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‘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, ho
wever 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
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.
