The Mercenary Major (17 page)

Today, for instance, he’d been told to be at the Spa Fields meeting, but nothing had happened. No signal had been given. Then Jack’s spy had found him.

Victoria shifted against Jack, and the brush of her shoulders across his chest sent a ripple of sensation down his body. He took a steadying breath. “What did the fellow want?” he asked.

“Wanted to know how resolute I was. Was I still with them? That sort of thing,” Bertram replied. “Reminded me not to let up. There would be a day of reckoning soon.”

“Do you know his name?”

Bertram shook his head.

“Was he the one who got you into the back room?” Jack asked.

“No,” said Bertram. “It was a fellow who served under Colborne.” He paused, looking as if something significant had just occurred to him. “Your spy never enters the back room.”

Jack saw the implications, too. The watcher knew who came and went and what they were up to, but never directly participated in acts that could be considered treasonous.

“What about Hengrave?” Jack asked.

“Oh, he’s in it,” Bertram admitted.

“Where is he?”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t know.”

“Do you want out, George?”

The younger man ran his good hand through his hair. “What do I do with myself then, Bandit?” It was a desperate question, accompanied by an unconscious hitching of the shoulder above the missing arm.

Jack regarded his friend silently. The surgeons had laughed at him when he brought them Bertram’s arm from the field, a perfect limb, cleanly severed from the body.
“We’re taking them off, son, not putting them back on. Bury it,”
they’d told him.

It was a feeble suggestion he had to offer now, but if he could get Bertram out of the gaming hells and the cock-pits, maybe hope would be possible for him again. “Aunt Letty’s taking us to a ball tonight. Come.”

Bertram laughed coldly. “Bandit, your wits are addled. Me, at a ball?”

Jack stood and helped Victoria to stand, relinquishing his hold on her reluctantly. The wind cut through his coat where their bodies had touched. He looked at Bertram and said the one thing that might persuade his friend. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

The early dark of a November afternoon was settling on the city as they left Spa Fields. Victoria’s legs were stiff, and she clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. On the thoroughfares shops were closed, their bow windows dark, concealing the wares they were meant to display. People passed, heads down, tucking their chins into mufflers and shawls, against the soot and grit in the stinging air. But Victoria refused to hurry. She had questions to ask.

“You were there when Captain Bertram lost his arm, weren’t you? At Waterloo?”

Jack Amberly turned to her, a guarded expression in his eyes. “Yes.”

It was not a particularly revealing answer, but he had answered, and she knew she was asking about painful subjects. “I take it his family did not accept his injury.”

“He gave them no time.”

His understanding surprised her. She had expected him to condemn Lord and Lady Montford. She thought about her father struggling belatedly to accept her. “Did they try?”

“They are trying now.”

She offered a silent prayer that the captain would come to the ball. “And your other friend,” she asked, “why has he joined the Sprats?”

“No work. His uncle always promised him a position. Now the uncle is bankrupt.”

“Do you blame the government?”

“Not for the problem; for their indifference, yes.”

“You won’t go to the Home Office about the Sprats, then?”

“No. The Sprats are a setup.”

“How can you be sure?”

“That tavern, the Swan, seduces men with free ale and radical sentiment. Reasonable views don’t stand a chance there. The spy and his hirelings stir the pot, but they are careful not to do anything criminal themselves.”

“But why would the government hire someone to create plots?”

“To decrease a surplus they can no longer employ— old soldiers.”

“That’s madness.”

“Welcome to the underside of London, Miss Carr.”

She did not have to see his eyes in the dusk to know they were mocking. “You do not think me that cynical or indifferent, do you?”

“You don’t care what I think, do you?”

Victoria opened her mouth to say
Of course not
, but it wasn’t the truth, so she said nothing.

They crossed a small open square of plain brick houses and entered a narrower unlit street where the buildings listed toward one another, braced apart by dark timbers, bowed under the strain. The street smelled of the privy and stagnant water and coal fumes. Victoria lengthened her stride to match Jack Amberly’s.

“Just a bit farther,” he told her.

But the dark, narrow, foul-smelling street led to another. He took her hand, and they turned into a smaller lane. She was relieved to see a lamp shining at its end. In its glow a man approached. His hat, outlined by the light of the distant lamp, marked him a gentleman. Apparently an elderly man, his bent figure came toward them slowly, his cane tapping the cobbles.

Victoria felt Jack Amberly stiffen at her side, and in the next instant pounding footsteps sounded behind them. Jack shoved her into a shallow doorway.

“Three men,” he said. “Stay there.” He whirled to face the street, uttering a single Spanish word with bitter force.

Victoria flattened herself against the door at her back. Her heart hammered in her chest. The pounding came from both ends of the narrow street and reverberated off the walls. Just when the sound seemed to fill her head, two shapes came hurtling at Jack Amberly to crush him, but he dropped to the ground and rolled to the left. The shapes collided. From the left a tall, bulky man, his feet knocked from under him by Jack’s roll, came down like a felled tree on a slight man from the right, who was wielding a sword. The two hit the pavement with a sickening thud, as if someone had dropped a heavy stone onto dirt. A gentleman’s hat rolled to Victoria’s feet, and she kicked it away.

The huge man moved, heaving to his feet with a bellow of rage and charging after Jack out of her view. The small man rolled to his side, his left hand clutching his right shoulder, the sword abandoned on the cobbles. His eyes squeezed shut, his mouth opened, and an odd sucking sound emerged, then a hiss, and finally the words, “Broke my arm. Bloody bastard broke my arm.” He rocked back and forth, his mouth open on a keening moan.

Victoria could hear the swift scrape of boots on the pavement and panting breaths and blows like hammers falling against wood.

“Jack!” she called.

“Victoria, stay put,” he answered.

She looked at the sword, lying out of reach on the other side of the fallen man. If she could get it . . .

“Fools,” a parrot-like voice croaked. “Where’s the girl? Get up, Wat, get the girl.” The man on the ground started at the voice and rolled to a sitting position, but sat hunched over, cradling his hurt arm and rocking back and forth, moaning steadily.

A third man scrambled into view, hopping about in front of her, his teeth bared in a nasty smile. Victoria gasped. Only the man with the broken arm was between her and this new attacker. The third man aimed a savage kick at his downed friend. “Move yer carcass, Wat.” It was the parrot voice. Wat screamed and tightened up more around his injured arm, but he did not move. The squawker swore at the helpless Wat and snatched up the sword.

He turned and waved it in Victoria’s face. “Come here, missy,” he ordered. He lifted a foot to step over his fallen companion. Victoria opened her mouth to scream, and Jack Amberly was there. His foot came up in a kick like a dancer’s and struck the parrot- voiced man in the ear. The man screamed and fell to the ground, writhing and grasping his ear.

The big man stumbled back into sight, swinging his heavy fists at Jack. Jack ducked and spun, circling the man and planting blows with his feet, elbows, fists. The stolid man took the hits with a grunt or a curse, but he did not go down.

Parrot-voice rose to his feet, blood trickling from his ear down the side of his neck. He seemed to forget Victoria and the fallen sword. He circled Jack and the big man, a feral gleam in his eye, his hand at his belt. When he had Jack between him and his accomplice, he yelled, “Kill him!”

The big man made a lunge at the major, and Parrot-voice darted up behind, slashing at Jack Amberly with a sweep of his knife.

“Jack,” Victoria screamed, stepping around the man with the broken arm. She saw the knife slice through Jack’s uniform, heard him suck in his breath. But he didn’t stop moving. He spun on his right foot, and then, incredibly, shifted his weight to the left, bringing the right up in an arching swing with all his weight behind it, striking Parrot-voice in the chest and knocking him off his feet. The big man froze, watching openmouthed.

Victoria snatched up the sword. “Here’s a sword, Jack,” she cried.

Jack’s glance flicked her way, and he stepped back and accepted the sword. Only the big man was standing. Panting, Jack Amberly told him, “It’s over, friend . . . unless you want . . . to die.” The big man shook his head.

With a wave of the sword, the major indicated the man should step aside. When he did, Jack said to Victoria, “Can you run?”

“Yes,” she answered, in as firm a voice as she could manage.

Jack backed toward her, covering their attackers with the drawn sword.

“Don’t let them get away, you ox,” said Parrot-voice.

The big man didn’t move. “Cove didn’t pay us enow to fight the likes of him,” he said. “Never seen a man fight with his feet afore.”

“Damn you,” said the other man, “that’s a guinea apiece yer letting walk.”

“Me? It’s you that’s botched this lay.”

Victoria heard no more of this dispute. She and Jack Amberly had reached the end of the lane. “Take hold of your skirts,” he told her.

They reached a mews and slowed to a walk, and Jack pulled Victoria down the row of stables until they found an empty one. He released her hand and pushed open the wide door, pausing to listen at the entrance, then reaching for her again and drawing her into the dark, horse-scented space. She heard him close the door and lean the captured sword against the wall.

“I’ll find a light.” His cautious movements and her own breathing, ragged from their flight, sounded loud to her ears.

He struck tinder and lit an oil lamp, placing it on the floor where its faint glow would not betray their presence to anyone passing by. He glanced around at the empty stalls, then looked up at her. She did not move. Their gazes met and parted, a shift in sentiment too new to be trusted plain in his eyes—as it was, she knew, in hers.

After a pause he asked, “You’re not hurt, are you?”

She shook her head and dared another look at him. The right corner of his mouth was torn and bloodied. “You’re bleeding.” She had been thinking about his back, but this other wound held her gaze. She touched her own mouth at the same spot.

He stood, lifting his hand and wiping the back of it across his mouth. “It’s nothing,” he said. He crossed to where she stood by the door. “Your face is dirty.”

He said it with such dismay, she almost laughed. “I’ll wash it,” she promised. It was still difficult to look at him. His expression was more guarded than it had been minutes earlier, but still too much feeling lingered there.

“Your back . . . where the knife . . . Let me see,” she said, striving for a brisk tone and gesturing for him to turn around.

“Gilling will do for me,” he said. “We’ll catch our breath, and . . . I will get you home.”

“No,” she insisted. “Let me see.” She tugged at the handkerchief in her pocket, and the hidden coins jingled against one another.

He raised an eyebrow. “Miss Carr? A bit of insurance?”

The grin was back, and Victoria smiled in return. “I promised Katie I would have something for an emergency. Next time I will bring a pistol.”

“There will be no next time,” he told her solemnly. “I will not involve you in danger again.”

“Then I must have the full measure of this adventure, Major Amberly. Let me see your back.”

His eyes trapping hers, he put his hands to the buttons of his coat, and she had a moment’s doubt about the wisdom of looking at his wounded flesh. Resolutely she drew a bench up to the lamp and pulled off her mittens. She picked up the sword from where it leaned against the wall and, turning away from him, sat and cut a wide strip from her muslin underdress.

“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Making you a temporary bandage,” she told him. She put the sword down again. It wasn’t really a sword at all but a hollow stick with a blade protruding from one end. The other end was curved like the handle of a cane. An image of the elderly gentleman hobbling toward them flashed through her mind, and she shuddered.

She turned to face him with the strip of muslin in her hand. He was pulling his shirt out of his trousers, and the sight made her stomach take a peculiar sort of dip, the sort of feeling one had riding in a curricle when the wheels hit a bump wrong. She patted the bench and then stood aside.

He straddled the bench and sat with his back to her, lifting his shirt for her inspection. She knelt behind him and looked at the long, ugly gash across his lower back. It had bled freely, and dried blood caked the lower edge of the wound. Fresh blood welled up slowly from the slit.

“You’ve had worse, I suppose,” she said.

“The only danger is infection,” he answered.

“Then I will just wrap this cloth around you until Mr. Gilling can tend to your injury.” It was easier to say than do. She leaned forward and reached her left hand around his waist, pressing one end of the cloth strip against his stomach. The muscle under her palm tightened with a quick spasm. “Hold this end,” she told him. He took it from her, his fingers covering hers briefly.

Then she drew the other end of the strip across his back and around his waist. She tried to think of how the wound must hurt him and not how shaky it made her feel to brush against his shoulder or his ribs or his legs. She drew a steadying breath and stood up. “Turn,” she said, “so I can tie the ends together.”