A Reckless Beauty

“And, by Jesus, don’t be callin’ me sir. That’s Sergeant-Major Hart to you, boyo!”

“Yes, sir—Sergeant-Major Hart!” Fanny repeated, wincing at her mistake. She reached into the pocket of her uniform trousers and pulled out the scarf she’d worn tied around her head only three hours ago, talking softly to the gelding as she reached up to tie the material around those wild, rolling eyes.

“Good work, Private Reilly,” the mutton-chopped Sergeant-Major said, prudently standing at Blackie’s side, and not directly behind the animal, in case it decided to kick. “You see that, boys? All of you, cover their eyes, keep ’em quiet. Move!”

Fanny kept her back to the Sergeant-Major, mumbled a quick thank-you, then wondered if she should have spoken at all.

Probably not, as the Sergeant-Major was still paying entirely too much attention to her.

What did he see? What could he see, in this near-darkness? Why didn’t he just go away? Was he about to discover her deception?

She was tall, tall as the real Shamus Reilly. She’d clubbed her hacked-off hair at her nape with a plain black ribbon. Nothing unusual there. And Lord knew her bosom wasn’t giving her away, as nature had already snubbed her nose at Fanny and given most of it away to her sister Morgan.

“Private Reilly.”

Fanny’s spine stiffened. “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”

“How old are, boyo? Fifteen?”

“No, Sergeant-Major!” Fanny, who had just passed her twentieth birthday, denied with what she hoped was the indignation only a lad who had not yet felt the need of a razor could muster. “It’s ten and seven I am, come last Boxing Day.”

“A poor liar you are, Private Reilly. I’ll not have babies in my troop. But I need every man I have, and that includes you. Christ. Ten and seven, my sweet aunt Nellie. Next they’ll be saddlin’ me with babes in arms.”

“Yes, sir—Sergeant-Major!”

By the time they’d finally reached Ostend, Fanny had convinced herself she was safe.

She was wrong.

“Private Reilly!”

Now what did that man want? Fanny fought down a yearning to roll her eyes at the sound of Sergeant-Major Hart’s voice as the man edged his mount in close beside hers as they rode out of the city. Did the man have nothing better to do but to hound her, set her heart skipping every time she thought she was safe, anonymous, hopefully invisible?

“Sergeant-Major!”

“We can talk more private now, can’t we? Who are you huntin’, Private Reilly? A brother? A lover? The father of your unborn child?”

“Sir?” Fanny kept her eyes forward, even as her stomach attempted to drop onto the cobblestones beneath Molly’s feet.

“Sergeant-Major, damn your eyes! And it’s denyin’ it that won’t work, Private Reilly, not when you’re up against a man like me, who’s seen it all before.”

Fanny swallowed hard, trying to moisten her dry mouth. “Yes…yes, Sergeant-Major.”

“Who you after, Private?”

“I’d rather not say, Sergeant-Major.”

“Now, see, lass, there’s where you’d be wrong. I wasn’t askin’ you. It’s not a friendly chat we two are havin’ here, you understand?”

Fanny lifted her chin. “He doesn’t know I’ve followed him. It’s no fault of his, sir.”

“Sergeant-Major. How thick would be your head, Private Reilly, that you can’t remember such a small thing, such an important thing? You’ll stay by yourself, sleep with the horses and keep your yammer shut, even if that means my men think you stupid. Would they be far wrong, Private Reilly, were they to be thinkin’ that?”

“No, Sergeant-Major,” Fanny said, aware that she was blinking rapidly now, on the verge of angry tears. “It’s Lieutenant Rian Becket, cavalry officer in the Thirteenth who I’m searching for, Sergeant-Major. My brother.”

Sergeant-Major Hart rubbed at his florid face with the palm of his hand. “Brother, eh? At least there’s no bun in your oven, thank the Virgin. Seen that enough, I have. He’ll not be thankin’ you for trailin’ after him, Private Reilly. Man wants to think he’s a man, all on his own.”

Fanny nodded, miserable. What had seemed such a grand plan as she’d conjured it up in her bedchamber, now seemed silly, and impossible. Once out in the sunlight and, according to the Sergeant-Major, even in the dark of the hold, her charade had lasted no longer than the Romney Marsh mist on a sunny August morning.

“He’s been here for a bit, sir,” Fanny said, giving up any attempt to be soldierlike. “Do you know where he’d be?”

“Right where we’re headed in a roundabout way, I’d wager, poor devil. Place called Scendelbeck. You just keep your head down and your yap shut, and you’ll be seein’ him soon enough. Wouldn’t be you, though, lass, when he sees you, not for all the world.”

RIAN WATCHED AS the Earl of Uxbridge rode past after a day of reviewing his troops, looking just the sort of romantic hero Rian had dreamed of in his youth, when he’d first thought of war, of soldiering. A rather flamboyant fellow he seemed, the tailoring of his uniform definitely in the first stare, his dark hair waving over his forehead, his brasses twinkling in the sun, the horse beneath him stepping high, seemingly proud of the handsome man on its back.

Wellington had turned command of the cavalry to Uxbridge, but not too happily, Rian had heard, disliking the man’s taste for the dash and flash, but as Uxbridge was also the best cavalry general in the whole of the British army, the Iron Duke hadn’t really had a choice.

“The dear earl eloped with Wellington’s sister-in-law some time ago, you know,” said a voice beside Rian…drawled, actually. “A huge scandal, of course, for which the Duke has yet to forgive our handsome Lothario. It speaks to Uxbridge’s talents in the field that he isn’t still cooling his heels in London, with nothing to do but nag at his tailor.”

Rian reluctantly turned his head to see the Earl of Brede next to him, nonchalantly leaning back against the stone fence bordering a sadly trampled wheat field. The man looked no better than he had a few days previously; if anything, he looked worse. Worst of all, those world-weary hazel eyes were still twinkling the way they had in the tavern as Rian dismissed him as a nursemaid, and he still looked more than a little amused.

Rian jumped to the ground and bowed to the man. “My apologies, my lord. I allowed the drink to speak for me.”

“That, and your youth.” Valentine Clement smiled, running his cool, lazy gaze up and down Rian’s well-turned-out figure. Had he ever been this young, this eager? Perhaps before Talavera, before Albuera, Salamanca and the rest. Damn, how he wished this over, and now they were going to have to best Old Boney yet again. “But you’ve found a batman, perhaps? Neatly pressed, that pretty scarlet coat. Ever pause to think, Becket, what a marvelous target scarlet makes? But you all look so…spiffy, on parade.”

Suddenly emboldened, for he was young, after all, Rian gestured at the Earl’s filthy greatcoat, the nondescript white shirt and loose trousers. “Better the inconspicuous gray of the field mouse…or the kitchen rat?”

“At times, Lieutenant, yes, it is,” Brede drawled, clamping an unlit cheroot into a corner of his mouth, striking a match against the fieldstone, then looking at Rian beneath his brows and the lank, light brown locks that fell over those brows as he put flame to tip. There was something cold, almost calculated, about the man, for all his seeming ease and conversation. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, not this Valentine Clement, Earl of Brede and rumpled spy. “We move soon.”

“Do we?” Rian said, keeping his own tone even. “And I suppose you know where we’re going?”

Brede looked around at the dismissed soldiers, all carrying their rifles inelegantly slung over their shoulders as they headed for any space of ground or comfortable flat rock they could find, still sweating like fatted pigs from another full day of marching about to impress their superiors. He sighed, shook his head. As if marching ever won a battle—although strict discipline did, and that was really the point, wasn’t it? Poor bastards, marching straight into cannon fire whenever the order came. Not for him, not for Valentine Clement. He’d live or die on his own merits, using his own wits, making his own decisions.

“Come with me,” he said, and then vaulted neatly over the wall, heading for the line of trees at the side of the trampled wheat field, expecting young Becket to follow him.

Rian looked behind him, saw Captain Moray wink at him and carefully secured his sword at his side before hopping onto the wall, sliding his legs over and down, to follow after a man he couldn’t quite seem to like. Probably because this man had already proved himself, and Rian knew he still had so much to prove.

They made their way through the cantonment, the neat lines of small white tents, the cooking fires now just coming to life again, and into the trees, at which point Brede turned to Rian, looking hard at him again, measuring him again.

“If you don’t want to tell me anything, I—” Rian began, only to be cut off by a wave of the Earl’s hand.

Brede inhaled hard on the cheroot, blew out a stream of blue smoke and then said what he’d come to say. Hell of a thing, being beholden to somebody. Even Jack, who’d saved his life for him, twice. But he’d be damned if he’d wrap this pretty boy in cotton wool. Every man has to be given the right to prove himself, sometime.

“Jack swears you’ve got a good head, can ride anything with four legs or even less, know how to shoot, and how best to use that pretty sticker you’ve got strapped to that neatly pressed uniform. You know your place, says my old friend, and how to guard a secret. Now, listen to me. You saw Uxbridge today, Becket. Frippery fellow, you’d think, looks useless, but you stay close to him if you can. He knows what he’s about, he’s as hard as rock at his center. By tomorrow the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the last of the Thirteenth, the Sixteenth and the Twenty-third—they’ll all be here. Light Dragoons, mostly. You’ll be maneuvered all over hell and back at a field not far from here, eight, possibly ten hours or more a day, until Uxbridge is satisfied. After that, Becket, rest. Rest as much as you can, you and your horse. Stay sober, feed your belly, keep your socks dry—hang the wet ones around your neck, dry them that way, and for God’s sake don’t lose your extra pair. Your feet rot off and you’re no good to anybody. The next time the men move from here, Becket, it will be into battle.”

Rian felt his blood singing through his veins. “When? Where?”

Brede smiled, the cheroot still stuck in the corner of his mouth, and Rian was still having trouble separating the unkempt clothes from the obvious intelligence in those piercing hazel eyes. God, he looked the ruffian. Not an earl at all, at least not at all like the Earl of Uxbridge. “I’d guess Quatre Bras or Ligny, somewhere in that direction, although nobody else does. Not yet. But they will, I can only hope, once I’ve made my final report. Now, listen to me. We can none of us stop this, you understand? The Alliance won’t allow it, Napoleon can’t avoid it. But I can get you out of here.”