The Mercenary Major (24 page)

“If you are going to have adventures . . .” he reminded her.

She was too weary to dignify his comment with a reply.

In Jack’s dressing room they found Gilling tending Bertram, who sat with his shirt hanging about his thighs, his forehead pressed to Katie’s bosom, and his good arm clasped about her waist.

Gilling glanced up, and Katie cried out, ‘Tory! Oh, I’m so glad.”

“Don’t move, sir,” Gilling said to his patient. He laid a firm hand on Bertram’s shoulder. “Just let me finish stitching the back of your hard head, and you’re free to go.”

Jack led Victoria to a cot bed, seated her, and threw a coverlet around her shoulders.

“Your side,” she said, reaching out to the tattered strips of his waistcoat and shirt.

“Gilling will do for me,” he assured her. He crossed the room to a table where amber liquid in a decanter caught the candlelight, poured a glass, and brought it to Victoria.

“To warm you,” he said.

She sipped cautiously, and found that it did indeed warm her.

They were silent while the corporal completed his task, Katie handing him tools as if performing surgeries were just what her governess had trained her to do. Victoria gazed at her friend in wonder.

A few minutes later Gilling announced, “You’ll do.”

Bertram lifted his head and rose a bit unsteadily to his feet, keeping his arm around Katie.

“I take it she’s accepted you, Bertram,” said Jack.

“She has.” Bertram kissed Katie’s cheek, and she blushed but did not look down.

Their joy made Victoria blink as if she had stepped out into too-bright sunlight.

Jack held out his arms, and Katie accepted a hug and a cousinly kiss. Then Victoria stood and embraced her friend and Bertram, who claimed a kiss as well.

“Oh, Tory,” Katie said, “I worried so. Your note explained nothing, really, and when George said you were there, at that gun shop, I imagined dreadful things.”

“There were dreadful things,” Victoria acknowledged, “but we are safe now.”

“I owe Victoria my life,” said Jack quietly. They all looked at him, but he did not say more. “Hengrave?” he asked Gilling.

“He’s with your aunt. Not in prime twig.” The corporal shook his head grimly. “He goes on and on about what a fool he’s been and how he ought to be hanged. Lady Letitia seems to calm him.”

“Any pursuit?” Jack asked.

“Bow Street is looking everywhere for the men who were in on it,” Gilling reported. “Constables were at Wallen’s minutes after you left.”

Gilling and Jack exchanged a look that told Victoria the event had confirmed their suspicions.

“Thoresby’s dead,” Jack said. “Shot by someone in the mob at the Exchange. His evidence against the Sprats dies with him. Still, I would rather have Hengrave out of London. I’ll go see what I can do for him.”

“Got a bit of a wound that needs tending first, sir,” said Gilling in a tone that made the observation more of a command.

Jack grinned at his friend and turned back to Victoria. Their eyes met, and she looked away lest he see how much she had wanted to be the one to tend his scrapes. She heard him draw in a breath. “You’d best clean up a bit,” he told her. “Does your father know you were gone?”

“I’m afraid he does,” said Katie sheepishly. “We were worried, you see.” She added, “Mr. Carr is below with Papa. I’ll help you change, Tory.”

A knock on the dressing-room door took them all by surprise. They looked at one another, and Jack motioned to Gilling to answer the door.

“Let me in.” It was Reg’s voice from the other side.

Gilling opened the door a crack, and Reg slipped in, gaping a bit and looking from one to another, obviously trying to comprehend the unusual assortment of people in the major’s dressing room.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking pointedly at the shirtless Bertram, who still had his good arm around Katie.

“For one,” said Jack, stepping forward and taking Reg by the shoulders, drawing him into the room, “a betrothal. You may offer your sister and Captain Bertram your best wishes.”

“Katie?” said Reg. Katie was beaming, and Jack could have sworn that the workings of Reg’s self-interested mind were visible on his ruddy youthful face. At last he seemed to remember that his sister, too, had been having a Season. “Capital,” he said.

He stuck out his right hand, belatedly recalled his brother-in-law-to-be’s missing limb, mumbling something, and took his sister in a thumping hug. Then he managed to shake Bertram’s left hand appropriately.

In the silence that followed their rejoicing, Reg again looked around at all of them. “You’ve been caught up in the riot,” he observed.

“Gilling is making a few repairs, as you can see,” Jack explained.

“Devil take it.” Reg glanced from Jack to Bertram and back. “I suppose there’s nothing left for me to do, is there?” he asked a trifle resentfully.

“I think not, but what brings you here, Reg?” Jack asked.

At that Reg flushed. “A lady,” he said. He looked at Katie and Victoria as if considering how much he should say in their presence.

“Which lady?” Jack pressed.

“The Condesa de Villasantos,” Reg announced with a certain flourish. “She’s leaving Lonville and needs protection.”

Jack swore in Spanish. In English he added, “She needs to be locked up. Why has she left Lonville?”

“She says he’s wicked and cruel and does not understand the nature of Spanish ladies,” Reg said with obvious sympathy for the lady’s plight.

Jack refrained from comment in either language. Lonville had probably discovered the truth about the counterfeit
condesa
. Or Cida had tired of waiting to wed. She never could give loyalty, even when a man had paid for it. She was always looking for someone with something more to offer. The only surprise was that her own nature had not given her away in London already. The
ton
was definitely too confining for an adventuress of Cida’s restless, ambitious stamp. He had an idea.

“Where is she?” he asked Reg.

His cousin had the grace to blush. “In my dressing room.”

An hour later Victoria found her father and Lord Dorward standing by the fire in Letty’s drawing room, the evening tea tray untouched on Letty’s favorite table.

“Father,” she said, closing the door softly behind her.

He turned to her. “Victoria, my God.” He crossed the room in a couple of strides and took her in a hug such as she had not had from him since her mother died. She felt the prick of tears and blinked hard. “You were out there, weren’t you?” he asked.

She nodded wordlessly and pulled from his arms.

“I went looking for you,” her father said, “but the guards are out everywhere and kept turning me back.”

“I’m sorry to have worried you, Father. I never dreamed when I set out this morning that I would encounter any . . . danger.”

“But where were you going, Miss Carr?” demanded Lord Dorward.

She turned to the earl, glad of the opening he had unwittingly offered her.

“I was going, my lord, to Bow Street, to point out to the magistrates that Major Amberly has irrefutable proof of his identity.”

“Nonsense,” said Dorward with his usual bluster, “the man’s a—” A look from Edward Carr brought the earl up short. “What proof?” he asked Victoria.

“Major Amberly should be the one to show you,” she replied firmly.

“Well, I would like that,” said the earl. “The fellow has proof, but never produced it for his family. What are we to make of that, Carr? Fellow thinks he’s above the Favertons.” Victoria realized nothing was likely to change the earl’s habit of finding others at fault.

Victoria’s father was frowning, but she gave him a brief smile. “The major is proud,” she conceded, “but never above his company, and not mercenary.” She moved to Letty’s chocolate silk sofa and settled herself where she might pour the tea. A quick touch showed her it was still hot.

“Do sit down, Lord Dorward, Father,” she invited them, and when they had complied, she poured for them. She allowed Lord Dorward a minute or so to sip in peace and took a warming taste herself. Then she asked, “Now, my lord, what is Major Amberly’s inheritance from his mother?”

The earl choked and swallowed what Victoria suspected was a scalding gulp, but she thought of Letty and Helen Faverton and their dreams for Jack Amberly and waited for Lord Dorward to recover himself sufficiently to go on.

It came out, over the course of an hour in details reluctantly revealed by the earl, that Major Amberly possessed a comfortable property in Hampshire with an estate worth some four thousand a year. Victoria struggled to maintain a sober countenance at the thought. Her father’s plans for a second marriage and its effect on her own inheritance made the major very much her equal in the eyes of the world. She, after all, was merely a gentleman’s daughter, he, the nephew of an earl.

Under Edward Carr’s severe gaze, the earl acknowledged that he had borrowed a bit from Major Amberly’s estate. He promised to repay every farthing.

Victoria then asked, “Lord Dorward, would you be willing to tell Major Amberly of his inheritance tonight?”

“Tonight, my dear girl, when we’ve all been at sixes and sevens?”

“Tonight,” Victoria insisted, giving Lord Dorward a level stare. She knew Jack Amberly regarded his love for her as a weakness and that he would run rather than yield to temptation.

“Tonight what?” asked Letty, coming in at that moment leading the others—Bertram and Katie, Lady Dorward on Reg’s arm, and Jack, restored to blue-coated elegance by Gilling.

The gentlemen stood, and Edward Carr went to Letty, taking her by the hand and leading her to a chair. Reg led his mother to a seat by the earl, and Bertram and Katie went to stand directly before him.

“Sir,” said Bertram. “We were not properly introduced last evening. Captain Bertram. My father is Montford. I’ve been invalided out of the army, but I have some prospects with the Foreign Office. I’ve asked your daughter to marry me, and she’s agreed.”

“Marry you?” The earl turned to his wife. “Charlotte, what is this? Did you know about this?”

“Yes, Dorward. I think it’s a very sound idea,” said Charlotte with new willingness to give her opinion.

There was an ominous pause. The earl’s mouth opened and closed as if he were inclined to say something rash, but he looked at the faces around him and subsided. “We’ll talk, sir,” was all he said.

Victoria watched Jack step back a pace just beyond the circle of warmth around the tea tray. She could read him better now than she had just the night before. The proud stance said,
I don’t need to come in
. He caught her staring, but she did not look away.

Letty jumped up then and marched toward the bellpull. “We need more tea. Jack, dear,” she said in passing, “do sit down somewhere.”

At that the earl turned to Jack. “What’s this proof you have, Major Amberly, that you were unwilling to show us last night? Did you want to make idiots out of us all?”

Jack cast an accusing glance at Victoria, but she only smiled.

“It had to come out,” she said.

Letty came up at Jack’s side. “Do you have something I don’t know about, Jack?” she asked. She gave him a look of such longing that Victoria was sure he could not resist. Indeed, Katie and Reg and Charlotte had turned eagerly to him, and she knew he could not misread the message in those light Faverton eyes so like his own.
We want you
, it said.

He reached for the linen about his neck. “Excuse me,” he said tightly, his face expressionless. He pulled at his cravat, undoing Gilling’s artistry, released the button at the collar of his shirt, and with his forefinger hooked a gold chain and drew it forth. He lifted the chain from around his neck and offered it to Letty. “My mother’s wedding ring,” he said simply.

Letty closed a trembling hand around the chain and put her arms around her nephew. “I knew I had found you,” she told him. After the merest pause, Jack’s arms came up, and he gave his aunt a tight hug. Victoria swallowed hard but kept a smile in place.

“Let me see that,” demanded Dorward.

Letty looked at Jack, who nodded his assent, then she handed the ring to the earl. Dorward thrust the ring into the light of a candle and studied it.

Reg stepped up to Jack and thumped him on the back, shaking his hand vigorously. “Dashed glad to have you in the family, Cousin.”

Katie came forward more hesitantly, but Jack grinned at her and she, too, hugged him. “We would have adopted you, if we had to,” she whispered.

“Could still be a fraud,” the earl complained. “He could have had copied it from the portrait.”

Several voices protested at once at the earl’s continued reluctance to accept Jack.

“Uncle,” Jack said, and the crisp note of authority in his voice silenced them all. He stepped up to Dorward and held out his hand for the ring. The earl dropped it in Jack’s open palm as if he had been given an order, then drew himself up.

“Now see here,” he began in his usual tones, scowling, his wild brows drawn together.

Jack held up a hand, cutting the earl off. Quietly he said, “There’s no fraud here . . . Uncle. I could not have had the ring copied from the picture. The jeweler would not have been able to complete the design or get the inscription right on the inside of the band.” He paused. “Letty,” he said, bringing her to his side. “It is my mother’s ring. She put it in my hand the night she died. We were attacked on the Guadarramma road in the mountains above Madrid. Godoy, the king’s minister, arranged that death for my father. Godoy feared my father’s ties to England and his opposition to the corruption in the Spanish army. The bandit Sobrino later told me of it. My mother fought her way to his side. She killed many bandits, and no one touched her while she lived.”

Such a little ring, Victoria thought, and such a weight of grief to bear alone. His gaze sought hers, and she met it, withholding nothing of her love.

Then the Favertons offered their hugs and quiet words. Jack slipped the chain around his neck once more and stepped aside to restore his cravat to order.

Briggs appeared with a second tray of tea fixings, and Letty put a stop to the most-effusive outpourings of Charlotte and Reg. They all found seats, and even the earl subsided, somewhat comforted by the attentions of Katie and Charlotte, who repeated, “You could not have known, dear,” a dozen times before Letty gave a new direction to their thoughts.