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Although the day was fine and Castor had been keen to get out and gallop away the fidgets, there was too much evidence of the battle wherever she looked to be able to fully enjoy her ride.
By the time she returned, her pleasure in provoking Tom into a reaction had completely dissipated. And it wasn’t just the sight of soldiers lying wounded all over the road, the broken gun carriages, splintered wagons, or the smoke rising from mounds of carcasses that had been made into great bonfires, that had done it.
It was the guilt. Guilt caused by realising that whenever she was with Tom, actually in his presence, Gideon always got pushed to the back of her mind.
So it was with a heavy heart that she finally stepped through the back door of the lodgings, later that morning.
‘Ah, ma petite,’ said Madame le Brun, bustling up towards her, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘It is such sad news, is it not? To hear that your gallant officer, your beau, he has fallen in battle.’
‘My...my beau?’
She hadn’t had a beau.
‘Who do you mean?’
‘Why, that cavalry officer with all the moustaches. The colonel.’
‘Oh. Colonel Bennington Ffog,’ she responded dully. She’d experienced a jolt, it was true, when she’d read his name on the lists of the dead, but it was hardly more than she’d felt for any of the other names she recognised of men she’d talked to, and danced with, in the preceding weeks. Even though he had been her most frequent escort. After Gideon.
‘Never mind,’ said the landlady, placing her hand on the sleeve of Sarah’s riding habit. ‘The major, he is much more the man for you than that other one.’
Sarah felt her face flood with heat. ‘The...the major? You mean you know that Tom isn’t...isn’t my...’
‘Your brother?’ The landlady gave her a knowing look. ‘But no. No man looks at his sister the way that man looks at you. And I recall both your brothers. They have your nose. That one—’ she jerked her thumb upwards ‘—he is much more handsome. And then it made me to wonder at the way you said you did not want visitors, when last time you were here, there was a constant stream of callers, and you and your sister and her husband the marquis, you were all so caught up in the going to parties and balls. It all became clear,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone, ‘when the other English officer came, the one with also your nose, the one with a voice loud enough to be heard over a salvo of cannon fire.’
Sarah’s stomach hollowed out. She thought she’d been so discreet. She thought nobody would guess she was living in one room with a man to whom she was not married. And yet now this landlady knew. And Major Flint knew.
And how many others?
‘You haven’t told anyone, have you? That Major Bartlett and I... That the Major isn’t...’
Madame le Brun pulled a face. ‘As long as you pay your rent, what do I care what you get up to behind the closed doors?’
Was that a subtle threat? Was the woman going to increase her rent, in return for her silence?
‘Besides—’ she gave a wry smile ‘—to begin with, I wondered if perhaps he was French.’
‘French?’
‘Those men who carried him in, they wore the blue jackets. And they drove a French wagon. And so to begin with I did not tell anyone there was a wounded officer here at all.’
‘I... Well...’ Sarah recalled how the woman had fussed over her the night she’d turned up, on horseback, with only what she could cram into her saddlebags. How willing she’d been to hide her in the stables in case the French overran the city. How she’d even put up with Ben lolloping up and down the stairs, a law unto himself, once she’d seen how much comfort he brought Sarah during the long hours of watching over Tom.
And felt ashamed that for one terrible moment, she’d suspected Madame le Brun of attempted bribery.
‘Thank you, Madame.’
‘It is nothing,’ she said with a careless shrug. ‘But you—’ she reached up and patted her cheek in a motherly fashion ‘—do not mourn too long for the other one. He was not a worthy suitor for one with such spirit as you.’ She pulled a face. ‘I have heard about the behaviour of your British cavalry during the battle. How all their brains belong to their horse. How they charge recklessly here and there.’ She waved her arms wide. ‘They do no damage to the enemy, they get themselves into bad positions and practically hand themselves and their poor horses to the other side for the butchery.’
‘What?’ Sarah’s mind reeled. She had come to Brussels to learn the truth. But did she really want to hear exactly how Gideon had died? If it had been in that manner?
Oh, why hadn’t she just stayed in Antwerp, in blissful ignorance? If only she’d never seen a battlefield, she could still picture Gideon falling down neatly, swiftly, feeling no pain and suffering for only a moment.
As it was...
‘Excuse me, I must return to the Major. See how he is.’ With a fixed, rather strained smile, she turned and strode along the corridor, and up the stairs.
It felt as though a cold hand was squeezing at her insides. Major Flint had said Gideon had been cut with sabres. Cavalry sabres, like the ones that had knocked Tom unconscious, while nearly slicing off the top of his head.
