Susanna Fraser

by A Dream Defiant

  “He’s a freeborn black man, like me,” he said, somehow guessing how she’d meant to finish the sentence. “There are more of us than you’d think in London. Runaways, freed slaves, sailors between ships, a few families that have been there for generations. More men than women, though. Miriam didn’t lack for suitors.”

  “Oh.” She felt suddenly foolish and provincial. “I’ve never been to London,” she admitted.

  “I haven’t seen much of it myself, since I stayed with the regiment. I visited my family when I could when we were at Shorncliffe, but I was just a young private then. We didn’t often get leave to visit our mamas and daddies when we were supposed to be on guard against Boney invading.” He grinned, a brief white flash in the darkness. “I never thought we’d be taking the fight to him, in those days.”

  “No one did.” She could hardly believe it now. They were getting close to France, and even she had heard the stories of how the French emperor had lost an unimaginably vast army in Russia last year and was now having to scramble to keep his crown. If only Sam had shown more sense, he could’ve lived through to victory, and they could have gone home, together. Tears rose up in her eyes again. “Why did he think I’d want this thing?” She tried to keep her voice from breaking, but didn’t quite succeed. “I’d rather have him.”

  Elijah rested a cautious hand on her shoulder and, when she didn’t push him away, gently drew her in to nestle against his sturdy bulk. Before tonight he’d never touched her. “I know,” he said.

  “Sam didn’t think. I—I loved him, but he never did think.” She wished the words unsaid as soon as they were out of her mouth, but they were true.

  “Most people don’t—or not very often.”

  “I shouldn’t be saying this. I shouldn’t. If Sam had thought, he wouldn’t have married me, and then where would I be?”

  Elijah vented a noncommittal sort of sound that somehow welcomed her to continue without pushing her to do so if she’d rather keep her counsel. She’d never told anyone in the army how she’d come to marry Sam before, not even Luisa. It was too sordid a story for friendly talk over a shared meal. “I’d been turned off from my place as a housemaid at Aspwell Park without a character.”

  “Housemaid, not cook?—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted you.”

  She shook her head. “Housemaid. Lady Bassett already had a cook, and I was only seventeen, too young for such a post even if she’d needed one. I would rather have been a scullery maid, but everyone said I ought to be happy to be a housemaid, since they have a higher rank and better pay. But I would’ve been happier in the kitchens, and John Bassett most likely never would’ve seen me.”

  “I think I know how this ends.” Elijah loosened his grip on her shoulders but didn’t release her.

  She was glad of the continued contact. He was so warm, so solid. “You probably do. He was just down from Cambridge, with nothing better to do than lounge about waiting to inherit. He followed me about and tried to flirt with me, and when that didn’t get him anywhere, tried to force his attentions upon me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It happens,” she said. It was so long ago now. It had altered the course of her life, but she couldn’t imagine going back. She’d probably still be a housemaid. Sam would’ve married someone else, and she would be much the poorer for the loss of him and of Jake.

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “The world is full of things that shouldn’t happen, but do every day. It could’ve been worse. Lady Bassett happened to walk in, the first time her son actually attacked me. So she stopped him before...before anything too dreadful could happen. But rather than believe the worst of him, she declared me a temptress and said I should go to London and get my living on my back like others of my sort. There I was, all my family dead, with no home and no idea how to find honest work. The Merrifields took me in. Sam’s sister, Jenny, is just my age, and she was always my dearest friend. Our mothers had been great friends, too, and they said they were glad to have me for her sake. A few weeks later Sam asked me to marry him. It surprised me—I’d never thought of him that way before—yet I liked him very well, and I thought it would be better to be a wife than to go into service again. But he didn’t have steady work in the village, not enough to keep a wife, and soon enough a baby on the way, so when the recruiting sergeant came through town...you know the rest.”

  Elijah was silent for a moment, and Rose almost regretted having told him so much. Yet it was a relief to talk of it, to mark the path that had brought her to this spot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m glad Sam was there for you then.”

  “I wish he was here for me now.” She sighed, shrugged and sat up straight. Elijah dropped his arm, though he stayed close beside her. “Why did you do it, Sam?” she asked the darkness. She still clutched the necklace, which had grown warm under her touch. “What did he think I’d do with this? It’s not as though I could wear it.”

  “He said you could have what you want—no, that’s not it. He said you could be what you want, now.”

  Now all became clear. “The Red Lion.”

  “What?”

  “An inn in our village. It served the most dreadful food you can imagine.”

  Elijah laughed softly in the darkness. “I’ve lived almost my entire life in an army regiment. I can imagine some very bad food.”

  She couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “I can see that. Well, it was as bad as food can be when it ought to be good. There was enough of it, and good English beef and mutton that hadn’t been walked half to starvation before it was slaughtered, so it should’ve tasted better than anything I cook here, but it didn’t. I used to dream of being able to buy the inn so I could make Aspwell Heath a place where everyone on the Great North Road would stop to linger over their food, even the ones who were eloping to Scotland. Sam said when he enlisted that after the war we’d go home and do just that. I didn’t know how he expected to save the money, even then, and I’d certainly given up on any such thing by the time we’d been here a month, but he kept talking about it, that he’d get the money, somehow or other.”

  “Hm. Is that still what you want?”

  Was it? Rose clutched the necklace tighter and considered. “I’m not sure,” she said after a moment. “Most people only stopped there long enough to change horses.” She shook her head. “If I’m going to cook, I don’t want it to be for people who don’t slow down long enough to taste it properly. Half the joy of it is knowing that people like my cooking. Sam always did. You do.”

  “You’re the best cook I’ve ever met. Even better than my mother.”

  “High praise indeed.”

  “She is very good. She was Colonel Dryhurst’s cook, while my father was his clerk.”

  Now, that was a thought. Could she, Rose, get a similar post? Somehow Mrs. Cameron had managed it while raising a son and a daughter. Possibly some officer who liked to set a fine table might take a similar interest in her.

  “I might enjoy that sort of work,” she said. “Cook in a household that appreciated good cooking. Only, I suppose that sort wants chefs and not cooks, and French ones by preference.”

  “If the necklace is real, and you can find a way to sell it, you won’t need to work for anyone,” Elijah pointed out. “If you can’t buy your Red Lion outright, I’m sure you could at least lease it, or some other inn if it’s not for sale, and work toward owning it.”

  She frowned thoughtfully into the night. Now that it was no longer impossible, she found she still liked to imagine herself mistress of the Red Lion. And she’d be home at last. There was one difficulty, however. “When I marry, it’ll be my husband’s necklace—but wait. I don’t have to marry again, either.” Suddenly the world seemed large, large and open, and she blinked back tears that carried more relief than sadness.

>   “No, not unless you want to someday. You can take Jake and go home to England now. You won’t have to tell about the necklace to pay your passage. I took enough good plain silver coins from that baggage train to pay your way many times over.”

  “I couldn’t take so much from you—”

  “It wouldn’t be taking. You can repay me, when I’m back in England, if your inn will have a place for such as me to eat along with all the quality who’ll be clamoring for a spot at your table.”

  She laughed. “I’ll always make a place for you. But I have coin enough of my own to pay our passage—that’s what Luisa took for our share.”

  “Good, then. But I’ll still stop at your inn, after we win and the world is at peace.”

  “That will be a happy day indeed.” Rose yawned, tired despite herself. “I suppose we should try to sleep. Thank you, Elijah.”

  “What for?”

  “What for? Why, for everything. For bringing this to me, for keeping guard tonight—and for helping me see I really am free now.” She clutched the chain of rubies tighter. “I can go home.”

  “I’ll miss your cooking more than I can say,” he said lightly, “but I’ll do anything I can to speed your path.”

  “Thank you,” she repeated. Impulsively she leaned over to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head at just the wrong moment and her lips found his.

  She froze in pure shock, as did he. Then he slid a hand around to the back of her neck and held her there. All she could feel was his fingers threading into her hair, deft and questing, and his lips on hers, warm and seeking and hungry. The hand and lips felt good, they belonged. She kissed him back, for a heartbeat or two, until she realized what she was doing. Planting a hand on his chest, she pushed him away and jumped to her feet.

  “I didn’t mean to—” she began.

  “I’m sorry—” he said at the same time.

  She brushed anxious hands down her dress. “I should check on Jake. And—and sleep. The nights are so short.” The moon was already sinking, and Elijah was nothing but a dark form in the darkness. She was glad. She couldn’t bear to see him just now.

  “The necklace?”

  It was still gripped in her right hand. “I have it.”

  “Hide it well. Though, I should tell you—Lewis knows about it, too. He came upon us at the last. I swore him to secrecy, and I hope he remembers.”

  Rose frowned. There was no harm in Lewis, yet he could be thoughtless. But the rubies, the kiss—it was all too much to take in. “I’ll hide it,” she promised. “I know the perfect place.”

  “Good night, then. And I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t speak of it.” Turning on her heel, she fled for her tent.

  Chapter Four

  “Fool,” Elijah muttered under his breath as he stretched out on the most level bit of ground he could find and wrapped himself in his blanket. Of course Rose hadn’t meant to kiss him. They’d simply both turned at the same time, and their lips had collided with no more intent than when a man came around a blind corner and crashed into another.

  He should have drawn away. He should’ve tried to laugh it off. What had he been thinking, to grab her by the hair and try to make an awkward blunder into a true kiss? She didn’t want that, couldn’t possibly, not with her husband dead less than a day. Not a minute before, she’d said she didn’t want to marry again at all. Moreover, she’d rejoiced in her freedom.

  Though he was far from comfortable, he held himself perfectly still while Rose yet stirred in her tent. The celebration around the big tents had at last quieted to a few low murmurs and the occasional bark of laughter, so he could hear her every move as she lay down and then tossed and turned, trying to compose herself for sleep.

  His cock stood to attention, so he thought of ugly, miserable things—of winter marches followed by nights camping cold, wet and hungry, of the look and smell of a battlefield once the fighting was done, of adding the names of the dead to the regimental account books—until his willful member took the hint and went slack again. He’d taken this post tonight to keep unwanted suitors away from Rose, not to join their ranks himself.

  Damn Farlow for even mentioning the notion that he, Elijah, might marry Rose. He’d been doing such a good job, almost from the moment he’d met her, of concealing his desire for her. She and Sam had come to the army together as part of a draft of recruits sent from England almost four years before, with her one of the fortunate few wives who won the lottery to accompany their husbands, to draw rations for herself and her children and to earn what coin she could doing laundry and mending—and in Rose’s case, cooking—for the officers.

  Everyone had noticed her. Elijah had even heard Colonel Dryhurst praising the beautiful Mrs. Merrifield to Major Upjohn, not lustfully, but saying that looking at her was like looking at the best parts of England itself, all rich and growing and fertile.

  Elijah had done his best not to stare at her too much in those early days, and he’d refrained from adding his voice to the chorus of admiration of Rose and envy of Sam that had risen up through the company. But about a week after the Merrifields’ arrival, he’d awakened from a vivid dream in which he and Rose had been all alone, and all naked, in a vast green meadow near Shorncliffe where the regiment had sometimes gone for maneuvers. For the next two months he’d avoided her presence as best he could in a company that, even with all its wives, children and followers, numbered barely over a hundred souls. Then one evening, Sam had diffidently invited him to dinner. Elijah had heard much praise of Rose’s cooking by then, and his curiosity and desire for something better than the usual camp swill had overcome his reticence lest he get in the habit of seriously coveting his neighbor’s wife.

  After that night, he’d almost been able to regard her as nothing more than a friend. It had helped that by then she’d been heavily pregnant with Jake. It hadn’t made her any less beautiful, but it had served as a stark, tangible reminder that she belonged to someone else. So he’d managed to appreciate that she was not only beautiful, but clever and practical and good-humored, without wishing for what couldn’t be.

  Until now. When it wasn’t wrong anymore. No, he corrected himself. It was still wrong. Just because it was no longer a violation of the laws of God and man alike to want her didn’t make it right. He allowed himself to toss and shift now until he found a more comfortable position. Rose was asleep. He could hear her breathing, so near she was and so still the camp had grown. Good God, how he wanted her.

  But he couldn’t have her. He closed his eyes and made himself breathe, breathe and not think. Eventually the hard labor of the day caught up with him, and he drifted off to a fitful slumber.

  He awoke when someone tripped over him in the deadest hour of the night.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. The intruder let out a startled “Oof,” little Jake whimpered, and Rose cried out. Meanwhile, he came to alertness, shook off his blanket and pushed the man bodily off him.

  The intruder had brought a rushlight, damn him, and its flames were beginning to lick at the tangled canvas of Rose’s tent, which had collapsed when he blundered into it.

  “Rose!” Elijah shouted. He scrambled to his feet and tugged at the canvas, heedless of the flames, until he pulled it loose from Rose and Jake’s squirming forms and flung it aside. The fire licked at Rose’s skirts. She screamed and kicked, but couldn’t beat it out while her arms were burdened with Jake. Elijah flung himself atop both of them, smothering the fire.

  As soon as he was sure it was out, he sat up. He had to catch the intruder before it was too late.

  He needn’t have worried. George Yonge sat on his haunches, gaping at the still-burning canvas.

  Elijah tackled him, slamming his shoulders into the dirt. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I could ask the same thing of you. Let me
go.” Yonge squirmed and shoved, but Elijah held him down all the harder.

  By then the camp had roused around them. More men had come with torches, Lieutenant Farlow at their head, clad only in a nightshirt. Jemmy Whelan had doused the burning canvas with a bucket of water and was stomping out the remaining flames with booted feet.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Farlow asked in a ringing, carrying voice.

  “This big black bastard tackled me,” Yonge cried, all affronted dignity.

  Elijah bit back a snarl. “This white bastard,” he said as levelly as he could manage, “tripped over me, carrying a rushlight, trying to get into Rose’s tent, which he knocked down and set aflame. The rest, you can see.”

  “And what were you doing in her tent?” Roberts asked.

  There were some ribald mutterings from the little crowd surrounding them, but Rose’s voice rose above them, and above her son’s crying. “He was outside of my tent, keeping guard. I thought I might have...unwanted visitors tonight, so I asked him to stay. It appears I did right.”

  Her voice shook, and in the flickering torchlight she was whiter than Elijah had ever seen her, the rosy cheeks that made her name suit her so well drained and bloodless. It could be fear and weariness alone, but he remembered those terrible flames licking at her skirt, and he saw the singe marks on the light-colored fabric almost up to her knee. “She was burned,” he said in place of any outraged self-defense. “I don’t know how badly.” Then rage took possession of him again, and he slammed Yonge back into the ground. “You could’ve killed her, you fool.”

  “Corporal,” Lieutenant Farlow said in a low, level voice Elijah had never heard from him before. “He’ll be dealt with.”

  It was enough to make Elijah see how he must look—dangerous, angry, possessed by the rage he never let rule him even on the battlefield where he was allowed to be terrifying. He took a deep breath and sat back, though not far enough to let Yonge get up.