The Wedding Wager

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.

Drumming her fingers on the desktop, Leonora eyed the Latin grammar, open to a pitiful tenth page. Every day they slipped further and further behind on her meticulously constructed timetable. She had tried everything she could think of to challenge the man, but he obstinately refused to learn the most rudimentary Latin declension. His knowledge of English history was appalling. He couldn’t tell Agincourt from Hastings, and she sometimes wondered if he knew that Henry the Fifth came before Henry the Eighth. As for his ignorance of literature…

She could have forgiven the man if he’d proven an obvious dullard, incapable of learning. But that was not the case. In his dinner table conversation with Sir Hugo, she caught glimpses of the knowledge he’d gained while soldiering abroad. Morse Archer was too clever by half. If only she could curb his stubborn refusal to apply himself.

She’d tried everything short of cajolery. For some reason she could not bring herself to use a soft approach with him. Perhaps because his physical presence unnerved her so. Often when she should have been correcting his atrocious penmanship, she found herself instead staring at his hands. Blatantly staring at his powerful, shapely hands. Imagining them taking steady aim with his rifle, clamped around a bottle of Spanish wine or spanning the waist of some sultry Dulcinea.

Then he would glance up and catch her watching him. And his eyes would twinkle with mockery. Leonora willed herself to think of something else before she gave way to a shriek of vexation. Distracting her thoughts was no easy matter. A nauseating lump of panic rose in her throat as she pictured the days and weeks slipping away with so painfully little to show for them. Despite his hollow boasts to the contrary, at the rate he was going Morse Archer would not pass for a butler let alone a gentleman.

And when the petty nobility of Bath laughed him out of town, she would have to forfeit the wager. Marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. Surrender her dream of a school. Abandon the academic pursuits that were her only joy in life.

A briny mist stung her eyes.

Impatient with herself, Leonora pulled off her spectacles and roughly employed the cuff of her sleeve as a handkerchief. Not since the youngest years of her childhood had she allowed anyone or anything to drive her to tears. She was not about to yield that honor to a man like Morse Archer.

The library door burst open. Shutting it behind him with a bang that reverberated through the room, Morse lumbered over to the table and dropped heavily into his seat.

With a hiccup, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, Leonora pushed her spectacles back on again and stiffened her posture.

“If you learn nothing else from me in the next two and a half months, Morse Archer, I trust you will at least cultivate the civility of knocking before you barge into a room.”

He glared up at her, one eyebrow cocked insolently.

“Why should I waste my time knocking? Weren’t you expecting me?”

Leonora made herself glare back, hoping he would not notice the redness of her eyes. “I was expecting you a full quarter of an hour ago, as you should be well aware. That does not excuse the rudeness of your conduct. As penalty for lateness, we will work an additional half hour before taking breakfast.”

She ignored the groan with which he greeted this news. “And as penalty for your lapse in manners, I will expect you to spend an additional half hour reading history this evening before you retire.”

For some reason Morse showed no obvious dismay at this second punishment. Leonora was tempted to raise it to an hour.

“We have wasted quite enough time this morning. May I remind you that we have only ten weeks remaining until we must go to Bath. Let us begin with a review of yesterday’s Latin lesson. Translate the verb to eat, and conjugate it in the present tense if you please.”

“To eat?” Morse lounged back in his chair, not so much as glancing at the book open before him. “Last night’s dinner was so long ago, I’m not sure I recall the meaning of that word in English, let alone Latin.”

“Keep this up,” shot Leonora, her patience worn to a thread, “and it could be several hours before you get the chance to refresh your memory. Kindly apply yourself to the lesson and provide me with the translation and conjugation of the verb.”

Morse slammed his Latin grammar shut. “This is lunacy. Your wager is to pass me off as a gentleman soldier, not the Arch-bloody-bishop of Canterbury! If you’d just let me—”

“That is quite enough, sir!” Leonora’s simmering resentment threatened to boil over. “I am the teacher here. This wager is to test my skill. You understood that when you agreed to take part. I decide upon the curriculum. I choose the subjects. I set the lessons. You’d do well to master the role of pupil before you try usurping mine. Now let’s get on with it.”

She reopened the book and thrust it under his nose. If he insisted on behaving like a spoiled child, that’s how she would treat him from now on.

“Conjugation of the verb to eat, repeat after me…” She pointed out each word as she read it.

To her amazement, Morse did repeat after her. However, he did so in a flat, apathetic tone that left no doubt he’d forgotten each word the moment it left his lips.

For the next two hours Leonora persevered, bending over her pupil, straining to avoid any physical contact between them. As her outstretched finger glided beneath each line of text, she spoke the words of a dead language. Morse parroted her in a voice that sounded all but dead.

Her back and shoulder began to ache. Hunger gnawed at her innards. Worst of all, a painfully acute awareness of Morse Archer—the sight, sound and scent of him—set her senses aquiver. By half past eight, she wanted nothing more than to pick up the heavy Latin grammar and hurl it through the library window.

“Celo, celare, celavi, celatus.” Morse heard the words coming out of his mouth, as though from a distance. The page of Latin grammar was there before him and his eyes were open, but he did not see it.

“Habeo, habere, habui, habitus.” So much of army life had been numbingly boring physical routine. Morse had fallen into the habit of letting his hands or feet go through the familiar motions, while his mind fixed on some point of interest.

“Audio, audiere, audivi, auditus.” His speech organs produced the words by rote, while Morse found himself absorbed in the contemplation of Leonora’s hand.

Her fingers were slender and tapered. The nails were neatly kept, like five tiny translucent seashells. For all its daintiness, it was neither weak nor vapid. Instead it moved with an expressive, purposeful grace, which Morse found fascinating and strangely beautiful.

He scarcely realized what he was doing when his own hand reached for hers. She froze. With a stifled gasp, her recitation of Latin verbs ceased.

Once, in India, Morse had handled a priceless religious artifact, exquisitely carved in luminous pale jade. He held Leonora’s hand with the same breathless reverence, savoring its warmth and smoothness. It seemed the most natural impulse in the world to lift it to his lips in homage.

His curious trance shattered when Leonora ripped her hand from his grasp.

She found her voice again. “What is the meaning of this? How dare you take such liberties?”

Her face a livid crimson and her eyes gaping wide, she backed toward the door.

“I was just noticing what lovely hands you have.” Morse wondered that such a little thing had obviously upset her so. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

She stared at her hand as if she was seeing it for the first time, and was not pleased in the least with what she beheld. “You would do well to take more notice of your studies, Sergeant Archer, and less of my…person.” The last word came out in a strangled squeak.

Morse endeavored to suppress a smile. He had never imagined his icy, implacable martinet could appear so flustered. And over such a trifle.

“Since you are obviously not…attending to the lesson, perhaps we had better adjourn…for breakfast. Afterward, I expect you to read the next twenty pages of Mr. Butler’s Hudebras.”

Morse opened his mouth to ask where she would be while he was reading. Before he could voice the question, though, Leonora had slipped out the door and fled.

She never did come to breakfast.

For the first time since setting foot in Laurelwood, Morse was able to relax and enjoy a meal in peace. As he tucked ravenously into a plate of eggs and broiled veal kidneys, he pondered the unaccountable events of the morning. What was there in an innocent touch and a trifling compliment to throw Leonora Freemantle into such a bother? He had no success in puzzling it out.

After a leisurely breakfast he returned to the library and found it deserted. For lack of any better diversion, he did read a few pages of Hudebras. When it failed to stir his interest, he got up and walked over to the window.

The bright winter sunshine and the steady drip of water from the eaves told Morse the day must be mild. Reasoning that a bit of fresh air might revive his powers of concentration, he called for his hat, greatcoat and walking stick.

Ambling along the path between high cherry laurel hedges, Morse found himself able to bear more and more weight on his injured leg. With a bit of regular exercise, perhaps he would regain his former easy stride.

By the time he returned to the house, he was in a better humor than he’d enjoyed since coming to Laurelwood. Whatever he had done to disrupt the endless routine of lessons, it was well worth trying again. If compliments flustered Leonora so…Morse chuckled at the very thought of how she’d respond if he called her by that name. Surely she had other features he could admire the next time he needed a respite from his studies.

Her slender, graceful neck, for instance. If he nuzzled her sensitive nape, she might take to her bed for several days with a fit of the vapors.

Morse grinned to himself, anticipating her reaction.

Immensely pleased at the cleverness of his plan, he took up his book again and devoured nearly a hundred pages of it by teatime.

Chapter Four

He had kissed her hand.

Several hours later it still tingled faintly and the memory of Morse’s lips on her skin continued to prompt a most ridiculous blush in Leonora’s cheeks. She had retreated to the sanctuary of her bedchamber, not trusting herself to face him again that day. On no account must that man see the foolish reaction he’d excited in her.

Pacing the carpet runner beside her bed, Leonora tried to dismiss the whole episode for the silly trifle she knew it to be. No doubt Morse Archer had kissed the hand of many a woman. More than their hands, too, unless she missed her guess.

Through the window she spied him striding the grounds of Laurelwood, his limp much less noticeable than when he’d first arrived. Some unaccountable force kept her rooted to the spot, watching Morse Archer until he disappeared from view.

Quite against her will, Leonora found herself slipping into a shameful reverie. Unbidden images cascaded into her mind, piquing her senses. Of all the places on women’s bodies where the attractive sergeant might have bestowed kisses.

On their lips, of course. Perhaps a bare neck or shoulder had enticed him to nuzzle. Might he have dropped one, delicate as a whisper, upon some pretty ear? Or pressed his face into a head of tousled tresses?

As each notion took hold of her, Leonora’s hand—her kissed hand—strayed to that part of her own person. Setting her lips aquiver as one fingertip brushed over them, gliding from shoulder, to neck, to ear. Extracting the pins from her hair.

When at last it fell in a fine, ebony billow around her shoulders, her strangely possessed hand reached up and threaded her fingers through the strands. Feeling and appreciating its delicate, silky texture for perhaps the first time in her life.

Catching sight of herself in the looking glass, Leonora almost did not recognize the face that stared back at her. That woman had a strange softness about her features. It made her look far younger than Leonora’s twenty-seven sensible years. Even her severe little spectacles could not disguise the dreamy shimmer in her gray-green eyes.

Leonora had seen that look before. Her stomach curdled and her throat constricted at the memory of it.

Mother.

Downy and pensive. Humming a little tune to herself. Fondling a nosegay of posies from her latest admirer. Such looks had meant only one thing. Clarissa Freemantle had welcomed a new suitor into her life. To Leonora, it had always spelled trouble.

Setting her mouth in a taut line, she squared her shoulders and willed that mooning creature in the mirror to vacate the premises forthwith. She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes, least of all over a shiftless, insolent ex-Rifleman that circumstances had forced upon her.

Leonora thrust her spectacles back up to the bridge of her nose. Plucking a hairbrush from the top of her dressing table, she coerced her locks into submission, plaiting them into such tight braids they made her head ache.

Dickon, the footman, almost dropped his water kettle the next morning when he arrived at Morse’s door to find the sergeant already awake.

“Don’t just stand there gaping, man.” Morse plucked the steaming kettle from Dickon’s hand and splashed a generous measure into his washbasin. “Lay out my clothes while I shave.”

“I didn’t reckon to find you in such fine fettle this morning, sir.” The burly footman rubbed his forehead. “Not after the quantity of cider you put away last night and how merry we was making.”

Morse worked his shaving soap into a good lather and smeared it on his face, inhaling the tangy aroma. “I’ve been up before dawn and in the thick of a battle after far worse debauches than last night’s wee tipple, man.”

He whistled a few bars of a Portuguese drinking song, the words of which he had never understood. “Sometimes a fellow’s all the better in the morning for a spot of revelry the night before.”

“If you say so, sir.” Dickon did not sound convinced. Clearly, he was paying a somewhat higher price for their evening’s merriment.

“I do say so, Dickon.” Morse rinsed his face and dried it off, flashing his reflection a wolfish grin. He wasn’t certain what had brought about his sudden bout of energy and high spirits. Perhaps his congenial evening with Dickon accounted for it. Or perhaps yesterday’s unscheduled holiday from his studies.

Or could it be…?

The fellow in the looking glass grinned more broadly still. Had he guessed the truth? That, at last, Morse had found himself an effective weapon in his running conflict with Miss Leonora Freemantle.

Until yesterday she had possessed all the artillery, not to mention strategic field position. His only recourse had been a dogged refusal to capitulate. Then, just when he’d thought himself all but beaten, Morse had discovered his own tactical advantage—Leonora’s agitated reaction to a little harmless flirtation.

This set them on even ground at last. The prospect of a well-matched contest stirred Morse’s blood as nothing had since the rout at Bucaso.

He eyed the suit Dickon had chosen for him. “Don’t suppose you can find something more colorful by way of a waistcoat? If a fellow has to act the gentleman, might as well look the part, eh?”

With a glance that questioned if he truly could be Morse Archer, Dickon rummaged in the wardrobe and produced a brocade garment of forest green shot with gold.

Once he had donned his gear, Morse looked himself over in the mirror, approving what he saw. Even that tiny hint of green in the waistcoat reminded him of his Rifle Brigade uniform. It heartened him for whatever battles might lie ahead today.

He let Dickon give his coat a final brush, then Morse descended the stairs to the drawing room as rapidly as his injured leg would allow. Finding the place dark and deserted, he rubbed his hands with gleeful anticipation.

If Sir John Moore had drummed one precept into the minds of the Rifle Brigade, it was the benefit of being first to arrive on the field of battle. One gained superiority of position together with the element of surprise.

Morse lit several candles and picked up the volume of Hudebras he’d been reading the previous day. Settling into his chair, he affected an air of one who had been in the throes of diligent study for some time. Fortunately, he did not have to keep up the pose for long before he heard Leonora’s footsteps.

Something stirred inside him at the sound, and he had to admit it was more than the anticipation of catching her off guard. His lips warmed at the memory of kissing her hand.

As the door eased open, Morse tried to rein in the eager grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“You are late, Miss Freemantle.”

Leonora gasped at the sound of Morse Archer’s voice. In the very next instant she berated herself for letting him catch her off guard—again.

“Considering this is the first morning you have managed to arrive on time, Sergeant, it ill-behooves you to criticize.”

Blast the man to kingdom come! She had been anxious to reassert her authority this morning and already he had put her on the defensive.

Morse closed his book. Had he read that much since yesterday? She heartily doubted it.

Leaning back in his chair, he swept her with a look that made Leonora break out in gooseflesh from head to toe.

“You mistake me, Miss Freemantle.” His tone sounded far too cordial for her liking. The warm baritone wrapped itself around her heart. “I didn’t mean to criticize, only to state the fact. If you took a few extra minutes to dress and fix your hair, I would be the last to complain. You look particularly charming this morning.”

Her heart hammered and her stomach clenched. How had he guessed that she’d dithered a full ten minutes in her choice of a gown? That, against all logic, she’d spent more precious minutes dressing her hair in a marginally less severe style.

Her feet itched to flee, but Leonora stood her ground. “I will thank you not to mock me, Sergeant. I am well aware I look a fright this morning.”

There’d been nothing she could do to remedy the sleepless smudges beneath her eyes.