AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When just the officers and Lord Montgomery lingered at the table, Drew wanted to confirm his impression of Endicott.
"You recognised that Lieutenant, Bevins?"
"Sent him to the rear with our first casualty. Colonel Ruddock could barely ride a horse, so I sent Endicott to escort him. They went all the way to Brussels. This was early on in the day. The Lieutenant never came back."
"You mean he left and missed almost everything?"
"I’d call that deserting," Hopkins said. "Cowardly braggart."
"I went to see Ruddock in Brussels where Endicott took him," Bevin added. "He'll never walk again, and last time I saw him, his headaches never let up. Good officer. Serious loss for us, though not quite Picton. Or Ponsonby."
"Why, do you say that the scoundrel Endicott just stayed in the city all day, away from the fighting?" Lord Montgomery asked.
"Ruddock said an orderly told him he'd seen Endicott sell their horses outside the hospital. All over town, the panicky residents were trying to flee. They'd pay anything for transportation."
"Why he ought to be drawn and quartered, to do such a thing."
"You don’t think he was the only one? Many of the men spilling tales of bravery and heroism were probably deserters as well," Major Ellis added.
"I’m sure. Saw enough to know what was happening but escaped the danger as soon as their commanders' backs were turned."
"So, you know that Endicott's stories are lies?" Captain Drew asked.
Bevins gave a rueful chuckle.
"Pure nonsense. That part about saving the Duke? Happened dozens of times if you believe the fables we've heard, even from men who were really there but liked to embellish their stories. Often from those who weren't even close enough to hear the cannon fire."
Major Garwood speared another cut of the beef for himself.
"Hundreds of years from now, there will still be bragging from great-great-grandsons telling of their ancestor's heroism."
Drew felt wearying dejection at the thought that Miss Montgomery had been deceived. She hadn’t uttered a word, but her eyes seemed wet with tears. He felt no surprise either that William Turner had fallen for Endicott's falsehoods. His fiancée and her mother too. They had seemed frozen in place, unable to admit their folly. Had they all been enlightened by the late arriving officers? Drew could hardly sort out just what had happened when Bevins, Hopkins, Garwood, and Ellis walked in. Endicott had been speaking but stopped when he saw them. He'd looked shocked, as though he had never predicted that he'd encounter anyone from the battle here. It could have been surprise. Or he could have feared that he'd be exposed as a liar.
Dare he ask Miss Montgomery what she had observed?
******
Ronnie left her parents in the drawing room, arguing about Lieutenant Endicott's stories, after her father finally came upstairs. Jasper Endicott's disappearance from the table made her certain that he'd been deceiving them since he came there with William. No one could doubt that the officers, friends of Captain Drew, had fought in the battle. Had Endicott even been in Belgium until it was all over? How they had praised him that first night, begged him to tell the stories over and over, listened to his details of the scene and sighed with his recounting of the numbers of dead. They'd exclaimed over his French sword hilt and the shell casing Endicott had. William had admitted his trinkets, brass buttons and a bit from a French bridle, were bought from vultures at the edge of the battlefield. How ashamed she felt now, the way they had almost dismissed the sad remains of a terrible loss of life, not only men but horses, some they'd said had to be shot to shorten the time until they bled to death. She shuddered and felt tears of loss… and tears of frustration clog her thinking.
How Captain Drew must scorn her.
Chapter Ten
Ronnie had to face the facts.
No matter how long she sat here in her bedchamber, huddled under the covers, or gazing out of the window, wiping away her tears or cringing at her own stupidity, all she cared about was what Captain Drew thought of her.
Lieutenant Endicott had driven his curricle away that morning, Cici reported. Her mother had retreated, if only temporarily. Her father seemed unmindful of her feelings. Cici and William were all wrapped up in each other. Lady Stapleford gloried in Anthea's attachment to Lord Appleby, now nearly an inseparable couple. Evie said a kitchen maid had told her that Captain Drew and his friends had taken a picnic, and dozens of bottles of claret, on a tour of the countryside.
Ronnie sat alone in the blue chair, braiding then untangling the fringe on a shawl. Captain Drew had been correct in his distrust of Lieutenant Jasper Endicott.
And being such a fool, I even stood up for the fellow and his lies. Now the Captain, a man I thoroughly respect, knows what a ninny I am, a hopeless judge of character, an unworthy friend.
When she'd used her common sense to reject every eligible man for years, how had she been so gullible that she'd missed all the traits she despised in a suitor, displayed in Endicott. At first, she had felt sceptical because of William's eagerness to match her with Jasper Endicott. But for a few brief evenings in his company, she had lost her balance. How could she have been so correct about dull but fickle Lord Appleby, who'd instantly transferred his regard from her to Anthea, and so wrong about Endicott?
In actuality, she'd allowed Endicott to turn her head while she thought the man she truly admired, the Captain himself, was ineligible. Drew was honest and hard-working, a man of character, while Jasper was a cad. No doubt he'd disgraced himself in other ways too, family connections be damned.
A hard lesson. One that contravened all that her mother had taught her, all of the standards of their shallow society of useless fops and brainless twits.
