he in the rhythm of loading and firing. Eventually the shots around him slowed.
‘They are retreating!’ a man cried.
The French were withdrawing, like a wave ebbing from the shore.
Allan put down the musket and left his place at the wall. He met MacDonnell near the stable.
‘Get word to Wellington that we repelled the first attack, but if they keep coming we’ll need more ammunition,’ Mac-Donnell told him.
One of the soldiers brought out his horse and Allan mounted the steed. ‘I’ll get your message through.’ He didn’t know how to say what he most wanted MacDonnell to know. ‘The boy is in the château, but have someone look out for him, will you?’
MacDonnell nodded, but one of his officers called him away at the same time.
Allan had to ride off without any assurance that MacDonnell would even remember the presence of the boy Miss Pallant pretended to be.
Chapter Two
The shouts of the soldiers and the crack of musket fire signalled a new attack. Marian’s eyes flew open and she shook off the haze of sleep. Her exhaustion had overtaken her during the lull in fighting.
Now it was clear the French were attacking the farm again. The sounds were even louder and more alarming than before. So were the screams of the wounded horses and men.
She hugged her knees to her chest as the barrage continued. Had the captain made it through? With every shot in the first attack, she’d feared he’d been struck and now her fears for him were renewed. One thing she knew for certain. He was gone—either gone back to the British line or just … gone.
She cried out in frustration.
He must survive. To think that he would not just plunged her into more despair.
The hallway suddenly felt like a prison. Its walls might wrap her in relative safety, but each urgent shout, each agonised scream, cut into her like a sword thrust. To hear, but not see, the events made everything worse. She hated feeling alone and useless while men were dying.
She stood and paced.
This was absurd. Surely there was something she could do to assist. She’d promised Captain Landon that she would stay in the hallway, but he was not present to stop her, was he?
Marian left where the captain had placed her and made her way to the entrance hall.
The green-uniformed soldiers were gone, but several of the Coldstream Guards rushed past her. The sounds of the siege intensified now that she’d emerged from her cocoon of a hiding place.
The château’s main door swung open and two men carried another man inside. Blood poured from a wound in his chest.
She rushed forwards. ‘I can help. Tell me what to do.’ She forgot to make her voice low.
They did not seem to notice. ‘No help for this one, laddie,’ one answered in a thick Scottish accent. They dumped the injured soldier in a corner and rushed out again.
Marian looked around her. Several wounded men leaned against the walls of the hall. The marble floor was smeared with their blood.
Her stomach rebelled at the sight.
She held her breath for a moment, determined not to be sick. ‘I must do something,’ she cried.
One of the men, blood oozing through the fingers he held against his arm, answered her. ‘Find us some bandages, lad.’
Bandages. Where would she find bandages?
She ran back to the drawing room where the captain had found the chair for her. Pulling the covers off the furniture, she gathered as much of the white cloth as she could carry in her arms. She returned to the hall and dumped the cloth in a pile next to the man clutching his bleeding arm.
‘I need a knife,’ she said to him.
He shook his head, wincing in pain.
Another man whose face was covered in blood fumbled through his coat. ‘Here you go, lad.’ He held out a small penknife.
Marian took the knife, still sticky with his blood, and used it to start a rent in the cloth so she could rip it into strips. She worked as quickly as she could, well aware that the man the soldiers had carried in was still moaning and coughing. Most of the other men suffered silently.
She knew nothing about tending to the injured. It stood to reason, though, that bleeding wounds needed to be bandaged, as the wounded soldier had suggested.
Marian grabbed a fistful of the strips of cloth and turned to him. ‘I’ll tend that other man first, then you, sir.’ She gestured to the moaning man who’d been so swiftly left to die. ‘And you,’ she told the man who’d given her the knife.
‘Do that, lad. I’m not so bad off.’ His voice was taut with pain.
Marian touched his arm in sympathy and started for the gravely wounded soldier.
Her courage flagged as she reached him. Never had she seen such grievous injuries. Steeling herself, she gripped the bandages and forced herself to kneel at his side.
He was so young! Not much older than Domina’s brother. Blood gurgled from a hole in his abdomen. Her hand trembling, she used some of the cloth to sponge it away. The dark pink of his innards became visible, and Marian recoiled, thinking she would surely be sick.
He seized her arm, gripping her hard. ‘My mum,’ he rasped. ‘My mum.’ His glassy eyes regarded her with alarm, and his breathing rattled like a rusty gate. ‘My mum.’
She clasped his other hand, tears stinging her eyes. ‘Your mum will be so proud of you.’ It was not enough to say, not when this young man would die without ever seeing his mother again.
The young man’s eyes widened and he rose up, still gripping her. With one deep breath he collapsed and air slowly left his lungs as his eyes turned blank.
‘No,’ she cried. The faces of her mother and father when death had taken them flashed before her. ‘No.’
The room turned black and sound echoed. She was going to faint and the dead young man’s hand was still in hers.
The door opened and two more men staggered in. She forced her eyes open and took several deep breaths.
More wounds. More blood. More men in need.
She released the young soldier’s hand and gingerly closed his eyes. ‘God keep you,’ she whispered.
Marian grabbed her clean cloth and returned to the man who had told her to get bandages. ‘You are next,’ she said with a bravado she didn’t feel inside.
He gestured to the soldier who had given her the knife. ‘Tend him first.’
She nodded and kneeled on the floor, wiping away the blood on the soldier’s head so she could see the wound. His skin was split right
