The Wedding Wager

by Hale Deborah

  During the British retreat from Bucaso.

  Limping over to his cot, he sank down on it, stretching out his long frame. His heels projected two inches past the end of the thin mattress. To distract himself from the pain in his leg and the equally painful memories of that last rearguard skirmish, Morse turned his thoughts to Leonora Freemantle.

  The gall of the woman! To stroll in like Lady Bountiful with her Christmas basket and offer to turn him into a gentleman. In the instant before she’d opened her mouth, something about her had attracted him. Now Morse was damned if he could decide what it might have been.

  She had little in common with the type of woman he usually favored. In the first place, her figure was too lean and angular for his taste. He seldom paid much heed to women’s clothes, but in her case they were too ugly to ignore. He often noticed women’s hair, but Miss Freemantle had kept hers pulled back so severely and covered by her bonnet that he could not have sworn as to its color. There might have been something to her eyes—color or clarity, but tight little spectacles detracted from their modest charms.

  Altogether a prim, bluestocking spinster.

  None of these had roused Morse’s antagonism, though. Her voice had done that.

  Since joining the army, during his service in India and Spain, he’d seldom had occasion to hear an English lady speak. There was only one female at the Bramleigh hospital—if you could call her that. Matron, the old gargoyle, spoke in Cornish dialect so broad Morse often had trouble understanding her. Nothing in her gravelly voice evoked painful memories. Morse could not say the same for Leonora Freemantle.

  To make matters worse, her first words to him had concerned a proposition. True, it was not the kind of proposition Lady Pamela Granville had made him on the day before he enlisted. The emotional echo stung just the same. It had made him resist Miss Freemantle’s offer even before he heard it. Now, as his leg throbbed and he tried to block out the persistent din of the ward, Morse wondered if he’d been a fool to reject her proposal out-of-hand.

  His other options were depressingly limited. He couldn’t stay on at Bramleigh much longer, since he was past danger of amputation and he could use the leg, however haltingly. Even if the Board of Inquiry didn’t drum him out of the service, he could not go back to soldiering. The doctors were optimistic that his mobility would return with time. Until then, his lameness would make it all but impossible to find the sort of job his limited education had equipped him for.

  The dinner bell rang. With a weary sigh, Morse hauled himself up from his cot and joined the tail end of the queue headed for the refectory. There, he spooned the tepid, watery stew into his mouth with little interest or enjoyment. Boyer and a few of the other lads from his regiment took their places with Morse at their accustomed table. In one way or another, they were all casualties of the retreat from Bucaso.

  They were the lucky ones.

  “Yer comp’ny didn’t stay long, Sergeant.” There was an implied question in Boyer’s innocent remark. “Not exactly your kinda woman, were she?”

  The men exchanged grins all around the table. Their sergeant’s way with women was a point of pride among his men. They knew he had a taste for pretty, plump, saucy barmaids. They also knew he seldom had trouble attracting them.

  Without glancing up from his stew, Morse cut their amusement short with a single muttered sentence. “The lady was Lieutenant Peverill’s cousin.”

  A muted “Oh” rose from the men, breathed with obvious regret and perhaps a little shame. The late Lieutenant Wesley Peverill had enjoyed universal esteem among the enlisted men in his company. None more than his sergeant—Morse Archer.

  Just then, Morse realized what had drawn him to Miss Freemantle in the instant before she spoke. It was the likeness to her cousin. Lieutenant Peverill had been a short, slight man with a deceptive air of delicacy. Yet that unpromising frame had housed the guile of a serpent, the tenacity of a badger and the courage of a lion. For as long as he lived, Morse Archer would rue his young lieutenant’s senseless death.

  He had glimpsed something of Lieutenant Peverill’s cleverness and ferocious bravery in the woman. She had stood her ground and peppered him with every scrap of ammunition she could muster. When he’d turned on her with the full force of his wrath, she had scarcely flinched. He’d been skeptical of her claim that social class meant nothing to her. Now, remembering her kinship to the lieutenant, he could believe it.

  Boyer spoke up again. “Came to thank ye, did she, Sergeant?”

  Morse nodded. “Something like that.”

  The men knew Sir Hugo Peverill had called on their sergeant soon after they’d all arrived at Bramleigh. The old man had come to thank Morse for risking his life to rescue the lieutenant from certain death. Unfortunately, the young man’s wounds had proven too grave to survive. But his heartbroken father had cherished the small consolation that the lad had died and been buried at his home in England rather than some shallow, unmarked grave in Portugal.

  Sir Hugo had offered Morse money, a job, anything he might ask. Morse had declined with rather ill grace. He took no pride in his actions during the retreat. His desperate charge into a forest of French bayonets had been too little, too late. To accept a reward for it only compounded his sense of guilt.

  Apparently the wily old Sir Hugo was unwilling to take no for an answer. Thus the transparent stratagem of this wager with his niece. Morse did not go so far as to suspect Leonora Freemantle knew it was a ruse. She could not have entreated him so passionately unless she believed it to be genuine.

  Gnawing on a crust of hard bread, Morse imagined the food he might have received at Sir Hugo’s estate, Laurel-wood. When rations had been tight in Portugal, Lieutenant Peverill had often waxed lyrical about the contents of his father’s larder and the talent of his kitchen staff. More such stories recurred to Morse as he lolled around the ward after dinner feeling curiously restless.

  That night he dreamed of a fine, fat feather bed made up with linen that smelled of sunshine and clover. A warm, cheery fire blazing in the hearth. A plump roast goose laid out on the sideboard with all the trimmings, its skin brown and crisp over juicy dark meat. Morse woke to find his mouth watering.

  No doubt about it, Laurelwood would have made a soft billet for the next three months, while he recovered the full use of his leg. A snug roof over his head. Meals the like of which he hadn’t eaten in years. And nothing required of him but to suffer the tutelage of Sir Hugo’s bluestocking niece. For a wonder, the idea rather appealed to him.

  It was too late now, though.

  No doubt Miss Freemantle had gone straight out and acquired a more willing subject. A sharp fellow who didn’t let pride and foolish memories blind him to a good thing.

  Morse recalled his father’s gruff admonition. “When a man’s got nothing, he can’t afford pride, son.”

  He also remembered the bitter elegy he’d muttered over the unmarked graves of his family. “When a man’s got nothing, pride’s all he can afford.”

  One of these days, Morse Archer decided with a rueful shake of his head, his misbegotten pride was going to land him in serious trouble.

  Chapter Two

  “Dash it all, Leonora. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer, my dear.” Sir Hugo Peverill glanced up from his eager ingestion of the roast goose, an expectant gleam in his eye. “How soon can he come?”

  To delay her reply, Leonora pretended an intense concentration on her dinner. She was hungry. It had been a long, cold ride to Bramleigh and back, with only her indignation to keep her warm on the return journey.

  “Well? How soon?” repeated Sir Hugo.

  Still, Leonora hesitated to speak the words. She was no coward. Cousin Wesley had often claimed she possessed more courage than a field officer—denying society’s expectations by remaining unwed and devoted to her scholarly pursuits.

  It was one thing to deny society. Quite another to deny Sir Hugo when he took hold of an idea. Leonora often compared her lat
e aunt’s husband to a Royal Mail coach. Thundering toward his destination. Waving away objections like the Royal Mail speeding through toll stations. Impatient of the slightest delay or detour.

  He wouldn’t be happy with the detour she was about to deliver him. No sense in forestalling the inevitable, however.

  “He isn’t coming, Uncle.” Though she tried to sound indifferent, Leonora braced for the backlash. “We’ll simply have to find someone else. I’m certain there are plenty of men with the sense to recognize a unique opportunity when they’re presented with one.”

  “Not coming? Ridiculous. Rot!” Sir Hugo’s white side-whiskers bristled aggressively and his prominent Roman nose cleaved the air. “Of course he’s coming.”

  Leonora almost expected him to add, Sergeant Archer just doesn’t know it yet.

  She shook her head. “No, Uncle. He was quite adamant on the point. I had a devil of a time even persuading him to give me a hearing. When I finally won the opportunity to state my business, he accused me of trying to cram charity down his throat.”

  “Then you must’ve gone about it all the wrong way.” Eerily pale blue eyes shone with a glacial light that terrified many people. “Knew I should’ve gone with you. You’re a fine filly, Leonora, but you don’t reckon with the importance of a man’s pride.”

  Leonora pushed her plate away. Her stomach suddenly felt sour. She longed to remind Sir Hugo that she’d seen her family’s fortune decimated, all in the name of assuaging male pride. Noting how the ruddy flesh of his jowls had taken on a deep mulberry cast, she refrained from engaging him in a full-scale argument.

  For all his overbearing will and eccentric whims, he was a warmhearted, generous creature. With only a tenuous claim of kinship by marriage, he had been more of a father to her than any of the men her mother had married.

  “Don’t get yourself into a state, Uncle.” She did her best to soothe him. “Can’t we just find someone else? I don’t believe Sergeant Archer will do it no matter who asks or how we coax him. He’s an impossibly stubborn fellow.”

  “Stubborn?” Sir Hugo brandished his bread knife like a sword. “Poppycock! Resolute, you mean. It took a resolute character to defy orders and take on a dozen Frenchmen with bayonets to save Wesley.”

  Leonora could well picture Morse Archer fighting off an entire French battalion. It was no stretch to conceive of him defying orders. The difficult part was imagining him doing all that for the sake of someone else.

  Long ago, she had reconciled herself to the notion that human beings were selfish creatures at heart. The sergeant had struck her as a man well accustomed to looking out for himself. She had tried appealing to his sense of altruism by mentioning her school. He’d been positively insulting in his refusal, with more cant about unwanted charity.

  The truth suddenly dawned on Leonora. “That’s what this wager is about, isn’t it, Uncle Hugo? Not me and my school. You’re just using them as an excuse to repay Sergeant Archer.”

  “Harrumph! Excuse? Repayment? Nothing of the sort!” Sir Hugo took a deep draft of his wine, avoiding Leonora’s gaze.

  “He wouldn’t accept your help when you offered it outright.” She persisted. “So you hit on the idea of this wager. You might have been frank with me.”

  A look of relief came over Sir Hugo’s florid features. An unusually forthright man, he could not have enjoyed misleading her.

  “I’ll own that was part of it. I hadn’t much hope of Wes getting off the Peninsula alive. You’ll never know what it meant to me, having him here at the last. There’s scarcely enough in this world I can do to repay Archer for making that possible. Wish I could make him understand.”

  He spoke that last sentence on a sigh heaved from deep within his stout frame. Leonora could almost feel the weight of his debt on her own heart.

  “I can’t say I care to be manipulated like this, Uncle,” she chided him, but gently. More in hurt than in anger. “I thought you were in earnest about our wager.”

  “So I am, my dear. Whatever gave you the notion I wasn’t? I take our wager very seriously indeed.” His gaze rested on her with tangible fondness. “I want to see you settled and happy with a good man and a brood of lively young ones I can spoil rotten in my dotage.”

  “Uncle!” Leonora could not keep a hint of asperity from her voice. “We’ve been over this territory a hundred times at least. You know I’d never be happy in a marriage, any more than Wesley would have been happy as a civilian.”

  Too late, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Not for anything in the world would she add to her uncle’s pain.

  Sir Hugo replied with a long, level look. “How happy do you think he is now, eh?” he asked at last. “I should have done more to dissuade Wes from taking a commission. I’ll not sit by and make the same mistake with you, my dear. Just because Clarissa never met a blackguard she wouldn’t marry is no reason to condemn our whole sex…”

  “I’ll thank you to keep my mother and her men out of this,” Leonora snapped.

  Her uncle held up his hands in a parody of surrender. “No need to till that ground again. I’m only saying—since I haven’t been able to convince or cajole you—I’ve been driven to the extremity of this wager. If you fulfill its conditions, I’ll endow that school you’re hankering after.”

  “And?” prompted Leonora.

  “And,” he grumbled, “provide you with a settlement that ensures you never need to marry.”

  The very thought made a smile of contentment blossom on Leonora’s face.

  “Just be sure you don’t forget your part of the bargain.” Sir Hugo stabbed the table with his forefinger.

  Her budding smile withered, as if by a briny blast from the North Atlantic. “I’m not apt to forget, Uncle.”

  How could she with stakes as high as her future happiness? Lose the wager and she had sworn to marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. If she had not wanted her school so desperately she never would have agreed to Sir Hugo’s terms.

  “Another thing you’d better remember is that I have the sole right to choose the subject for our wager. I won’t settle for anyone but Morse Archer.”

  “But, Uncle, I told you…”

  “So you did. Now I’m telling you, Leonora—if Archer won’t agree to come, the wager’s off.”

  “You can’t mean that.” Leonora blanched. Without this one chance, however slim, she’d never have her school.

  “I assure you, I do mean it. Now, don’t look so stricken, child. I’ll go along with you, and between the two of us I’m sure we can win Sergeant Archer ’round. Why don’t you spruce yourself up a bit for our visit. Haven’t you any colored gowns?”

  She wanted to protest that her appearance was the last consideration likely to sway Sergeant Archer. A maypole tricked out in ribbons was still a stick.

  “Gray’s a color, Uncle.”

  “’Tisn’t. Not in a gel’s frock, anyhow. Neither is black, brown nor that dull green. Do something with your hair, while you’re about it. Can’t you twist it up some way to make it curl?”

  “Yes, Uncle.” Leonora sighed. There was no talking sense to him in such a mood.

  She did not look forward to her return visit to Bramleigh. Sharing the same room with two of the most exasperating men she’d ever met, Leonora wondered how she’d resist the urge to knock their heads together.

  When Lieutenant Peverill’s father and cousin tracked him down on the hospital grounds, Morse was hobbling along a mud-churned footpath with a stout tree branch for support.

  It was a cold winter for Somerset, even to people who hadn’t spent a decade baking in the heat of India and Iberia. Experiencing his first English winter in ten years, Morse felt the cold more keenly than he’d expected. Be that as it may, he could not stand being cooped up in the ward a moment longer.

  He was an outdoorsman, a man of movement, a man of action—well suited to life in the Rifle Brigade. Whether the army discharged him or not, the time had come to hang up his green jacket.
He would miss it.

  In spite of the danger, the bad food, the miserable pay, the heat, the flies, the hatred of the local people, the blinkered stupidity of the officer corps and the occasional loneliness. It was all he had known for ten years. He felt rather empty and adrift to think of leaving it all behind. All the more, when he considered the bleak future that lay before him.

  “Halloo! Sergeant Archer!”

  Morse glanced up to see Sir Hugo Peverill bearing down on him, Leonora Freemantle coasting along in her uncle’s wake. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Morse found himself approving the way she walked. Chin up. Eyes firmly fixed on her target. No mincing along, fussing about the mud that might spatter the hem of her cloak and gown.

  “Wondered if we were ever going run you to ground, man.” Sir Hugo gasped for breath.

  With a start, Morse realized what they must want with him. The notion of three months at Laurelwood lured him like a beacon in an otherwise murky future. If only his cursed pride would not rear up and spoil everything.

  Morse extended his hand. “Good to see you again, sir.”

  “Indeed. I believe you’ve met my niece, Miss Free-mantle.” Sir Hugo pushed the young woman forward by the elbow, until her hand met Morse’s.

  Their previous interview flashed in Morse’s mind. He remembered the touch of her hand on his bare arm, and the crude jest he’d made when she would not let him go. Little wonder she thought he could do with some gentlemanly polish.

  Determined to show her he was not devoid of manners, he bowed over her hand. “I have had that pleasure.”

  The wind had whipped a few spirals of dark hair loose from beneath her bonnet—a less severe piece of headgear than she’d worn on her previous visit. The cold had coaxed an engaging spot of color into the ivory flesh over her high cheekbones. Her spectacles had slipped down to the tip of her nose, leaving unguarded a pair of most attractive gray-green eyes.