With his curly black hair highlighted against the red of his uniform and his broad shoulders accentuated by the cut of his jacket, he leaned a hip against the closed door in a posture so rakishly alluring that her belly knotted. That was one undeniable facet of Maxwell Thorpe—the sight of him had always taken her breath away.
Apparently, some things never changed.
“It’s been a long time, Belinda.”
She trembled at his audacity to use her given name. When she’d stepped into this room, she’d thought she was seeing a ghost. But she wasn’t fortunate enough to simply be haunted. Oh, no. He was blood and flesh… and oh, what flesh. Even now her fingertips ached with the sudden memory of how it had felt to touch him, the soft warmth of his skin, the hardness of his muscles. Only the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth gave proof that he’d aged beyond the image of him she still carried in her mind from the last time she saw him.
“How have you been?”
Ha! As if he cared. “I was perfectly fine until you came along.”
His eyes gleamed at the sharpness behind her comment. As if he’d also expected that.
Not daring to challenge her, he said sincerely, “It’s good to know that you’re still dedicated to helping the pensioners. Your kind heart has always been your very best trait.”
At that unexpected compliment, she fought to keep her well-studied composure in place. The very last thing she’d allow was for him to see how much he still affected her. And most likely always would. “It’s easy to be kind… to those who deserve it.”
Instead of rising to the bait, he returned to the table and reached to pour a cup of tea from the tray, putting in milk and sugar. Then he held it out to her. A peace offering.
Her irritation spiked that he would remember how she took her tea. But then, didn’t she remember every detail about him, right down to the small scar at his right brow?
He murmured, “You’re also just as beautiful as I remember.”
Damn her heart for stuttering! And double-damn the dark emotion that squeezed her chest around it like an iron fist, because she knew better than to fall for his charms. She’d learned the hard way how little his word was worth.
Ignoring the offered tea, she stepped past him to the buffet cabinet to withdraw a bottle of port that was kept there for after the board meetings when the men finished their business. She filled a tea cup and offered it to him.
For a moment, they held each other’s gaze. Two adversaries now on even ground, both filled with such determination that tension pulsed between them.
“If you’re attempting to flatter me into conceding,” she warned, “it won’t work.”
He accepted the cup, then lifted it to his nose to draw in the port’s sweet scent. “I would never dare to presume such a thing.”
And she was certain that he’d dared to presume a great deal more about her in the past. A presumption that had made her beg her father to ask favors from his friends in order to give Maxwell a high-profile post in India where he could more easily distinguish himself.
Oh, she’d been so naïve!
He offered the tea again. This time, she accepted it… only to set it down, unwanted.
“Why are you doing this?” She folded her arms over her chest. There was no need for pleasantries between them.
The small tea cup in his hand served to remind her of how large and solid he was. Ten years ago, he’d been a young man just beginning to fill out his frame. Now he was a man in his prime. Every inch of him displayed the powerful officer he’d become. “As I told you, your cooperation makes establishing the academy easier.”
“I mean the orders from the War Office that brought you here.” And back into my life. “Why are you closing the hospital and putting those men out of their home?”
“Because we need a training academy.”
“You already have Sandhurst.”
“It isn’t enough.”
He set down the cup and stepped up to the large map of the world that decorated the wall. Red pushpin flags were scattered across it, one flag for each place the pensioners had served.
A frown creased his brow as he studied the map. “Do you have any idea how limited training was during the wars with France? The army needed men on the battlefield immediately, with no time for instruction except for a cursory overview of how to use their guns and bayonets. We had good generals with solid battle plans, but the lower-ranking officers and foot soldiers didn’t know enough to carry them out. Our men were little more than cannon fodder. We won only because of sheer numbers and our cavalry. Two years.” His voice grew distant as he touched one of the flags in the mass of those pressed into the Iberian Peninsula. “Two years of the worst bloodshed in British military history…” He flicked the flag with the tip of his finger. “How much of that carnage could have been avoided if they’d had better training? How many wives and children could we have kept from mourning their dead?”
His hand dropped to his side.
In the silence between them, Belinda shivered. He’d been wounded himself in the fighting in Spain, before her father arranged for him to be posted in India. The summer she’d met him.
“If I have the chance to save men’s lives—even if just a handful—I’m going to take it.” Then he turned away from the map, and the vulnerability she saw in him vanished. He was once more a brigadier, straight-spined and impassive. Once more the man sent to close the hospital. “No respectable officer would refuse that.”
Her chest tightened with empathy, but the pensioners needed to be defended. “At the cost of men in their golden years who have sacrificed all for their country, including the loss of limbs?”
He picked up his port and swirled it gently. “Wouldn’t it be better to have an academy to instruct soldiers so they don’t lose limbs in the first place?”
Damn him! He was twisting everything around, refusing to see the situation from the perspective of the pensioners. But then, hadn’t he always gotten his way? Hadn’t what he wanted always come first, no matter whom he hurt in the process?
She arched an imperious brow. “What do you gain from this?”
A haunted expression came over him, onne as dark as the port in the white bone cup.
“The knowledge that there will be fewer widows and orphans.”
She was no fool and refused to let that arrow pierce her. His answer was meant solely to pull at her heartstrings… and dodge her question. “What do you gain from this, Maxwell?”
He took a slow sip of port before answering, “The War Office thought I would be the best officer to present the plans to the board. They knew I’d been a patient at the hospital once myself.”
She inhaled sharply. The very last thing she needed was that reminder of how they’d met. He’d been wounded and was recuperating at the hospital, while she’d been doing charity work there as a way to fill the long, dull days that summer. Her father had insisted that the family spend their season here in Brighton, where there was nothing for a young lady her age to do except volunteer. Only later did she discover that her father was on the verge of being thrust into debtors’ prison and needed to ask favors of several men who had followed the Prince Regent down from London to keep the creditors at bay. She hadn’t discovered until season’s end that Papa was already ill. Or until the following year how much the medical expenses had added to the debt, sending her family into financial ruin.
She pushed away the flood of memories. All in the past. She had to focus on the present. “And a promotion for you, perhaps? I imagine it would be advantageous for your career to found a school that rivals Sandhurst.”
“Perhaps.” He set down the port. “But that’s not my prime motivation.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.” She reached a hand to the table to steady herself as ten years of hurt and anger rose inside her. The old bitterness returned in force. “I have firsthand knowledge of how you advance your career.”
She felt him stiffen
, as surely as she felt the tension filling the air around them.
With the ghosts of the past rising between them, she expected him to deny it. To defend himself and claim that he’d not used her all those years ago, only to abandon her once he’d no longer needed her. To strike out and attack—
Instead, his eyes softened as he took a slow step toward her.
Her heart skipped, the foolish thing momentarily forgetting what he’d done to her. But then, hadn’t it always loved him, even when he didn’t deserve it? Didn’t it even now remember the kind and caring man he’d been before he left for India, and how they’d healed each other that summer—her with his physical wounds, him with her heartbreak over her father?
Oh, he’d changed, certainly, both in appearance and in demeanor. But she could still see in him the only man she’d ever loved. Which was why she didn’t slap his hand away when he raised it to caress his knuckles across her cheek.
She gasped at the touch, pained by it.
“And what do you gain from this, Belinda?” His deep voice seeped into her, warming her as thoroughly as his hand against her cheek. “Why fight so hard when you know that the pensioners will be taken care of?”
“Split up and shipped off to other hospitals, you mean?” She’d wanted to sound determined and strong. Instead, her voice emerged as a whisper. “This place is their home, and those men have no other family but the men living with them. To force them apart…”
The knot of emotion in her throat choked her.
He reached for her hand and gave her fingers a soothing squeeze. “Why?”
She trembled, then cursed herself that he might be able to feel it. That he might dare to believe he still possessed even an ounce of influence over her. It certainly wasn’t a yearning for the old days. It was anger and pain… memories of how she’d placed her trust in him, only to have it destroyed. She’d never make that mistake again.
“An act of decency.” Her answer was a blatant challenge. “In your world of war, surely you can appreciate that.”
Then she stepped out of his reach. He didn’t deserve to know the real reason or to lessen his guilt about the past by attempting to console her now. They had a long fight ahead of them over the hospital, and she had no intention of making one second of that any easier on him.
“I won’t give up this fight.” She snatched up his tea cup of port and finished it in one swallow.
Something unreadable sparked in his eyes, and he quietly confessed, “I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Chapter Two
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Max strode into the Honors Club with determination. Good Lord, how he needed a drink!
When he’d first approached the War Office about creating the new academy, he’d known that winning the board’s support wouldn’t be easy. Neither was seeing Belinda again, even after all these years. But he hadn’t realized until he saw the fire in her green eyes exactly how difficult his task would be.
Or how much he still loved her.
“Cognac,” he ordered the attendant behind the bar, who nodded and promptly set to pouring a glass.
He squelched a tired sigh. He was getting too old to fight battles like this.
At thirty-two, he certainly wasn’t young anymore, and the years spent distinguishing himself in the army had left more scars than he wanted to admit. But he’d made a good life for himself, rising from lieutenant to brigadier, one hard-won promotion at a time. From the youngest son of a minor baron to a man who commanded legions.
But those days were done. He was tired of foreign posts and wanted to return to England. He’d grown sick of sending men to their deaths and wanted instead to train them to survive the carnage and destruction that battle brought. When he couldn’t bear to write one more letter home to yet another widow, informing her of her husband’s death, he knew he needed a new purpose. This academy would give him exactly that.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that the governing board’s support would make the transition easier for everyone. Peace had lasted long enough that the British people were no longer willing to accept without question such a decision by the military.
And Belinda, Duchess of Winchester, held the balance of that decision in her delicate little hands. The same woman who had healed him all those years ago and made him believe in the possibility of a future that was more than simple survival. A future that had purpose, wonder, goals… a home.
The same woman he’d so brutally hurt. Fate was surely laughing at him.
No difference that he’d rejected her for her own good—he would go to his grave letting her think the worst of him in that. What mattered now was that her trust in his character would be an enormous part of the board’s decision, and in that, she believed he’d failed her.
Worse. Based on her comments today, she believed he’d used her.
He could have asked to be replaced in this mission. Should have asked for that, in fact, when he’d discovered that Belinda was serving out her late husband’s term on the board. But the academy was his idea, one he needed to follow through to the end.
He’d also needed to see Belinda again, the way that thirsty men needed water to live.
“Brigadier!” a fellow officer called out and stepped up to the bar, with a half-dozen others following.
They announced their greetings as they pressed in around him. A few slapped him on the back.
“Thorpe! Good seeing you here.”
“We were wondering when you’d stop by.”
“Can’t keep a soldier away from his brothers-in-arms, eh?”
Max’s lips curled wistfully. Perhaps not, but he wasn’t here for military brotherhood. He was here in search of drink and solace.
“Heard you were back in England.” Another officer slapped him on the back. “When I heard that, I knew you were putting yourself up for a new position.”
He grimaced. Rumors were more reliable than military intelligence these days. “I am.”
“Ha!” The officer nodded toward two young captains in their group. “Told you that Thorpe was here to pursue that new post in Africa.”
“No,” another soldier interjected from behind Max’s shoulder. “The brigadier’s returning to India, aren’t you?”
He hesitated to answer. But what could it hurt to share his plans? They’d all find out as soon as the board members started spreading news of the meeting. “I am interested in a new position. But not in India or Africa. I’m pursuing a much more dangerous location, gentlemen.”
Curious murmurs surrounded him, along with bewildered frowns.
He accepted the glass of brandy from the attendant and raised it high. “Brighton!”
Laughter exploded from the soldiers. They all thought he was bamming them.
“The army needs a new academy, and the Royal Hospital is being converted into one.” He took a long swallow. “I’m here to carry it out.”
That sobered the group. They stared at him as if he’d just admitted to attempting to kill the king.
After several awkward moments while it became clear that Maxwell was serious, the senior officer commented, “I’d heard rumors that they were seeking battle-tried officers to train cadets.”
“Not rumors. They are.”
“Is that truly to be your next move, Thorpe? Retiring to the seaside like some old woman past her prime?” One of the captains didn’t bother with holding out his glass to the attendant for a refill but took the bottle from the bar and began topping off glasses himself. He pointed the bottle at Max and jokingly asked, “Earning your commission by putting young lords through their paces on their bellies?”
Before he could answer that he was here only to establish the academy, not run it, the senior officer interjected, “Bollocks! He won’t retire to the seaside if he’s offered the African post. It’s the perfect place for a career army man on the verge of becoming a major-general, which is assured.”
“Far from assured.” The only
thing he was certain of at that moment was his need for Belinda’s understanding. Professionally and personally. He’d had no choice before but to let her hate him. He’d not do it again.
“An academy?” a lieutenant who had served briefly with Max on a short stint in Egypt repeated with disdain, as if he hadn’t heard properly. “Don’t need no fancy academy to train officers. Those cadets are just a bunch o’ coxcombs who’ll piss their britches the first time a ball whizzes by ’em!”
More laughter rose from the group, but Max only sipped his cognac, saying nothing.
“A good soldier cuts his teeth on th’ battlefield,” one of the weathered officers explained. “Not on books in some academy lecture hall. Thorpe knows that, don’t ye, Brigadier? That’s how ye did it, an’ a fine officer ye became, too.”
Another soldier shook his head, tapping his glass against the older officer’s chest to impress his point. “Can’t study battle strategy while the artillery’s targeting your arse.”
Max hid his smile behind the rim of his glass.
“What’s your game, Thorpe? Truly—you’d give up a good post to teach a bunch of dandies how to march in line and point their muskets at the enemy?”
It was so much more than that. None of the soldiers here would understand, even if he tried to explain it. But someday they would, when they’d had enough of the slaughter of battle themselves, when they were ready to return home.
“Actually, I’ve always liked the idea of academies, even though I chose a different path. I’m all for anything that can make for better soldiers on the battlefield, especially if the training they receive comes from officers who have been through the fire.” He leveled his gaze on the older officer. “And it’s damned hard to cut your teeth on battle when the wars are over and there’s none to be fought.”
Laughter went up from the group of men, until Max raised his glass in a toast.
“But we should all pray to God that our memories of war are long, even in times of peace,” he added somberly, quashing the men’s amusement. “Lest we forget the hell of it and rush too easily back into the fray.”
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