A Mistress for Major Bartlett (Brides of Waterloo)

‘And don’t let him tell you the Major should be in a hospital,’ said Cooper vehemently. ‘They won’t look after him proper there.’

Coming from Cooper, that was quite a compliment. He’d been eyeing her askance every time she felt faint. His hostility had actually braced her, once or twice, just as much as Dawkins’s kindness and encouragement had. Because every time Cooper looked as though he expected her to fail, it made her more determined to prove she wouldn’t.

And now, to hear him say he trusted her to give the Major better care than he’d get in a hospital, made something in her swell and blossom.

‘I won’t let you down,’ she vowed. ‘I won’t let him down.’

With a parting nod, the men left.

‘Oh, goodness gracious,’ she said, sinking on to the chair again. ‘Whatever have I let myself in for?’

Chapter Four

The guns had ceased. The battle was over, then. Won or lost. Leaving the field to the dead and dying. And the crows.

Flocks of them. Tearing at his back. His head. They’d go for his eyes if they could get at them.

No! He flung his arm up to protect his eyes. And felt considerable surprise that he could move it. Hadn’t been able to move at all before. They’d buried him. Tons of rock, tumbling down, crushing him so he could scarcely breathe, let alone fend off the crows.

Who had dug him out of his grave? He hadn’t been able to save himself. He’d tried. Strained with all his might. He’d broken out into a sweat, that was all, and dragged blackness back round him in a smothering cloak.

But he’d be safer under the earth. Crows wouldn’t be able to get their claws into him any more. Or their beaks.

‘Put me back in the ground,’ he begged.

‘Don’t be silly,’ came a rather exasperated-sounding voice.

‘But I’m dead.’ Wasn’t he? Above the ringing in his ears he’d heard the other damned souls all round him, begging for mercy. Begging for water.

Because it was so hot on the edge of the abyss.

Or was it powder caking his mouth, his nostrils, so that everything stank of sulphur?

‘Is it crows, then, not demons?’ He’d thought they were wraiths, sliding silently between the other corpses scattered round him. But he’d seen knives flashing, silencing the groans. Sometimes they’d looked just like battlefield looters, not Satan’s minions.

But whoever, or whatever it had been before, they’d got their claws deep into what was left of him now.

‘There are no crows in here,’ came the voice again. ‘No demons, either. Only me. And Ben.’

Something cool glided across his brow.

He reached up and grabbed hold of what turned out to be a hand. A human hand. Small, and soft, and trembling slightly.

‘Don’t let them take me. Deserve it. Hell. But please...’ He didn’t know why he was begging. Nobody could save him. He’d begged before, for mercy, just like all the others. Or would have done if he’d been able to make a sound. He’d understood then that he wasn’t even going to be permitted one final appeal. He’d had to stay pinned there, reflecting on every sin he’d committed, remembering every man he’d killed, every act of wanton destruction he’d engineered.

‘Nobody’s going to take you. I won’t let them.’

The voice had a face, this time. The face of an angel. Though—he knew her. She was...she was...

His head hurt too much to think. Only knew he’d seen her before.

That’s right—for a moment, just one, the power of speech had returned. And he’d begged her to save him. It had something to do with the darkness ebbing and hearing the sound of birdsong, and working out that he couldn’t be dead yet, because birds didn’t sing in hell, and that if he wasn’t dead, then there was still hope. And though there had been all those great black creatures clawing at him, tearing at his clothes, he’d found the strength to make one last, desperate stand.

And she’d been there. She’d driven them away. Told them to leave him be. And they’d gone, the whole flock of them. Flapping away on their great ugly wings. And he’d fallen into her arms...

Hazy, what came next. She’d carried him away, somehow, from the mud and the stench. Pillowed on cushions of velvet, soft as feathers.

Was she an angel, then? There seemed no other logical reason to account for it. Beautiful women didn’t suddenly materialise on battlefields and carry dying men away. Which meant he’d been right in the first place.