His smile faded at those words. Playing at war. Which, as he certainly knew, was not a game. And not for children. As a boy, he had thought battle was all flags and glory.
Now he knew, of course, what it really was. Death and maiming, of both horses and men. The ghastly sounds of their dying and the unmistakable stench of hot blood. The roar of the cannon so loud he would be deafened at the end of the day. His arm so weary from hacking with his saber that he could no longer lift water to his parched mouth. His throat raw, his voice hoarse from trying to make his orders heard above the din.
Deliberately, Justin erased those images from his head. The first child had entered the clearing, followed rapidly by a stream of others. The children were so engrossed in their play that they took no notice of the horse and rider.
As he watched them, feeling old and rather avuncular, Justin gradually became aware that whatever was going on was not a game. A variety of missiles, rocks and roots and sticks was being thrown at the little boy in the lead. As Justin watched, a rock, thrown by one of the largest of the pursuing boys, struck the child they were chasing on the back of the head.
Although they were almost upon him, the victim whirled and began picking up the fallen objects, lobbing them back at his tormentors. His throws were short and ineffective, but one had to admire his spirit, Justin thought. Apparently, however, the others didn’t feel the same admiration.
“Surround him,” shouted the boy who had thrown the rock.
Like well-trained troopers, his followers did just that, encircling the still-defiant victim as he pitched whatever he could find on the ground back at them. The boy who was giving orders broke out of the circle and began to approach him.
“Now you’re in for it, you little bastard,” he said.
Enough, Justin thought, especially given the disparity in size between the two. He touched his heel to Star’s flank, sending the gelding charging toward the children. The boys on the outer edges scattered at the sound of his approach, and the two in the center looked up in amazement as he pulled up just before it seemed Star might crash into them.
“That’s quite enough,” Justin said.
He hadn’t raised his voice, the tone of command unconsciously the same one he had used on countless battlefields. His voice rang with authority, however, and not surprisingly, it had the same effect on these boys as it had once had on soldiers.
The larger lad looked up, eyes widening at the sight of the horse looming above him. Justin knew that he and Star would appear as threatening as St. George approaching the dragon, lance in hand. The spectators had already backed away in terror, avoiding the hooves of his mount, which Justin was controlling almost without thought.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Their eyes round with shock or awe, the boys remained silent for a moment. The larger of the two in the center of the circle had scrambled back, getting away from the horse, but the smaller child had barely moved.
“What we’re about here ain’t nothing to do with you,” the larger boy said belligerently, obviously attempting to regain both his bravado and his standing among his fellows.
The ranking officer, Justin thought in amusement, allowing nothing of what he was thinking to show on his face. His expression was as stern as if he were dealing with an enemy.
“Since you’re doing it on my land, I beg to think whatever happens here has something to do with me.” He paused a moment to let that information sink in, before he added, “I’m Wynfield.”
The leader’s eyes widened. This time they examined his face and then ran with undisguised admiration over Star’s gleaming hide before focusing on Justin’s right boot, the one that hid the artificial foot.
“Whoever you are,” the boy said, his mouth arranged in a sneer, “it’s for certain you ain’t the earl.”
Justin hesitated only a second or two before he reversed his crop and tapped its thick handle against the toe of his shining Hessian. The sound the stick made was as solid as that of a knocker applied to a door. Distinctly not flesh and bone.
Hearing it, there were gasps and a muttered oath or two from the surrounding urchins, and even a softly breathed “Cor” from the sneering lad before him. After Justin had offered that indisputable proof of his identity, his gaze returned to challenge the boy who had doubted him.
“Guess again,” he suggested softly.
“We ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong,” the boy claimed.
Apparently the ringleader had decided that not only was Justin exactly who he had claimed to be, but that, as the earl of Wynfield and owner of this wood, he had the right to question their actions. Even to demand an accounting for them.
Wynfield studied the boy’s face, its skin as grimy as his thin knuckles, which were bunched into fists. The pale, pinched features reminded Justin of the village urchins he’d played with nearly a quarter of a century earlier. For the most part they had been overly respectful of his and Robert’s exalted positions. Occasionally there had been one this bold. Usually that had been the most intelligent of the lot, so maybe it would be worth the effort to try to change the dynamics of this situation, which he was beginning to suspect wasn’t a new one.
“Any time you don’t fight fairly you are doing wrong,” Justin said. “The odds here seemed a trifle one-sided.”
He deliberately allowed his eyes to fall to the smaller child. Justin had kept his voice low, but he made sure his words carried across the clearing, where dirt-smeared faces peered around the trunks of the circling trees. Despite their initial flurry to get out of the way of Star’s advance, no one had left, more intrigued than frightened by his intervention.
“Little bastard,” the boy Justin had pegged as the leader said dismissively. Then he spat on the ground, the spittle landing near the other boy’s boots. The gesture, as well as his voice, indicated total contempt. Too much contempt, it seemed, for a child this young to have earned.
Justin’s gaze moved to the face of the outcast. He was looking up at his rescuer, ignoring the others. The places where he’d been struck were reddened against his pale, fine-grained skin. He wasn’t crying, however. And he hadn’t been, Justin realized, not even when he had been getting far worse than he’d been able to give back.
The eyes of the child held his a long moment, and then the boy raised his arm and wiped at the blood trickling from one nostril with the back of his thin wrist. He succeeded in smearing the gore around a bit, but not in removing it. He sniffed, that gesture as ineffectual as the first at getting rid of the trickle of blood.
“They won’t hurt you anymore,” Wynfield said reassuringly.
“They didn’t hurt me,” the child said.
His voice still held defiance, and that emotion was evident even in the contours of the childishly rounded cheeks and the uptilted chin. It was only then that Justin noticed something he should certainly have observed before. This child’s clothing was very different from that worn by the other boys.
Not one of the tenant children. Nor was he from the nearby village, Justin judged, assessing the short jacket buttoned to matching linsey-woolsey trousers. His boots were both well-polished and well-made. Which meant...
Justin took a breath, the sudden rush of blood loud in his ears because he knew exactly what it meant—this child in this particular location. And he had only to look more closely at the boy’s face and dark blue eyes to have no doubt that he was right.
“Go home,” he ordered, without raising his voice or removing his gaze from the child’s face. “It’s time for you to go home.”
The child he had just rescued started forward, obviously intending to leave with the others.
“Not you,” Justin told him. Surprised, the little boy looked up, eyes questionitig.
“Sir?” the boy said.
“Your name?” Wynfield asked. An urge to masochism, he supposed. Like dressing for dinner. He was vaguely aware that the other children were following his command, slinking back into the f
orest around them.
“My name is Andrew,” the boy said.
And the rest of it? Justin wanted to demand, but he restrained himself. What could it possibly matter whom Sarah had chosen as his replacement? That wound was old and should be well-healed by now. He had had years to recover from Sarah Spenser’s jilting. Years in which he had certainly not been celibate, nor had he worn his wounded heart on his sleeve. He had recovered long ago from that youthful heartbreak, so he could not imagine why the realization that this must be Sarah’s child should have this effect.
“But everyone calls me Drew,” the boy added, blue eyes still focused on Wynfield’s face.
He was obviously a Spenser. The features were too familiar for Justin to be in any doubt about that. After all, he had grown up next door to Sarah and Amelia, and had watched them change, almost unnoticed, from children into young women.
Then, one May night, he had encountered this same alignment of features across a crowded ballroom and had known them instantly. And surprisingly, within the course of Sarah Spenser’s first London Season, he had fallen head-over-heels in love with a girl he had known all his life.
A girl who had, despite all the promises they’d exchanged and the plans they had made, fallen in love with someone else less than a year after he had been posted to Spain. Sarah’s letter had been quite unequivocal on that score, and there had been little he could do from the Iberian Peninsula, of course, to change her decision. Even had he been in England, Justin admitted, his pride might have prevented him from begging Sarah not to break their engagement, despite how much he had loved her.
Loved her. The words reverberated in his head. He had loved her, he acknowledged, as much as he was capable of loving anyone at that time. And had he not gone to Spain, he realized, this child might very well have been his son.
“I’m Wynfield,” he said softly, wondering as he did if the boy had ever heard his name in connection with his mother.
“You said that,” Andrew said.
“So I did. My apologies.” Justin allowed the smile he had resisted earlier. Its effect was an immediate and visible relaxation of the boy’s shoulders, which had been tightened as if he expected another blow.
“Did you really do all the things they say?” the child asked, his eyes alight, alive in a way they had not been throughout the encounter with the village boys.
“Since I don’t have any idea what ‘they say,”.’ Justin said, “I couldn’t tell you if I did them or not.”
“Killed a thousand Frenchies. Rode like the devil right over their positions. Broke the squares so Wellington could win. Is that your charger?”
Justin laughed at the barrage of words. “Soldiers’ exploits are usually exaggerated in the retelling,” he said. “They make better stories that way.”
“But they did cut off your leg,” the child said, his eyes locking on the high riding boot that hid the defect. “I heard Sarah and Mrs. Simkins talking.”
When the silence that followed his comment stretched, the child’s blue eyes lifted again to Justin’s. Wynfield had no idea what his face might reveal, but he knew that those simple words bad had more of an effect than they should have had.
The thought of Sarah discussing his amputation with her housekeeper was for some reason as raw and painful as the stump itself. It took a moment for the import of the rest of that statement to register. The child had referred to her as Sarah.
Could he possibly have been mistaken? Justin wondered, again studying the familiar Spenser features presented perfectly in miniature. Amelia had died shortly after he had left for the Peninsula, so:..if this were not Sarah’s child, Justin thought, studying the small face, then who the hell was he?
“Sarah?” he asked carefully.
“My maman.” Suddenly the boy’s eyes widened. “I shall be late,” he said, apparently only now realizing the danger of that. “And if I am, I shall be in a great deal of trouble.”
Justin remembered the number of times he had hurried home from these woods, knowing that his tutor would call him to account for every minute of his tardiness. And that his accounting would be painful in the extreme. Although Justin couldn’t imagine Sarah applying the birch, the anxiety in the boy’s eyes was enough to encourage him to offer another rescue.
“I can take you to the ford,” he said.
He reached down, holding out his hand to the boy. There was only a moment’s hesitation before the child laid small fingers within the sunburned darkness of his. Justin pulled, lifting him easily into the saddle before him.
Then he directed Star toward the narrow stream that separated the two properties. He knew exactly where the child would cross. He and Robert had chased the village boys back across that rock-strewn ford innumerable times.
From there the path diverged, one fork going to the nearby village, the other winding through the Spenser half of the woods to Longford.
Feeling the child relax as he became accustomed to the height of the gelding, Justin urged Star into a canter, picking his way through the sun-dappled shade of the huge oaks. There was something satisfying about the small, warm body he held, seated securely in the saddle before him.
Sarah’s son, he thought. And was again surprised by the sense of loss that realization engendered.
Chapter Two
“And then he tapped the handle of his crop on his wooden leg,” Andrew said, his excited narrative only occasionally interrupted by a gasp or a twist of his head as Sarah attempted to apply liniment to his scrapes and bruises. “Like this,” he said, demonstrating the sound the earl’s crop had made by rapping his fist against the trestle table over which Sarah had spread out her medicinals.
“Andrew,” she admonished, feeling a faint sickness stir in the pit of her stomach, which had nothing to do with the battle scars she was treating. She was thankful his scrapes were no worse, of course, and very glad Andrew had told her the truth this time about how he’d acquired them. Although she had long suspected he was the butt of the village boys’ cruelty, he had never before admitted to being their target. Today, the news of Wynfield’s intervention had apparently outweighed his reticence to tell her what had been going on.
Sarah wasn’t sure if Drew were mature enough to wish to spare her the knowledge of what they said to him or if he had been afraid that she might try to interfere on his behalf and make things worse. In either case, she supposed she had reason to be grateful to Justin for more than his timely rescue.
Wynfield, she amended. She had decided that using his title rather than the name by which she had known him from childhood would help her begin to put his return into perspective. Even if she had occasion to use it only in her mind.
Come home only long enough to sell the place, Lady Fortley had surmised, and she was probably right. Why would Justin, or anyone, for that matter, wish to remain in a place where children were tormented for the sins of their elders? she thought bitterly, dabbing too vigorously with her lint at a small cut over Andrew’s brow.
“Ow!” he howled, pulling away.
“Sorry,” she whispered, dropping a kiss on his golden curls.
He nodded forgiveness and then trustingly submitted himself again to her ministrations. He was very accustomed to Sarah fussing over him. After all, Drew had never had a nanny. It had been Sarah’s deepest joy to care for him herself, which had led, she supposed, to their unusual closeness.
“You should have seen ’em scatter,” Andrew said after enduring stoically in silence for a few minutes.
When she looked up, his eyes were full of remembered satisfaction over the routing of his enemies.
“They were afraid of his battle charger,” he said, “but I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all afraid, Sarah. He even took me up for a ride. And I asked him about the war.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have,” Sarah suggested quietly. So grievously woureded ran through her head.
“Why ever not?” Andrew asked. In his tone was a patent disbelief that anyone might b
e reluctant to talk about something as fascinating as His Majesty’s war against the Corsican monster.
“Because the earl may not wish to discuss it. After all, he was gravely injured, Drew. And war is not a game.”
“I know that,” he said scornfully.
He thought she was being condescending, Sarah realized. Treating him like a baby. Which was, in Andrew’s view, her most frequently committed and most heinous sin.
“They cut off his leg, after all,” he added.
“Yes, they did,” she said softly, thinking about what effect that mutilation might have had on the man she had known.
“Sarah?” Andrew questioned the silence that had fallen. Or perhaps he was questioning the fact that, hands unconsciously clenched together in her lap, she had ceased to dab at his cuts.
“I think you’ll live,” she said, looking up into blue eyes that were now full of a very adult concern.
“Does it make you sad?” he asked. “Thinking about the war?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “And it may make the earl sad as well,” she warned.
“He wasn’t sad,” Andrew asserted. “Bam, bam, bam,” he said, eyes alight as he pounded his fist reminiscently against the table. “He wasn’t at all sad about the war.”
Sarah’s lips quirked involuntarily. Whatever effect the loss of his leg had had on Justin, it had made him larger than life in the eyes of at least one small boy he had encountered today. Probably in the eyes of the others as well, she thought, judging by Andrew’s unquenchable enthusiasm for the new earl.
“Did you thank him for intervening on your behalf?”.
“I don’t remember,” Andrew confessed, his brow wrinkling as he tried to think.
“Then you must be sure to do so the next time you see him,” Sarah said, beginning to gather up her materials.
“Will he come to service on Sunday, do you think?” Andrew asked, his eyes widened with hope.
Gayle Wilson Page 3