A Rose for Major Flint (Brides of Waterloo) Page 7

  It will be all right, Rose assured herself as the blunt head nudged into her intimate flesh. This is what all that dampness is for. Then he was inside her.

  ‘Rose—’

  He was only just inside her, she realised as she managed to sort out one sensation from another. He rocked his hips, pushing a little, withdrawing, teasing himself as much as her, she suspected with sudden insight.

  ‘You’re so tight… Sorry, I was too fast. I want you too badly.’ His head dropped until his forehead rested against hers, one hand slid between their bodies and touched her close to where he had entered her, stroking.

  The sensation was intense and she arched up against his fingers, searching for more. The weight of his body held her down, but her movement pushed him deeper. He groaned and she felt the shift of his pelvis against hers.

  The thrust of Adam’s hips filled her impossibly, alarmingly, full. Perhaps the wetness was not enough, after all. Rose felt her body fighting him and struggled to relax, to stay calm, to control the instinct to reject this intrusion. She had known to expect this, only not how it would feel. Then he surged again, there was a sharp, sore pain and she realised Adam was hilted deep inside her.

  Rose breathed deeply as her body begin to adjust. It would be all right in a moment. Her instincts knew what to do and he felt wonderful. This was a man, this was Adam, and they were joined in a way that seemed almost magically intimate and intense. There was more pleasure waiting just beyond the discomfort. She wasn’t certain she wanted him to move though, not yet, not for a minute or two while she—

  But shouldn’t Adam be moving something? As her sensation-clouded mind cleared she realised he had gone quite still, rigid all over. Then he slowly raised himself up, pulled back and rolled free of her body, leaving her bereft. Surely this was not all there was to making love?

  She could make out his silhouette as he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. After a heartbeat he raked his fingers through his hair and straightened up. ‘You were a virgin.’ His voice was flat, hard. ‘A virgin, damn it.’

  He shifted off the bed in one abrupt movement. Rose heard the rasp of a tinderbox and flung a forearm across her eyes to shield them from the sudden glare as he began to light candles, then the two oil lamps. Adam stood there in the wash of light naked, still half-erect, furious. ‘You let me think you were a camp follower, that you had been with a man as his mistress. Why?’

  How to mime that? Rose lifted her hands helplessly. How to explain?

  ‘I may not be a gentleman, I may have been dragged up in the stable yard, but I have never, never despoiled an innocent.’ He snatched a sheet from the bed and swathed it around his waist. ‘Put something on. Now.’ He began to pace, talking half to her, half to himself as she fumbled for her nightgown. ‘A virgin this week…what will it be next week? Forcing an unwilling woman? I am obviously my father’s son in every respect.’

  No! She reached for him, the denial a silent scream. No, how could he believe that of himself? What had she done?

  The rant brought him up to the small table at the far end of the room. Rose saw Adam go still, watched his rigid back, felt her mouth go dry as he just stood there.

  ‘What is this?’ Adam turned and pointed to the ink bottle, the pen and the scraps of unused paper she had forgotten when she had tidied away her notes after hours of effort. ‘You can write? Why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me? This would never have happened if we had been able to have even half a conversation!’

  Rose half fell out of bed and stumbled to the table. Because I forgot, she scrawled, blotting the lines in her haste. I don’t know my own name. Why should I remember about this?

  ‘You forgot.’ Adam seemed to drag the breath down to his guts, then said, in the voice she had heard him use to give orders, ‘What do you remember?’ He pulled out the chair for her. ‘Sit. Write.’

  He looks like a Roman emperor in his toga, Rose thought, stupid with tiredness and frustration and unhappiness. So I know about ancient Rome…

  She dipped the pen and began.

  I ran away with a man called Gerald. We were going to get married. It was the night before Quatre Bras.

  I realised almost at once I had been foolish, that I was not in love with him. He was very handsome—the uniform… Idiotic of me. But it was too late then. I had to stay with him. I’d promised.

  I spent the night in his tent but we didn’t… After the big battle I looked for him. He is dead. I forgot I could write until I saw Maggie this morning.

  I am sorry. I don’t remember much else, just little snatches.

  Adam picked up the paper. She made herself watch the strong, long-fingered, scarred hand and not his face. The paper was quite steady in his grip. After a minute he laid it down again. ‘Could you speak before the battle?’

  Yes. Until I found him. His head…half his face…was gone. I wanted to scream, but nothing would come out. The scream is still there, somewhere, and words won’t come.

  He was reading as she wrote, one hand resting on her shoulder, his weight pressing a little as he leaned over, his body warm, close. It should have made her feel safe. When she put down the pen he pushed the cork into the ink bottle. ‘It is shock. Probably another one will bring your voice and your memory back.’ His hand brushed against her cheek as he straightened. She thought it was an accident, for his voice held no tenderness. ‘Or time will. Go to bed now, Rose.’

  When she looked towards the rumpled bed he shook his head. ‘I need to sleep and to think. And I will not do either with you in my arms. Go to your own room.’

  His voice was not unkind now, but she could sense the banked anger. With me or with himself?

  She would have ignored his words, walked into his arms, tried everything she could to change his mind, then she saw the shadows under his eyes like the bruises left by the pressure of a thumb, saw the darkness in that blue gaze. He did not take what had just happened between them at all lightly and he was exhausted. And he says he is no gentleman, she thought with a wry smile as she turned and did as he asked.

  Sleep refused to come in her narrow, lonely bed. Her body was sore and restless. Rose felt cheated, as though she had been allowed the tiniest taste of something wonderful and then it had been snatched away. She moved, turned and heard the answering creak of bed ropes in the other room. Adam was not sleeping either.

  Now the initial shock was past the realisation was creeping over her that she had hurt him very badly. He had not been born a gentleman and his sense of honour had been hard-won, something he held to himself like a shield. She had breached that, unwittingly led him to behave in a way he despised.

  The temptation to go to him was like a physical force. To distract herself Rose got up, lit a candle and got out the slips of paper she had covered in notes. Each slip had one remembered fact or impression and she began to sort them out on the coverlet, searching for links and patterns.

  I am a gentlewoman from a family that is comfortably off. I have a mother and father still living and I take after my mother in looks. Our home is somewhere in England but we have been in Brussels for…months? Weeks? Why?

  I am well educated. I can ride and play the piano and sew. I play the harp very badly. I was at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. I was dazzled by a handsome face, a red coat and a dashing soldier who proved to be just a frightened boy, full of bravado.

  And I am twenty-three years old.

  Something about that stuck her as strange. Why was she not married, not betrothed? Am I on the shelf? Faint echoes of arguments came back. ‘Why are you so stubborn? So fussy? So independent? You’ll be left in the wallflowers’ corner if you don’t stop turning suitors down, my girl…’

  With a sigh she stacked the notes away, blew out the candle, burrowed down into the softness of the bed and willed sleep to come.

  *

  Hours later Flint lay and stared up into the darkness. His thoughts had circled all night, broken by snatches of restless sleep. R
ose. A decent girl who had fallen for a pretty face and a scarlet coat and who’d had the sense to realise she had made a mistake, and the loyalty and courage to stick with her promise. By some miracle he had not been quite as tired, or as randy, as he’d thought himself, he’d withdrawn as soon as he had realised and at least there was little chance of a pregnancy. But the damage was done all the same.

  He scrubbed his hands over his bristly jaw. Oh, yes, a fine first experience that must have been, crushed under an unshaven, angry, aroused man using less finesse than a rutting bull. The courage of the woman struck him again like a slap in the face of his conscience. Never once in all of this had she wept, except those few tears when she thought he had rejected her. Not on the battlefield, not when she found herself dumb, lost and confused amongst strangers, not when he ordered her about, not when he took her innocence.

  Rose had guts and grace and she deserved more of him. As an officer and a man he deserved more of himself than to treat her as a whore. He turned over yet again, seeking for a cool spot in the creased bedding, his nostrils full of the scent of her. Could he find Rose a decent man to marry? Something in him revolted at the thought although he did not understand why. Perhaps it was simply that he did not want to force her into anything until she had voice and memory back. He owed her that, at least, he thought as he dozed again.

  *

  The scream brought him out of bed before he could make sense of the sound. Attack! He stumbled towards his sword in the corner, dragged his eyes open on to the faint light of dawn.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Aah!’ It was wordless, desperate.

  Flint flung open the door of Rose’s room. She was thrashing amongst the sheets, her eyes closed, her face contorted in anguish as yet another scream was wrenched from her throat.

  ‘Rose, wake up!’ He fell to his knees, dragged her into his arms as the door to his room crashed open.

  ‘Sir!’

  He twisted round to see the figures jammed in the doorway. Moss, in trousers and braces, Maggie, her hair twisted into rag curlers, a rolling pin in her hand. Both of them stared aghast at him as he knelt there, stark naked, with a screaming woman in his arms. There was the sound of feet pounding up the stairs, Dog was howling. Moss turned and Flint saw the room behind was filled with the men, dressed anyhow, most of them with weapons in their hands.

  ‘Adam Flint, what in heaven’s name are you doing to that poor girl?’

  ‘I had a nightmare,’ Rose whispered against Adam’s bare shoulder.

  ‘Go on, downstairs the lot of you, and shut the dog up, for pity’s sake!’ someone said. ‘The French haven’t invaded, it’s just a girl with bad dreams.’

  It was Moss, she realised. The feet tramped off downstairs, Dog fell silent.

  Adam’s skin was slick with sweat, his breathing was short, as though he had been running. Over his shoulder she caught a glimpse of Maggie.

  ‘Maggie, will you please leave?’ he said harshly.

  ‘The poor girl needs a cuddle. Take her to bed,’ the older woman advised, ignoring the order.

  He did not turn. ‘She is in bed.’

  ‘Yours, you dunderheaded man!’ Maggie sounded torn between amusement and irritation.

  ‘Then, with all due respect, Maggie—get the hell out of here.’ The words seemed to escape between gritted teeth.

  ‘Just admiring the view.’ Maggie’s chuckle faded as the outer door closed behind her.

  ‘I cannot say I blame her,’ Rose ventured when Adam stayed silent, holding her close. How can I joke at a moment like this? What must they all have thought of me?

  After a moment he released her, rocked back on his heels and stared. ‘You can speak.’

  ‘So I can.’ She had a voice and she had not realised. ‘I can speak.’ Rose sat up and tried to recall the nightmare before it vanished into incoherence. ‘I had a dream, about the battlefield, about Gerald. It was just as it had happened, but this time, when I tugged at his shoulder and his body turned over…he spoke, even though he only had half a face. I screamed and this time the sound came out. I screamed and screamed.’

  ‘I know.’ He was holding himself rigid, but she saw the tremor in his hands, the sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Adam? What is wrong? I can speak again, aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘I was asleep. It startled me.’

  There was more to it than that. He was used to night alarms, she had heard the clang as he had tossed the sword aside. This was not a man who broke out in a sweat because of screams in the night or whose hands shook because of a sudden shock. ‘Tell me,’ she coaxed, encircling as much of the broad shoulders as she could, kissing the bristly cheek that was all her lips could reach. All he would let her reach.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ he muttered. ‘You have seen enough of horrors.’

  ‘Tell me.’ She gave him a little shake.

  Adam shrugged. His face was expressionless. ‘When I woke just now I was back in Badajoz when the city had fallen after the siege. The men went wild and for almost three days we could not restore order. They were insane with anger over the length of the siege, the loss of so many comrades. For some the relief made them drunk.

  ‘Those are the excuses, if there are any. There was shooting, pillaging. Women were raped, murdered. Many women. Girls, nuns. I can still hear the screaming. Officers were shot by our own men as they tried to control it.’ His hand went to the scar she had noticed just below his right collarbone, he did not seem to realise he was touching it.

  ‘You were hurt?’

  Adam nodded. Shrugged.

  ‘Not…not any of the Rogues?’

  ‘No.’

  Rose remembered his expression as he had charged across that clearing towards the men who threatened her, what he had done to them. Then she looked at him squarely in the face, put out her hand to tilt his head towards her.

  This was not a man who had just been shocked out of deep sleep. His face was the face of a man who had hardly slept, a man whose thoughts were as painful as a wound. She remembered his reaction in the night when he realised she had been a virgin. No. No, he cannot compare himself to those men, simply because he did not know.

  ‘Adam, you saved me.’ Her voice felt rusty with disuse and screaming. ‘It was not your fault…last night. It didn’t occur to me that I should have told you I was a virgin.’ Suddenly shy, she ducked her head. ‘It was thoughtless of me. Selfish. I wanted you.’ He was silent. After a heartbeat he shook his head, a tense jerk of his chin. From somewhere she found the strength to say, ‘I still do.’

  ‘No.’ Adam got to his feet, walked out of the door, was halfway across his own room, then stopped as though he had forgotten where he was going.

  It hurt how much she desired him, every battered, naked, weary inch of him.

  ‘You are a respectable young woman,’ he said without turning. ‘Perhaps a sergeant’s daughter, perhaps from a tradesman’s family. You should not be with me.’

  He hasn’t realised. He thinks Gerald was a private. My voice… I don’t sound like myself yet. If he knows I am gentry he’ll send me away. She was deceiving him again and this time she knew full well what she was doing. But she was ruined now—not that it felt like ruin. How could this make it any worse?

  ‘I was respectable till I ran off with Gerald,’ she corrected him. A slight accent seemed to come naturally to her tongue. It wasn’t much, just a broadening of the vowels. My nurse? Someone had spoken to her in that voice for years when she had been young. ‘I’m not any more, not from then on, never mind what didn’t happen that night in the tent.’

  Adam stooped to search in the pile of discarded clothing on the floor, the muscles in his back shifting in the golden glow of the lamps. He pulled on his trousers before turning back to her, as though he was putting on armour. ‘You deserve a decent man to marry you, give you children.’

  ‘You’re—’

  ‘I’m a bit of rough from the stable yard, pretending to be
a gentleman. I’ve seen too much, done too much and I am not the marrying kind. Faithful, yes, while it lasts. But it doesn’t last long, never does. I get to feeling trapped.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t take up with women who want to cling and that way parting doesn’t hurt anyone.’

  I don’t want to cling. I want you to want me and to be with me. I want to understand what I feel for you. It isn’t love, I’ve read about that, heard about it, thought I felt it for Gerald. I’m not faint or off my food. I don’t want to sleep with your handkerchief under my pillow. I don’t want you to read me poetry. I want to sleep with you in my arms, I need your weight over mine, your heart beating against my breast, your body sheathed within me. I want to live and explore and…

  ‘How do I get any less respectable than I am now?’ Rose demanded. ‘I ran off with one man and spent the night on a battlefield. I’ve been wandering round the place with a troop of soldiers, I’ve slept with you and I’m not a virgin any more. Doesn’t get much less decent, does it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it does,’ Adam said and sat down on the edge of the bed as though someone had kicked his legs from under him. ‘You shack up with one of Randall’s Rogues. You get pregnant. That’d do it.’

  Rose marched over and sat down at the other end of the bed. He was going beyond bone-weary, but she knew instinctively that she could show him no mercy now. ‘Got many women pregnant, have you?’

  ‘No!’ He looked ready to fall asleep where he sat. That, or walk out.

  ‘Then don’t get me pregnant,’ she said. ‘I’m not asking you to marry me, just let me be with you till I know who I am.’

  ‘Hell, Rose. It’s a risk, you need luck, however careful the man is. I’m not—’

  ‘Frankly,’ she said as she got up, ‘I don’t think you are any risk at all, just now.’ She gave him a sudden shove on the shoulder and then pinned him down on the bed with one palm on his flat stomach while she attacked the fastenings of his falls with the other hand.