Carla Kelly (8 page)

Jamie stood a
little straighter beside Omega and watched as Hugh Owen stood in
front of them.

“
Old
Hookey called us an ‘infamous army’ not long ago,” he said,
speaking more to himself than to them. “That was only because he
had never seen this file.”

“
Lead
on, sir,” said Omega.

They walked into
a beautiful Cotswold morning, where dew still decorated spiders’
webs and the very ground smelled of summer. Every now and then the
sweet, sharp scent of roses teased them as they passed crofters’
cottages and skirted tiny villages that probably had not changed
measurably since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Hugh ambled into
several villages to inquire about Byford. The closer they came, the
more information he gleaned.

“
Well,” he began after his latest side trip, “we now know that
Byford is home to well over one thousand souls, is famous for its
needlework, and has a church housing the relic of St. Stephen’s
little finger. Our latest piece of news is that the Viscount of
Byford is also the justice of the peace.”

“
Is
that good?” inquired Jamie.

“
I
hope so. Let’s assume that he has a sharp sense of justice, but
maybe not too much nicety about law by the books,” said Hugh.
“Jamie, have you considered what you will do if your uncle turns
you over to your guardian? He could, you know.”

The mulish look
returned to Jamie’s face. “I will not stay,” he said.

Hugh Owen had the
wisdom not to continue the conversation.

Still short of
their destination, they paused for the night in an area of heavy
woods. “From what I have learned, we could perhaps be there around
midnight, if we continued,” said Hugh, “but I do not think that
rousing the viscount from his bed will further our cause any.
Besides, I am hungry.”

They all were,
but no one complained about the short rations; Hugh and Angela were
obviously used to doing without, and Jamie and Omega were too
polite. Omega did find herself staring with some longing at a
rabbit that watched them from the protection of a bramble
thicket.

Hugh must have
seen the same rabbit. He halted his little army. “Angela, could you
work some Spanish magic?”

She grinned.
“
Claro que sí
, Hugh. Come, Jamie.”

He hung back.
“I’ve never caught a rabbit before.”

Angela stamped
her foot.
“Fulano
! And how will you learn if you do not
try?”

Jamie could think
of no argument to counter Angela’s logic. He followed his mentor
into the brush by the tall trees.

Omega watched
them go, and then seated herself on a fallen log. “You do not think
Angela will go too far away?” she asked.

“
She
knows what to do.”

Hugh’s short
reply told Omega how tired he was. Without a word he sat down on
the ground beside her and rested his back against the fallen tree.
He raised his knees and propped his injured arm up on one
knee.

“
I do
not know how it is possible for my hand to hurt when it is not
there,” he said at last. He shrugged. “And to think I ran away from
Wales so I would never lose life or limb in the
colliery.”

“
How
did you lose your hand?” Omega asked, cringing inside as she
considered all the governesses who had raised her to never ask any
question more forward than the time of day.

If Hugh thought
her encroaching, he gave no indication. He sighed again. “I’m
almost embarrassed to tell you, Miss Ch
— …
Omega. I mean, it was a chuffle-headed thing,
the merest quirk.” He looked at her in embarrassment. “You’ll
laugh.”

“
Most
assuredly I will not,” Omega replied. “This is hardly a laughing
matter.”

“
No,”
agreed Hugh. He settled back against the tree. “It was about two
hours before Boney’s Imperial Guard turned about-face and ran from
us. Or it might have been ten minutes. Time has an odd way of
taking on new meaning during a battle.”

He paused and
looked off in the distance, hearing something she could not hear,
seeing sights she did not want to view.

“
Anyway, the Frenchies’ cavalry swirled around us, and then
they would back off and their guns would roar.” He straightened out
his injured arm and stared at the hand that wasn’t there. “I was so
tired. A ball from one of Boney’s ‘beautiful daughters’ rolled into
our square. It was just rolling along the ground, moving straight
toward my captain’s head.”

“
Your
captain’s head?”

“
Yes.
He was dead already and lying on the ground, half-buried in the
mud. We were so muddy. I reached out to stop that ball from
slamming into him. Well, I was tired or I never would have done
that.”

“
Good
God,” murmured Omega. She touched Hugh on the shoulder. He looked
up, as if remembering where he was.

“
I
didn’t even feel anything at first, until I tried to reload my
piece and the only thing left was a bone sticking out. Oh, I’m
sorry.”

She knew from the
look on his face that she was ghastly pale, even under her sunburn.
She took a deep breath. He was still looking at her.

“
Do
you know, Omega, when you turn pale, those little freckles on your
nose are quite, quite green?”

She nodded and
managed a shaky laugh.

“
I was
lucky,” he continued. “I was able to walk off that battlefield.
Some of the wounded ... some of them drowned in puddles of
rainwater.” Again he looked into the far distance. “I lost all my
friends in that day’s work. Every one of them.”

Angela was waving
at him from the edge of the clearing. He waved back. “And that is
how I came to have Angela.”

“
Eh?”
asked the articulate educationist.

“
Her
mother was a Spanish camp follower. She came to us with a small
baby—Angela—and my best mate, Thomas Llewellen, took up with her.
She drowned crossing the Duero. Thomas died at Toulouse, and our
sergeant and his woman watched after Angela. The sergeant died at
Waterloo, and I’m the only survivor of our file. Angela’s my charge
now.”

“
Surely she has ...”

“
Other
relatives?” Hugh shook his head. “Her mother was an orphan. I could
have left Angela in an orphanage in Brussels, but that would have
been my last night of peaceful sleep.”

Omega understood.
If she had gone ahead and boarded that mail coach and left Jamie to
his fate, she would have seen his frightened eyes every night she
closed her own.

“
Besides that, Angela searched every bed in Brussels until she
found someone from the file. I couldn’t leave her
behind.”

“
Most
assuredly not,” agreed Omega. “And I do understand. I seem to have
declared myself Jamie’s protector, whether he wanted me or
not.”

Hugh got to his
feet. “You’ve discharged your duty well. Soon we’ll be at Byford,
and he’ll be the viscount’s worry.”

“
I
suppose,” she said, and wondered why she felt so little enthusiasm
for what would have been a wonderful relief only
yesterday.

Angela came
dancing back into the clearing, followed by Jamie, who walked head
down, the picture of failure. When he was quite close, he whipped
out a snared rabbit from behind his back, a smile splitting his
face from ear to ear.

“
Omega, it was famous! The rabbit didn’t have a chance. Angela
has promised that she’ll teach me how to do that.”

Omega laughed out
loud and clapped her hands together, delighting not so much in what
he said as in the joy in his voice.
That’s what was missing
before
, she thought to herself as she grabbed Jamie, ruffled
his hair, and kissed him on the cheek.
He wasn’t a little boy
before. Now he is. Thank God and Angela and Hugh
Owen
.

Angela took the
rabbit from Jamie. She set it on the ground and extracted two nails
from her leather pouch. She looked around for a big rock, and
pounded the nails close together into the nearest tree. With quick,
sharp motions she forced the rabbit’s hind legs into the
nails.

Omega watched
openmouthed as Angela took Hugh Owen’s knife from him. A few quick
cuts, a deft slice from vent to breastbone, and in a moment the
pelt came off in one wrench. The naked rabbit glittered in the
afternoon sun. Omega turned her head.

“
Famous!” breathed Jamie. He put out his leg and made a
sweeping bow. “Angela, you are a complete hand.”

Angela laughed
behind her hand like a proper Spanish lady. As Jamie gawked in
admiration, Angela gutted the rabbit and scurried to the river and
cleaned her catch. She laid the rabbit carefully on a tree stump.
With flint and steel she started a fire. Omega coaxed along the
little fingers of flame with selected pages from
Rochester’s
Guidebook
, while Jamie added twigs. By the time the fire was of
respectable dimensions, Angela had divided the rabbit into four
parts, like Gaul, and skewered each section onto a green stick. She
handed a stick to each diner and motioned them closer to the
fire.

“
I
just hold it in the flames?” asked Omega.

“
Up a
little bit,” cautioned Hugh, “or you will eat more charcoal than
rabbit.”

The four of them
sat companionably close to each other, Hugh making an occasional
comment to Omega, Jamie teasing Angela and being rewarded with her
bell-like laugh. Mostly they were silent, listening to the wind in
the trees and the hiss and pop of rabbit fat on the fire. Soon they
were concentrating on the magnificent odor of rabbit almost
done.

“
I’ve
never been so famished in my entire life,” Omega said finally, to
no one in particular, as she turned the stick over and over and
wished the rabbit would hurry up.

She watched the
flames again, wondering at her growing uneasiness in relinquishing
Jamie Clevenden to someone else, even if it were a relative. For
all his silence and stubbornness, she knew that she would miss
Jamie. How much, she would likely discover tomorrow.

But right now,
sitting in the little clearing surrounded by people who had become
surprisingly dear to her in a short time, Omega experienced another
sensation, sharper than hunger. It pierced through her worries
about the morrow, and her fear of the future. It was a feeling she
had not encountered since the morning of her wedding eight years
ago, when she woke up and knew that before nightfall she would be
in Matthew Bering’s arms.

She felt
happy.

During her one
London Season, Omega Chartley had attended banquets, routs, teas,
small dinners, large dinners, picnics al fresco, and elegant
luncheons too numerous to mention. She never enjoyed any of them as
much as the rabbit she ate under the trees along the River By in
the company of Jamie Clevenden, Hugh Owen, and Angela.

They tackled the
rabbit with little nicety, but much enthusiasm. Omega tucked her
last clean handkerchief under her chin, grateful for the soberness
of her dark gray traveling dress which defied the most obvious
stains.

“
Angela, have you any salt?”

Hugh paused in
his attack on the morsel before him and wiped his chin on his
shoulder, holding out the rabbit. Angela dug about in her leather
bag and extracted a piece of salt the size of a thimble. Carefully
she scraped her fingernail over the gray lump, as Hugh moved the
rabbit underneath it. He winked at her and tasted the
rabbit.

“
Angela! Magnificent!” exclaimed Hugh.

Jamie held out
his dinner for a minute scraping of salt. “Angela, this is famous!”
he exclaimed.

“
It is
only salt,” said the girl in her realistic Spanish fashion, but her
eyes shone with the pleasure of the compliments.

“
What
else have you in that bag?” Jamie asked, more inclined to talk, now
that the sharpest edge of his hunger had been distracted by the
rabbit.

Angela took
another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “I have a needle and
thread—”

“
Which
has mended trousers and shirts, bullet holes and bayonet wounds,”
interrupted Hugh. “When the little wounds heal, she pulls off the
thread, washes it, and winds it back on the spool.”

Jamie made a
face.

“
I
have a rosary.”

“
Put
the cross in your mouth and bite down hard, and then the needle and
thread glide along easier,” Hugh continued.

“
I
have a medal of St. Christopher, blessed by the pope,” she said
imperturbably.

“
How
else could we swim rivers with swooning schoolteachers?”

Omega
laughed.

“
Hugh,
you should not make a mockery of the pope,” reproved
Angela.

“
Or of
schoolteachers,” added Jamie, getting into the fun of it.
“Especially schoolteachers with prodigious
paperweights.”

“
And I
will not tell you what else is in my
bolsa
,” said Angela
severely, “not even if you have need of it, Jamie
Clevenden.”