An Infamous Marriage (20 page)

Elizabeth came to dread the sight of a paper. Before, she had always cherished it as a window to a wider world, but now she wanted to shut that world and its perils out. She had been so happy before George Lang rode up bearing the first of the hateful tidings.

Jack, naturally, took a different view. He tried to look grim as he muttered over the papers each day—
just as I expected
was one of his favorite phrases—but Elizabeth couldn’t miss the new brightness of his eyes, nor the impatient energy with which he paced the house and walked and rode about their lands.

Within a fortnight, Elizabeth’s greatest fears were realized. The hateful papers reported that King Louis had fled the country and Bonaparte was in Paris, acclaimed emperor and issuing decrees from the Tuileries. She tried to hide her despair from Jack, who had taken to galloping to the post office in Selyhaugh each morning before breakfast in hopes that orders had come from London for him.

“I can’t bear to wait here, fit to serve but with nothing to do, while all this is happening,” he confessed on an April morning when once again there was no letter from Horse Guards. The Langs had left Northumberland a week before to join Colonel Lang’s regiment on its way to Brussels. After their departure, Jack’s impatience had taken on an air of despair.

“You shouldn’t take it as a slight,” Elizabeth said, trying to hide her deep relief. “It’s no reflection on you if the duke prefers to have his old Peninsular commanders with him.”

“I know it’s no reflection,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Yes, but you do have to live with their decision. You cannot assign yourself a brigade.”

He made an impatient noise in the back of his throat and stalked off, muttering something about visiting the stables.

The next morning, when Jack rode off to Selyhaugh for the mail, Elizabeth found herself leafing through the travel books they had acquired in preparation for their Grand Tour. She wasn’t sure why she chose to torture herself in such a way, when once again Europe, at least for a peaceable traveler, was as far out of reach as the moon. It would have been lovely to see Paris and Rome and Vienna with Jack at her side. Why had Bonaparte had to go and spoil it, and why hadn’t the French stopped him? Weren’t they tired of war by now? Everyone else was, except for her husband.

When she heard him ride up the drive at a gallop instead of a mere canter or trot, she knew. Her heart rose into her throat and raced with sheer dread. She stood at the window and drew aside the curtain to watch him as he dismounted, handed the reins to his groom with some laughing remark and hurried toward the door as fast as his slight limp would allow him.

Soon she heard his footsteps thumping up the stairs, and she ran to throw open her bedroom door.

“Elizabeth!”

“They’ve given you a command,” she said flatly.

“How did you guess? Wait—it was the galloping, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, when you had nothing to be excited about, you kept to a more sedate pace.”

He watched her for a moment. A troubled, uncertain look briefly flitted over his face, only to be overtaken by triumph and joy. He reached out and stroked her cheek, tipped her chin up and leaned in for a kiss.

She wound her arms around him and tried to put all her love and dismay into her answering kiss, but Jack clearly wanted something more primal. Without ever breaking contact, he walked her backward into the room, kicked the door shut behind him and steered her to the bed.

“Jack?” she murmured as they bumped up against the mattress.

He stopped for just long enough to search her face for—what? Approval? Some sign she shared in his war madness? She couldn’t summon
that,
but desire? Oh, yes, she had that in plentitude. She threaded her fingers into his crisply curling hair, kissed him and fell back onto the bed, drawing him with her.

After that, everything happened quickly. He grappled with her skirts, she struggled over his breeches buttons and they came together all but fully clothed, kissing and nuzzling and breathing the same air all the while.

When it was over, Elizabeth didn’t feel her usual limp-limbed satisfaction, though Jack had paid his invariable careful attention to her pleasure and she had certainly reached a quick hard spasm that left her breathless. But there was no peace in it now that she’d been swept up in a whirlwind that wasn’t about to set her down.

She studied Jack’s face, inches away from her own.

He traced her cheekbone, brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes. “I feel like a whole man again,” he confessed.

Oh.
She understood, a little better, but why did he need a war to prove it? She feared she would never be a suitable soldier’s wife. “You’ve never been anything else.”

“I know, but if I could not do my duty, and take my place with others of my profession...”

She wished his profession anything else. Why couldn’t he have been a clergyman, or an attorney, or content, as his father had been, to live as a gentleman-farmer, breeding his horses and cultivating his lands? While he was right that accident or illness could befall any man at any moment, outside of the army and navy at least men didn’t sally forth to court death.

Chapter Fourteen

At Jack’s insistence they had been half-packed since the day they’d learned that Bonaparte had resumed the throne. Yet April had turned to May by the time they finished their journey southward for Jack to report to Horse Guards before taking ship for Belgium.

Under any other circumstances, Elizabeth would have found their travels a delight. As soon as they were a half day’s drive south of York, every sight was new to her, and she couldn’t help exclaiming over everything from grand houses to a particularly lovely bank of poppies blooming in scarlet abundance before a tidy cottage. “You must think I’m sadly naïve, to be thrilled by such small things,” she said to Jack when he brought her a bouquet of the poppies, having given the mistress of the cottage a few coins in exchange.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “Everything is new to me, too, when I see it through your eyes.”

Still, she could never forget the purpose of the journey, and each night when they stopped at an inn, all the talk in the common rooms was of Bonaparte and war. Though Jack and Elizabeth did not go out of their way to tell anyone who they were and where they were bound, their servants did not share their delicacy. “It’s just as well Macmillan keeps telling our hosts I’m a general bound for Belgium,” Jack commented philosophically the night they slept in Stilton as they lay together in the aftermath of passion in a bed even more comfortable than their own at Westerby Grange. “I doubt we’d command such fine rooms and such courteous service by our rank and the quality of our carriage alone.”

“Probably not.” They did outrank most travelers, but Elizabeth couldn’t imagine this inn commanded a better room for the plump, middle-aged baron and his Cambridge-bound son who had arrived just after they did. “It’s such a strange time,” she said. “The world goes on as if nothing is amiss—and yet it doesn’t, not entirely.”

“I know what you mean. War has been our normal state for so long, but to have it come back when everyone was beginning to grow accustomed to peace...what else is there to speak of, after all?”

She snuggled sleepily against Jack’s shoulder and drew the covers more firmly over them. Even in spring, the night air was chill. “I wish I could go to Paris myself and kill Bonaparte, and save all the armies of Europe the trouble.”

Jack laughed in the darkness and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Bloodthirsty woman.”

“On the contrary. My way would only shed one man’s blood. As it is? How many tens of thousands more must fall for the sake of that man’s glory?”

“When you put it that way, I wish someone
would
play the assassin.”

“Well, be sure and don’t shed your blood,” she said, knowing how meaningless it was to ask. “I would’ve made a dreadful Spartan woman,” she added. She could not tell Jack to return with his shield or on it.

“I love you, too, Elizabeth.”

* * *

They arrived in London too late in the day for Jack to call at Horse Guards or for Elizabeth to do such shopping and sightseeing as she could manage without him. Instead they spent a quiet evening in the Soho Square town house Sir Richard had left to them. The house was empty but for Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins, an aging couple who lived in it as caretakers. Upon finding their new master and mistress unexpectedly descending upon them, they scrambled to prepare the best bedroom and set a fine dinner upon the table no matter how much Jack and Elizabeth begged them not to trouble themselves.

“I still cannot quite realize he’s gone,” Jack said as they sat together in the parlor awaiting dinner.

“Neither can I, nor that he left all this to us.” He’d had no children of his own, but he’d had a dozen nieces and nephews he might have divided his fortune among. Instead he’d favored Jack, the one who had followed him, and his father before him, into the army. It wasn’t just this house, on a square that wasn’t quite in the highest fashion, but was within an easy walk of grander squares and streets. He had also left Jack his personal fortune, which almost doubled their annual income. Only his house in Scotland, near the Armstrong family castle, had gone to another cousin, who had been his godson.

Jack looked down at his hands. “He told me once I was the son he never had. I never understood just how seriously he meant it, while he lived. I hope I wasn’t too great of a disappointment to him.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “You weren’t. If you had been, he could’ve left all this to your cousin Dick. I suppose he meant to make sure you had everything you needed to see to your own interests once he wasn’t around to speak for you.”

“I’ll have to be sure not to disappoint him, then.”

“You won’t. Of that much I’m certain.”

He rose and began to pace around the room. “I don’t know. I’m not blind to what it means, that I wasn’t given a command on this campaign until now. I’m no one’s first choice. I wonder what poor devil is too ill to go, for me to have his place.”

Elizabeth couldn’t understand why it troubled him so much. Naturally Wellington and Horse Guards would prefer commanders with more experience, and experience against the French. But Jack was getting his chance, wasn’t he? “Then they will be all the more impressed when they see how good you are,” she said.

He stopped his pacing and blinked at her. “Ha! I’d never thought of it from that angle before.”

* * *

The next morning Elizabeth slept through Jack’s awakening to dress for the day at Horse Guards, but he came to gently shake her awake before he left.

She rubbed her eyes and blinked at his sheer splendor. “Good God.”

He tugged self-consciously at his lapels. “What’s amiss?”

She sat up in bed, the better to take in the vision. “Nothing. Only, I’ve never seen you in uniform before, and...oh, my.”

“Surely I don’t look so very different.”

He looked magnificent. On the handful of occasions when Elizabeth had encountered redcoats in her previous peaceful existence, she had failed to see any glamour in the garment. If anything, she had thought it unfortunate that Englishmen, in general a light-skinned, pink-cheeked race, must go fight battles in garments that made their pallor paler and their ruddiness redder. But on dark-haired, dark-eyed Jack... She looked him up, down and back up again. “I think I like you in red the way you like me in green.”

He grinned and all but preened before her. “And here I thought, if anything, you’d hate the sight of it for reminding you of the war.”

“It’s not as if I had any hopes of forgetting that no matter what you wore.” She ran her hand over his right shoulder, crowned by a loop of gold braid, over the double row of gilt buttons, then down to the sash at his waist, rich crimson against the bright scarlet of the coat. “I wonder why they don’t make the sashes match the coats,” she mused.

He shrugged. “I’ve never considered the fashion of the thing.”

“But you have considered the effect. Don’t tell me you’ve never realized you look different in uniform than in your ordinary attire.” Grand and powerful, those were the right words for it. Before this his army life had seemed almost an abstraction to her. She had never seen him in uniform, never seen him act the soldier. She only knew him as a calm, easygoing gentleman-farmer, one who loved his horses but was happy to leave most of the decisions about the land to his wife and his chief tenant. Now she could picture him commanding and being obeyed. She hadn’t realized such a thing was possible, but it made her want him more.

He cocked a thick eyebrow and grinned. “A little. But it needs a sword and a horse to give the full effect.”

She laughed and tugged at his lapels until he bent to kiss her. “We’ll have to have you painted just so, with the horse, after this is all over.” She cupped his smooth, freshly shaven jaw, as square and solid as the rest of him, in her hand.

He caught her hand and gave her palm a swift kiss. “Yes, and I’ll be sure the artist paints Menelaus as a snorting charger with rolling eyes.”

Elizabeth rolled her own eyes. Menelaus, though fleet of foot and agile over jumps, was perhaps the most placid hunter Westerby Grange had ever bred. She was glad Jack had chosen to bring the bay gelding, since he was the only horse from the Grange stables she would trust around cannons.

“Come now, give him his equine dignity. I’m sure he doesn’t wish to be remembered by our grandchildren a hundred years hence as drowsing in the sun or nibbling a patch of grass.”

“He’s a horse, dear. The only glory he cares for is the taste of apples or sugar.”

“True.” Jack stepped back. “I should be off. I sent word to Torrens I’d be there by nine.”

“Ah, well. I wish I could admire you in that uniform a bit longer,” Elizabeth admitted. “Or just have you out of it.”

“There will be other chances.” He swept her a bow. “Starting tonight.”

So he left Elizabeth to her solitude on her single day in London. She wished Louisa was with her instead of already in Brussels. Though she could not properly explore the city without an escort, after a brief discussion with Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins, she took Mrs. Dobbins and Jack’s valet, Macmillan, and ventured to Bond Street. There was no time for a visit to a modiste, but she bought herself a hat trimmed with green ribbons and two new books to while away the hours when Jack couldn’t be with her—Maria Edgeworth’s
Patronage
and a novel called
Waverley
by an anonymous author. Louisa had raved about it, and Elizabeth thought Jack might enjoy it, too, when he had leisure for such pleasures again, since it was full of Scottish history.

She spent a quiet afternoon reading
Patronage
in the parlor. Jack sent a note saying he would be late, for he had met an old friend who had invited him to dine at his club, and she mustn’t wait up for him. She kept reading and ate a solitary dinner, but going to bed without him was out of the question. Strange how in less than two months she’d got so used to having him beside her she no longer wanted to sleep alone.

He came home at last shortly before midnight, yawning. “You’re still dressed,” he commented.

“So are you.” Elizabeth looked him over, openly admiring. He looked even better in uniform by night, the warm candlelight gilding his tanned skin and mellowing the scarlet of his coat.

He grinned. “It’s a fine figure I would’ve made at Horse Guards or out on the streets of London in my nightshirt or nothing but my skin.”

“I’m still dressed because I wanted to show you my new hat,” she said, setting it on her head and tying the ribbons, “and I’d look just as ridiculous naked but for a hat as you would wearing a nightshirt in conference with your fellow generals.”

She smiled up at him, and he inspected her, his face grave but for an appreciative sparkle in his eyes and a smile just tugging at one corner of his mouth. “A splendid hat for a splendid woman,” he concluded.

“The milliner swore it’s in the first stare of fashion, but of course she’d hardly say otherwise.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but I like you in green.”

“I know you do.”

“It does make it rather difficult to kiss you.” He traced his hand around the hat’s broad brim. “You must promise me to wear it whenever any of the other officers ask you to promenade with them.”

“Surely they won’t.”

“I think you’ll be in for a surprise.” He untied the ribbon, carefully set the hat aside and bent to kiss her, long and tenderly. “I’m sorry we cannot stay any longer in London, and that I can do nothing to show you the place.”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly, tracing a finger around the topmost of his gilt coat buttons. “You’ve your duty to attend to, and there will be other chances. This house isn’t going anywhere, and we can spend the entire Season here one of these years.”
Please let the other chances come with him by my side, and not as a widow yet again.
“I hope your day went well,” she added.

“It did, I think,” he said. “We’re to leave at dawn tomorrow and make all speed to Ramsgate, where I’m to be the senior officer on a convoy to Ostend carrying two battalions of infantry plus an artillery troop. I’m afraid the accommodations on board will be a little rough. You might prefer to take a packet over and meet me in Brussels.”

“Only if you’d rather I did,” she said. “For my part, I don’t want to be parted from you until it’s entirely necessary.” She undid his top button, then the next and the next.

He smiled, and she knew she’d chosen the right answer. “Good. Nor do I.” He applied nimble fingers to her dress’s hooks and laces as she continued her work on his buttons. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that it might be a good few nights before we’re settled enough in Belgium to have anything resembling privacy, so we’d best make use of all the time we have now.”

She pushed his coat off his shoulders. “My thoughts precisely.”

* * *

The Belgian port of Ostend was utter chaos, and the captain of Jack’s transport ship an entire fool. Summoned from the hold, where he had been supervising the removal of crates of muskets and their ammunition, Jack found Captain Sluggett in the midst of a crowd of sailors and soldiers, urging his crew to make more haste in unloading the guns.

“Sir John!” an artillery captain cried. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you. He’s casting it all over the side, horses, guns, shot and all, and leaving it for us to fish out.”

Jack took in the situation at a glance. The port was so crowded there were no berths at the docks for them, and such was the convoy’s haste to unload them and return to England for the next set of men that the captain was unloading them into the shallow waters along a beach outside of town rather than await a berth. That much was appropriate, but a beach landing needed to be handled with greater pains than a proper dockside one, not fewer. But the way this captain was ordering everything and everyone flung over the side, he was in a fair way to spoiling barrels upon barrels of gunpowder, stranding cannon in water just deep enough to render it impossible to retrieve, half drowning Jack’s soldiers, and—good God, the horses! Jack glanced across to the horse transport, floating some fifty yards away. Equine screams rent the air, and he saw even his own placid Menelaus, easy to spot by the crooked blaze running down his bay face, rearing on the deck and fighting the crew’s attempts to bind a sling around his belly.