Susanna Fraser (3 page)

Luisa had only said, “Oh,” but for the next few days Rose had been unwontedly shy and self-conscious around Elijah.

Now...would he ask her? What if she found a way to hint she wanted him to?
Was
he what she wanted? Even Luisa had been surprised to hear her call him handsome, and Rose herself had found his size and blackness strange and disturbing in their unfamiliarity when she first met him.

She shook her head. She was borrowing trouble, and she didn’t have to find the answers tonight. Tired despite herself, she dozed a little, though the sound of the regiment celebrating their victory frightened her as it never had while Sam lived. All that drunken shouting and singing, no more than thirty yards away where the men clustered outside the large tents the unmarried men shared. If any one of them should remember she was here, alone and unprotected... Still, her eyes fell shut.

She startled awake to the sound of heavy footfalls approaching. Sitting up, she reached into a pack and pulled out a knife. She’d scream if anyone tried anything. Surely Jemmy and Luisa would help her.

“Rose.”

The voice was kind and low, just enough above a whisper to make itself heard over the drunken buzz of the camp. She let out a long, ragged breath. “Elijah,” she called in the same tone.

“Come out, if you will. I’ve something to show you.”

Chapter Three

Curious almost despite herself, she crawled out into the night, careful not to awaken Jake. Elijah extended a hand to help her to her feet. He had a strong grip, but he knew how to make his strength gentle. The moonlight was bright enough that she could see the difference in their hands, hers pale and his dark.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It feels...safer, on a night like this, not to be alone.” She nodded in the general direction of the main fire.

“If you wish, I can stay here tonight—outside your tent, of course,” he added hastily. “That way, if anyone tries to come near you...” His voice trailed off.

“Thank you. I’d be grateful.” No harm could come to her with Elijah Cameron watching over her. Most of the men liked him too well to risk his ire, and even Georgie Yonge and his kind still feared his size.

She led him to a place a few feet from the tent where the ground was level and smooth. She sat and patted the ground in invitation.

He sank down beside her, graceful even in that.

“You said you have something to show me,” she prompted when he didn’t immediately speak.

He looked around as if checking to ensure no one was watching or listening. “Yes, and to give you, too. Is little Jake asleep?”

“He is, just now.”

“Good. I don’t think he needs to see this. He’s too young to be much good at keeping secrets.”

He unfastened his uniform jacket. Rose drew back in surprise, but he only reached inside, took out some object and pressed it into her hands. It was cool and heavy, a chain of metal and smooth stones.

She bit back a shocked squeal and gaped at it. A necklace. In the moonlight she couldn’t see the color of the stones, but there were many of them, and larger than any she had ever seen before. “What...?”

“Sam was killed fighting a French soldier for that. I scared the Frog off, and Sam said I must give it to you. His last words.”

Her heart pounded almost as hard as it had when she’d realized Sam was dead. “What...are they? I can’t see in this light.”

“Rubies, I think. They might be garnets. They’re red.”

Rubies were worth more, but even if they were only garnets, so many of them and so large must still be a small fortune. “Red red, or wine red?”

“Bright red.”

“Rubies, then,” she said. She’d learned something of such matters, in her brief stint as a maid at Aspwell Park.

“Of course, they might not be real,” Elijah pointed out.

She weighed the necklace from hand to hand. It
felt
real, important and solid, but... “I don’t know how to find out, either. It’s not as if there’s anyone we could trust to ask.” If she took it to someone who would know—an officer rich enough to know his gemstones, or a jeweler in some town large enough to have one—they would only see a treasure in the hands of a common woman who had no rights to such a thing. Even if it was real, ten-to-one they’d tell her the jewels were only glass, all the better to take it off her hands for a pitiful price and have the riches for themselves.

“Not here, no,” Elijah agreed. “But in London...my brother-in-law owns a pawnshop. I doubt he sees much of this quality, but he’d know, or know how to find out. And I trust him. Well, I’ve only met him once, but my parents like him now.”

“Now?” she asked, briefly diverted. “They didn’t always?”

“They thought she could do better. Miriam was the princess, you see, and they thought to see her marry a clerk like Daddy, or a better sort of shopkeeper. Not something as shady as a pawnbroker.”

“Is he...” Rose began, then trailed off. She’d been about to ask if Miriam’s husband was black. She didn’t know how many black men and women lived in London, only that she had hardly ever seen any as a girl growing up in Bedfordshire. There had been a few passing through on the Great North Road, footmen or grooms glimpsed from a distance at the Red Lion, but she’d never got close enough to do more than gape at them. After her marriage she’d seen black sailors on the transport that brought them to the Peninsula, several more in various regimental bands...and then Elijah himself.

“He’s a freeborn black man, like me,” he said, somehow guessing how she’d meant to finish the sentence. “There are more of us than you’d think in London. Runaways, freed slaves, sailors between ships, a few families that have been there for generations. More men than women, though. Miriam didn’t lack for suitors.”

“Oh.” She felt suddenly foolish and provincial. “I’ve never been to London,” she admitted.

“I haven’t seen much of it myself, since I stayed with the regiment. I visited my family when I could when we were at Shorncliffe, but I was just a young private then. We didn’t often get leave to visit our mamas and daddies when we were supposed to be on guard against Boney invading.” He grinned, a brief white flash in the darkness. “I never thought we’d be taking the fight to him, in those days.”

“No one did.” She could hardly believe it now. They were getting close to France, and even she had heard the stories of how the French emperor had lost an unimaginably vast army in Russia last year and was now having to scramble to keep his crown. If only Sam had shown more sense, he could’ve lived through to victory, and they could have gone
home
, together. Tears rose up in her eyes again. “Why did he think I’d want this thing?” She tried to keep her voice from breaking, but didn’t quite succeed. “I’d rather have
him.
”

Elijah rested a cautious hand on her shoulder and, when she didn’t push him away, gently drew her in to nestle against his sturdy bulk. Before tonight he’d never touched her. “I know,” he said.

“Sam didn’t
think.
I—I loved him, but he never did think.” She wished the words unsaid as soon as they were out of her mouth, but they were true.

“Most people don’t—or not very often.”

“I shouldn’t be saying this. I
shouldn’t.
If Sam had thought, he wouldn’t have married me, and then where would I be?”

Elijah vented a noncommittal sort of sound that somehow welcomed her to continue without pushing her to do so if she’d rather keep her counsel. She’d never told anyone in the army how she’d come to marry Sam before, not even Luisa. It was too sordid a story for friendly talk over a shared meal. “I’d been turned off from my place as a housemaid at Aspwell Park without a character.”

“Housemaid, not cook?—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted you.”

She shook her head. “Housemaid. Lady Bassett already had a cook, and I was only seventeen, too young for such a post even if she’d needed one. I would rather have been a scullery maid, but everyone said I ought to be happy to be a housemaid, since they have a higher rank and better pay. But I would’ve been happier in the kitchens, and John Bassett most likely never would’ve seen me.”

“I think I know how this ends.” Elijah loosened his grip on her shoulders but didn’t release her.

She was glad of the continued contact. He was so warm, so solid. “You probably do. He was just down from Cambridge, with nothing better to do than lounge about waiting to inherit. He followed me about and tried to flirt with me, and when that didn’t get him anywhere, tried to force his attentions upon me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It happens,” she said. It was so long ago now. It had altered the course of her life, but she couldn’t imagine going back. She’d probably still be a housemaid. Sam would’ve married someone else, and she would be much the poorer for the loss of him and of Jake.

“It shouldn’t.”

“The world is full of things that shouldn’t happen, but do every day. It could’ve been worse. Lady Bassett happened to walk in, the first time her son actually attacked me. So she stopped him before...before anything too dreadful could happen. But rather than believe the worst of him, she declared me a temptress and said I should go to London and get my living on my back like others of my sort. There I was, all my family dead, with no home and no idea how to find honest work. The Merrifields took me in. Sam’s sister, Jenny, is just my age, and she was always my dearest friend. Our mothers had been great friends, too, and they said they were glad to have me for her sake. A few weeks later Sam asked me to marry him. It surprised me—I’d never thought of him that way before—yet I liked him very well, and I thought it would be better to be a wife than to go into service again. But he didn’t have steady work in the village, not enough to keep a wife, and soon enough a baby on the way, so when the recruiting sergeant came through town...you know the rest.”

Elijah was silent for a moment, and Rose almost regretted having told him so much. Yet it was a relief to talk of it, to mark the path that had brought her to this spot.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m glad Sam was there for you then.”

“I wish he was here for me
now.
” She sighed, shrugged and sat up straight. Elijah dropped his arm, though he stayed close beside her. “Why did you do it, Sam?” she asked the darkness. She still clutched the necklace, which had grown warm under her touch. “What did he think I’d do with this? It’s not as though I could wear it.”

“He said you could have what you want—no, that’s not it. He said you could
be
what you want, now.”

Now all became clear. “The Red Lion.”

“What?”

“An inn in our village. It served the most dreadful food you can imagine.”

Elijah laughed softly in the darkness. “I’ve lived almost my entire life in an army regiment. I can imagine some very bad food.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “I can see that. Well, it was as bad as food can be when it ought to be good. There was enough of it, and good English beef and mutton that hadn’t been walked half to starvation before it was slaughtered, so it
should’ve
tasted better than anything I cook here, but it didn’t. I used to dream of being able to buy the inn so I could make Aspwell Heath a place where everyone on the Great North Road would stop to linger over their food, even the ones who were eloping to Scotland. Sam said when he enlisted that after the war we’d go home and do just that. I didn’t know how he expected to save the money, even then, and I’d certainly given up on any such thing by the time we’d been here a month, but he kept talking about it, that he’d get the money, somehow or other.”

“Hm. Is that still what you want?”

Was it? Rose clutched the necklace tighter and considered. “I’m not sure,” she said after a moment. “Most people only stopped there long enough to change horses.” She shook her head. “If I’m going to cook, I don’t want it to be for people who don’t slow down long enough to taste it properly. Half the joy of it is knowing that people like my cooking. Sam always did.
You
do.”

“You’re the best cook I’ve ever met. Even better than my mother.”

“High praise indeed.”

“She
is
very good. She was Colonel Dryhurst’s cook, while my father was his clerk.”

Now, that was a thought. Could she, Rose, get a similar post? Somehow Mrs. Cameron had managed it while raising a son and a daughter. Possibly some officer who liked to set a fine table might take a similar interest in her.

“I might enjoy that sort of work,” she said. “Cook in a household that appreciated good cooking. Only, I suppose that sort wants chefs and not cooks, and French ones by preference.”

“If the necklace is real, and you can find a way to sell it, you won’t need to work
for
anyone,” Elijah pointed out. “If you can’t buy your Red Lion outright, I’m sure you could at least lease it, or some other inn if it’s not for sale, and work toward owning it.”

She frowned thoughtfully into the night. Now that it was no longer impossible, she found she still liked to imagine herself mistress of the Red Lion. And she’d be home at last. There was one difficulty, however. “When I marry, it’ll be my husband’s necklace—but wait. I don’t have to marry again, either.” Suddenly the world seemed
large
, large and open, and she blinked back tears that carried more relief than sadness.

“No, not unless you want to someday. You can take Jake and go home to England now. You won’t have to tell about the necklace to pay your passage. I took enough good plain silver coins from that baggage train to pay your way many times over.”

“I couldn’t take so much from you—”

“It wouldn’t be taking. You can repay me, when
I’m
back in England, if your inn will have a place for such as me to eat along with all the quality who’ll be clamoring for a spot at your table.”

She laughed. “I’ll always make a place for
you.
But I have coin enough of my own to pay our passage—that’s what Luisa took for our share.”

“Good, then. But I’ll still stop at your inn, after we win and the world is at peace.”

“That will be a happy day indeed.” Rose yawned, tired despite herself. “I suppose we should try to sleep. Thank you, Elijah.”

“What for?”

“What for? Why, for everything. For bringing this to me, for keeping guard tonight—and for helping me see I really am free now.” She clutched the chain of rubies tighter. “I can go
home.
”

“I’ll miss your cooking more than I can say,” he said lightly, “but I’ll do anything I can to speed your path.”

“Thank you,” she repeated. Impulsively she leaned over to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head at just the wrong moment and her lips found his.

She froze in pure shock, as did he. Then he slid a hand around to the back of her neck and held her there. All she could feel was his fingers threading into her hair, deft and questing, and his lips on hers, warm and seeking and hungry. The hand and lips felt good, they belonged. She kissed him back, for a heartbeat or two, until she realized what she was doing. Planting a hand on his chest, she pushed him away and jumped to her feet.

“I didn’t mean to—” she began.

“I’m sorry—” he said at the same time.

She brushed anxious hands down her dress. “I should check on Jake. And—and sleep. The nights are so short.” The moon was already sinking, and Elijah was nothing but a dark form in the darkness. She was glad. She couldn’t bear to see him just now.