The Wedding Wager

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 late 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.

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.