A Rose for Major Flint. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ hands, not wings. One of them came close, reached for her with long, pale claws.

       ‘Pauvre...monsieur...pauvre petit...’

      She huddled closer into the Devil’s grip. He would stop them pecking her. They had one of the dead men now, bloody and limp as they carried him through the great gate. Like Gerald, only this one had all of his face. Perhaps they were going to eat him, peck at his eyes... Her fingers locked into the strap across the Devil’s back. No...no... The words stayed closed in with the scream.

      She felt the Devil shrug. The black crows chattered and flapped, then they rode on, her and the Devil on the great black hell horse. He said something, low, in his deep voice. It rumbled in his chest, against her ear, and this time she understood the words. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rose?’

      Who is Rose? It wasn’t her, she knew that. Her name was...was... It had gone. He had told her his name. Adam. That could not be right, the Devil was not called Adam. Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan. Those were the Devil’s names.

      Why wasn’t he hot? He should be burning hot, instead he was warm. And hard. He’d said he was made of stone... Flint, that was it. That was why he was hard, his thighs under her were rock that moved with the hell horse. His chest was solid, like holding on to an oak tree. His eyes were the blue of flames deep in the heart of a log fire, and he smelled of blood and smoke and sulphur.

      Dare she sleep? It had been so long since she had slept. There had been a ball... Memory shifted, blurred, focused for a moment. The night before she had been too excited to sleep. Then the night of the ball she had lain awake with Gerald in her arms, stroking his hair, trying to give him some comfort for his fears. How long had it been since then? Two battles, a rainstorm... Why was I at a ball? Who was Gerald?

      Could she sleep with all the noise in her head? She clung tighter to the Devil. He would keep her safe. It made no sense, but then nothing did any more. Nothing ever would again and all because she had sinned.

       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 little 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 СКАЧАТЬ