The Major Meets His Match

by Annie Burrows

  ‘I tell you what, though,’ he said aloud. ‘You are still my hero, Atlas’

  Atlas started, looking taken aback.

  ‘No, really. After all this time, you are still the best of us. Always was.’

  ‘You paid too much attention to the letters I wrote when I first went to sea,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘I made it sound far more exciting than it was. Didn’t want you all to...pity me, for having to leave. Didn’t want to admit that I was seasick, and homesick and utterly wretched.’

  ‘B-but,’ said Archie, looking shocked, ‘you were a hero. Read ab-bout your exp-ploits in the Gazette.’

  Atlas made a dismissive motion with his hand, as though banishing the Gazette and all that was printed in it to perdition.

  ‘Just did my duty. No choice, when you’re in the thick of action. You either fight like a demon, or...well, you know how it is, Jack. Same in the army, I dare say.’ He sent Jack a beseeching look, as though begging him to divert attention from him.

  ‘Only too well,’ he therefore said. ‘Which is why your homecoming is worth celebrating. Glad you’re alive. Glad I’m alive. Even glad Zeus is alive,’ he said, shooting his godship a wry grin. ‘Since he got us all together again, for the first time since...what year was it when you left school, Atlas?’

  ‘You are foxed,’ said Zeus with exasperation, before Atlas had a chance to make his response. ‘If I’d realised quite how badly foxed, I would never have let you attempt to ride Lucifer.’

  ‘Attempt? Pah! I did ride Lucifer.’

  ‘Not very far.’

  ‘Far enough to prove your boast about being the only man to be able to do it was patently false.’ God, how he’d wanted to knock the sneering expression from Zeus’s face when he’d made that claim. Which was why he’d declared there wasn’t a horse he couldn’t ride, drunk or sober.

  Zeus shook his head this time as he stood over Jack where he lay sprawled.

  But Jack didn’t care. For a few minutes, directly after he’d made the wager, all four of them had shaken off the gloom that had been hanging over them like a pall. They’d even laughed and started calling each other by the silly names they’d given each other at school as they staggered round to the stables. They’d sobered slightly when Lucifer had rolled his eyes at them and snorted indignantly when they’d approached his stall. Archie had even suggested, albeit timidly, that he was sure nobody would mind if Jack withdrew his claim.

  ‘Draw back from a bet? What kind of man do you think I am?’ Jack had retorted. And Zeus had grabbed the stallion’s halter and led the animal out into the streets before anyone could talk sense into either of them.

  Good God. Zeus had been as intent on carrying through on the wager as Jack himself. Did that mean...?

  Was there still something of the old Zeus left? Deep under all that sarcasm and sneering? He’d certainly been the one to arrange this reunion. And he’d also made sure they’d been given a chance to laugh at Jack’s antics, the way they’d done so many times at school. They’d certainly all been roaring with laughter as Lucifer had shot off, with Jack clinging to his mane. And so sweet had been that sound that Jack hadn’t cared that the beast had unseated him before he’d managed one circuit of the park.

  ‘I still maintain that girl was not flirting with us,’ he said defiantly. Was he imagining it, or was there an answering gleam in Zeus’s eyes? As though he was relishing having someone refusing to lie down and roll over at his bidding.

  Ah.

  Was that why he’d become so jaded? Because nobody challenged him any more? It would explain why he’d jumped at the wager, ridiculous though it was. Why he’d whisked Lucifer out of his stall before the sleepy groom had a chance to fling a saddle on his back.

  Perhaps, even, why he’d gathered them all together in the first place.

  ‘She may not have been a lady, precisely,’ Jack continued. ‘But I stick to my guns about her not flirting with us. Else why would she have set about us with her riding crop?’

  That had come as a shock, too, he had to admit. One moment she’d been melting into his arms, the next she was fighting him off. And she’d been kissing him so sweetly, after that initial hesitation, so shyly yet...hang on...shyly. With hesitation. As though she didn’t know quite what to do, but couldn’t help herself. As if she was catching fire, just as he’d been.

  One moment she was with him, and then...it was as if she’d come to her senses. As though she realised it was a stranger with whom she was rolling about on the grass.

  ‘I would wager,’ he said, a smile tugging at his lips as he recalled and re-examined her every reaction, ‘that not only was she not flirting, but that she was an innocent, to boot.’

  That would explain it all. That gasp of shock when he’d first started kissing her. Her inexpert, almost clumsy, yet uninhibited response. Until the very moment when she’d hauled up the drawbridge and slammed down the portcullis. The moment when she remembered she was dabbling in sin.

  ‘And I don’t care what you think, Zeus,’ he said with determination. ‘We owe that girl an apology. Well, I do, anyway. Shouldn’t have kissed her.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have put her face in the way of your lips, then,’ retorted Zeus.

  ‘No, no, the girl was only trying to see if I was injured.’ Which had been remarkably brave of her. Not many females would have come rushing to the aid of a stranger like that. Nor would they have been able to bring Zeus’s bad-tempered stallion under control, either.

  ‘Which is more than any of you have done,’ he finished pointedly.

  ‘You are not injured,’ said Zeus pithily. ‘You are indestructible. And I have that on the best authority.’

  ‘Must have been speaking to m’father.’

  ‘Your brother,’ Zeus corrected him.

  ‘Oh? Which one?’

  ‘I forget,’ said Zeus with a wave of his hand. ‘He did tell me he was Viscount Becconsall when he walked up to me in White’s and presumed friendship with me because of my friendship with you.’ His mouth twisted in distaste.

  ‘Could have been either of them, then,’ said Jack, who’d recently acquired the title himself. ‘Poor sod,’ he said, and not only because both his brothers were now dead, but because he could picture the reception such behaviour would have gained them. They hadn’t started calling him Zeus without good reason. From the very first day he’d attended school, he’d looked down on all the other boys from a very lofty height. He didn’t require an education, he’d informed anyone who would listen. He’d had perfectly good tutors at home. It was just that his father, who had suddenly developed radical tendencies, had decided the next Marquis of Rawcliffe ought to get to know how the lower orders lived.

  Jack chuckled at the vision of his bumptious brother attempting to take such a liberty with Zeus. ‘I can just see it. You gave him one of your freezing stares and raised your eyebrow at him.’

  ‘Not only my eyebrow, but also my quizzing glass,’ said Zeus, leaning down to offer him a hand, as though deciding Jack had been cluttering up the ground for long enough. ‘It had no effect. The man kept wittering on about what a charmed life you led. How you came through the bloodiest battles unscathed. As though you had some kind of lucky charm keeping you safe, instead of being willing to acknowledge that you owed your successes on the battlefield to your skill as a strategist, as well as personal valour.’

  Jack gasped as Zeus pulled him to his feet. That was the thing about him. He might be the most arrogant, conceited fellow he’d ever met, but he’d also been the first person to look beyond the way Jack clowned around to distract the bullies who’d been hounding Archie at school. The only person to take one look at him and see the intelligence he’d been at such pains to disguise.

  To believe in him.

  ‘Didn’t come through this tussle unscathed,’ h
e said, rubbing his posterior to explain his involuntary gasp. Zeus gave him one of his looks. The kind that told Jack he knew he was avoiding an issue, but was magnanimous enough to permit him to do so.

  ‘Which brings me back to the girl. Did you notice the way she spoke? And the horse? Expensive bit of blood and bone, that dappled grey.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ said Zeus. ‘I grant you that she may have been gently reared, but just because she speaks well and rides an expensive horse does not mean she is an innocent now.’

  ‘No, truly, I would stake my life on it.’

  ‘Since n-none of us know who she is,’ said Archie. ‘There is n-no way for us to v-verify your conc-clusion.’

  No, there wasn’t.

  Which was a horrible thought. In fact, the prospect of never seeing her again gave him a queer, almost painful feeling in his chest. And not only because she’d melted into his arms as if she belonged there. It was more than that. It was...it was...well, out of all the disappointments the night had brought, those few moments kissing her, holding her, and, yes, even fighting with her, had been...a breath of fresh air. No, he shook his head. More like a...well, the way the night had been going, he’d felt as if he was sinking deeper and deeper into a dark well of disappointment. And then, all of a sudden, she’d been in the centre of the one bright spot of the whole night. And that kiss...well, it had revived him, the way the sight of a lighthouse would revive a storm-tossed mariner, he suspected.

  Hope, that was what she’d brought him. Somehow.

  Was it a coincidence that right after meeting her, he’d seen that Atlas was still the same man, deep down, where it mattered? That there was even hope for Zeus, too?

  Hope. That was the name he’d give her, then, while he searched for her. And why not? Why not remember the one bright spot of the evening as a glimmer of hope in what was, of late, a life that contained anything but?

  And another thing. Hope was always worth pursuing.

  ‘Right then,’ said Jack, rubbing his hands together. ‘We’ll just have to search London until we find her.’

  Zeus’s eyes narrowed with interest. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, we will know which one of us is right.’

  ‘Another wager?’ Atlas shook his head in mock reproof. Though nobody had said anything about a wager. ‘At this rate, you will beggar me.’

  ‘Not I,’ said Jack, his heart lifting. Because Atlas was clearly doing his best to raise morale amongst his friends. He must have seen the effect the wager over Lucifer had on Zeus, the way Jack had. ‘You and Archie will just act as witnesses,’ he therefore informed Atlas. ‘This wager, just like the one over Lucifer, is between me and Zeus.’

  ‘And the stakes?’ Zeus had gone all narrow-eyed and sneering again, as though he suspected Jack of trading on their long-ago connections to take advantage of him.

  What the hell had happened to him, since school, to turn him into such a suspicious devil?

  ‘Why, the usual, naturally,’ said Jack. Which was almost as good as drawing his cork, since his head reared back in momentary surprise.

  ‘The...the usual?’

  ‘Yes. The usual between the four of us, that is.’

  ‘You...’ For a moment, Zeus looked as though he was about to express one of the softer emotions. But only for a moment.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ he drawled in that ghastly, affected way that set Jack’s teeth on edge. ‘You have already lost one wager.’

  ‘Are you demanding payment?’ Jack planted his fists on his hips and scowled. ‘Are you accusing me of attempting to welch on the bet?’

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I was only going to suggest...double or quits?’

  For a moment the four of them all stood in stunned silence.

  And then Archie began to giggle. Atlas snorted. And soon, all four of them were laughing like the schoolboys they had once been.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Nobody is going to ask you to dance if you don’t sit up straight and take that scowl off your face,’ said Aunt Susan, sternly.

  They might if Aunt Susan hadn’t already repulsed the young men who’d shown an interest in her when she’d first come to Town, on the grounds that they were all fortune-hunters or scoundrels.

  Nevertheless, Harriet obediently squared her shoulders and attempted the social smile her aunt had made her practise in the mirror every day for half an hour since she’d come to Town.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Aunt Susan out of the corner of her mouth which was also pulled into a similarly insincere rictus. ‘I know it must chafe that Kitty is having so much more success than you, but you must remember that you are no longer in the first flush of youth.’

  Harriet only just managed to stop herself rolling her eyes. She was only twenty, for heaven’s sake. But eligible gentlemen looking for brides, her aunt had informed her, with a rueful shake of her head, wanted much younger girls. ‘It’s perfectly natural,’ she’d explained. ‘Gels usually make their debut when they are seventeen, or eighteen, unless there’s been a death in the family, or something of a similar nature. So everyone is bound to wonder why any girl who looks much older hasn’t appeared in society before. And,’ she’d added with a grimace of distaste, ‘draw their own conclusions.’

  ‘Please, dear,’ she was saying now, ‘do try to look as if you are enjoying yourself. Gentlemen are much more likely to ask you to dance if you appear to be good-natured.’

  Harriet was beginning to suspect that actually she was not the slightest bit good-natured. She’d always thought of herself as being fairly placid before she’d come to Town. But ever since her aunt had descended on Stone Court like a fairy godmother to take her to the ball, she’d been see-sawing from one wild emotion to another. At first she’d been in a froth of excitement. But then had come the painful discovery that no amount of fine clothes could make her compare with her prettier, younger, more sociable cousin Kitty. After that, in spite of her aunt’s best efforts to bring her up to scratch in the short time they had, had come the discovery that actually, she didn’t want to conform to society’s notions of how a young lady should behave. And now she just felt as if she had a stone permanently lodged in her shoe.

  ‘Now, there is a young man with whom you might safely dance,’ said Lady Tarbrook, nudging Harriet in the ribs. And drawing her attention to the slender young man who’d just come into the ballroom. A man she’d been dreading coming across for the last two weeks. Ever since he’d fallen off his horse and tricked her into kissing him.

  ‘Though I shouldn’t like to raise your hopes too much. He hasn’t asked any eligible female to dance since he came to Town. Not that he’s actually attended many balls, to my knowledge. Well, not this sort of ball,’ Lady Tarbrook was muttering darkly. ‘Not his style. Not his style at all.’

  No, his style was roistering all night with a pack of reprobates, then taking part in reckless wagers that ended up with him almost breaking his stupid neck. To say nothing of molesting people who went to help him.

  And yet Aunt Susan was prepared to give her permission to dance with him. In the unlikely event he were to ask her.

  It beggared belief.

  ‘Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ said Aunt Susan, fluttering her fan wildly and smiling for all she was worth in his direction.

  While Harriet did her best to shrink into the meagre upholstery of the chair upon which she was sitting. Oh, where was a potted plant, or a fire screen, or...a hole in the ground when she needed one?

  Ulysses—for that was the only name she knew him by—ran his eyes round the ballroom as though searching for someone before setting off in the direction of a group of military men gathered in the doorway to the refreshment room.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lady Tarbrook with resignation. ‘He must have wanted to speak to one of his...associ
ates. I don’t suppose he will stay long.’ She folded her fan as though consigning him to history.

  While Harriet fumed. The...the beast! He’d looked right through her, as though she wasn’t there. Without the slightest sign he recognised her.

  Well, he probably didn’t. He probably kissed random women senseless every day of the week. The kiss that she’d spent so many nights recalling, in great detail, before she went to sleep, and at odd moments during the day as well, had obviously completely slipped his mind.

  Because it had meant nothing to him.

  Because she meant nothing to him.

  Well—he meant nothing to her, either. And nor did that kiss. Just because it was her first and still had the power to make her toes curl if she dwelt on it for too long, did not mean that...that...

  Oh, bother him for getting her thoughts into a tangle.

  A loud burst of laughter gave her the excuse she needed to let her eyes stray to the doorway of the refreshment room and the group of men who’d opened up to admit him to their company.

  She couldn’t help noticing several other women turning their heads in his direction, too. And eyeing him with great interest. Which came as no surprise, seeing the way he moved. There was a vitality about him that naturally drew the eye, for it was so very different from the languid stroll affected by the other men present tonight. And in the candlelight his hair, which had just looked a sort of dull brown in the shade of that chestnut tree, gleamed with traces of gold.

  She flicked her fan open and plied it vigorously before her face. Which she turned away from the part of the room in which he was standing. She would not stare at him. She would do nothing to attract his attention, either, in case he did have a dim recollection of her. You could sometimes get even quite stupid people to remember things if you constantly reminded them of it, or so Aunt Susan had told her, when she’d despaired of ever grasping the myriad rules of etiquette that seemed to come naturally to Kitty.