A Rose for Major Flint (Brides of Waterloo) Page 15

  ‘What is wrong, Miss Tatton?’ Adam was as correctly turned out as the day before.

  ‘Adam, please call me Rose. I cannot get used to being Catherine or Miss Tatton.’ Especially not from you. ‘I keep finding someone has been speaking to me for a good minute without me realising.’ She frowned at him. ‘You have had your hair cut again.’

  ‘Is that all that is wrong?’ He rested one booted foot on the low fender rail and seemed intent on checking the highly polished leather for scuffs.

  ‘Your hair? No, although I prefer it longer.’ It had curled strong and soft between her fingers as she ran them into it when he kissed her. Now she closed her hands tight to stop herself reaching for him. ‘No, it is nothing really. Just my name and the fact that I miss Maggie and Moss and that cosy kitchen.’ And feeling so guilty about her parents and frightened because being in familiar surroundings had not yet brought all of her memory back.

  Adam glanced towards the door and stood up straight. ‘Good morning, Lady Thetford, my lord.’

  Rose noticed that her mother barely inclined her head in acknowledgment although her father returned the greeting.

  ‘Catherine, do you have your prayer book?’ Her mother fussed around her, rather too obviously not looking at Adam. At breakfast Lord Thetford had had to remark sharply that this was the Sabbath before she had stopped declaring that she would be seen in church with that man over her dead body.

  ‘Yes, Mama. And money for the collection plate.’ And a clean handkerchief and a large and brooding artillery officer.

  Her father had ordered the landau with the roof down and the pair of match bays in harness. He and Adam settled opposite the ladies and embarked on a stilted discussion of horses while Lady Thetford sat, fidgeted with her parasol and glanced around as if expecting crowds of hissing ladies, all pointing at Rose and crying scandal.

  It was hardly worth taking the carriage—the chapel was at no great distance for a summer’s day stroll—but Mama liked to be seen in such a smart equipage and, as she had pointed out the evening before, appearances were even more important now that her daughter was teetering on the brink of disgrace.

  In Rose’s opinion the large English community in Brussels attended the weekly Protestant service at the Chapel Royal as much for the social event as for devotional purposes. Certainly the latest hats and smartest outfits were being flaunted in the morning sunshine as ladies gathered in small gossiping knots in the square. Rose swallowed hard. This would be worse than her first appearance at Almack’s under the critical eye of all the patronesses.

  But her father had timed their arrival well. The bell was ringing and the congregation began to enter the building as their carriage drew up. By the time Lady Thetford had fussed her skirts into perfect order, dropped her prayer book, twitched Rose’s bonnet ribbons and taken her husband’s arm, they were able to join the stragglers without attracting attention.

  Adam crooked his elbow and Rose placed her fingertips carefully on his forearm, resisting the temptation to cling on tightly. ‘Do you have your own pew?’ he asked as they stepped into the shadowy interior with its ornate white marble and grey-veined pillars.

  ‘No, not an allocated one. Mama likes to be about halfway down the aisle on the right though. Have you not attended services here before? They alternate between German and French. It is French today.’

  ‘Not services, no.’ He glanced around. ‘I brought some of our officers back here the other night.’

  It took Rose a moment to realise that he meant he had brought their bodies back, not that a group of them had come here to pray. ‘Your younger brother, too?’

  ‘Yes.’ He stood aside for Rose to follow her mother into the pew. ‘My brother Gideon, too.’

  Rose knelt, unable to find anything to say. After a moment she opened her eyes, conscious of her mother on one side and of Adam kneeling on the other, one hand covering his face. Was he thinking about his comrades lying so close? The half-brother he hardly knew? Or his own situation, trapped into play-acting the suitor?

  Slightly in front of their pew, on the other side of the aisle, was a familiar blue bonnet. As if Rose’s gaze was a touch on the shoulder the woman wearing it turned. Lady Sarah Latymor stared back at them, her eyes red-rimmed, her face pale. Her coat and gloves were black as if in a distracted attempt at mourning. She looked from Rose to Adam’s bowed head and back to meet Rose’s gaze. Her lips moved soundlessly as she gripped the back of the pew in front and began to rise.

  ‘Adam,’ Rose whispered frantically. ‘Lady Sarah. She is going to denounce us.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The organ thundered, Lady Sarah turned to face the front and the congregation rose to its feet.

  Rose let out a shuddering breath. ‘She looks dreadful,’ she whispered under cover of Adam helping her find the first hymn in her book. ‘But yesterday she was angry, not upset. Do you think Lord Randall, or Major Bartlett, are worse?’

  ‘We will find out after the service,’ he murmured. ‘No one here looks entirely normal.’

  All around were women in mourning of one shade or another, men with bandages or slings, drawn faces. Very few of the English residents would have escaped without the loss or wounding of someone they knew.

  Somehow Rose got through the service without standing during prayers or singing the wrong hymn. Finally the organ thundered out the processional again, the clergy and choir filed away to the vestry and the congregation began to get to its feet.

  ‘May I escort Miss Tatton back through the Parc?’ Adam asked before they left the pew. ‘I can see my half-sister, Lady Sarah Latymor, over there. She appears to be alone.’

  ‘Please, Mama?’

  ‘After yesterday, I thought you two girls were not on friendly terms.’

  ‘I wish to make up,’ Rose said earnestly.

  ‘Very well. It is Sunday, after all. I suppose we must all do our Christian duty.’ With a look that spoke volumes about her expectations of his behaviour, Lady Thetford nodded in Adam’s direction and swept off down the aisle on her husband’s arm.

  ‘Miss Tatton.’ It was Sarah, right by her elbow.

  ‘Lady Sarah.’ Rose took one look at her face and swallowed her apprehension and anger, with the other woman. She was in distress, not plotting more mischief.

  ‘I must speak to you. Both of you.’

  ‘Outside, then.’ Adam offered an arm to each and they made their way out of the church. ‘Well? Are you satisfied now, Sarah?’ he demanded as soon as they were around the corner and into a side street. ‘Miss Tatton had lost her memory. If you had stopped, just for a moment, to talk to her, you would have been able to help. Now you have distressed her parents and thrown her into turmoil while she is still recovering.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ All the fight seemed to have gone out of Lady Sarah. ‘I was sorry the moment I spoke to your parents, Catherine. But I was so angry with…’ She looked at Adam. ‘With Adam, my brother. And Gideon was dead and Justin is wounded and they wouldn’t let me near him. And Tom—I thought for a while I’d lost him, too.’

  She drew a deep breath and visibly got control of herself. ‘I saw Justin this morning. He is going to be all right. And we talked about Gideon and how he died so bravely and that you were both with him. And Justin told me you brought him back here, to this church, and didn’t leave him out there in that awful place. I won’t make any more trouble for you.’

  ‘You had better come with us.’ Adam turned and walked back to the church entrance. ‘You can’t go wandering about Brussels by yourself.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, it isn’t far and I must get back to Tom.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Adam’s cheek, a sudden glimmer of her old smile back on her face. ‘I don’t want to be a gooseberry and you seem to have courting to do.’ She took half a dozen steps away and then turned. ‘I promise I won’t make a scandal, tell anyone about you,’ she said earnestly, waved her hand and hurried off.

  She had forgotten to keep h
er voice down. Her clear words seemed to echo off the stones, cut through the clear summer air. Heads turned.

  ‘Do you think anyone heard what she said?’ Rose made a business of putting up her parasol.

  ‘Probably not.’ Adam looked round at the slowly dispersing crowd. ‘Or if they did, it wouldn’t make any sense and they’ll think they misheard. I can only hope she’ll not try to be any more help, or I may end up strangling the chit.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, I can’t help liking my little half-sister and I never thought I’d hear myself admit that. At least the news about Randall is good.’

  *

  Flint took Rose’s arm and made for the steep side street leading up to the Parc. He sensed she was unsettled after that encounter with Sarah and that she was nervous of the attention they were attracting. Enough people knew him, knew who he was, for gossip to start about his courtship of a viscount’s daughter. He was ready for it, but he doubted Rose was. Had she ever been the object of gossip in her life? He doubted it. He had, and he knew what they would be saying now.

  What is Lord Thetford’s daughter doing with Earl Randall’s bastard brother? Surely she was flirting with that nice young Haslam who was killed? I don’t recall seeing her after the supper dance at the Duchess’s ball. Did you see them with his half-sister Lady Sarah just now? What has happened that Thetford would countenance such an escort?

  And they would put two and two together and make three or eight and some—and it would only need a few of them—might arrive at something like four.

  He had to hope that she was not pregnant, that their courtship could be prolonged to the point where all gossip would die away. And yet… And yet the thought of Rose carrying his child filled him with a sort of wonderful terror. A child to be loved, one with both parents, a child with Rose’s eyes.

  ‘Mind that loose paving slab.’ He guided Rose with the upper level of his consciousness on the footpath, on watching for pickpockets or loose horses or any of the other myriad hazards of city life, and the deeper level wrestling with unfamiliar hopes.

  ‘I feel much better now,’ she confided. Her hand was tucked firmly into the crook of his elbow and she looked up at him with a smile from under the brim of her bonnet. ‘Lady Sarah will be no danger to us, your brother is recovering and attending church is behind me now. It will be easier from now on, I am certain.’

  I am not. Easier, when she is still so unsettled, when we are about to stir up the whisperers? ‘That is a most provoking bonnet, Miss Tatton.’ Flirt, don’t worry her with your doubts.

  ‘In what way, Major?’ She was being circumspect now they were nearing the Parc with its promenading crowds. ‘Bonnets may be frivolous or expensive or dowdy, but provoking?’

  ‘I can see very little of your face.’ He leaned down and murmured, ‘And I certainly cannot kiss you.’

  As he hoped, Rose laughed. ‘Wretch, putting me to the blush here of all places.’ He felt her stiffen. ‘Mrs Harrison and her daughters are going to stop.’

  Flint saluted and allowed Rose to introduce him to the Harrisons, Mama and three very pretty daughters rather younger than Rose.

  ‘Major Flint.’ Mrs Harrison smiled and nodded. She obviously had no idea who he was. ‘You escaped the battle without serious injury, I trust? Our own dear Charles is still laid up with a nasty bullet wound in the leg, but regaining his strength daily. He is in the Rifles, you know.’ She did not pause for him to answer, but turned to Rose. ‘And you, my dear, I declare we haven’t seen you since the Duchess’s ball. It was so affecting, seeing all those brave officers leave like that. Mind you, I thought it did the Duchess no credit, the way she ran around trying to make people stay.’

  ‘I…I left before that, Mrs Harrison. I found it difficult to witness.’ Flint watched with some concern as Rose bit her lip and seemed to falter, then breathed out as she smiled and confessed, ‘I have been such a coward. It was all so awful I have been at home ever since. I was not well and then Mama would not allow me to go out with all the men on the streets—such dreadful sights.’

  ‘But now you are quite recovered again, I can tell. Excellent, my dear.’

  The Harrisons moved on and Flint squeezed Rose’s arm against his side. ‘Well done.’ He wanted to hug her, kiss her, take her mind off all the nosy biddies. He wanted to take her to bed, and that had nothing to do with her welfare, as he knew perfectly well.

  The truth was, he had grown accustomed to her, attuned to her, in a way he had never experienced with another woman. She had become a necessary drug to him, both stimulating him and soothing him. Was it because he was her first lover? He was going to be her last as well, he was determined on that and he recognised the possessive instinct that swept over him as something new.

  Never before had he fought against that moment when it seemed time for a parting of the ways, but now he knew he would do whatever it took to keep Rose, regardless of whether she was carrying his child or not.

  *

  This business of walking in the Parc was simple enough, Flint concluded after twenty minutes of uneventful socialising. Smile, salute, keep half an ear on the small talk, make certain he showed Rose nothing but the most respectful, and slightly distant, attention. He obviously had a highly inflated opinion of his own notoriety for no one had so much as raised an eyebrow at being introduced to him and several ladies had given him their card and pointed out the days they were At Home.

  They had almost reached the far end. ‘Would you like to walk back along another path and look at the palace? There’s nothing much to be seen around headquarters, everything is packed up to follow Wellington towards Paris.’

  ‘Then let us go back towards the palace by all means. It is too nice a morning to go inside before we have to. Do you wish you were with the army, Adam, not stuck in Brussels?’

  ‘Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. Napoleon is in Paris, they say, Wellington’s chasing, he’s probably at Cambrai by now. They may need artillery there, but they’ve got enough without me or the Rogues.’

  He never thought he would say that, never thought he would lose his taste for a fight. Was this attachment to Rose making him soft? Probably not. He had come to the end of that chapter of his life, the world was changing, he was changing and it had taken this situation to make him face the fact.

  ‘I’m probably best doing what I can here. The soldiers need keeping an eye on.’ As men began to recover they were more of a handful, although to be honest he was grateful for the work to take his mind off Rose and the fact that his bed was cold at night.

  ‘Adam, I think those ladies over there know you.’ Rose’s elbow was sharp in his ribs. ‘They seem to be trying to attract your attention.’

  Ladies? Surely not. Pointing or muttering, perhaps. Or Rose was too innocent to recognise a high flier when she saw one. He followed her gaze and almost turned on his heel. An expensive bit of muslin would be preferable to the two bearing down on them.

  ‘Lady Archer, Mrs Gardener.’ Just nod and carry on past… But, no, they had to stop and exclaim in delight over his being safe and well. They begged an introduction to Rose, they said nothing whatsoever out of place and their smiles and their eyes and their fingertips on his arm all shouted as loudly as a scream that they had both been in his bed and would be pleased to repeat the experience.

  He dared not snub them, certainly had no intention of responding to their overtures, but they seemed to understand why all too well and their expressions as they studied Rose said quite clearly that they admired his enterprise, and probably his presumption, too.

  ‘Do look after our hero, Miss Tatton,’ Mrs Gardener said, smiling at Rose in a way that had Flint itching to pitch her into the nearby fountain. ‘He is such a dear friend from Peninsula days. Good day, Major. You must come to the little reception I am holding tomorrow. Don’t stand on ceremony.’ She lowered her lashes over wide blue eyes. ‘But then, you never did.’

  Rose must have been holding her breath until they were out of earshot,
he heard her expel it in one furious whoosh. ‘Two of your mistresses at once, Major? They were your mistresses, I take it? Are we likely to encounter any more?’

  She tugged her hand out from his arm and stalked off to the nearest bench, her skirt flicking in time with her angry gait. Flint took one moment to admire the sway of her hips and the hint of deliciously rounded bottom the swinging skirt outlined, then joined her. Rose sat and crossed her arms in as clear a display of rejection as he’d ever seen. ‘Well?’ She was furious and he found it curiously arousing. She is jealous.

  ‘They were never my mistresses. Lovers, yes, occasionally.’ He set one booted foot on the bench halfway along and leaned his elbow on his knee, his body as he turned towards her effectively screening her from passers-by.

  ‘Both together?’ she asked in an outraged squeak.

  ‘Certainly not.’ Although they’d have been game for it, he was quite certain.

  ‘And they are widows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then that, Major, was adultery.’ She turned and stared at the fountain as though it was of riveting interest. ‘And their husbands were your fellow officers, I presume?’

  Flint swore silently in Spanish, French and gutter English. Put like that it sounded both dishonourable and immoral. ‘They are both in marriages that were in name only.’ He hated justifying himself, let alone to Rose, but the cat was out of the bag now, she would never trust him if he could not make her understand. ‘Archer is considerably older than his wife and no longer able to get it…I mean, no longer able to perform his marital duties.’ Now he sounded like the parson. ‘Gardener is not sexually interested in women. And you will not repeat that.’

  ‘I have no intention of discussing your amorous encounters,’ Rose snapped. ‘What do you mean, not sexually interested in women? You mean he has taken a vow of celibacy?’

  ‘No,’ Flint retorted. ‘He prefers men for sex.’