A Rose for Major Flint

Was it? She’d thought Gerald a good lad. She’d thought she was in love with him and that they would marry and everything would be perfect. The daydream was as clear as if it were fresh minted. But life wasn’t perfect, she’d mistaken infatuation for love and now she was ruined. Why not snatch what happiness she could?

Although why I think this big, hard, weary man would make me happy, even for a few weeks, I don’t know. He obviously doesn’t want me, not like that.

‘Rose, don’t cry.’ It was the nearest to alarm she’d heard in Adam’s voice.

I’m not crying. Then she realised that she was. She put up her hands to shield her face, ashamed of the weakness.

‘You think I don’t want you?’ Adam stood up and pulled her to her feet. He tipped up her chin so she could not avoid his gaze. ‘Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?’ One blunt thumb caught the tears under her eyes, rubbed them away. ‘You’re beautiful, brave, sweet. But we need to talk about this and you can’t speak. I’m too old for you, Rose. Not in years, just in living. Don’t mistake the need for comfort for something it isn’t.’

She shook her head, helpless to explain her feelings when she hardly understood them herself.

‘I’ve got to go and see Randall now, and then I must get to the battlefield. I won’t be back until tomorrow, late.’

She caught his hand and brought it down to her lips, kissed it, tasted the salt of her own tears.

‘Hell, Rose.’ She felt the control snap as Adam pulled her to him hard and his hands slid into her hair, held her fast as his mouth took hers. She had never been kissed like this, not with unconstrained masculine desire. Gerald had been respectful, aware she was a lady and a virgin. In the tent he had been clumsy, inept and afraid, too frightened for kisses.

She doubted Adam Flint had ever been clumsy or inept with a woman. She clung to the shreds of rational thought as he plundered her mouth with ruthless expertise. It was like riding a wild horse, she could only clutch at his shoulders and hope to survive the experience.

His tongue was in her mouth—when had she opened to him? She could not remember. His teeth nipped and pressed, his lips tormented and then soothed. His taste filled her senses: coffee, a hint of brandy, man. Adam. His hands stayed locked around her head and she found she was pressing against him, her breasts aching for his touch. Her thighs tingled and a compelling ache between them throbbed in counterpoint to the movement of Adam’s mouth on hers. She snuggled closer and felt the evidence of his arousal hard against her stomach.

He released her suddenly and she sat down with a thump on the bed, one hand to her mouth, staring at him.

‘You see?’ His voice was harsh. ‘I shock you. Maggie thinks your last man was a brute, but he wasn’t, was he? He was a nice lad, I’d guess, just not around enough for you to get attached.’ He grinned, without humour, when she nodded. ‘I’m not a nice lad. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow. While I’m away, think about where you want to go.’ He opened the door and snapped his fingers at the dog. ‘Come.’

It took time for her to recognise the trembling, the confusion of feeling, for what it was. Not fear, but simply desire stoked higher than she could have imagined. Rose got to her feet after a while and made her way on unsteady feet to the washbasin to splash cold water on her face, but even when she had done that, and stood with the linen towel in her hands, she could not do more than stare at the closed door, her mind a jumble of thoughts.

It took the sound of Maggie’s voice to jerk her out of her trance. ‘Rose! Tea!’

She made her way downstairs into the crowded kitchen, took her tea and perched in a corner while Maggie and Moss dispensed mugs and slabs of heavy cake for the men to carry out to their less-mobile comrades in the yard. There seemed to be fewer of the walking wounded than earlier.

The heat of the liquid penetrated the thick earthenware, a comforting, real sensation. Rose curled her fingers tight around it and listened to Maggie and Moss talking about Adam.

‘What did the major want with those picks and shovels and the fitter men?’ Maggie asked as she sank into her rocking chair.

‘Gone to collect coffins. Lead-lined ones. Then they’re off to the battlefield to bring back the officers,’ Moss said and blew gustily on his tea. ‘Bad job that, having to go back. I wouldn’t have the stomach for it, not now, and I don’t mind confessing it.’

Maggie shuddered, the ample flesh quivering. ‘Poor man. And one of them his brother as well. That’ll hurt, for all he pretends the boy was a stranger to him.’

Rose’s imagination made a sickening lurch into thoughts of mud and heat and... No. Stop it. Think of Adam. He’s strong and he wouldn’t ever admit weakness, but he must be so tired and sick of this. No wonder he didn’t want some needy, helpless female tagging along, however convenient she might be for bed. And if he did want a woman, there must be plenty of tough, resourceful, experienced ones who understood a soldier’s life and how to support their man.

And I’m useless and inexperienced and he knows it, she thought as she took a bite of solid fruit cake. I’m less use to him than that great shaggy beast that comes to heel when he snaps his fingers. I’ve no voice and hardly any memory, so he thinks of me as a responsibility, another problem for him to deal with.

‘Aye, it’s a nasty business, war,’ Maggie said. ‘Still, there’s some good in it, too, even where you least expect it. Lieutenant Foster told me one of the infantry bandsmen found a French drummer boy, no more than a child, near where the colonel was lying. He says the regiment have adopted him and they’re taking him back with them into France. Perhaps that’s one boy who’ll be going home to his mother.’

Rose found tears welling at the thought, blew her nose briskly and made herself focus on putting her few facts together. What did she know about herself? Unconnected memories flitted in and out, confusing, impossible to link up and make sense of. The sound of the scream was still there, almost unnoticed now until she tried to focus, then it swelled and clamoured. This is impossible.

‘I’ll just make a shopping list,’ Maggie said. ‘Pass me the pen and ink and some of that scrap paper, will you, Moss?’ She began to scratch a list on the rough paper, muttering under her breath. ‘Eggs, tea, butter, starch...’

Of course! I can write, I can put down all of the memories and then I can sort them out, like a puzzle. When Maggie had finished Rose gestured towards the pen and paper. Excitement and hope fizzed inside her. She’d been lost in a maze and now, finally she could glimpse how to get out.

‘You can write?’ Maggie pushed them over to her. ‘You’ve found your memory?’

Yes and no. She waggled one hand. So-so.

The other woman seemed to understand. ‘Look, there’s more paper on that shelf. You take the things upstairs where you can be quiet, lovie. Your man won’t be back today.’

My man? No, he’s not. I doubt he is anyone’s man but his own.

Chapter Six (#ulink_da0a43cf-3118-5b9f-ad52-deba2448733d)

Flint rode at the head of his sombre little cavalcade of carts, his mood as black as the cloths they’d covered the coffins with. Corporal Pitts, who’d been a clerk in some far-off life, had written the names in a large copperplate hand on each box and the carpenter had done a good job with sturdy elm and lead. These few dead, at least, would wait in decent order until their grieving families could decide where to lay them to rest. It took more of an effort than it should to shut out the thoughts of the many whose final grave was a mass burial pit or a pile of burning corpses.

I’m getting old, Flint thought. Twenty-eight and bone-weary with this.

It wasn’t the fighting, it was the aftermath. They said that Wellington had wept over this victory and he could understand why. But this was the life he knew, the profession he had made his own. Peace was coming, surely—and then what? He’d been confident the other morning, talking to Hawkins about the East India Company. The armies of the Continental princelings sounded like toy soldiers from all accounts, but there was real fighting with the revolutionary armies in South America. If that was what he wanted... Hell, where had these doubts come from?

With an effort he dragged his mind from the future and thought about his errant half-sister. Randall had gone white with rage when he had reported where, and with whom, he had found Sarah and it had taken the concerted efforts of Flint and Randall’s batman to keep him flat on his back in bed. Flint had left him dictating a furious letter.

‘Report back the minute you have delivered the coffins to the Chapel Royal,’ the colonel had called after him on a gasp as he’d left the room. ‘If she’s not here, then you’ll go there and fetch her!’

And that was likely to get a positive response—one involving a slammed door in his face. Sieges were always tiresome and boring and he had an unpleasant premonition that he was going to have to remove Lady Sarah bodily, and probably end up answering a challenge from Bartlett into the bargain. Always assuming his fellow officer regained his conveniently scattered wits and considered him enough of a gentleman to challenge in the first place.

Whilst he was sunk in gloom he might as well worry about Rose while he was at it. He wanted her. Wanted her rather too much for comfort or for decency. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t remember who she was and he ought to leave her alone, find somewhere, someone, to take responsibility for her. As it was she was disturbing his sleep, making him ache and ruining his concentration.

Perhaps one of the officers’ ladies... He passed the next few miles reviewing those he had some knowledge of. The do-gooders who would take Rose in and find her a respectable job were enough to stifle any spirit the girl had. The frivolous and the pleasure-loving wouldn’t be bothered. Perhaps Randall knew of someone, but whatever the outcome, he was not keeping her, however much he was coming to feel she somehow belonged to him. A stray dog was one thing, a stray female, quite another.

* * *

It was past midnight when Flint returned to the lodging house. A grim day that had begun with disinterring corpses had ended in something very close to a theatrical farce, with him hammering on the door of Sarah’s lodgings and the infuriating chit hanging out of the window heaping insults and defiance on his aching head.

His temper had snapped. ‘You are behaving like some Billingsgate doxy,’ he’d roared. ‘And I have just come from leaving your brother’s coffin in the Chapel Royal.’

It was inexcusable, he knew it as soon as he said it. Gideon had been her twin and, from the little Randall had said, they’d been as close as twins so often were. He’d wondered at some point on that funereal journey whether her behaviour with Bartlett was not a reaction to that loss. Here was a wounded man she could tend to as she had been unable to tend to her brother.

‘You...you bastard,’ she’d screamed at him, hurled a potted geranium to crash on to the cobbles at his feet and slammed the window closed. The pretty blue-and-white-striped pot shattered along with any thoughts of empathy and the last shreds of his patience.

Now he walked through the deserted kitchen, dumped his sword belt on a chair, stripped off his clothes, grabbed soap from the stone sink and went out into the yard. Behind him he heard the click of claws as Dog made his way to his water bowl and then a gusty sigh as the animal sank down in his corner.

The cold water from the pump made him gasp, but it was clean, washing away the stink of death that had hung around him all day. Hawkins poked his head out of the stables, nodded, then closed the door again, his survival instincts sharp enough to recognise Flint’s mood, even in the gloom.

He scrubbed himself roughly dry with his shirt as he climbed the stairs. Bed, sleep, oblivion. A woman would be even better, bringing the sort of oblivion that did not contain nightmares. Flint kept his back to Rose’s door as he padded across the room in the almost-darkness of the midsummer night to the big white bed, dropping clothing behind him as he went. That way lay temptation. He knew he would not be able to resist her once he’d set foot in that room.