Loe raamatut: «The Wedding Wager»

Chapter One

Bramleigh Military Hospital for

Enlisted Men

1812

The whole place smelled of men.

Leonora Freemantle could almost feel her nose twitch and her muscles tense, like a hare or hind scenting predators on the wind. Looking neither left nor right, she strode down the ward behind Matron. As she passed bed after bed of convalescing soldiers, she sensed their covert glances, heard their muttered quips.

“Looks like Matron’s got a new dragon-in-training, lads.”

“D’yer reckon she’s sucking on a lemon?”

“Puts me in mind of me old drill sergeant.”

The derisive snickers dogged Leonora’s footsteps. Thrusting out her chin and stiffening her spine, she fiercely resisted the urge to adjust her spectacles and straighten her bonnet. They might take it as a sign of weakness. Never would she give them the satisfaction of thinking she cared for their opinion in the least.

Still, she could not quench the blistering blush that seared her face. How long had some of these men been without a woman? Yet they still found her laughably unappealing.

At least they were honest about their feelings. One could not say the same for most of their sex. That, Leonora had learned from bitter experience.

Matron veered into a small common room, heading straight for a clutch of men crouched in one corner. Leonora heard the muted click of dice tumbling along the hardwood floor. A shout went up, followed by a flurry of muttered curses.

“Knicked-it again, Archer!” cried one of the spectators in tones of grudging admiration. “Damned if you ain’t the luckiest elbow-shaker I’ve ever seen.”

At the mention of that name, Leonora perked up her ears. If this was the Sergeant Archer she’d come to see, it was encouraging to know he liked gambling.

The thrower scooped up his ivories with a practiced motion. “Luck’s got naught to do with it.” A note of teasing laughter warmed his words. “It’s skill, my boy, simple as that.”

“Ser’nt Archer!” Matron descended on the players like a terrier into a chicken coop. “How m’ny times have I told ye? Thar’s to be no gamblin’ in the hospital!”

The sergeant rose to his feet, unfolding the long, lean-muscled body of a Rifleman. For an instant he winced, as though the movement hurt him. Then his features blossomed into a smile of devastating charm, which he fixed upon Matron.

Leonora’s sensible, bluestocking heart began to flutter in a most unnerving fashion. Nothing in Cousin Wesley’s letters from the Peninsula had prepared her for the sight of his sergeant.

Stop it! she willed herself. Stop this foolishness, at once!

Her traitorous body mutinied. Her breath quickened.

Why should the sight of this man affect her so? Leonora asked herself as she watched him jolly Matron into a mood of exasperated tolerance. She hoped an intellectual consideration of the problem might bring her insurgent emotions back under control.

Why him? She’d seen far handsomer specimens—at least by the standard of the times. Smoother, blander, more uniformly proportioned.

There was nothing smooth or bland about this man’s face. Every feature was bold and definite. The nose and chin jutted out as though hewn from golden-brown stone, ready to take on the world. The wide, bowed mouth looked capable of a vast spectrum of expression, while the dark eyes wielded a provocative, penetrating gaze.

On a face less striking, the emphatic black eyebrows would have dominated. On Sergeant Morse Archer, they harmonized into an aspect of arresting appeal.

“What have we here?” He turned his piercing, hypnotic eyes upon Leonora, one full brow raised expressively.

Their color was a dynamic melding of green, brown and gold, Leonora realized as Sergeant Archer stepped toward her. For the first time in many years she yearned to be beautiful. His striking good looks made her all too aware of her own shortcomings. Though she told herself it was the height of folly, she could not help wanting him to like what he saw.

Matron answered his question. “A visitor for ye, Ser’nt Archer. Now mind yer manners.”

At a look from the sergeant, his gambling companions rapidly dispersed. Matron took up a post just outside the door. Whether she meant to guard the privacy of their conversation, or to act as some sort of chaperon, Leonora was not certain.

“What can such a lovely lady want with the likes of me?” asked Sergeant Archer once the room had cleared. His voice was as rich and mellow as well-aged brandy. Once again he unleashed his potent smile.

A shiver of icy wrath went through Leonora. Lovely lady? The liar! Did this cynical charmer expect her to lap up his spurious flattery? As she pulled off her glove, she longed to smack it against his cheek. Remembering how desperately she needed to win his cooperation, she curbed her ire and thrust out her hand for him to shake.

“Sergeant Archer, I’m Leonora Freemantle. I believe you know my uncle, Sir Hugo Peverill. I’ve come to make you a proposition.”

She could tell her words unsettled him, though he made a determined effort to hide it. Those expressive brows drew together and his mien darkened like a summer sky before a storm. His deep voice rumbled with the muted menace of distant thunder.

“Go away, Miss Freemantle. I’m not interested in your proposition.”

He tried to execute a crisp pivot on his heel. Apparently his wounded leg refused to cooperate. His stern frown crumpled into a grimace of pain as he staggered.

Before she had a chance to think better of it, Leonora reached out to steady him. The sleeves of his coarse-woven shirt were rolled up to the elbows. As she grasped his bronzed forearm, she felt the taut power of his muscle, the disconcerting warmth of his bare skin and the provocative caress of his dark body hair.

A jolt of mysterious energy surged in her. From the sensitive tips of her fingers and the palm of her hand, it radiated up her arm—to her throat and her bosom and the pit of her belly.

She hated it.

How dare this exasperating creature provoke her so? Even as he dismissed her without hearing a word she’d come to say. Long ago she had vowed never to submit to a man’s whims. She had no intention of starting now. Not with her whole future at stake.

When he tried to wrench his arm away, she tightened her hold. “I’ll let go when you agree to hear me out, Sergeant Archer.”

Animosity warred with amusement—every nuance of the battle showing on his vigorous, mobile face. Amusement won.

A row of square, even teeth flashed briefly in a fiendish grin. “This could turn out to be a very interesting day, if I choose not to listen.”

Leonora’s cheeks smarted. She knew what he would say next. Her own thoughts had raced ahead to the same conclusion.

“Not to mention an even more interesting night.” A warm, infectious chuckle bubbled up from some well of humor deep within him.

Abruptly, Leonora released his arm. Tears of impotent fury prickled in the corners of her eyes. She refused to let them fall. Why had Uncle Hugo chosen this infuriating man as the subject of their wager?

As he limped toward the door, she leveled a desperate parting shot at his back. “Strange. I didn’t take you for a fool, Sergeant.”

Her words found their mark. He hesitated in midstride, and his shoulder blades bunched, as though he had just taken a blow between them.

Leonora pressed her momentary advantage. “In my experience, only a fool shuts his ears to a proposal that might benefit him.”

Though he continued to face the door, Morse Archer lobbed his reply back at her. “When a woman like you comes with a proposition for a man like me, Miss Free-mantle, it isn’t often to his benefit. At least, not in the long run.”

A shriek of vexation rose in Leonora’s throat, but she stifled it—barely. She’d assumed Morse Archer would leap at the opportunity she offered him. Instead he had thrust her into the role of supplicant. One she abhorred.

It made her twice as determined to win Uncle Hugo’s wager and free herself from the need to go cap in hand to a man ever again.

“Pray, what do you mean by a woman like me, Sergeant Archer?”

“Don’t be thick, woman.” He rounded on her. “I mean a lady of your class.” The disdain in his voice was palpable.

At last—a scrap of leverage to use on him.

“Would it surprise you to learn that I care no more for the notion of class than you do?”

“It would.”

Drawing an unsteady breath, Leonora forced herself to look squarely into his penetrating gaze. “I believe all that separates the so-called upper and lower orders of our society is education.”

“Do you then?” He crossed his arms over his chest in a pose that demanded, And what’s that to me?

At least he made no further move to quit the room.

“I do. That is why I’m here. Uncle Hugo thinks I’m a crank, as does nearly everyone else of my acquaintance.”

One mercurial brow lifted a fraction, as if to cast his opinion with the rest. Leonora hurried on, before he took a notion to dismiss her again.

“My uncle has set me a wager, to test the validity of my theory.”

At the word wager, she sensed a subtle air of interest from Sergeant Archer.

Eagerly, she explained the plan. “I have three months to educate a common soldier and pass him off as a gentleman officer during a Season at Bath. If I win the bet, Uncle Hugo will finance a school for indigent girls, of which I shall be headmistress.”

“And I’m the common, ignorant soldier you plan to work your magic on?” The question sounded innocent enough, but the subtle curl of his lip conveyed scorn.

“If by magic you mean something easy or illusionary, you’re mistaken, Sergeant. It will be three months of very hard work for both of us. In the end, I believe you’ll find the result worthwhile. Will you do it?”

He smiled now—with his lips at least. “No, Miss Free-mantle. I will not.” His tone and posture were a parody of high courtesy. “Now please be so kind as to go away. You’ve taken up quite enough of my time for one afternoon.”

Didn’t he recognize the chance she was offering him? Couldn’t he see the noble cause it would serve?

“Are you devoid of ambition, man? Not the least bit interested in improving yourself?”

The insincere smile disappeared. Nostrils flared, he bore down on her like a charging bull. Against her will, Leonora retreated a step before his menacing advance. He stopped within a whisker of her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. He spoke with muted intensity, his whisper more intimidating than most men’s thunderous bluster.

“I have plenty of ambition, Miss Freemantle. On my terms. I happen to like who and what I am. So you can keep your improvements. I don’t need you or anyone else turning me into some mincing, mutton-headed gentleman.”

Leonora held her ground. Somewhere deep within her, she fought to quench a flicker of admiration for Morse Archer’s pride and independence. Remembering all she stood to gain…and lose, she forced herself to try one last time.

“Please, Sergeant. If not for yourself, think of my school.”

“Where you can turn wholesome farm girls into useless debutantes? An admirable cause, to be sure.”

With all the dignity she could muster, Leonora replied, “I don’t expect you to understand my motives. No one else does.”

“The trouble is, I understand all too well, Miss Free-mantle. I know all about having the charity of my betters crammed down my throat and having to tug a forelock and say ‘Thankee, ma’am’, even while I choke on it.”

His words smote her. Her school would be nothing like what he described…or would it? “We are not talking about charity, Sergeant.”

“Aren’t we, Miss Freemantle?” His burst of rage seemed to collapse on itself. Slowly he turned away from her and hobbled toward the door.

For a moment Leonora just stood, watching him go. Limp and spent, she felt as though she’d been buffeted by a violent storm. As she gathered up her courage to once again run the gauntlet of stares and whispers in the ward, she wondered how her uncle would react to this turn of events. He’d been so adamant on engaging this particular man.

Well, she had tried her best to recruit Morse Archer. He had refused. Uncle Hugo would simply have to pick someone else.

In some ways it was a pity. The sergeant seemed to possess a degree of intelligence, and his speech was not too rustic. Taken together with his arresting physical presence, it would not have been difficult to pass him off as a gentleman.

All the same, Leonora found herself breathing a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed was to spend three months in the close company of a man like Morse Archer. So stubborn. So intractable.

So compelling.

Morse watched Leonora Freemantle stalk off the ward, clearly oblivious to the winks and elbow digs with which the men greeted her departure. Turning to the window, he continued to stare after her as she climbed into her barouche and drove away. He wanted to make certain she was gone.

Or so he told himself.

“Give the ivories another rattle, Sergeant?” A young corporal from Morse’s regiment flashed a hopeful grin. The lad’s right arm had been severed below the elbow, but he’d learned to throw the dice pretty well with his left hand.

Morse shook his head in the manner of an elder brother who had better occupations than entertaining the little ones in the family. “You heard Matron, Corporal Boyer. No gambling on hospital property. I’m in hot water enough with the army. No need to go courting more.”

Boyer flashed him an awkward grin, then ambled off. This was the first time Morse had referred to the Board of Inquiry, though the matter must have been common knowledge among the convalescing soldiers at Bramleigh.

There was a good chance he would end up cashiered. Dismissed from the army in disgrace. Thinking of the Board made Morse think of the miserable retreat from Bucaso. His leg throbbed, just above the knee, where a French bayonet had pierced it.

During the British retreat from Bucaso.

Limping over to his cot, he sank down on it, stretching out his long frame. His heels projected two inches past the end of the thin mattress. To distract himself from the pain in his leg and the equally painful memories of that last rearguard skirmish, Morse turned his thoughts to Leonora Freemantle.

The gall of the woman! To stroll in like Lady Bountiful with her Christmas basket and offer to turn him into a gentleman. In the instant before she’d opened her mouth, something about her had attracted him. Now Morse was damned if he could decide what it might have been.

She had little in common with the type of woman he usually favored. In the first place, her figure was too lean and angular for his taste. He seldom paid much heed to women’s clothes, but in her case they were too ugly to ignore. He often noticed women’s hair, but Miss Freemantle had kept hers pulled back so severely and covered by her bonnet that he could not have sworn as to its color. There might have been something to her eyes—color or clarity, but tight little spectacles detracted from their modest charms.

Altogether a prim, bluestocking spinster.

None of these had roused Morse’s antagonism, though. Her voice had done that.

Since joining the army, during his service in India and Spain, he’d seldom had occasion to hear an English lady speak. There was only one female at the Bramleigh hospital—if you could call her that. Matron, the old gargoyle, spoke in Cornish dialect so broad Morse often had trouble understanding her. Nothing in her gravelly voice evoked painful memories. Morse could not say the same for Leonora Freemantle.

To make matters worse, her first words to him had concerned a proposition. True, it was not the kind of proposition Lady Pamela Granville had made him on the day before he enlisted. The emotional echo stung just the same. It had made him resist Miss Freemantle’s offer even before he heard it. Now, as his leg throbbed and he tried to block out the persistent din of the ward, Morse wondered if he’d been a fool to reject her proposal out-of-hand.

His other options were depressingly limited. He couldn’t stay on at Bramleigh much longer, since he was past danger of amputation and he could use the leg, however haltingly. Even if the Board of Inquiry didn’t drum him out of the service, he could not go back to soldiering. The doctors were optimistic that his mobility would return with time. Until then, his lameness would make it all but impossible to find the sort of job his limited education had equipped him for.

The dinner bell rang. With a weary sigh, Morse hauled himself up from his cot and joined the tail end of the queue headed for the refectory. There, he spooned the tepid, watery stew into his mouth with little interest or enjoyment. Boyer and a few of the other lads from his regiment took their places with Morse at their accustomed table. In one way or another, they were all casualties of the retreat from Bucaso.

They were the lucky ones.

“Yer comp’ny didn’t stay long, Sergeant.” There was an implied question in Boyer’s innocent remark. “Not exactly your kinda woman, were she?”

The men exchanged grins all around the table. Their sergeant’s way with women was a point of pride among his men. They knew he had a taste for pretty, plump, saucy barmaids. They also knew he seldom had trouble attracting them.

Without glancing up from his stew, Morse cut their amusement short with a single muttered sentence. “The lady was Lieutenant Peverill’s cousin.”

A muted “Oh” rose from the men, breathed with obvious regret and perhaps a little shame. The late Lieutenant Wesley Peverill had enjoyed universal esteem among the enlisted men in his company. None more than his sergeant—Morse Archer.

Just then, Morse realized what had drawn him to Miss Freemantle in the instant before she spoke. It was the likeness to her cousin. Lieutenant Peverill had been a short, slight man with a deceptive air of delicacy. Yet that unpromising frame had housed the guile of a serpent, the tenacity of a badger and the courage of a lion. For as long as he lived, Morse Archer would rue his young lieutenant’s senseless death.

He had glimpsed something of Lieutenant Peverill’s cleverness and ferocious bravery in the woman. She had stood her ground and peppered him with every scrap of ammunition she could muster. When he’d turned on her with the full force of his wrath, she had scarcely flinched. He’d been skeptical of her claim that social class meant nothing to her. Now, remembering her kinship to the lieutenant, he could believe it.

Boyer spoke up again. “Came to thank ye, did she, Sergeant?”

Morse nodded. “Something like that.”

The men knew Sir Hugo Peverill had called on their sergeant soon after they’d all arrived at Bramleigh. The old man had come to thank Morse for risking his life to rescue the lieutenant from certain death. Unfortunately, the young man’s wounds had proven too grave to survive. But his heartbroken father had cherished the small consolation that the lad had died and been buried at his home in England rather than some shallow, unmarked grave in Portugal.

Sir Hugo had offered Morse money, a job, anything he might ask. Morse had declined with rather ill grace. He took no pride in his actions during the retreat. His desperate charge into a forest of French bayonets had been too little, too late. To accept a reward for it only compounded his sense of guilt.

Apparently the wily old Sir Hugo was unwilling to take no for an answer. Thus the transparent stratagem of this wager with his niece. Morse did not go so far as to suspect Leonora Freemantle knew it was a ruse. She could not have entreated him so passionately unless she believed it to be genuine.

Gnawing on a crust of hard bread, Morse imagined the food he might have received at Sir Hugo’s estate, Laurel-wood. When rations had been tight in Portugal, Lieutenant Peverill had often waxed lyrical about the contents of his father’s larder and the talent of his kitchen staff. More such stories recurred to Morse as he lolled around the ward after dinner feeling curiously restless.

That night he dreamed of a fine, fat feather bed made up with linen that smelled of sunshine and clover. A warm, cheery fire blazing in the hearth. A plump roast goose laid out on the sideboard with all the trimmings, its skin brown and crisp over juicy dark meat. Morse woke to find his mouth watering.

No doubt about it, Laurelwood would have made a soft billet for the next three months, while he recovered the full use of his leg. A snug roof over his head. Meals the like of which he hadn’t eaten in years. And nothing required of him but to suffer the tutelage of Sir Hugo’s bluestocking niece. For a wonder, the idea rather appealed to him.

It was too late now, though.

No doubt Miss Freemantle had gone straight out and acquired a more willing subject. A sharp fellow who didn’t let pride and foolish memories blind him to a good thing.

Morse recalled his father’s gruff admonition. “When a man’s got nothing, he can’t afford pride, son.”

He also remembered the bitter elegy he’d muttered over the unmarked graves of his family. “When a man’s got nothing, pride’s all he can afford.”

One of these days, Morse Archer decided with a rueful shake of his head, his misbegotten pride was going to land him in serious trouble.