by Louise Allen
Her father was white around the lips. ‘Then what happened?’ he asked as though the question was being dragged from him by force.
‘I was being threatened by four deserters and Major Flint rescued me. I couldn’t tell him who I was because I did not know and, besides, I could not speak. He took me to the lodging house that one of his old sergeants and his wife keep. They are a respectable couple and very kind. My voice came back after a while and then little bits of my memory. I only remembered who I was today.’
‘Lady Sarah said that she found you and this man together,’ Lady Thetford whispered, as if by keeping her voice low she could pretend that this was not happening. ‘In his bedchamber. You were in his bed. She said he was…unclothed.’
What could she say that would protect Adam? Rose struggled to find some form of words as the door opened.
‘Are you receiving, my lady? A Major Flint is here asking for his lordship.’
‘Is he indeed?’ Lord Thetford rose to his feet. ‘Show him in. My dear, take Catherine into your boudoir.’
How did he know I was here? Maggie must have told him. Rose stood up. She must go to Adam, stop this confrontation before he said something that would ruin his career.
Then she looked across the room at the erect, steadfast figure of her father braced to defend his family and realised with a sudden pang of affection that he was no longer a young man, not even a young middle-aged man. The skin of his neck was beginning to sag, his hair was more grey than brown, he had a little paunch and there were the beginning of bags under his eyes. She loved him and she had worried him desperately, had disappointed him dreadfully, and now he was squaring up to deal with this threat to her from a man half his age.
‘I will stay here, Papa,’ she said. She had two men to shield from the damage she had wrought. Somehow.
‘Major Flint, my lord.’
Lady Thetford rose, quivering with outrage as Adam came into the room and stopped when he saw the tableau in front of him. She swept up to him. ‘You libertine,’ she hissed and slapped him hard across the face. ‘Scum. How dare you presume to lay a finger on my daughter?’ Without waiting for a reply she walked out of the room. The door closed quietly behind her.
Adam would stand like that, look like that, if he faced a court martial or a firing squad, Rose thought, aching to go to him, knowing that to do so would be another slap to his pride.
‘What have you to say for yourself?’ her father said at last.
‘I am at your disposal, my lord.’ The marks of Lady Thetford’s fingers stood out like a brand on Adam’s face.
‘You think I would duel with a bastard? I should horsewhip you, rather.’
‘If your lordship feels that would help.’ Adam was as still and as controlled as he had been when she had cleaned and dressed his wound. To anyone who did not know him he would appear simply stoical, or perhaps unconcerned. Rose knew this was hard-learned self-discipline, just as she knew that if her father sent for a horsewhip and led the way to the stable yard, Adam would follow him, strip off jacket and shirt and submit to the older man’s fury without flinching.
‘Major Flint believed I was a camp follower,’ she said.
‘He thought what?’ her father roared.
‘Ro…Miss Tatton, I think you should leave.’
‘And have you take the blame for this?’ she demanded, coming to stand as her mother had, toe to toe with Adam.
‘Of course. It is mine to take, after all.’ His smile was like a touch on the cheek, gentle and reassuring, transforming his face.
‘How dare you look at my daughter like that!’ her father snapped.
‘As if she is a lady I respect and admire? A lady for whom I feel great fondness?’ Adam enquired. ‘I understand your anger, my lord, and your desire to do me damage. But I do intend to marry Miss Tatton.’
‘You, a bastard, marry a viscount’s daughter? Oh, yes, I know who you are, your half-sister has been here before you to carry the tale.’ Her father flung up his hands and turned away, but Rose could tell he was already beginning to realise that shooting Adam was not an option, that pretending nothing had happened was not possible either.
‘My father, for whose numerous sins I do not feel I can be blamed, was an earl. My half-brother, who recognises me, is an earl. I am financially in a position to support a wife in comfort and respectability, if not luxury.’ Adam was hanging on to his temper by his fingernails, Rose suspected, but he was hiding the fact well. ‘I understand and accept your anger, my lord. If I were in your shoes I would be tempted to reach for a pistol, but that will not help your daughter now.’
‘Catherine, come away from that man,’ Lord Thetford ordered.
‘I cannot quite get used to that name, Papa. I have been Rose for days, with no idea who I was.’ She put her hand on Adam’s arm and shook it gently until he looked down at her. ‘I do not need to marry. You do not need to marry me.’
‘No?’ The ghost of that smile was still there.
‘We will know in a few days,’ she murmured.
It was not soft enough for her father’s hearing. ‘Scoundrel!’
Chapter Thirteen
‘Miss Tatton, I think it best if you join Lady Thetford,’ Flint said with a wary eye on the red-faced viscount. They’d have a heart seizure on their hands in a moment. ‘I fear we are doing your father’s health no good at all with this exchange.’
Rose sat down on the sofa, folded her hands in her lap and asked her father with commendable, and infuriating, calm, ‘Is it known that I eloped with Gerald?’
‘Fortunately not, which is the one bright spark in this whole sorry mess.’ Her father flung himself down into the nearest chair. He did not ask Adam to sit. ‘At the ball your mama developed a headache. We went to look for you so we could return home but could not find you. The footman in charge of cloaks said you had left an hour earlier and described Haslam. Your mama was…overwrought. That attracted an audience.’ He grimaced. ‘However, she did not say anything indiscreet and I think I passed it off as a bad attack of migraine.
‘I went to find Haslam’s commanding officer, but they had left for Quatre Bras. I assumed he had hidden you in his lodgings, as your note that we found when we returned home said nothing of you leaving with him to the battlefield. When there was no word afterwards we could not understand it, for we were sure you would have tried to discover his fate. We saw his name on the lists, but we had no idea you were not in Brussels and we dared not make any enquiries about him by name. For what it is worth we have put it around that you are in bed with the influenza.’
‘I am very sorry to have caused you so much anxiety, Papa.’ Rose was within a breath of tears, Adam could tell, but she kept her voice steady. He wanted to go and sit beside her, put an arm around her in support, but that risked shattering her control. ‘You see, I thought we could run away to Antwerp, get married, then come back within a day or so. But then Gerald received his orders to march as we left the ball. I was going to be an army wife, so I thought my place was with him.’
‘I never liked that boy,’ Lord Thetford said. ‘He was immature, and too pretty by half. I had told him I would not accept his offer for your hand. What was he thinking of, to take you with him?’
‘He was as green as grass, I would guess,’ Adam said. This at least he could understand after years of dealing with callow youths. ‘He’d been a Hyde Park soldier until this, no doubt. He had probably never seen a battle, had no idea what it would be like. He expected to leave Miss Tatton in a pretty little tent and gallop off to fight. There would be gallantry, glory, the thrill of a cavalry charge. Then he would return to her, bloodied but unbowed, perhaps with a captured eagle to lay at her feet. What he got was two battles, mud, blood and noise and a desperate encounter that almost overwhelmed even those of us who had been fighting for a decade or more.’
‘You would defend him to me?’
‘I would explain him to you, my lord. He was an inexperienced officer tryin
g to do his duty, even though he found himself in hell.’
The older man looked him in the eye, without speaking. Flint felt as though he was being assessed, fairly, even if coldly, for the first time since he had entered the room. Rose’s father gestured towards a chair. ‘Sit, Major Flint.’ It appeared a decision had been reached. No horsewhip, then.
The sigh that Rose gave showed that she, too, must have noticed that unspoken decision. She then rushed into speech before Flint could build on the moment of understanding. ‘The point is, Papa, that I was technically ruined simply by eloping with Gerald. If no one knows of it, I am not actually ruined. Major Flint does not need to come into it.’
‘I do if you are carrying my child,’ Adam pointed out with, he thought, unarguable logic. He could not afford to regard her blushes, or her father’s likely reaction to the blunt confirmation of his worst fears. ‘And the unfortunate Lieutenant Haslam is dead or we wouldn’t be in this position.’ This unfortunate position. He did not need to spell it out to her, surely? ‘Lady Sarah knows and feels angry enough with me to bring the story straight to your parents. Who can tell what she will do with the information? But even if no one else ever knows, I have been your lover. You need a husband, Miss Tatton, and you are my responsibility now. Child or no child,’ he added.
‘No,’ Rose said flatly.
Flint caught the viscount’s gaze. He, too, seemed baffled by whatever feminine logic Rose was employing. She was not a fool, she was an intelligent woman. Why could she not grasp the inevitability of this? Presumably because marriage to him was worse than ruin in her mind.
‘I will try to persuade Sarah to keep quiet about it,’ Rose said. ‘We were never friends, but I cannot believe she wants to hurt me by tattling about this all over Brussels. She is too involved with Major Bartlett and with worries about Lord Randall to be attending social events, in any case, surely?
‘I was wrong to elope with Gerald when I did not truly love him,’ she added earnestly. ‘And do not ask me why, Papa. It is one of the things that I still do not understand. But everything that happened afterwards was a consequence of that action. I am going to be punished enough for my deeds, please do not punish me further by forcing me into a marriage I do not want.’
Adam felt his body tense and forced himself to relax. That was clear enough, she did not want to marry him, which considering she had been so eager to join him in his bed, and was perfectly well aware of the fate of disgraced young ladies, argued a strong objection to something about either his personality, his birth or his character. Probably all three.
‘What we want and what we need are not the same things, my girl,’ her father said. He looked at Adam and Adam looked back. After a moment her father nodded and Adam inclined his head in assent to the unspoken question. Somehow, for her own good, they were going to have to unite to persuade Rose into this union and form an unwilling truce to do so.
‘Take yourself off to your mother, Catherine. The major and I have business to discuss.’
‘I am not going to go and leave you to trap Adam into marrying me.’ Her hand tightened on the arm of the sofa, rucking the chintz cover under her fingers.
‘It would be an unusual thing to find a man in Major Flint’s position wishing to turn down the opportunity to marry the well-dowered daughter of a viscount,’ Lord Thetford said drily. ‘Especially when society will think him gallant indeed for rescuing you from disgrace if a whisper of your elopement ever comes out.’
The idea that he would have anything to gain from marrying her, other than the sense of having done the right thing, had obviously never occurred to Rose. Now she stared at him and Flint saw the colour rise and then ebb in her cheeks, saw the flicker of disquiet in her eyes.
It had not occurred to him either, which only proved he was not thinking very clearly. Whatever he wanted to do now, whether stay in the army or buy land, would be made easier by a marriage to Miss Tatton. She would bring a dowry, influential relatives, an established place in society—and she thought he had been thinking about that from the moment he discovered that she was a lady.
‘I think it would be better if you do leave, Miss Tatton. Your father and I must have a practical discussion.’
‘Horse trading,’ Rose said with scorn in her voice. She stood, sweeping her skirts around her with ostentatious care. ‘But I would remind you both that clichés usually have a kernel of truth in them. You may lead a horse to water, but you most certainly cannot make it drink.’
Flint stood to open the door for her, but she was already across the room. She paused in the open doorway and curtsied. ‘Papa. Major Flint.’
‘On her high horse, to carry a weary metaphor further.’ Lord Thetford sighed as he dropped back into his chair. ‘What have you got to say for yourself now the ladies are out of the room, Flint?’
‘I genuinely believed that the woman I found on the battlefield was a camp follower, my lord. I had seen her at Quatre Bras, her clothing was that of a common woman, there was nothing out of place and she could not speak. I found myself drawn to her, fond of her. I wanted to keep her with me, treat her well. I did not see the clues that should have led me to a realisation of who she was, although I will be frank with you, even if I had, it was too late.’
Her father grimaced. ‘Yes, that is frank indeed. Tell me about yourself then, Major. I know you are the old Earl Randall’s by-blow.’
‘One of them, yes.’ An angry man, a worried man, but a fair one, he decided as he studied the viscount. Flint took a deep breath and cleared his mind as though he was about to give an intelligence report. ‘My mother…’
*
Half an hour later Lord Thetford leaned back in his chair and grunted. ‘Not as bad as I thought. You’ve more behind you financially than that boy Haslam had.’
‘I can give you my bankers’ direction for confirmation of my assets. I would refer you to Colonel Lord Randall if his health was not in such a precarious state. The duke might speak for me.’
‘He may well. Wellington likes rogues, provided they get the business done,’ the viscount said drily. ‘You’ll want to know about Catherine’s dowry. No, don’t wave it away, we’re talking business here and I’ll think you a noddy if you aren’t concerned. I’m rich in land, poor in ready money like many a title-holder. I make no secret of the fact. That’s why we’re here in Brussels, a cheap place to live, as the Duke of Richmond would find if his duchess didn’t keep throwing damn-fool entertainments. But Catherine inherited from her godfather and from her mother’s mother.’ He named a sum that had Flint feeling mildly queasy. ‘And there is property, of course. All the unentailed land is settled on her and for now there’s her godfather’s nice little estate I’m looking after for her. That would suit you, I have no doubt.’
‘I cannot…’ Money? Land? A nice little estate? ‘The settlements will have to be put in trust for the children. Whatever is the usual practice. I don’t want any of it, I am not a fortune hunter.’
‘Then you’re a fool. Do you want your wife having to live in Brussels on the economical plan like the rest of us here?’ Bushy grey eyebrows rose in scornful enquiry. ‘Do you want your children growing up as a major of artillery can rear them or as a rich man can?’
‘If you put it like that, the latter, I suppose.’ It seemed there was no end to the blows his pride was expected to take. ‘My lord, Miss Tatton is a beautiful, intelligent, elegant young lady. She is also past the age one would expect the daughter of a viscount to be unmarried. Is there something I should know?’
‘Some broken heart in the past, you mean?’ Lord Thetford gave a bark of laughter. ‘Nothing that simple. The girl declares she will not marry except for love, mutual love. Romantic poppycock. I had met her mother half a dozen times before we married and we have rubbed along very well. Why Catherine lost her head over Haslam I cannot say, given that she regained her senses soon enough.’
Love? Rose wants a love match and she gets me.
‘I wil
l do everything in my power to make her happy, my lord,’ he said, keeping hold of the fast-disappearing tail of his temper.
‘You had better. I’ll not have her marry you unless I am certain you will be kind to my girl, even if it means we have to go and live in Italy to avoid the scandal. Will you strike her if she displeases you? Keep a mistress? Come home drunk and gamble her fortune away?’
‘No, damn it!’ There went his temper.
The older man’s expression hardened as he studied Flint’s struggle to get his annoyance under control. ‘If it turns out that you treat her badly despite what you say, then I’ll make you sorry you were ever born, believe me. I will be quite frank with you—you are not what I had hoped for as a son-in-law, far from it, but a live major of dubious pedigree is better than a dead, feckless youth, under the circumstances. All you need to do is to convince Catherine, because I haven’t been able to turn her will on anything important to her since she was eleven.’
Nature might be taking care of that without any further help from him, Flint mused, maintaining his composure in the face of Lord Thetford’s stony gaze. He had been careless just the once, but once could be enough. He thought of the bone-deep pleasure of spending inside Rose, of feeling her body joining his in ecstasy. If ever a coupling deserved to produce a child, that one did. But if she was forced into marriage she would never forget it or forgive it. He needed her to agree because she wanted him as a husband, not because she was forced. He was becoming as romantic as she was, it seemed. Or perhaps it was simply that he could not bear the thought of her unhappiness.
He looked across into the face of the man who would be his father-in-law, the grandfather of his children. The man who looked down on him, barely trusting his word. ‘I will do my best, my lord.’