A Reckless Beauty

“It would seem so, Wiggins,” Rian said, motioning for Fanny to join him, as he’d opened a narrow door, exposing a set of equally narrow stairs leading down, and from the smells emanating from beyond, felt certain he’d found the way to the kitchens. “So, your master isn’t always so unfriendly?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Becket, sir, I wouldn’t want you to think that,” Wiggins said, winking. “He’s always so unfriendly. He just usually takes pains to hide it better. We’re sorely short-staffed, what with the city so crowded. So I thank you for your help, sir. We’d best feed him. Soon.”

FANNY KNEW SHE WASN’T a patch on her sister Elly when it came to organizing a household. But she’d watched her enough, and had spent enough hours in the kitchens at Becket Hall to know the rhythms and routines of that particular area, usually chopping up carrots as punishment for something she’d done and would doubtless go off to do again once Bumble released her from her stool and pile of vegetables.

Within the hour she had struck up a smiling, gesturing friendship with a buxomy old woman named Hilda, who spoke no English. As for herself, she spoke no German or whatever language the woman kept tossing at her. She’d washed her face and hands at the wooden trough in a corner of the narrow kitchen, shoved some lovely fat slices of ham into her cheeks and made certain a heavily loaded tray had been sent up to the Ogre in the Tower, which is how she’d decided to think of the Earl of Brede.

Her filthy scarlet jacket draped over the back of one of the high-backed chairs, Fanny sat cross-legged on her chair—wonderfully comfortable in her uniform trousers—and looked across the scarred wooden kitchen table at her brother, once again urging him to, for pity’s sake, stop pouting and eat something. After all, it wasn’t the end of the world, was it?

Rian sat back in his chair, shaking his head at her. “You have no bloody idea how difficult you’ve made things, do you? Just as long as you’re happy.”

“Rian, that’s not true,” she said, waving a fork at him, the threat lessened quite a bit by the small roasted potato stuck on the tines. “I said I was sorry, and I am. But we’ve suffered no major setback, now have we? I’ve seen you, I’m safely here with the Ogre, and you’re to be joining Wellington’s staff in the morning, or even later tonight. I know how happy that makes you. I’ll pen a note to Papa tomorrow and I’m sure the Ogre will frank it, so there’s nothing to worry about there. All in all,” she said, pushing the potato into her mouth and maneuvering it against the inside of her cheek, “daring to overlook my punishment when I get back to Becket Hall, I’d consider the exercise a success.”

Rian gave up his moody pose and smiled. “As I remember the thing, you also thought coaxing Molly safely over that five-bar fence a success, even if you’d fallen off and broken your arm in the process, and couldn’t ride again for the rest of that summer. But Wellington’s staff, Fanny! Can you imagine? I’ll be right in the thick of things.”

Fanny plunked an elbow onto the tabletop and rested her chin in her hand. Although at least six years her senior, he was so, so young. “What do you suppose you’ll do?”

“I’ve thought about that, about how Brede mentioned how Jack told him I can ride anything with four legs—or even three. So I’m thinking, since I really don’t know anything about strategy so that the Field Marshal will be soliciting my opinion on matters, I’ll just be one of those riding out again and again, taking orders from Wellington to his generals during the battles. Jupiter will be magnificent there. He may not be the fastest of foot, but he’s got the best heart, and he’ll go forever. You know that.”

Fanny speared the last potato on her plate and popped it into her mouth, mumbled her question around it as she chewed. She knew she was being inelegant, as Elly would call it, but real food tasted so good. “So, then, you’ll be safely behind the lines?”

Rian shook his head. “Would you stop that, Fanny? But, yes, I’ll be fairly safe. Except when I’m riding by myself, between our ranks. Then things might become interesting.”

“You’re just saying that so I’ll worry,” Fanny said, gathering up her dish and utensils and carrying them over to the sink already piled high with plates and pots. “But if you’re not, please remember to ride low on Jupiter’s back, your head close down by his neck, so that you don’t present too tempting a target.”

Rian set his own dishes into the sink and smiled a thank-you to Hilda. “How many times, Fanny, have I outrun the Waterguard on the Marsh?”

Fanny took a quick look at Hilda, not that she thought the woman could understand her, yet when she answered Rian it was in a whisper. Beckets learned early not to trust many people. “Riding with the Black Ghost and outrunning the Waterguard from time to time as you guard the men moving a haul inland is not facing Bonaparte’s army, Rian Becket. I’m just saying—don’t go riding along the top of a ridge with the sun at your side, waving your hat in the air, that’s all.”

Rian bent and kissed her cheek. “You’re such an old woman. You’ve been listening to Court entirely too much, you know. I won’t let any of Boney’s men kill me. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of believing yourself right.”

Fanny shut her eyes, swallowing down a sob. “Oh, Rian…”

He put a finger to her lips as he turned in the direction of the narrow staircase. Moments later a pair of legs appeared, followed closely by the head of Wiggins, who looked none too happy. “His lordship’s sister is here and with his lordship in the drawing room. You’re to join them, please.”

“Is the Ogre still biting off heads, Wiggins?” Fanny asked as she hastily grabbed her uniform jacket and shoved her arms into it. “Or has food soothed the savage beast?”

“That’s very funny, miss,” Wiggins said, not smiling at all. “If you were please to follow me?”

Rian pushed a nervously giggling Fanny up the stairs ahead of him, then pulled her aside to insist she spit on his hands so that he could attempt to tamp down her butchered and dirty hair with his fingers. “Now, remember, Fanny-panny. Not a word of protest, no matter what the man says. As Sergeant-Major Hart warned us, even the luck of the Irish runs out from time to time.”

Fanny nodded quickly, reluctant to tell Rian that her entire insides seemed to be shaking. Would she be back aboard ship by morning, heading to Becket Hall? Had this all been for nothing? Was the Ogre about to send her on her way?

Together, they entered the small drawing room.

“Ah, and here they are again. It wasn’t a nightmare and I’m awake now. How unfortunate,” Brede said from his place standing in front of the cold fireplace. Rian stopped short to slam his ankles together and smartly salute him. “Yes, yes, very pretty, thank you, Lieutenant. And the redoubtable Miss Fanny Becket, as well. Don’t you look—so depressingly the same.”

Fanny opened her mouth, but Rian’s elbow was in her ribs before any words could come out, so she merely inclined her head slightly, mockingly, in his lordship’s direction.

“My stars, Valentine, you weren’t funning me, were you? And you expect me to, as you begged me, do something with that? My stars!”

Fanny’s attention went immediately to the couch and the petite young woman sitting there, at the moment waving a black-edged lace handkerchief beneath her softly rounded chin. The woman was handsome rather than beautiful—there was too much of her brother in her for beautiful—and dressed in the most becoming mourning black London could fashion.

Not that she held a patch on Brede himself, who was also in black, his linen white as a gull’s wing, his streaked light brown hair ruthlessly combed back from his face. Rough and tumble, dirty, he was formidable. Dressed as he was now, he was truly frightening. And, again, those eyes. And that dangerous, smiling mouth…

“Ma’am,” Fanny said, caught between a bow and a curtsey, so that she nearly tripped over her own two feet, eliciting a short bark of laughter from the Earl.

“Did you see that, Valentine? Oh, my stars!”

“Lucille, if you could dispense with that repetitious and quite annoying exclamation, so that we might move on? Lieutenant Rian Becket, Miss Fanny Becket, you are in the presence of my younger sister, one Lady Lucille Blight, widow of the late and largely unlamented Viscount Whalley, although she is quite enjoying her blacks, aren’t you, Lucille? Please, Miss Becket, don’t attempt that maneuver again—you may injure yourself.”

“Valentine, you’re such a wicked tease,” the woman said, waving at Fanny. “Please, call me Lucie. Everyone does. Everyone save Valentine, but I pay him no never mind, although he is quite right about poor William. I don’t know what possessed me to think I had to have him, and all over my dear brother’s objections. He drank like a fish, you understand, and chased anything in skirts. Oh, don’t scowl so, Valentine, it’s not as if no one knows. And aren’t you pretty, Lieutenant? Valentine—isn’t the Lieutenant pretty? You couldn’t give me him, could you, and just keep the girl for yourself? You go about looking nearly as bedraggled half the time anyway. I mean, she’s wearing trousers. My stars!”

Fanny, unable to help herself, actually snorted, and Rian rushed into speech to cover her rudeness. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said for lack of anything more intelligent springing into his mind, bowing yet again. “My lord, again I apologize for the monstrous inconvenience my sister and I have put you to, and I would like to say that I am more than cognizant of your forbearance and—”

“Oh, for the love of heaven, Becket, shut up,” Brede said wearily, looking at Fanny. “Lucille, what do you think? Can you rescue that?”

“In time for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball this Saturday night? That’s only four days away. Oh, I hardly think so, Valentine. My stars. When have you known me to perform miracles?”

Brede smiled slightly. “A miracle? Surely, Lucille, you don’t see Miss Becket here as on a par with loaves and fishes?”

Lucie gnawed on the side of her index finger as she looked at Fanny, who was caught between amusement and longing to wring the Ogre’s neck with his own snowy cravat. “I suppose a bath might be of some small help? And then I could have my Frances attempt something with the hair. And there’s this lovely little modiste a few blocks from—Yes, all right, Valentine, if I must. I shall gather all of my depleted strength and attempt to do my best.”

This last was completed with the tragic pose and half-gulping voice of the truly put-upon, and Fanny looked at Rian, whose shoulders were shaking as he attempted to tamp down his mirth at her expense.

“That’s my brave Lucille. The trials you endure for your quarterly allowance,” Brede said bracingly, wondering idly if he was right as to Bonaparte’s current position, and the possibility of riding there, lashing himself to the mouth of one of the French cannon. “You’re dismissed.”

Lady Whalley got to her feet, clearly in a huff. “Dismissed, is it? You drag me away from a perfectly marvelous lamb cutlet, just to dismiss me? Oh, very well.” She looked to Fanny yet again. “Tomorrow. But no one can see her until I work this miracle you require of me. Bring her round to the servant’s entrance tomorrow morning at eleven. Clean, if possible.”

Fanny didn’t bother to either curtsey or bow as Lady Whalley swept out of the small room, trailing her ruffled black skirts and enough scent to make a meal of by itself, and then turned back to glare at the Ogre. “Definitely your sister, my lord. There’s no question there.”

Brede ignored her, the cheeky brat. When forced to deal with females, ignoring them had always topped his list of the ways preferable to him. “Lieutenant, you will accompany me tomorrow morning at precisely eight of the clock. You’ll be quartered with other more junior members of the Duke’s staff, which means the food will be good and the beds dry. Take any opportunity to ride out these next few days, familiarize yourself with the topography of the area—I suggest you concentrate on the area south of Brussels, all the way to Quatre Bras, Ligny, and beyond—as I expect you’ll be traveling that ground quite often in the next week or two. But keep an eye out for Boney’s advance parties. I last spied one only a few miles below Givet. He’s been there before with his army, years ago. But he won’t wait for us to come to him there, fight on traditionally French soil. For the moment, I suggest you scare up Wiggins from where he’s hiding himself and he’ll show you to your chamber. The same goes for you, Miss Becket.”

“I’ll want a bath,” Fanny dared.

“If you are applying for my opinion, I completely concur. However, I do not number that among my duties to Jack Eastwood. There are other females in this house—I’m sure I’ve glimpsed at least two of them. Go find one, Miss Becket, and beg a tub. Difficult as this may be for you to comprehend, I have other things to do.”

Fanny watched, her mouth screwed to one side, her fists jammed on her hips, as the Earl of Brede quit the room in much the same way his sister had moments earlier. The sound of the door to the street slamming behind him lent her the happy information that the Ogre was gone.

She turned to Rian and grinned. “Papa would adore him, wouldn’t he?”

Rian gave a single shake of his head. “If he didn’t kill him, yes.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

WIGGINS HAD WORKED a small miracle of his own, Fanny decided the next morning as she donned the freshly laundered and pressed gown she’d rolled up and stuffed in her pack. She’d had a bath last night before slipping in between clean, fresh-smelling sheets, and felt very nearly human again. Her only regret was that she’d slept the sleep of the dead until nine, which meant that Rian had gone off without saying goodbye to her.

But she’d find him again, she had no fears there. After all, she’d found him before, hadn’t she?