He flicked his hand to show her how the Frenchman sent him back to the cart seat then went to where his horse stood stamping its hooves and flicking its tail at the flies.
“He ran a hand over my horse’s withers and I thought I’d lost my best mount until I remembered my gold watch.”
“But, Seelye, a watch is worth more than a horse.”
“Not to a cavalry officer.”
She apologized and bade him continue.
“I dangled it to catch the sunlight. The sergeant left the horse to look it over. ‘The horse I keep?’ I begged him. If it had been a mounted patrol, he’d have taken the horse, but an infantry sergeant has no right to one on campaign. So he took the watch and made his men even angrier.”
Seelye resumed the role of French sergeant, “‘The two of you make sure the British dogs are dead,’ and went upwind. The soldiers he’d pursed his lips at stepped forward. The others held their rifles on me.”
He’d felt optimistic until bayonets came out. He couldn’t help tensing every time a blade point made a dull thud. To feign boredom better, he forced himself to slouch where he sat and let his mouth hang open.
“By happy coincidence, breathing through my mouth helped stave off the nausea.”
He sounded anything but happy. He fell silent, his expression grimmer.
“When I think of it, I feel the flies. I had to let them walk all over my face without flinching—still makes my skin crawl—but a renderer’s lackey wouldn’t notice insects common to that line of work, would he?”
“How dreadful.”
“I had a part to play,” he said with a shrug. “And I played it.”
He described how the infantrymen made a few jabs and stood down, hoping they’d satisfied their sour in-command. At his nod, they snatched leaves from bushes to clean their blades. The youngest clamped a hand over his mouth and stepped away to vomit.
“To everyone’s amazement, the sergeant joked, ‘New recruits assume the dead are buried. Ha, ha.’ Death was the subject of black humor on both sides, you see.”
He explained that if he’d died in battle, he’d have been stripped, his finger cut off for its gold ring, teeth pried from his jaws for dentures, hair shorn for wigs, and clothes picked clean of brass buttons and marketable salvage.
Enlisted soldiers looted the fallen while the fighting still raged. Civilian scavengers came after to treasure hunt. Whosoever could profit took what he could carry or cart off. Even renderers might help themselves and make tallow candles from it.
“All’s fair after soldiers fall. But there’s a different standard among officers. An officer shouldn’t desecrate his fallen the way I did. But I buried Clun in the mortal remains of our countrymen because I knew the French would take exception to someone using their dead for repellent purposes.”
“And you were right,” she said.
“Poor consolation. I can only pray that God forgives me for what I’ve done, for I can never forgive myself. I swore I’d never draw blood again if I survived the war.”
“When did you find the British camp?” Jane asked, anxious to nudge Seelye’s memory in a happier direction.
But there was more to confess.
“They let me go but I left at a snail’s pace. Clun might’ve been dying at that point, but I had to play the Spanish halfwit in no hurry to avoid suspicion. I tell you, Jane, leaving at a crawl terrified me more than any cavalry charge.”
When he felt it was safe, he scrambled down, brushed aside his guilt and, with a hurried Lord’s Prayer, commended most of the remains to a roadside ditch.
“I dumped them out to uncover Clun and travel lighter. So you see, I murdered, stole, lied and left comrades to rot in a ditch. Heroic, wasn’t it?”
Seelye’s sarcasm invited her condemnation. She said nothing, unable think of a suitable reply.
“Heard enough?” he asked.
“Tell me the rest, Seelye.”
“Clun wasn’t cold yet, but that much viscera can keep a fresh corpse warm,” he said almost cruelly. And admitted he’d been on the verge of tears when he peeled back the bloody blanket to check his friend and treat fresh bayonet wounds.
“There was none. It was a miracle, pure and simple, but I couldn’t find his pulse so I kept yelling, ‘Bloody thick neck, you stupid, neckless brute.’”
Jane held her breath, though she knew Clun survived.
“I swore at him until he grumbled, ‘G’way.’ Lord, how I whooped for joy!”
She gasped in relief, too.
He told the rest more succinctly: The road cut through rolling countryside. They went up hill after hill but there was nothing, no tents, no red uniforms, just more fields beyond. In the last light of day, he no longer stood up in the cart to look. But when the cart topped that rise, he saw the irregular rows of cramped British tents and soldiers in the crimson.
“It must’ve hurt like hell to be knocked about like that. But I heard a deep grumble of ‘Wha-a-at sti-i-in-inks?’ from the back of the cart.”
Seelye mimicked Clun’s deep accent and his own joyous answers.
“I told him, ‘We stink, by God, it’s us! Mostly you, but it’s my doing.’ And he said, ‘Smell’s never c-c-coming out.’ But his grousing encouraged me, Jane. He had the strength to be himself. I was never so happy to hear him complain about anything.”
They laughed together.
“When we reached the outer picket, I barked orders to stand down. The sentries ran from the stink and I screamed like a madman all the way to the surgeon’s tent. He came storming out to complain about the noise, took one look at Clun, and gave me a wigging for bouncing the wounded about in a filthy cart. He had him carried in, but once inside, he barked, ‘Out! Take him out! I’ll see him in the open air lest I’m overcome.’ So three of us shuffled Clun back out.”
Seelye wheezed for breath and wiped his streaming eyes.
“We dashed him with water so the sawbones could check the wound. In and out below the ribs, the ball missed everything vital,” he cried at the top of his register. “Then the doctor says, ‘He’ll do with enough brandy in him and on the wound. I trust you’ll see to that, Captain. Now, remove yourself and that rancid cart. I cannot see for my eyes’ weeping. Burn the lot far away. Preferably Portugal.’”
Seelye stood before her, arm outstretched, finger pointing in the imaginary direction of Portugal, a Scottish burr dying away on his tongue.
She watched his amusement fade and a guarded expression take its place.
“I was overjoyed that Clun was safe,” he said. “Self-loathing about the rest came later when I’d had more time to consider my sins.” He rubbed his hands on his trouser legs. “Now you know why I never explain Maguilla.”
Jane stared at him, dumbstruck.
* * *
Seelye damn well knew he shouldn’t have let Jane goad him into speaking explicitly. Even in the privacy of the narrow boat’s cabin, he felt exposed and monstrous.
A gentleman shields womenfolk from the horrors of war. A better man would’ve kept the whole, disgraceful incident wrapped up in clean cloth for her sake. Or said nothing. Ever.
Why did he tell her?
It wasn’t to fulfill their quid pro quo or send her running into some other man’s arms. Although that was no less than he deserved. He succumbed to the temptation to confess.
There was no reeling back the ugly truth about him now. Her expression made that much clear. He despised himself for seeking her absolution as much as he regretted seeing her shock. Hadn’t he always known confession would bring more shame?
Well, to hell with Lady Jane Babcock. Clun survived.
She was on her feet and coming near. He backed away instinctively. A slap wasn’t out of the question. She opened her mouth. What would she say?
“But why haven’t you told Clun?” she asked.
A nonsensical question.
“You detest braggarts, I understand, but—”
Seelye’s mind balked at �
�braggarts.’ Try as he might, her word choice made no sense at all, unless she mistook it for boasting.
“No-n-no, I—” he stuttered.
She continued, “That is possibly the—”
The lowest, vilest—
“—bravest, most remarkable thing I’ve ever heard. Under duress, your friend badly wounded, enemies all around, yet by your wits alone, you carried him to safety. Seelye, I’m amazed.”
“Wait, what?” He heard her but wanted to make sure he heard her aright.
She looked him straight in the eye, her own eyes bright, and his heart ached at every syllable she repeated.
“I dishonored my comrades, Jane,” he said, on the verge of tears himself.
“What else could you have done? What use is honor,” she said, “if you must lose someone you love?”
She stepped right up to him. He stumbled back against the closed berth door.
“Honor is precious, Jane. One can’t put a price on it, spend a little here or there, and still possess it. Either a man has it or he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter if you don’t value it, I did.”
“In that case, you are nobler still,” she said, standing toe to toe with him. “You gave up what mattered most to you for the sake of your friend. You, sir, are the very best of men, whether you believe it or not.”
His mind blanked but his heart kicked into a gallop.
Jane wasn’t done. “If there’s one thing you know about me, one thing for which I am notorious,” she said, eyes searing blue, “it’s that I don’t hesitate to heap scorn on those who deserve it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
That was inarguable. He nodded.
“I respect your compunctions, Seelye, but I approve. More important, I believe your fallen comrades would’ve approved, too. If only they could’ve known, wouldn’t it have given them satisfaction to help two of their own cheat death and make fools of the French?”
She backed away from him, whereas he stood rooted to the floor with no rebuttal.
“I never thought it that way,” he said quietly.
Tangled emotions, more than her clemency, kept his tongue tied in knots.
Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
“Oh, no. No, you don’t,” he finally said.
“No waterworks, I promise,” she answered with a defiant sniff. “You surprised me is all.”
“That is nothing to how you continually astonish me,” he said and took her roughly. He grasped her bottom in both hands, turned and brought her up hard against the door. Her arms and legs wound around him and she grappled him to her, her hunger as keen as his own. The fallen tears he tasted on her lips filled him with gratitude. And lust. His arousal made her moan at the growing pressure between them. He made a glutton of himself, tasting her mouth and her neck. Grateful, so grateful to fierce, forgiving Jane.
Inevitably, his conscience flogged the rest of him back to order. He lowered her gently and let her go. As the coup de grâce, he made a complete arse of himself by saying, “I didn’t mean that.”
Jane’s flushed face shuttered. “Of course not,” she replied coolly and straightened her clothes. “It was battlefield relief. And my fault. I insisted you recall Maguilla. I’ll be in the berth until we leave Bath.”
He watched her close the door, stared at it like a lummox, and whispered, “Jane, I—I thank you.”
The Plimptons arrived soon after.
In Bath, Seelye spent his time in the stern with the skipper, keeping an eye on the closed berth door. He sketched scenes Jane could only glimpse through the portholes.
The spa town was a frequent haunt of hers, given its proximity to Athlingcourt, but she’d never seen it from the canal’s perspective. Few of the city’s gentlefolk had. Handsomely walled in the local cream stone, the canal was nevertheless a utilitarian shipping passage and, excepting the Dundas flyboat, no pleasure craft plied its course.
According to Plimpton, it lay well below ground level through the town center. “So if the lady wished to see what sights there are, she could. The garden’s starting to bloom about now. That’s not to say she’ll see much, just what hangs overtop the walls.”
The horse towed them into the first canal tunnel under Sydney Place. At the far end, a low-slung arc of bright sunlight beckoned.
Seelye felt his way to the door in the dark.
“Jane, come see the gardens if you’d like,” he whispered, half-hoping she couldn’t hear him.
No answer and just as well. He left to mope on deck by the crate.
He felt raw from their conversation. Give a man black and white and leave him be, he brooded, confounded by his fellow passenger.
At the bridge’s far side, he clenched his eyes against the dancing glare of sun on water. When he reopened them, Jane stood nearby.
She murmured affection to her bear through the bars before sitting down near him.
Together, they beheld the sun-dazzled canal. Several ornate cast iron footbridges overhead connected most of Sydney Gardens with its remainder. Flowering trees overflowed the wall like the foaming heads of hastily-poured pints of stout.
None of the gentry strolling in the garden peeked over the tall canal wall. No pedestrians crossing the footbridges lingered to watch the flyboat pass. The Invictus floated unnoticed beneath the city’s upper crust, which meant Jane could stay beside him.
Narrow boats were scarce. Those with commercial cargo took the longer, easier river route to avoid the deep lock, which Plimpton gaily described as “entering Davy Jones’ own locker.”
When they reached it, Seelye saw why. Before them, tall, hulking wooden gates hoary with green moss slowly swung open. By chance, the lock was filled so they could enter without delay. The lads promptly cranked the back gates closed and opened the gates ahead. Water sluiced out the gap in roaring volume. The boat bobbed down into murky shadows.
When towed into sunlight once again, Seelye welcomed the open air.
“We’ll have more traffic where the canal joins the river, milady,” the skipper called out.
“Thank you, Mr. Plimpton,” she answered. “That was lovely,” she said to Seelye and stood up.
“Thank you, Jane.”
“For what?”
“Your perspective. I may not agree with you, but I’m comforted to know that mine is not the only view of past events possible. That means a great deal to me.”
“You’re welcome, Seelye. There are times when one must do what matters most, no matter what.” She retired to the berth and out of sight.
If I were more like you, he thought after she’d gone, I would never let you go no matter how selfish that made me.
After Bath, the narrow boat made excellent time to Bristol’s new floating harbor. It was another engineering marvel, with innovative bypass channels and dams that kept the harbor from stranding boats at low tide, the skipper informed him.
Seelye heard little of this, his mind preoccupied with the day’s other marvel.
Chapter 37
In which our heroine lets the cat out of the bag.
Bristol Harbor
“Deny it as you may, Seelye, you were doomed the moment she boarded the boat—just as I predicted.”
“Shhhh!” he hissed at Mr. Percy.
Jane was about to leave the cabin to go on deck after the narrow boat docked in the chairman’s slip. With one foot on a stair, she heard Mr. Percy’s taunt and stopped.
A few feet away stood Mr. Plimpton at the tiller. He heard them, too, and glanced down at her in the shallow hatchway.
She brought her finger to her lips.
“Doomed, my arse. Her little excursion has gone without a hitch. She’s safe,” Seelye said quietly, but not quietly enough. “But she must leave for London immediately.”
“Your sister has put it about that Jane oversees alterations at Athlingcourt,” Percy said. “It’s a decent pretext for her disappearance. It might serve. Everyone assumes her grace will spend her confinement there. The place must be in good repair
.”
“Good old Gert,” Seelye said. “Count on her to lend countenance to Jane’s bad behavior. The little pest is damned lucky.”
Doomed. A damned lucky little pest. His comments left her rooted to the spot.
“Luck had nothing to do with it. You’re the one who let her gad about with you on the canal,” Percy said, “Couldn’t resist temptation, could you? Caused a stir in Limpley Stoke, you know.”
“I didn’t, Lord Byron did,” he said. “No one gave her a second glance, believe me. Her reputation is unblemished, so there’s no need for me to redeem it, if that’s what you mean.”
“It isn’t, as you well know. You’re neck deep,” Percy teased, “with no way out but through a wedding bower. That, my friend, is what I mean.”
“You’re wrong.”
Now, she regretted turning Seelye’s treat of a quiet tea into a major literary event. She hadn’t considered that her mischief could have unwelcome repercussions for him. Consequences never occurred to her, she was having too wonderful a time.
“We’re here now, so she goes,” Seelye told his friend. “For everyone’s sake.”
“Won’t do you any good. Whatever you say, you are in trouble,” Percy declared in a taunting sing-song.
“Keep your voice down!” Seelye lowered his own to demonstrate.
Jane strained to hear the rest.
“When she returns to London, Jane’s promised to accept someone this Season. She gave me her word. She’ll be married, just as I promised Lady Abingdon.”
“Yet, you don’t sound overjoyed at the prospect.”
“I’ve a lot on my mind, Percy. There’s Jane to send away, a bear to ship to Ireland, and a supposed Bow Street runner lurking about,” he said. “I’ve been run ragged, but I must manage all of it. Otherwise, I’ll have to marry her.”
“Would her dowry be such a burden?” Percy asked.
“Her money’s no inducement to me—”
Jane retreated to the berth, closed the portholes silently. She’d heard enough.
His Lordship's Last Wager Page 31
