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She liked him, she was very attracted to him, she admired him and she was grateful to him. And that was the problem. Was she blinded by gratitude and sheer physical desire into thinking she felt more for this man than she really did? Rose watched the scarred, long-fingered hand close around the fragile stem of the wine glass and shivered. She was perilously close to believing herself in—

Chapter Ten

‘Miss Rose, more wine?’ Hawkins lifted the bottle, making her jump.

‘Thank you, no.’ She did not need anything else to cloud her thinking.

‘I would walk you back,’ Adam said. ‘But we have the horses just down the street.’

‘I told you, I am perfectly all right by myself. And besides, I still have shopping to do in the market.’ And I need to be alone, I need to be apart from you, just now.

Adam’s expression was as inscrutable as ever, but she sensed that her show of independence disconcerted him. Did he expect her to be fearful and clinging still? Surely his other women must have been strong and independent types if they had been camp followers? Perhaps he liked that in her, enjoyed the role of protector, but if that was the case he was going to be disappointed, Rose realised. She did not want to cling and be dependent, not with a man as strong as Adam Flint, or he would simply consume her.

Was that why I ran away with Gerald? she wondered. Because I sensed he was not a strong character and I wanted to escape from home on my own terms? That was not a comfortable thought, either about her relationship with her parents or her own motives in eloping. Poor Gerald.

‘Rose?’

‘Sorry, I was wool-gathering.’

Adam pushed money across the table to Hawkins. ‘Go and settle up, will you?’ He waited until the other man was halfway across the room. ‘What’s wrong, Rose?’

‘Other than the fact that I still don’t know who I am?’ Her voice had risen, heads turned. She lowered it to reach only Adam’s ears. ‘Or that my parents must be frantic? Or that I am dependent on you for everything—the roof over my head, the clothes on my back, my food?’ She gestured at the empty plate, then snatched her hand back. That had been theatrical, almost wild. She needed calm and rational thought, not to succumb to panic and drama.

‘I’m sorry. I think the shock of everything is catching up with me. I will be fine, I’ll just go and finish my shopping.’

Adam rose as she did, his chair scraping back on the tiled floor. ‘Rose, it will be all right. I will make it all right.’

If sheer force of will could, then he probably spoke the truth. Rose found a smile and reached up to press a kiss on his cheek. ‘I know.’ She managed a gay little wave to Sergeant Hawkins and then she was off down the steps and heading for the market.

I have worried Adam now and he has too much else to worry about. But I am not going to lie to him, not once I discover who I am. Then I am not going to deceive him about anything. Anything except how I feel about him.

*

Adam came back to the house late that afternoon, along with Hawkins and the surgeon. Rose hung out of the bedroom window to watch Hawkins form the men up in the street outside and then start marching them up and down again.

‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked Maggie when she found her, as usual, in the kitchen.

‘Sick parade. Everyone that the lieutenant thinks is fit will march off to Roosbos, to join the others. It takes a while to sort them out. There’s those who shouldn’t go yet who’ll pretend they are fit and those who are fit who fancy lying around some more and those who are fine.’

‘I wouldn’t want to try to deceive the major when he’s looking like that,’ Rose said and Maggie laughed. But that was just what she was doing. Deceiving him about the fact she was far better born than he believed, deceiving him about her confused feelings for him.

Dog sat whining by the front door. ‘No, you can’t go out there and join in,’ Rose scolded him. ‘The major isn’t going to go away and leave you.’ Dog looked at her and scratched at the door. ‘You need to go out? Well, come to the back with me then.’

She let the dog out of the kitchen door to the courtyard and followed him as he ran over to his favourite post, watered it liberally, then trotted off purposefully through the arch into the stable yard. ‘Stay,’ she called. ‘I’m not chasing you across half of Brussels.’ But it seemed he was only concerned with treeing the stable cat and once that was out of reach, spitting and muttering on the grain-store roof, he was content to trot around the yard, sniffing for rats and marking his territory against the neighbourhood dogs.

She had not been in the stable yard before and Rose poked around, enjoying the dusty smells in the grain store, the satisfying tang of saddle soap and oil in the tack room, the military precision of the stacked bales of straw and hay.

The top half-door to the stables themselves was hooked back and Rose opened the lower half and let herself in. There were three stalls. The first contained a pitiful wreck of a horse with its coat covered in sticky patches of salve and a bandage around one leg. It was pulling hay from a net with the air of an animal that was going to stuff itself while the opportunity was there. Clouded memories of it between the shafts of a cart came back to her. This was the horse that had brought the men back from the battlefield, poor creature. At least it had found a safe home here.

It twitched nervously when she spoke to it, so she moved on to the next stall and a large, sturdy bay that was unfamiliar. She clicked her tongue, interested to observe her own familiarity with horses. She was comfortable with them and it occurred to her, when the bay came to have its nose rubbed, that she would welcome riding out.

‘You’re not a lady’s horse though, are you? More of a cavalry troop horse by the size of you. No, I haven’t got a carrot.’

There was the stamp of a hoof and a great black head appeared over the final door in the row.

‘My heavens.’ Rose blinked at the apparition. If she had thought the bay was large, this creature was enormous, with the arched, muscular neck of a stallion and a flowing, wavy, mane. It snorted and rolled its eye at her. ‘You must be the hell horse. You brought me back from the battlefield. That does deserve a reward. Let me see if there is something…’

She searched amongst the sacks and found some lumpy carrots. The thin horse eyed the offering nervously, so she tossed it into his manger and the bay accepted his with good manners, but the big black showed a fine set of yellow teeth and stamped impatiently.


Tags: Louise Allen Historical