Jane Feather - [V Series] (13 page)

“You need to eat,” Marcus said immediately, the gnawing rat of mistrust for the moment appeased. “We’ll go to the duke’s headquarters.”

Sebastian chose to return to his friends in the village tavern while Marcus hustled Judith into a stone farmhouse, one of the few buildings with its roof still intact, where they found Wellington’s staff sitting around a table. The duke himself was chewing a hunk of barley bread as he fired off dispatches to a steady stream of runners.

Francis Tallent offered Judith a pewter cup of rough red wine, greeting her pleasantly and without surprise. Fleetingly, Judith wondered what he must have thought that morning when she’d drifted into the taproom with her shirt unbuttoned and her hair tumbling about her ears. It was best not to speculate, she decided, taking a seat at the table.

It didn’t take long before she was completely at ease. The condition of her clothes, her exhaustion that matched their own, the part she’d played in the last hours, provided her pass into this group of battle-weary veterans. Even Wellington greeted her with an absent yet friendly acceptance, accused Marcus of being a secretive dog to keep his marriage plans under wraps, and suggested
she try to wash the blood from her skirt with a mixture of salt and water.

Judith spent what was left of her wedding night wrapped up in a military greatcoat, asleep on a table at the end of the room, while the military conference went on around her. Marcus looked across at her and tried not to dwell on how they would have been spending this night in more traditional circumstances. He took off his coat, rolled it up into a pillow, and gently lifted her head, slipping it beneath her. Her eyelids fluttered, and she mumbled something inarticulate. He smiled, stroked her hair, its usual burnish faded, and returned to the table.

Judith was awakened just before dawn by an orderly, who touched her shoulder tentatively. “Ma’am … there’s coffee, ma’am. We’re on the move.”

She opened her eyes and blinked up at him in bemusement. Slowly memory returned and she struggled into a sitting position, swinging her legs over the edge of the table. She took the steaming mug from the orderly with a grateful smile. Apart from the two of them, the room was empty.

“Where is everybody?”

“Outside, ready to move, ma’am,” he said. “His lordship’s waiting for you.”

“Thank you.” She slid off the table and made her way outside into the damp, gray light, her hands cupped around the comforting warmth of the mug.

Men and horses milled around the front door. Wellington was mounted on Copenhagen, his favorite charger, and the beast pranced impatiently, tossing his head, sniffing the wind. The village seemed quiet, after the frenzy of the previous evening, and a line of wagons moved away from the field hospital toward Brussels, transporting those the surgeons had managed to patch up. Burial parties were at work in a neighboring field,
turning the sod with their shovels, wraithlike figures in the dawn mist.

Marcus, holding the bridle of a black stallion, stood talking with Francis Tallent. Judith hurried over to him. Colonel Tallent greeted her cheerfully, then made his excuses and went to join the duke.

Judith examined her husband. He looked tired but calm. “Are we to leave straightaway?”

Marcus gave her his own searching look. “As soon as you’re ready. Are you rested at all? The table made a hard bed.”

She laughed. “I’ve slept in many a hard place in my time, sir. Indeed, I’m very rested. I must have slept for three hours.” She took an appreciative gulp of the coffee. “This is the elixir of the gods.”

Marcus smiled. “A lifesaver I agree. You’ll have to manage the cart today on your own, I’m afraid. Just keep up as best you can.”

Judith looked at the stallion. “You’re riding?”

“Yes, one of Francis’s spares.”

“I suppose he doesn’t have one for me,” she said disconsolately.

Marcus regarded her calmly. “It wouldn’t matter if he did. After ‘borrowing’—as you so charmingly put it—the cart and horse, it’s your responsibility to look after it and make sure it’s returned to its owner no worse for wear.”

Judith pulled a face but couldn’t dispute the justice of this. “I hadn’t expected to keep it for so long.”

A glimmer of amusement appeared in the ebony eyes. “No, I’m sure you hadn’t. But then, rather a lot of unexpected things have happened in the last day or so.”

“They have,” agreed Judith with a tiny answering smile. “But I daresay the owner will be happy with a
handsome compensation. I’m sure the tavern keeper will find him for me when we get back to Brussels.”

“Conscience conveniently quietened?” he mocked.

Judith laughed. “My conscience was never uneasy. However, if I can’t ride with you, then I’ll stay here today. There’s still work to be done at the hospital.”

Marcus frowned, considering. She’d proved herself competent enough yesterday. “I suppose I could allow you to do that. I’ll send someone for you later. When he comes, though, you’re to go with him without delay. He’ll have orders to bring you to me at once, because there’s no knowing how long we’ll be in any one place. If you delay, I may lose you. Is that clear?”

It had been a short moment of accord. “Yes, it’s perfectly clear, and would have been equally so without your sounding so autocratic,” she pointed out, reflecting that it was never too early to start her program of reform. “I’m not in the schoolroom.”

“For heaven’s sake, Judith, I don’t have time to squabble with you in the middle of a war!”

“Oh, listen to you!” she exclaimed in a fierce undertone. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Taking her shoulders, he pulled her toward him. “Maybe I am a trifle autocratic, but you’re as bristly as a porcupine this morning.” Despite the irritation in his voice, he couldn’t control the flicker of desire in his eyes. Although her cheeks were flushed with indignation, dark currents of promise lurked below the surface of her eyes, and he could feel in memory the print of her soft mouth on his. “Porcupine or not, I want you,” he murmured. “Somehow, I’ll contrive something for later.” He ran his finger over her mouth. “And we’ll be a world away from any schoolroom, I can safely promise you that.” His eyebrows rose and his eyes gleamed. “Will that guarantee your obedience, lynx?”

Judith grinned, her irritation vanished. “I’ll come when I’m called, sir.”

He caught her face and kissed her, a hard, assertive salute that left her lips tingling and heated her blood. “A further promise,” he said, then turned, swung onto his horse, and rode off with a backward wave.

A
s the day wore on, passion became the last thing on Judith’s mind. She was soon moving in a trance of fatigue, blindly putting one foot in front of the other, driven by the overpowering need and suffering around her. Wellington had lost five thousand men the previous day and they were still bringing in casualties from the battlefield, men who had lain outside all night. It began to seem as if the stream of wounded bodies would never cease.

The sky darkened toward the middle of the morning and within minutes was shot with jagged forks of lightning. The thunder was almost as violent as the gunfire of the preceding day, Judith thought, standing for a moment in the entrance of the hospital tent looking out at the sheeting rain.

All day the downpour was relentless. Judith was soon soaked to the skin, but was barely aware of it. Wagonloads of patched wounded continued throughout the day to bump along the road to the safety of Brussels, and toward evening Judith was trying to make some of the casualties more comfortable under a tarpaulin in one of the wagons when a hesitant voice called her.

“Charlie!” She looked up in glad surprise, water dripping from her hair. “Thank God, you’re safe.”

“Yes,” he said, blushing crimson over his tunic as he stammered, “Um … Miss Daven … um … Jud … um … my cousin … my cousin sent me to fetch you. He’s with the army at Waterloo. We’re to go at once.”

Judith climbed wearily down from the wagon. What had Marcus told Charlie? “Is it far?”

“No, a couple of miles. The army’s in position across the Brussels road,” Charlie said. “There’s been no fighting today, because of the storm.”

“I have to find my horse and cart.”

“I have it,” Charlie said. “Over by that farmhouse. Marcus told me where it would be.” He stared into the middle distance, unable to meet her eye. “He said you … well, I gather congratulations are in order.”

“Oh, Charlie, it’s too difficult to explain at the moment,” she said, taking his arm. “In fact, I don’t know whether I
can
explain it. It happened very quickly.”

“In Brussels, you weren’t thinking of—”

“No,” she interrupted, recognizing his mortifying suspicion that he’d been played for a fool by his elders, who’d had their own secret liaison all along. “No. It just happened very suddenly. I don’t know how to ask you to understand it when I don’t myself.”

“Oh.” Charlie still seemed unconvinced as he handed her up into the cart. “I’ll tether my horse to the
back and sit beside you. There’s a tarpaulin we can put over us.”

Judith took the reins. They both huddled beneath the tarpaulin, although they were already so wet it seemed rather pointless. After a minute Charlie said hotly, “My cousin never does surprising things. Why would he suddenly get married in the middle of a battle? I thought people only fell in love like that in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances.”

Judith smiled and patted his hand. “You know what they say about truth being stranger than fiction.” If that was the explanation he’d hit upon, then she’d leave him with it. He obviously wouldn’t be able to handle the truth: violent passion, mutual seduction, inconvenient encounters, and a most scrupulous sense of honor … along with a quite unscrupulous seizing of an opportunity.

Wellington’s army was drawn up outside the village of Waterloo, straddling the Brussels road behind the shelter of a small hill that would protect them from enemy observation and gunfire. It was a relatively strong position, and the duke was in cheerful mood when Judith, escorted by Charlie, walked into one of the string of farm buildings that protected both the army’s flanks. A fire burned in the grate and the smell of gently steaming wet wool filled the air as the soaked inhabitants of the farmhouse jostled for position near the heat.

“We’ll stand where we are, if Blücher promises us one corp in support,” the duke was declaring, over a table laden with supper dishes. “Ah, Lady Carrington, you’ve been in the field hospital at Quatre Bras, your husband says.” He waved a chop bone at her in greeting. “Come to the fire and dry off. Carrington’s taking a look at the field. Boney’s ensconced on the other hilltop.”

Judith dropped onto a bench at the table, exhaustion
flooding her so she couldn’t even summon up the energy to reach the fire. Charlie murmured his excuses and went off into the rain again to rejoin his regiment. Someone pushed a pewter mug of wine toward her, and she buried her nose in it with a grateful groan. As with last night, her presence was completely accepted. This didn’t seem as surprising to her now that she’d met several women that day, laboring beside her in the hospital, all wives of soldiers, all accustomed to following the drum and enduring the same privations as the army while they waited behind the lines for their men. That Lord Carrington’s wife chose to do the same was a little more remarkable, but then so was the marquis’s position with Wellington’s army as a civilian tactician.

Marcus came in a few minutes later, shaking water off his coat, tossing his soaked beaver hat onto a settle. “It’s raining cats and dogs,” he said. “The roads are enmired and the field’s a mudbath.” He saw his wife and came quickly to the table. “How are you?”

“Dripping,” she said, smiling wearily. “But well enough. I’ll be even better for another cup of wine.”

“Take it easy,” he cautioned, reaching for the bottle and refilling her cup. “Exhaustion and wine make the devil’s own combination. Have you eaten?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I think I’m too tired.”

“You must eat. Then I’ll show you to the chamber I’ve managed to lay claim to, and you can get out of those clothes.”

Judith toyed with a cold mutton chop and listened to the conversation. Marcus sat beside her on the bench and, when her head drifted onto his shoulder, put an arm around her in support. Her clothes dried a little in the steamy warmth of the crowded room and she sipped wine sleepily, trying to make some sense of the discussion. Everything seemed to hang on the Prussians. Could
they send a corps in support? If not, Wellington’s army was alarmingly outnumbered by the French across the hill.

The tension in the room was too powerful for her to wish to go to bed, and she shook her head when Marcus suggested he show her to the bedchamber he’d found in a cottage across the yard. At three in the morning, a drenched runner tumbled through the door bearing the message they’d all been waiting for. At dawn, two corps of the Prussian army would move from Wavre against Napoleon’s right flank.

“Twice as good as we’d hoped for!” Peter Welby exclaimed.

Marcus examined a map with a pair of compasses. “It’s ten miles from Wavre to Waterloo and it’ll be slow going during this terrible storm on muddy roads. I expect they’ll be here midday.”