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‘You think I would duel with a bastard? I should horsewhip you, rather.’
‘If your lordship feels that would help.’ Adam was as still and as controlled as he had been when she had cleaned and dressed his wound. To anyone who did not know him he would appear simply stoical, or perhaps unconcerned. Rose knew this was hard-learned self-discipline, just as she knew that if her father sent for a horsewhip and led the way to the stable yard, Adam would follow him, strip off jacket and shirt and submit to the older man’s fury without flinching.
‘Major Flint believed I was a camp follower,’ she said.
‘He thought what?’ her father roared.
‘Ro…Miss Tatton, I think you should leave.’
‘And have you take the blame for this?’ she demanded, coming to stand as her mother had, toe to toe with Adam.
‘Of course. It is mine to take, after all.’ His smile was like a touch on the cheek, gentle and reassuring, transforming his face.
‘How dare you look at my daughter like that!’ her father snapped.
‘As if she is a lady I respect and admire? A lady for whom I feel great fondness?’ Adam enquired. ‘I understand your anger, my lord, and your desire to do me damage. But I do intend to marry Miss Tatton.’
‘You, a bastard, marry a viscount’s daughter? Oh, yes, I know who you are, your half-sister has been here before you to carry the tale.’ Her father flung up his hands and turned away, but Rose could tell he was already beginning to realise that shooting Adam was not an option, that pretending nothing had happened was not possible either.
‘My father, for whose numerous sins I do not feel I can be blamed, was an earl. My half-brother, who recognises me, is an earl. I am financially in a position to support a wife in comfort and respectability, if not luxury.’ Adam was hanging on to his temper by his fingernails, Rose suspected, but he was hiding the fact well. ‘I understand and accept your anger, my lord. If I were in your shoes I would be tempted to reach for a pistol, but that will not help your daughter now.’
‘Catherine, come away from that man,’ Lord Thetford ordered.
‘I cannot quite get used to that name, Papa. I have been Rose for days, with no idea who I was.’ She put her hand on Adam’s arm and shook it gently until he looked down at her. ‘I do not need to marry. You do not need to marry me.’
‘No?’ The ghost of that smile was still there.
‘We will know in a few days,’ she murmured.
It was not soft enough for her father’s hearing. ‘Scoundrel!’
Chapter Thirteen
‘Miss Tatton, I think it best if you join Lady Thetford,’ Flint said with a wary eye on the red-faced viscount. They’d have a heart seizure on their hands in a moment. ‘I fear we are doing your father’s health no good at all with this exchange.’
Rose sat down on the sofa, folded her hands in her lap and asked her father with commendable, and infuriating, calm, ‘Is it known that I eloped with Gerald?’
‘Fortunately not, which is the one bright spark in this whole sorry mess.’ Her father flung himself down into the nearest chair. He did not ask Adam to sit. ‘At the ball your mama developed a headache. We went to look for you so we could return home but could not find you. The footman in charge of cloaks said you had left an hour earlier and described Haslam. Your mama was…overwrought. That attracted an audience.’ He grimaced. ‘However, she did not say anything indiscreet and I think I passed it off as a bad attack of migraine.
‘I went to find Haslam’s commanding officer, but they had left for Quatre Bras. I assumed he had hidden you in his lodgings, as your note that we found when we returned home said nothing of you leaving with him to the battlefield. When there was no word afterwards we could not understand it, for we were sure you would have tried to discover his fate. We saw his name on the lists, but we had no idea you were not in Brussels and we dared not make any enquiries about him by name. For what it is worth we have put it around that you are in bed with the influenza.’
‘I am very sorry to have caused you so much anxiety, Papa.’ Rose was within a breath of tears, Adam could tell, but she kept her voice steady. He wanted to go and sit beside her, put an arm around her in support, but that risked shattering her control. ‘You see, I thought we could run away to Antwerp, get married, then come back within a day or so. But then Gerald received his orders to march as we left the ball. I was going to be an army wife, so I thought my place was with him.’
‘I never liked that boy,’ Lord Thetford said. ‘He was immature, and too pretty by half. I had told him I would not accept his offer for your hand. What was he thinking of, to take you with him?’
‘He was as green as grass, I would guess,’ Adam said. This at least he could understand after years of dealing with callow youths. ‘He’d been a Hyde Park soldier until this, no doubt. He had probably never seen a battle, had no idea what it would be like. He expected to leave Miss Tatton in a pretty little tent and gallop off to fight. There would be gallantry, glory, the thrill of a cavalry charge. Then he would return to her, bloodied but unbowed, perhaps with a captured eagle to lay at her feet. What he got was two battles, mud, blood and noise and a desperate encounter that almost overwhelmed even those of us who had been fighting for a decade or more.’
‘You would defend him to me?’
‘I would explain him to you, my lord. He was an inexperienced officer tryin
g to do his duty, even though he found himself in hell.’
The older man looked him in the eye, without speaking. Flint felt as though he was being assessed, fairly, even if coldly, for the first time since he had entered the room. Rose’s father gestured towards a chair. ‘Sit, Major Flint.’ It appeared a decision had been reached. No horsewhip, then.
The sigh that Rose gave showed that she, too, must have noticed that unspoken decision. She then rushed into speech before Flint could build on the moment of understanding. ‘The point is, Papa, that I was technically ruined simply by eloping with Gerald. If no one knows of it, I am not actually ruined. Major Flint does not need to come into it.’
‘I do if you are carrying my child,’ Adam pointed out with, he thought, unarguable logic. He could not afford to regard her blushes, or her father’s likely reaction to the blunt confirmation of his worst fears. ‘And the unfortunate Lieutenant Haslam is dead or we wouldn’t be in this position.’ This unfortunate position. He did not need to spell it out to her, surely? ‘Lady Sarah knows and feels angry enough with me to bring the story straight to your parents. Who can tell what she will do with the information? But even if no one else ever knows, I have been your lover. You need a husband, Miss Tatton, and you are my responsibility now. Child or no child,’ he added.
