The Price Of Honour. Mary Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ to me.’ He paused and pointed to the door into the rest of the house. ‘Have you been through there?’

      ‘Yes. It is empty, nothing to steal, I am afraid.’

      ‘What a disappointment for you.’

      She was about to say she was referring to him and that she was not a thief when she remembered the clothes she had found and intended to keep. Instead she said, ‘Go and wait in the hall if you want any dinner.’

      He made an ostentatious leg and left the room. As soon as she was sure he had really gone, she scrambled out and dried herself quickly, then dressed in her own underclothes and topped them with the dressing-gown she had found. She went to the door and called to him. ‘If you want a bath, you had better empty this one and draw more water.’

      She went to stir the pot and skin the hare and did not know he had come back into the room until he spoke. ‘Where is the owner of this?’

      She turned towards him. He was standing just inside the door holding Philippe’s coat at arm’s length. ‘Dead,’ she said flatly, returning to her task.

      ‘Who was he?’

      ‘My husband.’

      ‘Your husband?’

      ‘Yes. Lieutenant Philippe Santerre.’

      ‘A Frenchman?’

      ‘Yes.’ She looked at him boldly. ‘Does that change your mind?’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘About sharing a meal.’

      ‘No, why should it?’ He began dragging the bath towards the door. She watched as he opened the door, tipped it up and emptied its contents into the yard where the soapy bubbles dispersed in the puddles already there. He brought it back and stood it on end against the wall. ‘Is there anyone in the house at all?’

      ‘No. Unless they are hiding in a cupboard. There is a cellar, but the door is locked, I couldn’t open it.’

      ‘Best be sure.’ He picked up his rifle and left her. She could hear him moving about the house, doing as she had done earlier and searching every cranny. She was stirring the pot and humming quietly to herself when she was startled by a shot. She ran into the hall, half expecting to see him lying dead at the feet of the rightful owner of the house, but there was no one about and all was quiet. A moment later he appeared clutching two bottles of wine. ‘Had to shoot the lock off,’ he said. ‘But there was no one there. They probably evacuated when they heard your people were advancing.’

      ‘My people?’

      ‘Johnny Bluecoats.’

      ‘They are not my people.’

      ‘One of them was. You said so.’

      ‘I am English, just as you are.’

      ‘Ah.’ He smiled wryly, taking the bottles into the kitchen and setting them on the table. ‘How can you be sure that I am?’

      ‘You are dressed in a British uniform and you speak English as well as I do.’

      ‘Neither of which is proof positive. No, if I were you, I would want to know a great deal more than that.’

      ‘Why? It is of little consequence; our paths are unlikely to cross again.’

      ‘Now that would be a pity,’ he said. ‘I thought my luck had changed at last.’

      ‘You are impertinent, sir.’

      He stood squarely and gave her a cool look of appraisal from her bare feet — army boots were hardly a suitable accessory for a blue silk dressing-gown — up over her five feet seven — she had the figure of an angel, he decided — to an oval face in which the green eyes flashed at him with a confusing mixture of humour and anger. He laughed. ‘Pretending to be affronted by what was, after all, meant as a compliment, doesn’t fool me, Madame Santerre. You are no drawing-room miss and, I’ll wager, never have been. A camp follower, that’s what you are, and, it seems, not particular as to the camp. Tell me, is it true that Frenchman are more romantically inclined than Englishmen?’

      She picked up the kitchen knife she had used to cut up the hare and raised it as if she meant to throw it but, deciding that it would be very unwise and probably dangerous, she turned back to her cooking. ‘Are you going to bath before we eat or afterwards? The water is hardly hot yet.’

      ‘It will do me. I’ll take it upstairs.’ He picked up the cauldron of hot water with little effort, though it was extremely heavy, grabbed the handle of the bath and disappeared with them into the hall, carrying the one and dragging the other.

      She went to the door and shouted after him, ‘Not the room with the four-poster. I saw it first.’

      Half an hour later he returned, looking much more presentable, though he had been obliged to put the buttonless uniform on again. ‘There are no men’s clothes at all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the owner was a lady who lived alone. It would account for her leaving in the face of an army, don’t you think?’

      ‘Perhaps.’ She filled two bowls to the brim with the hot stew and set them on the table, together with cutlery and glasses which she had found in the back of a kitchen cupboard. They were obviously not the family silver; that had gone, either with its owner or, after her departure, to marauding soldiers. ‘Would you like me to sew your buttons back on?’

      ‘No.’ He spoked sharply. ‘I like things as they are.’

      ‘Do you? How whimsical.’ She sat down opposite him and picked up her spoon. ‘I should have thought you would be glad to be able to close your coat again. The wind and rain in the mountains are cold, even in summer.’

      ‘I do not feel the cold.’

      ‘No? Not outside perhaps, but inside?’ She did not know why she said that, except that he looked like a man who kept his inner self very much to himself.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      She answered his question with another. ‘Why are you alone, so far from the British lines?’

      ‘Why should the British lines be of interest to me? I told you, you should not make assumptions from appearances.’

      ‘Are you saying you are not an English soldier?’

      ‘I am not.’

      ‘But you were?’

      ‘That is neither here nor there.’

      She guessed that he had been cashiered and it made her curious. In times of war when every available soldier was needed they would not discharge a man unless there was a very compelling reason. What crime had he committed? Ought she to be afraid of him? She supposed if she persisted in asking questions he might become dangerous, but at the moment he seemed more concerned with tucking into his dinner; he was obviously not going to be drawn on the subject. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It is no concern of mine. I only asked because I want to go back to the British lines myself and I thought you might take СКАЧАТЬ