The Duke's Daring Debutante (Regency Historical Romance)

by Ann Lethbridge

  After a moment her arms slipped around his neck and she clung as he crossed the glade, stepped over the bodies. She was a reasonable armful, Flint thought as he found the track again and made for where he had left the men. Slim but not skinny, curved but not buxom. Feminine. Any other day he’d enjoy the feel of her against his body, but not now. Not here.

  The men had sorted themselves out while he’d been away searching for that last missing private. Sergeant Hawkins looked up from the back of the ammunition wagon they had managed to patch back together that morning. ‘Any luck, Major?’ His right eyebrow—the left had been burned off in some half-forgotten skirmish when a gun had exploded—lifted as he saw Flint’s burden.

  ‘Jakes is dead.’ There was a chorus of muttered curses from the back of the cart. ‘I buried him.’ He’d rolled him into a shell hole and kicked earth on top of him, to be exact. Not a decent burial, even for an alley rat like Jakes, but it would keep the looters from his body.

  ‘We can all go then.’ Hawkins knew Flint would never leave a man alive on the field, even if it meant staying back himself until he’d exhausted all hope. ‘Get a shift on there, Hewitt! Get everyone stowed.’ He jerked his head towards the woman. ‘Not one of ours.’

  ‘No.’ Their camp followers were all safe back at Roosbos where they’d been stationed before the call to Quatre Bras, three days ago. Flint counted heads. ‘Thirteen.’ He’d lost the tally of the injured they’d sent back already, the dead they’d scratched graves for, but Hawkins had been jotting numbers down as they went. This was the lot.

  ‘Aye, thirteen including us, Major. She hurt?’

  ‘Don’t think so, I can’t see any wounds, but she’s not talking.’ In his arms she was as limp as a stunned hare. ‘Found her cornered by a pack of deserters back there.’

  The one tattered eyebrow lifted in question. Hawkins knew what happened to lone women in the aftermath of battle. Flint shook his head. ‘No, I got there first.’

  ‘They won’t be troubling anyone else, then.’ Hawkins didn’t bother to ask how many constituted a pack, he’d seen Flint deal with scum like that before. ‘Wonder if she’ll scrub up any better than the last thing you picked up, Major.’

  That had been Dog. Flint hoped the great shaggy beast had got out of this in one piece. Lord, but he must be tired if he was becoming sentimental.

  ‘I’d got ’em all packed in tight,’ Hawkins said. He shoved his shako back to scratch his thinning scalp. ‘Llewellyn and Hodge can walk. Where’ll we put her though?’

  Flint went over and studied the cart. Two men leaned against it, one, with a rough bandage round his leg, sat on the shaft. Three men were laid out on the boards and the rest perched on the edge, fitting their feet and weapons in around the prostrate men as best they could. ‘Potts, you can ride well enough to manage one-handed. Get up on my horse, I’ll walk and we’ll squeeze this lass in your place.’

  The man shuffled out awkwardly and jumped down, swearing under his breath as he jarred his wounded shoulder. The others moved up to make room and Flint swung the girl up on to the edge.

  She turned her head, stared wide-eyed into the cart and then fastened her arms around his neck in a stranglehold. Where did anything so fragile and helpless get the strength?

  ‘I know they aren’t the prettiest sight you’ll ever see, but they’re good lads and they won’t hurt you.’ He tried again, but she clung like a burr, her breath panting in his ear. He could use force, but there was enough pain to wade through here without adding to it.

  ‘She looks terrified out of her wits, Major,’ one of the men said. ‘I don’t think it’s us, more like the blood an’ guts an’ all. We’ve done our best with Jimmy, but he’s no sight for a slip of a girl.’ He nodded towards one of the men on the floor, unconscious and, if there was any more mercy to spare for a scoundrel artilleryman, likely to die without waking up.

  Flint reached into reserves of patience and kept his voice level. ‘Back you go, Potts, I’ll take her up in front of me.’ The sooner they got going, the more chance they had of getting everyone back alive. Except Jimmy. But at least he’d die with his mates round him. Randall’s Rogues didn’t leave their comrades behind—not if they were breathing, at any rate.

  Potts was hauled back in. Hawkins mustered his two walking wounded, went to the head of the nag between the shafts and urged it forward while Flint studied the logistics of getting on to Old Nick with a woman attached to his torso. The big black Spanish stallion rolled an eye and curled back its upper lip to reveal yellow teeth.

  ‘Don’t even think of it, or I swear I’ll have your bollocks off,’ Flint said. How the damned animal had the energy to even contemplate biting anyone after the past few days he had no idea. ‘Come on, over here.’ There was a shattered wagon and he used it like a set of steps to get high enough to fling a leg over the saddle and settle down with his burden uncomfortably in front of him. ‘Stand!’ Old Nick shuffled his feet, but obeyed while Flint arranged her as best he could across his thighs. ‘Walk on.’

  The rickety caravan set off on the twelve miles to Brussels. No distance at all when they rode with the guns. No distance at all to march on a reasonable road—but this was going to take a long time. He’d sent their guns with the fit officers and men of the unit back to muster behind the ridge for the return march to Brussels while he brought in the wounded and they’d be back well before his ragtag bunch.

  Randall would be with them. Strange that he hadn’t seen the colonel since mid-afternoon the day before, but he’d have heard if he was seriously injured and certainly if he was dead. Same went for Bartlett, the unit’s wild man and resident rake. He was probably drinking claret and nursing his superficial cuts with his boots propped up on a gun carriage by now. Bartlett could find a decent claret anywhere and Dog would be there, too, waiting for his dinner.

  That accounted for the officers and gentlemen. Which left him, an officer and definitely not a gentleman, the bastard in every sense of the word, to pick up the messy pieces.

  Young Gideon Latymor was dead, cut down at Quatre Bras. He’d avoided thinking about Gideon and he wasn’t going to start now. He had more immediate matters than one dead half-brother on his hands. Literally.

  He tried again. ‘What’s your name?’ The woman in his arms made no response. ‘Votre nom? Wat is je naam? Wie ist dein Name?’ Nothing. ‘My name is Flint. Adam Flint.’ Silence. A rose petal fluttered down from her hair, brushed his knuckles in the ghost of a kiss and fell to the mud. ‘Very well, then, I’ll call you...Rose.’

  They rode on at walking pace, limited not so much by the two soldiers on foot but the decrepit horse pulling the cart. Lord only knew where Hawkins had stolen it from, some peasant’s stewpot probably, but horses were as rare as hens’ teeth after that carnage and they knew from bitter experience that trying to get Old Nick between the shafts would result in more casualties than they had already. The stallion was trained to fight and to kill and it regarded being a carthorse as grounds for murder.

  It was like a traffic jam in Piccadilly, Flint thought with unaccustomed whimsy. If, that is, one imagined Piccadilly knee-deep in mud and water-filled ruts, and the other traffic consisting of groups of exhausted troops, rough carts jolting along full of men biting back cries of pain and staff officers, their elegant uniforms filthy and torn, directing carts here, men there. And all along the margins of the road soldiers were lying where they’d dropped, dead or dying amongst the fallen horses, their bodies swelling, already turning black in the wet heat. The stench was an almost solid thing, clogging nostrils and throats.

  They got to a particularly boggy patch and Flint kicked his feet out of the stirrups so the two artillerymen on foot could grip the leathers and swing themselves through the mud. Old Nick was used to this, the standard way of getting unhorsed men off the field in a hurry, and ignored the extra weight.

 
* * *

  Waterloo village, when they finally got that far, was jammed. Hawkins forced the cart on through the road between high banks and Flint saw the parish priest on the steps of the church, his head in his hands, as more and more bodies were piled up at his feet. On the other side of the street men were chalking names on doorposts where senior officers had been carried in. Ponsonby, he read. Damn, another good officer wounded. He hoped he was going to make it.

  ‘Rose?’ They cleared the village and struggled on. Her back, beneath his arm, was still rigid, her face still buried in the frogging of his uniform. He wouldn’t want to get that close to himself, he thought with a sour smile. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d washed, he must stink of sweat, black powder, wet wool and blood. A cautious sniff confirmed it and brought a hint of her own scent. Hot, terrified, wet woman. Mud. The faintest hint of herbs and lemon.

  Puzzled, he lowered his head until he was almost nuzzling the tangled brown hair. She had rinsed it in rosemary and lemon juice. It seemed such a harmless, feminine thing to have done just before plunging into hell. He imagined her humming to herself as she brewed the rinse, washing her hair over a bucket somewhere in the lines of tents, pouring the decoction over her hair and combing it through. Her man would have been cleaning his weapon, polishing his harness perhaps, his preparations all directed at killing while hers took no account of battles at all.

  ‘What you going to do with her, sir?’ Flint jerked out of the daydream. Peters, hanging on to his stirrup leather, looked up at him, bright blue eyes bloodshot in his dirt-smeared face.

  ‘God knows. She needs women to look after her, but these peasants have too much on their hands to leave her with them.’ Flint tried to think. His side ached like the devil, the bangs and bruises and minor wounds were coming to life, his guts were empty, his thighs were getting pins and needles, and the men depended on him to get them back to Brussels more or less alive. He could do that, or fight another battle if he had to, but safely disposing of unwanted women, now that was another kettle of fish.

  He shifted the girl into a more comfortable position, for him at least. ‘There’s a nunnery a couple of miles ahead. That’ll be the place.’ Problem solved. Cheered by the prospect of getting the stray off his hands, he said, ‘We’re almost at the nunnery, Rose. You’ll be better there, the sisters will look after you.’ She made no movement. Was she deaf as well?

  ‘Jimmy’s gone, Major,’ Potts called from the back of the cart.

  Hell. Scurvy little sneak thief. And damned good artilleryman. This had been a very expensive battle. They would leave him at the convent, the nuns would bury him and he’d end up as close to heaven as any of the Rogues were likely to get.

  ‘Rest stop at the nunnery,’ he called and grinned, despite everything, at the chorus of coarse jokes that provoked.

  * * *

  ‘Here...Rose...nuns...get down...safe...’ The Devil was talking to her, but the words jumbled in her head, half-drowned by the never-ending scream.

  She tried to listen, to understand. Finally she managed to raise her head and focus. One of the tattered, bloody scarecrows was walking towards a high wall with a great gate in it. A bell clanged, jumbling the words in her head even more, and then a flock of great black crows flew out of the gate, flapping, waving hands, not wings. One of them came close, reached for her with long, pale claws.

  ‘Pauvre...monsieur...pauvre petit...’

  She huddled closer into the Devil’s grip. He would stop them pecking her. They had one of the dead men now, bloody and limp as they carried him through the great gate. Like Gerald, only this one had all of his face. Perhaps they were going to eat him, peck at his eyes... Her fingers locked into the strap across the Devil’s back. No...no... The words stayed closed in with the scream.

  She felt the Devil shrug. The black crows chattered and flapped, then they rode on, her and the Devil on the great black hell horse. He said something, low, in his deep voice. It rumbled in his chest, against her ear, and this time she understood the words. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rose?’

  Who is Rose? It wasn’t her, she knew that. Her name was...was... It had gone. He had told her his name. Adam. That could not be right, the Devil was not called Adam. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan. Those were the Devil’s names.

  Why wasn’t he hot? He should be burning hot, instead he was warm. And hard. He’d said he was made of stone... Flint, that was it. That was why he was hard, his thighs under her were rock that moved with the hell horse. His chest was solid, like holding on to an oak tree. His eyes were the blue of flames deep in the heart of a log fire, and he smelled of blood and smoke and sulphur.

  Dare she sleep? It had been so long since she had slept. There had been a ball... Memory shifted, blurred, focused for a moment. The night before she had been too excited to sleep. Then the night of the ball she had lain awake with Gerald in her arms, stroking his hair, trying to give him some comfort for his fears. How long had it been since then? Two battles, a rainstorm... Why was I at a ball? Who was Gerald?

  Could she sleep with all the noise in her head? She clung tighter to the Devil. He would keep her safe. It made no sense, but then nothing did any more. Nothing ever would again and all because she had sinned.

  Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Hilton

  ISBN-13: 9781460384602

  The Duke’s Daring Debutante

  Copyright © 2015 by Michèle Ann Young

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