by Louise Allen
‘God knows. She needs women to look after her, but these peasants have too much on their hands to leave her with them.’ Flint tried to think. His side ached like the devil, the bangs and bruises and minor wounds were coming to life, his guts were empty, his thighs were getting pins and needles, and the men depended on him to get them back to Brussels more or less alive. He could do that, or fight another battle if he had to, but safely disposing of unwanted women, now that was another kettle of fish.
He shifted the girl into a more comfortable position, for him at least. ‘There’s a nunnery a couple of miles ahead. That’ll be the place.’ Problem solved. Cheered by the prospect of getting the stray off his hands, he said, ‘We’re almost at the nunnery, Rose. You’ll be better there, the sisters will look after you.’ She made no movement. Was she deaf as well?
‘Jimmy’s gone, Major,’ Potts called from the back of the cart.
Hell. Scurvy little sneak thief. And damned good artilleryman. This had been a very expensive battle. They would leave him at the convent, the nuns would bury him and he’d end up as close to heaven as any of the Rogues were likely to get.
‘Rest stop at the nunnery,’ he called and grinned, despite everything, at the chorus of coarse jokes that provoked.
*
‘Here…Rose…nuns…get down…safe…’ The Devil was talking to her, but the words jumbled in her head, half-drowned by the never-ending scream.
She tried to listen, to understand. Finally she managed to raise her head and focus. One of the tattered, bloody scarecrows was walking towards a high wall with a great gate in it. A bell clanged, jumbling the words in her head even more, and then a flock of great black crows flew out of the gate, flapping, waving hands, not wings. One of them came close, reached for her with long, pale claws.
‘Pauvre…monsieur…pauvre petit…’
She huddled closer into the Devil’s grip. He would stop them pecking her. They had one of the dead men now, bloody and limp as they carried him through the great gate. Like Gerald, only this one had all of his face. Perhaps they were going to eat him, peck at his eyes… Her fingers locked into the strap across the Devil’s back. No…no… The words stayed closed in with the scream.
She felt the Devil shrug. The black crows chattered and flapped, then they rode on, her and the Devil on the great black hell horse. He said something, low, in his deep voice. It rumbled in his chest, against her ear, and this time she understood the words. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rose?’
Who is Rose? It wasn’t her, she knew that. Her name was…was… It had gone. He had told her his name. Adam. That could not be right, the Devil was not called Adam. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan. Those were the Devil’s names.
Why wasn’t he hot? He should be burning hot, instead he was warm. And hard. He’d said he was made of stone… Flint, that was it. That was why he was hard, his thighs under her were rock that moved with the hell horse. His chest was solid, like holding on to an oak tree. His eyes were the blue of flames deep in the heart of a log fire, and he smelled of blood and smoke and sulphur.
Dare she sleep? It had been so long since she had slept. There had been a ball… Memory shifted, blurred, focused for a moment. The night before she had been too excited to sleep. Then the night of the ball she had lain awake with Gerald in her arms, stroking his hair, trying to give him some comfort for his fears. How long had it been since then? Two battles, a rainstorm… Why was I at a ball? Who was Gerald?
Could she sleep with all the noise in her head? She clung tighter to the Devil. He would keep her safe. It made no sense, but then nothing did any more. Nothing ever would again and all because she had sinned.
Chapter Two
‘Oh, my Gawd, look at you!’ Maggie Moss stood in the doorway, apron covered in flour, hair straggling out of its bun, elbows akimbo. ‘That’s a fine sight for a respectable Brussels boarding-house keeper to find on her doorstep of an evening.’ The tears poured down her cheeks.
‘We’ve been in a bit of a scrap, Maggie,’ Flint said, knowing better than to notice the tears. Something in his chest loosened at the sight and sound of her. Maggie meant warm practicality, a sanctuary of normality after a voyage into chaos. ‘Is there room? Twelve of us. Sergeant Hawkins, nine of the men and me. And Rose here.’
‘Of course there’s room, I made sure there would be, and never mind what those commissariat officers wanted when they came round. This house is for Randall’s Rogues and no one else, I said. Moss! Where is the man? Come on in. Tracking mud and worse all over my floors… And the noise! Those guns. Through here.’ Her hands were gentle as she helped the men through into the kitchen, scolding all the time like a mother making a child believe his scraped knee was nothing to make a fuss about.
Her husband came stomping through from the back on his wooden leg. He’d been Flint’s sergeant for three years until a spent ball had taken his leg off at Badajoz. Maggie had followed him through the hell of the Peninsular campaign and then, when peace had come and the English had flocked to Brussels, they’d come, too, to open a lodging house.
‘I’ve got palliasses laid out in the outhouse,’ Moss said. ‘It’s cool and dry out there and no need for stairs. Doesn’t look as though it will be too crowded, either,’ he added, low-voiced, to Flint. ‘Fewer than I expected. Butcher’s bill bad—or did you get off easy?’
‘Could have been worse. Could have been a damn sight better. The ones I sent back earlier were with the rest of the non-commissioned officers under orders to go to the hospitals or nunneries. Hawkins, can you manage here for a bit? I can’t do a thing with my arms full.’
‘We’ll manage, Major,’ Moss said with a sharp glance at Flint’s burden. ‘The missus had best help you with that one. Hawkins, I’ve got hot water in the boiler, let’s get them cleaned up and we’ll see what’s what.’ He turned to one of the privates. ‘Hey, lad, the pump’s in the yard, you fetch everyone a drink, right?’
‘Come on, Major, bring her through here. Hawkins and Moss will manage without us.’ Maggie urged him towards the stairs. ‘Up you go. How’s your broth—Colonel Randall?’
‘All right as far as I know. Gideon’s dead,’ Flint said. ‘At Quatre Bras.’ His younger half-brother had been a cavalry officer, full of courage and with, Flint thought bitterly, the brains of a partridge in shooting season. Gideon shouldn’t have been with the guns, and he, Flint, was a fool to feel that somehow he should have stopped him, saved him.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Poor lad, he was only a boy.’
‘Hardly knew him.’ He’d stayed out of Gideon Latymor’s way all his life—until those last minutes. What did an ambitious young cavalry officer want with one of his father’s countless by-blows, even if their elder brother had, for some inscrutable reason of his own, promoted the by-blow’s career? What did the bastard in question need with either of them, come to that? Randall was his commanding officer, that was as close a relationship as Flint wanted.
‘Room on the left, the one you had before.’ Maggie didn’t make any further comment about Gideon, but he could feel her glare of disapproval at his words like a jab in the back from a bayonet. ‘So who’s this?’ she demanded when he reached the middle of the bedchamber and she could look properly at the woman clinging to him like a burr to a blanket.
‘No idea. Found her after the battle trapped by a gang of deserters.’
‘Had they hurt her?’
‘No. But something’s wrong. She won’t speak, doesn’t seem to understand what I say to her in any language and she won’t let go. Which is becoming uncomfortable,’ he added, aware now he’d got where he was going that certain basic needs required attention.
‘Come on, lovie, down you get now. You’re safe here. I’m Maggie, I’ll look after you.’
It took five minutes, and they had to unbuckle Flint’s belt and peel off his jacket, before they had Rose huddled on the bed in the dressing room off Flint’s bedchamber. ‘Quieter in here and snugger,’ Maggie said. ‘Poor li
ttle creature.’
‘Not so little,’ Flint said, stretching cramped shoulders. But she looked fragile. Not childlike, for even like this her womanly curves were obvious, but vulnerable. Something in Flint’s chest twisted. Damn it, he was not going to get sentimental about one waif and stray. She’d probably been following the drum with some man or another since she was sixteen. ‘I’ll bring hot water up so you can get her clean.’ This was women’s work and Maggie, thank the saints, was the woman to do it. If anyone could bring some terrified camp follower to her senses, she could.
He lugged the tin bath along from the cupboard on the landing. The last time he’d used it was the afternoon before the Duchess of Richmond’s accursed ball.
‘I need you there,’ his commanding officer had said. Justin, Lord Randall, who just happened to be his elder Latymor half-brother, had sighed as he’d looked at him, the sigh of a man whose butler has just spilled the best cognac on the Chinese silk rug. ‘Get yourself cleaned up and try, just try, to look like a gentleman for a change.’
So Moss and Maggie had trimmed his hair, nagged him into the closest shave he’d ever had in his life, dumped him in a bath with some fancy soap, dabbed at him with infernal cologne and eased him into his scarcely-worn dress uniform. He’d had to fight with ghosts from the past to make himself cross that threshold, but it had been worth it to see Justin’s face when Flint stood there brooding in the corner, surrounded by the interested and predatory ladies who had deserted his handsome half-brother to simper at his scowls and stare unabashedly at his tight breeches.
‘I forget that you scrub up quite well,’ Randall had said, a smile on his sculpted lips, his blue eyes, so like Flint’s, chill and unamused by what he had unleashed on the ballroom.
Flint had shown his teeth in response, knowing his smile and his eyes were identical to Randall’s. ‘I know,’ he’d replied in the upper-class drawl he could produce when he could be bothered. ‘Worried I’ll cut you out with the ladies, sir?’ And he could, they both knew that from their time in the Peninsula. Ladies who’d want him for one thing only. Randall, of course, was always too much on his dignity to allow his amours to be seen in public.
Focus. He could not let his mind drift, not stop being a damned officer. Not yet. He stuffed the unpleasant memories away, dumped the tin bath in the bedchamber and went for hot water, leaving Maggie crooning reassurance in the dressing room. When he came down again Moss was tending to the worst of the injured while those who could stand were naked in the yard, sluicing themselves off under Hawkins’s watchful eye.
‘We’ve sent a lad with a note to HQ, sir,’ Hawkins said. ‘Let them know where we are. I’ve asked for the surgeon to call, but I think we’ll be all right for now. They’re checking each other over and washing the wounds out. Maggie’s laid in plenty of bandages and salve. How’s the girl?’ he asked as Flint studied the battered bodies.
Yes, unless loss of blood or shock caught up with any of them, or a wound began to fester, they’d do. It had been, against all the odds and late in the day, a victory, and their tails were up as a result. ‘The girl? I’ve called her Rose. We got her on to a bed and Maggie’s doing what she can. Women’s work, not our problem any more.’ He began to strip. ‘You, too, let’s see what exciting holes you’ve acquired this time.’
‘Nothing.’ Hawkins stripped and grabbed for some soap. ‘I’m filthy as a cesspit digger, but not a scratch on me.’ He jerked his head at the slash over Flint’s ribs. ‘That needs cleaning.’
Flint grunted, splashed soapy water into the wound, swore and scrubbed the rest of himself mostly clean. The men were limping and hobbling back to the straw beds, wrapped in bits of sheet for decency.
‘Lie down, the lot of you, and get some rest,’ Moss ordered with the authority of the sergeant he had once been. ‘I’ll bring you more water and there’ll be stew in bit.’ He began to gather up the torn and filthy shirts, muttering over the state of the uniforms. ‘The girl will get the linen into the copper and do her best with it.’ He stomped into the house, shouting, ‘Lucille!’
‘You rest, too,’ Flint said to Hawkins. He reached out to steady the other man as he balanced on one foot to scrub at the other. Hawkins grasped his hand, returned the momentary pressure without meeting his eyes. There was no need for more words. We’re alive. Hundreds aren’t. We won. ‘Rest. That’s an order.’
‘And you, Major.’
‘Aye.’ Flint looked round at the yard and the outhouse. Nothing more to be done now for a bit except sleep. Immediately after a battle no one wanted to let their eyes close and risk it, the oblivion was too much like dying. Now they could all finally let go. He slung a towel round his waist, picked up his clothes. ‘I’m upstairs if you need me.’
The dressing-room door was closed, but the tub was full of scummy grey water and a pile of damp towels were heaped on the floor. So Maggie had got Rose into a bath, at least, which meant she would have checked her for any injuries. He got rid of the dirty water and put the tub back in the cupboard, then stood in the middle of the room and eyed the bed. Yes, he could let go now for a while at last. He dropped the towel, climbed between the sheets and sank straight into a sleep as dark and still as death.
*
Light, softness and blissful quiet. The scream was still there, an echo in her head, but she could hear faint sounds from somewhere below and a rhythmic purring rasp like a big cat. Something had woken her. Footsteps? Voices? Whatever it was had stopped now.
She opened her eyes on to whiteness. Clouds…? Heaven? No, a big white puffy eiderdown, linen sheets, a lime-washed wall. She was in bed in a small, very simple, very clean room.
She sat up and looked down at her body. Someone had put her into a vast white nightgown. The plump woman with the big hands and the soft voice had bathed her and talked all the time with words that made no sense, but that soothed. Now she ached in every muscle as though she had walked a hundred miles, but that could not be right.
Where am I? Once there had been a house somewhere far away over the sea and then another one, smaller. Smiling faces. Love and arguments. What about? A man? A ball and a beautiful gown. Then kisses and a tent and tears and rain and mud and noise. The worst noise in the world. And then searching, searching and being afraid and then… The scream became louder and she fought back the memory, the images, until she huddled into the pillow, shivering with effort, and it was quiet enough for her to think again.
The demons had come and then the Devil who took her and all the other damned souls he was sending to hell. He had carried her off on his great black horse and she had felt safe, even though he was the Devil. And he had brought her here, to the soft woman and the warm water and peace.
None of it made any sense, because this was not hell, unless it was a cruel trick. Perhaps if she opened the door there would be flames and demons and mocking laughter. Perhaps that sound was a sleeping hellhound. But she had to get up. Surely if you were dead you did not need the chamber pot any more? That was encouraging. She made her way on shaky legs to the screen in the corner and emerged feeling a little better.
Now for the door and what lay beyond. It opened without a creak on to a bedchamber, another white room with muslin curtains drawn over early-morning light and the only flames those safely enclosed within a pair of lamps, burning low. There was a cold fireplace, a rag rug, a chair and a bed. A big bed with, in it, a big man. Her Devil. And he was snoring. That was the sound she had heard. Her face felt strange and she lifted a scratched hand to touch her mouth. She was smiling.
She stood beside the bed and studied him. His shoulders and one arm were above the sheets, muscled, brown, bruised, battered, marked with fresh cuts and old scars. His face was half-hidden under dark brown stubble, darker than the brown hair that partly covered the scar on his forehead. His nose was straight and imperious. He should have seemed vulnerable in sleep, instead he looked dangerous and formidable, a smouldering volcano.
Her Devil. He had saved her,
so she was his now and she should be in bed with him. She eased back the covers and slid under, half-expecting the movement of the feather mattress to wake him, but he only muttered, shifted and threw one heavy arm across her, trapping her against him. He was naked, she could tell even through the sensible cotton nightgown. Naked and warm and big. Safe. She closed her eyes and slept, the rumble of his snores drowning the scream.
*
‘Rose? Bloody hell, what are you doing here?’
Rose? Who was Rose? She snuggled closer against the solid bare body, into the warmth and the security, then had to clutch the edge of the bed as it shifted violently. She opened her eyes and found the Devil was sitting up, glaring at her.
She stared back, wondering why she was not afraid. There was no one else here, so she must be the Rose he was talking to. He was angry with her. What was she doing there? Foolish question, this was where she belonged. She laid her hand, palm down, on his chest and felt his heart beating hard and steady under it. He was very handsome, her battered, fallen angel. She had thought angels were sexless, perhaps feminine, all purity and light. He was dark and male and made her think of carnal, hidden, wicked things.
‘Rose, you must go back to your own bed. You are perfectly safe there.’ He muttered something that sounded like, ‘But not here.’
No. She shook her head.
‘You understand me? You are English?’
Yes. Two nods.
‘Then talk to me, woman!’
Talk? But she couldn’t do that. She had tried to scream when she had found Gerald, but nothing had come out of her mouth. All the words, all the screams, were trapped inside now. She spread her hands and shook her head.
‘You can’t?’ He seemed to understand. ‘That is a pity. Do you remember me? Adam Flint?’ The intense blue gaze focused on her face.