by Louise Allen
He smiled at her, a curve of his lips that left his eyes bleak. ‘You did ask. So now I have to work out what I can do, so you will have to forgive me if I am rather less positive than my fellow officers, all gentlemen who have something to go home to.’ He closed his eyes and took a deep breath while she struggled for the right words. ‘And I apologise for inflicting my temper over my lack of purpose on you.’
He had become a soldier, like many a lad before him making the best of a difficult home life, a limited upbringing. And then he had made himself, remade himself, as an officer, as a gentleman. And now he was going to have to remake himself all over again.
‘And now…’ The sentence petered out. She had no words of comfort, only platitudes. Adam had to work this out for himself.
Old Nick tossed his head, a solid blow between Adam’s shoulder blades that pushed him the final few inches against her body. ‘And now, what I do know is that I am your lover, Rose.’ He lifted her, his hands at her waist, and carried her, his mouth hard on hers, the few long strides that brought her against the wall.
‘Hold on,’ he rasped before his kiss sucked the air from her lungs.
Rose clung to his shoulders, curled an arm around his neck and by instinct hooked her leg up, over his hip. ‘Adam.’ She managed a gasp when he came up for air. ‘Here?’
‘Here. Now. Like this.’ Somehow he wedged her firmly enough to be able to free a hand and pull up her skirts, bundling them into the small space between their bodies. She felt him fumbling with the falls of his trousers and then he was against her, insistent flesh against her own damp, yearning softness.
A voice said, ‘Yes, Adam. Yes, now.’ She recognised it as hers, recognised a desperate need that matched his.
He shifted, pressed into her, held her against the rough boards as he impaled her. ‘Rose, forgive me, but I can’t be gentle.’
‘Good. Stop talking,’ she gasped and heard the huff of laughter shaken out of him as he buried his face in the angle of her neck and thrust. It was completely without finesse, relentless, yet she came apart in his arms on the first stoke, shuddering around him as he drove into her.
‘Again.’
‘Adam, I can’t.’
‘Yes. Come with me. Again.’
Through the ebbing shock waves of pleasure she felt another surge growing, realised that she had both legs wrapped around his hips and that her mouth was fastened on his neck, the taste of desire and man and heat on her tongue.
‘Now,’ he demanded and she obeyed, cresting another impossible wave of pleasure, her body arching into his, her cries muffled against his neck as he groaned and shuddered and went rigid against her. Inside her.
Afterwards Rose had no idea how long they stayed like that, locked together against the stable wall. The sound of a hoof stamping on the stone floor finally shook Adam out of the trance.
‘Old Nick approves,’ he said, a grim smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘Two things he understands, sex and violence.’ He helped her on to unsteady feet. ‘Did I hurt you, Rose? I’m sorry.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I didn’t notice, it was too good. I hurt you, though.’ She reached up to touch the red mark at the angle of throat and shoulder. ‘I bit you.’
‘I didn’t notice—it was too good,’ Adam echoed. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, dipped in a bucket of water, wrung it out and offered it to her. ‘There, just until you can get to your room.’ He turned aside to give her privacy for a moment, then spun back, his face stark with realisation. ‘Hell, Rose, I didn’t withdraw. I could have got you with child.’
Surely a heart cannot stop from alarm, can it? Rose gasped, breathless with sudden panic until the sheer horror on Adam’s face acted like a slap on the cheek.
‘Unlikely, surely, after just the once?’ she said as calmly as she knew how. When are my courses due? About two weeks? Not long to have to wait.
‘It only takes once.’ Adam still looked grim. ‘We’ll marry.’
It was hardly a resounding declaration of devoted love, Rose thought miserably, more a statement along the lines of, Impossible odds, but we attack at dawn. Or, All the ammunition has gone, fix bayonets.
‘No we will not. Not unless it is absolutely necessary,’ she said with a brisk confidence she was far from feeling. ‘I promised you I did not expect marriage. Stop looking like that, Adam. We were both carried away.’
The expression on his face said as clearly as words that he did not consider she had any responsibility in the matter whatsoever.
Chapter Eleven
‘I’ll go in. Give me a moment.’ By some miracle her hair was not the bird’s nest she feared. Rose pushed in some pins, brushed dust from her skirts and walked out of the stable as briskly as her trembling legs would allow her. Once she was round the corner she sat down with a thump on the mounting block. There was the sound of tramping feet and the little yard was full of the men forming up in ranks, shouldering packs and weapons.
‘Where are you going?’ Rose asked Hawkins.
‘Roosbos, which is where we were based before Quatre Bras.’ He looked at her, a very straight, fatherly look. ‘You take care of yourself, Miss Rose.’
‘I will. Good luck, Sergeant.’ She managed a bright smile as she went down the row of men, wishing them goodbye. And then they were gone, marching out of the yard, out of her life, the motley crew of brave, foul-mouthed artillerymen, some of them rogues in more than name, all of them unlike anyone she had ever had contact with before.
Rose drifted into the strangely quiet kitchen, then jumped as Moss shouldered his way through the door and dumped a load of sheets into the boiler in the lean-to. ‘Lord, but those lads made a lot of work. Still, I’m sorry to see them go. They’re forming up at Roosbos while they wait to see what Wellington wants them to do. Could be Paris, could be home to England, could be the Lord knows where.’
She went upstairs, washed, changed, but still Adam did not come. When Maggie called she went downstairs and ate supper with the strangely reduced household, then dipped a can of hot water to take to her room. ‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ she explained when Maggie sent a look of surprise at the kitchen clock.
It was not true. She had no intention of going to bed and she was not at all tired. She washed, a proper hot sponge bath this time, then shook out her new clothes and began to dress without looking in the mirror. Chemise, petticoat, light stays, stockings. She slipped the morning gown over her head, fastened it and put on her shoes.
Still without using the glass she assembled the ribbons and hairpins she’d bought at the market and began to put up her hair into a simple style that her fingers seemed to know very well indeed. When it was done she shook out her skirts, stood in front of the long glass and looked up.
Staring back at her was a young lady in a simple but fashionable gown. She appeared groomed, even elegant. Her hair, a shining dark brown shot through with mahogany lights, needed no ornament other than the moss-green ribbon threaded through it.
She was completely familiar. Rose dropped into a formal curtsy to her own reflection. ‘Catherine.’
Catherine. That was her name, but who was she? ‘Catherine,’ she whispered again. ‘Miss Catherine…’ No that was not quite right. She was an only child so she was Miss… No, the surname would not come. But the Miss was correct.
She touched her earlobes. They were pierced and there should be pearl earrings. She wore her pearl set a lot, and the citrines, too. There was the amber necklace her godmother had given her…
‘Rose?’ Adam came through the doorway from the landing into the main room. She heard the snap of his boot heels across the boards, the clank as he set his sword belt and weapon in the corner, the sigh as he sat on the edge of the bed and began to lever off his boots. Familiar sounds, the sounds a husband coming home after a long day might make. She stood frozen, staring into her own wide eyes in the glass.
‘Rose?’ The pad of bare feet now. ‘Are you all right? Ma
ggie said you are having an early night. I’m sorry, I had to go with the men as far as headquarters. This afternoon…’ His words trailed off as he reached the doorway and she turned to face him.
The silence seemed to stretch on and on. His voice when he did speak was deadly quiet. ‘Who in blazes are you?’
*
‘Rose,’ the apparition said.
Flint stared. Of course it was Rose, but a Rose transformed. She shifted, uneasy under his regard, like a woman hiding something. Hell, of course she’s hiding something. Look at her, you fool.
‘Still Rose,’ she murmured.
‘You look like a lady.’ Yes, he had been a fool, or perhaps he’d seen exactly what he wanted to see all along. ‘You are a lady, aren’t you?’ Flint did not trouble to keep the bitter edge from his voice. ‘You keep forgetting to use that accent. I should have guessed, just from your handwriting alone.’ He studied her in the candlelight, kept quite still while everything shifted under his feet. She was not just respectable, she was well bred, possibly an aristocrat, the precious daughter of some titled household. Not only had he taken her virginity, but that afternoon he had poured his seed into her like a careless rutting fool.
‘I think I may be, yes.’ She stood as still as he did, as if chilled by the suppressed anger in his voice. Rose was not afraid of him, not physically, but she kept her own voice level, as though she was reasoning with a dangerous dog. He fought the urge to growl.
‘I found this gown in a second-hand clothes shop that ladies’ maids use to sell their mistresses’ cast-offs. It was made for me, I remember it, I gave it to my maid. But the name label has been cut out.’
He came fully into the room and fingered the fabric of her skirts, the finest wool, the smoothest silk ribbons. Silk like her skin. ‘You can afford gowns of this quality, you had your own lady’s maid. Tell me, what rank was this Gerald of yours?’ An officer, of course.
‘A lieutenant. I…we eloped from the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. I think I saw you there. Adam, I am worried about my parents—I remember I left them a letter, telling them about Gerald. They will know he is dead by now and therefore that I am missing.’
‘What was his surname? I can find out who is asking about a lieutenant of the Seventy-Third of that name.’ He made himself walk away from her, kept his voice level and reasonable. The world was falling away beneath him, but an officer had to keep calm, had to resolve the crisis, damn it. ‘Your parents will have made enquiries. The sooner we find them, the sooner we can get the horsewhipping element of this farce out of the way.’
Trust him, the blundering soldier who tried to ape the gentleman. First he had innocently asked for one lady’s hand in marriage, now he had managed to ruin another.
‘I can’t remember his last name…’ Her voice trailed away as his words registered. ‘Horsewhipping? What are you talking about?’
Flint picked up the walking dress from the bed and shook it out. He had to move and that was better than shaking her, or slamming his fist into the wall or going out and getting dead drunk. Or what he really wanted to do, drag her into bed and forget all of this doubt and conflict in the simple, glorious certainty of making love to Rose. My Rose, not this fine lady.
‘You have excellent taste in clothes, my dear.’ He laid the gown down with exaggerated care and turned back to her now he had himself under control again. ‘And you are not stupid. You know your father or your brother are not going to call me out for ruining you. Gentlemen do not duel with bastards, they have other ways of dealing with them.’
‘I do not have a brother,’ she said with certainty. ‘And it wasn’t your fault. You thought I was a camp follower, you thought I was experienced, not a virgin.’
‘It is my responsibility.’ He shrugged. ‘I saw what I wanted to see, I expect. Not for the first time.’
‘We won’t tell them. I am certain I will not fall pregnant.’
‘Sure about that?’ He watched her face, the colour ebbing and flowing under her skin. ‘Your courses started this afternoon?’ God, he really had ruined an innocent if she thought they could brush through this with a few lies.
‘No!’ Rose’s cheeks were flaming now. She had never discussed such a thing with a man, not even the family doctor, he was sure.
‘Well, then, we cannot be certain. And I am not going to lie to your father, whether you are with child or not. I do try to at least counterfeit some pretence of honour.’
‘I wish you would stop doing that,’ she snapped. Flint raised an eyebrow at the sudden flare of temper from the woman changing before his eyes into a lady he did not know. ‘Stop putting yourself down. You are an officer and you have made yourself a gentleman.’
‘And you are exceedingly naive, Rose. Unless your father has a gullible candidate lined up, then we are going to be married once I have given him whatever satisfaction he requires, but I can assure you, he will know exactly what I am.’
‘I do not know if I wish to marry you.’ Rose turned on her heel and went into the main bedchamber. It was clearly a retreat.
‘What has that got to do with it?’ Of course she did not want to marry him. All she’d wanted, like all the well-bred ladies who made eyes at him, was his body in her bed. ‘Just when did you realise you were a gentlewoman?’ Flint demanded, staying close on her heels. There was no way she was going to wriggle out of this, or charm him out of doing the right thing. ‘Before you got between my sheets?’
‘I realised when you were talking about Lady Sarah being ruined. I was beginning to piece things together,’ she admitted.
‘You knew the consequences of what we did. How in heaven’s name can you say you do not want to marry me after that? The scandal is going to be bad enough as it is, but if we don’t marry it will be infinitely worse and you know it.’
‘Because I do not know myself.’ Rose threw up her hands in obvious frustration and began to pace. ‘I know how I feel about you now. I admire you, I feel safe with you, I like you. I desire you. But I am not the real me, now. I am changing, you must have seen it. I am not the frightened, speechless, helpless creature you rescued. What will I be when I am my real self again? What will I think and feel when I know who I am, when my memory comes back?’
‘You will think you were a damn fool.’ Rose flinched at the roughness in his tone, the language, but he did not relent. ‘You will bitterly regret that desire. You will certainly not want to find yourself married to me, my lady, but married you will be.’
‘Not Lady. Miss, I am certain,’ Rose said, coming to a stop right in front of him.
‘Oh, that is excellent news, I am relieved,’ he jibed, fighting with the only weapon he had, words. ‘A viscount or below for a father. At least I have not ruined a duke’s daughter.’
‘I do not know myself,’ she repeated, standing her ground, toe to toe with him as if that would somehow make him take her more seriously. His words, his sarcasm, his bitterness slid off her skin as though she recognised them for what they were, a desperate deceit.
‘You don’t know me, either, but that did not stop you coming to my bed,’ Flint pointed out.
‘Yes, I do,’ Rose said slowly. He saw himself reflected in the wide, honest depths of her eyes, saw his own bitterness staring back. ‘I knew who you were the moment I saw you, Adam Flint. Even when I thought you were the Devil himself come to take me down to hell for my sins, I trusted you.’
‘You thought I was the Devil?’
‘I thought the men who were coming for me were demons, but you vanquished them. You smelt of fire and brimstone and blood and you rode a great black horse. It was the only way to make sense of the world I found myself in.’
‘Rose.’ Flint took her shoulders. Within his grasp they felt as fragile as eggshells. He made himself keep the hold gentle, acutely aware of how big and calloused his hands were. He must not drag her towards him, kiss her until she yielded. ‘We will find your parents and I will marry you.’ And somehow I will make it right for you.<
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‘You do not want to,’ she said stubbornly, her eyes fixed on the topmost button of his jacket.
‘Yes, I do. I was thinking about it today.’ He banished all the doubt from his tone, pushed away the uncertainty, the vagueness of his plans. When you were leading men into a situation you knew was lethally dangerous, but your orders gave you no choice, you put just that certainty into your voice. It wasn’t deceit, it was survival and he’d always come through alive before. He had dishonoured her, so he must marry her. It was that simple. That complicated.
‘Liar. In the stable you were far from sure about anything.’ Her voice shook, just a little.
He forgot to be gentle, simply pulled her hard against his chest and wrapped his arms around her and felt her tremble. His anger ebbed a little with the realisation of just how frightened and confused Rose was for all her composure and her brave words. ‘I would fight any man who called me a liar.’
‘There is no time for this. You’ll be leaving for Paris soon,’ Rose muttered, her voice muffled in broadcloth. She had been washing her hair in something herbal again. Rosemary, lemon and a herb he could not identify.
Flint closed his eyes. ‘I told you, my orders are to stay here in Brussels. I have no expectation of being ordered to Paris.’
‘But you will be sent somewhere eventually, won’t you? Moss seems to think so. Or you’ll be ordered back to England or off to somewhere else unless you sell out now and I don’t believe you’ll forget the army, just like that. Wellington isn’t going to let you sit around in Brussels, finding my parents. Then you’ll need to arrange what you are doing next, join the East India Company. I heard you talking about it.’
‘I will resign.’ He could not drag Rose to India or to follow the drum in whatever foreign land he ended up. Nor could he leave her alone in England while he was away for months, years. He avoided examining why it was that fellow officers routinely left their wives behind, but he could not contemplate it.
He held her, his cheek against the crown of her head and felt himself relax, just a little. There was a certain relief in having the decision taken away. This was what must happen and now all he had to do was to make it work, however unpleasant the process.
