Page 42 of Yielding to Love

Adam pushed away his bowl. “I hear the colonel stirring.” He rose. “I’d best go to him. He had a bad night.”

Him, too? “A bad night?”

“He suffers nightmares. About Vitoria. Did you not hear him? I think that is why they gave him so much laudanum at the hospital. To keep him quiet.”

That was sobering. Crispin remembered Vitoria as a triumph, the victory the British so desperately needed. But Colonel Harrington would remember it differently.

Crispin had his own torturous memories. Things he’d done of which he was not proud. Things to which he could never confess. Things that had needed doing that it had fallen to him to do.

“Oh, it is wrenching,” Mrs. Clay said. “He screams so awfully. You’re fortunate the walls are thick, and you can’t hear it upstairs.”

He was fortunate in more than thick walls. He had to remember that. He was fortunate.

*

Crispin stayed. He wasn’t bored. Strangely, he was anything but bored, and they made it clear he was welcome, so he stayed. He endured two supper-and-cards Saturday evenings with Sir Bodwell, and was still there though it was approaching a third. It amused him, in a cruel way, to see how his continuing presence bothered the man. And then it bothered him that he could enjoy being cruel. The war had done that. It had taught him to steel himself against softness. But he had overshot the mark and become mean.

He told himself he was staying for the colonel’s sake. Harrington seemed stronger in body under Adam’s care, but his spirits were often low. He had things he needed to get off his chest—the young deserter whom he’d caught and sentenced to thirty lashes, a lethal punishment for a mere boy; his willingness to execute Adam who’d been guilty of nothing; the confiscation of a stolen chicken from a starving foot soldier, that he then shared with fellow officers who had plenty to eat. Crispin shared no confidences, but he excused his old superior’s offenses in the same way he tried justifying his own.

It was war. It was war. It was war.

*

“You plant yourself here,” Crispin said, putting his hand on the seat of the sidesaddle. “Then you hook your…your right knee here, over the pommel.”

Miss Harrington paled. “I don’t know. Perhaps this would be better attempted on a pony.”

“We don’t have a pony.” They had Mercury. And they had an old sidesaddle that had been Miss Harrington’s grandmother’s. He’d checked and rechecked that the saddle fit his horse properly so that it wouldn’t rub or slide. Crispin was using Mercury as a training horse. Olivia would have a conniption fit and Jasper would faint. But Miss Harrington had confided that she had never ridden. That was a deficit needing correction. “Hold the reins loosely. I’ll have the lead rope. He won’t bolt, and I promise you won’t fall off.”

He’d brought Mercury back to the farm early in his stay, after seeing to it that the barn was well-provisioned. He had to serve as his own stable hand, but that was fine, since he trusted no man with Mercury more than himself.

His pupil looked frightened.

“Miss Harrington, don’t let me browbeat you into something you’d rather not do.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “This is the second time you’ve mentioned browbeating. Are you often accused of such?”

He started. Yes. Then made himself chuckle. “By my sister. She says Jasper wins arguments with charm, and I win them by bullying.”

“And your younger brother?”

“Reg? Reg wins by being right.”

“Are you ever right?”

“Seldom.”

“Well, this is a dilemma. Since you have said that I won’t fall off.”

“If you do, I will catch you.”

He saw something in her expression. A flash of something undefinable in her eyes before she turned her head and set her jaw. “All right. Help me up.”

“Put your left hand on my shoulder. When I lift you, use your right hand for balance, but don’t grab, just rest it on the pommel until you can settle yourself.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he lifted her. She wasn’t wearing a riding habit. She didn’t have one. Her yellow dress was as soft as silk. He tried not to notice her narrow waist. The flare of her hips. A flash of ankle. He caught the scent of lilacs.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no,” she murmured. Or groaned. Until she was sitting in the saddle.