The Captive

by Grace Burrowes

  “I can’t guard you if I don’t watch what you’re about,” St. Just said, unsheathing his saber. “Else I’d politely turn my back.”

  “You aren’t guarding me. The only threats I see are a lot of bleating sheep and two brindle heifers. You’re playing with your toys.”

  “Right. You could also wait until dark, but then the sea monsters might come out and gobble you up.”

  “Fuck you, St. Just.”

  “So many wish they could.” He heaved a theatrical sigh and went about polishing his sword as if Christian weren’t kneeling on his blankets, feeling like a complete buffoon. The legacy of his tenure among the French would accrue usurious interest—if he allowed it to. Christian pulled his shirt over his head, shucked out of his breeches, and took his damned bath.

  And to be clean again, really truly clean, had been worth the humiliation.

  Except St. Just hadn’t said a thing about the scars, the eccentricity of a titled officer being afraid to bathe, or the need for a grown man to be reassured of his own safety in the bucolic surrounds of the French countryside.

  Christian’s heart had still been thundering against his ribs when he emerged from the pond and toweled off.

  “Shall I trim your beard?”

  “Are you trying to provoke me?”

  “I’m trying to tidy you up. You look like a wild man from darkest Africa in your off moments.”

  Of which there was an abundance. “Perhaps I always looked like something escaped from the jungles.”

  “Not you.” St. Just tucked his pistols away, and Christian was sorry to lose sight of them. “I was two years ahead of you at university. You were as vain as a peacock ten years ago.”

  “We all were.”

  “We were boys; it was our turn to be vain.”

  Except Christian abruptly recalled St. Just as a much-younger man, a duke’s by-blow who was cursed with a stutter. He hadn’t been vain in the least, and when the situation had called for it, he’d let his fists do the talking.

  “So you either give me permission to trim you up now,” St. Just said, “or I’ll have a go at you while you sleep.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Nighty-night then.” He ran his thumb across the blade of yet another knife—this one likely resided in the man’s boot—and his teeth gleamed in the fading light. “Or we could go best out of three falls.” He tucked the knife away. “I’m a decent wrestler, growing up with four brothers. For a while I had a slight advantage, being the oldest, but they’d come at me in twos and threes.”

  “Get out your kit, then, and shut up.”

  “Wise choice. You wouldn’t want my death or dismemberment on your conscience.”

  He pulled a shaving kit from his saddlebag—Aladdin’s cave of wonders for the traveling cavalryman—and produced a pair of grooming scissors.

  “Don’t think,” he said. “Just sit there and hate me for doing this, hmm?”

  “What hatreds keep you going?” Christian asked the question mostly to keep St. Just talking.

  “I am haunted by the abuse I see of good animals,” St. Just said. “They never asked to go to war. They never asked to attempt a goddamned winter march on Moscow. They never asked for the artillery barrages to frighten them out of their feeble little horsey wits. Hold the hell still.”

  For all his irascibility, St. Just’s hand was steady and deft. Snip, snip, snip, while Christian wondered if he’d ever allow another to shave him again. To be assigned a valet when he’d come down from university had been a comfortable and pleasant rite of maturation, to start each day with the cheerful, careful ministrations of a man dedicated to the proper care and grooming of the young duke.

  “Your cousin took good care of your horse while you were unable to,” St. Just said. “You’re done, and I expect a solid recommendation from you as a barber when I muster out.”

  Christian rubbed his hand along his jaw, finding the beard much closer to his skin, much tidier.

  “My thanks.” Because by insisting on this concession to proper turnout, St. Just had scrubbed away another layer of captivity.

  “You’ll set all the ladies’ hearts to fluttering.” St. Just tossed him a towel, using, of course, too much force.

  And Christian couldn’t catch it, not with either hand. “As if I give a hearty goddamn for the ladies’ opinions.”

  “You will,” St. Just said, getting comfortable on his blankets. “God willing, we all will again, someday soon.”

  Christian wanted to argue with St. Just, wanted to ask what that last comment meant, wanted an excuse to keep the man awake, really, because bathing and letting his beard be trimmed had left Christian’s nerves shorn too. These mundane aspects of hygiene were accomplishments for him, reasons to be a little less worried for his sanity.

  But something in the exchange with St. Just had tickled Christian’s jumble of memories, something in the comments about horses. The words rankled, as so many things rankled, and still, Christian could not put a finger on why. Something to do with Chessie, with finding the horse whole and in good weight, even after months of campaigning against the French.

  Christian eventually fell asleep, feeling bodily clean for the first time in more than a year, though feeling clean was by no means the same as feeling safe.

  ***

  Christian found Lady Greendale in the family parlor, sitting at the escritoire by the window.

  “The clothing fits,” she said, rising as she surveyed him. “A bit loosely, but well enough.”

  “And my thanks for your efforts.” She looked so…composed, sitting in the sunlight, the invitations scattered about on the desk. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she had a domestic quality that went well with the tidy parlor and morning sunlight. “I must impose on you a bit further, though.”

  “Of course.” She tossed her pen aside and came toward him, then circled around behind him. “You’ll want this tied back.”

  “My hair?”

  “You’re going to Court, Your Grace. Some still powder their hair for such occasions. Hold still.”

  She withdrew a pocket comb and gently started tidying up his hair. He’d done the best he could with his own brush and comb, unwilling to ask anybody’s assistance.

  He hadn’t thought to ask hers, though she was a widow and a relation, and a woman who, for all her chatter, possessed prodigious common sense. She’d comprehended he needed his oranges peeled, and he hadn’t had to ask.

  Nobody should have to look on the evidence of his captivity—he didn’t want to see it himself—and yet, Christian was gratified that when she did look, Lady Greendale calmly accepted what was before her eyes.

  So he suffered her to arrange his hair, tying it back with a simple black ribbon. Her diminutive stature helped him endure her attentions, but so did her tendency to chatter.

  His irritation at her tendency to chatter, rather.

  “You do not appear to be looking forward to this great honor, Your Grace. The day is pleasant, fortunately. Perhaps Prinny will be kept overlong at his tennis matches, and then you’ll be spared the royal interview. Where are your gloves?”

  He passed them to her, which merited him a frown.

  “These are not riding gloves, sir.”

  His dignity suffered more than a pinch, but common sense did not make the woman prescient.

  “I can’t easily manage the change of gloves myself—I must use my teeth—and I don’t want to risk…”

  She didn’t make him finish. “Dress gloves then. I daresay you’ve a pair or two. You were smart not to tart yourself up with too much gold, lest Prinny get ideas. You won’t glower at the poor Regent like that, though, will you?”

  She tugged the glove onto his right hand, and he submitted to her assistance as if he were a boy still in dresses.

  “What do
you mean, giving Prinny ideas?” He knew the man, had been introduced on a handful of occasions as the scion of any noble house might be in early manhood. The Regent was genial when it suited him, shrewd, and not as spoiled as the press wanted to paint him.

  “He solicits donations for his causes, the parks, that pavilion by the sea. Some think it scandalous, while we’ve been waging war over half the globe for his papa’s entire reign. Others consider him a visionary, but everybody knows to keep their coin out of his sight. Where are your sleeve buttons, that I might do up your cuffs?”

  “Here.” He extracted them from his pocket, and dropped them into her outstretched hand. He hadn’t figured out quite how he was to don them—a footman usually assisted—and Lady Greendale was still blathering away.

  “These are lovely.” She slipped one through his cuff, then brought his hand close to her nose to examine his jewelry. “Are those sapphires?”

  By virtue of her having appropriated his hand, his palm was near enough to her cheek he could have stroked her face with his fingers. Had he taken this liberty and dared a small touch of her soft, fragrant person, she would not have rebuked him, but she might have pitied him, and that would have stolen all his pleasure from the moment.

  “Those are star sapphires,” Christian said when she let his hand go. “On my personal signet ring, the lion’s eye in the family crest is the same stone.”

  “What do you mean your personal signet ring?” She gathered up the right cuff, and slipped the fastener through, then patted his knuckles as if he’d been a good lad, not holding up the coach before the family departed for Sunday services.

  “My father was sufficiently practical he kept various versions of the Severn signet ring at our principle houses. He said a groom shouldn’t have to ride halfway across England because His Grace forgot a piece of jewelry and had a letter to seal. I liked the idea of one ring, though, the Severn ducal ring, so I had one made on my eighteenth birthday. Papa no doubt rolled his celestial eyes at my vanity. The sleeve buttons and cravat pin were made to go with that ring.”

  “And let me guess, the French took your ring from you?” She seized his left hand and attacked the cuff, his disfigurement of no apparent moment to her.

  “My ring was the only thing I was wearing when I was captured.”

  Her hands momentarily paused, holding his. Her grip around his fingers was warm, firm, and lovely. Sensation in his left hand had become dodgy, but he felt her hold on him and made no move to withdraw.

  “Then why did they torture you? Your ring gave away your identity.”

  Why, indeed. Christian had been weeks in Girard’s dungeon before that question had occurred to him, emerging into his awareness in the middle of a dream about Chessie being led away by the grinning, laughing French.

  “What ring, my lady? The ring disappeared, just as they claimed not to have seen my uniform drying in plain sight over the bushes. I was out of uniform, and therefore due none of the courtesies afforded an officer in captivity.”

  “A nation of lawyers, the French…” She retied his cravat and repositioned the pin, the whole effect more fluffy and elegant than what Christian had managed. Had she patted his left knuckles too? Christian was too preoccupied with her casual use of the word torture. Even in his mind, he shied away from the blunt term.

  Misadventure, ordeal, difficulties, captivity…not torture.

  “You’ll start a fashion with this beard.” She brushed her fingers over his cheek, a passing caress startling in its familiarity. Mothers and sisters might touch their menfolk thus, and wives certainly did, though duchesses did not.

  Had not.

  Her touch sparked none of the bristling and roiling in his gut he might have expected, particularly when she’d been making free with his person for some minutes.

  “I’ll soon be late,” he countered. “My thanks for your assistance.”

  “You’ll be all right?” She went quiet, didn’t follow the question up with more of her patter or fussing.

  He would never be all right, had stopped even wishing for it, for then his Christian duty to forgive his enemies might gain a toehold in his conscience. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Today, putting up with the nonsense of it all. George means well, you know. I think he’s really quite a lonely man.”

  George…the Regent, the sovereign, the de facto King. And the countess thought the man lonely.

  And was very likely right. “I will manage.”

  “Yes, you shall.” She linked her arm through his, another casual touch that ought to have startled, but didn’t…quite. “If you find yourself in difficulties, wanting to smash something, say, or scream profanities and take up arms, you put in your mind a picture of what you can look forward to, and you add details to it, one by one, until the picture is very accurate and the urge to do something untoward has passed.”

  He liked that she’d walk arm in arm with him, liked that she’d lecture him about how to endure…torture. “You do this when the morning calls become too boring?”

  She looked down, as if puzzling something out.

  “When I am vexed beyond all tolerance, but can do nothing to aid myself, when I want to descend to the primitive level of those who lash out in violence at blameless victims, then I do this in my mind. I think of Lucille, or my mother’s flower gardens, or a nice rich, hot cup of chocolate on a cold and blustery morning when we might see the first snowflakes of the season.”

  St. Just had told him to endure by concentrating on his hatreds, but such guidance hadn’t been particularly useful when the length of the list alone left a man helpless and overwhelmed.

  Lady Greendale told him to endure by focusing on something he looked forward to.

  Whatever that might be.

  She walked him right out through the back gardens, to the mews, to the very mounting block where Chessie stood, one hip cocked, swishing a luxurious russet tail at nothing in particular.

  “Safe journey, Mercia, and of course, my regards to dear George.” Lady Greendale went all the way up on her toes and kissed not his cheek—his cheeks being covered with neatly trimmed beard—but his unsuspecting mouth. Perhaps because he’d had no warning, he felt that kiss. Felt the soft brush of her mouth against lips no longer chapped, the weight of her balancing against his chest, the momentary press of her breast against his arm.

  She lingered near for a moment, long enough to whisper, “Courage, Your Grace.”

  Then she stepped back so he could mount his steed and tilt at the day’s windmill.

  He rode the distance to Carlton House by sticking mainly to the quiet paths through the parks, and when he arrived, he’d found one thing, and one thing only, to look forward to—another kiss from the countess, soft, sweet, freely given, and wholly unexpected.

  ***

  Mercia’s eyes had been a trifle wild as the groom had tightened Chessie’s girth, and Gilly had wanted to tell His Grace to stay home. This call on the Regent was a courtesy extended by the Crown toward a loyal—also wealthy and impressively titled—soldier. The soldier should have been free to decline the honor.

  But men did not operate according to the principles of any logic Gilly could fathom, and so she did as women had long done—she waited. She finished the last of the polite replies to invitations, she consulted with Mrs. Magnus on which staff to send down to Severn and which to leave in Town, she embroidered the hem of one of her black handkerchiefs, using a pearly gray thread she liked for the way it caught more light than any true gray ought.

  She started embroidering a cream silk handkerchief with the Severn crest done in royal blue, and still the duke didn’t come home.

  When it came time for late tea, and the afternoon had passed into early evening, Gilly rounded up the two largest footmen the household boasted and prepared to make a charge on Carlton House.

  She conjured up
any number of explanations. Mercia had run into old chums from the army; he’d been invited to join the Regent for tea; his horse had turned up lame… But what if he’d taken a misstep, perhaps pulled a knife on a footman, lost his patience with the Regent himself, or lost his way? What if he’d flown into a rage because he couldn’t manage his gloves or a cat had nipped at his finger?

  Losing one’s way was easy enough to do.

  ***

  When Christian had gone for a soldier, the cavalry had been the natural choice because he’d long had an appreciation for the horse. He’d been riding since before he could walk, if being taken up before his papa counted, and so he’d hidden in the Carlton House mews after enduring a half hour of George’s good wishes and shrewd regard.

  Prinny had prosed on about his uniform from the 10th Hussars, an outfit he’d designed himself, and Christian hadn’t known whether to laugh or weep at the notion of military dress reduced to a flight of fashion.

  When that interminable half hour had passed, the grooms had let Christian sit on a tack trunk and pass an hour in idleness, watching the comings and goings common to a busy stable. One hour became two, then afternoon became evening, and one old groom remarked to another that a man shouldn’t be made to wait so long for his ladybird, no matter how pretty her ankles.

  Time to leave then.

  Christian signaled he was ready for his horse, and walked out into the soft light of a summer evening.

  Without warning, his heart pounded, his ears roared, and the periphery of his vision dimmed. A sense of dread congealed in his chest, making him want to both collapse and run.

  “You a’right, guv?”

  “He’s a bloody dook, that one. The missin’ dook. Yer Grace?”

  “He ain’t missin’ if he’s standin’ right cheer. Maybe missin’ his buttons.”

  This exchange, quintessentially British in its accents and intonation, and in its cheek, helped Christian push the darkness back.

  “Gentlemen, I can hear your every word.”