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‘Why, the major, miss.’
‘You said he had gone.’
‘Yes, but only into Whitstable to send a letter to your parents, Miss Tatton. And he said he had some shopping to do.’
Shopping for civilian clothes. Adam, what are you doing? He had to get back to Brussels before they accepted his resignation as final.
‘I need hot water immediately, then lay out a riding habit.’ If a confrontation was inevitable she was not going to face it looking like a sickly waif trapped in her bed. ‘Send to the stables and tell them I need a horse ready in half an hour.’
*
He knew less about farming and estate management than he did about French literature, but Adam thought he could recognise well-kept land when he saw it. The cattle were fat, the sheep satisfyingly woolly, the hedges had no gaps and the grass was green. The buildings all had sound roofs and the men who were working about the place were dressed in decent homespun and returned his greetings with cheerful grins.
He looked up at the beat of approaching hooves and doffed his hat when he saw the rider was female. The low-crowned beaver felt odd in his hand after a shako. He drew Old Nick on to the verge of the lane to allow the lady to pass. Strange that she had no groom to accompany her.
‘What are you doing?’ The rider reined in the neat bay cover hack he had seen in the stables that morning.
‘And what are you doing out of bed?’ he demanded. Rose, pale but healthy, rode as though she had been born in the saddle. An utterly inappropriate wave of arousal swept over him.
‘Why are you still here—and dressed like that?’ She did not appear very pleased at his civilian breeches and coat, his plain blue waistcoat and modest beaver hat. His boots were his old ones, his stock was decently tied and his linen clean. What was there to object to?
‘I told you, I resigned. These clothes may not be very fashionable, but they are perfectly serviceable,’ he said mildly.
‘I do not care if you are wearing bright yellow Cossack trousers, a pink waistcoat and a cabbage in your buttonhole!’ The bay was sidling uneasily, picking up on her agitation. ‘You must go back to Brussels and withdraw your resignation immediately.’
‘I do not want to.’ And, he realised with relief, that was true. Now he was here he knew he was homesick for England again. He needed a challenge, something fresh in this new world the peace would bring. He wanted Rose. Above everything, he wanted Rose. ‘Besides,’ he said, trying to make her smile, ‘I’ve written to Maggie asking her to send Dog over.’
‘Good, he’ll mope without you,’ she said and, instead of smiling, turned pink. That, he thought was encouraging. Perhaps she was moping for him, too, just a little. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked and Flint realised he must have fallen silent, gazing not at her, but over the green hillside and the clear sparkle of the river.
‘That I want you,’ he said, meeting her eyes. She coloured up, a wash of warm colour. ‘Not like that. Well, yes, like that as well. But I want to marry you, to be with you.’ She shook her head, obviously exasperated with him, and something inside snapped. He urged Old Nick up close alongside her hack, reached across and simply dragged her into the saddle in front of him.
She gave a muffled shriek as she clung to him. ‘Adam, what are you doing?’ Old Nick curvetted sideways, then stood at a sharp command from Flint.
‘Do you remember riding with me like this?’ She nodded, her hat bumping his chin, and he pulled out the hatpin and sent the hat spinning into the nearest bush. ‘That’s better.’ Now his chin rested on her hair. ‘I smell a damn sight better than I did then, and you’ve got your voice, but it still feels as good to have you in my arms, against my heart.’ She gave a murmur of agreement and tightened her hold.
‘You said once that you knew me, that right from the start you knew you could trust me, even when you thought I was the Devil. What changed, Rose? When did you stop trusting me?’
She pushed against his chest and sat up so her mouth was no longer muffled against his coat. ‘When I realised that honour was the most important thing for you. You said you were not the marrying kind, that you wouldn’t stay faithful. But you were also insistent on marrying me, on leaving the army, on doing all those things that I knew you would hate. It did not add up, Adam.’ Her fingers played with Old Nick’s mane, twisting the coarse hair into knots. ‘You would do your duty and marry me, because that was the honourable thing to do, but how could I expect you to be faithful?’
He let his breath out in a huff of relief. ‘That is easy. To be unfaithful to my wife would be dishonourable. But there is a much stronger reason than that. I love you.’
‘You had always been honest with me before, but that morning when you gave me the ring, told me you loved me, you couldn’t meet my eyes, you were hesitant. I knew you were making yourself speak of love because you thought it as the only thing that would make me accept marriage happily.’
‘I’ve never had to speak of love before, I had no idea how to say it. You think I would lie to you?’ That hurt, but not as much as she was hurting, he could tell.
‘Yes, if you thought it was for my own good.’ And that was bitter.
Flint sat with the sweet weight of Rose in his arms and tried to think. His mind was blank. How do you convince a woman that you love her when she has no reason to believe you and her own honour stops her taking the easy way of pretence and compromise? He knew what his instinct was telling him: let her go free, let her decide. Instinct had saved his life more times than he could count, had shown him the way when intellect was exhausted. He would risk his h
eart on an artilleryman’s instinct, it was all he had left.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said and snapped his fingers at the cover hack who obediently trailed behind as he turned Old Nick’s head towards the stables.
*
Rose sat in the drawing room and waited as Adam had requested, very formally. He was going to give up, say goodbye, she was certain. She raised her chin a notch. That was the right thing and she would not let herself down or shake his resolve by weeping all over him.
When he came in he carried the ring box in one hand and his sword in the other. ‘You gave me this ring back and I will take it with me,’ he said and pushed it into his pocket. ‘And I will leave today, go back to Brussels, settle my affairs. I will not withdraw my resignation. But before I go, I want to show you, tell you, something.’
