He just prayed Brownie had saved him a fresh shirt.
A Match Made in Heaven—Or Hell
1
Nicky and Pete were arguing over a broken soldier.
“He’s mine.”
“No, he’s mine.”
“I saw him first!”
“I’ve had my eye on him for ages.”
“Have not.”
“Have too.”
But these were not two boys in the nursery; they were two ancient adversaries overlooking the Spanish plains, and the soldier was no cast-metal figurine. He wasn’t even a soldier, but a British lord. A battle had been fought here, but now another battle was being waged, this time for the soul of Hugh, Marquess of Hardesty.
Nicodemus, or Old Nick, as he was often called by those who would not say his name out loud, sneered as he looked down on the dusty field where the marquess lay crumpled in a pool of blood, half under his fallen horse. “Of course I have had this one in my sights. How could you think otherwise? I’ve watched this Hugh Hardesty for the last ten years, ever since he was tossed out of university. I waited while he cut a swath through London, drinking, whoring, gambling. Then I watched while he seduced all those wives and widows. It was just a matter of time before some jealous husband killed him, if he did not break his neck in an absurd race, or lose a brawl in a filthy tavern. Then he’d be mine. It just took a little longer than I expected, but he is hellhound now.”
Saint Peter wagged his chin. “No, he died a hero, saving all those other poor souls when he fought by their side.” He waved a gnarled hand at the ragged foot soldiers beginning to stir through the smoke and the stench of the battlefield. “He could have ridden off after delivering his message, but he stayed to help when he found the commanding officer wounded, rallying the troops, defending them with his sword. He was courageous and selfless, sacrificing himself and his horse for his king and his country. That makes him mine.”
“What, so many years of profligacy forgiven in one instant? Not even you could be such a—”
“Now, now. You know how it works. He died with honor. That is enough for us.”
“He died disobeying orders, as usual. The thirty-year-old heir to a duke would never be allowed in the thick of battle, not without ensuring the succession first. I believe there was something mentioned about honoring thy parents. Then there is the fact that they let him act as courier on the Peninsula simply because he was such an embarrassment in London. Not one but two undersecretaries’ wives, at the same time.” Nicky grinned, showing pointed teeth. “Absolutely a lad after my own heart. Let’s see…adultery, coveting thy neighbor’s wife, definitely blaspheming when he was accused, then bearing false witness when he swore he had been elsewhere.”
“That last was nobly done, to protect the ladies’ reputations.”
“Stubble it, Peter. He’s mine.”
The brangling might have gone on for days—or decades—but the marquess moved an arm.
“Heaven be praised,” Saint Peter said, predictably. “He lives.”
“Not for long,” the devil said. “If the scavengers don’t kill him for his silver buttons, a little rain and a chill will finish him off, what with that head wound and the other injuries.” He raised one hand, as if to call down the storm.
“You cannot,” Saint Peter thundered. “His time has not come.”
Never being one for formalities, Old Nick brushed that aside. “What’s another hour or day? He’ll be mine soon enough.”
Saint Peter studied the wounded man, looking far deeper than the broken bones. “Perhaps not.”
Nicodemus snorted. “Care to make a wager, old man? Not an actual bet, of course, knowing your attitude toward these things, but just a small bit of play between gentlemen, to liven up the job.”
Saint Peter was tempted. “You’re too sure of yourself, sir. There is always a chance he can reform, you know. A brush with death can do that, show a man the error of his ways.”
“Or it can show him how fragile life is, so he should enjoy his few years to the fullest. He’ll go back to hell-raking as soon as his wounds heal.”
“Not necessarily. That is what redemption is all about. Even the worst libertine can change with enough encouragement. Why, the love of a good woman has been known to work wonders.”
“Bosh. That is the stuff of fiction. Good women have been loving Hardesty for all of his thirty years, to no effect. He’s never loved one enough to care to earn her respect, much less be faithful. I doubt the man has a heart.”
“Oh, he has a heart, all right. And he’ll love the woman I have in mind.”
“Never. Good women do not interest him.”
“This one will. I’ll make sure she is beautiful enough to stir even his jaded senses.”
“I’ll make him blind so he can’t see her.”
Saint Peter was adamant. “She will be so good at heart that her inner beauty will show through.”
The devil sneered. “I’ll make him deaf so he cannot hear this paragon’s sweetness.”
“What? You’d make him deaf and blind, just to prove your point that he cannot be saved?”
Nick shrugged. “We all have our objectives.”
“But he is not ours yet. No,” Saint Peter declared, “I say we let Lord Hardesty’s life take what course it will, without interference, then see who wins his soul.”
Old Nick agreed. “No interference.” He lied, of course. He was the devil.
As soon as Saint Peter left to gather those poor souls who’d perished here with a prayer on their lips, the devil snapped his fingers, calling forth a gremlin. Small, hairy, with big ears, a long tail, and sharp, snaggled teeth, the creature drooled on its master’s cloven feet. “You,” Nicodemus ordered. “You will accompany Lord Hardesty to keep all good women away from him.”
The gremlin scratched its nether regions, then under its armpit.
The devil realized that would not do, so he changed the yellow-eyed demon into a monkey. No, that would not work, either. Not even a decadent English lordling was foolish enough to carry a simian into battle. A goat would be eaten before nightfall, and a snake never could be trusted. He snapped his fingers again. “A dog. Perfect. Do your job and you will be rewarded. Fail and you will be roasted on a spit until hell freezes over.”
*
Hugh awoke in pain and so weak he could barely open his eyes. He could not feel his legs, and wished he could not feel his head. They ought to let a fellow sleep off his overindulgence in peace, he complained to himself, although he could never recall feeling quite this wretched after the worst debauchery. Then he recalled the battle. This was no morning after; this was eternity. He was dead, and right where his nanny, his tutors, the gossip columns, and his father always said he’d end, in hell.
The heat, the pain, the stench, the cries of agony all around were overwhelming. Hugh sank back into whatever limbo he could find. When he returned to awareness the next time, the torture was as intense, but joined with a din that threatened to shatter his skull. He tried to separate the sounds: shouts, growls, and high-pitched, frantic gibberish, although that might have been Spanish spoken so fast he could not translate. Then one voice rose above the others, assured, assertive, and in English, thank whatever powers held sway in this purgatory. “Sit,” the unmistakably feminine voice said. “Sit, sir, or I swear I shall shoot.”
Hugh was already dead, so he wasn’t afraid of the threat, but he tried to sit up anyway. He saw no reason to antagonize the authorities, not on his first day here, at any rate. His legs would not move, his head was too heavy to lift, and his muscles had turned to mush. He sank back against what felt like a bed of nails.
“Oh, you are awake, my lord. Excellent. Please call off your dog so we might see to your wounds.”
He was wounded, not dead? Someone was going to help him, take away his pain? Hugh almost cried in relief. In fact, he was weeping, to his embarrassment. He tried to brush the moisture away from his cheeks but his right arm
appeared to be immobile, strapped to his chest. His left hand discovered a large bandage around his head and over one eye. He managed to open his other eye to look at his rescuer.
She was a tall woman, dressed head to toe in black, with a pinched face and a scowl that might have frightened small children. She wore a bloodstained apron, and had a pistol pointed right at his privates. Maybe he was in hell after all, Hugh thought. No, he could see a large cross on the wall behind the female. Surely the devil did not decorate with religious symbols. He had to be in some kind of Spanish convent, judging from the flock of other black-robed women clutching their Bibles and beads near a door. His aching brain tried to comprehend why one of the nuns was speaking such perfectly accented, educated English, but the more important question was why she was threatening to emasculate him. Hugh tried to ask, but his mouth appeared glued shut. Now that he was aware of it, he was parched and parboiled. “Water,” he tried to beg, but managed only the sound of a fish gasping its last breath.
“Please, my lord, tell your dog to stand down.”
“Don’t…have a…dog,” Hugh managed to croak.
“Tell that to the imp of Satan on your lap. The cur has already bitten two of the sisters. He will not let anyone but the surgeon come near you, and the poor man is run ragged as it is. You wound needs attention, and your next dose of laudanum is due, along with the fever powders the surgeon left.”
Hugh raised his head an inch—all he could accomplish—and found himself staring into odd yellow eyes amid bristly brown fur. “Not mine.”
“Well, he thinks he is, my lord, and no one has been able to convince him otherwise. He saved your life out on the battlefield, chasing away the looters and barking to draw the attention of the litter bearers who had left you for dead. Unfortunately, he insists on guarding you still.”
The dog was a mangy-looking mongrel with big ears and a long, skinny tail. As ugly as the animal was, Hugh was doubly relieved to see him. The English abyss was not aiming for his apparatus, and his legs could move, once the creature shifted off them. He fumbled to pat the coarse-haired head, earning him a wag of that rat’s tail, and a snaggle-toothed dog grin. He’d seen uglier dogs, Hugh was sure, but he could not recall when or where. Then the beast snarled at the nun with the gun.
The woman was growing impatient. “We are too busy for this nonsense, my lord. Tell that ill-mannered menace to be quiet, for he has been disturbing all the other patients. And we really have to change your dressings now before you become infected, so make your watchdog behave or I will shoot him, I swear I will.”
Hugh stroked the dog again. “We need help, old boy. I think the lady means to offer it.”
The dog fixed his yellow-eyed stare on Hugh, then on the woman, as if he were trying to solve a conundrum. What kind of woman was this, he seemed to be asking himself, friend or foe? Sure as Hades, no good woman would shoot a dog. Satisfied, he circled Lord Hardesty’s legs three times, tucked his nose between his paws, and went to sleep.
2
The sisters were still afraid of the dog, so nursing the grievously wounded gentleman fell to Marian. She believed that the nuns were more fearful of the marquess than of the mongrel. His lordship’s valet might have remained behind in Lisbon, but Lord Hardesty’s reputation had followed him to this tiny convent of Saint Esperanza in the desolate, devastated countryside.
Two days after the battle of Cifuente, Hardesty was a legend. The injured foot soldiers were full of his daring rescue, how he had ridden through the dust on a stallion as gray as English fog, delivering orders from headquarters. He had stayed, though, unlike any messenger they had ever seen, or any dandified civilian, for that matter. He had stayed in the fray, rallying the outnumbered, leaderless troop. He had been a madman, the soldiers declared, galloping here, there, sword flashing, a smile on his lips. He had performed more equestrian tricks than any bareback horseman at Astley’s Amphitheatre, they swore, and Marian translated for the nuns. Dodging, bobbing, feinting, weaving in and out, Lord Hardesty had defended the small band of survivors until they could reload and re-form their ranks. He was a true hero, and a true berserker.
Battle rage was not what had the sisters of Saint Esperanza so wary of the English peer. His other, earlier reputation was the one no God-fearing female could accept or ignore. Hardesty was a womanizer by all accounts, an unprincipled, hedonistic rake, who was as successful at his chosen vocation as he was handsome. As far away from London as Hampshire, Marian had read about him often enough in the social gazettes, in association with some dashing widow or straying wife. His name was never linked to the younger, more innocent, marriage-minded ladies of the ton, which, Marian supposed, was to his credit. His eschewing wellborn virgins was about the only thing she had ever heard in his favor.
If she had gone to town for her own delayed presentation, as her parents had wished, they would not have traveled in the same social circles, despite her father’s title. Still, Marian knew enough of the marquess to despise him and all he stood for. Men who used women solely for their own pleasure were lower than the hard-packed Spanish dirt beneath her feet. Marian would not be here on this blasted, blood-soaked Peninsula if not for another such lying, licentious, lizard-tongued blackguard.
So she had warned the mother superior, who had Lord Hardesty moved to a small cell far removed from the nuns’ chambers, as if the wounded man were any threat in his condition. They all thought he would die, and if he did not, that his valet would arrive to tend him. Neither had happened yet, and Marian was left to care for the dastard and his dog while the sisters prayed for him. Considering his dire injuries, and her skill in the sickroom, prayers might not come amiss, Marian reflected.
The nights were the worst. During the day the true nursing sisters were in and out, or as far in as the marquess’s mongrel would permit. The convent’s manservant came to attend to the male patients’ bodily needs, and the surgeon called. Marian could go rest in her own assigned guest room when the other wounded English soldiers did not need comforting, help translating, or letters written back to their wives and sweethearts at home. But at night, which started after evening prayers, nearly at sundown, all was quiet except for Lord Hardesty’s labored breathing and the dog’s snores. No prayers echoed through the stone walls, no conversations, no laughter from the wide-eyed village children who were always underfoot during the day, curious about the British troops.
The marquess could not be left alone through the long, lonely hours of the dark, and Marian’s bedchamber was too far away, so she dragged a palette into his sparse little room. She thought she could nap, but she feared sleeping through one of his lordship’s prescribed medications. Then, too, her borrowed black gown was coarse and uncomfortable, but Sister Emanuella would be scandalized to find Marian in her nightclothes, no matter that the libertine lord was mainly unconscious. Her own frocks would have been just as outrageous in the good sister’s eyes. Mostly Marian sat in the hard wooden chair at his bedside until her back ached and her neck grew stiff, trying to read or do mending by the light of the one meager candle.
She had never mended anything in her life, although she had spent hours at fancy needlework, but no maidservant was going to repair her petticoats or stockings, and who knew how long before she could purchase new ones? Her best efforts would just have to be good enough, like her efforts to repair the battered peer.
While the nuns trusted in their prayers to heal Lord Hardesty, Marian relied on her own determination to keep the man alive. She had made mice feet of her own life; she was going to save his, even if it killed her. She might have wished for a worthier subject, one whose demise would not benefit all womankind, but the marquess’s welfare rested on her shoulders, and she did not intend to drop this burden. She would not fail, not this time. He needed her, and she needed to be a success at something, anything, to prove her own worth, if even to herself.
So she bathed his fevered skin, dribbled broth down his throat, made sure he had both the surgeon’s
medications and Sister Conchita’s herbal infusions, and laudanum when the pain was too fierce. And she commanded him to fight. “Live, damn you,” she ordered when she was sure no one else could hear. “Live so some angry husband can put a sword through your black heart, or some scorned female can shoot you. Live so you can bedevil your poor family for ages more, and keep the scandal-sheet journalists in business. Live, you immoral maggot, live.”
The dog wagged his skinny tail, and the marquess kept breathing.
While he slept, when her eyes grew too weary for sewing or reading, Marian studied this duke’s profligate son who had become a hero of the Peninsula war. With nothing to occupy her thoughts but her own dismal past and more dismal future, Marian contemplated Lord Hardesty, trying to discover what made him so irresistible to women. The bandage around his head obscured most of his features, but Marian knew they were even, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, a wide brow. He had thick auburn hair, where the surgeon had not cut it away to dress the wound under the wrappings. One of his eyes was still swollen shut, all black and blue and purple, but the other was blue-green, with flecks of gold. Despite being glazed with pain and drugs and fever, that eye showed intelligence when he was awake, and awareness of his situation. He was no fool, this gazetted flirt. He knew he was inches away from shaking hands with the hereafter, and seemed to appreciate the efforts to widen the distance.
He had a strong jaw, and laugh lines around his mouth. Marian was sure that was what they were and wished she could see him smile. As handsome as he must be, a smile would make him devastatingly appealing—to a certain kind of woman, of course. That woman would not be disappointed when she unwrapped her gift, either. Marian knew from sponging his lordship’s chest how well muscled he was, how fit, without an ounce of softness to him. There was nothing of the idle wastrel in his physique, so he must exercise regularly. Marian blushed to think of what form a rake’s exertions might take. To maintain this form, he must practice a lot. Oh, my.
Autumn Glory and Other Stories Page 13