“I tremble to think of you among the hungry wolves of the ton. They’ll fleece you in a trice.”
She shrugged. “They’ll have Papa to contend with. He’s quite a Yankee.”
“Meaning?”
“Thrifty, ingenious, a hard bargainer.”
“I see. So, you will sail home on the winning end of any marriage contract?”
“I doubt there will be any marriage contract. What I have seen of your British gentlemen leaves little to recommend.”
He threw back his head and laughed, and Hester felt glad she could dispel the shadows from his eyes. “Heaven help us. In all fairness to our gender, I don’t think you’ve seen enough to come to such a dire conclusion.”
“I’ve seen a fair variety.”
“But hardly the cream of the crop.”
“It sounds as if you have entrée into these exalted realms.”
He shrugged in turn. “More so than Mrs. Bellows.”
She tipped her head in acknowledgement. It occurred to her that she hadn’t enjoyed herself quite so much since docking in England.
Major Hawkes gestured with his whip. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll arrange for a few introductions for you and—your father, is it?” At her nod, he continued. “I’ll whisper a word in my elder sister’s ear. She is quite active in the right circles, those where the most eligible young gentlemen and ladies go to see and be seen each season when seeking to be paired up.”
She didn’t know whether to feel affronted or grateful. Did he really think she was solely bent on making an eligible match? She leaned forward to pat her mare’s neck. “You needn’t go to any trouble on my behalf.”
He chuckled, as if reading her thoughts. “No need to get your dander up. It’s no trouble at all. If you receive a call from Lady Stanchfield, you needn’t receive her.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Lady Stanchfield? Well, why didn’t you say so?”
She enjoyed watching the edges of his eyes crinkle in humor. “The very one. My eldest—and only—sister. She went to all the right parties and caught herself a viscount, and her dowry was only a thousand pounds.”
“Indeed?” Was he speaking seriously or in cynical amusement?
“Who is to say that a dowry-laden young lady from the former Colonies could not do better—catch herself an impoverished duke or earl? But only if she is seen at the right parties.”
She scanned his face, trying to read his intention. He couldn’t really be serious. “Pray, why should I want to do that?”
He shrugged. “I’d hate for you to leave our shores with such a low opinion of Britain’s manhood. We did just win a war, you know, and are accounted the most powerful nation on earth at present.”
“Which makes it all the more shocking you could never best your former Colonies,” she countered.
“True enough. Now, would you have me speak with my sister, or would you prefer to continue under Mrs. Bellows’s sole tutelage?”
She spurred her horse back to a canter, resisting the temptation to tell him she didn’t need his help. No need to be prideful. Perhaps the Lord had a purpose for her in the upper circles of the so-called haut-ton. Or at least an escape from Mrs. Bellows’ parties. “Very well, show me England’s finest,” she called back at him with a smile. “I’ll let you know if they are worth their salt.”
With those words, she rode ahead, leaving it up to him if he would follow her or not.
Late that evening, Gerrit sat in the backyard of the Cock and Crow Inn on Fleet Street. The name was appropriate, given the nature of the evening’s entertainment.
“There he goes! Come on, Daggart, kick him in the chest! Thattaboy!” shouted the rooster’s owner from the side of the pit in the dirt yard. The crowd around Gerrit added their encouragement as one rooster stuck his metal gaffs into the other.
Gerrit leaned forward on the wooden bench, forcing himself to watch the bloodied birds poking and jabbing at each other. Just as they would fight to the finish, he would endure it to the end. More than for the sake of collecting his winnings, he needed to prove that he was man enough to last.
The time before, he’d had to get up halfway through and heave up his dinner in a dark alley. Now he gripped his fingers into his knees, refusing to believe he’d become as weak-stomached as a child. Where was the man who’d charged into every battle, the bloodlust high, to fell as many Frenchmen as his Brown Bess had allowed?
His attention back on the fight, Gerrit saw that the losing rooster still had a lot of juice left in him. Though he’d lost an eye and his feathers were torn and bloodied, he continued pecking at the strutting Daggart.
Glad he’d at least put his money on a winner tonight, Gerrit rubbed his hand along the rough stubble of his jaw. He had to bring home some blunt. He could just hear Crocker’s old woman scoldings if he came in empty-handed—or worse, with another pile of vouchers.
He’d forgotten how expensive London could be. His army pay scarcely covered his lodgings, and the quarterly income from his father was hardly enough to sustain a gentleman’s existence.
Gerrit sighed. He’d have to give up his nightly rounds of amusements for at least a fortnight. The situation was almost enough to drive a man to marry an heiress. Almost.
An agreeable young face and personality came to mind. He’d felt a sort of kinship during their two conversations. Bits and pieces kept recurring during odd moments of the day, before he’d laugh at his own foolishness. He and Miss Leighton could have nothing in common—a redcoat and a Yank! A gentleman’s son and a tradesman’s daughter.
“He’s got him now! Pull at his other wing, Daggart!” The yells intensified as the losing bird looked more and more bedraggled. The onlookers were now standing, waving their arms and stamping their feet.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” cried the military crowd. Others took up the chant.
Gerrit rose more slowly to his feet. Victory was in sight. The cock, as if sensing it, seemed to grow more vicious. His stick legs jabbed the sharp curved blades strapped to them at his opponent’s body, causing more feathers to fly. Gerrit’s mind began to play the same tricks on him as on prior occasions.
Bursts of gunpowder and glimpses of screaming faces flashed before him, alternating their reality with the fighting cocks in front of him, till he no longer knew which was real and which was imaginary.
He rubbed his temple, desperate to stop the images. He would stay until the end. A few more minutes and it would be over.
“He did it. My Daggart did it!”
The men around him shouted the rooster’s name and thronged forward. The loser’s limp body was tossed onto a rubbish heap. Gerrit remained where he was, standing but bowed forward facedown, his hands supported by his knees. He gulped in the air.
“Anyone for a second round?” The rooster’s owner marched around the yard, his rooster led by a string. “No one yet’s beat my Daggart.”
His breathing returned to normal, Gerrit straightened. After collecting his winnings, he left the yard with enough for a round of cards. With any luck, he’d be home with his pockets full this evening.
He looked up and down the thoroughfare. He could always catch a game of faro at the King’s Crown or vingt-et-un at the Black Bull.
Many hours later, the sky pale blue on the horizon, Gerrit sat on his bed, his batman tugging at his boots.
Thud went the first one as it hit the floor, the noise barely penetrating his fuzzy brain. Thud went the second, and suddenly Gerrit found himself thinking once again of Miss Hester Leighton.
A self-possessed young miss with a warm undercurrent beneath those laughing eyes.
He shook his head groggily to stave off the image of the young lady in the park. No more maidens for him. He’d sworn off innocent young damsels after the last fiasco.
“Are you all right, major?”
He squinted at Crocker. “Fine…jus’ fine…” he mumbled as he was helped off with jacket and waistcoat. “No—nothing an heiress wouldn’t solve.”
He laughed at his own witticism.
“What’s that you say?”
“Nothing…at all…” His hilarity increased.
“There now, major, you mustn’t carry on so. We’ll manage somehow. We always have.”
“That we have, haven’t we, Crocker?” He grinned at the older man with the crooked nose and thick dark eyebrows that always made him look as if he was scowling.
The coins jingled in Gerrit’s pockets when Crocker took the jacket from him. He lifted an eyebrow. “I’d say someone had a bit o’luck tonight.” His batman dug into a pocket and brought out a fistful of coins. His thin lips split wide in his leathery face. “What was it tonight, sir, the cards or bones?”
“You can thank a tough rooster named…what was his name?” Gerrit rubbed his head. “Dempster? Daggart! Yes, the stalwart Daggart, for bringing me luck tonight.”
“Ah. A man can grow rich with the right bird. Much better than the luck of the faro table.”
“Satisfied?” Gerrit asked, falling back on the bed in his shirtsleeves.
Crocker counted the coins. “Twenty crowns and some. It’ll do to keep the duns at bay. But we’ll need more’n this if you insist on entertaining every soldier in your company.”
“Hos-pi-ta-li-ty.” Gerrit’s mouth had a hard time around the syllables. “That’s what it’s called.”
“Hmm. What’s it called when we land in the sponging house?”
“Sleep…that’s what I need right now.” Gerrit rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. Crocker could be worse than a wife at times.
“You sleep, sir.” Crocker shook the coins in his fist. “You earned a good night’s rest. I’ll find a safe place for this and on the morrow we’ll see who’s to be paid.” He shoved the money into his own pocket and hung Gerrit’s jacket on a chair back. “Well, I’ll be off then to my own bed.”
“Right-o,” Gerrit agreed, no longer following Crocker’s conversation. As usual he had drunk too much. He kept telling himself he could make it through a night clearheaded, but the warm fuzziness that grew with each sip, and the promise of a temporary escape from his thoughts, was too much to resist.
The click of the door latch told him Crocker had left. Silence filled the room like a familiar presence. Oh, for one blessed night’s uninterrupted sleep. Dark, deep oblivion was all he asked. No dreams, no images…no memories.
Even as his thoughts became more disjointed, the face of a French boy stared at him in astonishment. Just as Gerrit’s bayonet had stabbed him, his sky-blue eyes seemed to ask, “Why did you have to kill me? Why couldn’t you simply wound me?”
But Gerrit’s thrust had been too deep, too sure. His commander’s orders had been clear. Keep the gates closed against the French. Hold the château, whatever the cost. But the French forces had gotten younger and younger with each passing year.
The lad couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
Maybe Gerrit had been mistaken, as he had this morning with Miss Leighton’s age. Maybe the boy had in truth been twenty or five-and-twenty. Gerrit let out a laugh that came out a groan.
The boy’s smooth cheeks hadn’t lied. Ruddy-faced and soft. Gerrit remembered when his cheeks had been just like that. When he’d been fifteen—careless and carefree, just discovering his charms with the opposite sex. Knowing he had years ahead of him in which to frolic. Nothing serious was expected of him for the time being, certainly not as the third son. An eventual career in the military—that or the cloth—but no, hadn’t his older brother, Michael, already taken orders? That left only a military career.
No such frivolity for the young French cadet. No more years in which to play before facing the harsh realities of life.
Gerrit had searched for him after the battle, turning over every wounded, mutilated body in his path, both redcoat and blue. He’d finally found him, lying there in the courtyard of the château, not far from the gates Gerrit and his men had held against the French forces.
He’d identified him by the soft moans at his feet. He’d been half-buried by another French soldier, a full-grown man. Gerrit had rolled him off the boy with his boot. The man’s mouth gaped open, the dark eyes staring blankly ahead, the saber wound at his neck already coagulated and turning black.
Gerrit crouched down at the boy beneath him. He was still alive! He cradled his head and felt his soft, silky brown curls between his fingers, incongruously like a girl’s. His hair was the color of hazelnuts. What was he doing on a battlefield knee-deep in blood? The fuzz on his pale cheeks was barely discernible. Gerrit searched for his wounds, but the stain on the front of his blue jacket was large and already stiffening. The boy’s long, golden eyelashes fluttered open. Gerrit’s heart began pumping in hope.
“Maman?” His blue eyes searched Gerrit’s hopefully before the life began to ebb from them.
Gerrit clutched the front of the boy, as if the movement could stave off the draining of his life force. And then he was gone.
Why had he lived just long enough for Gerrit to find him, before dying and leaving Gerrit with the indelible impression of his beseeching eyes?
Gerrit loosened his hold on the boy, laying him back down on the ground and closing his eyes.
Non, ce n’etait pas Maman. No, it wasn’t his mother.
“You’re not bamming me, are you?” Gerrit’s sister, Delia, Viscountess Stanchfield, set her cup of coffee back on her breakfast tray and gazed at Gerrit in amused disbelief.
He shrugged, not wanting her to make more of what he was asking for than was warranted. “All I’m requesting is you introduce a young American lady to the right circles.” He leaned his head back against the satin upholstery of his sister’s settee to ease the throbbing between his temples. He really shouldn’t have undertaken this visit so early in the day.
“‘American’ and ‘lady’—can the two terms be used together?” Without waiting for a reply, his sister gestured with the butter knife at the food on her tray. “Are you sure I can’t offer you some breakfast? Mrs. Hart’s scones are the best in London.”
“Thank you, no. Nothing appeals to me at the moment.”
“Foxed again last night? You do look a bit green about the gills.” She eyed him beneath her lacy nightcap. “Well, at least a cup of coffee will brace you.” She held up the silver pot.
As she poured her own cup of the steaming black liquid, he relented. “All right, I’ll take a cup as long it’s strong.”
“Strong as a donkey’s kick.”
He rose to take the dainty porcelain cup offered him. “Thank you.” When he’d returned to his seat, he continued with the topic he’d come to discuss. “If you meet Miss Leighton, I’m sure you’ll agree she is presentable enough.”
“Miss Leighton? Is she of the Leightons of Surrey?” Delia’s voice perked up as she spread marmalade over her scone. “Delicious,” she murmured, closing her eyes after the first bite and nestling against the mound of pillows at her back.
“I have no idea which branch she hails from. All I know is she has enough of the blunt to tempt some fortune hunter to come sniffing ’round her heels.” He sipped the coffee, gratified to find it was hot and bracing.
“Why not do some sniffing yourself?”
“She’s not my type,” he answered immediately, even as his mind conjured up her tall, lithe figure in the forest-green riding habit she had worn in the park.
“I haven’t seen you in so long I’ve forgotten what sort you favor.”
“Let’s just say I like a woman who’s experienced and knows what she wants.”
“It sounds like you need a married woman.”
He looked down into his cup, wanting no reminders of the last occasion with a married woman. What had he been thinking to rekindle what had clearly been over long ago with Lady Gillian? He replaced the cup in its saucer. “Anyway, this visit is not about me, but about Miss Leighton.”
“An American, you say? How novel. I can’t say I’ve ever been acquainted with one personally, thoug
h one does hear of them. She probably doesn’t know how to hold her fork and knife properly and drops her Hs.”
“Oh, she’s couth enough,” he said with a shrug. “Though who knows about the rest of her family. She’s probably attached to a barbarous clan of uncivil, illiterate relatives. Her father, by her own admission, is a hard-driving tradesman.”
Her sister shuddered. “As bad as that? I can scarcely picture it. You with your fine manners ensconced in the bosom of money-grubbing Yanks.”
“I agree, it wouldn’t do,” he said with a grin. “I may be a scoundrel and wastrel, in debt up to my teeth, but I have my standards.”
“We shall just have to find you a nice English miss with the proper pedigree…”
“It’s best if I don’t marry at all. The whole fortune-hunting picture holds little appeal.”
She waved a pale hand at him. “You must get over your scruples. Everyone in our circle marries for money to some degree or another. Look at how well things turned out for me.”
“How is Lord Lionel these days, by the way?” he asked, preferring to steer the conversation away from himself. “I don’t seem to run into him much since I returned to London.”
“He hardly comes out of White’s. You two just don’t move in the same circles anymore.” She frowned at him over the rim of her cup. “I hear you are hanging with a pretty reckless crowd…the Life Guards and Horse Guards. You know, there is a world apart from your military cronies.”
“Is there?” He preferred not to enter into any disagreement with her about the merits of the society she moved in and that which he moved in.
She gave a toss of her lacy nightcap. “Very well, be as inscrutable as always. Now, let’s talk about your Miss Leighton.”
He was relieved the topic was coming back to the reason he’d paid this early morning visit to his sibling.
“Well, at least her name sounds respectable. So, what is in it for you if you aren’t interested in her yourself?”
“Nothing.”
She looked skeptical.
“Upon my honor,” he insisted, attempting to convince his sister as much as himself. “She knows no one in town and is floundering a bit. You’ll never believe it. Her father hired Mrs. Bellows to introduce her.”
The Rogue's Redemption Page 3