‘Dog?’ Adam turned and saw them. ‘For heaven’s sake! Friend. This is Rose and she does not need herding.’
The creature gave her hand a swipe with a tongue like a rough red flannel and collapsed on her feet.
‘I’m sorry. He’s a Bouvier des Flandres and he’s used to herding his flock. We rescued him and so he decided the Rogues were his.’
Rose raised her eyebrows and pointed a finger at Adam. He believes you are a sheep?
‘Me? He seems to think I’m the shepherd. He rounds up strays which is what seems to have happened with the search party looking for the colonel. God, I am going to kill Bartlett, just as soon as he’s fit enough. She’s a wilful, irritating brat, but she’s my sister. Randall can get in line behind me.’ He began to pace again. Dog whined softly, lifted his head and followed Adam’s movements with mournful brown eyes. His tail stopped wagging.
Rose took a step into Adam’s path and shook his arm. Tell me.
‘You want to know what I’m ranting about?’ He shrugged. ‘Sit down, it’s a long story.’ She went back to her chair and folded her hands in her lap. ‘You look as though I should begin, Once upon a time, as though this was a fairy tale. Well, once upon a time there was Earl Randall, the father of our present colonel. He was a great man who thought that he could take anything he wanted, especially women.
‘He had a large family—Justin, his heir; Gideon, who was killed at Quatre Bras; a pair of twins who’re at school now; Augusta, now Marchioness of Blanchards, who was in Paris with her unmarried sister Sarah, Gideon’s twin; and Harriet, who married some rural dean or another.
‘And then there’s the rest of us, the bastards.’ He stopped pacing and drew a finger down the line of his nose. ‘You’ll see this nose and these eyes across every parish for miles around Chalfont Magna. My mother was a chambermaid. He forced her, used her and then when she fell pregnant, he tossed her out.’
The very calmness of his voice warned Rose just how angry he was, even after a lifetime of knowing the story of his own birth. She stayed quiet and still, out of his line of sight.
‘The head groom took her in, gave her a room over the stables out of the old devil’s way. She earned her keep cooking and looking after the lads and the grooms. I became one of them, learned to ride, learned to read and write, learned to mimic my betters.’ His voice changed from the neutral accent with its faint country burr to an aristocratic drawl. ‘“Hitch up my chaise, lad. Saddle the bay. Clean up my hounds. Here’s a penny for you.”
‘I stayed while my mother needed me, although I didn’t take well to being a servant. Too bloody minded,’ he added with a twist of his lips. ‘Then when I was fourteen she married one of the grooms and the recruiting sergeant came to the village. I was a tall lad and they didn’t ask about ages. I joined the army. Square peg, square hole.’
He fell silent and Rose stood up and went to stand in front of him, running her hands over the marks of rank on his uniform jacket. As an officer? Adam grasped her meaning as he always seemed to.
‘Hardly, at that age and from that background. As a private at first, then a corporal. I learned my figures, found I was good at the mathematics you need for gunnery. Then I became a sergeant in charge of a gun crew, like Hawkins.’
He looked down at her as she stood there, her fingers still stroking the gold braid.
‘And one day, after a particularly hot fight, I stood in the middle of what was left of the position, looked up and there was this officer on a big grey horse staring down his nose—this nose—at me. “Who are you?” he said. And I said, “Adam Flint, one of your father’s gets, I’d wager,” and he laughed and rode on. A week later I found myself with a field commission to lieutenant and a transfer to a unit they were beginning to call Randall’s Rogues, under his command. One thing about artillery, officers are promoted on merit, not by purchase, which makes all of us not quite gentlemen in Wellington’s eyes. So here I am now, a major.’
He shrugged as though that was an ordinary career path, not a climb from poverty and bastardy through skill and courage and sheer determination.
Just as Hawkins said, Adam had remade himself into the man he was now. The officer, the gentleman. The soldier. And Sarah? she mouthed.
‘My esteemed fellow officer, Major Tom Bartlett, drinker, gambler and highly qualified rake, got himself hit on the head. Apparently Dog here found Sarah wandering about amongst the wounded—although how the devil she got there I do not know because she was supposed to be safe with our sister Gussie—and herded her over to him.’
But that is good, surely? Rose frowned up at him. He’s safe…
‘The idiot girl gets him back to Brussels and sticks him in her own bed—and th
at’s where I find them. In bed. She says she’s soothing his fevered brow and he doesn’t remember who he is and I’m a brute to shout at an injured man. He lies there looking like the perfect wounded hero and calls me sir, as though he hasn’t a clue who I am. Then when I order her out of there she announces it is her lodgings and that as Randall has never let her anywhere near my polluting and illegitimate presence I have no authority over her and she can do what she likes.’
Adam flung himself down in an armchair and Dog came and butted him anxiously on the knee. ‘The only creature in that damned house who’d do what I told them was Dog.’
Rose repressed the smile tugging at her lips. The poor man was furious and frustrated, but it was somehow touching to see the confident officer brought to a stand by one concussed major and a defiant young woman. She perched on the arm of the chair and raised an eyebrow in question.
‘What am I going to do now? I told Randall, managed to get past that dragon of a woman who is guarding him for a second. It seemed to bring him round, at least. He’s sending a note to order her home. But if there’s a hope in hell of getting the silly chit out of there before she’s ruined, we’ve got to try. She won’t listen to me, but perhaps she will to him.’ He rested his head back and closed his eyes.
Rose slid to the floor and curled up against the chair and Dog’s solid, furry bulk. Ruined. I’m ruined, just like she will be, and that is my sin. I ran off with Gerald. She looked at her hands, soft and white under the bruises and scratches. I was a lady once, like this Lady Sarah, I must have been. It explained the flashes of memory of big houses, it explained why she had been at a ball. It must have been the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, the one that Maggie had been gossiping about.
She studied Adam’s profile, aloof and severe, even with the piercing blue eyes hooded. I saw you before, I was at the ball and so were you. She’d looked in the closet while he was out and found a dress uniform, fine dark blue broadcloth and gold lace. I was at the ball and then I ran away with Gerald and now I am ruined.
Something brushed over her hair, Adam’s hand, stroking it as though it was Dog’s rough black coat. She shifted until she could feel his leg against her back. A shiver of desire ran through her. I want this man.
‘And what the blazes am I going to do with you?’ he enquired. ‘I suppose I’d best find out where the Seventy-Third’s camp followers are and get you an escort there.’
No! Rose swivelled round and came up on her knees so fast that she bumped her head against Dog’s massive jaws. Ouch. He gave her a pained look and lay down, his muzzle on Adam’s left foot. Rose shook her head emphatically at Adam.