The Captive

by Grace Burrowes

  Girard had understood that too, and had understood how to manipulate even that last, best hope.

  Christian was required to heal between sessions with Girard or the various corporals, and he was given medical care when the corporals—or more often Anduvoir—got out of hand. Now he’d earned a simple, relatively painless death.

  He tried to muster gratitude, fear, relief, something.

  Anything besides a towering regret that revenge would be denied him.

  “I’m sorry,” the jailer said again. “I’m so bloody sorry.”

  Girard had said the same things, always softly, always sincerely, as he’d lowered Christian carefully to the cot where the mandatory healing would commence.

  Christian felt the knife slicing at the bindings around his wrists and ankles, felt the agony of blood surging into his hands, then his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” the jailer said again.

  And then Christian felt…nothing.

  Two

  “Orders fly in all directions once the guns go silent.”

  Devlin St. Just—Colonel St. Just, thank you very much—was complaining about peace, one of the career soldier’s dubious privileges. “During wartime, the paperwork was limited to one side of a line,” he went on. “Now we’re galloping the length and breadth of Europe because pigeons simply won’t do.”

  “If you brought Baldy orders, they must be important,” Marcus Easterbrook observed—though he was finally Lord Greendale now. He would not bruit the title about until he’d received word of the final outcome of the inquest, bad form being an offense among Wellington’s officers tantamount to treason.

  Easterbrook took a nip of brandy, then passed his fellow officer the bottle, because a victorious army was supposed to be a gracious, cheerful institution—also because, like many who rode dispatch, St. Just had the ears of the generals. Brandy, alas, constituted the sum total of the amenities available in Easterbrook’s tent, unless one counted the occasional camp whore.

  Colonel St. Just was built like a dragoon, big, muscular, and capable of wielding rifle or sword with deadly intent. Easterbrook did not envy the larger man his dispatch rides, though. For the sake of the horse, the rider traveled light, and for the sake of the orders, he traveled hard, taking routes more direct than prudent.

  “One shouldn’t swill decent brandy, Easterbrook.” St. Just tipped a finger’s worth into his glass. “Bad form.”

  St. Just had been born on the wrong side of the blanket, but it had been a ducal blanket. Easterbrook poured himself three fingers into a chipped glass and moderated his reply accordingly.

  “One develops a certain tolerance for lapses of form during war.”

  “Does one bloody ever.” St. Just swirled his drink, held it under his not-exactly-delicate nose, then set it on the table untouched. “Tell me about this lost duke. He’s the talk of the entire camp, though we hadn’t heard of him up in Paris.”

  A small mercy, that.

  “The lost duke is a legend here in the South and around the passes,” Easterbrook said, wondering why, of all vices, St. Just had to be willing to gossip. “The eighth Duke of Mercia was attached to Wellington’s Peninsular Army, serving mostly on His Grace’s staff. He’d produced his heir and bought a commission in the family tradition.”

  “One baby does not a ducal succession ensure.”

  No, it did not, alas for the poor duke, though if memory served, St. Just had a proper litter of legitimate siblings.

  “You’d have to have known Mercia,” Easterbrook said. “Had all the brass in the world. As arrogant as only a duke born and bred can be, and as his cousin, I can assure you, the succession was not in jeopardy. My father was younger brother to the ducal heir, though Papa took the surname of his bride as a condition of the marriage settlements. I am every inch a Severn.”

  “You know His Grace?”

  As if a duke would not associate with a mere cousin?

  “He was my only living adult relation on my father’s side, his father having been my eldest uncle. In any case, Mercia bought his colors and served honorably, but simply disappeared one morning last summer. We found his uniform, shaving kit, and his horse near a stream running north of the camp, and concluded he’d drowned while bathing.”

  Though as a boy, Christian had swum like an otter. Easterbrook had even said as much to the investigating officers, who’d viewed it as possible evidence of desertion.

  Desertion, by a peer and an officer. The board of inquiry hadn’t been very fond of their ducal comrade. Pity, that.

  St. Just was apparently not impressed with the brandy, for he ran his finger around the top of the glass rather than consume his portion. “A grown man drowned in a stream?”

  “You served in Spain?”

  “For years, clear back to Portugal,” St. Just said, that finger pausing in its circumnavigation of the rim. “Yes, I know: sudden floods, tinkers, locals sympathetic to the French, French deserters… His Grace would have been well blessed to die by drowning.”

  “He might agree with you, were he still alive. Smoke?” Easterbrook certainly agreed with him.

  “I don’t indulge.” He didn’t indulge, he rode like the wind, and he’d paused a moment, eyes closed, before consuming his midday peasant fare of black bread, butter, boiled potatoes, and beef cooked to mush. After the belching, farting company in the officers’ mess, such a paragon should have been a refreshing change, and yet, Easterbrook was not enjoying St. Just’s company.

  Easterbrook clipped off the end of a cheroot, because he did indulge.

  “A few weeks after Mercia disappeared, we heard rumors the French had captured a high-ranking English officer out of uniform.”

  St. Just shifted his stool a foot closer to the tent flaps tied back to catch the prevailing breeze. “Poor sod.”

  “I know men who wouldn’t bathe, lest they lose the protection afforded them by their officer’s uniform.” For the French considered any English officer captured out of uniform a spy, and indulged their interrogatory whims on such unfortunates without limit or mercy.

  “I certainly kept my colors handy,” St. Just mused.

  Easterbrook passed the cut end of the cheroot under his nose and took a whiff of privilege and pleasure, however minor.

  “I was seldom out of uniform myself. When the rumors died down, a letter was carried from parts unknown to one of Wellington’s aides, unsigned, but purporting to be from a French doctor. Said a titled English officer was being held under torture and should be quietly ransomed.”

  St. Just paused, his glass halfway to his lips. “That’s unusual.”

  Ransom was unusual and officially unavailable, both sides having decided to hold prisoners for the duration of the hostilities. At last count, some Englishmen had enjoyed the dubious hospitality of Verdun for more than ten years.

  “Suspiciously unusual,” Easterbrook allowed, though Christian had been lucky from the cradle, and protocol regarding prisoners was often honored in the breach. “Word of the letter disappeared into diplomatic channels, but spies were sent out who apparently reported to Wellington that they found nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing.”

  Thank God.

  “And yet, you began to hope?”

  “Hope for what? By that time it had been months. Mercia was raised with every privilege and wasn’t shy about indulging himself. Even in the officers’ internment up in Verdun, he would have fared badly. How would a man like that cope with torture? How would any man? And after that much time, one had to wonder if Mercia would even want rescuing.”

  St. Just studied his drink, when most officers would have long since tossed it back and helped themselves to a refill.

  “His Grace had a wife and son. Why wouldn’t he want rescuing?”

  “Cleaning up after Soult, we’ve freed some prisoners of war, and they did not fare w
ell in the hands of the French.”

  “The French themselves did not fare well,” St. Just countered, peering at the label on the brandy bottle as if actually reading what was written there—in French, of course. “One doesn’t expect prisoners to enjoy full rations, regardless of whose care they’re in.”

  “The deprivation is only part of it.” Easterbrook used the oil lantern on the table to light his cheroot, then poured himself more brandy and cast around for a change of topic. “Is there any pleasure more gratifying than decent libation, a lusty whore, and a good smoke?”

  “A lasting and fair peace,” St. Just said, his gaze off to the northwest, in the direction of Merry Olde England, no less. “But you were telling me about your cousin.”

  The colonel would rather discuss a missing duke than naughty women. War did strange things to some men.

  “The lost duke, whom I believe to be with his Maker as we speak. When Toulouse fell a few weeks ago, some half-soused Paddy of questionable loyalties let slip that a titled English officer had been held in some crumbling château in the foothills of the mountains. Seems the place was built on the site of a medieval castle, complete with dungeons. He said the prisoner was freed when the castle was abandoned by the gallant French.”

  “They’re the defeated French now.”

  “So they are.” Easterbrook lifted his glass in salute and took a drag of pungent tobacco.

  And made another effort to change the damned topic. “You shipping out for Canada with everybody else?”

  “I have family obligations, though I doubt I’ll sell out. You’ve concluded this Irishman was lying?”

  This was the same tenacity that ensured orders entrusted to St. Just reached their destination, no matter what. Easterbrook was beginning to hate his guest nearly as much as he respected him.

  “The Irishman was…” Easterbrook paused as the acrid smoke curled toward the tent’s ceiling. What to say? To crave a wealthy dukedom wasn’t a sin, was it? “The Irishman was none too sober, and his motives were questionable. What was he doing inside that château, hmm? And where is this lost duke now, when every soul knows the Emperor has abdicated.”

  St. Just twitched the tent flap, as if to let in a bit more light, though Easterbrook took small satisfaction from the smoke bothering his guest.

  “If Mercia was tortured at length, his mental faculties might not be at their sharpest,” St. Just said. “And what would he gain by marching even this far north, as opposed to making his way directly home from the coast?”

  “How could he afford passage home? How could a man subjected to deprivation and torture for that long travel any distance on foot? Assuming he’s alive—which I have not for months—he’s a bloody hero. As for those impersonating Mercia and claiming to be the lost duke, we give them a hot meal and nominal courtesy, until I can assure the generals we’ve another charlatan on our hands. Then the mountebank is run off to make shift with some other scheme.”

  And still the damned man merely sat back, folded his arms over a broad chest, and watched the smoke curling upward.

  “For a French physician to put something in writing like that… He’d have been shot as a traitor to the Republique if the letter had fallen into the wrong hands.”

  Tobacco was said to calm the nerves. Easterbrook inhaled deeply, until the tip of his cheroot flared bright red, then let the smoke ease out through his nose.

  “Mercia might have been taken prisoner, but what are the chances the French would capture a man naked from his bath, deny him the chance to get into uniform, realize he’s a bloody duke, and continue to hold him for interrogation against all policy to the contrary? That would exceed bad form considerably.

  “Besides,” Easterbrook rose as he went on, because it was time to run his guest off, “we suffered no lapses of intelligence that suggest this prisoner might have been Mercia. Mercia was in on all the meetings, consulted on strategy, had even scouted some of the passes. He’s a canny devil—was a canny devil, for all his arrogance—and the French would have been well served if they’d laid their hands on him.”

  “If he broke.”

  Easterbrook tipped the bottle to his lips, because it would somehow be empty when he returned to his tent, victory and graciousness notwithstanding.

  “I’d break,” Easterbrook said quietly. Perhaps he’d had too much brandy, or perhaps he’d spent too much time in the company of Colonel Paragon St. Just. “I’d try to hold out, but one hears stories, and I’m sorry, St. Just, one officer to another, I’d break.”

  “You don’t know that.” St. Just rose too easily for a man who’d ridden the distance from Paris. “My thanks for the hospitality, for the meal, the drink, and your company. I’m off to check on my horse.”

  Bless the beast. “Your horse?”

  “I ride my own mounts. I’m safer that way, and as much ground as we’ve covered the past few days, I need to take him out and stretch his legs, keep him from stiffening up. You’re welcome to join me.”

  “Excuse me, Colonel Easterbrook, Colonel St. Just?” A subaltern who might soon be of an age to shave came puffing to a stop right outside the tent, then saluted with the exaggerated enthusiasm of the young and never injured.

  “Anders.” Easterbrook took one last drag on his smoke, tossed the stub to the ground, and rubbed it out with the toe of his boot. “Are you on an errand for Baldy?”

  “General Baldridge has another lost duke for you, sir. We put him in the officers’ mess.”

  “Famous.” Easterbrook chugged the dregs from the brandy bottle and tossed it aside. “Does this one at least speak English?”

  “He doesn’t say much at all, sir, though his eyes are a frightful blue.”

  “Well, the poor devil got that much right. Fetch my horse, Anders. St. Just and I will hack out when we’ve dispensed with His Latest Grace. Come along, St. Just. Lost dukes only show up once a week or so in these parts. They’re our entertainment, now that the Frogs no longer oblige.”

  ***

  Christian stood outside the tent, the spring breeze nigh making his sore teeth chatter—though it hadn’t obscured a word of the exchange that had taken place inside.

  “He’s another lost duke.” The subaltern had kept his tone expressionless as he passed along the message to some general. “Third one this month, but we’ve sent for Colonel Easterbrook, sir.”

  “Poor Easterbrook.” The senior officer blew out a gusty breath, and Christian heard what sounded like a pen being tossed onto a table, then a chair creak. “I suppose this one has a tale as well?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, sir. He looks… Well…”

  “Permission to speak freely, Blevins.”

  “If I were claiming to have wandered the heights for months, living on nothing, perhaps crazed from a blow to the head or captured by Frogs, it would help if I looked like him, sir.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “He’s skinny as a wraith, and his eyes look like he had a front-row seat in hell. He isn’t babbling and carrying on like the last two did.”

  “The last four, you mean. I suppose Easterbrook will be forced to denounce this one too, but a bit of Christian charity won’t go amiss. Take the man to the mess tent, observe the proprieties, and get him a decent meal. One never knows, and it doesn’t do to offend a duke, particularly not a mad one.”

  Interesting point, suggesting this commanding officer had a grasp of strategy.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Blevins stepped out of the tent, conscientiously retying the flap, though it continued to luff noisily in the breeze.

  Sounds were something Christian was getting used to again. Sounds other than iron bars clanging open and shut, rats scurrying, Girard’s philosophizing, his jailer’s doleful brogue-and-burr mutterings…

  “You’re to be fed while we await further orders,” the blond, ruddy-faced Bl
evins said. From the crisp look of his uniform, Blevins either came from means, was particularly vain of his appearance—thinning hair could do that to a young fellow—or he’d only recently bought his colors.

  Christian mustered two words. “Your Grace.”

  “Beg pardon?” English manners had Blevins bending nearer, for the fifth lost duke spoke only quietly.

  When he spoke at all.

  “You’re to be fed, Your Grace,” Christian said slowly, each word the product of a mental gymnastic, like tossing separate pebbles into the exact center of a quiet pond.

  “Oh, right you are, sir, er, Your Grace.” The man’s ears turned red and he marched smartly away, only to have to slow his step when Christian didn’t quicken his own. Blevins’s embarrassment was not the product of a lapse in manners, but rather, pity for one who had parted from both his reason and his shaving kit some time ago.

  “Afraid the fare is humble, Your, er, Grace. Well-cooked beef, boiled potatoes with salt and butter, the inevitable coarse bread, but it sustains us. Things are better since old Wellie put Soult in his place. The locals are happy to feed us, you see, because we pay them for their bread, unlike their own army.”

  The words, English words, flowed past Christian’s awareness like so much birdsong at the beginning of a summer day. Easterbrook was coming, and Easterbrook could see Christian to England, back to the arms of his devoted if not quite loving duchess, and their children. Evan would be walking and talking by now, losing his baby curls, perhaps even ready to be taken up before his papa for a quiet hack.

  Christian had enjoyed many discussions with his infant son while enduring Girard’s hospitality. He’d chosen the boy’s first pony—a fat, shaggy piebald—read him his favorite bedtime stories, and picked out a puppy or two.

  In his mind, he’d gently explained to the child that papa had a few Frenchmen to kill, but would be home soon thereafter.

  The scent of roasted beef interrupted Christian’s musings like a physical slap. He categorized his perceptions to keep his mind from overflowing with sensory noise. Scents were English, or rural, or French. Cooked beef was definitely English. The pervasive mud smelled merely rural. The damned orange cat with the matted fur stropping itself against Christian’s boots was French.