A Reckless Beauty

Feeling as if he might have made some sort of mistake, Rian called for another bottle. But, instead of the barmaid, one of his superiors from the 13th Light Dragoons delivered the wine, as well as a second glass clearly meant for himself.

“Remain seated, Lieutenant. That conversation was a mite short,” Captain Moray commented, pulling the cork from the bottle and pouring them each a full tumbler of surprisingly good wine. “What did his lordship want? He say anything about what’s going on with Boney?”

Rian looked at the older man, the quick flip of his stomach telling him he probably didn’t want to hear anything Moray might say next. “His lordship? You’re not mistaken? His lordship?”

Moray nodded, and then drank deeply from his glass before setting it down again. “I still hate this part, the waiting. One more bloody parade, Becket, and we’ll all be busy reshoeing our horses while Boney is driving over us with his cannon. And, right you are, his lordship. That was himself, Valentine Clement. Earl of Brede, you know. Haven’t seen him in a while, and us that know are never supposed to let on who he is, but I’ve been down this road before, and that was him, I’m sure of it. The great bloody Brede himself.”

Rian jammed his fingers through his hair, feeling young and stupid. “Oh, well…hell,” he said, disgusted, and then slumped back against his chair. “I just turned him down for the position of my batman. And all but told him he smelled, needed a bath. Which he did, damn it all anyway, on both counts.”

Moray’s braying laugh had heads turning in the tavern. “Cheeky young pup. But he knew you, didn’t he, called you by name? Brede’s one of Wellington’s own, you know, and been with him forever. Handpicked for being sneaky. Flits around wherever he wants, his ear always to the ground. Odds are his lordship supped with Boney at that fancy Versailles of his three nights ago, and then flirted into the mornin’ with all the prettiest mam-selles. And you all but served the man his notice? There’s bollocks for you, I’ll give you that. I think that calls for another bottle, I do.” And he leaned back in his chair, snapping his fingers at the barmaid.

Rian drank silently, mentally kicking himself for his own arrogance. Elly’s husband had written a letter, sent Brede to him. Jack never spoke much about what he’d done years ago, but they all knew he’d acted as a spy on the Peninsula, among other things. A spy like Brede. So did Jack then break both his hands affixing a seal to the letter to Brede, so that he couldn’t send another to his brother-in-law, warning him as to what he’d done?

“That man—Brede—he looked as tired as old death itself, didn’t he?” Rian asked his Captain, feeling young and damned foolish. “He’s seen things I shouldn’t want to see, I think. I thought this all would be…different somehow. Good. Noble.”

Moray lifted his head, smacked his lips together a time or two, as the wine, far from his first bottle of the evening, had begun to make his tongue numb and thick. He peered across the tabletop at Rian. “Noble, is it? Then that’s your mistake, boy. You never should have set foot from home, not a dreamer like you. Put that dreaming away. If you don’t, you’ll end up dead, mark my words.”

“Then I’ll put away the dreams, if that’s what it takes. I want to fight, Captain Moray,” Rian said, bristling. “And I’m damn good at it.”

The captain grinned, his head sort of sliding down between his palms as one cheek made slow, gentle contact with the tabletop. “You can ride like the very devil, I’ll give you that. Never miss the straw with your saber, either. But a heap of straw ain’t flesh, boy, and that fine, light-footed bay of yours will probably be shot from under you in the first minute of the charge. When you’re knee deep in blood and mud, tripping over pieces of the men you drank with the night before, and the Froggies are screaming, running at you—then we’ll see how damn good you are. Enough. Jesus, I hate this…I hate this. Too much waiting…too much thinking. Too much remembering the last time. Cursed Boney, he was supposed to be gone….”

CHAPTER FOUR

FANNY SAT WITH her back against the raw wood planks that made up the hold of the small ship, her knees bent as she braced herself against the storm raging in the Channel. Molly, her lead tied to a hook like the other sixty-five horses jammed in together in the cramped space, kept trying to nuzzle Fanny’s shoulder, her huge brown eyes wide and frightened.

“It’s all right, Molly,” Fanny told the mare, reaching up to stroke the horse’s velvety muzzle. “Just a little wind, just a little rain.”

Her eyelids heavy, Fanny continued to comfort Molly, but the black gelding was becoming anxious, rolling its red-rimmed eyes and jerking back its head, trying to be free of the rope, the dark hold, the ship itself, most probably.

“Shamus Reilly! Control that damn horse before it sets the others off, or I’ll have your skinny guts for garters!”

“Yes, sir!” Fanny said, jumping to her feet.

“And, by Jesus, don’t be callin’ me sir. That’s Sergeant-Major Hart to you, boyo!”

“Yes, sir—Sergeant-Major Hart!” Fanny repeated, wincing at her mistake. She reached into the pocket of her uniform trousers and pulled out the scarf she’d worn tied around her head only three hours ago, talking softly to the gelding as she reached up to tie the material around those wild, rolling eyes.

“Good work, Private Reilly,” the mutton-chopped Sergeant-Major said, prudently standing at Blackie’s side, and not directly behind the animal, in case it decided to kick. “You see that, boys? All of you, cover their eyes, keep ’em quiet. Move!”

Fanny kept her back to the Sergeant-Major, mumbled a quick thank-you, then wondered if she should have spoken at all.

Probably not, as the Sergeant-Major was still paying entirely too much attention to her.

What did he see? What could he see, in this near-darkness? Why didn’t he just go away? Was he about to discover her deception?

She was tall, tall as the real Shamus Reilly. She’d clubbed her hacked-off hair at her nape with a plain black ribbon. Nothing unusual there. And Lord knew her bosom wasn’t giving her away, as nature had already snubbed her nose at Fanny and given most of it away to her sister Morgan.

“Private Reilly.”

Fanny’s spine stiffened. “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”

“How old are, boyo? Fifteen?”

“No, Sergeant-Major!” Fanny, who had just passed her twentieth birthday, denied with what she hoped was the indignation only a lad who had not yet felt the need of a razor could muster. “It’s ten and seven I am, come last Boxing Day.”

“A poor liar you are, Private Reilly. I’ll not have babies in my troop. But I need every man I have, and that includes you. Christ. Ten and seven, my sweet aunt Nellie. Next they’ll be saddlin’ me with babes in arms.”

“Yes, sir—Sergeant-Major!”

By the time they’d finally reached Ostend, Fanny had convinced herself she was safe.

She was wrong.

“Private Reilly!”

Now what did that man want? Fanny fought down a yearning to roll her eyes at the sound of Sergeant-Major Hart’s voice as the man edged his mount in close beside hers as they rode out of the city. Did the man have nothing better to do but to hound her, set her heart skipping every time she thought she was safe, anonymous, hopefully invisible?

“Sergeant-Major!”

“We can talk more private now, can’t we? Who are you huntin’, Private Reilly? A brother? A lover? The father of your unborn child?”

“Sir?” Fanny kept her eyes forward, even as her stomach attempted to drop onto the cobblestones beneath Molly’s feet.

“Sergeant-Major, damn your eyes! And it’s denyin’ it that won’t work, Private Reilly, not when you’re up against a man like me, who’s seen it all before.”

Fanny swallowed hard, trying to moisten her dry mouth. “Yes…yes, Sergeant-Major.”

“Who you after, Private?”

“I’d rather not say, Sergeant-Major.”

“Now, see, lass, there’s where you’d be wrong. I wasn’t askin’ you. It’s not a friendly chat we two are havin’ here, you understand?”

Fanny lifted her chin. “He doesn’t know I’ve followed him. It’s no fault of his, sir.”

“Sergeant-Major. How thick would be your head, Private Reilly, that you can’t remember such a small thing, such an important thing? You’ll stay by yourself, sleep with the horses and keep your yammer shut, even if that means my men think you stupid. Would they be far wrong, Private Reilly, were they to be thinkin’ that?”

“No, Sergeant-Major,” Fanny said, aware that she was blinking rapidly now, on the verge of angry tears. “It’s Lieutenant Rian Becket, cavalry officer in the Thirteenth who I’m searching for, Sergeant-Major. My brother.”

Sergeant-Major Hart rubbed at his florid face with the palm of his hand. “Brother, eh? At least there’s no bun in your oven, thank the Virgin. Seen that enough, I have. He’ll not be thankin’ you for trailin’ after him, Private Reilly. Man wants to think he’s a man, all on his own.”

Fanny nodded, miserable. What had seemed such a grand plan as she’d conjured it up in her bedchamber, now seemed silly, and impossible. Once out in the sunlight and, according to the Sergeant-Major, even in the dark of the hold, her charade had lasted no longer than the Romney Marsh mist on a sunny August morning.

“He’s been here for a bit, sir,” Fanny said, giving up any attempt to be soldierlike. “Do you know where he’d be?”

“Right where we’re headed in a roundabout way, I’d wager, poor devil. Place called Scendelbeck. You just keep your head down and your yap shut, and you’ll be seein’ him soon enough. Wouldn’t be you, though, lass, when he sees you, not for all the world.”

RIAN WATCHED AS the Earl of Uxbridge rode past after a day of reviewing his troops, looking just the sort of romantic hero Rian had dreamed of in his youth, when he’d first thought of war, of soldiering. A rather flamboyant fellow he seemed, the tailoring of his uniform definitely in the first stare, his dark hair waving over his forehead, his brasses twinkling in the sun, the horse beneath him stepping high, seemingly proud of the handsome man on its back.

Wellington had turned command of the cavalry to Uxbridge, but not too happily, Rian had heard, disliking the man’s taste for the dash and flash, but as Uxbridge was also the best cavalry general in the whole of the British army, the Iron Duke hadn’t really had a choice.

“The dear earl eloped with Wellington’s sister-in-law some time ago, you know,” said a voice beside Rian…drawled, actually. “A huge scandal, of course, for which the Duke has yet to forgive our handsome Lothario. It speaks to Uxbridge’s talents in the field that he isn’t still cooling his heels in London, with nothing to do but nag at his tailor.”

Rian reluctantly turned his head to see the Earl of Brede next to him, nonchalantly leaning back against the stone fence bordering a sadly trampled wheat field. The man looked no better than he had a few days previously; if anything, he looked worse. Worst of all, those world-weary hazel eyes were still twinkling the way they had in the tavern as Rian dismissed him as a nursemaid, and he still looked more than a little amused.

Rian jumped to the ground and bowed to the man. “My apologies, my lord. I allowed the drink to speak for me.”

“That, and your youth.” Valentine Clement smiled, running his cool, lazy gaze up and down Rian’s well-turned-out figure. Had he ever been this young, this eager? Perhaps before Talavera, before Albuera, Salamanca and the rest. Damn, how he wished this over, and now they were going to have to best Old Boney yet again. “But you’ve found a batman, perhaps? Neatly pressed, that pretty scarlet coat. Ever pause to think, Becket, what a marvelous target scarlet makes? But you all look so…spiffy, on parade.”

Suddenly emboldened, for he was young, after all, Rian gestured at the Earl’s filthy greatcoat, the nondescript white shirt and loose trousers. “Better the inconspicuous gray of the field mouse…or the kitchen rat?”

“At times, Lieutenant, yes, it is,” Brede drawled, clamping an unlit cheroot into a corner of his mouth, striking a match against the fieldstone, then looking at Rian beneath his brows and the lank, light brown locks that fell over those brows as he put flame to tip. There was something cold, almost calculated, about the man, for all his seeming ease and conversation. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, not this Valentine Clement, Earl of Brede and rumpled spy. “We move soon.”

“Do we?” Rian said, keeping his own tone even. “And I suppose you know where we’re going?”

Brede looked around at the dismissed soldiers, all carrying their rifles inelegantly slung over their shoulders as they headed for any space of ground or comfortable flat rock they could find, still sweating like fatted pigs from another full day of marching about to impress their superiors. He sighed, shook his head. As if marching ever won a battle—although strict discipline did, and that was really the point, wasn’t it? Poor bastards, marching straight into cannon fire whenever the order came. Not for him, not for Valentine Clement. He’d live or die on his own merits, using his own wits, making his own decisions.

“Come with me,” he said, and then vaulted neatly over the wall, heading for the line of trees at the side of the trampled wheat field, expecting young Becket to follow him.

Rian looked behind him, saw Captain Moray wink at him and carefully secured his sword at his side before hopping onto the wall, sliding his legs over and down, to follow after a man he couldn’t quite seem to like. Probably because this man had already proved himself, and Rian knew he still had so much to prove.

They made their way through the cantonment, the neat lines of small white tents, the cooking fires now just coming to life again, and into the trees, at which point Brede turned to Rian, looking hard at him again, measuring him again.

“If you don’t want to tell me anything, I—” Rian began, only to be cut off by a wave of the Earl’s hand.

Brede inhaled hard on the cheroot, blew out a stream of blue smoke and then said what he’d come to say. Hell of a thing, being beholden to somebody. Even Jack, who’d saved his life for him, twice. But he’d be damned if he’d wrap this pretty boy in cotton wool. Every man has to be given the right to prove himself, sometime.

“Jack swears you’ve got a good head, can ride anything with four legs or even less, know how to shoot, and how best to use that pretty sticker you’ve got strapped to that neatly pressed uniform. You know your place, says my old friend, and how to guard a secret. Now, listen to me. You saw Uxbridge today, Becket. Frippery fellow, you’d think, looks useless, but you stay close to him if you can. He knows what he’s about, he’s as hard as rock at his center. By tomorrow the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the last of the Thirteenth, the Sixteenth and the Twenty-third—they’ll all be here. Light Dragoons, mostly. You’ll be maneuvered all over hell and back at a field not far from here, eight, possibly ten hours or more a day, until Uxbridge is satisfied. After that, Becket, rest. Rest as much as you can, you and your horse. Stay sober, feed your belly, keep your socks dry—hang the wet ones around your neck, dry them that way, and for God’s sake don’t lose your extra pair. Your feet rot off and you’re no good to anybody. The next time the men move from here, Becket, it will be into battle.”

Rian felt his blood singing through his veins. “When? Where?”

Brede smiled, the cheroot still stuck in the corner of his mouth, and Rian was still having trouble separating the unkempt clothes from the obvious intelligence in those piercing hazel eyes. God, he looked the ruffian. Not an earl at all, at least not at all like the Earl of Uxbridge. “I’d guess Quatre Bras or Ligny, somewhere in that direction, although nobody else does. Not yet. But they will, I can only hope, once I’ve made my final report. Now, listen to me. We can none of us stop this, you understand? The Alliance won’t allow it, Napoleon can’t avoid it. But I can get you out of here.”

“Jack asked you to do that?” Rian could barely see through the bright red of his sudden fury.

Brede smiled. “No. But he holds an affection for you, and I have an affection for him. I also have enough consequence to get you reassigned to Wellington’s own staff. He needs good men, with Pakenham and so many others cut to pieces in New Orleans, damn that stupid war for the folly it was.”

Rian nodded his agreement. “My brother Spencer fought at Moraviantown. He called that battle considerably less than laudable.”

Brede brushed aside the comment. He had places to go before nightfall. “The Duke doesn’t hide, so if you’re with him, you’re not out of danger. But there’s more than one way to fight a war, Becket. With your body, thrown into the field against other bodies, or with your brains.” He extracted the cheroot from his mouth, stared at the glowing tip now that the sun was sliding toward the horizon and it was growing darker beneath the trees. “I offer this only the once, Rian Becket, and for the sake of an old friend who did me more than one good turn on the Peninsula. As you so rightly said—I’m no nursemaid.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Rian said, bowing to the man. “I would, of course, be honored.”

“Only a damn fool wouldn’t be,” Brede said, smiling once more. “Two days from now, as I have things to do, things that don’t concern you. I’ll see you on Monday, exactly here, sometime before noon, with new orders for you in my possession. You will be ready to go, or I’m leaving without you. Understood?”

Rian opened his mouth to answer, but the Earl of Brede had already turned to walk away, taking no more than ten steps back out onto the wheat field before gracefully throwing himself up onto the saddle of a sleek, dappled gray stallion whose head had been held by no less than Captain Moray.

Brede turned the horse, pulled back on the reins so that it reared up on its back legs as the Earl threw Rian a casual salute, and then he was gone, gray figure and gray horse soon fading into the equally gray twilight.

“Uxbridge isn’t the only flamboyant one,” Rian mumbled as he headed toward a grinning Captain Moray. “He merely dresses better….”

CHAPTER FIVE

THIS WASN’T TOO TERRIBLE. The countryside was beautiful, the air not too uncomfortably warm, and the horses a grand protection. Fanny might miss her soft bed and Bumble’s fine way with a chicken, but the adventure made up for that.

And, with every mile, she drew closer to Rian.

“Who will probably attempt to box my ears for me,” Fanny muttered quietly behind the scarf she’d tied around her nose and mouth to keep out the dust raised by the horses.

She rode at the back of the troop, which meant that after the dried strip of beef she’d had for breakfast, she was having road dust for luncheon. Mentally, she added the lovely tin tub in her bedchamber at Becket Hall to the list of things she missed most.

“Private Reilly!”

Fanny rolled her eyes and straightened her slim shoulders. Honestly, the man was constantly at her; her own father didn’t guard her half so closely. Of course, if he had, she wouldn’t be riding across Belgium at the moment, would she? “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”

“We’ll be at the cantonment in another few minutes. Just around the next bend, I’m told. Now, here’s what I’m doing. You’ll see that brother you’ve come all this way to see, and then you’ll be off to Brussels with the rest of the women who had nothin’ better to do than follow along with us. No women here for much longer, Private Reilly, to help with the cookin’, the washin’. Uxbridge won’t allow it. You’ll have plenty to do, helpin’ with the wounded when the time comes, honest women’s work, and then you’ll be shipped off home, wherever that is.”

“But, Sergeant-Major—”

The Sergeant-Major shook his head, sighing in an exaggerated way. “And here she goes again, dear God, thinkin’ she has somethin’ to say to any of this. Show me an army of women, and I’ll show you pure disaster, every one of them questionin’ me, thinkin’ she knows best. ‘Oh, no, Sergeant-Major Hart, we should camp farther from the stream, it’s too damp here. We’ll catch a sniffle.’”

Fanny pulled down the scarf and grinned at the man. “When you get to heaven, Sergeant-Major, the good Queen Boadicea may have a word or two to say to you.”

For the first time since she’d encountered the Sergeant-Major, Fanny saw the man smile. “Her? She was only in a snit.”

“She raised an army against the Romans, destroyed London and was responsible for killing seventy thousand soldiers. That’s a bit more than a snit, don’t you think? And then we might discuss the Maid of Orleans, the famous Joan—”

“And they don’t know when to stifle themselves, women don’t,” the Sergeant-Major grumbled, pulling on his muttonchops. You’ll be goin’ on to Brussels, where it’s safe, you hear me?”

Fanny was fairly certain she shouldn’t ask him to say please, and simply nodded her agreement. “I was stupid, sir. I shouldn’t have come.”

The Sergeant-Major slapped his huge thigh. “Well, now, that’s what m’sister shoulda said, back in aught-six. But she chased her Bobby Finnegan all the way to the Peninsula. He didn’t thank her for it, any more than this brother of yours will be thankin’ you. Dead these eight years, the both of them.”

Fanny’s stomach clenched. “On the Peninsula?”

He nodded. “Caught a fever, like so many. Private Reilly, I’ve seen men starve. I’ve seen men drown in holes they dug to protect themselves from the enemy. I’ve seen…You do what I say. I’m not to be havin’ you on my heart along with my Maureen. I’ve no one now, no home, no family. So I take good care of you boys…you all.”

Fanny pulled up the scarf once more. “I’m sorry, Sergeant-Major, that I’ve worried you, even as I realize how fortunate I am that you’re the fine man you are. When this is over, I know my papa will want to shake your hand, want to thank you. Will you please remember this? Becket Hall, in Romney Marsh. If I could find my way here, you can find your way there. You’ll always have a welcome and a home there if you wish it, that’s a promise. Papa has a great respect for honest, brave men.”

Sergeant-Major Hart looked at her rather incredulously, but then nodded. “Becket Hall, in Romney Marsh. I’ll remember. Now, you stay with these horses, tend to them, and I’ll find your Lieutenant Becket for you. Mayhap keep him from saying what he should say. And no tears from you, Private Reilly. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir!”

He shook his head in mock dismay. “Such a simple thing, lass. Sergeant-Major.”

Fanny grinned behind her scarf as he rode back toward the head of the line. “Such an honorable man—sir.”

And then, because she knew she’d been wrong to follow him, because she knew Rian was going to tell her how wrong she’d been to follow him—and at some length—Fanny blinked away her tears and prepared to do battle with the man too stupid to know she loved him. Had always loved him.

RIAN WATCHED the Sergeant-Major walk away and then turned to look at his sister as she sat cross-legged on the ground in front of him. Her face was smudged brown with road dirt from the middle of her cheeks to the top of her butchered blond hair, the whites of her eyes and their emerald-green centers thrown into stark relief above the bottom half of her face, which seemed unnaturally pale.

And she was in uniform. Even the Sergeant-Major, who had been pleading her case for her—if calling her a brainless baby was pleading for her—had been aghast to hear her at last admit how she’d come by that uniform.

Rian stayed seated on a large flat boulder, his elbows over his knees, staring at her, and said nothing.

He was quiet for a long time. He looked so sad to Fanny, so angry. So disappointed in her. She longed to run her hands through his black as night hair, put the blue sky back into his stormy eyes. If, as he’d said, she was pretty, he was beautiful. Like some tragic Irish poet, his brothers had always teased him. Almost too pretty to be real. He’d wondered why she’d worried for him, followed after him?