Buch lesen: «A Mistress For Major Bartlett»

Chapter One

Sunday, 18th June—1815

‘Limber up, fast as you can!’ Colonel Randall rode up to Major Bartlett and pointed to a spot to the rear. ‘We are heading to the ridge up yonder. You will recall we came in that way yesterday, past a place—what was it called?—Hougoumont. The French are massing their heavy cavalry between the château and the Charleroi road. Take up your position between the two infantry squares up there. And be quick about it!’

Major Bartlett kept his face impassive as he saluted. Quick? That was going to be a relative term given the sodden state of the ground.

‘Right, lads,’ he said, turning to his men. ‘You heard the Colonel. At the double!’

The speed at which they turned the gun carriages and started ploughing their way across the field had much more to do with the shells exploding all around them, spraying them with mud, than willingness to obey their commanding officer. The sooner they got to higher ground, the sooner they could start inflicting some damage on the Frenchmen currently trying to blow them to kingdom come. Not that Major Bartlett had any complaints. He had a rather elastic attitude to obeying orders himself. In any other unit his tendency to interpret orders to suit himself would have got him up on a charge—indeed, had done so on several occasions. Only Colonel Randall had appreciated that his ability to think on his feet, rather than dumbly obeying orders, could be an advantage, taking him into his unit and giving him promotion.

Still, when he glanced across the ridge, and saw that his team had beaten Major Flint’s to reach their designated position, he felt a twinge of pride in his men. They’d worked with a swiftness and efficiency he’d drilled into them, even if, at this moment, they’d worked the way they had because their hides depended on it.

Flint’s guns were ready to fire mere seconds after his own. Even Rawlins, who’d only been promoted a matter of days before, had his guns in position not long after. And just as well. The French cavalry were approaching at the trot.

The first salvo his men fired mowed down the leaders. But they kept coming. Big bastards. On big horses.

‘Dear lord, they’ll charge right over us!’

Major Bartlett whirled round. Had one of his own men dared say that?

‘Not Randall’s Rogues, they won’t,’ he snarled. ‘Remember our motto—always victorious!’ By any means. Particularly when sent behind enemy lines, where his, and his men’s, talents for causing mayhem had so often been given free rein.

‘Aye,’ roared Randall, drawing his sword and holding it aloft. ‘Semper Laurifer! Ready, Rogues... Fire!’

The guns roared again. Horses and men fell. Smoke swirled round the scene, blotting out the sight of the dead and dying, though Bartlett could still hear their screams and groans.

And then he heard cheering. From the infantry squares behind him. The cavalry charge was over. This one, anyway. He cast a quick, appraising glance over his men. All of them steadily reloading, preparing for the next attack, not wasting their time cheering, or capering about and having to be pushed back into position.

At this point, between cavalry charges, their orders had been to retreat into the infantry squares for cover. But his men, seasoned veterans, knew as well as he did that if they didn’t stay right where they were, the squares would break and scatter. They’d seen it happen elsewhere already today. The infantry—with little or no experience—were watching the way the Rogues calmly went about their business as though those huge French horses were no more than skittles to knock down. Their staunch disregard of danger was probably the only thing giving them any hope.

Hope—hah! It was the one thing neither he, nor his men, had felt for a very long time. They were the damned. Doomed to death, one way or another. They just preferred to take as many of the murdering French to hell with them as they could. At least they could die like men, if they did so in defence of their country, instead of dancing on the end of a rope.

‘Here they come again, lads,’ he heard Randall shout.

And then came the thunder of hooves. The roar of the guns. The smoke, and the screams, and the mud, and the carnage.

And his men reloaded and fired. And loaded and fired.

And still there was no end to the French.

The next morning

Lady Sarah Latymor rubbed her eyes and peered up at the manger above her head. Could she really make out wisps of straw sticking through the grating, or was it just wishful thinking?

In the stall next to hers, she could hear Castor shuffling about, lipping at whatever provender Pieter had placed in his own manger. She reached out her hand and laid the palm against the partition. Being able to hear her horse, Gideon’s last gift to her, moving about in his stall during the night, had been all that had kept her flayed nerves from giving way altogether. But it looked as though the worst day of her life was over now. She could, at last, make out the pale rectangle of her hand against the planking. Dawn was definitely breaking. And Brussels was quiet. Though Madame le Brun had warned her that French troops might overrun the city during the night, they’d never come. Which meant the Allies must have won. She could come out of hiding.

And continue her quest.

To find out what had really happened to Gideon.

He couldn’t be dead. He was her twin. If his soul had really departed this earth, she would feel it, wouldn’t she? Her stomach twisted and dropped, just as it had when her brother-in-law Lord Blanchards had broken the news. While her sister Gussie had broken down and wept, Sarah had stood there, shaking her head. Grown more and more angry at the way they both just accepted it.

Blanchards had brushed aside her refusal to believe that the hastily scrawled note he held in his hand could possibly be delivering news of that magnitude. He’d practically ordered her to her room, where he no doubt expected her to weep decorously, out of sight, so that he could concentrate on comforting and supporting his wife.

Well, she hadn’t wept. She’d been too angry to weep. That anger had simmered all night and driven her, on Sunday morning, all the way to Brussels, the only place where she was likely to be able to find out what had really happened to Gideon. Had driven her about half a mile along the road to the Forest of Soignes before she’d been beaten back by a troop of Hussars, claiming the French had won the battle, and were right on their heels.

Hussars, she snorted, sitting up and pushing a hank of hair off her face. What did they know?

As if in agreement, Ben, the dog she’d teamed up with in the wake of the Hussars’ cowardly scramble to safety, sat up, stretched and yawned.

‘Did you have a lovely sleep, Ben?’ she asked as the dog came to swipe his tongue over her face in morning greeting. ‘Yes, you did. You marvellous, fierce creature,’ she added, ruffling his ears. ‘I could feel you lying at my feet all night long and knew that if any Frenchman dared to set one toe inside this stable, you’d bite him with those great big teeth of yours.’ She’d felt safer with him to guard her than she would have done had she had a loaded pistol in her hand.

‘Woof,’ Ben agreed, settling back to give his ear a vigorous scratch with one hind paw.

‘Well, I may not have had a wink of sleep,’ she informed him as she flung her blanket aside, ‘but at least I didn’t waste all those sleepless hours. I have,’ she said, reaching for the jacket of her riding habit, which she’d rolled up and used for a pillow, ‘come up with a plan. We’re going to find Justin.’

She frowned at the jacket. Pale blue velvet was not the ideal material for rolling up and pillowing a lady’s head. Especially not a lady who’d taken refuge in a stable. She shook it, brushed off the straw and slid her arms into the sleeves.

Ben stopped scratching, and gave her a hard stare.

‘It’s no use telling me that now the battle is over, I should go to the authorities and ask them for details,’ she informed him testily. ‘They would simply order me to go home, like a good girl, and wait for official notification. Which would get sent to Blanchards. Well,’ she huffed as she went to rummage in her saddlebag—which she’d draped over the stall door in case she needed it in a hurry—and came up with a comb, ‘they did send notification to Blanchards, didn’t they? And much good it did me.’

She raised a hand to her head, discovered that most of her braids were still more or less intact and promptly thought better of attempting anything much in the way of grooming.

‘And anyway,’ she said, shoving the comb back into the saddlebag, ‘if I walked into headquarters, unescorted, they’d want to know what I was doing in Brussels on my own. And don’t say how would they know I’d come here on my own, Ben, it’s obvious. If Blanchards had come to Brussels with me, he would be the one at headquarters asking the questions. See?’

Ben shuffled forward a little and licked his lips hopefully.

‘Yes, I do have more sausage in here,’ she told him, dipping her hand once more into the saddlebag. ‘You may as well have it,’ she said, breaking off a piece and tossing it to the straw at his feet. Her stomach was still coiled into the hard knot that had made eating virtually impossible since the moment Blanchards had told her Gideon was dead. Though she’d still packed plenty of provisions when she’d run away from Antwerp, thinking it might take her a day or so to locate Gideon, or his commanding officer, Colonel Bennington Ffog.

She wrinkled her nose as Ben disposed of the sausage in a few gulps. Why she’d thought, however briefly, that Bennington Ffog might be of any use, she couldn’t imagine. It would be far better to find her oldest brother, Justin.

‘Now, Justin might be cross with me,’ she said as she pushed open the stall door and ventured into the aisle, ‘but he won’t send me back to Antwerp without telling me what I need to know first. He might be the stuffiest, most arrogant, obnoxious man,’ she said, peering out into the stable yard to make sure nobody was about. ‘He may give me a thundering scold for leaving the safety of Antwerp, against his explicit orders, but he does at least understand what Gideon means to me.’

With Ben trotting at her heels, Sarah made her way to the pump, where she quickly rinsed her face and hands. Ben took the opportunity to relieve himself and have a good sniff round.

When she made for the stable again, though, he was right beside her.

‘Good boy,’ she said, pausing to pat his head, before reaching for her riding hat, which she’d set on one of the doorposts.

‘The only problem is,’ she said, holding her hat in place with one hand, while thrusting as much of her hair as she could under it, ‘I’m not entirely sure where to find him. However,’ she added, deftly securing everything in place with a hatpin, ‘Mary Endacott will.’

Ben dropped down on to his haunches, tilting his head to one side.

‘Yes, I know. She doesn’t like me. And I don’t blame her. But you have to admit, since she’s lived in Brussels for years, and knows everyone, she’s bound to know who we can ask for his direction if she doesn’t already have it. And what’s more,’ she added, when he didn’t look convinced, ‘she’s the one person who is likely to want to know it just as much as I do, since the poor girl is in love with him.’

She lowered her head to fumble the buttons of her jacket closed as her mind dwelt on the last time she’d seen Mary, when Justin had been ordering her to leave Brussels, too. If she’d done as he’d told her...

No. Mary wouldn’t have left, not even had they still been betrothed. The school she ran was her livelihood. And Justin had forfeited any authority he might have thought he had over her the minute he broke off their relationship in such a brutal fashion.

Besides, she wasn’t the sort of woman to give up hope and sit about weeping, any more than Sarah was. Even after Justin had said all those horrid things, Mary would want to make sure he’d survived the battle, even if he didn’t want to have anything more to do with her.

She lifted her head, squared her shoulders and strode out of the stall on her way back to the water pump. This time she saw Pieter shambling across the yard, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

‘Be so good as to saddle my horse,’ she said.

He hesitated for a moment, only tugging at his cap and making for the stable once he saw Ben come trotting out and joining Lady Sarah at the pump, where she was now filling her water bottle.

‘I’m so glad I found you yesterday,’ she said, bending down to stroke Ben’s head as he lapped up the water splashing to the cobbles. ‘At first I just thought stumbling across the regimental mascot was a sign I was in exactly the right place, at the right time. But today I’m thankful that having you with me means I won’t have to face Mary alone.’ It wasn’t going to be easy. Mary had no reason to greet her warmly. Yet what was the worst Mary could do? Show her the door? Or not even let her inside? What was that, compared to what had already happened? If Gideon really was dead.

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 all 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.