A Rose for Major Flint (Brides of Waterloo)

‘You seem to know what you are doing,’ Adam remarked. Rose could feel his gaze on her as she swirled salt into the water. ‘Did your man get wounded often?’

No. She shook her head and tried to work out why she was so sure of that. Of course, she had not been with Gerald long enough for him to be hurt…only killed. There were memories of bandages and salves, of pouring medicines, but that seemed to be in domestic settings. Humble rooms. Children, old people, a presence she sensed was her mother instructing her. Our tenants, our duty.

Wounds must be cleaned, salt water helped healing, she knew these things as she knew that her eyes were hazel without having to look in a glass.

Rose glanced at Adam, frowning with the effort to recall something more, something useful about who she was, and his gaze sharpened. ‘I’ve seen you before. Where the blazes? Yes, after Quatre Bras, with the Seventy-Third’s camp followers. Is that your man’s regiment? I’ll help you find him.’

No, he

is dead. And he was never my man, not really. I was a fool who thought herself in love. How did she know that when everything else was a blur? How to make Adam understand? Rose gestured to the floor, then covered her face with her hands in a pantomime of grief.

‘Dead? You are certain?’

She nodded and busied herself with the cloths and water, the memory coming back in frustrating flashes. His name had been Gerald and the belief that she loved him had lasted as long as it took to realise she did not know him at all. But after that there was no going back. She had made a commitment and she must stay with him, give him her loyalty even as his courage dissolved into the rain and mud and the dashing officer turned into a frightened boy in her arms. But how had they met, where had she come from? Who am I?

That could wait, she thought, surprising herself with the firmness of the intent. The traumatised, clinging creature of the day before was retreating, although she had no idea who would emerge in her place. Whoever she was, her true self was stubborn and determined, it seemed. Rose put the bowl on the floor beside Adam and set herself to clean the wound.

He sat like a statue as she explored the slash with ruthless thoroughness. Under her hands she felt the nerves jump and flinch in involuntary protest, but all he said was, ‘There’s some salve in my pack.’

Rose found it and smoothed the green paste on, wondering at Adam’s stoicism. Was he simply inured to pain after so many wounds or was it sheer will power that kept him silent and unmoving? She rested one hand on his shoulder as she leaned over him to wind the bandage around his ribs and felt the rigid muscles beneath her palm. Will power, then. She knotted the bandage, touched her fingers to his cheek in a fleeting caress and sat back on her heels. Finished.

*

The soft touch on his bristled cheek was both a caress and a statement. Finished. Did she think he needed comfort? It was a novel sentiment if he had read it aright: no one ever thought Adam Flint in need of tenderness. He had believed he had acquired an inconvenient waif and stray, much as he had acquired Dog. Now he wondered if both animal and girl thought they had adopted him.

‘Thank you.’ Her eyes were asking a question. ‘Yes, it feels much better.’ In fact, it hurt like the very devil, but in a good way. It would not fester now. ‘You go back to your chamber. I’ll have hot water sent up for you and I’m sure Maggie can find something for you to wear. I need a bath and a shave.’ He wasn’t used to soft dealing, to people who needed gentle voices and kind words, but he would try for her.

Damn, but those wide hazel eyes were enough to make a man want to forget everything and just talk to her, find out what was going on behind that direct gaze. Pain and fear and stubborn courage, he would guess, and behind that there was doubt and uncertainty. But he had neither time nor inclination to explore her feelings. Rose needed a woman to look after her, not a man for whom a female in his life had only one purpose.

‘Go on,’ he said, his voice harsh with command, despite his resolve to be gentle. ‘Back to your room.’ If he spoke to Dog like that he got a reproachful look from melting brown eyes, accompanied by a drooping tail. Rose merely lowered her lashes and nodded. Yet somehow the gesture was anything but meek. She had assessed his mood and he suspected he was now being humoured with obedience while it suited her. Rose got to her feet in one fluid motion and walked to the door, the oversized nightgown swishing around her slim body, one moment cloaking it, the next caressing an almost-elegant curve of hip and thigh.

Flint cursed under his breath, low and fluent, as he dragged on his shirt, welcoming the distracting stab of pain as he tucked the tails into his trousers and looped the braces over his shoulders. His feet wanted to go straight to the dressing-room door, but instead he went downstairs.

The men had slept, it seemed, like the dead, but all of them had woken up in better shape than before. Maggie and Moss between them had sorted them into bed cases, the walking wounded who could care for their fellows and two who were in not much worse condition than Flint.

Maggie despatched those two upstairs with hot water for Rose—‘And just knock and leave it at the door, mind!’—and for Flint’s bath. ‘Good thing you left a spare uniform here,’ she grumbled at him when he handed her the wreckage of his shirt. ‘Most of this is fit for the rag bag.’

‘I know,’ Flint said, straight-faced. ‘Anyone would think I’d fought two battles and been in a rainstorm in it.’ He dodged the cuff she aimed at him. ‘Can you do anything about fitting Rose out, Maggie?’

‘Aye, that I can. My sister Susan leaves clothes here for when she visits, saves carting too much baggage back and forth. The size’ll be about right, I dare say.’

‘Anything else she needs, just give me the bills.’ He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back. ‘Her man’s dead, Maggie. She’s shocked, but I can’t say she’s grieving exactly. I don’t know what it is, she doesn’t seem the sort to just shrug that off.’

‘Likely he knocked her around,’ Maggie said with distaste. ‘She’s happy enough with you, by the looks of it.’

If he, a big, murderous bastard, made Rose feel happy, then her last man must have been a brute, Flint concluded as he stood in the bath and did his best to scrub off the dirt that had escaped last night’s dowsing under the pump, without soaking the fresh bandage. The thought of unkindness to Rose made him angry, he discovered as he climbed out, feeling completely human again for the first time in days.

As he ran the razor through four days’ accumulation of beard he heard the faint sounds of splashing from the little room. His memory, with inconvenient precision, presented the memory of Rose’s body in his arms, in his bed against his naked chest, of her walking away with the wary grace of a young deer. Tension gathered low in his belly, heavy and demanding. With an inward snarl at his own lack of self-control he finished shaving, scrubbed a towel over his face.

She needed time and the last thing he needed at the moment was a woman. Sex, yes. He could certainly do with that, but a man could manage. His body protested that it always needed a woman and was firmly ignored while he rummaged in the clothes press for his spare uniform. Women were demanding, expected emotions he did not have to share. This one was tying him in knots and she wasn’t even his, whatever Maggie said.

Maggie had brushed his dress uniform and he shoved it aside, smart, expensive, reeking of officer and privilege. It reminded him again of the confounded Duchess of Richmond’s confounded ball where he had stood around, under orders to do the pretty, pretend to be a gentleman and generally give the impression that the nickname of Randall’s Rogues that attached to their irregular unit of artillery was a light-hearted jest and not a mild description for a bunch of semi-lawless adventurers.

He’d even had to let Moss cut his hair, he thought with a snarl as he stood in front of the mirror and raked the severe new crop into order. Fashionable, Maggie had said with approval. Damned frippery, more like. Flint buckled on his sword belt, grabbed his shako and ran downstairs for his breakfast.

*

‘Hawkins! With me.’