A Rose for Major Flint (Brides of Waterloo)

‘No.’ Adam got to his feet, walked out of the door, was halfway across his own room, then stopped as though he had forgotten where he was going.

It hurt how much she desired him, every battered, naked, weary inch of him.

‘You are a respectable young woman,’ he said without turning. ‘Perhaps a sergeant’s daughter, perhaps from a tradesman’s family. You should not be with me.’

He hasn’t realised. He thinks Gerald was a private. My voice… I don’t sound like myself yet. If he knows I am gentry he’ll send me away. She was deceiving him again and this time she knew full well what she was doing. But she was ruined now—not that it felt like ruin. How could this make it any worse?

‘I was respectable till I ran off with Gerald,’ she corrected him. A slight accent seemed to come naturally to her tongue. It wasn’t much, just a broadening of the vowels. My nurse? Someone had spoken to her in that voice for years when she had been young. ‘I’m not any more, not from then on, never mind what didn’t happen that night in the tent.’

Adam stooped to search in the pile of discarded clothing on the floor, the muscles in his back shifting in the golden glow of the lamps. He pulled on his trousers before turning back to her, as though he was putting on armour. ‘You deserve a decent man to marry you, give you children.’

‘You’re—’

‘I’m a bit of rough from the stable yard, pretending to be

a gentleman. I’ve seen too much, done too much and I am not the marrying kind. Faithful, yes, while it lasts. But it doesn’t last long, never does. I get to feeling trapped.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t take up with women who want to cling and that way parting doesn’t hurt anyone.’

I don’t want to cling. I want you to want me and to be with me. I want to understand what I feel for you. It isn’t love, I’ve read about that, heard about it, thought I felt it for Gerald. I’m not faint or off my food. I don’t want to sleep with your handkerchief under my pillow. I don’t want you to read me poetry. I want to sleep with you in my arms, I need your weight over mine, your heart beating against my breast, your body sheathed within me. I want to live and explore and…

‘How do I get any less respectable than I am now?’ Rose demanded. ‘I ran off with one man and spent the night on a battlefield. I’ve been wandering round the place with a troop of soldiers, I’ve slept with you and I’m not a virgin any more. Doesn’t get much less decent, does it?’

‘Oh, yes, it does,’ Adam said and sat down on the edge of the bed as though someone had kicked his legs from under him. ‘You shack up with one of Randall’s Rogues. You get pregnant. That’d do it.’

Rose marched over and sat down at the other end of the bed. He was going beyond bone-weary, but she knew instinctively that she could show him no mercy now. ‘Got many women pregnant, have you?’

‘No!’ He looked ready to fall asleep where he sat. That, or walk out.

‘Then don’t get me pregnant,’ she said. ‘I’m not asking you to marry me, just let me be with you till I know who I am.’

‘Hell, Rose. It’s a risk, you need luck, however careful the man is. I’m not—’

‘Frankly,’ she said as she got up, ‘I don’t think you are any risk at all, just now.’ She gave him a sudden shove on the shoulder and then pinned him down on the bed with one palm on his flat stomach while she attacked the fastenings of his falls with the other hand.

Adam reared up on his elbows, then sank back with a groan of surrender. ‘All right, you win. And you’re safe for now, I suppose. At this moment I couldn’t rise for the entire ballet at the Lyceum if they came and offered themselves. Let me get a couple of hours’ sleep and we’ll talk.’ He lifted his hips as she dragged off the trousers, then rolled away on to his side.

Rose wriggled out of her nightgown and slid into the space Adam had left. She pulled the covers over them both and laid her lips against his back, ran her hand lightly over the bandage around his ribs to make sure it was still secure. He was asleep already, she realised, hearing the soft purr of his breathing. If they’ll only let him rest… She sank down into slumber beside him.

*

Rose woke to full daylight and the delicious drift of hands over her body. ‘Mmm…’

‘Mmm?’

When she opened her eyes Adam was lying next to her, propped on one elbow. He had tossed back the covers and his gaze was on her naked body, sprawled in sleepy, immodest abandon.

‘Is that, Mmm, yes? Or, Mmm, what the devil’s going on?’

‘Yes.’ She lifted one hand to caress his cheek. The dark marks were still smudged under his eyes, but he looked a thousand times better than he had in the early-morning light. Somewhere a clock struck seven.

‘I’m as bristly as an old badger.’ He went on stroking his fingertips from collarbone to hip bone, just brushing the side of her breast, then back again. Down and up, up and down, savouring her skin as though she was made of silk and satin.

‘I like your stubble.’ She ran her nails through it and watched as he closed his eyes like a big cat being scratched. ‘It is very masculine. I like it when you shave close as well, you look elegant then.’

Adam snorted and opened his eyes, deep, troubled blue. ‘Rose, last night, there’s no going back from that. But we don’t need to go forward either. I’ll think of something to make it right for you.’

‘I am twenty-three years old. I may not have all my memory, but I know my own mind. Adam, I want to be your lover, for as long as…as long as we both want it. You don’t need to worry, I’m not going to expect you to marry me, I swear it.’

‘All women want to get married,’ he said.