by Hale Deborah
Eyes that shot him a look of censure, which he could not fathom. What had he done wrong now?
She snatched her hand back, as if she feared he might bite it. “You did not appear very pleased with our first meeting, sir.”
Morse felt his own cheeks tingle. Perhaps it was time to come in from the cold. “I must beg your pardon for that, miss. There are days this place would try the patience of a saint. I’m sorry you had the misfortune to catch me on a bad one.”
Sir Hugo clapped his niece around the shoulders, but he addressed his words to Morse. “Only natural, my boy. Of course, Leonora will pardon you. She’s one of those rare females who doesn’t hold a grudge.”
“Rare, indeed.” Morse smiled again into those gray-green eyes, hoping to make peace.
Leonora Freemantle replied by abruptly jamming her spectacles back into place. It was as though she had slammed a heavy door in his face. Morse took an involuntary step back.
Sir Hugo raised a hand to anchor his hat against a strong gust of winter wind. “We’d like to talk to you again, if we may, Sergeant?” He shouted to make himself heard over the rising rush of the wind. “No sense freezing our giblets out here, though. If you’re not ready to go back in just yet, perhaps we could take a little drive around the neighborhood?”
“Very well, sir.” It had been many a year since he’d driven in a good carriage.
“Capital!” Sir Hugo flashed an open, appealing grin.
It reminded Morse so forcefully of his young lieutenant that a choking lump rose in the back of his throat.
Sir Hugo pivoted and strode toward the driveway, calling back over his shoulder. “Lend the sergeant your arm, Leonora. This ground looks uneven.”
She shot Morse a look that might have been apology or defiance—it was difficult to tell behind those grim spectacles.
Then she took his arm, as bidden.
Morse fought back a smile that tickled at the corner of his mouth. Plenty of women would have been delighted to take his arm. Leonora Freemantle looked positively martyred by the effort. No question that she was an unusual creature, unique in his experience. That novelty attracted Morse. He wouldn’t mind getting better acquainted with her.
“Go ahead and grin, Sergeant.” She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. “I know you want to. Enjoy my humiliation.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, miss. You don’t look much humbled to me.”
Between the sturdy fabric of his greatcoat and the thick wool of her pelisse, there was no real contact between his arm and hers. Not like their previous meeting, when she’d clutched his bare arm with her naked hand. As a vivid memory of that instant rose in his mind, Morse felt a queer rush of heat that defied the bitter wind. He found himself counting back, trying to recall when he’d last had a woman.
Before he finished his count, they reached the carriage.
“Come along!” Sir Hugo sang out, motioning to them through the open door.
Again Leonora Freemantle spoke, as though she had hoarded her words till the last minute so there would be no time for discussion.
“You needn’t have begged my pardon, Sergeant. I am the one who owes you an apology. Of everything you said to me when we last met, it appears you were right in almost every particular. Save one. My school will not be charity—at least not of the wretched type you’ve experienced. I beg you to reconsider helping me.”
Morse understood about pride. He could appreciate what it cost her to speak those words. If only she’d left him with a moment to reply. The best he could do was a little show of gallantry, helping her into the carriage. As he caught a glimpse of one trim ankle encased in a fitted leather boot, Morse felt that confounded surge of warmth again.
Impatient with himself, he tried to tamp down the feeling. It did not yield to his control.
Climbing in behind Miss Freemantle, he sank gratefully into the seat opposite her and Sir Hugo. If he’d needed any reminder of the comfortable life he could expect at Laurelwood, the elegantly appointed interior of the barouche provided it—in spades. Mahogany, oiled and polished to a gleaming finish. Fine brass fittings. Supple leather upholstery.
Reaching up with his ivory-handled walking stick, Sir Hugo rapped on the ceiling of the carriage. Without a moment’s hesitation, the barouche rolled smoothly away on the frozen road.
Sir Hugo fixed his intent gaze upon Morse. “I’ll come to the point straightaway, Archer. No shilly-shallying about. I know you military chaps haven’t much patience for that. The fact is, Leonora and I need you most desperately to help us with our wager.”
“Yes, well…sir…as a matter of fact…I must tell you…” Morse groped for the words that would allow him to accept Sir Hugo’s largesse while surrendering as little of his self-respect as possible.
“Say no more, my boy,” interjected Sir Hugo in a manner that brooked no gainsay.
Both his tone and the my boy set Morse’s oversensitive pride abristle, though he tried in vain to quell the feeling.
“I know just what’s on your mind,” Sir Hugo continued. “My niece and I can hardly expect you to relinquish several months of your life, not to mention putting all your plans in abeyance, while we settle a philosophical conundrum of no consequence to anyone but ourselves.”
When the older man paused for breath, Morse tried to voice his objection. “No, no, Sir Hugo. That’s not—”
Sir Hugo raised a stout hand to bid Morse be quiet. “Hear me out, young fellow. At least don’t refuse us until you’ve heard the compensation I mean to offer you.”
Morse wanted to laugh. Compensation? They meant to pluck him out of the cold, hungry, jobless life that awaited him, and cast him into the lap of luxury. Now, on top of that, they proposed to compensate him for doing it. He was hard-pressed to imagine how they reckoned to sweeten the pot. Curiosity, together with his respect for Sir Hugo, kept him from interrupting further.
“If you’ll agree to help us,” said Sir Hugo, “I’ll engage on your behalf the best legal counsel money can buy. I’ll also bring to bear every scrap of influence I can muster. No false promises, of course, but I should be very much surprised if the Board of Inquiry doesn’t throw out your case.”
Morse felt his jaw go slack. What could he say? Here was Sir Hugo offering to smooth out all the wrinkles of his life as casually as a housemaid straightening the bedsheets.
As he struggled to find his voice, Miss Freemantle spoke. “Don’t forget the rest, Uncle.”
Morse could not believe his ears. There was more?
“Of course, my dear.” Sir Hugo took a deep breath. “My niece advises me that you should have a stake in the success of her little experiment. An inducement for you to give it your best effort.”
Morse experienced a momentary pang of affront at the notion that he would ever give less than his best. Sir Hugo’s next words drove the slight from his mind.
“If you succeed in passing yourself off as a gentleman officer at Bath, I’ll see you set up somewhere that a man’s caste isn’t of such consequence. Any British colony you want to name—the Caribbean, North America, Botany Bay. I’ll wangle you a decent grant of land and provide you with gold to buy equipment, stock and seed. Whatever you need. That should make it worth your while putting up with our foolishness, what?”
His generous mouth spread into a broad grin as he waited for Morse’s answer.
Morse clamped his own lips together, to keep from saying the first thing that came into his mind.
Damn! He’d managed to curb his pride enough to accept Miss Freemantle’s original offer. Now, with the kindest intentions in the world, Sir Hugo had heaped a double helping of charity on top of the first. Much as the prospect tempted him, Morse knew it was too rich a dish for him to stomach.
“It’s a generous offer, sir.” Morse strove to keep his temper in check. The old man meant well, after all. He just didn’t understand. “But I can’t accept.”
The curve of Sir Hugo’s smile pulled straight and
taut. The color began to rise in his face. He looked like a man struggling to contain an outburst.
Morse was suddenly aware of Leonora Freemantle, too. She looked quite stricken. Though why the founding of a school should mean that much to her, Morse could not fathom. Neither could he fathom the unaccountable urge he felt to take her in his arms and comfort her.
He wished he could find it within himself to oblige them. To oblige himself for that matter. If he could have contrived some way to appease his damnable pride, he’d have leaped at Sir Hugo’s offer.
“Are you mad, boy? How can you think of turning up your nose at—”
“There, there, Uncle. Don’t fret yourself.” Miss Free-mantle patted his arm.
She cast Morse a look as frigid as the crust of snow that blanketed the surrounding fields. Perhaps he’d only imagined her instant of vulnerability. “It’s clear Sergeant Archer does not feel himself equal to the challenge of our wager.”
Her words struck Morse like a leather glove whipped across his cheek. His pride, already piqued to quivering pitch, dove to take up the gauntlet.
“Challenge? You call that a challenge, to masquerade as some arrogant puppy of an officer? I’ve suffered enough of those fools that I could do it tomorrow, without your three months’ tutoring.”
She appraised him with her eyes, and he returned the insult. Somewhere within him, Morse felt a flash of admiration for a worthy opponent and a yearning to win her admiration in return.
“Prove it, Sergeant. Take the wager.”
“I have nothing to prove to you, or to anyone else, Miss Freemantle.” Morse felt reason and control slipping from his grasp like a greased rope, but he could not tamely swallow this woman’s baiting.
“Admit it, Sergeant. You haven’t the nerve to try.”
“I never heard such confounded rot.”
“It isn’t rot.”
“’Tis.”
“Then you’re up to the challenge?”
“Bloody right.” The words were out of his mouth before Morse realized what he’d said. He saw a flicker of triumph in his opponent’s striking eyes. “I mean, no. I can’t. I could, but I won’t.”
“Now, now, Archer,” interjected Sir Hugo. “Don’t tell me a Rifleman would go back on his word. You accepted. Heard it with my own two ears. I mean to hold you to it.”
Part of Morse longed to call back the acceptance he’d flung at Leonora Freemantle during their childish tit for tat. The greater part surrendered to a wave of relief that she had galled him into doing what he’d wanted to do all along.
“Since you’ve left me no choice, how soon can we start?”
Sir Hugo appeared to rouse himself from his amazement at Morse’s abrupt turnabout. “If the sawbones at Bramleigh will pronounce you fit enough, we can load your gear and be back to Laurelwood in time for tea.”
Morse stared at Leonora Freemantle with a gaze that held its own challenge. “That suits me.”
His stomach growled just then, though the others politely ignored the sound. The notion of tea at Laurelwood set his mouth watering, and his stiff muscles yearned for the luxurious embrace of a feather bed. After a hard decade of soldiering, surely this Rifleman deserved a soft billet. Then he noticed Leonora Freemantle eyeing him with the speculative gaze of a drill sergeant sizing up a raw recruit. A shiver of apprehension ran through him.
Or was it excitement?
Chapter Three
A soft billet?
For the hundredth time in the past fortnight, Morse gave an ironic groan at the thought of that rose-colored dream. Rolling onto his stomach, he clamped the feather bolster over his head almost tight enough to suffocate him. It still wasn’t enough to drown out the persistent tapping on his door.
“G’way, Dickon!” he hollered at the young footman. “Give me a few more minutes’ sleep.”
His plea was futile, and Morse knew it.
The tapping stopped, but that only meant Dickon had let himself in. As he’d been ordered to by that she-devil. Morse clamped his fingers onto the thick linen of the pillowcase.
It was no use.
Dickon, who must have weighed twenty stone, had fingers the size of country sausages. He removed the pillow from Morse’s head with a restrained but irresistible force.
“Time to get up, sir,” he rumbled in an apologetic tone. “Don’t make me douse ye with the cold water, like yisterday.”
With a growl of resignation Morse struggled out of bed and let the footman help ready him for the day. It was a ritual he detested. More than ever, at this frigid hour long before dawn. However, Leonora Freemantle insisted he become accustomed to dealing with servants. Morse had discovered that, in all matters pertaining to him, Miss Free-mantle’s word was law.
Law be damned—it was tyranny!
“Dunno why you take on so, sir.” Steaming water splashed into the washbasin from the kettle Dickon had brought with him. “When you was a Rifleman, didn’t you have to be up at dawn?”
“Well…yes.” Morse muttered the grudging admission as he took a chair and let Dickon lather him up for his morning shave.
An hour before dawn to be precise. Sir John Moore—God rest his soul—had drilled that habit into his Riflemen. Daybreak was often a time the enemy chose to attack, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise.
“But that’s not the point.”
As the big footman shaved him, employing an unexpectedly deft touch with the razor, Morse mulled over his grievances against Leonora Freemantle.
Contrary to what he’d expected, meals at Laurelwood were tortured affairs involving the proper deployment of a bewildering array of cutlery and crystal. If he made so much as one hapless mistake in the choice of his fork, Miss Freemantle was not above depriving him of whatever dish he was about to eat. Worse yet were the endless hours each day sitting at a desk, staring at a book until his eyes fairly crossed. Laboring over a piece of written work with his pen clenched almost to the breaking point.
“It all comes down to this, Dickon.” Morse rinsed the residue of soap from his face. “I’m not much good at taking orders.”
“G’way, sir.” The footman handed Morse a pair of buff-colored breeches. “Soldiering all those years and no good at taking orders?”
A piece at a time, Morse donned the articles of clothing Dickon held out for him. The apparel was all well tailored in the finest quality fabrics. When he glanced in the mirror, Morse grudged a fleeting grin at the fashionable dandy who stared back at him.
Still, his body itched for the old green jacket that had once marked him as a member of the elite Rifle Brigade.
“A green jacket’s different, Dickon. The redcoats are drilled to follow orders without a second’s thought, but a Rifleman’s trained to think for himself. For all that, I was still a bit too independent for the Rifles. It landed me in trouble more than once. I’m well enough off if I respect the ability of my superiors and see the sense in what they’re asking me to do. To take senseless orders from a fool who ranks me, though—that’s my notion of hell.”
Sticking a finger under the edge of his stock, he tugged in vain to loosen the wrapping of linen that hugged his throat like a noose.
“Buck up, sir.” Dickon nudged him, flashing a broad wink. “It’s Wednesday night, remember?”
“Wednesday night.” Morse savored the words. The tension that bunched his shoulder muscles began to ebb.
Wednesday and Saturday nights were his only respite from the tyranny of General Freemantle. Without them, Morse was certain he’d have chucked the whole business, in spite of his debt to Sir Hugo.
True to his word, the old man had managed to dissuade the Board of Inquiry from pursuing charges against Morse, letting him muster out with no fuss.
“Think you can liberate us another few pints of that fine ale?” Morse asked the footman.
When Miss Freemantle went into the village on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, he took the opportunity to sneak off with Dickon for a pint or two
in some deserted cranny of the house. While they drank and ate whatever cold collation Dickon could forage from the pantry, Morse told stories of his adventures as a Rifleman in the Fourth Somerset Regiment. It felt good to bask in the footman’s soldier-struck admiration. In fact, it was almost enough to buttress Morse against Leonora Freemantle’s persistent assault on his self-assurance.
“Better’n that sir. Do ye fancy a drop of hard cider?”
“Don’t I just! Could do with a drop this very minute.”
Dickon nodded his massive head in sympathy. “Be off, now, sir. Miss Leonora will be waitin’ on ye. I’m apt to catch the edge of her tongue if yer late. It’s the oddest thing. Before you came to the house I never heard a cross word from her. T’was all Would ye be so kind and Might I trouble ye for this or that. This past fortnight, though, she’s been as cranky as a badger sow.”
An involuntary smile rippled across Morse’s lips. He was certain it would be his last before nightfall. No doubt, Leonora Freemantle could badger with the best of them. Not to mention carp, reproach and downright bully.
Army life had been hard and dangerous by times, Morse admitted to himself. Apart from the pitiful pay, it had not been entirely thankless. He’d earned his promotions, won the affection and respect of the men in his command, gained the trust of his superiors—at least those superiors whose opinion mattered to him.
At Camp Laurelwood, however, he was reminded day and night that he could do nothing right.
Morse forced his feet down each step of the darkened staircase toward the library. Every soldier’s instinct in him shrank from tardiness. For ten years it had been dunned into him that he must be where he was expected, when he was expected, no matter what. The lives of his comrades might hang in the balance. He couldn’t make himself believe it was of any consequence whether he started lessons now, or two hours from now. It was all a pack of nonsense anyhow.
With a grunt of disgust, he thrust open the library door.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, Leonora glanced at the mantel clock. Once again Morse Archer was a quarter of an hour late for their prebreakfast lessons. This, in spite of her having sent Dickon to wake him half an hour early. Little wonder General Wellington’s Iberian campaign was all but lost, if he was commanding an army of surly idlers like her star pupil.
