Carla Kelly (9 page)

While the bearers were loading Wilkie onto the stretcher—Wilkie had been so obliging as to fake a swoon—Jess looked at the quartermaster. A rapid glance told him there was nothing wrong with the man except an overactive imagination. How much have you been cheating this army? he thought, after taking the man’s pulse. “What on earth happened here?” he asked, not because he wanted to know, but because the QM might be suspicious if he didn’t ask.

“The private ran in front of my tent as though Soult himself was on his ass,” he said. “I had just sat down to eat my beefsteak.” He looked around. “Where is it?”

Probably down the front of ’arry ’arper’s uniform blouse, Jess thought sourly. “I didn’t know anyone had any beefsteak left,” he said. “You were fortunate, indeed.”

The QM realized his mistake. “Well, yes, rather,” he stammered, and chose not to continue that line of conversation. “Shouldn’t you hurry on to tend that poor sod?”

Jesse nodded and gestured to Nell, who fell into step beside him. She was looking so forlorn and puzzled that he clapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Randall. There’s not a thing wrong with Wilkie.” He whispered to her what the man had done. She started to laugh. It was a delightful sound, and so unexpected right then that a wagoneer stopped to stare, and then grinned as he turned back to his less-than-cooperative mule.

“Why would he do such a thing?” she asked.

He was pleased when she put her own arm around his waist so she could match his stride easier. “I haven’t the slightest notion,” he replied. “Wilkie and Harper constitute two members of a malingerer’s army ever bent on mischief.” Even as he said that, he felt the stirring of an idea so awful that he dismissed it immediately.

Jess didn’t think Bones was following them, and truth to tell, he didn’t care. He had walked with Nell before, but only on an errand, or as part of some duty. This was different. He relaxed his grip on her shoulders, just to see if she would loose her hold on him. To his pleasure, she did not. She seemed content to walk beside him.

When they returned to Number Eight, Major Sheffield was in the tent they shared, packing his own effects. Dan O’Leary, looking more indignant than fifty overworked hospital stewards, glared at Private Wilkie. Lying on the stretcher with his hand clasped around the bloody wound, Wilkie grinned at him. “Explain yourself, Private,” he said as he pulled up a stool beside him.

Before Wilkie could speak, Harper pulled four little brown vials out of his sleeve and set them in a row beside Jess. “I believe you’ve been wanting this, sir,” he said.

O’Leary seemed to forget his pique in an instant. “Laudanum!” he exclaimed as he looked over Jesse’s shoulder.

Hippocrates, I can use this, Jess thought as he stared at the bottles. He looked up at the private as the man pulled a slim canvas case from his uniform blouse, where Jess had suspected a beefsteak resided. Harper undid the ties with a flourish, and Jess stared at a row of scalpels. They practically glowed, gleaming steel catching a glimpse of the watery sun to blink back at him in that wicked way of scalpels.

“I can’t possibly take these,” he protested. “I just couldn’t,” he said, ashamed at how feeble his protestation sounded.

Harper only shrugged and retied the strings. “Sir, you want me to take them back so the QM can sell them to some Spaniard who will sell ’um to the French? Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s not a good idea.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jess agreed, amazed at how little his conscience was already bothering him. I will become as depraved
as ’arry, ’ippocrates, he thought, with some amusement. “Oh, hell, I’ll keep the scalpels. Use ’um on you, Harper, and give you a high voice.”

His amusement vanished when Harper reached inside his pants. “Ain’t it amazing what a good distraction will get?”

Jess stared, speechless, as the private groped around in his roomy pants—Nell looked away—and pulled out a handful of coins. He sprinkled them like golden rain onto Wilkie’s stretcher, then looked at Nell. “There you are, Miss Mason. Didn’t I hear the surgeon here tell us to empty our budgets this morning to keep ’im from a desperate act?” He winked at her. “Wilkie and I was thinking creatively.”

“I’m…I’m afraid he already had to do the desperate act,” Nell said, her voice subdued. “I know you meant well.”

“Meant well?” Jesse burst out. “He’s a damned thief! My God, Private, one word from me and you’re with the provost marshal from now until Portugal!”

“If you can find him, sir, begging your pardon,” Harper said. “We’re on retreat.”

Jess looked hard at the private. There was nothing of that irritating kind of subservience in his voice that he had become accustomed to from the man. “Explain yourself, Private,” he snapped, lowering his voice, because he could hear Jenks starting to hyperventilate, three cots over. “Go to him, Dan,” he said, tired all of a sudden.

Harper crouched beside Wilkie’s stretcher. “Pardon me, sir, but it takes a thief to know a thief. Wilkie and me, we’ve watched you skimp on everything here, and we’ve seen you and the Chief fill out QM reqs by the wad.”

No denying that, Jess thought. “There was no call for this.” I am a weak man, indeed, he thought as Harper continued to press his point. Why am I not scooping up those guineas and rushing back to our QM with my apologies? He sighed.

“I heard you say only this morning, sir, that the army would be better off if someone tied the QM to an anvil and dropped ’im in the river,” Harper concluded.

“I did,” Jess said wryly. “And now you’ve picked a lock in the QM’s tent and liberated what you feel is rightfully ours.”

Harper grinned and poked Wilkie on the stretcher. “Told
you our darlin’ surgeon here was a bright one! Trust me, sir, he won’t even miss this.”

“
Trust
you?” he exclaimed. “I’m not in my dotage, Harper!”

“No, indeed, sir,” the private agreed. “You can’t be more than thirty.”

Jess sighed again and stared long and hard at the private. I am arguing with a thief and a scoundrel who robbed another thief and a scoundrel, he told himself. And the deuce of it is, I actually think he did this out of the goodness of his heart. “How much did you take, Harper?” he asked finally.

The private knew surrender when he heard it, obviously. He smiled, and Jess was hard put to resist smiling back. “Sir, you said Miss Mason here needed fifty-two pounds.” He looked at Wilkie. “We thought maybe sixty pounds would grease her through a bad spot, supposin’ that old Bones had a few more pounds to up the ante over Captain Mason. Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Mason, but your da is a little lean on scruples.”

“And you’re not?” Jess said, unable to resist.

“I know what I am,” Harper said simply. “She needed our help, didn’t she? Hold out your apron, Miss Mason. This is yours.”

When she only looked at him, the private seemed less sure of himself. “We’re too late?” he asked, then turned his attention to Jess. “She’s still here.”

“She’s my wife, Private,” he said. “While you were robbing the QM, I married her to keep Bones away.” Oh, God, he thought, that’s not even true. I married her because I have loved her these two years and more probably. He knew he couldn’t say that. He knew it would sound even stranger than his public reason.

He didn’t want to interpret the look Nell gave him; he hadn’t the heart. As she deflated before his eyes, he knew he was a worse thief than Harper, because he had robbed her of her dignity. Silence filled the tent, broken only by Jenks’ ragged breathing and the steady whoosh of the bellows. He didn’t know what to say.

Nell spoke, but it wasn’t to him. “I’ll take your money, Private Harper,” she said, and he could hear she was on the ragged edge of tears. “I’ll give it to my father.” Her
voice faltered then. “No, I’ll find Major Bones and give it to him. No telling what my father would do with sixty pounds.”

No, he thought, no. “Private, I’ll find Bones. Nell, you’re my responsibility now.” He wanted her to look him in the eye, but she was too ashamed. “Nell, please, it isn’t quite what you think.” He touched her arm. “Nell, I mean it.”

She had withdrawn from him. It wasn’t a physical gesture; she did not flinch when he touched her. He kept the pressure on her arm, but she was in another place deep inside herself. “Nell. It’ll be all right. I promise,” he told her. He meant it with all his heart, but he wondered how many other promises had been broken in her life. And this is one more, he thought. Oh, Hippocrates, why couldn’t I have been an architect or the man who sells
gelato
on street corners?

He took the money from Harper. “Wilkie, when I get back I’m going to sew up that fistula of yours before it gets you in more trouble. Harper, during this retreat you had better be on your best behavior. No lock pickings, no stealing, no creativity!”

He got up and went to the tent opening. To his surprise, Nell followed him. “I’m sorry I could not think of something else, Captain,” she began. She looked down at the ground. “Mama…Mama always used to say what a good contriver I was, and I…”

He put his finger to her lips. “Don’t, Nell,” he said softly. “Maybe you’ve had to do too much contriving for someone your age.” Her face was so sad that he wondered if he was right to speak. “Maybe neither of us thought when we woke up this morning that we’d be married by suppertime, but since we are, you can share your worries with me.”

It was the most he had ever said to her at once. Even though it sounded stupid to his ears, Nell raised her head and looked at him as though she had never considered such a thing. “Do you really mean that?” she asked quickly.

“With all my heart.” He touched her cheek. “And now I’d better find your father and then Major Bones.”

She shook her head. “He will only spend it before he gets to Bones.”

“I must disagree, Nell,” he told her. “It is more than likely that we are all charting a course toward each other.”
He took out his timepiece. “Didn’t the good major give your father until six o’clock? When I find your father, I will find Bones.” He saw the fear in her eyes. “Nell, don’t worry so much! It appears to me that thanks to my larcenous patients we have quite neutralized Bones.”

“I pray you are right,” she said finally. “Do this for me: take along Harper.”

“I wouldn’t take him across the street!”

To his dismay, Nell’s eyes welled with tears. She swallowed, and dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “Didn’t the chaplain tell you to do what I say?” she asked.

Jess sighed inwardly. Hippocrates, I am less than an hour married, and already she has run out the heavy guns, he thought. “Very well, but only because I cannot deal with tears!” He looked at Harper, reached deep within himself for some patience, and gestured at the man. “Private, you are to accompany me to find Captain Mason.”

“That’s right sensible of you, Captain, if you don’t mind me saying so,” the private said.

And if I did? Jess asked himself wearily. “Oh, come along.”

Harper saluted in so haphazard a fashion that Jess could only be grateful that no one stood on parade. “I believe you must be the poorest excuse for a soldier in all the armies in Spain,” he declared.

His mutterings didn’t seem to daunt the private, who merely beamed at him as though he had been paid a compliment by Wellington himself. “Aye, sir, but I am very big, where you, if you will beg my pardon, are not.”

He thought he would have no trouble finding Mason. Bones had said this morning that the captain would be drinking. If the man followed the pattern that Jess had observed during long years with the division, he would be drunk by noon, then remorseful by afternoon. By six o’clock, Jess reckoned, Mason would be low, indeed. His pattern was to come crawling home then.

Audrey Mason’s remains were already coffined. Accompanied by his escort, Jess went first to the burying field. Under the watchful eyes of a provost sergeant, two French prisoners were digging pits for the recent deaths in the command. He thought of Jenks then, barely breathing back in the hospital tent, and wondered if he should requisition
a coffin for the retreat. Mason was not at the burying field, which hardly surprised Jess. Father-in-law, you are a coward, he thought. You treated your wife poorly when she lived, and you cannot face her now that she is dead.

He found his father-in-law in his ramshackle house, sitting on a stool that was the only thing remaining. Jess knew that Nell had retrieved nothing from the place because she had fled from it with the clothes on her back, but it was picked clean. Mason, his face more vacant than usual, appeared lost in thought, but Jess knew that thinking was not his strong suit. It must be an alcoholic haze. Indicating with his head for Harper to remain outside, he went in through the open door and stood in front of the man on the stool.

“I have ninety pounds for you, Captain,” he said, “but I’m going to wait here and give it to Major Bones.” He knew he shouldn’t continue, but he did. “You’re a pitiful excuse for a soldier, and a worse father.” He dropped the money in Mason’s lap. He couldn’t remember when he had ever said anything so unkind, but his words barely seemed to register. Captain Mason merely nodded, and stared straight ahead.

“I also married your daughter so Bones couldn’t get his hands on her.”

His bald words penetrated then. Captain Mason looked at him, his face incredulous and then heavy with relief. “Thank God,” he said fervently, and Jess actually thought he meant it.

Jess thought of all the unpleasant things he could say. He could remind Mason that he had been bailed out yet again, and not required to be accountable. He could have scolded, chided, and humiliated Mason as he had heard others do, but he did not have the heart. Instead, he put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. “I will take good care of her, sir,” he said softly. “You need not worry about her again.”

If you ever did, he thought as he watched Mason’s face. I am pretending that you care what happens to her. No matter what happens to you or me, I never need to have on my conscience that I kicked you when you were already prostrate. It’s not something that is going to lie between me and Nell at nights, if we ever progress to that point.