A Mistress for Major Bartlett (Brides of Waterloo)

‘Well, what about taking him back to his lodgings, then? His man could help, couldn’t he?’ Justin’s own body servant, Robbins, was always tending Justin when he was wounded. Gideon had told her so.

‘His man’s used up,’ said the Second Rogue brusquely.

She’d heard Justin apply that term to the butcher’s bill after a battle. He didn’t speak of his troops dying, but of being used up.

‘What are we to do with him, then?’ It never occurred to her, not for one moment, to simply mount Castor, ride away and leave him. In some weird way, it felt that if she just left the Major’s fate in the hands of providence, it would be tantamount to submitting to the horrid inevitability of death itself.

Which would somehow dishonour Gideon’s memory.

‘You’ve got all those medical supplies in yer bags,’ said Rogue Two.

‘How...how did you know?’

He shrugged. ‘Had a look.’

He’d gone through her saddlebags, while she’d been climbing over the wall, and throwing stones at the looters? Or had it been later, when she was washing her hands in the stream?

‘I didn’t take nothing,’ he protested.

‘Look, it’s plain as a pikestaff you’ve been sent here to save our Major,’ said Rogue One. ‘If you nurse him, there’s a chance he’ll pull through.’

‘Me? But...’ She thought of the wounds covering his body, not to mention the huge tear across his scalp.

Then she saw their faces harden. Take on a tinge of disappointment. Of disapproval.

Of course, they wouldn’t believe she didn’t feel capable of nursing their Major. They had no idea how inadequate she felt. They would just think she was too high and mighty to lower herself to their level.

‘I suppose I could try,’ she explained. ‘I mean, the little I might be able to do is bound to be better than nothing, isn’t it?’

‘I took a gander when we put ’im in the wagon,’ said Rogue Two. ‘His skull ain’t broke. A lady like you could stitch him up as nice as any doctor. And then it’ll just be nursing he needs.’

‘Plenty of drink,’ said Rogue One. ‘Get all his wounds clean.’

‘We’ll help you with that. Lifting him and turning him and such.’

They made it sound so simple.

They made it sound as though she was perfectly capable of taking charge of a severely wounded man.

Her heart started hammering in her chest.

Perhaps she really could do it. After all, they’d said they’d help her. And now she came to think of it, hadn’t she already done much, much more than anyone would ever have thought possible? She’d reached Brussels unaccompanied when everyone else was fleeing the place. She’d rescued the snarling, snapping Ben from the teetering wreckage of a baggage cart. She’d ignored the Hussars and made her own judgement about whether the French were about to overrun Brussels, and been right. She’d even stood up to those women who’d been trying to murder poor Major Bartlett. And that after riding across a battlefield without totally fainting away.

And she could sew.

And even though she’d never nursed anyone in her life, she had listened most attentively to every word of Bridget’s advice, because she’d believed she was going to be nursing Gideon. Marigold was for cleansing wounds to stop them from putrefying. Comfrey was for healing cuts. And apparently she could make a sort of tea from the dried meadowsweet flowers, which was less bitter and nasty than willow bark and almost as effective at reducing fever.

Poor Gideon wouldn’t need any of that, now. He was beyond anyone’s help.

But this man had fallen, literally, into her lap.

Had begged her to save him.

And there was nobody else to do it. He had nobody.

Just as she had nobody.

Well, she thought, firming her lips, he might not know it, but he had her.