A Mistress for Major Bartlett (Brides of Waterloo)

‘Of course,’ he said with a tight smile. ‘You should go out and get some fresh air. It will do you good. And in truth, I do want to sleep. There really is no point in you sitting here all day, is there?’

‘None whatever,’ she said with a toss of her head.

* * *

It was a relief to reach the stables, with its familiar smells and sounds.

‘It’s not as if I want him to flirt with me,’ she informed Castor, giving his velvety nose a rub. ‘Why would I? I detest rakes.’ Though she didn’t detest Tom.

‘It’s just as well I did want to come out for a ride, isn’t it? Because the last thing I would ever do is sit about all day waiting for some man to admire me. Or pretend to, because that is what rakes generally do. Ooh,’ she breathed, leaning into the reassuringly solid column of Castor’s neck, ‘I thought he looked full of himself, the first time I saw him. He may not have a title, apart from his army rank, but he’s certainly become lord of that room. He’s one of those men who are born bossy, just like my brothers. Both Justin and Major Flint expect everyone else to do what they say. In fact, they don’t even always need to say anything. Just the way they walk shows they think they are lords of all they survey. Not that Tom can actually walk at the moment, but if he did, he’d be strutting about the place, turning heads. Female heads, that is.’

Castor blew heavily through his nostrils, as if in complete agreement.

‘And the worst of it is, I don’t really understand why I mind.

I knew he was a habitual womaniser when I scooped him up out of the mud. It’s more than likely that he’ll have a go at getting Jeanne to kiss him while I’m out.’

Her stomach clenched into a cold knot. She half-wanted to run back upstairs, to prevent any such thing from happening.

Instead, she firmed her mouth and led Castor to the mounting block. ‘If I find he’s done any such thing,’ she muttered between clenched teeth as they set off, ‘I shall tip his next bowl of broth over his head.’

She hadn’t gone more than a few yards before revising this punishment. But only because she remembered she was the one who’d have to change Tom’s bandages if she did douse them in broth.

By the time she reached the end of the Allée Verte, she’d devised and discarded a dozen plans for punishing Tom. None of which would make her feel the slightest bit better. No, the only thing that would make her feel better would be making certain, somehow, that he wasn’t kissing anyone else.

Even if it meant keeping him occupied with her own lips. It went against her principles, but it was the only course she could see that would satisfy her pride. Not that she’d ever kissed a man before, but how hard could it be? Anyway, Tom’s vast experience would more than compensate for her own ignorance.

If she could get him to see her as kissable, that was.

* * *

Her determination to appear amenable to kisses took a nosedive the moment she set foot in his room, for in her absence he’d washed and shaved, and put on a shirt. In her imagination, during the ride home, it had been the piratically whiskered, half-naked Tom she’d approached and snuggled up to, and offered her mouth to.

This Tom, this clothed, clean, proper man, didn’t look like her Tom at all. He made her feel shy and nervous, and aware of how improper her plan had been. Without the four days’ growth of beard, he also looked very pale, which smote her conscience. He was her patient, for heaven’s sake. He’d been grievously wounded. The last thing he needed was for some inquisitive spinster to fling herself on his chest and make demands he’d shown no sign of wanting to fulfil.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said, with a quick frown. ‘Has something happened?’

Nothing she could confess. Only stupid things that had gone on inside her own head, which she hung in shame.

And caught sight of the hat she was clutching in nervous fingers.

‘I don’t like this hat,’ she said inanely, ‘anywhere near as much as the one I lost that day I went searching the battlefield.’ It was either that, or blurt out her confused, contradictory reactions to seeing him properly clothed, instead of all naked and tempting. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter. The riding habit it matched had to be burned, anyway.’

‘Never mind your hat. Or your gown. I know that isn’t what is upsetting you.’

‘No. You are right.’ She went to the window and stood looking out for a moment or two, gathering the strength to turn round and face him again. The new Tom. Or was it the true Tom? She blinked away her confusion. Whichever it was, it was no longer her Tom, that was what was upsetting her.

‘It is the terrible waste of it all,’ she said, instead. ‘So many men, young men at that, with nobody to care what becomes of them, from the looks of it. Oh, the citizens are doing what they can. Taking them food and drink. And some of the hotels are putting straw down for them to make them more comfortable. But I just...’ She wound the stings of her hat round and round her fingers. ‘I wish I could do something.’

‘You are doing something. You are nursing me. You saved me, Lady Sarah.’

‘Yes. Thank goodness your men brought you here. I’ve heard some officers, ones who went back to their own billets, died while waiting to get medical attention. So I know I saved you. But you are just one. And there are so many more of them out there.’ She waved her hand towards the window. Her hat caught at the potted geranium, spraying the sill with blood-red petals. ‘And I feel so helpless. I dare say,’ she muttered darkly, ‘Mary has turned her school into a regular hospital by now.’

‘Mary?’

‘Mary Endacott. The woman...’ She’d been about to say, the woman who was going to marry Justin. But who knew how that was going to end?

‘The woman who helped me make my way to the battlefield, to search for my brother. The one who is nursing him, now. She’s so capable, so organised. I’m sure she won’t be stretched to her limits nursing just one man.’