Читать книгу A Rose for Major Flint - Louise Allen - Страница 13

Chapter Five

Adam crashed into the room like a sudden clap of thunder. The door slammed back against the wall as he strode in swearing and came to a fulminating halt in the middle of the room.

Rose dropped the shirt she was mending and stared. He appeared not to have seen her sitting in the corner. ‘My own damned sister! The—’ then something in French that Rose did not understand ‘—lascivious sod! I’ll gut the swiving, good-for-nothing, fornicating—’ Rose clapped her hands over her ears. ‘And her, blast her, looking down her nose and announcing that as we’ve never been introduced she can’t see why she has to obey me! I’ll give her obey...’ He unbuckled his sword belt and tossed the weapon on to the bed. ‘And she tries to steal my blasted dog. I’ll...’

Something cold and wet nudged against Rose’s hand and she looked down to find a huge black dog watching her fixedly. It look a fold of her skirts in its jaws and tugged. Rose stood up. Adam was still swearing. The dog released her skirt and pushed her with its big head. When she stood her ground it growled softly.

‘Dog?’ Adam turned and saw them. ‘For heaven’s sake! Friend. This is Rose and she does not need herding.’

The creature gave her hand a swipe with a tongue like a rough red flannel and collapsed on her feet.

‘I’m sorry. He’s a Bouvier des Flandres and he’s used to herding his flock. We rescued him and so he decided the Rogues were his.’

Rose raised her eyebrows and pointed a finger at Adam. He believes you are a sheep?

‘Me? He seems to think I’m the shepherd. He rounds up strays which is what seems to have happened with the search party looking for the colonel. God, I am going to kill Bartlett, just as soon as he’s fit enough. She’s a wilful, irritating brat, but she’s my sister. Randall can get in line behind me.’ He began to pace again. Dog whined softly, lifted his head and followed Adam’s movements with mournful brown eyes. His tail stopped wagging.

Rose took a step into Adam’s path and shook his arm. Tell me.

‘You want to know what I’m ranting about?’ He shrugged. ‘Sit down, it’s a long story.’ She went back to her chair and folded her hands in her lap. ‘You look as though I should begin, Once upon a time, as though this was a fairy tale. Well, once upon a time there was Earl Randall, the father of our present colonel. He was a great man who thought that he could take anything he wanted, especially women.

‘He had a large family—Justin, his heir; Gideon, who was killed at Quatre Bras; a pair of twins who’re at school now; Augusta, now Marchioness of Blanchards, who was in Paris with her unmarried sister Sarah, Gideon’s twin; and Harriet, who married some rural dean or another.

‘And then there’s the rest of us, the bastards.’ He stopped pacing and drew a finger down the line of his nose. ‘You’ll see this nose and these eyes across every parish for miles around Chalfont Magna. My mother was a chambermaid. He forced her, used her and then when she fell pregnant, he tossed her out.’

The very calmness of his voice warned Rose just how angry he was, even after a lifetime of knowing the story of his own birth. She stayed quiet and still, out of his line of sight.

‘The head groom took her in, gave her a room over the stables out of the old devil’s way. She earned her keep cooking and looking after the lads and the grooms. I became one of them, learned to ride, learned to read and write, learned to mimic my betters.’ His voice changed from the neutral accent with its faint country burr to an aristocratic drawl. ‘“Hitch up my chaise, lad. Saddle the bay. Clean up my hounds. Here’s a penny for you.”

‘I stayed while my mother needed me, although I didn’t take well to being a servant. Too bloody minded,’ he added with a twist of his lips. ‘Then when I was fourteen she married one of the grooms and the recruiting sergeant came to the village. I was a tall lad and they didn’t ask about ages. I joined the army. Square peg, square hole.’

He fell silent and Rose stood up and went to stand in front of him, running her hands over the marks of rank on his uniform jacket. As an officer? Adam grasped her meaning as he always seemed to.

‘Hardly, at that age and from that background. As a private at first, then a corporal. I learned my figures, found I was good at the mathematics you need for gunnery. Then I became a sergeant in charge of a gun crew, like Hawkins.’

He looked down at her as she stood there, her fingers still stroking the gold braid.

‘And one day, after a particularly hot fight, I stood in the middle of what was left of the position, looked up and there was this officer on a big grey horse staring down his nose—this nose—at me. “Who are you?” he said. And I said, “Adam Flint, one of your father’s gets, I’d wager,” and he laughed and rode on. A week later I found myself with a field commission to lieutenant and a transfer to a unit they were beginning to call Randall’s Rogues, under his command. One thing about artillery, officers are promoted on merit, not by purchase, which makes all of us not quite gentlemen in Wellington’s eyes. So here I am now, a major.’

He shrugged as though that was an ordinary career path, not a climb from poverty and bastardy through skill and courage and sheer determination.

Just as Hawkins said, Adam had remade himself into the man he was now. The officer, the gentleman. The soldier. And Sarah? she mouthed.

‘My esteemed fellow officer, Major Tom Bartlett, drinker, gambler and highly qualified rake, got himself hit on the head. Apparently Dog here found Sarah wandering about amongst the wounded—although how the devil she got there I do not know because she was supposed to be safe with our sister Gussie—and herded her over to him.’

But that is good, surely? Rose frowned up at him. He’s safe...

‘The idiot girl gets him back to Brussels and sticks him in her own bed—and that’s where I find them. In bed. She says she’s soothing his fevered brow and he doesn’t remember who he is and I’m a brute to shout at an injured man. He lies there looking like the perfect wounded hero and calls me sir, as though he hasn’t a clue who I am. Then when I order her out of there she announces it is her lodgings and that as Randall has never let her anywhere near my polluting and illegitimate presence I have no authority over her and she can do what she likes.’

Adam flung himself down in an armchair and Dog came and butted him anxiously on the knee. ‘The only creature in that damned house who’d do what I told them was Dog.’

Rose repressed the smile tugging at her lips. The poor man was furious and frustrated, but it was somehow touching to see the confident officer brought to a stand by one concussed major and a defiant young woman. She perched on the arm of the chair and raised an eyebrow in question.

‘What am I going to do now? I told Randall, managed to get past that dragon of a woman who is guarding him for a second. It seemed to bring him round, at least. He’s sending a note to order her home. But if there’s a hope in hell of getting the silly chit out of there before she’s ruined, we’ve got to try. She won’t listen to me, but perhaps she will to him.’ He rested his head back and closed his eyes.

Rose slid to the floor and curled up against the chair and Dog’s solid, furry bulk. Ruined. I’m ruined, just like she will be, and that is my sin. I ran off with Gerald. She looked at her hands, soft and white under the bruises and scratches. I was a lady once, like this Lady Sarah, I must have been. It explained the flashes of memory of big houses, it explained why she had been at a ball. It must have been the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, the one that Maggie had been gossiping about.

She studied Adam’s profile, aloof and severe, even with the piercing blue eyes hooded. I saw you before, I was at the ball and so were you. She’d looked in the closet while he was out and found a dress uniform, fine dark blue broadcloth and gold lace. I was at the ball and then I ran away with Gerald and now I am ruined.

Something brushed over her hair, Adam’s hand, stroking it as though it was Dog’s rough black coat. She shifted until she could feel his leg against her back. A shiver of desire ran through her. I want this man.

‘And what the blazes am I going to do with you?’ he enquired. ‘I suppose I’d best find out where the Seventy-Third’s camp followers are and get you an escort there.’

No! Rose swivelled round and came up on her knees so fast that she bumped her head against Dog’s massive jaws. Ouch. He gave her a pained look and lay down, his muzzle on Adam’s left foot. Rose shook her head emphatically at Adam.

‘No? Then what do you want to do?’ He was being patient, far more patient than she had any right to expect him to be when he had so much to think about, to do, to take responsibility for.

Rose got up, sat on the bed and looked Adam straight in the eye. She waved her hand to encompass the room, the house, then pointed a finger at him. Stay with you.

Rose had thought she was beginning to be able to read Adam’s expression, but now she might as well have been staring at a statue, so impenetrable were the strong, immobile planes of his face, the hard mouth, the steady blue eyes. Was there a flare of heat in the sapphire gaze? Something flickered and was gone.

‘Stay with me?’ He glanced at the sewing basket and the discarded shirt. ‘I don’t need a maid, Rose. I’ve got a batman at Roosbos.’

No. She stroked her hand over the coverlet, trying not to blush as she met his gaze.

‘As my woman?’ There was that flare of heat again. He was not indifferent to her.

Something very basic, very female, stirred inside her. Something she had never felt with Gerald. She had admired his looks, liked his sunny temper, enjoyed his kisses. Those memories were coming back and she had never fantasised about being naked with him, she was sure. She was reasonably certain she had never had fantasies like that about any man.

‘You are too young for me, Rose.’

She gave a huff of exasperation. Men were supposed to want sex, weren’t they? What was so wrong with her that Adam was fighting her off? She held up her hands, opening and closing them rapidly, confident about this at least. Ten, ten and three. Twenty-three. And you? She pointed at him.

‘Twenty-eight. You don’t look more than twenty-one, not that years have anything to do with it. I’m not a nice man, Rose and you deserve a nice man. No, don’t look at me like that.’ That half-smile put a crease in his left cheek that hardly qualified as anything so soft as a dimple. ‘I might have rescued you back there on the battlefield, but I’m a bastard, a professional one. I fight dirty, I kill for a living and I’m not capable of being faithful to one woman for any length of time.’

You don’t kill for a living, she wanted to protest. You fight for your country. She stretched out her hand, then let it drop back into her lap. No, of course she couldn’t expect him to be faithful to her. What had she got that could hold a virile, experienced man like this?

‘Rose, I’m not the marrying kind.’ It was as blunt a warning as she could ever expect to receive. ‘There are lots of good lads out there who’d take care of you, want to wed you, give you a family. Isn’t that what you want?’

Was it? She’d thought Gerald a good lad. She’d thought she was in love with him and that they would marry and everything would be perfect. The daydream was as clear as if it were fresh minted. But life wasn’t perfect, she’d mistaken infatuation for love and now she was ruined. Why not snatch what happiness she could?

Although why I think this big, hard, weary man would make me happy, even for a few weeks, I don’t know. He obviously doesn’t want me, not like that.

‘Rose, don’t cry.’ It was the nearest to alarm she’d heard in Adam’s voice.

I’m not crying. Then she realised that she was. She put up her hands to shield her face, ashamed of the weakness.

‘You think I don’t want you?’ Adam stood up and pulled her to her feet. He tipped up her chin so she could not avoid his gaze. ‘Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?’ One blunt thumb caught the tears under her eyes, rubbed them away. ‘You’re beautiful, brave, sweet. But we need to talk about this and you can’t speak. I’m too old for you, Rose. Not in years, just in living. Don’t mistake the need for comfort for something it isn’t.’

She shook her head, helpless to explain her feelings when she hardly understood them herself.

‘I’ve got to go and see Randall now, and then I must get to the battlefield. I won’t be back until tomorrow, late.’

She caught his hand and brought it down to her lips, kissed it, tasted the salt of her own tears.

‘Hell, Rose.’ She felt the control snap as Adam pulled her to him hard and his hands slid into her hair, held her fast as his mouth took hers. She had never been kissed like this, not with unconstrained masculine desire. Gerald had been respectful, aware she was a lady and a virgin. In the tent he had been clumsy, inept and afraid, too frightened for kisses.

She doubted Adam Flint had ever been clumsy or inept with a woman. She clung to the shreds of rational thought as he plundered her mouth with ruthless expertise. It was like riding a wild horse, she could only clutch at his shoulders and hope to survive the experience.

His tongue was in her mouth—when had she opened to him? She could not remember. His teeth nipped and pressed, his lips tormented and then soothed. His taste filled her senses: coffee, a hint of brandy, man. Adam. His hands stayed locked around her head and she found she was pressing against him, her breasts aching for his touch. Her thighs tingled and a compelling ache between them throbbed in counterpoint to the movement of Adam’s mouth on hers. She snuggled closer and felt the evidence of his arousal hard against her stomach.

He released her suddenly and she sat down with a thump on the bed, one hand to her mouth, staring at him.

‘You see?’ His voice was harsh. ‘I shock you. Maggie thinks your last man was a brute, but he wasn’t, was he? He was a nice lad, I’d guess, just not around enough for you to get attached.’ He grinned, without humour, when she nodded. ‘I’m not a nice lad. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow. While I’m away, think about where you want to go.’ He opened the door and snapped his fingers at the dog. ‘Come.’

It took time for her to recognise the trembling, the confusion of feeling, for what it was. Not fear, but simply desire stoked higher than she could have imagined. Rose got to her feet after a while and made her way on unsteady feet to the washbasin to splash cold water on her face, but even when she had done that, and stood with the linen towel in her hands, she could not do more than stare at the closed door, her mind a jumble of thoughts.

It took the sound of Maggie’s voice to jerk her out of her trance. ‘Rose! Tea!’

She made her way downstairs into the crowded kitchen, took her tea and perched in a corner while Maggie and Moss dispensed mugs and slabs of heavy cake for the men to carry out to their less-mobile comrades in the yard. There seemed to be fewer of the walking wounded than earlier.

The heat of the liquid penetrated the thick earthenware, a comforting, real sensation. Rose curled her fingers tight around it and listened to Maggie and Moss talking about Adam.

‘What did the major want with those picks and shovels and the fitter men?’ Maggie asked as she sank into her rocking chair.

‘Gone to collect coffins. Lead-lined ones. Then they’re off to the battlefield to bring back the officers,’ Moss said and blew gustily on his tea. ‘Bad job that, having to go back. I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, not now, and I don’t mind confessing it.’

Maggie shuddered, the ample flesh quivering. ‘Poor man. And one of them his brother as well. That’ll hurt, for all he pretends the boy was a stranger to him.’

Rose’s imagination made a sickening lurch into thoughts of mud and heat and... No. Stop it. Think of Adam. He’s strong and he wouldn’t ever admit weakness, but he must be so tired and sick of this. No wonder he didn’t want some needy, helpless female tagging along, however convenient she might be for bed. And if he did want a woman, there must be plenty of tough, resourceful, experienced ones who understood a soldier’s life and how to support their man.

And I’m useless and inexperienced and he knows it, she thought as she took a bite of solid fruit cake. I’m less use to him than that great shaggy beast that comes to heel when he snaps his fingers. I’ve no voice and hardly any memory, so he thinks of me as a responsibility, another problem for him to deal with.

‘Aye, it’s a nasty business, war,’ Maggie said. ‘Still, there’s some good in it, too, even where you least expect it. Lieutenant Foster told me one of the infantry bandsmen found a French drummer boy, no more than a child, near where the colonel was lying. He says the regiment have adopted him and they’re taking him back with them into France. Perhaps that’s one boy who’ll be going home to his mother.’

Rose found tears welling at the thought, blew her nose briskly and made herself focus on putting her few facts together. What did she know about herself? Unconnected memories flitted in and out, confusing, impossible to link up and make sense of. The sound of the scream was still there, almost unnoticed now until she tried to focus, then it swelled and clamoured. This is impossible.

‘I’ll just make a shopping list,’ Maggie said. ‘Pass me the pen and ink and some of that scrap paper, will you, Moss?’ She began to scratch a list on the rough paper, muttering under her breath. ‘Eggs, tea, butter, starch...’

Of course! I can write, I can put down all of the memories and then I can sort them out, like a puzzle. When Maggie had finished Rose gestured towards the pen and paper. Excitement and hope fizzed inside her. She’d been lost in a maze and now, finally she could glimpse how to get out.

‘You can write?’ Maggie pushed them over to her. ‘You’ve found your memory?’

Yes and no. She waggled one hand. So-so.

The other woman seemed to understand. ‘Look, there’s more paper on that shelf. You take the things upstairs where you can be quiet, lovie. Your man won’t be back today.’

My man? No, he’s not. I doubt he is anyone’s man but his own.