by Louise Allen
‘Where is she?’ Flint went past her to the door she had emerged from.
‘You can’t go in there, Major, it isn’t seemly.’ Jane tried to push in front of him.
‘Seemly be damned.’ He shook off her hand. ‘That’s my betrothed in there. Go and get the cook to make chicken soup and soft white bread and bring up weak sweet tea at once.’
*
‘Rose!’
She dragged open heavy lids. It was too much, she felt like death and now she was having hallucinations. ‘Go ’way,’ she managed to croak through lips that felt as though they were covered in rice paper.
The apparition of Adam neither vanished nor wavered. ‘I’m not going anywhere and you are not going to die on me. You were too much trouble last time.’
‘Adam?’
‘Who else?’ He raked one hand through already dishevelled hair and began to unbuckle his sword belt. ‘Where’s that girl with the tea?’
‘Tea?’ Vague thoughts of tea parties and dainty cakes swam through Rose’s mind. ‘You’re really here?’
‘Give me that.’ There was a clatter of china, then she was being hauled up into a sitting position and pillows stuffed down behind her back. ‘Drink this.’ A cup was pressed to her lips.
‘Can’t. It just comes back up.’ She pushed the cup away with a hand that seemed as heavy as stone.
‘This won’t. Try for me.’ The cup pressed against her lips again. ‘Just sip.’
It was too much effort to fight. She sipped and swallowed and her stomach heaved.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Adam said in the tone she’d last heard him use to Private Williams when he caught him trying to hobble out to find a gin shop.
Rose opened her mouth to protest and tea was poured in. This time her stomach accepted it. ‘More,’ she managed.
Adam tilted the cup again, then set it aside. ‘That’s enough for a minute.’ He got to his feet, still snapping at her. ‘Look at you, what the devil do you think you were doing? They must have told you it was going to be rough and you weren’t feeling well to begin with. And then not to rest when you got to Margate is ridiculous.’ He came back to the bed with a towel and a damp cloth in his hands and began to wash her face with a gentleness that was the opposite to his voice.
‘I can be ridiculous if I want to,’ Rose muttered. The cool cloth was bliss as he smoothed it over her crusted lips and sore eyes.
‘Not under my command you don’t. Have some more tea.’
She drank and the room stopped moving up and down and the pounding headache eased a fraction. ‘I’m not under your command.’ Oh, but it was so good to see him. So impossible. So wrong.
‘All right. But I am responsible for you. We are betrothed,’ Adam said.
Perhaps it was not so good, after all, if he was going to be dictatorial. ‘I am responsible for myself.’ Adam raised one eyebrow. He did not have to say it: she was not taking very good care of herself. ‘Besides, I broke it off.’
‘Your intelligence was faulty,’ he said, his voice dry. ‘You were taken in by enemy spies and you misunderstood what you heard with your own ears.’
None of that made any sense. Rose reached for the teacup and he filled it and put it in her hand. She drank it down slowly, thinking. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Your father sent for me the moment he found your note. I left at once and I was kicking my heels in Ostend for days, imagining you shipwrecked.’
The remembered anxiety in his voice caught at her heart and her eyes filled with tears before she registered what that headlong journey implied. ‘You can’t have just left like that!’ She might not know much about military life, but she knew an officer did not simply leave on personal business. ‘You deserted your post—they’ll court-martial you and you’ll never get command of the Rogues.’
‘I resigned. Tom Bartlett has taken over my duties.’
‘No. Oh, Adam, no!’ He couldn’t throw it away, couldn’t be so impossibly honourable and gallant all because she had made one monumental mistake. ‘Go back, tell them you have changed your mind. I don’t want you, I have come to my senses.’
‘You have?’ He said it without a smile. ‘So you did not mean what you wrote in that note?’
‘I was emotional, and confused and grateful to you.’ Rose made herself hold his hard blue gaze. No man looks at a woman he loves like that, but a soldier faces an unpleasant duty with just that look in his eyes. ‘We had been lovers…I see now I was simply making up a romantic fairy tale to justify my wantonness when I thought I was in love with you. Of course I don’t want to marry you.’
Adam sat silent, watching her, so she kept talking. ‘And you are a dreadful liar. You do not want to marry me, so you can go back to Brussels and tell my parents that I am fine and they do not need to worry. Then you can get on with your own life.’ She thought the smile she produced was really rather good, under the circumstances.
‘I see. Very considerate of you.’ Adam’s mouth thinned to a hard line. He stood up and reached for his sword belt. ‘I can hear the maid with your soup. Try to drink as much as possible and get some rest as soon as the doctor has seen you.’ He walked to the door, held it open for Jane and then disappeared into the shadowy passageway.
Jane put the tray down and flapped a napkin over Rose’s lap. ‘I’ve told Mrs Weston to have a bedchamber made up for the major in the west wing, Miss Tatton.’
‘Here?’ She almost spilled the soup when Jane placed the tray in her lap.
‘He’s been travelling as long as we have, ma’am, and Mrs Weston says there isn’t a decent inn until you get into Whitstable. I didn’t think you’d want to turn him out. Besides, Jem in the stables says his horse needs to rest.’
‘He brought Old Nick? On a boat?’
‘Seems so, Miss Tatton. A powerfully determined man is the major.’
‘Well, he can determine on going back to the Continent tomorrow.’ Her hand shook with weakness as she lifted the spoon, but the soup slid down into her abused stomach, savoury and warm and comforting. ‘But make sure he has a good dinner tonight, won’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss Tatton.’ Jane gathered up the tea things. ‘Shall I sleep in here tonight?’
‘Why?’
‘In case you feel uncomfortable with a gentleman in the house and no chaperone, miss.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jane,’ Rose snapped and wondered, rather desperately, where she had put her handkerchief.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Is Major Flint about yet?’
‘He’s gone, Miss Tatton. He was up with the dawn.’ Jane set the tray down on the window table in Rose’s bedchamber and began to lay out cutlery. ‘Cook’s sent up a nice poached egg and a slice of mild-cure ham and some toast. That will all sit well inside, I’m sure.’
‘Please thank Cook for her thoughtfulness.’ Rose slipped on her robe and padded barefoot to the table. Gone. Is it to be so easy, then?
The day before, Adam had made no attempt to see her, but he had asked the doctor to call again and Jane reported that he was supervising the food sent up from the kitchen. She also said that Old Nick was rested. The doctor had been encouraging and had no doubt put Adam’s mind at rest. His horse was fit to make the short journey to Margate. What was there to keep him, after all?
The window commanded a fine view over the small park at the back of the house where grassland edged with trees led down to the river in its shallow valley. She had slept in, for the mid-morning sun was bright on a swath of buttercups.
So Adam had given up and left. She had to be relieved, of course. It was good of him to go without saying goodbye, for that could only have led to more arguments or painful silences. Now all she had to do was work out what she was going to do with the rest of her life. It wouldn’t involve a husband and children. Or Adam Flint.
Rose stabbed the quivering centre of the egg and watched the yolk run out. That had not been a good idea with her sensitive stomach. Or perhaps that unplea
sant sinking feeling was despair, not squeamishness. Many women did not marry, she told herself, attacking the ham. She was luckier than most, for she had wealth and education behind her. She could, and would, find something fulfilling and worthwhile to do.
She forced her thoughts away from Adam and thought about the injured Rogues in Brussels. What was going to happen to all those wounded soldiers coming back from the war? How would the ones who had lost limbs, or their sight, fare? And what about those whose wits had been turned by the ordeals they had been through? She had just touched on the edge of that horror and had lost her voice and her memory. What would happen to those who had gone through far worse and who never recovered?
She had heard of the horrors of Bedlam where the inmates were chained like animals and exhibited as a menagerie of horrors for the entertainment of gawping visitors and it was the stuff of nightmares, not the sanctuary it should be for those who had given so much for their country.
What those men needed was comfort and tranquillity, kindness and care and, if they were able, a suitable occupation. She could provide that, she was certain. Others would help her with such a good cause and she could begin here by converting the great east wing to house them.
Rose folded the remains of the ham into a roll and went to rummage in the bureau for paper and pen. With her sandwich in one hand she began to jot notes. She would need military help at a high level and lady patronesses. Medical advice… The list got longer as the ham cooled. Convert the east wing into separate rooms? Shared rooms? Dormitories? All three? She needed more advice.
*
When she reached the foot of the third sheet of paper she had to get up and stretch her stiff shoulders. Perhaps it would be best to look around the east wing now. Rose had her hand on the bell pull to ring for her bath when she saw the rider in the park. The horse she would have known anywhere, the rider…the rider was not in uniform. Adam might have left Old Nick here to rest up, but the stallion would kill anyone else who tried to ride him. It had to be Adam.
All the suppressed emotion surged up, filling her with energy that she thought she had lost for ever. Rose yanked on the bell pull and Jane came in minutes later, flushed and out of breath. ‘Miss, are you all right?’
‘Yes, perfectly.’ Except for a racing pulse and a pain where her heart was. ‘Who is that?’ She pointed to where the rider had halted to survey the valley.
‘Why, the major, miss.’
‘You said he had gone.’
‘Yes, but only into Whitstable to send a letter to your parents, Miss Tatton. And he said he had some shopping to do.’
Shopping for civilian clothes. Adam, what are you doing? He had to get back to Brussels before they accepted his resignation as final.
‘I need hot water immediately, then lay out a riding habit.’ If a confrontation was inevitable she was not going to face it looking like a sickly waif trapped in her bed. ‘Send to the stables and tell them I need a horse ready in half an hour.’
*
He knew less about farming and estate management than he did about French literature, but Adam thought he could recognise well-kept land when he saw it. The cattle were fat, the sheep satisfyingly woolly, the hedges had no gaps and the grass was green. The buildings all had sound roofs and the men who were working about the place were dressed in decent homespun and returned his greetings with cheerful grins.
He looked up at the beat of approaching hooves and doffed his hat when he saw the rider was female. The low-crowned beaver felt odd in his hand after a shako. He drew Old Nick on to the verge of the lane to allow the lady to pass. Strange that she had no groom to accompany her.
‘What are you doing?’ The rider reined in the neat bay cover hack he had seen in the stables that morning.
‘And what are you doing out of bed?’ he demanded. Rose, pale but healthy, rode as though she had been born in the saddle. An utterly inappropriate wave of arousal swept over him.
‘Why are you still here—and dressed like that?’ She did not appear very pleased at his civilian breeches and coat, his plain blue waistcoat and modest beaver hat. His boots were his old ones, his stock was decently tied and his linen clean. What was there to object to?
‘I told you, I resigned. These clothes may not be very fashionable, but they are perfectly serviceable,’ he said mildly.
‘I do not care if you are wearing bright yellow Cossack trousers, a pink waistcoat and a cabbage in your buttonhole!’ The bay was sidling uneasily, picking up on her agitation. ‘You must go back to Brussels and withdraw your resignation immediately.’
‘I do not want to.’ And, he realised with relief, that was true. Now he was here he knew he was homesick for England again. He needed a challenge, something fresh in this new world the peace would bring. He wanted Rose. Above everything, he wanted Rose. ‘Besides,’ he said, trying to make her smile, ‘I’ve written to Maggie asking her to send Dog over.’
‘Good, he’ll mope without you,’ she said and, instead of smiling, turned pink. That, he thought was encouraging. Perhaps she was moping for him, too, just a little. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked and Flint realised he must have fallen silent, gazing not at her, but over the green hillside and the clear sparkle of the river.
‘That I want you,’ he said, meeting her eyes. She coloured up, a wash of warm colour. ‘Not like that. Well, yes, like that as well. But I want to marry you, to be with you.’ She shook her head, obviously exasperated with him, and something inside snapped. He urged Old Nick up close alongside her hack, reached across and simply dragged her into the saddle in front of him.
She gave a muffled shriek as she clung to him. ‘Adam, what are you doing?’ Old Nick curvetted sideways, then stood at a sharp command from Flint.
‘Do you remember riding with me like this?’ She nodded, her hat bumping his chin, and he pulled out the hatpin and sent the hat spinning into the nearest bush. ‘That’s better.’ Now his chin rested on her hair. ‘I smell a damn sight better than I did then, and you’ve got your voice, but it still feels as good to have you in my arms, against my heart.’ She gave a murmur of agreement and tightened her hold.
‘You said once that you knew me, that right from the start you knew you could trust me, even when you thought I was the Devil. What changed, Rose? When did you stop trusting me?’
She pushed against his chest and sat up so her mouth was no longer muffled against his coat. ‘When I realised that honour was the most important thing for you. You said you were not the marrying kind, that you wouldn’t stay faithful. But you were also insistent on marrying me, on leaving the army, on doing all those things that I knew you would hate. It did not add up, Adam.’ Her fingers played with Old Nick’s mane, twisting the coarse hair into knots. ‘You would do your duty and marry me, because that was the honourable thing to do, but how could I expect you to be faithful?’
He let his breath out in a huff of relief. ‘That is easy. To be unfaithful to my wife would be dishonourable. But there is a much stronger reason than that. I love you.’
‘You had always been honest with me before, but that morning when you gave me the ring, told me you loved me, you couldn’t meet my eyes, you were hesitant. I knew you were making yourself speak of love because you thought it as the only thing that would make me accept marriage happily.’
‘I’ve never had to speak of love before, I had no idea how to say it. You think I would lie to you?’ That hurt, but not as much as she was hurting, he could tell.
‘Yes, if you thought it was for my own good.’ And that was bitter.
Flint sat with the sweet weight of Rose in his arms and tried to think. His mind was blank. How do you convince a woman that you love her when she has no reason to believe you and her own honour stops her taking the easy way of pretence and compromise? He knew what his instinct was telling him: let her go free, let her decide. Instinct had saved his life more times than he could count, had shown him the way when intellect was exhausted. He would risk his h
eart on an artilleryman’s instinct, it was all he had left.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said and snapped his fingers at the cover hack who obediently trailed behind as he turned Old Nick’s head towards the stables.
*
Rose sat in the drawing room and waited as Adam had requested, very formally. He was going to give up, say goodbye, she was certain. She raised her chin a notch. That was the right thing and she would not let herself down or shake his resolve by weeping all over him.
When he came in he carried the ring box in one hand and his sword in the other. ‘You gave me this ring back and I will take it with me,’ he said and pushed it into his pocket. ‘And I will leave today, go back to Brussels, settle my affairs. I will not withdraw my resignation. But before I go, I want to show you, tell you, something.’
He picked up his sword, knelt in front of her and laid it in its scabbard across her lap. ‘That is mine. When I was made an officer I had to have a sword, but I could not afford to buy one so I picked this up on the battlefield.’ That explained its plain hilt and the battered scabbard, so unlike his dress sword that gleamed with fancy work and lived in an elegant, unmarked scabbard. ‘This sword has been with me ever since. It has saved my life countless times, it is the symbol of my honour, of what I have made of my life. It is the only possession I would kill to keep.’
Adam laid his right hand on the hilt, took hers in his left hand and placed it on top. ‘I swear, on this sword, that I love you, Rose. I swear that I want to marry you. I swear that I will always be faithful to you and that I want to make my life here in England with you.’
He lifted her hand away and stood up. ‘Now I will leave unless you tell me to stay, tell me you believe me, trust me. That you still love me.’