demanded irritably. “How should any of us? I cannot like this notion. If it were anyone but Sir Thomas asking this of us I should have refused. As it is, I shall not rest easy until the matter is over and done with.”

  “None of us shall,” Lady Darton agreed with a shudder.

  That was a sentiment to which Prudence could whole-heartedly agree and she did so. But still Harry stared at her as though he could sense there was more to be said. So what could she do, when they reached Lord Darton’s town house, but distract him with some of what she had seen in the book that Emily and Juliet had shown her?

  Chapter 26

  Precisely as Lord Brandon had advised, all the carriages met at Lord Darton’s town house that morning. Every member of the Langford family was there. It was too cold a day for a picnic but another entertainment had been arranged. Or so Prudence had told his lordship several days before.

  Brandon himself was nowhere to be seen. He had closed up his town house and given out that he meant to retire to his country seat for a time. Neither Prudence nor Sir Thomas believed him. Still, they pretended to be oblivious to any threat—either from him or anyone else.

  It was all a sham, of course. The adults had been told as little as possible, but enough so that they knew something of what was happening. Naturally they were nervous and that emotion conveyed itself to the children, who became even more restless than usual as a result.

  Every one of the parents would have left their children home, had it been possible. But the pretense of normality was essential. If Lord and Lady Darton brought their children, so must the rest. It was a measure of the trust the Langfords placed in Sir Thomas that they agreed to do this for him when he asked.

  As he stood in the drawing room filled with adults and children, Sir Thomas said, slowly and carefully so that he could not be misunderstood, “I thank you. This is a matter that touches on the security of England. I know there is a risk but we have taken steps, every possible measure, to insure that it is as small as possible. And by doing this, by having you draw our quarry out into the open, we hope to trap a cunning traitor we have not been able to catch any other way.”

  So at something like half an hour past the appointed time, the Langfords all emerged from Lord Darton’s front doorway. As arranged between them, the adults formed a shield around the children. It was done so skillfully that an onlooker would have sworn all was confusion and that it had happened by chance. But it did not. The children were carefully surrounded by adults. And when they reached the carriages, the children were still shielded, the men alert for strangers and any possible danger.

  From an upstairs window, Sir Thomas Levenger and his wife, Agatha, watched. She clutched at his arm. “I pray that nothing goes wrong,” she said anxiously.

  He put his hand over hers. “Every possible precaution has been taken. We must hope they will prove sufficient.”

  As arranged, Harry and Prudence moved to the lead carriage. They were, after all, supposed to ride alone. Only Prudence knew why and she quailed at the notion of exposing Lord Brandon’s plans and her apparent complicity to Harry’s family.

  Prudence held her breath as Harry handed her up into the carriage. It was a cold day for a ride in such an open vehicle. But somehow she did not think they would be going very far and, in any event, considering what was about to happen, such considerations seemed unimportant.

  Suddenly the peaceful morning was shattered by cries of “death to tyranny!”

  Men rushed out of hiding places to toss objects at the carriages. Even as Prudence turned to look, to see if the others were safe, a crack rang out and Harry pulled on her arm, pulling her down and out of the carriage just as something tore into the fabric of the coach behind her head.

  Harry meant to catch her, she had no doubt of that. But something happened and he fell slightly off balance. Prudence tumbled to the ground and her head struck something hard as she fell.

  All around her was chaos. Men were running, shouting, more gunshots rang out and a bullet struck perilously close to where she lay. She tried to rise only to be thrust down again with a harsh command from a familiar voice.

  “Stay down!”

  Prudence did not argue with Wilkins nor ask how he came to be there. Instead, from her position close to the ground, she watched as he ran toward several men who were struggling together. On the top step, by the front door of Lord Darton’s town house, she could see Sir Thomas Levenger looking for someone. Suddenly he moved forward, taking the steps two and three at a time.

  Prudence turned to look where he was heading and she saw Harry dragging someone forward. He seemed completely undeterred by the way his injured leg still hampered him. She drew in a deep breath as she realized the man he held was Lord Brandon. He was struggling against Harry’s grasp and she could not help but feel glad to see two of Harry’s brothers rush forward to help him subdue the man.

  Now Wilkins was back at her side and helped Prudence to her feet. “I’m very sorry. Didn’t mean no offense, but it were safer you stayed on t’ground.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Believe me, Wilkins, I am very grateful that you did push me back down.”

  Prudence joined the Langford women, all standing huddled together, their children still shielded within the circle they formed. She looked to Sir Thomas to see what was happening, whether he seemed pleased or not. He was with Harry and the other Langford men helping to bind Lord Brandon’s arms. A group of men she could only suppose to be Bow Street Runners had another group surrounded.

  She could not repress a shudder of relief when she saw the last of the villains bundled into hackneys and setting off down the street, the sturdy Runners with them. Only then, when the carriages were all out of sight, did the Langfords go inside. The children were sent up to the nursery to chatter excitedly about the morning’s adventure. The grown-ups repaired to the drawing room and a glass of wine each to steady their frayed nerves.

  “I do hope,” Lord Darton said severely, “that you mean to tell us what just happened, Sir Thomas.”

  The elder barrister smiled. “I certainly shall,” he replied. “I am aware that I have sorely tried your patience. But it is no exaggeration when I say that it was of the greatest importance. Both to our country and to your own family.”

  Quietly he began to explain. “You didn’t know it, no one did and that was to their advantage, but your parents, Lord and Lady Darton, had the courage to try to help us trap traitors. They had obtained a letter written, we believed to Lord Brandon, by Napoleon Bonaparte. He did everything in his power to discredit them. But far worse, I believe he arranged the carriage accident that killed them. I have no proof,” he added, holding up a hand to forestall questions, “but it is what I have believed for these ten years.”

  “Ten years!” George exclaimed. “And you did nothing about it?”

  A look of pain crossed the barrister’s face. “I tried,” he said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “But until Prudence became my ally in this venture, all my efforts failed. It was she who managed to get into Lord Brandon’s confidence sufficiently to cause him to betray himself to her.”

  “Prudence?” Several voices murmured her name in surprise.

  “Then why did he shoot at her?” Harry protested. “For I’ll swear she was his target.”

  Sir Thomas nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back. “She was the only one who could have told what he had said to her. The only one, he thought, who knew that he was behind today’s attempt to murder all of you. Were she dead, the bombs thrown would, he hoped, be attributed to anarchists, of whom there are too many in London these days. That was why he had to make certain she did not survive.”

  There were a number of visible shudders. “You mean those were bombs they were hurling at us?” George demanded indignantly.

  “Patently not, if they did not destroy us,” James replied with a poor attempt at humor.

 
“But they were meant to be?” Philip hazarded.

  Sir Thomas nodded. “I have had a man watching Lord Brandon’s household and he followed the messenger used to carry word to the anarchists and back again. We managed to get a man inside their group and he replaced the real bombs with substitutes that could do no harm. The only real danger this morning was from Lord Brandon. I thought he would wish to make certain of the death of the only person who could connect him to the anarchists. The messenger,” he added quietly, “is already dead.”

  “How could you know he would be here at all?” Harry asked. “It seems an unlikely risk for him to have taken. He could easily have had someone else attempt to murder Prudence, if the bombs failed to do so.”

  Sir Thomas shrugged. “I could not be certain, but I thought he would come himself. It seemed unlike Lord Brandon to trust the task to anyone else.”

  There was silence as they all pondered what had just been said. Prudence and Sir Thomas exchanged rueful looks. When, they both wondered, would it occur to the others to speak about her role in all of this?

  Not very long. Abruptly Athenia turned to Prudence and demanded, “Is that why you went to work in Lord Brandon’s household? At Sir Thomas’s behest?”

  How she wished she could say yes! But Prudence was not a coward and so she straightened her shoulders unconsciously and replied, “No, I went to work for him because of another matter.”

  What had begun as hopeful smiles now turned to disapproving scowls. Sir Thomas shook his head reprovingly, though whether at the Langfords or at Prudence none of them could have said.

  “She went there for another purpose but it still touched on Langford honor,” he told them. “Explain, my dear, about France and overhearing about the letter.”

  Harry turned a piercing gaze on Prudence and she carefully avoided meeting his eyes. How to explain why she could not tell him what she was doing? Instead she put her attention into trying to simply explain to the entire family the reasoning that led her to take the steps she did.

  “In France there was mention of a letter. I thought that it seemed as if Harry believed Bonaparte had sent it to your father, the late Lord Darton. But the Frenchman made it evident that the letter had been meant for someone else. I thought it a curious interchange and bent my mind to the task of determining whether I could guess who the person might be. There was,” she added half-apologetically, “a great deal of time to think, you see.”

  She paused and took a deep breath before she went on. “When I thought of the people who had moved in the same circles as my uncle, I found my mind returning again and again to Lord Brandon and some of the odd things I had heard him say, over the years. I found I could not dismiss the notion that it might have been he to whom the letter was originally sent. I thought that if I went to work for him, helping him with his memoirs, that I might find proof that he was. Then Sir Thomas spoke with me and asked that I take a somewhat different direction in my dealings with Lord Brandon. Today is the result of that.”

  There was a stunned silence and then a noisy burst of approving words, with Lord Darton insisting upon toasting Prudence. Only Harry was not pleased. Under cover of the general noise and with the appearance of a loving gesture, he put an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He held on tight and would not let her go as he demanded, in a voice that carried to her ears only, “How dare you take such a risk? How dare you not tell me you were doing so?”

  “Because you might have tried to stop me,” she answered in return. “Because my suspicions were only that and I would not condemn any man to the censure of his fellows without some kind of proof. Because it was something I had to do.”

  “And you could not do it with me, could not tell me because I, your husband, am a cripple!”

  And with those harsh words he released her waist and rose to his feet. That he meant to leave her, to leave all of them, she could not doubt. Prudence rose to her feet as well. Her voice was loud and clear and cut through all the other noise to bring silence to the room.

  “Cripple? Only if you believe so, Harry. I see a man capable of doing almost anything he wishes. The only thing you cannot be is a soldier and I am not certain that is the best use of your talents anyway.”

  Now it was an appalled silence that held the room in sway as everyone waited for Harry’s angry answer. It was not long in coming.

  “A soldier is all I have ever wanted to be!”

  It was as though he flung the words at her, like a gauntlet, daring her to fling them back at him. She would not have disappointed him save that someone else spoke first.

  It was, to everyone’s surprise, Sir Thomas. There was an edge of reproof to his voice as he said, “And do you think that is the only value you have? Foolish puppy! I have heard time and again this past month that you are of more value in the Horse Guards than ever you were in the field. And that is saying a great deal! Do you know what it means to Wellington to have a man here who knows what it is like for him? Who understands the importance of supplies? Who will recognize what might occur next?”

  Harry gaped at Sir Thomas and then Athenia addressed him. Her voice was more gentle than any, save George, could ever remembering hearing her speak.

  “There can be no doubt as to your courage, Harry. Nor that you would be in the field if you could.”

  Both Philip and James came to stand beside him.

  “You are a fool if you think we value you less because of your injury,” Philip said, clouting his brother on the shoulder.

  James chuckled. “Yes, but then we always knew he was.” When Harry glared at him he added, “Look at your bride, Harry. We have. And we can tell you she does not look at you as if she thought you a matter for pity. Indeed, I should say there was a far warmer emotion there.”

  Harry colored up, but he did look at Prudence and at once she came toward him, a mixture of softness and exasperation in both her eyes and her voice.

  “Do you think me such a fool, Harry, that I would only see your leg and not the man you are? That I fell in love with you because of how fast you could run?”

  “Love?” Harry echoed uncertainly. “You are saying that you love me?”

  “Well, of course she does!” Emily and Juliet and Lady Levenger all exclaimed at precisely the same moment.

  Now they all colored up. Prudence took another step closer to Harry and his brothers stepped away, for which she was grateful. There were things, she realized, that she needed to say. And it was not going to be easy to find the words to say them. She took a deep breath and tried.

  “I owe you an apology,” she began. “You are right. I should have told you at the start what I suspected. And what I meant to do. I should have given you the chance to help me. I am beginning to realize that is part of loving someone. But I have never known, you see, what it was to be able to lean on someone for support. Never had anyone care enough to wish me to do so.”

  “I care enough. I want you to,” Harry said, in a voice that shook.

  Prudence looked at him. Now her own voice shook as she asked, “Truly?”

  When he nodded and held his arms open to her, she went straight into them. Behind her, Lord Darton cleared his throat in warning. Once again, however, Sir Thomas forestalled everyone.

  “Perhaps the two of you had best continue this conversation in private,” the barrister suggested with some amusement.

  Accompanied by the teasing comments of his entire family, Prudence let Harry lead her out of the drawing room and down the hallway to his room. She went quite willingly. There were, after all, more words to be said, more assurances to be given. And afterward? Well, there were still a great many drawings in that book and sooner or later she meant to try every one.

  Epilogue

  The crowd in the drawing room was a large one even though it was almost morning and most of the guests invited to tonight’s masquerade ball were already gone. This group was comprised almost entirely of members of the Langford family. In the center stood a radiant
lady and her husband beside her. He wore a colonel’s uniform, she wore the robes of a Moroccan prince. Early on in the evening someone had dubbed him the sentimental soldier and it had stuck. Now Harry raised his glass of champagne and everyone else did likewise.

  “To our new home, may it be as loving a one as each of you have made of your own.”

  “Here, here!”

  “What word of your mother?” Emily asked Prudence for, in the end, the journey had not been kept quiet from the brothers and their wives.

  Harry answered for her. With an arm fixed firmly around her waist, he said, “Prudence’s mother, along with Frederick Baines, is on her way back to England. They ought to arrive in a few days.”

  “Yes, but where are George and Athenia?” James demanded, almost petulantly. “I should have expected them to be here! They consider it their duty to oversee every family event, after all.”

  Emily and Philip looked at one another and it was he who said, carefully not meeting anyone’s eyes, “I collect they, er, have gone away to, er, spend some time alone together.”

  “Alone together? Why the devil should they want to do that?” James persisted.

  It was Emily who said, with a significant glance to Lady Levenger and Juliet and Prudence, “I collect it was Athenia who arranged everything. After she borrowed the book.”

  “Book?” Philip said, giving his wife a surprised look. “What book did you lend them, my dear?”

  But she refused to answer. Juliet and Prudence were hard pressed not to laugh out loud. To Philip, Emily said, “It’s not important, dear.”

  It was Sir Thomas who diverted everyone’s attention, however. “And how are things at the Horse Guards, Harry?” He asked, with a careless air that fooled no one.

  Harry grinned at the barrister. “You were quite right, sir. I am needed far more than ever I was in the Peninsula. I have hopes of doing Wellington more good here than I did him there. And since we helped to capture Lord Brandon and he killed himself, one avenue of information leaking to France has ended and I am even more welcome at the Horse Guards than I was before.”