Along with Pablo, Manual and Hugo were vagabonds of a sort. They usually drifted from town to town at their leisure picking up coin and supplies as they could, by honest and less than honest means. They were in an abandoned town allowing Edward time to recuperate. Edward was surprised that the men had taken such pains to ensure that he was strengthening in the week since his beating and attempted execution.
“I feel that this will be a good hand,” Manual said as he tapped his feet under the table.
Edward narrowed his eyes at the man. Manual was always quite cheerful when his hand was good, but he was even more cheerful when he had a poor hand. Edward eyed his hand. He was not what he would call a good hand at playing cards, but he had done it from time to time.
Hugo snorted. “Manual is scraping the barrel clean with his hand, boys.”
“Cork your mouth, Hugo,” Manual said. Where the man’s English had once sounded rusty, it now flowed as if he had spoken it all his life. Pablo still did not like to use the rigid English tongue and often spoke in Spanish. Edward had picked up a few words but only enough to get the gist of what the man said, never the subtlety of it.
Pablo grunted and tossed down a rough wooden coin that they used to play with. They did not have much in the way of money, but sometimes they played for chores, or rather to get out of doing them. It passed the time, and Edward found he enjoyed their company most of the time. The rest of the time, Edward was reminded of his own friends who had betrayed him, and he kept his distance from the men.
The three men were leaving in a few weeks to go to meet up with their band of men. Edward was not sure of what the men did other than petty thieving that Manual had admitted to easily. Edward did not wish to steal, but he was hopeful that he could at least get to somewhere near civilization with their help before he parted ways with the men.
“You haven’t answered my questions, Major,” Hugo reminded Edward as he tapped his cards on the table.
Edward’s eyes left his hand of cards and went to Hugo’s face. “I don’t know how to answer them,” Edward said with a shrug. “If I return home, I run the risk of being captured and thereby killing the man who helped me when no one else would, as they would surely hang Colonel Ainsley too for his part in my escape.”
“Doesn’t mean you won’t try to clear your name, though,” Manual said.
Pablo grunted and said something in Spanish to the others.
Hugo nodded to Pablo. “He is going with us, but I meant after he is more himself. A man like the major here will surely not want to be with us lowly peasants forever,” Hugo said.
“I have nothing against you,” Edward said without hesitation. “I just do not know what I will do. Please, call me Edward. I am no longer a major in any army.”
Manual shuffled his hand as if to make it somehow look better. “You don’t have to decide all of that today,” he said nonchalantly. “You’ve only just gotten to where you can stand without passing out. Let’s not get too hasty and mount a revolution.”
“I don’t think a revolution is in my future,” Edward assured the man. He touched Emily’s locket through the simple linen shirt the men had provided him with. “If I cannot prove my innocence, then I can never go home, and I fear that I will never prove my innocence.”
Manual said, “You would like it in Paris. It is nice there.”
Edward looked over at the man, and his brows furrowed. “Perhaps,” he said noncommittally.
***
The orders to leave came for the regiment the week after Edward’s hanging. Most of the men seemed grateful to be leaving behind the reminder of what had happened. Augustus, however, went to Oscar and James distraught at the news. “We cannot just leave him here,” Augustus said woefully of their dead friend, Edward.
“What would you have us do?” Oscar asked as he chuckled. “If you want to dig up his corpse and carry it over your shoulder like Christ and his cross then you are welcome to it.”
James smiled as he swung his musket onto his shoulder and said, “Oscar has a point, Augustus. His family may put in for his body to be returned home after the war, but now is not the time to lament over things in the past.”
Augustus looked like he wanted to say something further, but the man merely stomped out of the room wallowing in misery. Oscar looked over at James. “We are going to have to do something about him,” Oscar said as he picked up his pack.
“He’ll hold,” James said with a shrug.
Oscar nodded but asked, “And if he does not?”
“Tragedies happen in war, Oscar,” James said as he turned to leave the room at the inn and join the regiment as they prepared to march.
Outside on the street, the regiment’s lines were forming to ready for marching. James and his men joined their ranks and waited for the command to start. Colonel Ainsley could be seen at the head of the column of men talking with one of the other officers. James watched the man with interest. The colonel had been quieter than usual since Edward’s court-martial and hanging. James thought the man was probably questioning some of his past decisions, as well he should.
Chapter 7
Edward travelled with the three Spaniards the following week and met up with their men who had a base set up in a small town just south of the French border along the coast. The town was located in the mountains. The scenery was so beautiful that Edward was in awe of its natural splendour. The houses were nestled along well-worn roads that wound up into hills and around valleys.
“Home sweet home,” Manual said. The man took a deep breath of the air and smiled over at Edward. “Did you ever see such a beautiful sight?”
Edward had to admit that it surpassed even the beauty of his beloved England. “Never, not even in a dream,” Edward said as he looked around.
Women were sitting out on the steps of houses with wide-brimmed hats working at looms or weaving yarn together in such a way that Edward was mesmerised by the colours that abounded in everything. The women gave them waves as Edward and his companions passed by. Despite what he thought he would find, the town of Leon seemed quiet and peaceful, not at all like the centre for any sort of gang.
Edward followed Hugo and the others to a house set up against the side of a mountain cliff. There he was introduced to the rest of the thieves, or most of them. The men eyed him with varying degrees of distrust, and he could not blame them. The world was such that everyone needed to be measured carefully.
Hugo spoke to the men in the house in Spanish, and Edward stood uneasily nearby. After Hugo and the men had talked, he pulled Edward aside and told him, “We’ve agreed that you can stay here as long as you like. As you recover,you’ll need to pull your weight.”
“You mean steal,” Edward said as he filled in what Hugo had not said.
Hugo shrugged. “I don’t care if you dance for your supper. I just can’t validate keeping you around once you are fit enough to work if you don’t work. That’s the only way we survive. Everyone pitches in.”
Edward understood. Hugo was not a horrible man; neither were Manual or Pablo as much as Edward could tell. That perhaps was the part that put Edward ill-at-ease. If the men before him were merely degenerate scoundrels, then Edward could accept them at face value, and that would be easier than trying to judge if the face he saw was merely a pretence as his own friends had held before Edward to conceal their true selves.
Over the next week, Edward learned that most of the men were only interested in coin and where they could get more coins. Edward was settling in as well as he could. He limped over to a table and poured himself a glass of water. The house was a large one, but so crowded with men most of the time that it felt like a tiny cottage.
A man that Edward had only seen in passing sat down across from him and helped himself to a glass of water as well. The glasses were not at all what anyone would call clean, but Edward found it easy to overlook that if he was thirsty enough. “You gonna have a nasty scar,” the man said in a thick accent.
Edward ran his finger gently over the wound that was still healing along the right side of his face. It was where James had hit him. The skin had been torn apart by the force of the blow. Now the skin was red and gruesome as the wound fought to close. Edward knew all too well what he looked like. He had scared one of the local women before seeking out a mirror. Manual had been loathed to let him look, but Edward had merely accepted his disfiguration.
“Yes,” Edward said in a quiet voice. His hand clenched around his glass. “I would not mind giving the person who placed that particular wound one just like it.”
The man snickered. “I feel like that about my back. I was sold into servitude and lashed horribly.”
“Did you kill your master?” Edward asked as he eyed the man with interest. The idea of revenge was something that Edward could hold onto, even if he could never return to England. Perhaps he would run across James while the man was still in France.
The man shook his head. “No. He had the poor manners to die of malaria.”
Laughter spilled forth from the man. Edward laughed with him. “So, now you are a free man?” Edward asked as he offered the man another drink.
“That I am,” the man said with a smile. “They say you’re English. From the sound of your speech, you sound like a noble. What are you doing here, I ponder?”
Edward sighed heavily as he poured the man some more water. When the man’s glass was filled again, Edward set the pitcher down and eyed him steadily. “I was betrayed by men that I thought were my friends.”
“So, they ran out of town?” the man asked as he leaned forward intent on hearing Edward’s answer.
Edward shook his head. “That would have been a kindness. No, they said I murdered someone and got me hanged for it.”
“You look pretty good for a dead man,” the man said as the corners of his lips twitched in amusement.
Edward chuckled. “Would have been better if I had died.”
“There’s always something to look forward to if you have someone you want to kill,” the man said. He snickered. “My ma told me that when I was seven.”
Edward snorted at the idea and shook his head. “That is really all I think about it.”
“Then you’ll go far in this gang,” the man said.
***
Mail from the war zones was sometimes slow to trickle in. Emily sat with her father and mother in her father’s study. “Emily, darling, are you quite all right?”
Emily could hear her father’s words, but she was staring at the paper that he had handed her. He had told her what it was before he handed it to her, but the words made no sense. It said that Edward was not coming home. It said he was dead. The letter was sparse and formal. There were no details given, and Emily clasped the letter to her chest as she took a deep breath.
She blinked through tear-filled eyes at her father. “Edward promised that he would come back,” Emily said as she shook her head. “It cannot be true. Mother, there has to be a mistake.” Emily looked over at her mother who just reached over to put her hand on Emily’s shoulder. Emily quickly looked at her father. “Father, you must write them at once and ask them to correct this gross error. To make us think that he is dead is just inexcusable!”
Sir Daventry sighed heavily. His hands were laid on the desk in front of him,and he eyed his daughter with compassion. “Mistakes such as those are few and far between, Emily.”
“Father, he promised,” Emily said with all the force she could muster. “He promised he would come back. Edward does not break his promises. We are to be married.”
Her mother’s arms were around her then,and Emily could hold the tears back no longer. The letter and the look on her father’s face crumbled Emily’s hopes that perhaps this was not really happening. The hope turned into a deep hole that she felt she would never fill. She sobbed for the loss of Edward and the future together.
***
It took Emily weeks to be able to think of Edward and not cry. Even then it took an effort to keep the tears at bay. Her mother kept telling her that it would get better, but Emily had her doubts about that. How could anything be the way it once was with Edward not there anymore?
“Miss?” A voice behind her made Emily turn in her chair away from the vanity that she had been staring at as she was lost in thought.
A chambermaid was watching Emily with concern. “Are you alright, Miss?”
Emily nodded slowly. “I was just lost in thought, Anne.”
Anne fidgeted with her apron as she came into the room fully. She shut the door gently and walked over to where Emily sat. Emily looked up at the woman’s brown eyes and saw compassion there. “I heard about your young man,” the woman said softly. Anne had not been with their family long, and Emily saw the colour rise to the young woman’s plump cheeks. “I do not mean to speak out of turn.”
“No, it’s not that at all,” Emily assured the woman. “I am just not myself.”
Anne put a tentative hand on Emily’s shoulder. “He died a hero, didn’t he?”
“There were not many details, but I cannot imagine my Edward dying any other way. He was the type of man who would have put himself in harms’ way rather than let others risk themselves,” Emily said with a sad smile. “You never met him, but he had long dark hair and eyes so deep that you could just sink into them.”
“He sounds wonderful, Miss,” Anne said as she let her hand fall off Emily’s shoulder.
Emily gave Anne a smile. Talking about Edward felt right. It eased the pain in her heart a bit to share memories of the man. “Have you ever lost anyone that was dear to you?”
“Not a lover,” Anne said as she clasped her hands before her. “I lost my mother a year back. She was my guide stone. I felt lost for a long while without her.”
Emily reached out and put her hand over Anne’s clasped hands. “How did you make the hole in yourself go away?”
“I didn’t, Miss,” Anne said. “Gradually, you learn to live without them. Things are not the same, but you learn how things will be.”
Emily nodded slowly pulling her hand back and resting it on the back of her chair. “The pain may lessen, but I will never love a man again. How could any man come close to him?”
“My mother never married again after my father’s death. We went to live with my uncle. She considered it a great luxury that my uncle consented to care for us as if we were his own family. She never could stand the thought of having another man close to her.” Anne frowned slightly. “You may change your mind, Miss. You are young, unlike my mother when my father passed. Youthful hearts mend better than older ones.”
Emily turned back around to her vanity. She picked up her brush and stroked her hair as she thought about what Anne had said. “My heart is set, Anne. I could no more let another man in than I could have kept Edward out.”
Chapter 8
(Two years later, June 1814)
James breathed in the smell of London. He thumped Oscar on the shoulder. “It’s good to be home, is it not?”
“I never thought that I would see it again at times,” Oscar said with a broad grin. “What say you, Augustus? You are as surly and quiet as ever.”
Augustus glanced at his two companions but just shrugged. When Augustus turned towards the post house, Oscar clucked his tongue. “You are going straight back to your pa? You must be hungry for paper and parcels.”
“I would much prefer paper and parcels to muskets and knives,” Augustus replied with a scowl at how Oscar described his father’s merchant trade.
James put his arm over Oscar’s shoulders. “Come on, Oscar. Let Augustus run back to the apron strings. We have too much to celebrate to go chasing after one sourpuss.”
The Revenge of the Betrayed Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 9
