He came home at last shortly before midnight, yawning. “You’re still dressed,” he commented.
“So are you.” Elizabeth looked him over, openly admiring. He looked even better in uniform by night, the warm candlelight gilding his tanned skin and mellowing the scarlet of his coat.
He grinned. “It’s a fine figure I would’ve made at Horse Guards or out on the streets of London in my nightshirt or nothing but my skin.”
“I’m still dressed because I wanted to show you my new hat,” she said, setting it on her head and tying the ribbons, “and I’d look just as ridiculous naked but for a hat as you would wearing a nightshirt in conference with your fellow generals.”
She smiled up at him, and he inspected her, his face grave but for an appreciative sparkle in his eyes and a smile just tugging at one corner of his mouth. “A splendid hat for a splendid woman,” he concluded.
“The milliner swore it’s in the first stare of fashion, but of course she’d hardly say otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, but I like you in green.”
“I know you do.”
“It does make it rather difficult to kiss you.” He traced his hand around the hat’s broad brim. “You must promise me to wear it whenever any of the other officers ask you to promenade with them.”
“Surely they won’t.”
“I think you’ll be in for a surprise.” He untied the ribbon, carefully set the hat aside and bent to kiss her, long and tenderly. “I’m sorry we cannot stay any longer in London, and that I can do nothing to show you the place.”
“Nonsense,” she said briskly, tracing a finger around the topmost of his gilt coat buttons. “You’ve your duty to attend to, and there will be other chances. This house isn’t going anywhere, and we can spend the entire Season here one of these years.” Please let the other chances come with him by my side, and not as a widow yet again. “I hope your day went well,” she added.
“It did, I think,” he said. “We’re to leave at dawn tomorrow and make all speed to Ramsgate, where I’m to be the senior officer on a convoy to Ostend carrying two battalions of infantry plus an artillery troop. I’m afraid the accommodations on board will be a little rough. You might prefer to take a packet over and meet me in Brussels.”
“Only if you’d rather I did,” she said. “For my part, I don’t want to be parted from you until it’s entirely necessary.” She undid his top button, then the next and the next.
He smiled, and she knew she’d chosen the right answer. “Good. Nor do I.” He applied nimble fingers to her dress’s hooks and laces as she continued her work on his buttons. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that it might be a good few nights before we’re settled enough in Belgium to have anything resembling privacy, so we’d best make use of all the time we have now.”
She pushed his coat off his shoulders. “My thoughts precisely.”
* * *
The Belgian port of Ostend was utter chaos, and the captain of Jack’s transport ship an entire fool. Summoned from the hold, where he had been supervising the removal of crates of muskets and their ammunition, Jack found Captain Sluggett in the midst of a crowd of sailors and soldiers, urging his crew to make more haste in unloading the guns.
“Sir John!” an artillery captain cried. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you. He’s casting it all over the side, horses, guns, shot and all, and leaving it for us to fish out.”
Jack took in the situation at a glance. The port was so crowded there were no berths at the docks for them, and such was the convoy’s haste to unload them and return to England for the next set of men that the captain was unloading them into the shallow waters along a beach outside of town rather than await a berth. That much was appropriate, but a beach landing needed to be handled with greater pains than a proper dockside one, not fewer. But the way this captain was ordering everything and everyone flung over the side, he was in a fair way to spoiling barrels upon barrels of gunpowder, stranding cannon in water just deep enough to render it impossible to retrieve, half drowning Jack’s soldiers, and—good God, the horses! Jack glanced across to the horse transport, floating some fifty yards away. Equine screams rent the air, and he saw even his own placid Menelaus, easy to spot by the crooked blaze running down his bay face, rearing on the deck and fighting the crew’s attempts to bind a sling around his belly.
He watched as a black horse was lowered over the side, much too quickly, striking its hind leg against the hull on the way down. How many horses would be lamed beyond hope of recovery if this continued?
“Captain Sluggett!” Jack bellowed.
The captain turned to face him, annoyance and impatience written on every feature. “What is it, General?”
“What is the meaning of this unseemly haste?”
The surrounding din lessened as all the soldiers and sailors within earshot stopped to listen. Jack saw several of the regimental officers watching him with curious, wary interest. In the three days they had spent together in Ramsgate and aboard the transport, he’d sensed that the officers hadn’t accepted him yet. Oh, they had shown him every mark of respect and obeyed his orders readily enough, but he could tell by a certain guardedness and stillness that they weren’t yet ready to treat a young major-general who’d only commanded in the American war, and briefly at that, with the same acceptance they would’ve given a commander who’d served with them on the Peninsula. It was understandable, and Jack couldn’t fault them for it. But perhaps now, if he could make Sluggett see reason, the officers and their men might begin to trust him.
“Duke’s orders, sir,” the captain said, thrusting his chin out belligerently. “The Duke of Wellington’s positive orders. We’re to unload our cargos with all haste and waste no time going back to England for more of you.”
“Never tell me,” Jack said coldly, “that His Grace ordered you to throw us and our baggage overboard with no thought to the ruination salt water does to our equipment and ammunition.”
“Trust an army man to be afraid of a little seawater.”
“Does the navy have gunpowder that will ignite when it is wet? If so, do share the trick of it with us. It will give us a great advantage should we meet with Boney on a rainy day.”
A chuckle rippled over the listening crowd. Jack could tell even the sailors were on his side. There was Elizabeth, too, watching from the far end of the deck where she waited with the little knot of common soldiers’ wives who were the only other women aboard. He couldn’t read her expression from this distance, but he wanted her to be proud of him. It meant just as much—more, even—than winning over the officers and men.
“Our orders said all haste,” Sluggett said stubbornly. “Do you want me to disobey them?”
Jack ground his teeth. God spare him from such literal interpretations of his own orders. “As the senior officer on the spot, I am amending your orders to all deliberate haste. You will keep our powder dry and see our guns safely to land. You will tell your brother captain across the way there to have a care with our horses, so that they may remain uninjured and we will be able to hitch them to our guns and make our own deliberate haste to join our army.”
“The duke—”
“If the duke does not like my amendment of his orders, it shall be upon my head, not yours, so you need not fear.”
Sluggett met his eyes for just a few heartbeats longer, then looked away. “Very well, sir. Upon your head be it.”
After that the unloading of the transports proceeded smoothly. Jack noted that the sailors treated Elizabeth with particular courtesy, more than they had shown when they boarded. She didn’t hang about him—she was most scrupulous about avoiding any appearance of distracting him from his duty—but she grinned and gave him a jaunty wave as she was lowered over the railing in a bosun’s chair.
As she vanished from his sight for the moment, he resisted the urge to hang over the rail to watch her progress to the waiting boat below. Turning, he saw the artillery captain who had informed him
of Captain Sluggett’s folly. “Thank you, Captain, for summoning me when you did,” he said. “You saved us more loss and trouble than I care to contemplate outside of engaging the enemy.”
“Thank you, sir, for putting a stop to the madness.” The officer nodded respectfully, and Jack felt cheered. He was, after all, where he belonged, doing the work he’d been meant for.
That happy sense of rightness and satisfaction began to dissolve once they were all safe ashore. Such was the chaos at Ostend that no one seemed to be in charge of directing each new set of British arrivals to their first night’s billet, and it was long after dark before they were all safely settled around a pair of farms a good two hours’ march from the city. Only when he was sure all was secure and all the men and horses fed did Jack join Elizabeth in the farmhouse bedroom that was their quarters for the night. She had fallen asleep, but she sat up at his entrance.
“I wouldn’t blame you in the least,” he said, “if you repented of accompanying me and said you wished you’d taken the packet, or even stayed at the Grange.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “What would be the use of repenting now? You know I would never have stayed behind altogether, and I’m certainly not going to sail back to England with that mad captain for the pleasure of making the journey again in a different ship.”
He grinned and began undoing his coat buttons. “It should be better tomorrow. That quartermaster’s aide finally found us, and it seems as if the worst of the confusion is here around Ostend. Once we move inland, everything should be better regulated. My brigade is to be quartered in and around Brussels. I’m glad the Langs have room in their house for us, or I’d have to go begging for a headquarters.”
“Surely for a man of your rank, there wouldn’t be any difficulty.”
“I’m sure I could commandeer something, but it sounds as though the city is overflowing already.”
“I’ll be glad to see the Langs again.”
“And I’m glad you’ll have Louisa for company, once the campaign begins in earnest.” He didn’t like to think of Elizabeth alone and eating her heart out with fear while he rode into battle.
“At least we know we have a place to stay. That gives me one less thing to worry over.”
“No one would’ve thought you were worried today. You did splendidly, keeping the women organized and useful.” Jack was beginning to think the army had lost a brilliant quartermaster when his wife had been born a woman, not that he would’ve had it any other way.
“It was the least I could do. You were the one who was splendid, telling off our captain like that. I hope it won’t get you into any trouble with the duke.”
“Surely not,” he said, though at her doubt he felt the first doubts of his own on that score. “I’m certain he did order them to make haste, but unless he’s a complete fool, which I cannot believe possible of a man who’s had so much success, he only meant they mustn’t wait for berths, and they mustn’t allow their crews to go ashore and waste time in taverns and the like.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said comfortably.
Jack finished stripping to his shirt and climbed into bed alongside Elizabeth. “I must confess that I am utterly exhausted.” At the moment he wanted nothing more than to sleep with her nestled in his arms. He put his arm around her waist and drew her against him, spoon-fashion.
“So am I,” she admitted, shifting her shoulders to a more comfortable angle. “And I suppose we’ll need to make an early morning of it.”
“Yes. We should have more time when we’re in Brussels. It won’t be all duty. No one expects to march for the French frontier before July or so. We’re not ready yet—we want more of our more seasoned regiments back from America, for one thing—and the Austrians and the Russians certainly haven’t had time to get in place to the east.” That was the plan, and it was far from secret. The great powers were to assemble their armies in numbers Bonaparte could not hope to match, march into France and put an end to his pretensions. Of course, Boney could force a change anytime he chose to move, but all available intelligence had him firmly ensconced in Paris, consolidating his regained power.
“We’ll have to see if Bonaparte waits for your attack,” she replied, unconsciously echoing his thoughts. “He certainly hasn’t made a habit of waiting upon the actions of others.”
“No, but perhaps this time he will. He’s trying to portray himself as a man of peace who only wants to be left alone to govern France.”
Elizabeth responded to this with the derisive snort it deserved, and Jack bent his head to kiss her neck. “In any case, he won’t attack tonight, so let’s take the rest we’ve earned.”
“Mm,” she murmured sleepily. “At least it’s a comfortable bed.”
“Someday we’ll really have our Grand Tour, and we’ll sleep in the finest hotels.”
She entwined her fingers with his. “As long as we’re together, I’m content.”
Chapter Fifteen
Elizabeth awoke early on her first morning away from her native soil. She didn’t count the two nights on the transport, for it had been an English ship, and it had been all but impossible to sleep in any case.
She blinked at the strange, shadowy chamber. There was nothing about it to mark it as a Belgian room. The furnishings were too plain, and there weren’t even any books in sight to indicate its foreignness by their unfamiliar words. But for all that, Elizabeth couldn’t forget she was in a strange and new place. She heard voices outside the house, the familiar rhythms of the soldiers’ English mixed with the stranger sounds of Flemish. Even the air felt different somehow, heavier and warmer than May in Yorkshire or Northumberland.
She knew they must make an early start, and soon Macmillan would be pounding on the door to ensure they were awake. A commander couldn’t be seen to dawdle, and Elizabeth knew Jack was working especially hard to prove himself to the many battle-hardened Peninsular veterans among his men. But Macmillan hadn’t come yet, so they must have a little time. Surely they could use it to celebrate, to mark their arrival on Continental soil.
Heat and hunger built within her at the thought of it alone. She shifted, rubbing herself catlike against her husband’s body, and she took his hand from her waist and moved it to cup her breast.
It was enough. She’d married a light sleeper.
“Mm?” he murmured. He squeezed her breast lightly, then drew circles around it through the fine lawn of her nightdress, starting at the outside and moving in to caress the peak of her nipple.
She sighed her pleasure and arched back against him.
“So that’s how it is.”
His voice dripped equal parts lust and smug self-satisfaction. Elizabeth decided she didn’t mind. So he knew she wanted him—at least he felt the same. “Always.”
He nipped gently at the spot where her neck met her shoulder. At the small of her back she could feel him growing hard. “This will have to be quick.”
“Quickly or slowly, I want you.” He liked it when she talked to him like that, she’d noticed, and she’d grown to enjoy the brazen abandonment of admitting her own hungers.
He ran a hand, quick yet caressing, along her side, from her waist to her hip and down to the hem of her nightgown, which he slid up. She gasped at the feel of his hand on her skin as he stroked her thighs and her stomach, then trailed a finger down to her curls. She shifted to her back and let her thighs fall open to give him easier access.
He rose up above her, and as she reached up to span his broad shoulders with her hands, in the dim light she could just see his grin. “Good morning, General,” she said with a wink.
“And to you, my lady.” The courtesies concluded, he returned his attention to the seat of her pleasure, rubbing with the firm strokes they’d discovered she enjoyed best until she couldn’t keep her hips still. He slid his finger down and thrust inside her. “Like that, do you?”
“So do you,” she pointed out.
“Oh, yes, but as we’ve no time to linger
over our love today...” He drew his finger out and shifted, taking her hands in both of his and pinning her to the bed. She sighed with pleasure at the feel of his cock sliding between her folds to her entrance, and she shifted her hips to just the right angle.
He thrust into her, and she closed her eyes, the better to savor the sensation. He fit her so well, filled her so fully. He began to thrust, fast and hard, and she met him, locking her knees around his hips.
He kissed her. “I love you,” he said, all flippancy gone.
“And I, you.”
Half a minute more, and he came, still and shuddering in her arms. He made sure she had her release, too, reaching down to stroke her to her own peak of bliss.
Before they’d had time to catch their breaths, the knock came at the door. “Beg pardon, sir,” came Macmillan’s voice through the thick wood, “but you said you wanted to be up at dawn.”
“Thank you, Macmillan,” he called.
Elizabeth felt her face heat. “That was suspiciously timed. I hope he wasn’t listening at the door.”
Jack, already half out of bed, stopped to frown at her. “If he was, he’s a good enough valet to never let on. And we were quiet, all things considered.”
She sat up, stretching. “Don’t worry, I’m not having a sudden fit of missishness.”
He winked at her. “I should hope not, after that brazen way you attacked me this morning.”
She tossed her head. “You like to be attacked, my general, and you made no effort at all to defend yourself.”
“On the contrary. Like any commander with spirit, I simply counterattacked.”
She lobbed a pillow at him, and they helped each other dress for the day.
* * *
As Jack had promised, the remainder of their journey to Brussels passed far more smoothly than the landing at Ostend. Halfway through the second day, they, along with the infantry battalions they were accompanying, left the road behind them for the ease and comfort of a little flotilla of barges. Jack perforce spent most of his time in conference with the other officers, but Elizabeth didn’t mind. It was enough to know he was there and that she was his beloved. They still had the nights.
An Infamous Marriage Page 20
