The Officer and the Proper Lady

by Louise Allen

  Someone jostled him from behind. Hal swung round, the light dress sword sliding out of the scabbard, the hilt firm in his hand, and the man, a hulking figure in a shabby great coat, shambled off hurriedly.

  A drunk? A thief? Or a little reminder from Hebden? Hebden, who associated Julia with him, who could have watched them tonight. It seemed difficult to realize that this elusive and implacable enemy was the same seven year old who had played with Marcus in the woods and streams for a long hot summer while Hal, two years younger, had tagged along behind, falling over his wooden sword and demanding piggyback rides.

  And now their old playmate did not just want the Carlow men to suffer, but wanted to make them do it through their women as well. Was Julia Hal’s woman? Would she want to be? He thrust the slim blade back into its scabbard and walked on, all his senses alert now. She was, he thought without vanity, aware of him as a man, although she was too innocent to recognize what that meant. She liked him and trusted him or she would not have gone with him tonight or confided as easily as she had.

  And there had been that moment when he had asked her about her feelings for Smyth and he thought she was going to say she loved someone. Him?

  If only he under stood what that meant. Marcus had gone up like dry wood in the path of a forest fire when he met Nell, even though he had every reason to distrust the woman who was now his wife. Hal supposed he could write and ask how you knew when you were in love. How you knew if a woman loved you. And he could be teased for the rest of his life, he concluded, trying to imagine his brother’s face if he ever got such a letter.

  Unless they got the order to march between now and ten tomorrow night, he and Julia would both be at the duchess’s ball, he realized, feeling rather more apprehensive than he had last time he had eyed a row of French artillery all pointed in his direction at short range.

  He reached the main street leading to the Anvers Gate and had to wait while a stream of carriages and carts rumbled past, all intent, he supposed, on running for Antwerp. Julia did not seem to have the same sense of urgency about evacuating Brussels as those people did. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks for vander Helvig and his amiable agreement to look after the Tresilians.

  ‘Carlow?’ Will Grey was standing on the steps of their hotel, hands on his hips and an expression of bemused amusement on his face. ‘What the devil’s the matter with you? You’ve a damn-fool look on your face, you’re muttering and that last carriage nearly ran you down.’

  ‘Will.’ Hal looked at his best friend’s smiling face and found he had no idea what he wanted to say, or do.

  ‘Bloody hell, you’ve done it!’ Will bounded down the steps and buffeted him hard enough on the back to send him staggering.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Asked Miss Tresilian to marry you.’ Will took him by the shoulders and stared at him. ‘My God, the worst rake in the Hussars, leg-shackled. She’s a brave woman if she’s taking you on, I’ll say that for her.’

  ‘I haven’t asked her.’ Hal got a grip on the railings and fended his friend off. He really could not face being warmly embraced by Will Grey, whiskers and all, on a public street. And his friend’s words ran through him like a sabre thrust. To ask a girl like Julia to marry a man like him was not the action of a gentleman. His honour would not let him do it, and he would just have to live with the consequences.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘For all the reasons you said. I can’t ask it of her, she’s too innocent to under stand what I am, the life I’ve lived.’

  ‘Damn it…’ Grey blundered to a halt, his face reflecting both his agreement and his regret.

  ‘Look, Will, if I don’t…if I’m not in a position to look after her, will you get her back to England? Ask my brother Stanegate to keep an eye on her?’

  They knew each other too well, and knew the risks only too clearly, for Will to make any false protestations or to pretend he did not under stand what Hal was alluding to. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I’ll make sure she is all right.’

  Then he threw an arm around Hal’s shoulders and towed him towards the front door. ‘We’ve got deployment orders to go over, just come down the hill from the duke. I hope you weren’t expecting to sleep tonight.’

  Hal shook his head. After studying the papers, they’d need to ride out to their troops, get them into marching order, check on provisioning and then, if they were lucky, get back in time to change and dine before tomorrow night’s ball. Excitement and a fierce focus gripped him: this was what he lived for. At the back of his mind was the nagging certainty that Julia would be appalled to know he was happy about the prospect of the next few days. He pushed the thought aside: the important thing was to make certain she was completely sheltered from the realities of what was going to happen.

  ‘Julia!’ Mrs Tresilian thrust the door open and arrived panting in their sitting room. ‘There are soldiers all over town with armloads of swords, taking them to be sharpened! And the banks are closed again.’ She sat down on the sofa and fanned herself with a journal.

  ‘We should pack,’ Julia said, leaning down to untie her mother’s bonnet. ‘And send to the baron to ask for the use of a carriage to go to Antwerp.’

  ‘But the ball—you cannot miss the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, it will one of the high lights of the month,’ Mrs Tresilian lamented. ‘Well, so she thinks,’ Julia said with a smile, recalling one of Lady Geraldine’s catty observations. ‘Apparently the duke is teasing her Grace by referring to their house as the Wash House—because it is on the Rue de la Blanchisserie.’

  ‘Even so,’ her mother said, ‘a ball given by a duchess is not to be sneered at.’ They looked at the clock. The hands stood at just after two.

  ‘If it goes ahead. We should pack. And then have our dinner at six.’ Julia began to move around the room, making piles of those things which should be taken and things that could remain. It was essential that Mama and Philip were ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

  ‘Very well, dear,’ Mrs Tresilian got to her feet. ‘I will write a note for the baron. I just hope we can get the laundry back before we have to set out.’

  Packing did not take as long as Julia had feared. Her mother, apparently prepared for headlong flight, intended to travel light with a few changes of clothing and all their items of value, which, as they largely consisted of a few pieces of jewellery, bank notes and lace, took up very little space. She went through the motions of packing her own bag, silent about the audacious idea that had come to her last night in the carriage. But she had to make sure Mama and Phillip were safe first.

  They had just sat down to dinner when their land lady knocked and announced Mrs Cairns and Mrs Templeton, two of Mrs Tresilian’s closest friends.

  ‘My dears—’ Mrs Cairns waved aside offers of a glass of wine ‘—are you not leaving? The officers are riding around, the men are forming up all over the place-everyone is going!’

  ‘They say the French have attacked the Prussians at Charleroi,’ Mrs Templeton, a faded blonde, chipped in. ‘One hundred thousand French troops!’

  Charleroi, Julia guessed, was perhaps a day’s march away. Or less. Her mouth went dry. Antwerp suddenly sounded very enticing.

  ‘We will leave first thing in the morning,’ Mrs Tresilian said, the sparkling prospect of the ducal ball for her daughter still over-riding rumours of the French advance in her mind. ‘Julia has been invited to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.’

  ‘Along with all those floosies the Duke of Wellington has prevailed upon her to send cards to,’ Mrs Cairns said waspishly. ‘Lady John Campbell, for one.’

  ‘Julia will be under Lady Geraldine’s cha per on age,’ Mrs Tresilian said, her chin up. ‘Do you both leave for Antwerp this evening?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ Mrs Templeton said. ‘We are going together in an hour. It is almost impossible to find a team of horses now: I thank heavens that Mr Templeton bought one last week.’

  ‘Then we will see you in Antwerp,�
� Julia said with a smile, wishing they would leave and not continue to over-excite Phillip who was sitting there, his eyes like saucers with all the drama. ‘I will show you out, you must not linger.’ She closed the door behind them and came back to the table. ‘What time did the baron say he would collect us tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I said we would be ready at eight. I am afraid you are going to get very little sleep, my dear.’ Mrs Tresilian began to carve the cooling chicken.

  ‘That doesn’t matter, Mama,’ Julia said, tucking a napkin into Phillip’s collar as he squirmed on his chair. ‘I suspect no-one will for the next few days.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I was quite expecting to receive a note from you to say that you were about to leave the city,’ Lady Geraldine remarked as her footman closed the carriage door at ten o’clock. ‘Did you hear the gunfire to the south?’

  ‘I think so—it was very distant. Perhaps it was thunder. Mama has arranged with the baron for him to call at eight tomorrow morning,’ Julia said, care fully smoothing down the fine tissue of her skirts. The new gown—semi-transparent white silk over jonquil yellow with a draped bodice of white lace—felt too fragile to move in. ‘Will you leave the city, ma’am?’

  ‘We will go to friends who have a chateau some ten miles to the north,’ Lady Geraldine said. ‘I expect we will leave a little later than you. My husband has the grooms with shotguns guarding the horses against looters. I do hope the baron is taking similar precautions.’

  It was a short drive down the hill to the large house the Richmonds had taken. ‘It used to be a carriage builder’s establishment,’ Lady Geraldine observed acidly. ‘No doubt we will be ac com mo dated in some barn.’

  The barn turned out to be the former carriage showroom which seemed, to Julia’s curious eyes, quite well disguised with hangings and a podium for the band. When they finally managed to reach the doors, after a long queue in the street and an even longer one in the receiving line, the noise from within was considerable but, as they moved through the doors, Julia thought she heard the sound of bugles and drums from outside.

  ‘They are sounding the assembly,’ a civilian guest remarked, and Julia strained her ears until the noise of over two hundred people and an orchestra over whelmed any other sound.

  She supposed it was really no different from any other ball that had take place in Brussels over the past month. But the atmosphere was utterly changed, as though everyone was waiting for some momentous announcement, yet were united in a great conspiracy to pretend that they were doing nothing of the kind.

  There was no sign of Hal. Had she seen the last of him before the battle? Or ever? Julia closed her eyes against a moment of panic, then opened them to find one of the aides de camp, whose name had completely gone from her head, offering his hand for the next dance.

  So she danced and chatted and smiled until her feet, her head and her lips ached and re hearsed over and over what she as going to do tomorrow.

  The band ended the waltz they were playing and put down their instruments. The duchess stepped onto the podium and clapped her hands. ‘The Gordon Highlanders!’ she announced to a flurry of applause. It was drowned out in the skirl of sound as a tall pipe-major marched into the hall with four kilted sergeants magnificent behind him.

  Julia had never heard pipe music before. Slightly stunned by the effect in a crowded room, she began to make her way back through the crowd towards the chaperones’ corner.

  ‘Don’t you like the pipes?’ an amused voice by her left ear asked.

  ‘Hal!’ She swung round, so relieved to see him that she almost took his hands there and then. ‘I thought—I thought you must have gone already. The French are advancing, are they not?’

  ‘Yes. You are packed and ready to go?’

  She nodded and saw the tension around his mouth ease into a smile. ‘Good girl. Come, let’s go up to supper; there will be a rush as soon as the Scottish dancing demonstration is over.’

  He seemed to assume she was his partner: Julia wondered what Hal would have done if she had said she was already engaged for supper. It was rather pleasant to be so masterfully swept along, although she knew if it had been anyone else she would have resented it.

  The supper room on the first floor was only partly full and the noise of the pipes penetrated even there. ‘That table down there,’ Hal announced, pointing to one in a deserted corner. ‘I’ll bring some food.’ He came back to the table with a footman behind him carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

  ‘Right.’ He waited until the man had gone, poured the wine and looked at her. ‘We need to talk. About things.’

  ‘Yes?’ Julia enquired as his silence stretched on. Across the room, people were beginning to come in and the tables were filling up, although their gloomy little corner was ignored. A tall man with a beak of a nose strolled in, officers clustered round him. ‘Look, there’s the duke—’

  ‘I am a younger son,’ Hal said, ignoring Wellington’s arrival and making her jump.

  She nodded, puzzled, dragging her attention away from the bustle around the great man. She knew that.

  ‘And I am a soldier. Beside that I have only a small estate in Buckinghamshire.’ He picked up his glass and drained it. ‘Julia—’

  ‘Yes?’ Perhaps he was going to ask her to take a message home if…if something happened to him. Her heart lurched and she felt herself go pale. Her hand trembled as she picked up her own glass and sipped, grimacing at the way the bubbles tickled.

  ‘I ought to ask you to marry me.’

  Julia stared at him across the rim of her glass. Had he really said that? She opened her mouth, found no words and closed it again. Ought to ask?

  ‘I nearly ruined you, I’ve compromised you with two suitors,’ he said, his smile a little twisted. ‘I drove with you last night, after dark and un chaperoned. But I am utterly and completely un suitable as a husband for a lady like you, Julia.’

  ‘But—but why are you telling me this?’ she stammered.

  This was not her dream, her fantasy. Everything was wrong. He did not want her, she should have accepted that, realized that he would have kissed her again before now, shown her how he felt, not treated her like one of his sisters, or a friend, if he did.

  ‘I realized last night that the idea rather appealed to me, but that I must not give in to such a whim.’ For all his so phistication, he looked suddenly both younger and bitterly un certain.

  ‘Rather appealed? Whim?’ At least Mr Smyth had managed a proposal, however unromantic. She realized the glass was still in her hand and tossed back the wine recklessly. ‘You mean you have a guilty conscience because you have lost me two suitors and you are worried about Hebden so you thought you ought to propose! But then you realized that your reputation makes you un suitable. How very convenient!

  ‘Do you know something, Hal Carlow?’ She grounded the glass with enough force to crack the stem. ‘I would rather you had not made this confession. I can do without a catalogue of the reasons why you are not about to make me an offer.’

  Julia found she had lost her temper, rather comprehensively, and that under the anger, what she was feeling was disappointment. Bitter disappointment for the shattering of the fantasy that, because she loved him, he loved her too and only had to realize it.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he fired back. ‘But you don’t want to marry me, do you?’

  ‘How do you know? You haven’t asked me what I want. You have produced this confession to quieten your conscience, that is all.’

  ‘I know I want you, I know I want to keep you safe. And that means keeping you safe from me,’ he fired back, the hardness and the edge back in his voice and his face. ‘That’s the best apology I can come up with. Won’t that do?’

  ‘No, it won’t do!’ Julia grabbed her fan and reticule and jumped to her feet leaving Hal to catch her wildly rocking chair. She swept across the room, weaving between tables, and came up hard against a solid figure. ‘Oh. I am—Your G
race.’

  The duke looked down at her, the hard, preoccupied eyes barely seeming to notice her. Then he stepped back, bowed slightly, and the hint of a smile touched his mouth. His reputation with women was terrible, Julia recollected hazily, and she could quite see why. He was formidably attractive.

  ‘Please—’ she gestured to the corridor ahead of them ‘—I am in no hurry.’

  He bowed again and strode off trailing his retinue. Julia followed more slowly. Hal, it appeared, was willing to let her go.

  Blank with confused misery and the acid seething of her anger, she passed a dust-covered soldier, incongruous as he slumped back against the wall to make way for the gorgeously dressed guests. A messenger perhaps.

  The duke had vanished when she reached the ballroom, but there were eddies of movement all around, cutting across the grain of the dancing couples, the groups in conversation. Something was happening; her already painful stomach cramped. The Duke of Brunswick was sitting to one side, the young Prince of Ligne on his knee. An officer bent and spoke in his ear, and he leapt to his feet, sending the child sprawling.

  ‘Julia.’ Hal had followed her after all. He took her arm, pulling her behind one of the long tapestries that draped the walls hiding recesses and doorways. ‘The Prussians have been defeated at Ligny,’ he said without preliminaries. ‘I must go now, we all must. Find Lady Geraldine and leave with her. When you get home, tell your mother to send to the baron at once. You must leave at first light.’

  ‘Hal.’ Julia found she was clinging to his arm, the anger melting into something else in her fear for him. ‘I don’t want to part with you feeling like this, so angry.’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled and ran his fingers down her cheek. ‘I didn’t know you could be, I thought you were always quiet and ladylike. It is quite a stimulating revelation.’

  ‘Well, after the picnic, nothing about me has ever seemed to stimulate you,’ she retorted, not sure whether it was the memory of his excuses for not proposing or her fear for him making her so snappish.