The Officer and the Proper Lady

by Louise Allen

  ‘Will you please take her away?’ Hal sounded desperate, Julia thought, her stomach a tight knot of misery.

  ‘No. For a start, I am not hauling a kicking and screaming female all the way back to Brussels; and secondly, I believe her when she says you aren’t to be trusted. While you’ve got no trousers and her in the room, you’ll stay put until I come back.’

  He was silent for a moment, then added, ‘You know, I really thought you were going to propose to her.’

  ‘I told you why not. At the Richmonds’ affair I made a right balls-up of it, trying to explain why I wasn’t going to. Must have been mad. God, I am so angry with her I could put her across my knee. I will do, if I ever get well enough. And now I must marry her, she’s too compromised for me not to—Will, what the devil will I do with a wife?’

  Julia got to her feet and half ran down the path that led through what must once have been a tidy vegetable plot. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and blinked hard until the nearest apple tree came back into focus. That would teach her to eaves drop. Between them, they had compromised them selves and each other, and marriage, she supposed, was inevitable.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Julia turned to find Captain Grey looking grim.

  ‘No, not really,’ she admitted. ‘But there’s nothing to be done about it. Are you leaving now?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll bring him clothes and I’ll steal a cart if I have to and be back tomorrow. You’ll make a good soldier’s wife, Miss Tresilian.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Praise indeed: it was just a pity she was not marrying a soldier who wanted her. ‘Take care of that arm, Captain Grey.’

  Hal was lying with his eyes closed when she went back in, but he opened them at the sound of her soft foot steps.

  ‘Break fast?’ she asked.

  Hal grimaced. ‘Not hungry. Coffee—now, that I could drink.’

  ‘I’ll go and make some,’ George said from the back of the hovel, where he was tending the horses. ‘And I’ll cook something. You need to eat, Miss Julia.’

  ‘Yes, you should.’ Hal turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘She needs more rest, begging your pardon, sir.’ George stopped in the doorway and frowned at Hal. ‘Miss Julia was down nursing the wounded at that hotel of yours for two days, getting hardly any sleep and then coming down here yesterday—that made her sick to the stomach on top of everything else.’

  ‘What? Nursing for two days?’ Hal looked from George’s retreating back to Julia’s set face. There were dark shadows under her eyes, her hair was escaping from its tight braids and she was pale with fatigue, not just, as he had assumed, the shock of seeing the battlefield. ‘What the devil was your mother thinking of?’

  ‘I gave her no choice. The baron has taken her and Phillip to Antwerp and I told him that if he did not help me to stay I would run away and get back to Brussels. The carriage was moving before she realized what I was doing.’

  ‘And where have you been staying?’ he demanded. This was Julia, obedient, well-behaved, sheltered Julia, defying her mother, conniving with the baron, running away…

  ‘At our lodgings.’ She began to move about the room, picking things up, moving basins. ‘Madame has stayed and George moved into the stables with the horse and gig the baron left us.’

  ‘But nursing?’ Ladies did not do such things, not in public.

  ‘They started taking the wounded back to where they had been billeted, after the hospitals filled up,’ she explained. ‘I knew where you and Captain Grey had lodged, and, I guessed, probably some of the other officers I had met at the Opera. So I went there and did what I could.’

  Hal closed his eyes. He knew exactly what that would have been like. He knew the smells, the sights, the shock she would have been exposed to. But why? Why had she stayed when she could have got safe away?

  His conscience told him: he had spoken of death, of not coming back. He had made her confront the reality of battle, and she, with the comfortable fictions of glory and flag-waving stripped away, had decided to do what she could against that tidal wave of horror. But for the wounded in general? Or for him? ‘And you worked there for two days?’

  ‘I went home at night. It was only sensible to sleep and eat and wash. I would be no use to anyone if I exhausted myself.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, unable to think of anything else to say. Would any young woman of her back ground, finding themselves in the same position, do what she had done? Honoria would, he suspected, if she was helping people she knew. But Verity would just crumple in the face of that much pain and squalor. And he had been comparing Julia with his younger sister. It seemed he had missed the steel in her backbone.

  Julia sat down and began to check over her basket of bandages. ‘And then Captain Grey arrived and told me you were missing.’

  ‘So you came for me. Why, Julia?’ Had his fears been realized? Had he let her tumble into love with him? Must he have that on his conscience as well?

  ‘Because I knew you,’ she said, staring at him as though he had asked a very stupid question. ‘How could I not? The battle was over and you had not come back. The chances were, if you had not been killed, that you were lying on the field somewhere with no medical help and would die.’

  ‘That applies to hundreds of men,’ Hal said harshly, wondering why he needed to push her like this.

  ‘I couldn’t help hundreds,’ she explained, patient in the face of his anger. ‘But I might help one. One that I cared for.’ He saw her closed expression and knew that was as close to a declaration of her feelings as he would get. ‘Even if you were dying, it would have been a comfort to your family to know you were cared for at the end.’

  It would. Of course it would, he realized, staring up into the cob webbed gloom of the roof overhead. In all the years he had been fighting he had known the anxiety his family had suffered, their fears. But it had not occurred to him what anguish it would be to hear the details of the horrors of the battlefield and to know he had died there, perhaps lingering for days.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said at last, realizing it was not possible to say any more without shaming himself with tears. He had been angry with her for risking her safety and her reputation. She did not deserve that. She deserved that he do what he could now to protect her, and do it with good grace.

  ‘I will marry you,’ Julia said abruptly. ‘You are right, I must, I see that.’ The relief he felt must have shown on his face for she added, ‘Then you are not angry with me any longer?’ He could hear a tremulous smile in her voice.

  ‘I am relieved. I will do my best to make you a good husband, Julia.’ She bit her lip and looked away, so he hesitated over the softer words he had thought she might expect. Then the moment was gone as foot steps approached the hut.

  ‘Here’s the coffee.’ She got to her feet with what he had to assume was relief at the interruption.

  ‘I’ve found some planks,’ George said, putting down the mug close enough to Hal for the aroma to have his mouth watering. They could have extracted any kind of confession, he realized, just by torturing him with the threat to take it away. ‘Reckon I can push them under the pillow and wedge them up and you’ll be able to sit up a bit.’

  It hurt, but he bit his lip and kept quiet. The relief of being able to lie back and look around, not at the roof, was worth every pang. Hal took the mug in his left hand and drank, almost moaning with pleasure as the strong, hot liquid slid down. It felt as though it was replacing all the blood he had lost with liquid fire.

  When he stopped drinking and paid attention to what the others were doing, he found they were in elegantly tackling fried bacon wedged between slices of bread. The smell of the hot savoury fat floated across the hut, overcoming even the coffee. ‘Is there any more of that bacon?’

  Julia smiled, ‘Oh thank goodness, you have an appetite after all. You must be recovering.’

  Hal smiled back, realizing how good it
was to see her looking happy again. ‘I hate to cast down your spirits, but frying bacon would make a dead soldier walk.’

  After the food, he lay there, realizing just how bad he had been feeling before Julia had found him and what a miracle she and the groom had wrought between them. It would take time, but unless an infection took hold, he was going to survive this, with all his limbs intact.

  Alive, intact and committed to marry the woman he wanted above all others. Why then did he feel like hell? Guilt, he supposed. In the middle of horror, Julia had behaved with courage, resource and intelligence, and it was his fault she had had to. Now she would find herself married to a man who had no idea what to do with a well-bred virgin, let alone a wife, and who was mired in a feud he only half under stood.

  He scrubbed his left hand over his face, shocked at the growth of beard. How long since he had shaved? Four days?

  ‘George, can you shave me?’

  ‘Aye, Major. I’ll go and heat some water.’

  ‘Enough for a wash,’ Julia called after the groom. ‘Not that you aren’t clean enough already,’ she commented, turning back. ‘We’ve been sponging you all night to keep the fever down.’

  ‘We?’ Hal tried to sit up, realized he couldn’t and fell back with a curse. ‘You have?’ Then he remembered: she had un dressed him as well.

  ‘Shocking, isn’t it,’ Julia said, shaking out a linen towel. ‘Just imagine, I’ve seen a naked man. Heaps of bodies, and bits of men and disembowelled horses—not shocking at all. But a naked man, and one I’m going to marry! In truth, I am ready to sink, just thinking about it.’ The corner of her mouth was twitching in an effort not to smile.

  Hal tried to decide whether he was more shocked or offended. He had, he admitted, expected the sight of his body to have had rather more effect on a sheltered virgin than mere amusement. Perhaps it would make things easier when they did, finally, go to bed together. When—if—he ever worked out how to make love to a virgin; all he was used to was women of very considerable experience.

  But now was definitely the time to change the subject.

  Food, coffee, a shave and the ability to sit up and watch what was going on had wrought wonders, Julia decided, studying Hal’s face from the shadows while George put away his shaving tackle. Hal was young, fit, tough—he would heal well, even though she doubted it would be fast enough for his impatient spirit.

  She did love him so much: his courage and his humour and his kindness. And his beauty. She blushed a little, thinking about that, then smiled at the recollection of his shocked reaction to the realization that she had seen him naked. Bless him, like a poacher turned game keeper, he was becoming positively prudish where she was concerned.

  Did he secretly hate the idea of their marrying so very much? Now that the fever had gone, he was guarding his tongue and she knew she would not hear the truth, even if she asked him directly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Will you bring me the things George stripped off that trooper, please?’

  Julia jumped, brought out of her reverie by the un conscious note of command in Hal’s voice. He might have remembered to say please but he was back to being an officer.

  Julia scooped them up from the back of the hovel and brought them to his bedside.

  ‘Can you show me everything?’ he asked. ‘And check pockets, seams, linings.’

  ‘What for?’ Julia sat down on a milking stool she had found and picked up the jacket, trying to ignore the stains.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Hal fell silent, obviously weighing something up in his mind. Julia began to feel along the seams, flexing the stiffened plackets and probing the padding. ‘He tried to kill me,’ Hal said suddenly, making her drop the garment.

  ‘What, here in the hut? He was looting?’

  ‘No, on the battlefield. He tried to get to me the night before the battle, I think, but Max went for him. I thought he’d just got too close. Then, we charged the guns. Will was hurt.’ Hal paused, obviously reliving it in his mind. ‘Their cavalry ran, we got to a gun, and he turned—I thought he was going to say something, but he struck straight for my heart. I don’t know why the blow didn’t kill me. It was deflected off something, I felt the pain down my arm, my leg—and then there was a God-awful noise—a shell I suppose, blew us both up. I assume they picked us up together and dumped us in here.’

  ‘This is why he didn’t kill you.’ Julia picked up the shattered mother-of-pearl cover of her notebook. ‘You had it over your heart.’

  ‘Then you saved my life twice,’ Hal said, and his eyes were dark as they rested on the ruined book. ‘Keep that somewhere safe.’

  Julia tucked it into her pocket and picked up the jacket again. ‘But why would a British trooper want to kill you?’

  ‘He was paid to. He told me just before he died.’ Hal took swallow of a fresh mug of coffee. ‘Good money too. I was flattered.’

  ‘Who?’ Lurid visions of outraged husbands ran through Julia’s mind. Or Major Fellowes. Then she remembered. ‘Hebden?’

  ‘That was my guess. But the description didn’t fit.’ He lay back, his head turned to watch what she was doing.

  The jacket revealed no secrets, nor did the overall trousers, the shirt or the leather stock. Julia tossed each aside, then picked up a boot.

  ‘Try the heels.’ It took some prising with his pocket knife, but the heels came away at last, revealing a hiding place in each, full of gold coins. ‘I think I’ve earned those,’ Hal commented as Julia put them care fully aside. ‘What about his pack? There will be a rope somewhere.’

  The pack contained nothing of any interest, except a rope coiled at the bottom, just as Hal had predicted. Julia pulled it out, and it slithered un pleasantly in her hands.

  ‘Ugh.’ She dropped it on the bed, and Hal picked it up left-handed, running the multicoloured length through his fingers. ‘It feels alive.’

  ‘Silk,’ he said. ‘It is what they hang peers with.’

  ‘But you aren’t a peer,’ Julia said, puzzled.

  ‘No, but the man who killed Hebden’s father was.’ She waited, biting her lip, while Hal frowned into space.

  ‘I had better tell you everything,’ he said at length. ‘You are marrying into a family in the midst of a mystery—a dangerous and probably scandalous one.’

  She listened while he spoke, trying to keep the characters straight in her mind, separate the old history from the present events. ‘So Stephen Hebden the jewel merchant is also a half-Romany called Stephano Beshaley who blames not just the family of the man who was hanged for his father’s murder—your sister in law and her sister and brother—but also the Carlows, because he thinks your father did nothing to prevent the crime. He is also bitter about his father’s legitimate connections because he was thrown out of the family home and sent away to an orphanage.’

  Hal nodded. So she had got that straight. ‘And for some reason he decided last year to begin attacking these people he hates so much.’

  ‘Yes. He’s a couple of years older than I am. I knew him as a child, a little. I wonder if it is because he is approaching the age his own father was when he died that it is obsessing him now.’

  ‘That is hardly a good enough reason to try and kill people.’

  ‘Yes, but this is the first attempt at something lethal. Up to now he seems to have wanted to bring scandal and disgrace, not death.’

  ‘You have another enemy?’ Julia ventured, folding her hands tightly in her lap to prevent herself smoothing back the lock of unruly hair that kept falling across his brow. She wanted to touch him all the time: it was disconcerting and left her oddly breath less and distracted.

  ‘A good many,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘But none of them with Hebden’s calling card.’ The rope lay like a dead snake across his thighs. ‘And there’s something else. Rumours are beginning to spread about the circumstances surrounding the murder. People are wondering why my father was so adamant that his best friend was guilty. Because if he were not
, then the spy escaped undetected.’

  ‘They say that your father was the spy?’ she asked, too surprised to be tactful.

  ‘No-one is saying it out loud. But it can be made to fit. If he was, then he had disposed of the two men who were about to unmask him.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’ she asked, shocked at Hal’s dispassionate tone.

  ‘No, of course not. But he isn’t helping. He won’t talk about it. Pages are missing from his diaries and he won’t say what they contained. He’s a stubborn devil.’

  There is something in the way he speaks of his father, she thought, watching the long lashes come down to hide the thoughts in Hal’s expressive eyes. He doesn’t hate him, or dislike him—but there is a wariness, a distance. Perhaps Hal is the black sheep of the family.

  ‘And why are the rumours spreading now?’ Julia asked. ‘Is Hebden in such a position that he could start them amongst such influential people?’

  Before Hal could reply, George put his head round the door of the hovel. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  They were so tucked away that the activity on the main road and in the village was hardly audible most of the time. Julia shivered: if they had not seen Rick Bredon, she would never have found Hal. If she had not fled from Thomas Smyth at the party, she would never have met Bredon. If Hal had not taken her back in the carriage, she would not have given him her notebook and that sabre-thrust would have pierced his chest. On such chances lives hung.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Tresilian. Carlow, I have brought you a shirt and some loose trousers,’ Captain Grey announced, striding into the hovel, a mass of white cloth flapping over his arm. ‘And I’ve got a cart and a horse with four legs—and that, my friend was harder than taking a French gun, believe me.’

  ‘I do.’ Hal grinned back at him, then they both looked pointedly at Julia.