Chapter Two
‘Oh, my Gawd, look at you!’ Maggie Moss stood in the doorway, apron covered in flour, hair straggling out of its bun, elbows akimbo. ‘That’s a fine sight for a respectable Brussels boarding-house keeper to find on her doorstep of an evening.’ The tears poured down her cheeks.
‘We’ve been in a bit of a scrap, Maggie,’ Flint said, knowing better than to notice the tears. Something in his chest loosened at the sight and sound of her. Maggie meant warm practicality, a sanctuary of normality after a voyage into chaos. ‘Is there room? Twelve of us. Sergeant Hawkins, nine of the men and me. And Rose here.’
‘Of course there’s room, I made sure there would be, and never mind what those commissariat officers wanted when they came round. This house is for Randall’s Rogues and no one else, I said. Moss! Where is the man? Come on in. Tracking mud and worse all over my floors… And the noise! Those guns. Through here.’ Her hands were gentle as she helped the men through into the kitchen, scolding all the time like a mother making a child believe his scraped knee was nothing to make a fuss about.
Her husband came stomping through from the back on his wooden leg. He’d been Flint’s sergeant for three years until a spent ball had taken his leg off at Badajoz. Maggie had followed him through the hell of the Peninsular campaign and then, when peace had come and the English had flocked to Brussels, they’d come, too, to open a lodging house.
‘I’ve got palliasses laid out in the outhouse,’ Moss said. ‘It’s cool and dry out there and no need for stairs. Doesn’t look as though it will be too crowded, either,’ he added, low-voiced, to Flint. ‘Fewer than I expected. Butcher’s bill bad—or did you get off easy?’
‘Could have been worse. Could have been a damn sight better. The ones I sent back earlier were with the rest of the non-commissioned officers under orders to go to the hospitals or nunneries. Hawkins, can you manage here for a bit? I can’t do a thing with my arms full.’
‘We’ll manage, Major,’ Moss said with a sharp glance at Flint’s burden. ‘The missus had best help you with that one. Hawkins, I’ve got hot water in the boiler, let’s get them cleaned up and we’ll see what’s what.’ He turned to one of the privates. ‘Hey, lad, the pump’s in the yard, you fetch everyone a drink, right?’
‘Come on, Major, bring her through here. Hawkins and Moss will manage without us.’ Maggie urged him towards the stairs. ‘Up you go. How’s your broth—Colonel Randall?’
‘All right as far as I know. Gideon’s dead,’ Flint said. ‘At Quatre Bras.’ His younger half-brother had been a cavalry officer, full of courage and with, Flint thought bitterly, the brains of a partridge in shooting season. Gideon shouldn’t have been with the guns, and he, Flint, was a fool to feel that somehow he should have stopped him, saved him.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Poor lad, he was only a boy.’
‘Hardly knew him.’ He’d stayed out of Gideon Latymor’s way all his life—until those last minutes. What did an ambitious young cavalry officer want with one of his father’s countless by-blows, even if their elder brother had, for some inscrutable reason of his own, promoted the by-blow’s career? What did the bastard in question need with either of them, come to that? Randall was his commanding officer, that was as close a relationship as Flint wanted.
‘Room on the left, the one you had before.’ Maggie didn’t make any further comment about Gideon, but he could feel her glare of disapproval at his words like a jab in the back from a bayonet. ‘So who’s this?’ she demanded when he reached the middle of the bedchamber and she could look properly at the woman clinging to him like a burr to a blanket.
‘No idea. Found her after the battle trapped by a gang of deserters.’
‘Had they hurt her?’
‘No. But something’s wrong. She won’t speak, doesn’t seem to understand what I say to her in any language and she won’t let go. Which is becoming uncomfortable,’ he added, aware now he’d got where he was going that certain basic needs required attention.
‘Come on, lovie, down you get now. You’re safe here. I’m Maggie, I’ll look after you.’
It took five minutes, and they had to unbuckle Flint’s belt and peel off his jacket, before they had Rose huddled on the bed in the dressing room off Flint’s bedchamber. ‘Quieter in here and snugger,’ Maggie said. ‘Poor li
ttle creature.’
‘Not so little,’ Flint said, stretching cramped shoulders. But she looked fragile. Not childlike, for even like this her womanly curves were obvious, but vulnerable. Something in Flint’s chest twisted. Damn it, he was not going to get sentimental about one waif and stray. She’d probably been following the drum with some man or another since she was sixteen. ‘I’ll bring hot water up so you can get her clean.’ This was women’s work and Maggie, thank the saints, was the woman to do it. If anyone could bring some terrified camp follower to her senses, she could.
He lugged the tin bath along from the cupboard on the landing. The last time he’d used it was the afternoon before the Duchess of Richmond’s accursed ball.
‘I need you there,’ his commanding officer had said. Justin, Lord Randall, who just happened to be his elder Latymor half-brother, had sighed as he’d looked at him, the sigh of a man whose butler has just spilled the best cognac on the Chinese silk rug. ‘Get yourself cleaned up and try, just try, to look like a gentleman for a change.’
So Moss and Maggie had trimmed his hair, nagged him into the closest shave he’d ever had in his life, dumped him in a bath with some fancy soap, dabbed at him with infernal cologne and eased him into his scarcely-worn dress uniform. He’d had to fight with ghosts from the past to make himself cross that threshold, but it had been worth it to see Justin’s face when Flint stood there brooding in the corner, surrounded by the interested and predatory ladies who had deserted his handsome half-brother to simper at his scowls and stare unabashedly at his tight breeches.
‘I forget that you scrub up quite well,’ Randall had said, a smile on his sculpted lips, his blue eyes, so like Flint’s, chill and unamused by what he had unleashed on the ballroom.
Flint had shown his teeth in response, knowing his smile and his eyes were identical to Randall’s. ‘I know,’ he’d replied in the upper-class drawl he could produce when he could be bothered. ‘Worried I’ll cut you out with the ladies, sir?’ And he could, they both knew that from their time in the Peninsula. Ladies who’d want him for one thing only. Randall, of course, was always too much on his dignity to allow his amours to be seen in public.
Focus. He could not let his mind drift, not stop being a damned officer. Not yet. He stuffed the unpleasant memories away, dumped the tin bath in the bedchamber and went for hot water, leaving Maggie crooning reassurance in the dressing room. When he came down again Moss was tending to the worst of the injured while those who could stand were naked in the yard, sluicing themselves off under Hawkins’s watchful eye.
‘We’ve sent a lad with a note to HQ, sir,’ Hawkins said. ‘Let them know where we are. I’ve asked for the surgeon to call, but I think we’ll be all right for now. They’re checking each other over and washing the wounds out. Maggie’s laid in plenty of bandages and salve. How’s the girl?’ he asked as Flint studied the battered bodies.
Yes, unless loss of blood or shock caught up with any of them, or a wound began to fester, they’d do. It had been, against all the odds and late in the day, a victory, and their tails were up as a result. ‘The girl? I’ve called her Rose. We got her on to a bed and Maggie’s doing what she can. Women’s work, not our problem any more.’ He began to strip. ‘You, too, let’s see what exciting holes you’ve acquired this time.’
‘Nothing.’ Hawkins stripped and grabbed for some soap. ‘I’m filthy as a cesspit digger, but not a scratch on me.’ He jerked his head at the slash over Flint’s ribs. ‘That needs cleaning.’
Flint grunted, splashed soapy water into the wound, swore and scrubbed the rest of himself mostly clean. The men were limping and hobbling back to the straw beds, wrapped in bits of sheet for decency.