Читать книгу A Mistress For Major Bartlett - Энни Берроуз, Annie Burrows - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe guns had ceased. The battle was over, then. Won or lost. Leaving the field to the dead and dying. And the crows.
Flocks of them. Tearing at his back. His head. They’d go for his eyes if they could get at them.
No! He flung his arm up to protect his eyes. And felt considerable surprise that he could move it. Hadn’t been able to move at all before. They’d buried him. Tons of rock, tumbling down, crushing him so he could scarcely breathe, let alone fend off the crows.
Who had dug him out of his grave? He hadn’t been able to save himself. He’d tried. Strained with all his might. He’d broken out into a sweat, that was all, and dragged blackness back round him in a smothering cloak.
But he’d be safer under the earth. Crows wouldn’t be able to get their claws into him any more. Or their beaks.
‘Put me back in the ground,’ he begged.
‘Don’t be silly,’ came a rather exasperated-sounding voice.
‘But I’m dead.’ Wasn’t he? Above the ringing in his ears he’d heard the other damned souls all round him, begging for mercy. Begging for water.
Because it was so hot on the edge of the abyss.
Or was it powder caking his mouth, his nostrils, so that everything stank of sulphur?
‘Is it crows, then, not demons?’ He’d thought they were wraiths, sliding silently between the other corpses scattered round him. But he’d seen knives flashing, silencing the groans. Sometimes they’d looked just like battlefield looters, not Satan’s minions.
But whoever, or whatever it had been before, they’d got their claws deep into what was left of him now.
‘There are no crows in here,’ came the voice again. ‘No demons, either. Only me. And Ben.’
Something cool glided across his brow.
He reached up and grabbed hold of what turned out to be a hand. A human hand. Small, and soft, and trembling slightly.
‘Don’t let them take me. Deserve it. Hell. But please...’ He didn’t know why he was begging. Nobody could save him. He’d begged before, for mercy, just like all the others. Or would have done if he’d been able to make a sound. He’d understood then that he wasn’t even going to be permitted one final appeal. He’d had to stay pinned there, reflecting on every sin he’d committed, remembering every man he’d killed, every act of wanton destruction he’d engineered.
‘Nobody’s going to take you. I won’t let them.’
The voice had a face, this time. The face of an angel. Though—he knew her. She was...she was...
His head hurt too much to think. Only knew he’d seen her before.
That’s right—for a moment, just one, the power of speech had returned. And he’d begged her to save him. It had something to do with the darkness ebbing and hearing the sound of birdsong, and working out that he couldn’t be dead yet, because birds didn’t sing in hell, and that if he wasn’t dead, then there was still hope. And though there had been all those great black creatures clawing at him, tearing at his clothes, he’d found the strength to make one last, desperate stand.
And she’d been there. She’d driven them away. Told them to leave him be. And they’d gone, the whole flock of them. Flapping away on their great ugly wings. And he’d fallen into her arms...
Hazy, what came next. She’d carried him away, somehow, from the mud and the stench. Pillowed on cushions of velvet, soft as feathers.
Was she an angel, then? There seemed no other logical reason to account for it. Beautiful women didn’t suddenly materialise on battlefields and carry dying men away. Which meant he’d been right in the first place.
He was dead.
‘Did you fly?’ How else could she have carried him here? Besides, she was an angel, wasn’t she? Angels had wings. Only hers weren’t black, like the crows. But blue. Palest blue, like sky after the rain had washed it clean.
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ the angel sobbed.
‘Why are you weeping? I’m not worth it.’
‘I’m not weeping.’ The angel sniffed.
‘If I’m dead, why does it still hurt so much?’ he groaned. ‘Look, they know my soul belongs to their master. That’s why they’re clawing at me. Perhaps you should just let me go. No need to cry, then.’
‘No! And it’s not claws. It’s your wounds. Here, try to drink some more of this. It will help with the pain.’
Her arm was under his neck, lifting his head. And she pressed a cup to his lips.
More? She’d given him a drink before?
Ah, yes. He did remember wishing someone would give him something to drink. The thirst had been worse than the pain, in that other place. He’d understood that bit in the bible, then, about the rich man begging Lazarus to dip even one finger in water and cool his tongue. And known, too, that like the rich man he deserved his torment. He’d earned his place in hell.
But his throat was no longer raw. His tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of his mouth. And he could speak.
So she must have given him water, before. Couldn’t have been anyone else. Nobody else gave a damn.
‘I was so thirsty.’ And now he was tired. Too tired to drink any more. Or speak. Or even think.
* * *
It was the longest night of Sarah’s life. He’d been lying there quietly enough until the Rogues left her on her own with him. But from the moment the door shut on them, it seemed to her, he hadn’t given her a moment’s peace.
Not that it was his fault, poor wretch. He couldn’t help starting to come out of his deep swoon. Or being thirsty, or hot, or uncomfortable. Only it was such a tremendous responsibility, caring for someone as ill as that. It was almost impossible to get more than a sip or two of the meadowsweet tea between his lips. And sponging him down didn’t seem to help for more than a minute or two. And then only at first. As the night wore on, his fever mounted and he started muttering all sorts of peculiar, disjointed things about hell, and demons, and thrashing about in the bed, as though trying to dig his way out from under some crushing weight.
And it was downright scary when he started speaking to her in that clear, lucid voice, in such a bizarrely confused manner.
The only thing that calmed him was to answer him as though he was making sense. To assure him that he wasn’t already in hell, whether he deserved it or not. And to promise she wasn’t going to let him die.
She would have promised him anything if only he would lie quietly and let her sleep. She was so tired. She’d hardly slept the night before, in the stable, she’d been so scared. Nor the night before that, she’d been in such a state over the report of Gideon’s death.
Yet, when Madame le Brun came in to ask how her brother was getting on, and if she wanted to take a short break, she found she was unable to leave him for long.
She was glad to have a meal, for she hadn’t eaten a thing all day. And she did feel better for a wash and a change of clothes. But once she’d seen to her immediate needs, she couldn’t rest for worrying about the Major.
Not that she must think of him as the Major, she decided, as she went to take Madame le Brun’s place at his bedside. If he really had been her brother, she would have thought of him as... What was his first name? They called him Tom Cat, so the chances were it was Tom. Well, that was what she must call him, for now. The truth would come out soon enough. The truth about his real identity. And his real name if it wasn’t Tom. And it wasn’t as if it would make any difference to him what she called him, the state he was in tonight.
His eyes flicked open, yet again.
‘It’s so hot. Are you sure...?’
‘Quite sure. This isn’t hell. It’s Brussels,’ she said, dipping the cloth in a basin of tepid water on the bedside table, then smoothing it over his face, his neck and his chest. Though it didn’t seem to be doing much good. His skin felt hotter than ever.
‘But you are my guardian angel, aren’t you?’ he said hopefully. Then groaned and shook his head.
‘Can’t be. Wretches like me don’t deserve guardian angels.’
‘Everyone has a guardian angel,’ she put in hastily. ‘Whether they deserve one or not.’
And if that were true, then she was exactly the sort of guardian angel someone as sinful as Tom probably would get. The sort who wasn’t sure what she was doing. And who was terrified of the responsibility. The sort who simply didn’t measure up. Second-best.
She was even wearing second-hand clothes. Madame le Brun had insisted she couldn’t nurse Major Bartlett wearing her muddy riding habit and had lent her one of the femme de chambre’s gowns. Jeanne wasn’t as tall as Sarah—well, very few women were. And Jeanne was a bit more stout. So that the gown both hung off her, yet was too small at the same time. It was a perfect example of all that was wrong with her situation.
If only she hadn’t been in such a hurry when she’d left Antwerp. If only she’d stopped to pack at least a nightgown. Irritably, she dashed away the single tear that slid down her cheek. How could she be crying over the lack of a nightgown, or anything else of her own to change into come morning, when poor Major Bartlett—no, she had to think of him as Tom—was fighting for his very life?
It was everything that had happened over the last few days catching up with her, that was what it was, not the lack of decent clothing. Ever since the night of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball she’d done nothing but dash from one place to another, in a state bordering on panic. Leaving a trail of personal possessions in her wake.
She could weep when she thought of the trunks and trunks stuffed full of clothes she’d bought during her brief stay in Paris, all stacked in her cramped little room in Antwerp.
If only she could write to Gussie and ask her to send her things here. But that simply wasn’t possible. For one thing she didn’t want Gussie to know exactly where she was, or what she was doing, because it would worry her. And anyway, Gussie wouldn’t send what she needed. She’d send Blanchards instead, with strict instructions to bring her back to safety. Which would mean poor Major—poor Tom—would be left to the care of strangers. Well, technically she was a stranger, too, but he’d asked her to look after him. Not Madame le Brun. Or anyone else. Not even Mary Endacott.
And he was staring at her in a fixed, glazed way as though she was his only hope.
‘Drink this,’ she said, in as calm a voice as she could, holding a cup of meadowsweet tea to his lips. Meek as a lamb, he opened his mouth and swallowed.
Because he trusted her. He didn’t care that she had no experience. Was too feverish to notice what she was wearing. Unlike that day in the park, when he’d run a connoisseur’s eye over the riding habit she’d just obtained from Odette, the brilliant dressmaker they’d discovered in a little street off the Place de la Monnaie.
Oh, my goodness! She’d placed an order with Odette only last week—and Blanchards had been in such a hurry to get them on to the barge bound for Antwerp last Friday that he hadn’t let her go to collect it. She placed Tom’s empty cup on the bedside table, watching his eyelids droop, though her mind was on all those gowns awaiting collection from the shop. She could very easily send a message to the modiste, requesting immediate delivery of everything that was ready and include a list of all the other items she needed, too. Stockings and stays and petticoats and so forth. No doubt the bill for doing her shopping would be steep, but then when had she ever had to worry about money? Not even the management of it. Justin, as head of the family, took care of all that side of things, so that all she had to do was send her bills to whomever he’d appointed to take care of her day-to-day needs. At the moment, it was Blanchards.
That thought brought a grim sort of smile to her lips as she went to the writing desk and turned up the lamp. He’d already written, in response to the explanation she’d scrawled as she’d been cowering in the stable, with Castor in the next stall and Ben at her feet. And his letter had been so horrid and unfeeling she’d crumpled it up and thrown it in the kitchen fire on her way back from fetching the medicine pouch. He’d totally ignored her attempt to reassure Gussie she was safe. He’d accused her of having no consideration for her sister’s delicate condition, of flitting off to Brussels on a wild goose chase, and ordered her to come back, without once acknowledging it might be the depth of grief she felt over losing Gideon that had sparked her rash behaviour.
He hadn’t let Gussie know she wasn’t in Antwerp at all. Because of his over-protective nature, he’d simply told his wife Sarah was with friends and would return soon.
Oh, but she could just see his face, when her bills started turning up in Antwerp. He would be so vexed with her for disobeying his order to return. Doubly vexed at not being able to tell Gussie why he was annoyed, since he’d kept Sarah’s whereabouts secret.
Well, she sniffed, that served him right for keeping secrets from his wife. No man should try to deceive his wife, not even if he thought it was for her own good. Indeed, she was teaching him a valuable lesson.
As well as proving that she could manage without him. That she could manage fine without him.
* * *
Tom blinked at the angel’s fierce profile as she dipped her pen into the inkwell and wrote something down. Her golden hair glowed, the way he’d seen angels in churches glow when the sun shone through the stained-glass windows.
‘You’ve even got a halo,’ he said.
She looked up, startled, and dropped her pen.
‘I’m disturbing your writing. Is it important?’ But, of course, it must be important. Anything an angel wrote was bound to be important. ‘Sorry.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry. It’s just a list.’
‘Of my sins?’ Then he would be sorry. ‘Have you got enough paper?’
She came close. Floated towards him on a violet-scented cloud.
‘I have plenty of paper, thank you.’
She sat on a chair next to his bed. The wicker work creaked.
He was in a bed. She was on a chair. He frowned.
‘This is a strange sort of hell.’
‘That’s because it isn’t hell,’ she said in that clipped, practical voice he was coming to recognise. ‘It’s Brussels.’
‘Not hell? Why not?’
‘Never you mind why not,’ she said sternly. ‘Come on, drink some of this.’
‘Why?’
‘It will make you feel better.’
‘Just looking at you makes me feel better.’
‘I wish that were true,’ she said tartly. ‘Then looking after you wouldn’t be half so much work.’
‘Why are you doing this, then?’
‘Because...I...I...well, if you don’t get well again I will never forgive myself.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘I will feel as if it is if you die on me,’ she said glumly.
‘You don’t want me to die?’
‘Of course I don’t want you to die. How can you even ask?’
‘Better dead. Nothing to live for really. Just got into the habit.’
‘Well it’s about the only habit of yours, from what I’ve heard of you, that I don’t want you to break.’
‘You’re crying again. Didn’t mean to make you cry.’
‘Well, then stop talking about dying and concentrate on getting better.’
‘And now you’re angry.’
‘Of course I’m angry. Hasn’t there been enough death already? Stop it, Tom. Stop it right now.’
He reached out and found her hand.
‘Sorry. Will try and do better.’
‘Promise me?’
‘If it means that much to you,’ he said slowly, hardly able to credit that anyone could really care that much whether he lived or died, ‘then, yes.’
After that, every time he felt the pit yawning at his back, he reached for the angel. She was always there. Even when he was too exhausted to drag his eyes open and look for her, he could tell she was near. He only had to smell the faint fragrance of violets for a wave of profound relief to wash through him. For it was her scent. And it meant she hadn’t left him.
He’d thought he would always be alone. But she hadn’t left him to his fate. And had promised she wouldn’t.
‘Hush,’ she whispered, smoothing that cool balm over his burning face and neck. ‘Don’t fret. You are going to be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.’
* * *
He doubted her only the once, very briefly. When he thought he saw the brigade surgeon hovering over him like a great vulture.
She couldn’t have saved his life, only to turn him over to that ghoul, could she? The man liked nothing better than cutting up poor helpless victims, to see what made them tick. Oh, he said he was trying to cure them, but he spent far too much time writing up his findings in all those leather journals. The journals that were going to make his name some day. His findings, he called them.
Cold sweat broke out all over him at the prospect of falling into his hands. He’d cut him up, for sure. Lay his kidneys out in a tray.
‘Lieutenant...’ He had to screw up his face. ‘What’s the name?’ Foster, that was it. ‘Angel...’ He thought he didn’t care whether he lived or died, but the prospect of being dissected in the name of science?
‘Don’t let him cut me up.’
* * *
Lieutenant Foster straightened up, and gave Lady Sarah a hard stare.
‘You can see how confused he is. Doesn’t know his own name. Seems to think he’s a lieutenant. This is often the case with head wounds. Even though the skull itself is not fractured, injury to the brain can leave a patient with no memory, or impeded memory, or even physical impairment.’
‘But he is going to get well, isn’t he? I mean, he won’t die, now?’
‘There’s no telling, with head wounds. Men can appear to be getting well, then suddenly collapse and die,’ he said, looking more animated for a moment or two. ‘Delicate organ, the brain. All you can do is keep him as quiet and as still as you can. Let nature take its course.’
The surgeon’s eyes flicked round Sarah’s room—no, the sickroom—lingering for a moment or two on the pile of material she’d been cutting up for bandages, the bedside table with the bowl of water and sponge, pausing with a perplexed frown at the potted geranium on the windowsill, that Madame le Brun had brought in to cheer the place up.
‘There is nothing I can do for him that you can’t do just as well here,’ he finally declared, brusquely. And marched out of the room.
She hadn’t expected an army surgeon to have the bedside manner of a family doctor, naturally, but couldn’t he have spared just a moment or two to advise her? Encourage her? At least let her know she’d done an adequate job of stitching Tom’s head? And congratulate her for getting his fever down?
No wonder Cooper had insisted she should nurse the Major herself and keep him out of hospital. She wouldn’t trust a dog to that cold-eyed man’s dubious care.
As if he could read her thoughts, Ben whined and nudged her hand with his nose.
‘You are supposed to be in the stable,’ she said with mock sternness, though she ruffled his ears at the same time. ‘Guarding my horse.’ Although Castor didn’t need guarding so closely now. Since the news of Bonaparte’s flight from the battlefield had circulated, the city had started to become almost civilised again, from what Madame le Brun reported. Which was both a good and a bad thing. Good in the sense that England and her allies had defeated Bonaparte’s pretensions. But somewhat dangerous for her reputation, if any of her old crowd discovered she’d returned ahead of them and was holed up with a notorious rake.
‘We both need to keep our heads down,’ she said. ‘Or we’ll be in trouble. But I can’t be cross with you, you clever dog, for bounding up here the minute that nasty doctor came calling. I felt so much better with you standing guard over both me and Tom. Even so, now he’s gone I feel completely drained,’ she told Ben, before sitting down by the bed and closing her eyes. The dog laid his head on her knee in what felt remarkably like a gesture of comfort. For a moment or two she just rested. Almost dozed. But then Ben whined and pawed at her knee.
‘What is it?’
But as soon as the words left her mouth she saw why Ben had roused her. Tom was awake. He was lying there looking at her with a faint frown creasing his brow, as though he wasn’t too sure who she was. Though for some reason, she felt his confusion was no longer due to fever. His eyes were clear and focused steadily on her. In fact, he looked like any man who’d just woken up in a strange place with no recollection of how he’d come to be there.
A pang of concern and self-doubt had her leaning forward to lay her hand on his forehead. But, no—the fever hadn’t returned.
‘He’s gone?’
The Major’s voice was hoarse, but for the first time, what he said actually made sense.
‘The doctor? Yes.’
He reached up and seized her hand. ‘You didn’t let him take me. Thank you.’ A little shiver went right through her at the look of adoration blazing from his clear green eyes. Oh, no wonder he had such a reputation with the ladies, if he looked at them all like that.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ she said, a little perturbed by both the fear the company surgeon could inspire in potential patients, and the feelings Tom could provoke in her now he had his wits about him. It was a warning that she was going to have to sharpen her own.
‘I promised I would look after you myself.’
The grip of his hand tightened. ‘Do you always keep your promises?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
His mouth tightened fractionally, as if there was no of course about promises. But then in his world there probably wasn’t. A man of his type probably made dozens of promises he had no intention of keeping. And she’d do well to remember it.
‘I am in your hands, then.’
‘Yes.’
He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Thank God,’ he mumbled. And promptly fell asleep, as though a great weight had rolled off his shoulders.
He trusted her.
Just as those Rogues had trusted her.
Before she had a chance to let it go to her head, she reminded herself that anyone would be preferable to that doctor, who seemed to view the injured as interesting cases rather than people with feelings.
Though Tom was making her feel as if it were more than that, by the way he hadn’t let go of her hand, even though he’d fallen asleep. As though he really, really needed her.
It would wear off, once he recovered, and got to know her better, of course. Though for now, why shouldn’t she bask in his apparent need? It felt good. Since there was nobody here to tell her how she ought to behave, and think, and feel, she could make up her own mind.
She decided that even though he was a rake, whose mere glance could send heated shivers down a woman’s spine, there was no harm in just sitting holding his hand while he was asleep. Besides, she was so tired. All she wanted to do was just sit and rest for a while.
So she sat there, her hand in his, half-drowsing, until a knock on the door heralding the arrival of Madame le Brun, with a tray of food, jolted her awake.
Sarah let go of his hand to stretch and yawn as Madame placed the tray none too gently on the bedside table.
‘That smells good,’ croaked Tom. ‘What is it?’
Sarah glanced at the contents of the tray. ‘Some broth and some bread. And wine.’
‘Nectar.’ He sighed.
‘Ah! He is awake,’ said Madame, ‘and wanting his dinner.’
‘That is a good sign, isn’t it? It must mean he is getting well.’
‘Yes. But he is a strong one, that one,’ said Madame, casting her eye over his naked torso with what looked like feminine appreciation. And for the first time, Sarah looked, too. At least, for the first time since the battle, she permitted herself to look at him as a man, not just a patient.
She’d thought him handsome before. When she’d seen him in the park, fully clothed. But she’d never run her eyes over his torso, the way she was doing now. With appreciation of his muscled beauty.
She blushed at the inappropriate turn her mind was taking. She was his nurse. She was supposed to be convincing Madame le Brun that he was her brother. She had no business going all gooey-eyed because he had the kind of body artists would want to sculpt in marble.
‘Will you help me to sit him up?’ she asked Madame with what she hoped sounded like brisk efficiency. ‘Then we can feed him some broth.’
‘I can do it,’ he grumbled.
But he couldn’t. So between them, Sarah and Madame le Brun propped the Major up on a mound of pillows and fed him soup until his eyelids started to flutter closed.
‘Weak as a kitten,’ he muttered in disgust as they helped him lie down again.
‘But now you are eating and the fever has gone, you will be up and going around in no time,’ Madame chided him gently as he drifted back to sleep.
That was good news. Before much longer he wouldn’t need Sarah any more. He would be up and going around, as Madame so quaintly put it. She wouldn’t need to sit over him, alternately sponging his overheated body, or covering him when he shivered.
She would be able to leave, like as not, before anyone discovered she’d had anything to do with him at all. And her reputation would remain intact. She would be safe.
So why did she feel like crying again?
