by Louise Allen
His use of the sergeant’s first name was a signal that this was man-to-man talk. Hawkins shrugged. ‘Thought we’d agreed. Find another war. There’ll be one soon enough, that’s for sure, and there’s always the East India Company, like you said.’
‘Yes, that was what I said. But…carry on fighting?’ There was a small girl with auburn hair throwing a ball for a puppy. They both chased it, both tripped over their feet. The little girl burst into laughter. ‘There’s got to be something beyond that, I’m thinking,’ he said slowly, his mind filled with the unsettling uncertainties again. ‘What are we fighting for? All those men dying, all our wounds—we fight to win and for peace. But I just can’t see peace in my head.’
Hawkins shifted to follow his gaze and watched the child’s nursemaid scoop her up, laughing. ‘Never had a yen to settle down. If I found a woman I liked well enough, then perhaps…’ He let his voice trail off. Flint was very conscious that the other man kept his eyes forward.
‘I’m changing my mind and I don’t much like it. I’m thinking I should sell out, settle, if I knew what to settle to,’ Flint admitted. There, he’d said it out loud. Something like panic lodged under his breastbone as the vague thoughts and uneasiness found solid words.
‘Officers’ pay isn’t bad,’ Hawkins said casually. ‘I expect you’ve a bit put aside.’ Enough for a wife. The words did not need to be spoken.
‘I’ve been saving,’ Flint agreed. A major’s pay had been beyond his wildest imaginings when he’d enlisted. Now it arrived in his bank account regularly. A bank account, for goodness’ sake! And what had he got to spend it on? His mother was dead, there was no one else relying on his support. He didn’t patronise smart clubs—they wouldn’t have him even if he wanted to—he wasn’t fool enough to get fleeced in gambling dens, and he didn’t keep high-flying mistresses. He certainly didn’t bother Jermyn Street tailors. His two extravagances were his boots and his weapons.
Once he realised the money was mounting up he had swallowed his pride and asked Randall how to invest safely. That was years ago. His half-brother had put him in touch with his own man of business and now the quarterly reports showed an improbably large sum growing and growing. Enough to keep Rose in comfort, that was sure.
‘I’d be bored out of my mind,’ he said now, fighting the feeling of unease at the thought of life beyond the army.
‘You could buy a tidy little property, manage that,’ Hawkins suggested.
‘Might breed horses, I suppose.’ Flint slapped Old Nick’s shoulder. ‘This brute has the manners of a rabid leopard, but his bloodlines are incredible. Might run a stagecoach line…’ Or look into investing in industry. Steam engines, now they sounded interesting. Didn’t understand them, but that could be remedied. It was only machinery and mathematics, and so was artillery. Perhaps there was something beyond firing a cannon and killing people that he could be good at.
But whatever else he did, he wanted land, he realised, the ideas galloping now he had let them loose. He might always be a half-bred almost gentleman, but if his sons had a decent education and land behind them, they’d rise. That would be the perfect revenge on the man who’d so carelessly fathered him—provided he could work out how to be a father himself first.
He was building castles in the air now. An estate, sons, good schools. He needed a wife for all that and Rose might very well change her mind about even liking him once she got her memory back and knew who she was. He might change his mind, the way he was feeling. It was the aftermath of battle, just a reaction, just a particularly solid-seeming daydream.
‘Aye, well, enough of this.’ He turned Old Nick’s head towards headquarters. ‘Let’s run our surgeon down and set him on the men. We’re still at war, so far as I know.’
*
Rose woke to find herself alone and Adam’s side of the bed cold. Her stomach growled in protest at the lack of breakfast, but she lay there for a while, sorting her thoughts out, her spread fingers running over the place where he had slept. Everything had changed, totally. She could speak, she had some of her memory back, she was no longer a virgin and Adam had made love to her three times last night.
She still glowed with remembered pleasure and her body, despite its aches in unexpected and naughty places, was suggesting it would like it if he was back in bed now. Even the way she felt when she stretched, long and languid, sent little ripples of remembered pleasure through her body. Adam desired her and he had shown her just how much.
‘Time to get up,’ she murmured and went to investigate the wash stand. There was a pitcher of clean, cool water so she stood in the basin and had a standing sponge bath rather than go downstairs and draw attention to the fact that she had slept the morning away, worn out by passion.
Rose paused in the middle of a precarious one-legged balance while she washed her left foot. It was more than passion. She felt relief and happiness. She felt safe, as though she was somewhere she belonged. It was Adam, of course. He had saved her life, he had cared for her when she must have been nothing but an utter nuisance, and he had made love to her with a mixture of strength and sweetness, care and sensual abandon, that was beyond her wildest dreams of what the physical relationship between a man and a woman would be like.
She had never really trusted men, not emotionally, not to be honest, she felt that with a certainty. Why, she wasn’t sure; there were memories, half-formed, of flattery and insincerity, of courtships based on wealth and status, not on emotion. Was that why she had talked herself into thinking she loved Gerald, because he had seemed guileless?
Adam was not guileless and she doubted he ever had been. He said he was no gentleman. He called himself a bit of rough, a bastard, a killer. ‘Oh, Adam.’ She put her foot down with a splash and reached for the towel. Was there any future for them at all? Why would Adam want her, other than for the rather obvious fact that he appeared to desire her sexually? She had no assets to bring him except her body. No family, no money. No past at all.
The hollow feeling inside that had been hunger turned to something else, something uneasy. There was a real world out there and sooner rather than later she was going to have to face it. And she did not know who she was as a person, not really. All she knew, with increasing certainty, was that she was not the helpless creature who had clung so tightly to the man who saved her that he had virtually to strip before he could shake her off.
She was usually a determined person, the memories of refusing to do the conventional thing and agree to marry for suitability, not love, told her that. She was unconventional enough to run off with one man and to persuade another into bed with her. Perhaps wanton was the word, although she hoped not. Adam had said passionate, sensual.
The unsettling suspicion grew that her infatuation with Gerald had been a kind of desperation. She had needed to prove to herself that she was perfectly normal, that she could fall in love and want to marry. But for some reason she had to fall in love with a man her parents did not approve of. They couldn’t have done, or she wouldn’t have needed to elope with him.
This was making her head ache again. A convenient excuse for not facing facts, she scolded herself as she dressed and made her way downstairs. Do I really want to be with Adam? That was the other worry that fretted at the back of her mind. Was the fact that every fibre of her being revolted at the thought of being parted from him simply a measure of how much she relied on him now? That and a sensual enchantment, she admitted ruefully.
I am not some waif to be rescued, I must do this myself. Perhaps Adam’s strays would always turn out to be less waiflike than he thought. So far he had a dog with a strong protective instinct for his rescuers and a woman who would not do as she was told.
Chapter Nine
Maggie, Lucille the maid and two of the soldiers were in the kitchen. Rose greeted them absently, her mind still wrestling with her feelings for Adam. Then she noticed the very careful way they were keeping quiet and carrying on with their tasks. Not one of them looked at
her.
They know. They know Adam and I are lovers. She sat down, uncertain what to say. Is this disapproval? No, they don’t want to embarrass me, she realised as Lucille shot her a quick, half-smiling glance.
‘I have my voice back,’ she said. It was as though she had thrown a stone into a stage tableau. Everyone relaxed, heads turned.
‘That’s wonderful,’ Maggie said, beaming. ‘The major said you could talk again. And has all of your memory returned?’
‘No. Not that.’ And it was more than an inconvenience, she realised now. She needed to know who she was, what she was, if she had any hope of understanding her feelings for Adam. Any hope of holding him.
‘Your poor friends, not knowing what has happened to you,’ Maggie said as she peered into the flour bin. ‘You run along, lads, let the women have a comfy chat. You find some breakfast for Miss Rose, Lucille.’
‘My friends?’ Oh, my heavens. Not friends—my parents. Somewhere, in the muddle of things half-remembered, was the comforting thought that she had left them a letter, explained she was safe with Gerald. Only she hadn’t been safe with Gerald and they would have known that for days now.
‘They must be frantic,’ she whispered, sick with guilt. Eloping was bad enough, running off and getting lost in the middle of a vast and bloody battle was quite another thing. ‘My parents. I eloped with Gerald, I left them a note.’
Did they know that Gerald was dead yet? She must ask Adam how casualty lists were distributed, how she could find out if anyone had been asking about Gerald. His own parents were in Wales, she knew that. News could not have reached them about the battle, let alone any enquiries from them come back about their son.
‘Casualty lists,’ she began as the door closed behind the soldiers. ‘Gerald’s name will be on them.’
‘Not for rank and file,’ Maggie said, apparently following her train of thought. ‘Only officers.’
She couldn’t tell them Gerald had been an officer, not before she talked to Adam. ‘That won’t help, then.’
‘There’s the knocker,’ Maggie said.
Lucille was slicing bread. ‘I’ll get it,’ Rose said.
A small, plainly-dressed lady in her mid-twenties stood on the doorstep. She held out a small leather-bound book.
‘I am Miss Endacott. I have come from Lord Randall’s lodgings. Major Flint left this when he called there.’
‘Thank you.’ Rose put out her hand to take the book. ‘He told me that Lord Randall was injured in the battle. How is he now?’
‘I, that is, he…’
The woman seemed extremely distressed. Rose wanted to offer her some comfort, to find out more details, but Miss Endacott was already backing away from the doorstep.
‘We are hoping, praying—excuse me!’ And with that the woman turned abruptly and hurried away up the street.
‘What was that about?’ Maggie asked when Rose came back into the kitchen.
Rose recounted the short conversation. ‘Miss Endacott seems very upset. Is she betrothed to the colonel?’
‘I hadn’t heard anything. But never mind them—Rose, are you going to marry the major?’
‘He isn’t the marrying kind,’ Rose said with a casual shrug.
‘None of them are,’ Maggie said crisply as she slapped a lump of dough on to the kneading board. ‘Not until they meet the right woman, that is. And then they usually need hitting over the head with it before they notice.’
Rose had a delicious image of Maggie taking her rolling pin to Moss until he admitted he loved her. ‘Even if Adam did think…I don’t know whether…’ She ground to a halt and tried again. ‘I don’t know who I am, so how do I know what I feel for him?’
Maggie grunted and slapped the dough as if it was an uncooperative man. ‘You had a nasty shock, he looked after you—good at looking after strays is the major—and now you don’t know if you’re just plain grateful, is that it?’
‘It’s more than that,’ Rose admitted, hoping the heat in the kitchen accounted for the warmth in her cheeks.
‘Aye, well, I’ve heard he doesn’t disappoint in other ways.’
Now she was feeling jealous of all the other women in Adam’s life. He said he wasn’t the faithful kind, so why had the word marriage even entered her head? She had been looking for a man she could trust and love ever since she came out, that certainty was growing the more she thought about it. She was not swayed by wealth or power or titles, but she did care about honesty and faithfulness and love. Adam would give her the first of those in uncomfortable abundance, but he had also told her plainly that the other two were not in him to give.
‘I can’t think about any of that now,’ she said aloud. ‘I’ll worry about it later.’ If he ever asks me. ‘I need to find out who I am and let my parents know I am safe.’ And she had to do it without causing a scandal. They might well have been able to cover up an elopement, but a young woman enquiring of the British authorities whether any genteel family had misplaced a daughter would cause an uproar.
I need to take control, she thought. She could not simply lean on Adam until her memory came back, if it ever did. It muddled her thinking to be so dependent and it hurt her pride.
It was all very well to worry about her pride and her independence, first she had to know who she really was and what that woman felt about Major Adam Flint. She could simply go into the fashionable part of town—she could find her way around there, she was certain—and wait to be recognised, she supposed. But not dressed like a respectable but humble servant, which is how she looked now. She needed a gown and a bonnet. Gloves, a reticule…
‘Maggie, Adam said something about letting me have money for anything I needed, didn’t he?’ She could pay it back as soon as she discovered who she was. She sensed she had never wanted for money, that her quarterly allowance had been more than generous.
‘He left a wallet in the dresser.’ Maggie nodded towards a chest of drawers. ‘You help yourself, I’m all over dough.’
There seemed to be a considerable amount in the battered leather folder. How much would she need in order to present a ladylike appearance? She certainly could not go to a modiste and order a gown to be made, not with no name and no credit. But there were second-hand shops, places where ladies’ maids took the cast-off garments that formed one of their most valuable perks. The simpler items they might adjust for their own use, but the money was more valuable to them, she knew from conversations with her own maid, Jane.
Jane. I can remember her. I can remember her careful diction and the efforts she made to put her East End background behind her. Rose put a number of banknotes in her pocket and shook her head in frustration with being able to recall so much and yet none of it the essentials. ‘I need some things, so I will go out now. I might be a while. I want to see if anywhere looks familiar.’
‘Do you want Lucille with you?’ Maggie called as Rose ran upstairs for her borrowed bonnet.
‘No, thank you.’ She looked round the kitchen door with a smile, tying the bonnet ribbons, her spirits lifted by the thought of doing something positive. ‘I will be all right when I reach the centre of town. Which way do I go?’
‘Left out of the door,’ Maggie said. ‘Then straight on and you’ll soon find the Grand Place.’
The plain straw bonnet had a large brim which hid her face and gave her confidence. There were some respectable second-hand clothes shops in the network of streets behind the Grand Place, she knew, and the market stalls would provide cheap stockings and handkerchiefs, perhaps a shawl.
At first it was simply wonderful to be outside again. The sun was shining, the city, despite the remaining encampments of soldiers under awnings on the streets, was returning to its normal pristine, bustling self. Rose made her way rapidly along the pavement, wishing she could run, just for the chance to stretch her legs. As she went further into the centre of town her pace slowed. Buildings began to look familiar, she knew their names. She stopped on the corner of the Rue des Bouchers
and stared around in frustration. Why could she not recall the name of the street where she had lived?
What would she do if she saw someone whose face she recognised? She had vague memories of social calls, of knowing people, of stopping to chat in the Parc. Whatever her family’s station in life, their social circle was wide.
Rose began to walk again, more slowly now. If she saw a face she recognised, she would follow them home, she decided. Then, when she was respectably dressed, she could call on them. The thought of accosting someone in the street and asking what her own name was made her dizzy. Scandal, it seemed, was far from her normal experience.
But there was no one who looked at all familiar. Rose was not certain she was relieved or sorry. Relieved, she decided as she stood outside the second-hand dress shop Jane had mentioned. Coward. This strange bubble she lived in with Adam, with no past and no future, felt safe, even if that was only an illusion. She would have to prick the bubble and emerge sooner or later. But not just yet.
*
It was even easier than she had expected to outfit herself. This establishment only accepted garments in good condition and the gowns had been made by high-quality seamstresses. Rose found a walking dress that was an almost perfect fit at a much lower price than she had feared having to pay. A bonnet to match, gloves and a reticule and there was still money in her pocket. She could afford a day dress—or, rather, Adam could.
She smiled at the thought of his face if he had been dragged in here amongst the feminine frills and furbelows. Or perhaps he took his mistresses to dress shops and milliners, let them choose gowns and hats which he would pay for. But he did not have mistresses like some town buck, set up in a luxurious little love nest, she suspected. Adam’s women lived with him for as long as the relationship lasted. Which was not very long, by the sound of it.
Rose blinked to clear the sudden blurring of her vision. She was here to shop, not to mope. That soft green fabric looked nice. In fact, it looked…familiar. She lifted the garment from the rack, held it against herself and studied her reflection in the long mirror.