A bad business, this battle, the worst he had ever seen. And now Dan was gone. Will wanted to grieve, wanted to worry over what would become of Juana and Anita, but that must wait for the morning. If he lived to see it. Now he gathered the remnants of his company. It was his duty, and there was no one else left. Captain Matheson lived, but he’d been sent to the rear early on, too dazed by a blow to the head to continue. Lieutenant Danvers had fallen, and Will couldn’t find Lieutenant Garvey. He must be dead, too, or worse, injured. Better a quick death than to lie alive in the growing pile of bodies, surrounded by the dead and trampled with each fresh attempt upon the breach.
Will shivered in the raw air, but the locket with Anna’s portrait was warm against his skin. He’d worn it on a cord around his neck since the day she’d given it to him. He hoped that if he died they would bury him before the plunderers got to him so he could carry his secret into the grave.
He wondered where Anna was on this night. To think of her safe and happy in Scotland made this hell of musketry and cannon and the groans and screams of the wounded a little more bearable. He imagined her laughing with her cousins or sleeping peacefully in a warm soft bed. Selfish though it was, he hoped he haunted her dreams as she did his, and that she missed him in her bed just as every time he awakened in the night in his cold bedroll he wished he could creep through the darkness to the sanctuary of her arms.
He closed his eyes and allowed himself one more moment to think of Anna, of love and beauty, before plunging back into hell.
***
Orchard Park, Gloucestershire, England
Three days now. Three days of racking, searing pains, trying to birth a baby who’d refused to turn properly. The accoucheur had pushed and tugged at Anna’s belly, trying to force the child to move. At the suggestion of a neighbor who’d borne six children, Anna had even spent hours propped on pillows with her head down and her posterior in the air. But nothing had worked, and she had gone into labor with her baby still stubbornly breech.
She had tried so hard. But it wasn’t working. She could feel herself weakening. She had to tell Lucy before it was too late.
She fumbled for her sister-in-law’s hand. “Lucy?”
“Yes, dearest?”
Lucy wouldn’t speak so affectionately once Anna had made her confession. Sebastian had been her cousin. But if Anna must die, she wanted someone to know the truth. If the baby lived—well, the child would look nothing like Sebastian. Her brother and his wife would be the ones who raised him. Better that they know than merely wonder and suspect.
“Send them out. I must speak to you.”
Lucy looked doubtfully at the accoucheur and nurse. “Are you certain?”
“Please.”
Her brows drawn together in a troubled frown, Lucy waved them out.
When they were alone, Lucy turned to her expectantly, but Anna curled in on herself. “Oh, God. Another one.”
Lucy handed her the rolled-up sheet tied to the bedpost she’d been clutching through the contractions, and Anna pulled hard as the pain seized her in its relentless grip. Lucy smoothed her hair. “Breathe, Anna. Don’t fight so. Let it happen.”
Anna tried, but the pain overwhelmed her. When it ended she sagged into the mattress, clutching her pillow with one hand.
“You’re still doing well,” Lucy said.
Anna didn’t believe her. “Promise me.”
“What must I promise you?”
“Promise me that if I die, and there’s any chance that the baby lives, you’ll make them cut it out.”
Lucy’s eyes went round. “Don’t talk so! You will not die.”
“Promise!” This couldn’t all be for nothing. Her baby, Will’s baby, must live.
“I promise.” Lucy swallowed. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. She must get this out before the next contraction. “You’ll take care of the baby if I die, so you should know. It isn’t Sebastian’s.”
Lucy gasped and stepped back.
“It’s not like that! It was after—” But she could get no further before the next wave of pain struck.
After just an instant’s hesitation, Lucy returned to her side.
When it passed, Lucy coughed. “Was it…when you were captured by the French?”
Anna shook her head. “No. Not rape. I love him so very much.”
“Who? Why?” Lucy shook her head. “Never mind. You can explain after you recover.”
“If I die—”
“You won’t die!”
“I wanted you to know, so that when the baby doesn’t look like Sebastian—” Another contraction.
“Anna, you must save your strength. Of course we would take care of your baby, just like one of our own, but it won’t be necessary, because you will live.”
Anna groped for Lucy’s hand again. “Tell the baby I loved him. Tell him his father was a good man—the best, the bravest—and he would’ve loved him, too. Tell him—”
“Anna, you will not die!” Lucy’s voice had a shrill edge.
Anna shook her head. Three days, and her strength was draining away. Lucy didn’t understand.
***
Will gathered twenty men from his company, along with a few other stray riflemen. He found Cockburn, Second Company’s bugler, who could sound the advance over the roaring din of explosions and musketry. Time to try again.
“Sergeant! Rifles! Cooeee!”
At the shout, Will and his band of followers looked to the right and spotted some thirty men of the Fifty-Second, another of the Light Division’s regiments, commanded by a captain and a lieutenant. Will led his men toward them.
“What say we join forces?” the captain, a stout, red-faced man, bellowed over the noise.
“Yes, sir,” Will said. “The more the merrier.”
“I’m Herrick.” He pointed at his companion. “He’s Stokes.”
Lieutenant Stokes eyed his captain as though he were mad, but acknowledged Will with a curt nod.
“Come, Stokes,” Captain Herrick continued. “If we’re to die together, we may as well be properly introduced.”
Will grinned. “I’m Atkins.”
“Well then, Sergeant Atkins, shall we make a charge? Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more?”
He recognized the quotation. Henry V. “Or close up the wall with our English dead.”
Captain Herrick clapped him on the back. “Did you hear that, Stokes? He recognizes the Bard when he hears him. Maybe we’ll make a lieutenant of him.”
Another morose look from Stokes. “He’s welcome to it, so long as I make captain.”
“Ample vacancies in all ranks, come the morrow,” the captain shouted cheerfully.
Will thought Lieutenant Stokes rather hoped Captain Herrick’s place would be among the vacant ones.
“Well, Sergeant,” the captain continued, “shall we blow the blast of war and imitate the action of the tiger?”
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Will thought. “You heard the man, Cockburn,” he told the bugler. “Sound the advance.”
Together the remnant companies mounted the breach, Will and the officers in the lead, they with upraised swords, he with bayonet fixed and rifle held before him. It was rough going, stumbling in the rubble, treading on the horrible yielding softness of fallen bodies, but they pressed on.
Captain Herrick fell first from a musket ball to his throat. As he tumbled aside, he nearly knocked Lieutenant Stokes into the flooded ditch below, but Will reached out and caught the junior officer by the elbow just in time. Both men stumbled to hands and knees. Something sharp grazed Will’s right shoulder, but he ignored it.
The lieutenant got to his feet and extended a hand to help Will. “Thanks,” he mouthed, a manic sparkle in his eyes. Then, with upraised sword, “Forward, Fifty-Second!”
Will added his own shout. “Rifles, to me!”
Almost there. Will searched for a gap in the wall of b
lades, fired his single shot at a French lieutenant and saw him fall, and prepared to fight his way through with bayonet and brute force.
A musket ball struck his forearm and pain seared through him. He fell back, struck his head upon a stone and knew no more.
***
Lucy tried not to look at the blood. She shouldn’t feel so very queasy. She was a grown woman with two children of her own; she had seen her share of blood. But there was so much, the warm, coppery smell heavy in the air. How could anyone bleed so and yet live?
Anna was alive, for now. She was unconscious, her skin held a deathly pallor, and her breathing was terrifyingly shallow. But she clung to life, and the accoucheur had managed to staunch the bleeding.
The baby’s cries echoed around the room and rang in Lucy’s ears. It was a strong child. It had commenced its indignant wailing practically the instant its head finally emerged and had not ceased for an instant as the nurse washed and swaddled it. Not “it,” Lucy corrected herself, but “he.” Anna’s baby was a boy, a fine, vigorous child whose prospects seemed much better than his mother’s.
Lucy stared at Anna’s pale face and murmured a prayer. Anna must not die now, so troubled and bereft. Lucy willed her to recover and prayed that she be given the chance to atone, if need be, and find peace and happiness.
As she rested a hand on Anna’s clammy forehead in benediction, Lucy looked up and met her husband’s anguished eyes. James had burst into the room just after the baby was born, drawn by the clamor of an obvious crisis, and he’d watched in mute horror from the doorway as his sister almost died before his eyes. Now he had crept nearer, but he should not be there. It wasn’t proper, and besides, women were stronger than men at times like these.
“James, we’re in the way,” she said. “We should leave and let them do their work.”
“Her ladyship is right, my lord.” Mr. Hayden, the accoucheur, was deferential yet firm.
“Shall we take the baby with us?” she asked. “He sounds strong enough to go to the nursery.”
“He is that, my lady,” the nurse agreed.
“An excellent notion, Lady Selsley.” Mr. Hayden nodded. “The quiet will do Mrs. Arrington good.”
Lucy couldn’t see how, for Anna was far beyond hearing her son’s wails. But Mr. Hayden and the nurse could care better for her without the distraction, and she and the nursery maids could supply all his needs.
“Come, James,” she said.
Bending forward, he kissed his sister’s still brow. “Don’t you dare die,” he whispered.
Lucy led him from the room, collecting the baby along the way. She bounced him gently and crooned the Welsh lullaby her father had once sung to her, and he began to grow calmer. Rather than take him to the nursery, she carried him to the room she and James shared.
“Shouldn’t we take him to the nursery?” James asked.
Lucy settled herself in a chair near their bed. “Not yet.” The baby, quiet now, stared solemnly up at her. “There’s something I must tell you,” she continued. “Can you light a few more candles?”
“What is it?” James fumbled in the semidarkness for more candles and lit them from the single taper burning on her dressing-table.
“This isn’t Sebastian’s baby,” she said, lowering her voice as if the very walls might overhear.
“The devil!” James knelt before her and peered at the infant’s face.
For the most part, the baby simply appeared new—red-faced, with unformed features. His thick black hair was a Gordon trait, one that James and Lucy’s two daughters shared. But this baby was unfamiliar in a way that Lucy couldn’t define—was it the forehead, or perhaps the eyebrows? She guessed that he would grow to have the look of his unknown father.
“It isn’t his appearance,” she said, “though he certainly doesn’t resemble Sebastian. Anna told me. She wanted us to know, in case she died.”
The young interloper turned his head toward her bosom, rooting hopefully. Lucy was too much of a mother to resist that wordless plea, so she unbuttoned her bodice. She had more than enough milk; her four-month-old, Lilias, would not go hungry if she fed Anna’s son now. They would be obliged to make other arrangements if—but Lucy wouldn’t allow herself to complete the thought.
“I cannot understand it.” She smoothed the baby’s hair as he latched on and sucked greedily. “I know Anna was unhappy with Sebastian, and of course the manner of his death doesn’t bear speaking of, but I cannot imagine going to another man so soon.” Truly, she could not imagine ever wanting anyone else if James died.
“I know. But you know what Sebastian was.”
Lucy did indeed. Her cousin had shown himself more than willing to use her for his own selfish ends before he met Anna. If only she had been quicker to trust James when they first married, she would have told him how Sebastian had almost forced her to marry him when he was threatened by a scandal involving his mistress. Armed with that knowledge, James would have prevented Anna’s marriage. But Lucy had been bewildered by her new husband’s character, and she had still felt loyal to the family who had brought her up.
In three years of happy marriage, Lucy had never quite shaken her guilt over her part in Anna’s unhappiness, though James had forgiven her long ago. So as Lucy fed Anna’s son, she decided that she had no right to condemn Anna.
“I do know what Sebastian was,” she said at last. “And I suppose everything must be very different with the army, too, surrounded by so much danger and death.”
“She’s my sister.” James stroked one of the baby’s small, wrinkled hands. “And this is my nephew. I could never cast them out.”
“I promised her we’d care for her child just as if he were ours.” She blinked back tears. “She was so certain she would die.”
James’ knuckles turned white where he gripped the arm of her chair. “It’s exactly what happened to our mother. She bore Anna, she bled too much, and she died.”
Lucy shifted the baby until she had a free hand, then smoothed her husband’s hair. “I don’t believe in fate. Anna isn’t doomed because of what happened to your mother.”
“I’m afraid to hope.”
“She’s strong. She fought hard for this child, and I’m sure she’ll fight to live for his sake.”
James brushed his lips against her hand. When he looked up, his expression was calm. “Did she tell you anything about the father?”
“She didn’t name him, but only said that he was brave and good, and that she loves him very much.” Lucy had drawn her own conclusions. “I think it must be that sergeant.”
James frowned. “What was his name—Atwell? You think so?”
Did she? Now she doubted. James was generally more perceptive than she. “I do,” she said uncertainly. “He rescued her, and they were alone together for days. And surely you remember how relieved she was last month when we got the letter from Helen that mentioned seeing him after Ciudad Rodrigo.”
“Naturally she wishes him well, but—my sister, with a common soldier? I can’t imagine it unless the fellow coerced her, and then she wouldn’t be kindly disposed toward him.”
Lucy wasn’t so sure. Certainly, the Anna she had first met, the blithe Miss Wright-Gordon, never would’ve looked twice at a sergeant, much less taken him as a lover. But the Anna who had turned up on their doorstep in November was a different woman entirely, transformed by war and unhappy marriage. Also, Lucy remembered that when James had read Helen’s letter aloud, Anna’s hand had dropped to her heavily pregnant belly at the mention of Sergeant At-something. Then Lucy had assumed the baby had been kicking, but now she wondered if it had been an instinctive gesture—Anna’s love for the father she could not reach transformed into affection for the child she almost could.
The baby’s mouth fell away from her breast, and Lucy did up her bodice and shifted him to her shoulder, rubbing his back.
James stood and paced back and forth. “I know who the father is,” he said.
“You do
?”
“Yes.” He halted and leaned against the bed. “You do, too, if you think about it. It must be that Lieutenant Montmorency.”
“That would make sense,” she allowed.
“Of course it would.”
Soon after Anna had arrived at Orchard Park, she had asked James to arrange a pension for a widow named Mrs. Montmorency and her four daughters, whom she believed lived in genteel poverty somewhere near Gloucester. She insisted that it be disguised as a bequest from a long-lost relative, and the amount should be small enough to deflect suspicion, yet large enough to prevent them from suffering want. He could tell Lucy, but no one else. When James had tried to question Anna, she had turned withdrawn and pale, saying it was a private matter.
James had told Lucy about it that night and they had puzzled over it together. He had set up the pension and made a few discreet inquiries, discovering that the ladies were the mother and sisters of a Rifle lieutenant missing and presumed dead since late in the summer. James’s conclusion, which Lucy had thought likely, was that he and Anna had planned to marry when her mourning period was over, and that out of devotion to his memory, Anna had determined to provide for his family.
So it was logical to believe that they had anticipated their intended vows, but Lucy couldn’t quite discard her own theory. “She didn’t say she loved the father, but that she loves him. She spoke of him as one living.”
“Surely she misspoke, suffering as she was.”
Lucy shook her head. Anna had been exhausted and in pain, but wholly rational.
“But what else would explain her interest the Montmorency family?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. The baby whimpered, and she stroked his back. “You must be right.”
“Here, let me hold him.” James held out his arms, and Lucy passed the baby to him. “Well, laddie,” he began, and she smiled. James was more Scottish than he admitted. “I do hope you’re worth the trouble you’ve caused.”
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