by Louise Allen
‘That is perfect, mademoiselle,’ the shopkeeper remarked in accented English. ‘It might have been made for you.’
It was made for me. Rose laid the gown on to the counter and examined the skirts. Yes, there was the place where a cinder from the fire had burned a hole. Jane had cut out a strip and resewn it, but Mama had turned up her nose at the result, convinced the reduction in the fullness of the skirt ruined the line, so Rose had given it to the maid.
Her hands shook as she looked inside for the dressmaker’s label. It would have her name on it, or at the least, her initials. A few threads hung where it had been cut out.
Rose sank down on the chair beside the counter. She could have wept in earnest now. So close…
‘Are you quite well, mademoiselle? A glass of water, perhaps?’
‘I…I am just a little faint. I had no noon meal. I will take that gown, and the walking dress and other items. Tell me, monsieur, is there a respectable café nearby where a woman alone might eat?’
‘But certainly, mademoiselle. The Pot au Feu at the end of the street is quite unexceptional.’
He began to wrap up her purchases in brown paper, looping and knotting string to create ingenious carrying handles. That was another clue, she realised. She was not used to carrying her own shopping, which meant the family kept at least one footman. Rose paid, took her parcel and made her way to the square in the direction the shopkeeper had indicated.
The café was more of a bistrot and was crowded with working people, including several young women. A couple got up to go as Rose entered and she slipped into a chair at the vacated table, right by the window.
The waiter was polite, the chalked-up menu short but appetising. Rose ordered an omelette and looked around. This was rather fun, she decided. She had probably never eaten outside a private house before and certainly never alone. Now she relaxed and settled down to watch the passers-by.
She had just lifted the first forkful of egg and fried potato to her mouth when two blue-jacketed soldiers came into view, stopped and turned to look at the bistrot. Rose burned her mouth, choked and took a gulp of water. Adam and Sergeant Hawkins. Hawkins gestured towards the restaurant, Adam shrugged, then nodded, and they came up the steps and in through the door.
The room was crowded and there were few free places, except at her table. Hawkins glanced her way, apparently did not recognise the bonnet, said something to Adam. He turned as she sat there, fork halfway to her mouth, like a rabbit in front of a stoat.
Rose felt both exposed and curiously guilty, then common sense took over. What was she afraid of? She was doing nothing wrong, just learning to be herself again. ‘Gentlemen, won’t you join me?’
Hawkins’s jaw dropped and Adam’s expression darkened into one of his better scowls. The waiter began to move towards them and Rose realised what he, and everyone else in the place must think, that she was a woman of easy virtue soliciting the men’s attention.
‘Please lay places for my brother and his sergeant,’ she said in French to the waiter. ‘And bring some wine, I am sure he will need putting into a good mood when he sees all my shopping.’
The man glanced from the brown paper parcel to Adam’s expression and winked. ‘At once, mademoiselle.’
‘What the devil are you doing here?’ Adam hissed as they sat down.
‘Shopping. And I missed the noon meal. A shopkeeper told me this was a respectable place to eat.’
‘You did not tell me you were going out.’
‘We were hardly discussing…’ She noticed Hawkins staring out of the window with heavy-handed tact. ‘I only made up my mind late this morning.’
‘You should not be out by yourself.’ Adam was still looking thunderous.
‘Why not? This is a perfectly safe area and dressed like this no one will give me a second glance.’
Adam’s expression suggested he would have more to say about it if it were not for the waiter putting the wine on the table. ‘The special, for two. And another glass for my sister.’ He waited until the man was weaving his way back to the kitchen between the packed tables. ‘It is perfectly safe until someone thinks you are a streetwalker.’
‘Really, Adam, do you think you ought to be mentioning such women to me?’ she enquired in mock-shocked tones.
Hawkins turned a snort into a cough and Adam’s expression reminded her all too clearly that he was used to receiving unquestioning obedience to orders and no back talk. He was looking, she decided, exceptionally smart. His shave had been close, his uniform was brushed, his boots and his sword belt shone. And I am not the only person here who thinks so, she thought, noticing covert glances from the other women in the room.
Broad shoulders, straight back, an air of authority and danger. Really, he was a most impressive male specimen. My impressive male. It was a titillating thought.
‘What is wrong, Rose?’ Adam asked, his voice gentler now.
‘Nothing at all. You just startled me, marching in here and scowling,’ she said with a smile to soften the words. ‘I feel as wary as any woman does when the man paying the bills spots a large parcel from a dress shop.’
And I do not like the knowledge that he is paying the bills, she realised. I do not like feeling like a kept woman. Idiot, what did you expect when you got into bed with him? You made him your protector in every sense of the word. I really am ruined. It had never occurred to her, she thought while the men were distracted by the mild confusion of plates of food arriving, that it was possible to be more than ruined. Eloping with an officer was one thing. Living as a mistress was a whole step more shocking.
But I want to be with him, part of her argued. Yes, her conscience retorted, but who am I?
They all fell silent, eating. Rose snatched glances at Adam under cover of sipping her wine, watched the muscles in his jaw and throat moving as he chewed. In profile it was a strong, determined jaw. The curve of his ear, the flare of his nostrils, had a masculine elegance that she suspected he would share with his half-brother, but she doubted anyone would ever mistake Adam Flint for a fashionable member of the ton. He looked half-tamed, feral, dangerous, even sitting quietly eating in a bourgeois bistrot.
She liked him, she was very attracted to him, she admired him and she was grateful to him. And that was the problem. Was she blinded by gratitude and sheer physical desire into thinking she felt more for this man than she really did? Rose watched the scarred, long-fingered hand close around the fragile stem of the wine glass and shivered. She was perilously close to believing herself in—
Chapter Ten
‘Miss Rose, more wine?’ Hawkins lifted the bottle, making her jump.
‘Thank you, no.’ She did not need anything else to cloud her thinking.
‘I would walk you back,’ Adam said. ‘But we have the horses just down the street.’
‘I told you, I am perfectly all right by myself. And besides, I still have shopping to do in the market.’ And I need to be alone, I need to be apart from you, just now.
Adam’s expression was as inscrutable as ever, but she sensed that her show of independence disconcerted him. Did he expect her to be fearful and clinging still? Surely his other women must have been strong and independent types if they had been camp followers? Perhaps he liked that in her, enjoyed the role of protector, but if that was the case he was going to be disappointed, Rose realised. She did not want to cling and be dependent, not with a man as strong as Adam Flint, or he would simply consume her.
Was that why I ran away with Gerald? she wondered. Because I sensed he was not a strong character and I wanted to escape from home on my own terms? That was not a comfortable thought, either about her relationship with her parents or her own motives in eloping. Poor Gerald.
‘Rose?’
‘Sorry, I was wool-gathering.’
Adam pushed money across the table to Hawkins. ‘Go and settle up, will you?’ He waited until the other man was halfway across the room. ‘What’s wrong, Rose?’
‘Other than the fact that I still don’t know who I am?’ Her voice had risen, heads turned. She lowered it to reach only Adam’s ears. ‘Or that my parents must be frantic? Or that I am dependent on you for everything—the roof over my head, the clothes on my back, my food?’ She gestured at the empty plate, then snatched her hand back. That had been theatrical, almost wild. She needed calm and rational thought, not to succumb to panic and drama.
‘I’m sorry. I think the shock of everything is catching up with me. I will be fine, I’ll just go and finish my shopping.’
Adam rose as she did, his chair scraping back on the tiled floor. ‘Rose, it will be all right. I will make it all right.’
If sheer force of will could, then he probably spoke the truth. Rose found a smile and reached up to press a kiss on his cheek. ‘I know.’ She managed a gay little wave to Sergeant Hawkins and then she was off down the steps and heading for the market.
I have worried Adam now and he has too much else to worry about. But I am not going to lie to him, not once I discover who I am. Then I am not going to deceive him about anything. Anything except how I feel about him.
*
Adam came back to the house late that afternoon, along with Hawkins and the surgeon. Rose hung out of the bedroom window to watch Hawkins form the men up in the street outside and then start marching them up and down again.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked Maggie when she found her, as usual, in the kitchen.
‘Sick parade. Everyone that the lieutenant thinks is fit will march off to Roosbos, to join the others. It takes a while to sort them out. There’s those who shouldn’t go yet who’ll pretend they are fit and those who are fit who fancy lying around some more and those who are fine.’
‘I wouldn’t want to try to deceive the major when he’s looking like that,’ Rose said and Maggie laughed. But that was just what she was doing. Deceiving him about the fact she was far better born than he believed, deceiving him about her confused feelings for him.
Dog sat whining by the front door. ‘No, you can’t go out there and join in,’ Rose scolded him. ‘The major isn’t going to go away and leave you.’ Dog looked at her and scratched at the door. ‘You need to go out? Well, come to the back with me then.’
She let the dog out of the kitchen door to the courtyard and followed him as he ran over to his favourite post, watered it liberally, then trotted off purposefully through the arch into the stable yard. ‘Stay,’ she called. ‘I’m not chasing you across half of Brussels.’ But it seemed he was only concerned with treeing the stable cat and once that was out of reach, spitting and muttering on the grain-store roof, he was content to trot around the yard, sniffing for rats and marking his territory against the neighbourhood dogs.
She had not been in the stable yard before and Rose poked around, enjoying the dusty smells in the grain store, the satisfying tang of saddle soap and oil in the tack room, the military precision of the stacked bales of straw and hay.
The top half-door to the stables themselves was hooked back and Rose opened the lower half and let herself in. There were three stalls. The first contained a pitiful wreck of a horse with its coat covered in sticky patches of salve and a bandage around one leg. It was pulling hay from a net with the air of an animal that was going to stuff itself while the opportunity was there. Clouded memories of it between the shafts of a cart came back to her. This was the horse that had brought the men back from the battlefield, poor creature. At least it had found a safe home here.
It twitched nervously when she spoke to it, so she moved on to the next stall and a large, sturdy bay that was unfamiliar. She clicked her tongue, interested to observe her own familiarity with horses. She was comfortable with them and it occurred to her, when the bay came to have its nose rubbed, that she would welcome riding out.
‘You’re not a lady’s horse though, are you? More of a cavalry troop horse by the size of you. No, I haven’t got a carrot.’
There was the stamp of a hoof and a great black head appeared over the final door in the row.
‘My heavens.’ Rose blinked at the apparition. If she had thought the bay was large, this creature was enormous, with the arched, muscular neck of a stallion and a flowing, wavy, mane. It snorted and rolled its eye at her. ‘You must be the hell horse. You brought me back from the battlefield. That does deserve a reward. Let me see if there is something…’
She searched amongst the sacks and found some lumpy carrots. The thin horse eyed the offering nervously, so she tossed it into his manger and the bay accepted his with good manners, but the big black showed a fine set of yellow teeth and stamped impatiently.
‘Behave,’ she chided, taking care to flatten her palm completely before she put her fingers anywhere near those teeth. He lipped up the carrot with surprising delicacy and Rose laughed. ‘You are a gentleman, after all.’ He butted her shoulder so she began to scratch his nose, then under his chin until he leaned his head heavily against her, begging for more.
‘You are like your master,’ she murmured. ‘You look fierce and underneath—’
The tug on her arm that jerked her back flattened her against a solid wall of man. ‘Adam!’
‘Dear God, that horse is a killer, what in blazes were you thinking of?’ Adam shook her, none too gently, picked her up and dumped her on a bale of hay. He had shed his uniform jacket, pulled off his stock, rolled up his sleeves, although the curved sabre still hung by his side. He looked ready for a fight, for a battle and somehow she had got in his way.
The fact that there was real anxiety in his eyes did nothing to quench the flare of irritation at being taken for an idiot. ‘I know horses and I knew he’d be safe. I hadn’t gone into the stall, I have sense enough for that.’ She stood up. Adam’s hands on her shoulders promptly pushed her back down again.
‘You know about horses? Since when have you known that?’
‘Since I came in here just now and felt confident with them,’ she retorted. ‘The big black is the horse you brought me back on, isn’t he?’
Some of the tension went out of Adam’s stance. ‘Old Nick. That’s what I called him after ten minutes’ acquaintance. He’s Spanish and trained in all the classical manoeuvres of a fighting horse and he works on the general principle of kill first, ask questions afterward. I bought him from a Spanish grandee who had eaten his way through his entire stable just to keep his household alive. The stallion had been left until last. I lived on credit for the rest of the year—’ he shrugged ‘—but he was worth it.’
Rose ducked under his arm and went back to the stallion. ‘He likes me.’ The animal’s eyes were half-closed as she rubbed the soft spot under his chin. ‘If he was a cat he’d be purring.’
‘Interesting.’ Adam came over. ‘He must like women, or he was trained early not to hurt them. He tolerates me—under threat of being gelded—until I’m mounted and then he’s totally obedient.’ He stoked the proud arch of the stallion’s neck and Old Nick bared his teeth. ‘See? One day, when we’ve access to a field, I’ll show you what he can do, although I suspect I don’t know the half of it. I must find a dressage master to put him through his paces.’
‘Will you breed from him?’
‘Yes, if I can find mares big enough.’
‘English or Irish hunters,’ Rose suggested. ‘Something meant for heavy country. It would be interesting, breeding horses.’
‘Hmm.’
That was hardly forthcoming. Rose peered round the stallion’s nose. ‘What are you thinking about, Adam?’
‘The future.’
‘Peace will be declared soon, I suppose. Napoleon can’t recover from this, surely?’ Silence. ‘But I suppose you’ll have your orders soon.’ It was more of a question than a statement.
‘I’m stuck in Brussels for now. The Rogues could be split up between other artillery units while I’m pushing paper around. Even if Randall recovers I doubt he’ll stay in the army now the war is all but won, he’s too many responsibilities ba
ck in England.’
Rose noticed he did not say back home. ‘How is Lord Randall?’
‘They had to operate on him, remove the bullet. Foster says he became agitated and it shifted.’ She could not see his face, but he sounded shaken. ‘And that was my fault for telling him about Sarah. Chest surgery is hideously dangerous. For them to decide to operate then it must have moved close to his heart or his lungs or a major blood vessel.’
She thought she heard him mutter, ‘If Randall dies, that really is all I have of family gone. And that’s a damn selfish way to look at it.’
There was a silence she did not know how to break, then Adam said, ‘Foster thinks he’ll recover. We’ve fought the war we were formed for. Time for change.’
‘Adam, you are talking to me, not telling the men what you think they ought to hear. I can tell you aren’t happy.’ Her hand slid under Old Nick’s nose to catch his wrist. ‘What are your orders? Could you take over the Rogues?’
‘Perhaps. Or Bartlett. I can’t see him leaving the army. As for me, nothing has changed. For now I am still a cross between a hospital superintendent and a constable.’ The sudden burst of anger made Old Nick toss his head and her hand slipped from Adam’s wrist.
‘I don’t imagine you enjoy being separated from the army. No action, no excitement.’
‘Are you attempting to be soothing and understanding, Rose?’ His voice was a dark growl. The stallion shifted uneasily.
‘Probably,’ she admitted. ‘What do you want to do, Adam?’ She was still sounding reasonable and soothing, she realised. Probably patronising.
‘Want?’ Adam ducked under the horse’s head and came up right in front of her. ‘I want the war back. I want the certainty of one enemy and my duty. I want to carry on doing something I know I am good at. I want to keep the only family I’ve had since I was fourteen. And I am damn sure that none of that is going to happen, not if I don’t shift for myself.’
