yes, it is,” Brede drawled, clamping an unlit cheroot into a corner of his mouth, striking a match against the fieldstone, then looking at Rian beneath his brows and the lank, light brown locks that fell over those brows as he put flame to tip. There was something cold, almost calculated, about the man, for all his seeming ease and conversation. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, not this Valentine Clement, Earl of Brede and rumpled spy. “We move soon.”
“Do we?” Rian said, keeping his own tone even. “And I suppose you know where we’re going?”
Brede looked around at the dismissed soldiers, all carrying their rifles inelegantly slung over their shoulders as they headed for any space of ground or comfortable flat rock they could find, still sweating like fatted pigs from another full day of marching about to impress their superiors. He sighed, shook his head. As if marching ever won a battle—although strict discipline did, and that was really the point, wasn’t it? Poor bastards, marching straight into cannon fire whenever the order came. Not for him, not for Valentine Clement. He’d live or die on his own merits, using his own wits, making his own decisions.
“Come with me,” he said, and then vaulted neatly over the wall, heading for the line of trees at the side of the trampled wheat field, expecting young Becket to follow him.
Rian looked behind him, saw Captain Moray wink at him and carefully secured his sword at his side before hopping onto the wall, sliding his legs over and down, to follow after a man he couldn’t quite seem to like. Probably because this man had already proved himself, and Rian knew he still had so much to prove.
They made their way through the cantonment, the neat lines of small white tents, the cooking fires now just coming to life again, and into the trees, at which point Brede turned to Rian, looking hard at him again, measuring him again.
“If you don’t want to tell me anything, I—” Rian began, only to be cut off by a wave of the Earl’s hand.
Brede inhaled hard on the cheroot, blew out a stream of blue smoke and then said what he’d come to say. Hell of a thing, being beholden to somebody. Even Jack, who’d saved his life for him, twice. But he’d be damned if he’d wrap this pretty boy in cotton wool. Every man has to be given the right to prove himself, sometime.
“Jack swears you’ve got a good head, can ride anything with four legs or even less, know how to shoot, and how best to use that pretty sticker you’ve got strapped to that neatly pressed uniform. You know your place, says my old friend, and how to guard a secret. Now, listen to me. You saw Uxbridge today, Becket. Frippery fellow, you’d think, looks useless, but you stay close to him if you can. He knows what he’s about, he’s as hard as rock at his center. By tomorrow the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the last of the Thirteenth, the Sixteenth and the Twenty-third—they’ll all be here. Light Dragoons, mostly. You’ll be maneuvered all over hell and back at a field not far from here, eight, possibly ten hours or more a day, until Uxbridge is satisfied. After that, Becket, rest. Rest as much as you can, you and your horse. Stay sober, feed your belly, keep your socks dry—hang the wet ones around your neck, dry them that way, and for God’s sake don’t lose your extra pair. Your feet rot off and you’re no good to anybody. The next time the men move from here, Becket, it will be into battle.”
Rian felt his blood singing through his veins. “When? Where?”
Brede smiled, the cheroot still stuck in the corner of his mouth, and Rian was still having trouble separating the unkempt clothes from the obvious intelligence in those piercing hazel eyes. God, he looked the ruffian. Not an earl at all, at least not at all like the Earl of Uxbridge. “I’d guess Quatre Bras or Ligny, somewhere in that direction, although nobody else does. Not yet. But they will, I can only hope, once I’ve made my final report. Now, listen to me. We can none of us stop this, you understand? The Alliance won’t allow it, Napoleon can’t avoid it. But I can get you out of here.”
“Jack asked you to do that?” Rian could barely see through the bright red of his sudden fury.
Brede smiled. “No. But he holds an affection for you, and I have an affection for him. I also have enough consequence to get you reassigned to Wellington’s own staff. He needs good men, with Pakenham and so many others cut to pieces in New Orleans, damn that stupid war for the folly it was.”
Rian nodded his agreement. “My brother Spencer fought at Moraviantown. He called that battle considerably less than laudable.”
Brede brushed aside the comment. He had places to go before nightfall. “The Duke doesn’t hide, so if you’re with him, you’re not out of danger. But there’s more than one way to fight a war, Becket. With your body, thrown into the field against other bodies, or with your brains.” He extracted the cheroot from his mouth, stared at the glowing tip now that the sun was sliding toward the horizon and it was growing darker beneath the trees. “I offer this only the once, Rian Becket, and for the sake of an old friend who did me more than one good turn on the Peninsula. As you so rightly said—I’m no nursemaid.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Rian said, bowing to the man. “I would, of course, be honored.”
“Only a damn fool wouldn’t be,” Brede said, smiling once more. “Two days from now, as I have things to do, things that don’t concern you. I’ll see you on Monday, exactly here, sometime before noon, with new orders for you in my possession. You will be ready to go, or I’m leaving without you. Understood?”
Rian opened his mouth to answer, but the Earl of Brede had already turned to walk away, taking no more than ten steps back out onto the wheat field before gracefully throwing himself up onto the saddle of a sleek, dappled gray stallion whose head had been held by no less than Captain Moray.
Brede turned the horse, pulled back on the reins so that it reared up on its back legs as the Earl threw Rian a casual salute, and then he was gone, gray figure and gray horse soon fading into the equally gray twilight.
“Uxbridge isn’t the only flamboyant one,” Rian mumbled as he headed toward a grinning Captain Moray. “He merely dresses better….”
CHAPTER FIVE
THIS WASN’T TOO TERRIBLE. The countryside was beautiful, the air not too uncomfortably warm, and the horses a grand protection. Fanny might miss her soft bed and Bumble’s fine way with a chicken, but the adventure made up for that.
And, with every mile, she drew closer to Rian.
“Who will probably attempt to box my ears for me,” Fanny muttered quietly behind the scarf she’d tied around her nose and mouth to keep out the dust raised by the horses.
She rode at the back of the troop, which meant that after the dried strip of beef she’d had for breakfast, she was having road dust for luncheon. Mentally, she added the lovely tin tub in her bedchamber at Becket Hall to the list of things she missed most.
“Private Reilly!”
Fanny rolled her eyes and straightened her slim shoulders. Honestly, the man was constantly at her; her own father didn’t guard her half so closely. Of course, if he had, she wouldn’t be riding across Belgium at the moment, would she? “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”
“We’ll be at the cantonment in another few minutes. Just around the next bend, I’m told. Now, here’s what I’m doing. You’ll see that brother you’ve come all this way to see, and then you’ll be off to Brussels with the rest of the women who had nothin’ better to do than follow along with us. No women here for much longer, Private Reilly, to help with the cookin’, the washin’. Uxbridge
