The Last Gamble

by Mary Nichols

  He told her of the triumphant march into Paris and how Napoleon had tried to get onto a British ship and expected the Regent to give him sanctuary. He described Vienna and told her about the arguments and counter-arguments at the Vienna Convention which had been going on for years as the allies carved Europe up between them. He told her about the social life, every bit as hectic as that in Paris, and of the Grand Tour, now re-established for all young men before they settled down.

  She answered him now and again and put forward some ideas of her own, but mostly she listened; it was all very easy and very pleasant, and she did not want to break it up and go to bed, though she was feeling very sleepy again and could hardly keep her eyes open.

  He did not think she was the sort of girl to swoon at the mention of blood, but he was careful not to frighten her with gory details and was, therefore, very surprised when she suddenly said she felt very hot and would have fallen from her seat if he had not had the presence of mind to catch her.

  He sat with her half-lying across his knee and looked about him. The dining room had emptied and there was no one to be seen but a waiter sweeping the floor. He called to him. ‘Fetch mine host’s wife, if you please.’

  ‘That’s more than I dare do, sir. She’s long abed and asleep and she won’t want to be disturbed on account of she has to be up betimes.’

  ‘A chambermaid, then.’

  ‘Now, sir, how can I go waking chambermaids?’

  Duncan looked down at the girl in his arms. Her face was flushed and her bosom heaved gently, but she showed no sign of regaining her senses. He tried shaking her a little, calling her name, but all that happened was that her head wobbled, her bonnet fell off and she muttered something unintelligible. He cursed himself for a fool. She had eaten hardly anything all day and she was very tired; the unaccustomed swaying of the coach had made her giddy and the little wine she had drunk had done the rest. Why had he not noticed?

  It was a long time since he had enjoyed a woman’s company so much; talking to her and watching her animated face as she spoke to him had filled his mind. He had only been half aware that the coach had gone on without him and completely oblivious to the fact that she was not well. Tomorrow she would hate him. Tonight though, she needed putting to bed.

  He knew which room was hers because he had had her trunk taken up to it. He scooped her up in his arms, surprised that she weighed so little, and carried her up to her room, pushing the door open with his foot and depositing her on the bed. Then he lit a candle which stood on a cupboard by the door and stood looking down at her. He could not leave her like that.

  He put the candle on a table, sat on the edge of the bed and shook her gently. ‘Miss Sadler, wake up, you foolish child, wake up.’ When she did not respond, he pulled off her mantle and set about undoing the buttons which fastened her gown up to the chin, but when he had done that, he discovered the layers of underwear. No wonder she had fainted! The sooner she was rid of them and able to breathe freely, the sooner she would recover.

  She gave a huge sigh of relief and then giggled as he pulled off the dress and untied the thick petticoat beneath it. ‘Oh, Daisy, you are tickling me…’

  He took off the thick outer layer of underwear and untied her corset and discovered that she was not the dumpy young girl he had thought, but a woman, slight to be sure, but perfectly formed. She certainly did not need the corset.

  His own words suddenly echoed in his mind: ‘I am not so in want of female company I have to wait until a young lady is unconscious before forcing myself upon her.’ He stifled a harsh laugh. It was his fault; he should have been watching out for her instead of allowing himself to be carried away with his own rhetoric. He could not leave her; tomorrow night, if he were not there, someone less honourable might be taking liberties, as she had put it.

  The thought of anyone else doing what he was doing made him go hot and cold with anxiety on her behalf. She needed looking after and he cursed the unknown man, whoever he was, who had brought her to this. That it had been a man he was sure. Leaving her in her shift and stockings, he covered her with the quilt, dropped a kiss on her forehead and crept from the room, closing the door softly behind him. Then he went in search of a bed.

  Helen woke with a start, wondering where she was. Her head ached abominably and her stomach was churning. She remembered boarding a coach, remembered her fellow passengers and a boy, a dirty little urchin who had stolen her money. It had been retrieved by Captain Blair and she had shown scant gratitude. They had come a long way after that, so where was she now?

  Racking her brain, which did nothing to improve her headache, she recalled coming into an inn and sitting over a meal with the Captain. They had talked a lot and she had found him an agreeable companion, but after that her memory was a blank. She sat up and groaned as her head started to spin. She had taken rather more wine than she was used to and the Captain, who could know nothing of those extra undergarments, would undoubtedly think she had been foxed.

  How had she got to her room? She must have come upstairs and half undressed before collapsing on the bed. But someone had been with her, she remembered soothing words and gentle hands. The Captain must have fetched the innkeeper’s wife or one of the chambermaids to help her. Why was she forever in his debt? Why did she seem determined to prove she could not manage to travel a few miles on her own? He would be gone now and she was glad of that; she refused to admit that she had been grateful for his help.

  A month ago, she would hardly have noticed him. She smiled suddenly; no, that was not true, you could not help noticing him, he stood out head and shoulders above everyone else and not only physically; he had a way of commanding attention, a way of concentrating on you as if he were truly interested in what you were saying. It was cultivated, no doubt, along with his skill as a soldier and his extensive general knowledge.

  It was probably how he had managed to catch the eye of the Duke of Wellington, so one small, lonely young lady had little defence. But he had been right on one thing; there were sure to be others on the road who would not be so scrupulous and she would do well to be on her guard.

  She could hear sounds outside her window; voices and horses neighing and the jingle of harness. She left her bed and padded to the window to draw back the curtains. Dawn was just breaking and there was a coach in the yard which had just driven in. Its passengers were tumbling out, half-asleep, to come into the inn for breakfast. If that was the coach to Manchester, she did not have much time.

  Hurriedly she washed in cold water from the ewer, dressed in a pelisse-robe in black bombazine, packed her dusty round dress of the day before and the extra petticoats in her trunk, and went downstairs, carrying her small portmanteau. She met a chambermaid on the way, who bobbed and bade her good morning. Helen smiled, wanting to convey her thanks for whatever had been done for her without actually saying it. ‘Would you be kind enough to ask someone to take my trunk to the coach?’ she asked, handing her a sixpence.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The girl grinned at the unexpectedly large gratuity. ‘I’ll have Jake do it straight away.’

  Helen continued down to the dining room where the smell of breakfast cooking was making her feel decidedly ill, but she needed something to drink, preferably hot, strong coffee, before she could face another day of being jolted about in a coach.

  She was surprised to see the Captain sitting over breakfast at a table near the fire. He was dressed in a military-style frockcoat over a kerseymere waistcoat in brown and buff stripes, cut in the Hussar style, and buff nankin pantaloons, so that even in civilian clothes, he still looked every inch the soldier. His dark hair was damp and clung about his neck and ears in tight little curls. He rose, smiling. ‘Good morning, Miss Sadler. You are in good time for breakfast.’ He half expected her to cut him for taking even more liberties but, to his surprise, she sat down opposite him.

  ‘Good morning, Captain. No breakfast, thank you. Just coffee.’

  He called a waiter and the hot d
rink was soon in front of her. She gulped it greedily and began to feel a little better. ‘I am surprised to see you this morning, Captain,’ she said, before he could make any reference to the previous evening. ‘I collect you saying you were in haste to reach your destination and were going to travel through the night.’

  He suddenly realised she did not remember him carrying her to her room and must be thinking she had found her way there by herself. He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I found the company so convivial, I could not tear myself away,’ he said, deciding it would be unwise to say what was in his mind, that she was so helpless he could not abandon her. It would have invited a sharp rebuke and an assertion that she did not need looking after. ‘And this is a passably comfortable inn.’

  ‘Convivial,’ she repeated. ‘Are you inferring I had taken too much wine? Because if you are, let me tell you it was nothing of the sort. I was simply unwell. The rocking of the coach, you know, and the heat in the dining room…’

  ‘Please forgive me,’ he said. ‘I am afraid I have been too long a soldier and do not always choose my words with care. In truth, I found the heat in the dining-room somewhat overpowering myself, especially after the cold outside.’

  ‘I do believe I heard the guard calling up the passengers for the coach,’ she put in quickly, unwilling to continue the conversation.

  He stood up, picked up his cloak-bag and her portmanteau and waited to escort her. She paid for her bed and board and followed him. Whatever she thought of his behaviour, she was obliged to him. She was feeling far from well and in any case, he was only treating her like the working woman he believed her to be and she had to be thankful that he was gentleman enough to accept her explanation.

  As soon as she had purchased her ticket, he handed her in to her seat, checked that her trunk had been loaded safely and took his place beside her. They were joined by an elderly lady in a huge poke bonnet worn over her day cap, a parson in black robes and a low-crowned round hat, and a young couple, obviously in love, with eyes for no one but each other.

  Judging by his dress, the young man considered himself something of a dandy; his pantaloons and coat were tightly fitting, his waistcoat colourful and his pale blue cravat extravagantly tied. His wife wore a high-waisted gown of barège with a pleated bodice and a great deal of decoration around the hem, over which she wore a fur-lined pelisse in blue velvet.

  Helen could not see the outside passengers but they seemed a noisy group, laughing and calling to each other as they climbed aboard. She could hear the guard calling them to order as he took his own place in the seat above the back boot. A minute later the coachman, having completed his inspection, climbed aboard and they were off.

  Helen was glad that her fellow passengers were disinclined to talk; she did not feel like conversation and she was all too aware of the Captain beside her. It was funny how much she remembered of his conversation of the evening before. He had been an agreeable raconteur and she had learned much she had not known about how wars were fought and the magnitude of the task of supplying an army of thousands with horses, weapons, food and clothing.

  He had talked of Portugal with affection and of Wellington with admiration and loyalty. Helen had met the great man once, in 1814, in the brief spell of peace when he had come to London to be feted. Had she told the Captain that? What had she told him? She risked a peep at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet.

  He was sitting staring into space as if his thoughts were far away, on some battlefield perhaps. Or was he thinking of what was at the end of his journey? He had said he was unmarried, but that did not mean there was not a young lady waiting for him. Where? Where was he going? Did she hope he would leave soon or did she want him to stay until they arrived in Glasgow?

  Of one thing she was certain, she did not want him to meet whoever was sent to fetch her because then he would know she had lied, pretending she was something she was not. She surprised herself with how much his good opinion mattered to her.

  Duncan had not slept well. Given the option of sharing a room with two or three other men or finding a warm corner of the stables, he had chosen the stables, waking at dawn with his hair and clothes full of straw and an unmistakable odour of horses about him. He had stripped to his waist and stood under the pump in the yard, allowing the cold water to refresh him and then taken a new suit of clothes from his cloak-bag, rolling up the uniform and stuffing it in the bag in its place.

  He missed his personal servant, particularly when it came to shaving, but the man had family in London and he had could hardly drag him all the way to Scotland, especially when he had no idea how long he would be at home. If things were very bad, he might have to resign his commission. He had been a soldier for twelve of his thirty years, so perhaps it was time he settled down. But settling down meant marriage, at least in his father’s eyes, and since Arabella, he had not trusted himself even to think about it.

  He risked a sideways look at the young lady beside him. She was uncommonly beautiful and her figure, now that she had obviously discarded the extra petticoats, was curvaceous without being plump. He found himself picturing her in lighter colours, pale blues and greens instead of that unrelieved black, and decided that whatever she wore she would be lovely. Neither was she afraid to have an opinion of her own, nor of expressing it articulately.

  He had long ago decided she was not eloping; such a forceful person as she was, would not need to resort to clandestine methods to get her own way. Was she affianced to some Scottish gentleman and going to her wedding? The thought made him catch his breath and his heart beat faster, as if it mattered to him whether she were engaged to be married or no, which it did not, he told himself.

  She wore no ring and she would surely have told him last night if she had a fiancé. She was probably a nursery nurse or a governess, going to take up a post north of the border. On the other hand, her manner was not subservient, so perhaps she was really a lady, daughter of an aristocrat, royalty perhaps, travelling incognito. But even then she would have had at least one servant somewhere in the background watching over her. Miss Sadler, if that was truly her name, was definitely alone.

  Servants often aped the imperious mannerisms of their mistresses, so perhaps that was it; she was a lady’s maid. Whom was she mourning? Was she going to Scotland for a funeral? How had she managed to get him to talk about himself without volunteering anything of any import about herself? Almost all he had learned about her, she had divulged to their travelling companions, not to him. Was there a reason for that? Why, however hard he tried, could he not stop thinking about her?

  ‘The countryside is beautiful at this time of the year, don’t you think so, Miss Sadler?’ he ventured into the silence after they had stopped at Harborough for a change of horses.

  It was a moment before she realised he was addressing her, but then she smiled. ‘Oh, yes, the changing colours of the trees are quite glorious, but each of the seasons has its own appeal, do you not think? I find that in October, I am in favour of autumn, but in March nothing suits me so well as spring when everything we thought dead is growing anew.’

  ‘A good philosophy, ma’am,’ the parson put in. ‘One should be content with what God gives us at the time and not be forever wishing it were otherwise.’

  ‘I wish our outside passengers were otherwise,’ the old lady put in. ‘I do believe they are all drunk. There is one above my head who is banging his heels on the roof. I fear he will put his foot through before long.’

  The outside passengers had been growing more noisy the further they travelled and now there was such a drumming on the roof, they began to think the old lady might be right. Duncan got up and put his head out of the door to shout up to them. ‘Can you not be a little less boisterous; you are alarming the ladies.’

  One of them grabbed the guard’s tin horn and blew a blast down towards Duncan, then turned to one of the other young men, whom Duncan could not see. ‘Go on, Bertie, I’ll act guard if you drive.’ And again he gave
a toot on the horn, this time directed at the sky. ‘Ten guineas says you can’t take us to the next post.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  There was more banging and scraping on the roof and a great deal more shouting of encouragement to the unseen Bertie. Duncan’s remonstrances and demands that the coach should be stopped and the young men put off were ignored. A minute later they knew the reins were in inexperienced hands, for the coach began to lurch from side to side.

  Duncan returned to his seat. ‘I am afraid the coachman has allowed one of those thatchgallows to have the ribbons.’

  ‘What! We shall all be killed!’ the old lady said. ‘You must stop him at once.’

  ‘Ma’am, I can do nothing unless we come to a halt, or at least slow down enough for me to get down.’

  They showed no sign of doing so and in truth began to go even faster, so that the inside passengers were thrown from side to side. Helen, her earlier uneasy stomach forgotten in this new sensation, found herself hanging onto the door strap and praying the young man would realise how reckless he was being and let the coachman have the reins back.

  The parson was apparently doing the same thing; his eyes were shut tight and his lips were moving in prayer; the young couple were clinging to each other in terror and the old lady was screaming. Helen reached across and touched her arm. ‘Ma’am, pray calm yourself. The coachman, irresponsible as he is, will not allow us to be overturned. We shall slow down directly.’

  If anything they went faster and Helen, peering from the off-side door, saw another coach ahead of them, going at a steady pace. Unless they drew up very quickly, she did not see how they could avoid running into the back of it. She shut her eyes and tensed herself for a crash. She opened them when she heard the young lady in the opposite corner cry out and found herself looking right into the other coach as they hurtled along side by side.