The Mercenary Major (2 page)

“Say, who here served with Hookey?” he shouted, swaying precariously. There was a roar in answer and cries of “the Die-hards,” “the Gentlemen’s Sons,” “the Honey-suckers.” Then Bertram stilled the crowd with a sweep of his good arm. “Anybody here know the Bandit?”

“Aye, we know him,” shouted a man in a jacket the color of dried blood.

“Then you know how the Bandit left his messages for Hookey day after day behind the lines of Torres Vedras until that gentleman had to meet him,” continued Bertram from the tabletop, “know how he picked off the French colonel when we were pinned down along the Agueda, know how at Hougoumont . . .”

“Enough,” shouted Jack. “Come down, George.” He reached up a hand to help his friend.

“Gentlemen,” declared the young man, “I give you the Bandit, the bravest officer of the 95th.” He made a sweeping gesture that finally did unbalance him. His feet kicked the table over, and he fell heavily into the outstretched arms of Jack and Gilling, amid the cheers and laughter of the crowd.

Jack and Gilling set the unsteady Bertram on his feet. A score of other men gathered round their table to identify themselves, recall the battles they’d shared in, and raise their glasses. When the crowd drifted away at last, Hengrave righted the fallen table and brought up another chair. The four men settled down, and the landlord brought the round of drinks Bertram’s purse had provided.

“So what brings you to London, Jack?” Bertram asked.

“He’s come to make his fortune, of course,” supplied the sergeant.

“A regular Dick Whittington, heh?” suggested George.

“Who’s Dick Whittington?” asked Jack.

“A poor boy whose cat made him a fortune. Became Lord Mayor three times. Got a cat, Jack?”

Jack laughed. “You mean it’s that easy?”

For a while as the free ale went round, the talk in the crowded room sounded lighter, more cheerful. But the undercurrent of anger soon returned. Jack knew that kind of anger, the kind of anger men have when they’ve endured a bloody siege and been denied the sack. These were not his men, and he did not know what had stirred them to such bitter rage, but the familiar responsibility for men under him was not easily shed. He doubted they could be purged of their anger tonight, but he asked the sergeant to give them a song, something to turn them from the bitter talk going around the room.

Hengrave left their table and soon found a man with a fiddle. A space was cleared for them before the bar, and Hengrave lifted his voice in a lover’s ballad. The sergeant had a fine tenor that had often drawn men to camp fires along the rivers of Spain. The angry talk died away.

“Where are you putting up, Jack?” asked George.

Gilling named the street where they’d found a lodging, and George shook his head.

“Did the army leave you fellows that flat? No wonder there’s grumbling. What you ought to do, Jack, is hang out for a rich wife.” He sobered abruptly.

“Not me,” Jack protested.

Hengrave began a lighter air, one that had been popular in the cafes of Paris. The crowd shifted around the singer as some of the patrons left the taproom. Jack felt it the moment that the watcher turned away. He glanced at the shadowy corner, but the hunched figure was gone. Apparently, the man had slipped into the crowd while Jack had been listening to Bertram.

“I know,” George said, drawing Jack’s attention back, “you can stay with me. I’ve a capital lodging. You’ll save your silver.”

“Thanks, George, but if I took you up on that, I’d catch it from Gilling and Hengrave. They want me to go to my aunt.”

“I didn’t know you had any family, Bandit.”

“Just an aunt.”

“Well, who is your aunt?”

Jack looked at Gilling. Gilling had warned him that he would meet people who knew his relatives and who would expect Jack to move in the world of the
ton
.

“Lady Letitia Faverton,” he said, watching his friend’s face carefully.

“Letitia Faverton? You’ve some high connections, Bandit. No wonder you turned my lodgings down flat.” Bertram was plainly astonished. He shook his head. “But that means you have lots of family. Dorward, the earl, must be your uncle.”

Jack shook his head.

“Was your mother a Faverton?” Bertram began, then stopped. He was looking more sober than he had yet. “Sorry, Jack. Didn’t mean to pry. Maybe your family’s no better than mine. Some welcome home I got.” He lifted the limp sleeve of his jacket. “The devil take them, I say.” He drained his glass and rose unsteadily to his feet. “But a fellow’s got to give his family a try. Let me take you up. I go nearly to your aunt’s house. You’re bound to sleep well there.”

Gilling nodded at Jack. “Go with him,” the corporal advised. “I’ll see to Hengrave.”

Jack stood and pulled his pelisse from the back of the chair. As he swung the cape about his shoulders, his inner voice spoke again. Casually he reached down to retrieve his shako, concentrating on the sensation. He was not being watched. Under cover of the shako’s brim as he adjusted the headgear, he scanned the faces of the crowd just as he would study hostile ground. The only men left in the tavern were gathered around Hengrave, and one of them was not what he appeared to be. Hengrave was being watched.

Jack hesitated, feeling caught between his ties to two friends. Bertram took a couple of wobbly steps toward the door.

“Go,” said Gilling. “Stay with your aunt.”

The spy had positioned himself well. He could see the door, and yet he was close enough to the singing sergeant to pass the man a cup of ale when his throat grew dry. At the exact moment the major left the Swan, the spy turned a friendly smile on the singer and raised a tankard to his outstretched hand. The sergeant would tell him everything he needed to know. He would be very clever. He would use all his arts, and he would trap the proud major as he had already trapped George Bertram. And he would see them hang.

**** 2 ****

J
ack had to admire the energy of the butler who led him up the grand curving staircase. The man set a pace worthy of a seasoned rifleman on a mountain trail. In a minute they reached the threshold of a pretty high-ceilinged room as fresh and delicate as the room at the Swan had been stale and coarse.

“Major Jack Amberly,” the butler announced in ringing tones.

The butler’s eagerness to present him allowed Jack only a quick, general impression of wealth—
columns, for God’s sake
—before his eyes met the light-blue ones of his hostess, startlingly familiar though he had never seen them before.

Run, Jack
, urged the voice in his head, and he hesitated as he had not earlier at the door of the Swan.
Nonsense
, his reason replied, firmly dismissing the voice of instinct he had so long lived by. What danger could there be in his aunt’s drawing room? He crossed the threshold.

Letitia Faverton observed her nephew’s approach and checked the impulse to run to him and, with more difficulty, the desire to envelop him in a great hug. She had not waited so long, nor prepared so carefully, only to drive him away by appearing over-glad at their first meeting. Now that she had at last lured Jack to London, she must remain patient. How fine he was. His clear, light eyes and dark good looks reminded her of both Helen and Tom. But how much a man he was and not the boy she had pictured. Her guest’s silent scrutiny of her own person recalled her to her duties as hostess.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “you are not quite what I expected.” She rose and offered both of her hands in greeting. “You will think me quite without sense, Jack, but you see,” she confided, “I half-expected a boy of twelve.”

Jack took the hands she offered him, unsure what gesture would be considered appropriate to greet this relative who had claimed him but with whom he was so little acquainted. He had made it a rule to avoid women of her class ever since laughing, black- eyed Felicidad had introduced him to women of a different sort.

“Of course,” his aunt continued, “I did expect the uniform, but not the beard and mustache.”

Jack found himself grinning at her. “Well, Lady Letitia,” he began. She opened her mouth as if she meant to say something but seemed to bite back her intended remark. “If I am not what you expected,” Jack continued, “then neither are you what I looked for. I thought that an
aunt
must be old and gray and . . .” He paused. How frank could one be with a real lady? he wondered. “Ample,” he concluded, daring to reveal all his thoughts. The merry laughter that answered this admission warmed him.

“Do sit down, Jack,” his aunt invited, withdrawing her hands from his. Jack eyed an elegant chocolate silk sofa. He was sure Lady Letitia’s letters had never hinted at such wealth. She had called her home
snug
and had invited him to come to London to be
cozy
. No wonder George Bertram had teased him.

“Sit, Jack,” she repeated, then turned to the butler. “Briggs, some tea for me, please, and Madeira and a cold collation for the major.”

Jack took the seat she indicated. While her attention was turned from him, he tried to determine precisely what it was about her that reminded him of his mother. His mother had been the older of the two sisters, and had she lived, she would now be forty-four, so his aunt must be . . . forty, though she seemed younger. She was youthfully slim in a dress of the palest blue he had ever seen, but her girlishness lay more in the way her coppery curls, looking soft as down, peeped from under her lace cap and framed the delicate oval of her face. Her voice, too, sounded sweet and clear with no deeper notes of maturity. Unwilling to be caught staring, he looked away as she seated herself across from him.

“I daresay I am not very like your mother,” she said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Your mother would have gone to Spain to get you, you know, had she been the aunt and I, the mother. Helen was courage itself. But,” she continued, “though it took me seven years to find you and seven more to get you here, I truly am your aunt, Jack.”

The directness and conviction of these words and the earnestness of the gaze that accompanied them again roused the warning voice in Jack’s head. A silence fell, and he was glad of the butler’s timely reappearance with the tea tray. While his hostess busied herself with the tasks of arranging the tray and pouring their drinks, he considered what he knew of his Aunt Letty.

He had often heard of her before his parents died. She was the one relative his mother mentioned with affection, but in his young mind Aunt Letty had been no more real than Guinevere or Scheherazade or any of the other characters in the stories his mother read to him as he drifted off to sleep at night. The Aunt Letty of his boyhood had had no claim on him, and he had not thought to seek her after his parents died. He had learned that she was searching for him through Hengrave and Gilling, who had insisted he answer her letters.

Later he had come to look forward to those letters though he could not have said why. He had come to London only because there was no real soldiering left to be done now that Boney was confined to his island and because Paris was a faithless mistress who guillotined brave men for their loyalty to Napoleon and blackened the name of the victor. He had accepted Lady Letitia’s invitation because his friends needed every penny he could spare them.

Instinctively, Letty knew her guest’s guard was up, and she searched for some light topic with which to put him at ease. “Is Paris as charming as we are led to believe?” she asked, handing him a glass of Madeira. For an instant his gaze seemed to measure her intent. Then he answered, and she listened, offering him questions, and delicacies from the tea tray until she saw his stiff wariness relax. When he had accepted a second glass of wine, she ventured to bring the conversation back to their present circumstances.

“I think it only fair to warn you, Jack,” she said, “maiden aunts are eccentric creatures, and you must be prepared to humor me in my oddest whims.” To her relief he did not grow wary again at her words, but rather looked at her with something of a challenge in his eyes.

“Do you mean to scare me off . . . Lady Letitia?” he asked.

“Not Lady Letitia! Aunt Letty. Your eccentric Aunt Letty”

“I have seen no eccentricities yet.”

“When you hear what entertainments I have planned for you, you will be sure I am eccentric.”

“Entertainments?” he asked.

Letty was pleased to note that his smile was less reserved now than it had been when she had first seen it. “Yes—the Royal Exchange—they do have the most famous elephant—and Astley’s Amphitheatre, and I particularly do not want you to miss the balloon ascension on Friday. Now, confess,” she said, “you do find me eccentric.”

“Not at all,” he said, laughing, “I’d say you know just how to show a fellow the town.”

“Of course, now that I see you, now that I can let go of the picture I’ve had in my head these fourteen years, I am willing to consider more grown-up entertainments as well—the theatre and the opera, and dinner with friends.” She saw the guardedness return to his expression.

“I think I had best stay away from dinner parties . . . Lady Letitia. I have only my uniforms, and they are sadly in need of attention.” Jack held out a well-mended sleeve.

“I am sure there can be no lack of dignity in wearing a uniform that proclaims such service to England, Jack.”

“But soon I would be seen as the eccentric one, if I appeared on all occasions dressed for the parade ground.”

“Then we must add a trip to the tailor to your London itinerary. You can be dressed
a la mode
inside of a week.” The silence that greeted this suggestion left Letty feeling she had blundered irretrievably. Of course, she meant to outfit him as befitted his station, but she had not meant to make the suggestion so openly or so soon.

Again Jack heard the familiar warning voice. He shook his head. It was as if an invisible battle line were being drawn, but how could he think of Lady Letitia as an opponent when every impulse of hers seemed to be generous? She was watching him with an expression of restrained hope.