The Sergeant's Lady (26 page)

“You say you’ll go back to your brother—is there any danger he’ll throw you out, as well?”

“No, ma’am, I believe not. He and his wife already know—at least in part…” Anna blushed, and her voice trailed off.

“Juana has been telling me something of what happened between you and my son. I cannot say I approve of any of it.”

“No, ma’am,” Anna replied, her eyes downcast.

“But I believe in mercy as well, and so if there is any danger, Mrs. Arrington, of you finding yourself and my grandson homeless, do not let pride prevent you from coming to us.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Anna said. She could no longer prevent a few tears from trickling down her cheeks. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. But even if my brother does not welcome us, I am not without means.”

Juana sniffed. “Not without means.”

Anna frowned, and Mrs. Atkins lifted a curious eyebrow.

“She is rich,” Juana said.

“Are you?”

Anna shifted uncomfortably. “Strictly speaking, my fortune is held in trust for Arthur and any other children I may have, but I have a life interest in the income. It’s not unsubstantial…”

“You’re rich.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she agreed.

“Why did you come here today?” Mrs. Atkins asked. “What were you hoping to find?”

“Will,” she said quietly. “When I heard what had happened, I had to know how he fared. And I planned—I hoped that I could persuade him to marry me.”

“Marry you!”

“Yes, ma’am, but now I’m too late.” A dim memory of a story one of her father’s India cronies had once told her floated up through her despair, and she sat bolt upright, startling Arthur. “Or perhaps I’m not.”

“But his ship sails tomorrow,” Juana protested. “You cannot be in London tomorrow.”

“The fleets sail down the Thames into the Channel, and more often than not they have to lie off the Kentish coast and wait for a favorable wind,” Anna said. “I remember that, now—passengers who want to stay on land as long as possible meet their ships in the Channel.”

“You mean to chase Will to the Channel?” Juana said.

“Yes. It’s a long shot—but I shall pray for unfavorable winds.”

“You cannot go all that way alone, not with a baby,” Mrs. Atkins protested.

“She will not be alone,” Juana said. “I’ll go with her if you can spare me for a few days.”

Anna smiled. “It won’t be our first journey together.”

Mrs. Atkins went to hurry the grandson who was harnessing a horse to one of the inns’ wagons, and Anna and Juana conferred over what they must take for several days’ travel with two babies. Anna knew she was racing against long odds, but she couldn’t give up while there was even a possibility of finding Will in time. She had come too far to surrender now.

Deal, Kent

The September morning was still, sunny and summer-warm, and the Company fleet lay in the Downs with its naval escort, awaiting a favorable wind. Will inhaled the clean, salty air, shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed out at the forest of masts in the distance. Somewhere out there lay the
Felix
, his home for the next four months or so.

“I promised I’d get you to your ship on time,” Neil Matheson said as they wove their way out of the town’s narrow streets onto the sands where the local boatmen awaited their passengers.

“I never doubted it.”

“It was very good of you to stay behind, nonetheless.”

Matheson had needed an additional clerk in the bustle of preparing the first fleet of the season, and Will had been happy to step in. After all, he’d been paid for his work, and he wasn’t so eager to commence life in a tiny steerage cabin that he’d complain of a few days’ delay.

“Not at all, sir. More time on land is rather a blessing than otherwise.”

“I’m sure. Someday I shall have to make the voyage myself. I don’t wish to spend my entire career in London, though it does serve to keep my mother from fretting—she gets enough of that with Andrew in the army.”

Just ahead of them, a woman with a baby on her hip argued with a boatman, and Will wondered what she was doing here alone. Some women traveled to India for the express purpose of finding husbands, but not a woman with a child. Maybe she sailed to join a husband already there. All he could see of her was her back, but it was a well-dressed back in a sturdy blue pelisse and neat straw bonnet.

The boatman frowned. “You’re asking me to row all the way out to the
Felix
with naught but a letter, and then twiddle my thumbs waiting for an answer?”

“Yes. I’ll pay you exactly the same as if you were carrying a passenger and all his baggage.” She had an aristocrat’s accent, precise and accustomed to command, but with a faint, musical Scottish rhythm.

Will’s heart gave a great lurch and lodged somewhere in his throat. He’d know that voice anywhere. “Anna?” His feet were already carrying him forward at a stumbling run across the sands.

She spun about, her skirts whirling. “Will!”

Will retained just enough awareness of Matheson, the boatman, and who knew how many others watching them to refrain from crushing her against him. He stared down at her, filled with the same amazement and joy that he saw mirrored in her bright green eyes. She’d been asking after the
Felix
, so she must’ve come seeking him, but how had she known?

And the baby? Anna, with a baby? He tore his gaze from her face for a closer look at the squirming infant in her arms, a pretty, plump, thriving child—with his eyes and Anna’s smile. He hadn’t thought it was possible to be
more
amazed than when he’d heard Anna’s voice, but he managed it.

Still neither of them had spoken. Anna held the baby a little closer and gave Will a shy, uncertain smile. “This is Arthur,” she said. “He was born in April.”

“Arthur,” he echoed. “He’s beautiful.” His son. Anna wasn’t barren and she had a son, his son. Will felt ready to burst from joy and love for the pair of him, but why were they here? Had her family cast them out? Did she need his help?

“You’re not—are you here alone?”

She shook her head. “No, Juana is with me—she’s resting there.” She pointed with her chin, and Will glanced over his shoulder to see Juana standing in the shade of a tall boat, watching Anita collect shells and bits of driftwood. She raised her eyebrows and smiled a knowing smile.

“How…? I don’t understand any of this,” he confessed.

Matheson cleared his throat. “Ah, Atkins, since there doesn’t seem to be a great hurry to join the fleet, perhaps you and your friend might wish to stroll along the beach. It sounds as though you have a great deal to discuss.”

Anna colored, and Will felt his own face heat. Matheson had stepped forward and was watching them with a bland, expectant air, so Will fell back upon comforting formalities. “Mrs. Arrington, may I present Neil Matheson? He’s Captain Matheson’s younger brother.”

“You know Andrew, too, ma’am?”

“Only a little, but enough to know him as a fine officer. My late husband and my cousin were officers of the Sixteenth, but I believe my cousin dines with every Scot in the army—all the Highlanders, at least.”

“Ah. So you must’ve met Atkins in Spain as well. I see.” His eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “Yes, I see. Well, then. I’ll be sure to hail you if those ships look likely to go anywhere, but I doubt they will.”

“Maybe by nightfall we’ll get a good breeze,” the boatman put in, “but not much before. I reckon you don’t need my services now, ma’am? Found what you were looking for?”

“I did indeed,” Anna said coolly.

Without thinking, Will stood on Anna’s right, and she shifted Arthur to her left arm and lifted her hand to what would’ve been the crook of his elbow before Badajoz. She hesitated and looked a question at him.

Did she find the stump repulsive? Could she bear to touch him now? He shrugged his shoulder slightly, and with a smile she tucked her hand around his arm, just above where the stump ended.

They walked slowly down the beach, the dry, yielding sand giving little purchase to their booted feet.

“I have so many questions I don’t know where to begin,” he said when he thought they must be out of earshot of the others. It was almost enough simply to see her again—and now that she had sought him out, now that he knew they had a son, he
did
mean to ask her to wait for him. But they had so little time and so much to say.

“I know I gave you a great shock.” She squeezed his arm. “If there had been any other way…but I had to catch you before you sailed if I could, so we dashed across the country.” She freed her hand momentarily to shift the baby to a more comfortable station on her hip. “I hope you don’t mind—that is, I wish I’d been able to tell you about Arthur before.”

He looked at her, but could only see the side of her bonnet. She was looking at the baby—or maybe her feet. “I
am
shocked,” he admitted. “Shocked, and amazed. But how could I mind learning that I have such a beautiful son?” Anna looked up, her face aglow with relief and gratitude. So beautiful and so beloved, everything he had ever wanted and thought he could never have. “I only hope that his birth hasn’t created…difficulties…for you.”

She smiled, a little wistful and very wise. “None that I haven’t chosen to embrace.”

“Did you know you were with child before you left the army?” he asked, seizing upon one of the many questions racing through his mind.

“I hadn’t a notion of it when I wrote you that letter. If I’d known, I would’ve told you. I don’t know what we could’ve done, but I would’ve told you.”

He nodded. “How did you know to look for me here—you must’ve gone to the inn, to find Juana, but…how?”

She shrugged. “As soon as I heard about Badajoz—more than a month after, because Arthur was born the night of the battle and James and Lucy didn’t like to worry me until they thought me quite recovered—and saw how badly it had gone for the Light Division, I feared for you. I wrote Helen in May and asked if she would find out if you’d come through the battle. She was good enough to ask Captain Matheson, but the mails were even slower than normal, and I didn’t receive her reply till last week.”

“So you went to find me? How did you get there so quickly? Weren’t you in Scotland? I’ve been imagining you safe and happy there all this time.”

“No. I never made it further that my brother’s home in Gloucestershire. My aunt and uncle visit each summer, and I was to go home—to go to Dunmalcolm—with them. I got Helen’s letter just as we were preparing to leave. So I asked them if we could stop at Market Stretton and inquire after you.”

“Did they know? Surely not.”

“About us? No. But they did know that you’d rescued me from Colonel Robuchon, so they thought it a very proper attention. I hated deceiving them, but I had no notion of your not being there, and I’d thought to carry things off far more smoothly. I had speeches rehearsed—for you, for them—but then you
weren’t
there, and your mother, ah, recognized Arthur. It was rather awkward.”

“Rather awkward,” he echoed, sure that was an understatement. “Did your aunt and uncle cast you out?”

“Not precisely, but they gave me a choice between Dunmalcolm and Arthur.”

“Good God, Anna, I’m sorry.” After all she had already endured, the last thing Will had wanted was for her to suffer for his sake.

“Don’t be. No difficulties that I haven’t chosen to embrace, remember? Besides, I already knew there was a good possibility they’d cast me out, at least for a time. I’d gone there to ask you to marry me, after all.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. “What?” There was nothing he wanted more, but it was too soon. He had so much left to accomplish.

She closed her eyes. “That wasn’t well done, was it? I promise you the version I’d rehearsed was much better. But will you marry me, Will? I can think of no greater honor than to be your wife.”

“We can’t,” he sputtered. “Not yet.”

“Not
yet?
When?”

“When I’ve proven myself worthy of you.”

“You’ve done that a dozen times over already.”

He tried to explain. “I want to prove I can support you, prove I can make something of myself. That’s why I’m going to India. A man has his pride.”

“A woman has her pride, too,” she pointed out. “I had to set mine aside to come here.”

He tickled his son under the chin and watched him laugh and kick, wishing he could touch Anna, kiss her, but they were in far too public a place. “Anna, I love you so, and I want to marry you, more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but it wouldn’t be right of me to make you a laughingstock or separate you from your family—more than I already have,” he said. “So I have to find a way to make a gentleman of myself first—or at least as much of one as I can.”

“Take me with you.”

“What?”

“Go to India, prove whatever you need to prove, but
take me with you.
” She leaned toward him, earnest and yearning. “I don’t want to wait. I will if I must—I’ll never wed anyone else—but I’d so much rather go with you and work by your side, than simply sit at home and wait, wait, wait. And think of it—if we marry now, Arthur will grow up knowing you as his father, and as far as almost all the world is concerned, he’ll simply be our son. But if we must wait for years, there will be questions, and he’ll be confused.”

Her arguments were almost persuasive, but…he stepped back and took a deep breath. “But I don’t want to be a kept man, living on your money.”

“You wouldn’t be. We can live on nothing but what you earn if that’s what it takes for you to feel right about marrying me now.”

“I couldn’t ask you to sacrifice that much for the sake of my pride,” he said. He’d already taken so much from her. He couldn’t ask for more.

“You’re asking me to sacrifice far more.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re asking me to sacrifice five, ten, fifteen years I could spend at your side—maybe forever, because you may never think you’ve earned enough, or one of us could die. You’re asking me to sacrifice all the days we could spend together and the nights. You’re asking me to sacrifice the children we might have in all that time, all our sons and daughters. Don’t talk as if a fortune is a greater sacrifice than a life.”

His heart began to pound. She was right. They could never get back the years if they chose to spend them apart—and this was his Anna, his woman with the strength and courage of a whole company of soldiers. Of course she wouldn’t want to wait tamely at home and leave all the work to him. “Anna, are you sure? What if I fail?”

“Then you’ll succeed at the next thing you try. You’re too clever and too stubborn to do otherwise.”

“You want to come to India with me?”

“Of course. I always wanted to go, to see the places my father talked of, remember? And
you
are home to me now. If you’ll have me.”

He dropped to one knee before her. “Anna, will you marry me?”

She dimpled. “Now?”

He grinned. “As soon as it can be managed. I must sail on the
Felix
—there’s a position awaiting me in Calcutta—but you and Arthur can follow with the next fleet, and we’ll marry once we arrive.”

“I suppose that’s the only way. I hate to be parted from you after finding you again, though.”

“So do I.” He frowned. “You will have someplace to go while you wait?”

“I can stay with James and Lucy. They know Arthur isn’t Sebastian’s—I made what I thought was a deathbed confession.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “He was breech. It was a difficult delivery.”

He shuddered to think of her in danger. “Good God. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Now, if babies in your family were often born breech…but your mother assured me that isn’t the case.”

“She did?”

“She did. If it came to it, I think I could stay with
your
family until the next fleet. I don’t think your mother approves of me, precisely, but she helped Juana and me make arrangements to come here, and I believe she does approve of Arthur.”

“She would.” He sighed. “He’ll have changed out of recognition by the time you get there, and I’ve already missed so much. But it can’t be helped. Well. Shall we go back and tell them?”

She tucked her hand against his arm again as they began to walk back. “Does the arm bother you?” he asked.

“Only insofar as it bothers
you
. I’m sorry it happened, more sorry than I can ever say, but it doesn’t change how I feel. Nothing could ever make me love you less.”

“Oh, Anna. My love. We’re mad, you know.”

“Absolutely,” she said with a delighted laugh.

“I only wish—I’m sorry to have separated you from your family.”

“You haven’t. My family is here.”

Matheson and Juana were waiting for them, making what looked to be polite yet awkward conversation.

“Well?” Juana asked.