A Mistress for Major Bartlett (Brides of Waterloo)

‘I am home. This is my lodging.’

‘Well, then, I’ll take you to your brother.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Mary Endacott says he’s too ill to be disturbed.’

She was like a little terrier, standing up to the farmer’s prize bull, he marvelled, as the battle raged over his bed. Dodging, and yipping, and nipping with her sharp little words. While Major Flint, more used to applying brute force to those under his command, bellowed and raged with increasing impotence, confused by her speed and nimbleness.

He felt like weeping. She was still defending him. The way she’d done from the first. Not just from strangers, and his injuries, but now from her very family. The ones who cared about her and her reputation.

Nobody had ever fought for him before. Defended him. They’d all been more inclined to condemn him without a shred of evidence. Any trouble in the vicinity? Bound to be Tom’s fault. So he got the punishment whether he’d been involved or not.

‘Bartlett!’ Major Flint was bending over him, bellowing right into his face just as though he was a raw recruit who could be intimidated by such measures. He hadn’t been intimidated by such tactics when he had been a raw recruit.

Out of habit, he adopted the same measure he’d done then. Widened his eyes as if bewildered as to why he was up on a charge. Though he couldn’t resist taunting Flint just a bit, as well.

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t sir me, Bartlett. We’re the same rank, damn it.’

Yes, damn it, they were. Both of them had ended up as majors in Randall’s rag-tag unit of misfits. And neither of them had been able to inherit the land, or title, or wealth that their noble fathers had enjoyed.

There was a vast gulf between them. She was on one side, a lady of unimpeachable virtue. And he was on the other. A rake and a rogue. They’d held hands across the gulf for a short while, but now it was time to let go.

The argument raged on above him, while he went under a wave of utter misery. He’d known he couldn’t, in all conscience, stay here with her for long. Though why it mattered to him so much he couldn’t say. He’d never even felt the merest twinge of regret when the time had come to part from any other woman.

‘Leave him alone,’ Lady Sarah insisted, snagging his attention once more. ‘He has no idea who he is, what happened.’

What? Where had she got that notion? A dart of shame speared him. Yesterday. When he’d been trying to stave off reality, that’s where. That puerile game he’d started, hoping to prolong his time with her. In the hopes of snatching a kiss or two.

‘He doesn’t know you.’

He took a breath to explain. Then thought better of it. He wasn’t going to contradict Lady Sarah, not when she was doing her best to defend him. Major Flint might have been the closest thing Tom had ever had to a friend, but over the last couple of days, she’d earned his loyalty, too.

‘He seems to think he’s a lieutenant.’

He frowned. Now that was...no, actually he couldn’t think where she’d got that notion from at all. He’d never said anything about his army rank. Had deliberately kept reality out of all their conversations.

Which meant...his heart took a great bound. She was making it up. Lying. For him. She said he was too weak to move? He wouldn’t move, then.

She said he couldn’t remember who he was? He wouldn’t make her look a fool by arguing. Besides, his memory had been a touch hazy, at least when he’d first come round.

‘Perhaps in his mind he is back when he first joined the army,’ she finished on what looked like a burst of inspiration.

When Flint’s scowl turned in his direction, he therefore did his best to look confused. She’d put her reputation on the line for him. So he’d do whatever necessary to back her up.

‘Have you seen the head wound?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, turning a bit pale. And stunned him still further by describing it in all its gory detail. Including an account of how she’d stitched it up.

To think of this sheltered young woman doing that for him.

‘He is going to get better,’ she was insisting now, with tears in her eyes. ‘He must.’

Flint was looking at him with a thoughtful frown now. Was looking at Lady Sarah differently, too. She wasn’t the woman they all thought she was, that was why. Her own brother seemed to think she couldn’t cross the road without an escort, but in the last couple of days she’d come to Brussels alone, tamed a fearsome dog, seen off a deserter, scoured the battlefield for survivors, stitched him up and nursed him back from the brink of death.

Flint had just opened his mouth to say something, when the dog scratched at the door to be let in. Sarah ran to let him in with what looked like relief. She drew a lot of comfort from that dog, he’d noticed, though she went through the motions of chiding him whenever he came indoors—if the landlady was anywhere near.

For once, the dog didn’t take a blind bit of notice of her. Instead, it flung itself joyously at Flint, who took great pleasure in making the animal sit at his feet.