Page 65 of The Governess and the Rogue

Jack set his hand on the curved handle of his cane. He looked at it for several weighted seconds before he spoke. “The fighting at Mohammerah lasted less than a week,” he said at last. “Our forces ultimately prevailed, but on the final night, when we took the city, two of our men fired on us as we were chasing down the retreating Persian army.”

Bea’s eyes went wide. “Your own men?”

“It was later determined to be an accident.”

“But how⁠—?”

“It was dark and all was in chaos,” Jack said. His attention remained on his cane. “My horse went down and me along with him. It broke my leg. Partially crushed it. I must have fainted, for when I next opened my eyes, I was in a field hospital and some boy-child of a surgeon was doing his best for me. Regrettably, his best wasn’t very good. Which was all of a piece with the whole wretched affair. When I think of it…”

Bea waited for him to finish his thought, but he did not. “Why would you call it shameful?” she asked when the silence between them had stretched too long for her comfort.

“What else to call it? I was fired at by my own men. Injured by my own horse. And everything made worse by a too-green surgeon. And now I’ve come home, and I’m meant to let everyone fete me as the conquering hero? I can’t conceive of anything more distasteful.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s certainly one point of view.”

“There can be no other.”

“There can,” she said.

Jack gave her a dark look.

Bea didn’t allow it to intimidate her. “Even if all you say is true, it doesn’t negate your being a hero,” she said. “You must have plenty of heroic moments in your past.”

“In the past, precisely,” Jack replied. “No one cares a whit about those heroics. People only care about what a chap has done lately. It doesn’t matter how extraordinarily he did something before if his most recent endeavor has blown up in his face.”

She privately acknowledged the truth of his words. But it wouldn’t do to encourage him. Not when he was in his current frame of mind. “You speak of people in general terms. Yet, we’re talking of your family.”

A gentle wind drifted over the banks of the stream, rustling the leaves in the trees and making the forget-me-nots dance in the grass.

“With family, it’s worse,” Jack said.

“How so?” Bea asked, wrapping her cashmere shawl more firmly about her.

“Your family perpetually judges you for your latest accomplishments, while at the same time forcing you to serve a lifelong sentence for the idiocies of your youth.” Jack stabbed the tip of his cane into the grass. “I could be promoted countless times, receive a passel of medals for bravery, and James would still see me as the same witless scoundrel who used to meddle with village girls and engage in ill-conceived wagers.”

Meddle with village girls?

Bea drew back. “Er, what do you mean⁠—”

“I was a lad. I did what lads do. And far less, I might add, than most of the chaps that have been under my command in the army. But there’s no shedding one’s reputation with one’s own family. And after what happened at Mohammerah… And what’s happened with you… That reputation will be even worse.”

“Forget me for a moment,” Bea said.

Jack glared at her. “As if I could.”

Bea’s heart skipped a beat. She ignored the sensation. “It’s your wrong-headed ideas about how you were injured that trouble me.”

“Wrong-headed, you call them?”

“Indeed. What does it matter how you were injured if that injury took place while you were⁠—”

“Because,” he interrupted crossly, “I’d rather it had been our enemy who put an end to my glorious military career, not one of my own men. And not my bloody horse. Forget the fact that I swooned like a woman⁠—”

Bea bristled. “Women aren’t the only ones who swoon. It’s a human reaction.”

“Yes, very human. I’m sure there will be ballads written about it in my honor.”

It was her turn to glare. “You should be grateful to be alive.”