A Mistress for Major Bartlett

by Annie Burrows

  Which she wasn’t going to believe until somebody gave her some solid proof.

  She mounted Castor and, with Ben trotting at her side, that determination carried her as far as the Rue Haute, where Mary’s school stood. But then doubts started assailing her from all sides. If Mary wouldn’t speak to her, then who else could she turn to?

  ‘At least I won’t have to knock on the front door and beg for permission to speak to her,’ she observed, drawing Castor to a halt. For Mary was standing outside alongside a horse, talking to a group of bedraggled-looking men who stood with their mounts.

  But even though this meant she’d overcome the first hurdle she’d imagined, Sarah’s spirits sank. For Mary was, as always, looking neat as a pin.

  Whereas she must look exactly as though—well, as though she was still wearing the same gown in which she’d spent a whole day on horseback, fighting her way against a tide of refugees fleeing the very place she wanted to reach more than anywhere on earth. And crawled through the mud to rescue Ben, and ended by sleeping in a stable because the landlady, upon whose compassion she’d relied, refused point blank to permit a muddy, fierce dog inside her house.

  No, you couldn’t feel your best in a gown you’d been wearing for two days, especially when you’d put it through all that. Besides which, women like Mary, petite, pretty women with pert little noses, always did make her feel like a gangly, beaky beanpole.

  It was Ben who came to her rescue, for at least the second time in as many days, by letting out a series of joyful barks and bounding right into the group of men milling about on the front path. Because she’d been staring at Mary and wondering how on earth she was to persuade her to help, she hadn’t been paying the men much heed. But now she noticed, as they bent to ruffle Ben’s shaggy head rather than scattering in terror, that they were wearing the distinctive blue jackets of artillerymen. The blue jackets of her brother’s unit, their facings and insignia only just recognisable under a coating of dirt of all kinds.

  Randall’s Rogues. Here? What could that mean?

  Forgetting her own qualms about how Mary might treat her, Sarah urged Castor forward.

  ‘What is it? What has happened?’ A chill foreboding ran a finger down her spine. ‘Is it Justin?’ Mary’s lips thinned as she glanced up and saw Sarah. But after only a moment she appeared to relent.

  ‘We don’t really know. Nobody can find him. They think...they think...’ She gave an impatient little shake of her head. ‘Can you believe they came here to look for him?’

  Only too well. Because none of these men had been at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball and therefore couldn’t know their Colonel had broken things off. To them, Mary’s school must seem the obvious place to look.

  ‘So, we decided we had better go and search the battlefield for him, in case...’

  She could tell, from the way she seemed to brace herself, that Mary feared the worst. Sarah couldn’t bear to think of Mary giving up on her brother. Not in that way.

  Besides, she refused to believe she could have lost two brothers in the space of as many days.

  ‘He isn’t dead,’ said Sarah firmly. ‘He’s indestructible.’ At least, he would have been, had he been carrying his grandfather’s lucky sword. The one that protected its wearer during battle. The one he’d accused Mary of stealing because he couldn’t find it.

  An icy hand seemed to clutch at the back of her neck.

  ‘You cannot possibly know that,’ said the ever-practical Mary.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she insisted, even though she knew she was being totally irrational. Even though he might not be carrying the Latymor Luck, after all.

  ‘Why else would fate have led me to Ben? And why else would we have arrived just as you are setting off to search for Justin?’

  Mary’s expression turned from one of barely repressed despair to barely concealed contempt.

  But the men all perked up.

  ‘She’s got a point,’ said one of them. ‘Dog has a good nose. Best chance of finding Colonel Randall, since he’s not where we all thought he was.’

  ‘Aye, for the colonel’s own sister to turn up here, right now...it must mean his luck is still holding,’ said another.

  Mary only shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment as if summoning patience.

  ‘I think you would be better returning to Antwerp,’ Mary said to her. ‘You are in no fit state to come with us.’

  ‘I have been looking for Gideon and I will not, cannot, give up my search,’ Sarah replied, struggling to control her emotions now. ‘I cannot go back until I know what has happened to my brothers.’

  Mary sighed, clearly reluctant. ‘Oh, very well, I suppose you had better come with us, then. But try not,’ she snapped as she mounted up, ‘to get in the way.’

  Get in the way? How dare she assume...?

  But then, of course, Mary only saw what everyone else did when they looked at Sarah: a spoiled, empty-headed society miss. For which she had only herself to blame. She’d taken such pains to appear to be the model of decorum, always doing exactly as her parents or guardians told her without demur and observing every rule of etiquette. She’d even overheard Lord Blanchards remark that he couldn’t understand how a woman with Gussie’s strength of mind could possibly be related to such an insipid girl.

  ‘Here,’ said Mary, producing a large, scented handkerchief from her pocket. Then gave her a little lecture about why she might need it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sarah replied, pasting on a polite social smile to disguise her true feelings. Mary might say Sarah would need to hold a scented hanky to her nose for her own sake. But was she also hinting that everyone could tell Sarah hadn’t stopped to bathe that morning? She’d thought the odour of dog and horse were disguising her own stale sweat pretty well, but perhaps that dainty little nose was more efficient than it looked.

  It was some consolation that Ben, who’d been so delighted to see the men at first, didn’t stay with them when they mounted up, but came back to her and loped along beside her own horse.

  Of course, that probably had more to do with the scent of sausage still lingering round her saddlebags, but at least he appeared to prefer her to the others.

  * * *

  Even though it was early in the morning, the road from the Namur gate was already crowded with wounded men struggling back to Brussels for treatment. And little groups, like hers, going searching for loved ones.

  The closer they got to the scene of the previous day’s battle, the more gruesome the sights became.

  Not to mention the smells. Some of it was gunpowder. But underlying it was something far worse. Something which made her jolly grateful Mary had thought to drench a couple of handkerchiefs in scent and share one with her. Though at the same time, Mary’s foresight only made her even more aware of her own shortcomings.

  ‘Steady, there,’ she crooned, over and over again, patting Castor’s neck when she needed to urge him past a pile of what she’d identified, from the briefest of glances, as bodies, both horse and human. Although the words were almost as much for herself, as her horse.

  She tried not to let her eyes linger on what lay beside the roads. It put her in mind of a butcher’s shop. So many men, reduced to so many cuts of meat...

  A dog ran across the road in front of their little party, a long trail of what looked like sausages dangling from its jaws.

  She clenched her teeth against a sudden surge of nausea. Sweat prickled across her top lip. Ben, who’d been darting from one side of the road to the other, in an agitated manner, lifted his head and watched the other dog as it ran down a fork in the road ahead.

  Sarah closed her eyes, just for a minute, breathing deeply to try to clear her head which had started spinning alarmingly.

  I must not faint. I must not faint.

  ‘Are you al
l right, miss?’ One of the Rogues had noticed her lag behind. Sarah forced her eyes open, to see that the rest of the party had reached the fork in the road. Oh, lord, she hoped they weren’t going to have to go past the place where the scavenger dog had taken its obscene booty. Thank goodness she hadn’t taken any breakfast, or she would be bringing it straight back up.

  She couldn’t go that way. She wouldn’t go that way!

  ‘No, not that way!’ She raised her arm and pointed to the other fork in the road. ‘We must go that way,’ she said, in as steady a voice as she could muster, considering her whole body was shaking.

  ‘Begging yer pardon, miss, but down along there is where Colonel Randall ought to be, if he’s anywhere,’ said the soldier, pointing the other way.

  Mary had turned in her saddle and wore the look she’d seen on so many faces during her life. The look that told her she was an exasperating ninnyhammer.

  ‘You said yourself,’ Sarah replied haughtily, ‘that you’ve already looked where you thought he ought to be and couldn’t find him.’

  At that moment Ben, who’d been running back and forth with his nose to the ground, suddenly let out a bark and ran a few paces down the road she’d just indicated. Then turned and looked over his shoulder as if to ask why they weren’t following him.

  ‘Even Ben thinks we ought to go that way,’ she insisted.

  And though they hadn’t wanted to listen to her, they all seemed to have complete faith in Ben’s instincts. To a man, they turned and followed him.

  Leaving Mary no choice but to do so, too.

  Sarah’s stomach lurched again. Only this time it was from guilt. What if she was leading them in the wrong direction, simply because there didn’t seem to be so many gruesome sights this way?

  Mary was right to despise her. She wasn’t strong and brave. Or even sensible. She should have just admitted that the sights and smells were proving too much for her. Except that, to admit to such weakness, in front of Mary and those men...

  She didn’t just have the Latymor nose. She had the wretched Latymor pride, too. That made her go to any lengths rather than admit she might have made a mistake.

  Not that it had done her much good. For things were no better on this road, than they had looked on the one the scavenging dog had taken. The bright colours of uniforms lay stacked in heaps where the men who wore them had fallen, smeared now with mud and blood, and worse.

  And there were pieces of uniforms, too, containing severed limbs. And bodies without heads. And horses screaming. And men groaning.

  And Sarah’s head was spinning.

  And her heart was growing heavier and heavier.

  Because she was finally seeing what war really meant. Men didn’t die from neat little bullet wounds. Their bodies were smashed to pulp, torn asunder.

  Oh, lord—if this had been what happened to Gideon, no wonder they hadn’t sent his body to Antwerp. Justin might be overbearing, but it was always in a protective way. He wouldn’t have wanted her, or Gussie, who was in such a delicate condition, to be subjected to the sight of Gideon, reduced to...to...that.

  Just as it finally hit her that it might be true, that Gideon might really be dead, one of the men gave out a great cry.

  She looked up, to see Ben go bounding across a field to a sort of tumbledown building, round which even more bodies were stacked than by the side of the road.

  ‘He’s found him! The blessed dog’s only gone and found him,’ cried one of the men. And they all went charging up to the ruin.

  Chapter Two

  She heard somebody say charnel house.

  Sarah’s stomach lurched. She drew Castor to a halt as Ben scrabbled at the door of the barn until he found his way in.

  ‘Justin is in there,’ she cried in an agony of certainty. In the charnel house. Which meant he was dead. ‘I know he is.’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Mary calmly, dismounting.

  Sarah slid from her own horse, her legs shaking so much she had to cling to the pommel to stay upright.

  ‘Here,’ said Mary, thrusting her reins into her hands. ‘You stay here and...and guard the horses while I go and see.’

  Then, in a rather kinder tone, added, ‘It might not even be him.’

  But Sarah knew it was. Ben had scented...something. He’d ignored heaps and heaps of dead bodies. The dog wouldn’t have barked so excitedly for no good reason.

  And the Rogues hadn’t come out yet, either.

  It was her brother in there. In there, where Mary was going, her face composed, her demeanour determined and brave.

  While the prospect of seeing Justin, her strong, forceful brother, lying lifeless—perhaps even torn to bits like so many of the poor wretches she’d seen scattered in heaps along the roads...

  And then any pretence she was guarding the horses fled as blackness swirled round the edges of her vision. Eddied up from the depths of her, too, as the extent of her uselessness hit her. What point had there been in snatching up that bag of medical supplies when she’d fled Antwerp? Bridget, her old nursemaid, had told her she would need it. And Bridget had a way of seeing things. So yesterday, she’d imagined she was riding to Gideon’s rescue, armed with the very herbs that he needed. But the truth was that Gideon was beyond anyone’s help. And that she was so overset by the thought of seeing any of her brothers chopped and hacked about that she would have been no more use to Gideon than a...than a...

  Actually, she would have been of no help to Gideon at all. Just as she wasn’t being of any help to Justin.

  They were right about her—those people who wrote her off as a weak, empty-headed nuisance. All she’d done by coming here was create problems for everyone else. Gussie and Blanchards would be worried sick about her, and even though she’d promised Mary she wouldn’t get in the way— Sarah groaned. She was growing more and more certain that she was either going to faint dead away, or cast up her accounts.

  Well, she wasn’t going to do it in front of Justin’s men. Only a couple had stayed in the barn with Mary. The rest had come outside again, probably, she suspected, to keep an eye on their rather suspiciously magnificent horses.

  There was a half-collapsed wall to her left, which would shield her from view if she was going to be sick. Which would conceal the evidence from the stalwart Mary, too, when she eventually came out.

  If her legs would carry her that far...

  They did. But only just. The effort of clambering over the lowest, most broken-down portion of the wall proved too much for both Lady Sarah’s legs, and her stomach, which both gave way at the same time. She hadn’t even gained the privacy she’d sought, either, because there was a group of peasant women busily ferreting amongst the rubble so they could rob the men who’d been partially buried under it.

  They paused for a moment, but only a moment. With mocking, hard eyes, they dismissed her as being no threat as she retched fruitlessly, then calmly went back to stripping the corpse they’d just exhumed.

  Or what had appeared to be a corpse. For suddenly, as the women turned him to ease the removal of his shirt, the man let out a great bellow, which both startled and scattered them.

  Sarah gasped as he uttered a string of profanities. Not because of the words themselves, but because they were in English. His jacket, the one they’d just torn from his back, was blue, so she’d assumed he was French. But not only was he English, but his voice was cultured, his swearing fluent.

  He was an officer.

  And he was trying to get to his feet, though his face and shoulders were cloaked in blood.

  Instinctively, she got to her feet, too, though with what aim she wasn’t sure.

  Until she saw one of the peasant women hefting a knife.

  ‘No!’ Sarah’s fist closed round one of the stones that had once been part of the wall and, w
ithout thinking of the consequences, threw it as hard as she could at the woman who’d started to advance on the wounded man. She couldn’t just stand there and let them rob him of his very life. It was unthinkable!

  She’d been of no use to Gideon, but by God she wasn’t going to stand back and let those women casually despatch another Englishman before her very eyes!

  ‘Leave him alone,’ she screamed, throwing another stone in their direction.

  Rage and revulsion at what they were doing had her quivering with outrage now, instead of despair.

  The women paused, eyeing her warily.

  The man, too, turned his head when he heard her shout.

  He stretched his hand towards her.

  ‘Save me,’ he groaned, then swayed and slowly toppled forward.

  Oh, no! If he landed face down in the mud, that would finish him off as surely as the peasant woman’s knife. Sarah flung herself in his path, arms outstretched as if to catch him. Though, of course, his weight proved too much for her. She landed with a wet thud on her bottom, the unconscious, half-naked officer half on top of her.

  But at least he was still breathing.

  For now. The peasant women were still hovering. And her legs were pinned in place by his dead weight.

  Well, this was no time to hold her pride too dear. Throwing back her head, she screamed for help.

  At once, there came a familiar, deep throaty bark.

  The women ran for it as Ben came bounding over the wall, barking and baring his fangs, and looking gloriously, heart-warmingly ferocious.