“I am sorry to hear that,” Hugh said, and meant it. He had more respect for the common soldiers now that he had seen how bravely they fought under dreadful conditions and incompetent officers. Not including the general, of course.
Hugh raised his cup in a toast to the loyal British troopers, and the general joined
him
. After a respectful silence, the army commander stared at his coffee, but addressed Hugh. “You’ve caused a bit of a pother, my boy.”
“I can explain all that. The undersecretary simply misunderstood what he saw. His wife—”
The general brushed the sordid details away. “Don’t care what tomfoolery you got up to in London. That’s none of my affair, thank goodness. Shouldn’t have been yours, by Harry, but that’s water under the bridge.”
“Yes, but that mess is what brought me here to volunteer for courier duty. I was definitely persona non grata in London. In fact, it was strongly suggested that I take myself elsewhere. I believe the Antipodes were mentioned.”
“Don’t suppose you thought of going to grass at one of your country properties until the contretemps was forgotten?”
“Where my father could find me?” Hugh took another sip of his fortified coffee.
The general knew Hugh’s father. He had another swallow, too. “Can’t say I was sorry to have you here. Fine job you did that day, although I’d have to bring you up on charges if you were under my command. I do believe your job was to deliver the orders and ride back to headquarters, not get yourself blown to flinders.”
“I swear I did not intend to overstep my duties, sir.”
“Humph. Well, I wrote that in the dispatches, too. Not your foolhardy rush into the thick of battle, but your valor under fire. Fine bit of riding, I understand. Wish I’d seen it. Saved lives, too. The country appreciates what you did, Hardesty. I’m sure the prince will show his gratitude. Might even throw a ball in your honor, or a parade. I appreciate your actions too, by Jupiter. Wish all my young officers had such bottom. Still, that’s not the trouble I’m talking about.”
Marian. Hugh put his cup down. “I swear I did not
mean to offend the woman. I was merely—”
The general held up his hand. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. But in a convent? Don’t you have any limits?” He shook his head. “At any rate, it’s not your coming here that’s the issue. It’s your leaving. The army will be moving on. You cannot stay here unprotected.”
“I realize my presence is somewhat awkward, my being neither fish nor fowl, as it were. Not in the army, but under your command. I think I will be ready to depart for England in a week or so. I am as eager to see the last of this place as you are to see me leave.”
“I have to admit you are taking too much time away from my own business, which is running this blasted war, but perhaps you won’t be so eager to leave when you hear the terms.”
“Terms?”
The officer did not meet Hugh’s eyes. “The thin
g
is, you nearly died. They’d have had my guts for garters if you’d stuck your spoon in the wall.”
“They?”
“Whitehall, Parliament, Carlton House. Your father has a lot of friends, and a lot of influence. The heir to a dukedom is no bit player on that stage of power. Your father’s only son, besides.”
“I am well aware of my position, thank you.”
“And you’ve been kicking at the traces for, what, the past ten years?”
“Fifteen or twenty at the least. But you were speaking of terms?”
“The problem is, they want you back, all right, but they don’t want any more scandal. The prince especially sees your behavior as a poor reflection on his sovereignty.”
“The prince is an ass. And a hypocrite. Why, his own behavior—”
The general cleared his throat. “That’s treasonous sentiment. True, perhaps, but treasonous. The fact of the matter is, your father agrees with him. They both
think
you would do better settled down, with a wife.”
“They think a wife will lead me to the straight and narrow? Ask the undersecretary about his loving spouse. Or Lord—”
“Damn, sir, I do not need a catalog of every married woman you’ve tupped. His Highness and His Grace are insistent. You are not to return to England unwed.”
“Bosh. This is not the Middle Ages. No one can command me to marry.”
“But your father can cut off your allowance.”
“He has threatened me with penury for ages. No matter. I have property of my own, from my grandmother. I can live on that income easily enough.”
The general looked around for the flask of brandy and poured more into his nearly empty cup. Then he looked at Hugh and poured more into his cup, too. “You might need it. You see, before you came to the Peninsula, you did a wise thing. Surprised everyone, it seemed. But you went to your man of business and put your affairs in his hands, your estates and your accounts, with your father as trustee.”
“In case anything happened to me.”
“Exactly. Well, something did happen to you. Seems they can have you declared incompetent now. The head wound, don’t you know.”
“Fustian. I am in my right mind, or I was until we had this conversation. You can tell them so.”
“The truth is, I need those votes in Parliament your father controls. His Grace has enough power to affect the funding for supplies and ammunition. We’ll never be rid of the Corsican otherwise.”
“He wouldn’t cost England the war just to see me married! Not even my father is that pigheaded!”
“I’d say he is. The message was clear: If you don’t go home a married man, you go home a pauper.”
“He can’t do that! It’s robbery! My own father, stealing my fortune. I’ll stay here and join the army sooner than let him get away with that.”
“I’d be glad to have you, if you could ride.”
Hugh could barely walk. Besides, his horse had been killed in the battle. Without drawing on his London accounts, he could not afford another mount. The words he used next had never been heard in the convent, that was certain. The dog rolled over.
The general let Hugh curse until he started repeating himself. “Fact is,” he said, “I agree with him. Life’s too uncertain. You’ve seen that now. We all need to leave more of a legacy than a mention in the
on dits
columns. And you’ve sown enough wild oats for a regiment of roisterers, so you can’t complain.”
Not complain? Hugh wanted to howl. He’d rather give up his arm than his freedom. Why, he’d never met the woman who could please him for two months—much less a lifetime. Thunderation, a wife! Of course, he knew he’d have to do it eventually. He was not so lost to his responsibilities that he would let the dukedom go to some distant cousins. But he was not ready yet. Besides, getting a wife was not the same as begetting sons. What if he couldn’t? Then he would have sacrificed his bachelorhood for nothing. He was not discussing that with the general.
Like a drowning victim clutching at straws, he said, “That’s all very well and good, but proper English misses are not thick on the ground here on the Peninsula. I doubt my father would be happy with a dusky-skinned Spanish bride, or the daughter of a Portuguese noble.”
“It so happens that I know of a young lady in the area of whom His Grace will approve. Lovely gal, daughter of an earl, don’t you know. Make you the perfect bride.”
“If she is so perfect, why is she not wed?”
“She had a spot of trouble herself. Nothing a ring on her finger won’t cure.”
“Good grief, is she breeding?” Wouldn’t that be a joke on the duke, planting a cuckoo bird in his exalted family tree.
The general was offended. “I said she was a lady, didn’t I? A fine, upright example of English womanhood. What we are fighting to protect, don’t you know. She showed a mite of bad judgment, is all. Poor reflection on the army, too. In fact, you’d be doing me another service by wedding her. Gentle female like that does not belong in the war. Two birds with one stone, don’t you know.”
Hugh felt as if the stones were tied to his feet and he was going under for the third time. “The ideal woman, wellborn and virtuous, just happens to be waiting for me in Lisbon?”
“Fact is, she is somewhat closer than that.”
How close? Hugh wanted to ask, but his throat was closing for lack of air. They said that dying men saw their lives pass in front of their eyes. That hadn’t happened when Hugh had been shot, when he fell to the ground, his horse on top of him. It happened now. “You won’t regret it,” the general was saying. “Lady Marian Fortenham is a fine woman. She’ll make you an excellent duchess someday.”
Marian. Who hated men in general and Hugh in particular. The poorhouse was looking better. Enlisting as a common foot soldier was looking better. Hell, hell was looking better.
5
Marian, Lady Marian, it seemed, was not looking better. If anything, her mouth was more pinched and her skin was more sallow. She still wore the black shawl over her hair and the sacklike black gown. She stepped into Hugh’s room after the general left as slowly as if she were walking to a funeral. Hugh couldn’t decide if it was his funeral or hers.
In a way he felt offended that she looked as upset as he felt. He was, after all, a premier catch on the marriage market: titled, wealthy—once he reclaimed his own property—and had all his teeth. An antidote like her ought to be happy such a choice plum had fallen into her lap.
Then he took pity on her. She could not like being constrained any more than he did. And she had been kind to him before he’d overstepped the bounds of propriety. He told himself she was intelligent, well-read, and born to his way of life. Everyone would think the match was ideal. He thought she might faint, so he poured her a glass of the cognac.
She sipped at it, silently staring at him over the brim of the glass as if he were an insect pinned to an entomologist’s collection page. A rather noxious insect at that.
He swallowed. “It’s a deuce of a coil, isn’t it?” he asked, without wasting either of their time on pleasantries.
She nodded, not offering him any help with the conversation.
“I don’t suppose they left you any choice, either?” Hugh was still hoping for divine—or the damsel’s—intervention. If she refused to marry him, no one could place the blame on his plate. Unfortunately, she merely grimaced.
“Oh, they gave me a wealth of choices. I can stay here with the sisters as long as they will have me or the French come back to pillage the convent, or I can wed. The general was kind enough to let me select my own husband, too: you or the only man my father found who is willing to have me.”
Hope bloomed in Hugh’s breast until she gave the other fool’s—the other possible fiancé’s—name. “Simon, Lord Fredricks.”
“Great gods, the man is sixty, if he is a day. He is a perpetual drunk, and he has been through two wives already. The man lives for his horses and dogs and loose women.”
“Precisely.”
“Damnation, you cannot marry that dirty dish.”
“Precisely.”
“What kind of father would wed his daughter to such a loose screw?” he demanded.
“The same kind, I suppose, who would rather see his heir starve in the gutter than have
him
cause another scandal. What of your mother? Can she not sway your father?”
He shook his head. “She wants grandchildren. Yours?”
“Passed on ages ago. And Lord Fredricks’s estate runs with ours.”
“Surely there is some other gentleman….” Hugh let his voice trail off when she set the glass down and took to studying her hands.
A wealthy earl’s daughter alone on the Peninsula, with no horde of eager suitors to escort her back to Papa? The female must have blotted her copybook with a vengeance, Hugh decided, although he could not imagine the straitlaced Lady Marian letting down her hair enough to cause such a mare’s nest. He might have liked her more if she did. “Perhaps you had better tell me how you landed here anyway,” he said, when she volunteered no explanation. “I think it only fair that I know. Everyone seems to have all the details of my own fall from society’s grace.”
“The general did not tell you?”
“No, he felt it unnecessary, or your tale to tell.”
“It is a simple enough story, and a common one. Never having a
tendre
for a suitor for all my twenty-five years, I fell in love with a soldier—an officer, to be exact. I met him at my aunt’s house in Bath, where he was recovering from a wound and my father was taking the waters.”
Hugh was surprised she was so young. He’d thought her older than that, but of course his father would never have approved a daughter-in-law past child-bearing age. Then he tried to visualize Lady Marian being swept off her feet by a handsome scarlet uniform. He could not. “And?”
“And my father disapproved, of course. The officer had no title, no lands, no vast income, no
infl
uence in government. In other words, Captain Sondebeck had no advantages to appeal to a narrow-minded, ambitious earl. We were well-off but not wealthy. My father saw my marriage as a way to repair that deficiency.”
The captain’s name was not familiar to Hugh, which was no wonder, if the fellow did not circulate among the quality. Which brought up another question. “How is it that I never met you in London?”