Barely a Lady (5 page)

The sergeant bristled. “Don’t be pointin’ that popper at me, boyo. Lots o’ men are needin’ help this night.”

Chambers lifted the gun. “Good. Then you won’t mind taking a few.”

“I won’t—”

“Please,” Olivia begged, her hand on the sergeant’s arm. “Surely we can help.”

“Olivia?” Grace asked from the carriage, and Olivia turned back to see her friend leaning out of the window.

It was all Olivia could do to look down at that sad, strained face. She could barely speak past the dread of what she had to do.

“These men need a ride,” she said. “Couldn’t we take them up, at least to the field hospital?”

Grace looked up at her, as if she could discern Olivia’s intent by the frail light from the carriage lamps.

“Please, Grace,” Olivia begged. “For me.”

Grace said not another word. She just opened the door and motioned for Chambers to carry Jack inside. Knowing that she had just sealed her own fate, Olivia hopped down to help.

Chapter 4

H
e was… he…

Was he dead, then? Was this hell? There was… he was… He couldn’t think…. Too much pain… too much…

But he had to get on. He had to find… Who did he have to find? What did he have for them?

He couldn’t… remember….

“Oh, stop, Sergeant,” Olivia begged, her hand out to where he was setting another stitch in Jack’s leg. “His eyes just opened. He can feel that.”

The sergeant straightened and gave his back a cracking stretch. They’d been in Lady Kate’s second-best guest room for the past two hours, cleaning and stitching Jack’s wounds, washing his battered body. Olivia felt so drained she was shaking. And Jack had just opened his eyes, even if only for a moment.

Sergeant Harper set down his needle and thread and reached over to pull up Jack’s eyelid. “If you’ll pardon me sayin’, ma’am,” he said, his voice gravelly with exhaustion, “I’ve seen my share of head knocks like this one, and won’t the captain be opening and closing his eyes for a few days before we know if they’ll stay open? And, sure now, he don’t really feel a thing. At least, not as he’ll remember later.”

Olivia fought a wave of exhausted tears. “You’re certain?”

Sergeant Harper obviously saw them and patted her on the shoulder with his wide, callused hand. “You really should be after gettin’ a bit of sleep, ma’am. I’m fine here. Really.”

Olivia dredged up a stiff smile and gave her hair another shove out of her eyes. She’d never forget this hellish night as long as she lived. It had taken them five hours to travel the nightmarish road to Brussels, to end up with three new wounded in the house, including Jack. Olivia still wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. She was certain she’d meant to leave him in the medical tents with Chambers. But Chambers was gone, and Jack was in Lady Kate’s second-best bedroom.

“Don’t worry, Sergeant,” she said to Grace’s protector. “I won’t fail you.”

“Haven’t so far, ma’am,” he said, and turned back to work.

She hadn’t had the courage to let anyone know who Jack was. Not until she had the chance to talk to the duchess. But she’d given up pretending she didn’t know him. Given up lying to herself that she cared no more for his welfare than any of the other ten men sleeping in the house. Every time the sergeant had driven the needle through Jack’s skin, she’d flinched. When she’d heard the click of Lady Kate’s tweezers as he dug out shrapnel from Jack’s leg. When she’d counted up the injuries Jack had suffered and seen older scars she didn’t recognize.

She wanted to stand stoic and cold against him. But this was the man she had taken into her body, the man she’d worshiped as if he were a young god. The man whose mere touch had ignited a white-hot intoxication in her that had never cooled.

Even now she felt it, as if his skin sizzled with an energy only her body recognized. As if once met, that force could never be broken; fine tendrils that coiled around them and pulled inexorably together, sparking fire and life and want.

She didn’t want him. She
couldn’t
. But, oh, sweet Lord, she ached for the memory of him.

“Here now, ma’am,” Harper interrupted.

Olivia started back to the present. “Of course, Sergeant.”

Reaching over, she snipped the ends of a knot. They were sewing an angry slash that stretched from Jack’s jaw to his left temple, which was sure to leave a terrible scar. He would never again be the devastating, perfect Jack Wyndham who had cut such a swath through the
ton
. He’d carry this day with him for the rest of his life.

It made no difference to Olivia. She’d fallen in love with him without ever seeing his face.

She’d heard him through the hedges. It had been a Saturday, she remembered, and she’d been on her way to bring flowers to her father’s church in Little Wyndham. She knew now it had been Jack’s sister Maddie he’d been with. But at the time, all she had heard was his laugh, and it had stopped her in her tracks.

For the longest moment, she’d been unable to do anything but stand there, the flowers clutched to her chest, her eyes closed. His laughter had sounded like church bells to her, a carillon of unfettered joy and strength and freedom. It had been the sound of a man who knew his place in the world and who reveled in it.

Even now she couldn’t look down on him without feeling amazed. Of course, she’d fallen in love with him. By the time she’d met him, all of the county and two-thirds of the
ton
had been at his feet. That this man with the laughing sea-green eyes had loved her back had been a miracle.

The only miracle greater than that had been looking down on their baby and seeing those same bright, winsome eyes.

Olivia squeezed her eyes closed.
No
. She would not think about Jamie. He lived in a place she had to keep so tightly closed, she could almost pretend he had never existed.

She was so focused on her thoughts she almost didn’t hear the knocks on the door behind her. Turning, she saw Lady Bea walk in, Lady Kate right behind her.

Olivia held her breath. She couldn’t believe Lady Kate wouldn’t recognize Jack, even as battered and bruised as he looked right now. Lady Kate seemed to know everyone, and Jack had definitely been someone.

But she barely looked toward the bed.

“How is he coming along, Sergeant?” the duchess asked.

Lady Bea said not a word, just stepped up to the bed, her patrician features screwed up in distress as she bent to examine Jack. Olivia couldn’t take her eyes off the elegant old woman, terrified she was going to straighten and cry out,
What is this traitor doing in our house?

Alongside her, Harper straightened. “I’m thinkin’ it’ll be a long slog for the poor lad, all right,” he said.

“Will he live?” Lady Kate asked.

Olivia held her breath.

“Well, now, Your Grace,” Harper said, considering the slack features of his patient. “That’s something I couldn’t say. Sure isn’t he due for a fever, after sitting out in the mud and filth of that battle? And then to be afflicted with this great wallop to the head? The best I can say is that we’ll have to take it a day at a time.”

“You don’t think I should call a doctor and have him bled?”

“Punting on River Tick,” Lady Bea unaccountably proclaimed, her head tilted like a bright bird.

Olivia was too tired to do anything more than stare. Oddly enough, Lady Kate was nodding. “Indeed, my dear. He is in short supply already. Any idea who he is, Harper?”

Harper shrugged. “A captain of the First Guards.”

Olivia still couldn’t relax. “He’ll tell us when he wakes,” she assured them, hoping the duchess would be satisfied and go. She would have to know soon, of course, but Olivia wanted a chance to explain first.

If only she knew what she could possibly say.

“Odysseus!” Lady Bea suddenly chirped as if making a huge discovery. She turned to Lady Kate, as if for validation, then gave Jack a pat on his bruised, filthy cheek.

Lady Kate met Lady Bea’s bright smile with a narrowed gaze. “Ah,” was all she said.

Olivia felt completely at sea. What did the old woman mean? Then Lady Bea turned to peer at her, as if trying to place her, and Olivia felt the blood drain from her face.

Please, no. Not yet. Not ’til I’m ready.

Evidently her prayer was answered, because Bea just patted her cheek and made for the door.

“Well, then,” Lady Kate stated with a brisk nod. “I’m sure you don’t need our help. When you finish, Sergeant, call my butler Finney, and he’ll send someone up to watch our patient so you can rest.”

Olivia wished she could do just that. Instead, feeling deathly cold, she turned to face the little duchess and her confounding friend. “Not until I speak with you, Lady Kate.”

Kate made a perfectly outrageous moue. “Yes, I heard about how you commandeered my coach. All I can say is it’s a good thing your patients truly needed us. I’d hate to think you were simply picking up passing officers on a lark.”

“Lady Kate, please.”

“No, Olivia. Not now. You brought us two other fresh officers, and the wounded keep pouring into town without cease. Now, Grace, Bea, and I have slept. I want you to also. I’ve put you in the sitting room of my personal suite. It’s the only room besides the front parlor and larder that has space, and I didn’t think you would want to bed down with the cheese. Finney will show you the way.”

“But—”

Lady Kate straightened and donned her mantle of hauteur. “I don’t see how I can keep you in my employ if you’re always arguing. Come see me after you sleep. Not a moment sooner.”

And without another word, she ushered Lady Bea out and closed the door behind them, leaving Olivia to feel equal parts guilt, relief, and shame. She couldn’t put off telling the duchess. Jack’s life might depend on it.
All
their lives might depend on it. But still, she couldn’t help being grateful for her small reprieve.

“Got another thread to cut, ma’am,” Harper said behind her, and she turned back to her work.

Stopping a moment at the top of the stairs, Lady Kate looked into the early morning shadows that defied the forest of candles she always kept lit. Satisfied that there was no one but Bea to witness her behavior, she gave in to the urge for a most unduchesslike stretch. She swore she could hear every bone in her back crack as she arched herself backward like a ballet dancer.

“Oh, Bea,” she said, bending over at the waist until she could touch her fingertips to her toes. “I’ve been wanting to do this for days.”

“Princess Caroline,” her friend said with a sniff, which made Kate grin.

“If you’re saying that a good stretch is unbecoming in a duchess, I already know. It’s why I would only do it in front of you, my dear. And only here, where I know I won’t destroy any of Monsieur’s furniture.”

“French,”
Lady Bea sneered, her fine-honed features smug.

Kate laughed. “A bit ornate for my tastes too,” she admitted as she took in the excess around her.

The gentleman from whom she was renting had fallen victim to the excesses of rococo without a murmur of protest. Every available surface of the little town house was frescoed, gilded, and festooned. There wasn’t an inch of ceiling that wasn’t weighted with ornate plasterwork, and the furniture was so fragile even her twelve-year-old tiger was afraid to sit on it.

A fitting setting for a duchess, old Monsieur Menard had assured her back in March when he’d showed her around the prime location on Rue Royale, right across from the Parc Royale. Kate couldn’t help but think that Menard would have an apoplexy if he knew how his fussy, feminine rooms were being put to use.

“It is a unique design for a hospital,” Kate mused, thinking of all the wounded who crowded the rooms.

And morgue. She could hardly forget that Grace Fairchild’s father waited in the cold little wine cellar.

Shaking her head, she led Lady Bea down the ornate pink marble staircase.
Bloody damn hell,
she thought. She had seen a lot in her life. She’d faced her share of demons and disasters, which her valiant Bea could attest to. But she had never experienced anything like these last few days.

And there was still so much to do. Grace needed to bury her father, and the wounded needed care. The other British visitors in town had to be convinced to ante up desperately needed supplies. And Kate needed to find out just what was going on in her second-best guest room.

“I did understand you correctly upstairs, didn’t I?” she asked Bea as they continued down the stairs. “You recognized our guest? That’s Jack Wyndham in the flesh or I’m Marie Antoinette.”

Lady Bea patted her on the arm. “Odysseus.”

Kate slid her hand along the banister. “And our Olivia knew who he was.”

Lady Bea nodded emphatically. “Penelope.”

Kate skidded to a halt, almost upending her friend.
“What?”

Lady Bea gave her a hard nod. “Penelope.”

Kate gaped. “Good Lord. How can you be sure?”

Lady Bea shrugged.

Kate looked upward, as if she could see inside that room where Jack Wyndham lay unconscious and the woman caring for him wouldn’t admit to knowing him.

“Well bless my undeserving soul,” she said, shaking her head. “No wonder she wasn’t forthcoming about his identity. What do you think we should do?”

Bea took a considered look up the stairs. “Pray.”

“Indeed.” Kate sighed. “Well, I just hope we can keep everyone in the dark about her identity for a few days. We need her to help with the wounded.”

Just then, Finney stepped out from the library, where several of their wounded lay. Kate always smiled at seeing the hulking, stoop-shouldered Finney with his cauliflower ear and prehensile brow. He’d been a mediocre fighter. He wasn’t much better at butling. But he provided excellent security.

“The men is all fed, Y’r Grace,” he said in a low growl. “Any orders f’r the house?”

“Indeed there are, Finney,” she said, retrieving a pair of bonnets from the hall table. “Lady Bea and I are going out. See that Mrs. Grace gets some sleep. Put something in her meal if necessary. I have a feeling she’ll be needing her strength in the next few days. As, I fear, shall we.”