Counterfeit Countess (22 page)

As overcome by his rejection as she’d been by his possession, she felt him regain his breath. He rolled away from her, leaving the bed to go into the dressing room. She watched numbly when he returned with a cloth, attended to her, wiped her stomach and then lower, between her legs.

She half expected him to dress and leave, but instead he slid between the sheets and lay next to her, his head propped on his elbow. He didn’t touch her. She didn’t reach for him, didn’t dare, in case he moved further away.

“Why?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “A last minute decision.” He smiled wryly. “I thought it was wrong. I shouldn’t trap you in any way. If you’re not expecting now, I shouldn’t keep trying to ensure you were.”

“Is that what you did? Tried to impregnate me?”

He kept her gaze, didn’t flinch from the condemnation in her eyes. “No. Yes. I want you, never forget that fact. The moment I saw you when I came home, I wanted you. I’d seen you last before the battle. You didn’t appear as before but I felt exactly the same.”

She recalled the clothes she’d had. Although she owned two decent outfits, she didn’t use them often. Like most other women she wore practical garments in drab colours, darned and mended when needed. She’d screwed her hair up into a tight knot, and sometimes, when she couldn’t get water except to drink and cook with, she’d stayed grubby. Not the respectable widow she’d taken care to appear as when she lived in Red Lion Square. “I didn’t, did I?”

He touched a curl. “You’d had your hair cut.”

She burst into laughter, shock as much as amusement. “That’s what you noticed?”

“Yes. I like it. I desired you first, and only after did I recognise you.” He withdrew his hand and she felt the urge to grab for it, and hold it close to her heart. Foolish, especially as anger and
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bewilderment still simmered through her.

“So why reject me?”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You pulled out.”

He huffed. “I wanted to give you choices. You have your bag packed in the dressing room. I don’t want you ever to feel obliged to stay, or to sacrifice something you need for anyone else.”

“For you.” She knew what he meant. “I’ll do it for you and it’s not a sacrifice. So long as you don’t do it again.”

He shook his head, the light from the window flickering over his sharp-cut features. “I don’t understand, but if it makes you unhappy, I won’t do it again, I promise.” He lay down and opened his arms. “Come here.” He paused. “Please.”

She went, felt herself welcomed. She never wanted to leave and she didn’t feel she’d sacrificed anything.

Sweating, John cried out and sat bolt upright. “Jesus!”

Beside him, Faith stirred and mumbled, then she was awake too.

“What? John, what’s wrong?”

He closed his eyes, recalling what had woken him, shocked by what he knew wasn’t a mere dream. How could he tell her? He couldn’t, that was all. He couldn’t watch her while she realised the full implications of his revelation. “Nothing,” he said. He lay down and reached for her. She’d know he was shaking, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to hold her. Dawn was filtering through the clouds outside, illuminating her as she lay there, hair adorably tousled, eyes sleepy, her body warm. “A nightmare,” he told her. “I was at Waterloo.”

“I thought you didn’t remember.” She burrowed closer.

He wrapped his arms around her, letting her presence seep through him in a healing wave. “I remember the anticipation in the morning, and taking my troops to the farmhouse. That part.” He kissed the top of her head. “Go back to sleep.”

Snuggling in, she closed her eyes. He loved the way she did that, curled around him as if afraid he’d run away. Ironic, when that was what he’d worried she’d do. She was right, if she disappeared to a quiet life in a small town he might never find her. He had to leave her bag in place, knowing the imperative she didn’t become trapped.

Keeping the vision at the forefront of his mind, he waited until his rapidly drumming heartbeat slowed, forcing deep breaths into
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his lungs. What had appeared a nightmare was cool reality. His memory was complete. To fill the time before he could go over the recollection, so vivid now, and decide what it meant, he thought through the events of this evening.

Tonight their relationship had shifted. He feared he was about to become the pariah. He would not ask her to share that fate with him. The idea repulsed him, urging him to push her away before he dragged her into the mess. His instinct to protect her superseded everything else. Last night, the way the society sticklers had treated her made him want to do violence. If anyone ever looked at her again the way he’d seen some women do, he’d kill them. Strangle them with his bare hands. She had endured too much to end with a tainted legacy, which might be all he could give her.

Two forks in the road ahead. Either the rumour would die a natural death, or it would flourish. He had to kill it, and he’d only do that by implicating someone in its propagation. He couldn’t prove definitively the brothers had not been murdered, although he’d certainly instigate enquiries with the ship and crew involved.

The rumour had either been started deliberately by someone wishing him harm, or by general malicious gossip. The latter would take more effort to squash, but the suddenness with which it had arisen made him suspect the former.

He stared out the window. Dawn was breaking. He pulled the covers up to shield her from the light. He’d unlatched the shutter the night before, when he’d come to bed, wanting to see her while she slept. As it happened, he’d seen far more once she’d woken. A smile curved his lips at the memory.

But not what had woken him from his peaceful slumbers. No gap in his memory remained. Waterloo. The stink of black powder and blood, the clink of horse tack, the distant pounding of cannon, the not-so-distant whistle and
boom
when a ball landed close, the yell of a man, surprised out of life into sudden death. The mud that made action so difficult, worsened by the churning of several
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thousand booted feet.

Wellington called the officers to attend him, gave them their orders, and ran a quick survey of the area on the big maps, before conducting a rapid discussion with his fellow officers. Then he’d returned to his company and given the command to march. The women watched the men move out, tension on their lined, dirty faces.

Before tonight his memory had faded when they reached Hougoumont. Now, fully awake, he went through his actions that day. He’d recalled the sturdy building teeming with soldiers.

Wellington assigned several companies to protect the important strategic point, his only one of them. They’d arrived, staked their position and John had consulted with his fellow officers, exchanging the information they needed to keep the farmhouse in British hands and to distract the enemy from other attacks Wellington had planned.

So far, so normal. He’d survived campaigns, followed orders, issued them, fought his way to the next engagement. This was different, because they knew if they held fast here, they’d end the long, exhausting wars against Napoleon. A sense of optimism had suffused even the hearts of the jaded officers determined to do their duty today.

There his memories had faded except for a few disconnected shadows flashing back in the dead of night. Not tonight. He’d watched the scene as if viewing something happening to somebody else, at a distance. Until the end, when he’d shot back into his body and the pain and despair had tortured him. To come through everything to die this way!

He saw himself, unkempt hair, worn uniform, grubby linen shirt, covered in mud, yelling orders. He’d taken his station near the big double doors leading to the main courtyard. His men and those of the company opposite had shored them up with whatever they’d found to hand. The courtyard had several outbuildings, the tiles on
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the roofs smashing down around them when men had climbed up to hold their guns at the ready, extra dangers that could kill as surely as a musket ball. The enemy was outside. Eventually the gates would give way. They waited, as they had before in similar situations, with grim inevitability.

John took stock, ensured he’d stationed his men for the best available places, nodded to his fellow officer. They’d counted the blows as the battering rams had taken their toll of the sturdy farmhouse doors never meant to withstand a siege.

With a shout from outside, the doors shattered, and the French poured inside. Fighting was hand-to-hand and desperate, but the allies were holding their own and fighting back. John had seen first one man go down, then another, then a swathe. If they didn’t take care they’d lose too many, and the position would fall. Always cool under fire, counting that an attribute, he’d analysed, ordered his men to fall back and regroup, and then turned to realise he was isolated. If he didn’t get back, he’d stand in danger of being taken prisoner. No, of being killed, because nobody was taking prisoners today. He didn’t care about that as much as he should, but he refused to die failing his duty.

Turning, he saw a man in the familiar colours of his regiment, and sighed his relief that he wasn’t alone. Together they could plough a course back to the others.

John Smith had other ideas. Disbelieving, John watched his lieutenant raise a bloodied sabre and slice it down, aimed right at his head. Automatically he parried, the contact of the blades shivering down his arm, then went in to disarm the man. When Smith tried to knock his blade aside he met the weapon with his own and twisted, managing to wrench it from Smith’s hand. Over the cacophony of orders, bugles, men yelling in different languages, he made himself heard. “Fall back, man! It’s me!” for he’d assumed Smith, taken by bloodlust, hadn’t recognised him in this morass of Berserker rage.

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So when Smith nodded, his blood-spattered face grim, John ushered him forward. Unwilling to let the unstable soldier out of his sight, he’d thought they had a chance of regaining safer ground.

Until Smith grabbed something from the ground. A floor tile, an inch thick piece of terracotta. John could see it now, its sharp edges, fresh where it had broken in its tumble from above. In a vicious move motivated by desperation, if the expression in his eyes was anything to go by, Smith swung the makeshift weapon at him.

Too late he ducked, but if he hadn’t, the tile would have struck him hard and deep, and he’d have died for sure. Instead, he’d managed to deflect the direct blow, although the oblique one had been enough to nearly kill him. Blood flooded his eyes, and although he’d fought the blackness descending on him, with a sigh of surrender, he’d lost.

Smith had left him for dead, or someone had struck him down.

Too intent on murdering his superior officer to care for his own safety, John presumed, one of the enemy finishing his worthless life.

John Smith had inflicted the injury that had nearly carried him off. Faith’s husband. Her
first
husband, he corrected himself viciously.

However hard he tried, John couldn’t recall any more. He must have passed out cold. The ghouls had arrived and stripped him. As well he hadn’t come to when that was happening, because they would have killed him in case he recognised them later.

Then someone had taken him to the medic’s tent. There he’d woken with no recollection of who he was. If he knew then what he knew now he’d have considered himself blessed, but his memory had returned completely. He’d remembered his identity almost immediately, but once he assured himself of the outcome of the battle and that Wellington would not need his services, he’d decided to remain silent while he worked out his options.

Most of John’s remaining memory had returned over the following month in patches, dreams, nightmares of the battles he’d
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fought.

He decided to become anonymous John Smith for a while, long enough to get away to a new place. Start again and perhaps kill the bad dreams and the sense of futility that had dogged him in the first few months after Waterloo.

If he’d told them his real name, they’d have dragged him back to Britain, killed him with kindness, and then he’d be back fighting the family, no doubt ending by marrying one of the dowager’s daughters. His personal fortune was mostly liquid, in funds he could access anywhere with nobody any the wiser. So he’d opted for peace and a chance to live his life his way. Once he’d reached Canada, he’d sent the letter back home to assuage his conscience, then considered his duty done.

Now he’d do anything, as long as he had Faith with him. Face any number of dowagers, all the disapproval society had to throw at him, as long as he didn’t drag her down with him. He smiled at the woman in his arms, who was snoring slightly, probably because she had half her face mashed against his chest. He couldn’t let her go. It would kill him.

Selfish, considering what might lie ahead, but he couldn’t help that. He wouldn’t let her go yet, not until he knew she was safe.

That attack worried him enough to keep him awake nights. He needed to counter it, discover if it was safer for her to live with him or without him.

How could he tell her that her husband had tried to kill him?

She’d leave for sure, overwhelmed with guilt or shame or some other emotion. Stupid, but he knew his Faith by now. He bared his teeth to the unseeing moon, now fading in the face of the sun. He needed to track down this Cockfosters bastard, discover if he was acting on his own, or if anyone was paying him. Taking a lady with connections into a house of ill-repute was asking for trouble, especially when there were poverty-stricken girls for the taking. He had to keep Faith until then. Relief filled him when he followed
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instinct with rationality, and realised he had a reason to keep her with him. Not just his desire to hold her close and never let her go.