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‘Ma’am! I do apologise, inexcusably clumsy of me.’ He did not release her hand, simply drew her a little closer.
Rose blinked back at green eyes, a charming smile and a look that would make any woman’s toes curl in their satin slippers. If this man was not Major ‘Tom Cat’ Bart
lett, the Rogues’ notorious rakehell, then the army had more wicked artillery men on the strength than seemed probable.
‘Are you Major Bartlett?’
‘I am. I do not believe I have had the pleasure of an introduction.’ He did not appear surprised to be recognised, but then he was probably used to women discussing him.
‘How is Lady Sarah? I do hope she is…well.’ Her voice trailed away as the smile chilled on his lips, leaving a grim-faced man of undoubted intelligence regarding her as though she had just crawled out from under a small boulder.
‘You are Miss Tatton, aren’t you?’ Bartlett said.
‘Yes, but—’
‘Congratulations.’ The soft voice was a drawl. ‘I never thought I’d meet the woman who could ruin a man like Flint. It seems I was wrong.’
‘Ruin? What can you mean?’
He stepped back amongst the bushes, pulling her inexorably after him, his grip on her hand no longer caressingly flirtatious. ‘I came to talk to him because Randall is leaving the army, which means there is a vacancy for the command of the Rogues. There are only two possible candidates—me or Flint. But he tells me he’s resigning, marrying you, becoming a damn farmer.’ He said the two words as though they were an insult.
‘He is not! He will be a landowner, a wealthy man. He—’
‘Adam Flint is the best hands-on artillery officer I know. The men will follow him into hell and out of it. He can sight a gun by eye while I’m doing sums in the back of a notebook. I’m the better diplomat, the better at the big strategic picture, but that man is artillery to the soles of his boots. I expected to have to fight him for the Rogues, now I’ve been handed it on a plate.’
‘But you must be pleased about that,’ Rose began.
‘Pleased to know I got it by default? Pleased to see a friend emasculated and turned into a lapdog for some empty-headed chit?’
‘Stop right there!’ Rose jerked her hand free of his grip. ‘Adam Flint is most certainly not emasculated and he is not a lapdog, he’s a wolf and I am not empty-headed, you rude man. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about this.’
‘No? I know Flint as well as a brother. Better than a brother. We’ve fought together, been wounded together, half-frozen and starved together. I’ve been drunk with him, I’ve chased women with him, I’ve told him things in the small hours of the morning when I expected to die the next day that I daren’t even think about now. So do not tell me I don’t know him.’
‘The war is over.’
‘This one is, but there is always a place for soldiers. Do you think Flint wants to spend the rest of his life pretending he is something he is not, just for the sake of your reputation?’
‘Reputation? I know you do not care about reputations. After all, you are the rake who seduced Adam’s half-sister.’
‘We are getting married and she is following the drum.’ There was a look in those hard green eyes that made Rose’s breath catch in her throat. Pride and love. ‘Sarah’s a woman with the courage to become a soldier’s wife.’
‘And I am not?’
‘Quite obviously not. Good day to you, Miss Tatton. I wish you well of your marriage, I am sure it will be everything you hope for, because you are marrying a man of honour who will never break his word. He will never let you see that you have scooped out his soul like an oyster and left an empty shell in its place.’ He gave her a bow that was an insult in itself and strode away.
Rose heard his voice, light and amused and charmingly apologetic. When she looked at the entrance he was bidding Lady Anderson farewell.
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms in an effort to stop the shivering, then realised she was standing in a patch of full sun. She could not be cold. She wondered vaguely if she was going to faint and whether she should move off the gravel path to do so on the grass. Everything had gone very quiet although she could see people were laughing and talking. An edge of darkness rimmed her field of vision.
‘Rose?’ A warm hand caught both her cold ones and an arm went around her shoulders. Heat, shelter, protection.
‘Adam.’
‘You aren’t well, you’re as white as a sheet. Here, sit down before you faint.’
The iron garden seat was hard and chill, but she clutched at the arms and let the back with its moulded ferns stiffen her spine. ‘Adam,’ she said again.
‘I’ll get your mother.’
