if you didn’t have a gown rolled up in here,” he said, grabbing the pack before she could move toward it. He unbuttoned it and dumped the contents onto the grass. “And there it is. I don’t suppose you thought to bring a brush—and some soap.” He picked up the gown, tossed it at her. “Go back into the trees and put this on.”
“No.”
“Fanny…”
She held the rolled-up sprigged muslin against her chest and glared at him through slitted eyelids. “I hate you.”
“Oh, dear me. Have I somehow stumbled over a lovers’ quarrel? A thousand pardons, Lieutenant Becket, I’m sure.”
Rian swore under his breath. Brede. You’d think the man had rags wrapped round his boots, muffling his steps, he moved so quietly.
Fanny whirled about to see a man standing behind her, negligently leaning against a tree trunk. He was dressed all in dark gray, a long white scarf carelessly looped around his throat, his mussed, sun-lightened tawny hair falling from a ragged center part to the middle of his cheeks. His brows were low over amused hazel eyes and he had a straight, faintly wide nose; a slight growth of beard smudged those cheeks. The unlit cheroot trapped in the corner of his wide, full-lipped mouth made him seem rakish. Dangerous.
And he was looking at her in a way that made her wish herself back at Becket Hall. In her bed, under the covers. Behind a locked door.
“Lieutenant?” he said, pushing himself away from the tree trunk, and he advanced on them both with a slow, almost insolent grace. “You’ll not be introducing me to the…lady?”
Fanny smacked her palms against the sides of her head in frustration. “Have I fooled no one? I cut my hair. I’m wearing a uniform. I’m filthy.”
The man removed the cheroot from his mouth and leaned close to her ear. “And you most unfortunately smell very like a horse. There’s also that, my dear. Becket? An explanation, if you please. Quickly. I’ll be in Brussels by nightfall, with or without you. We are at war, if you’ll recall the matter? There’s no time for private skirmishes.”
Fanny looked to Rian to see the telltale flush of anger in his cheeks. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew she’d ruined something for him, and it was up to her to make it right again.
She held out her hand in her forthright way. “My name is Fanny Becket. I’m afraid, sir, that I’m at fault here, entirely. I gave in to impulse and donned this…masquerade, in order to follow my brother. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll—”
“Your sister, Becket?” Brede said, ignoring her hand. “And I imagine Jack has an affection for her, as well? Christ. He should have just let them shoot me. It would have been a mercy compared to this. I was not fashioned to run herd on an unruly nursery. Becket?”
“Sir! Arrangements have been made for her, my lord. I’m free to go whenever you wish.”
Free to go, was it? Oh, Rian would pay for this! But she understood his eagerness. Then Fanny frowned as she looked at the strange man once more. My lord? My lord what? My lord Ratcatcher? And yet there were those eyes, and that cultured voice. And, again, those eyes…
“You’d leave your sister, Becket? Perhaps you’re not the man Wellington needs.”
“No! No!” Fanny raced into speech at the sound of the name. Wellington? Rian all but worshipped the Iron Duke. She went to her knees, hastily stuffing her belongings back into the pack. “Truly, my lord, this is all my fault, and Rian has already made arrangements for me. I’ll be quite safe. Please take him with you.”
Rian bent down, put his hands on her shoulders, gently pulling her to her feet even as she was hastily pushing a decidedly feminine undergarment back into the pack. “No, Fanny. Beckets don’t grovel, not even to the Earl of Brede. You’re my responsibility. My lord, I thank you for your intervention on my behalf, the trouble you’ve gone to, but I’ll be staying here until I know my sister is safely on her way to Brussels with the other women in less than three days time.”
Brede stuck the cheroot back into the corner of his mouth and clapped his hands together in mocking applause. “Bravo, Lieutenant Becket. A belated self-sacrifice, but not unappreciated by your sister, I’m sure. Miss Becket, the uniform will suffice for now, but not for long. The two of you—be ready to leave here in twenty minutes, not a moment more.”
“But, sir—”
“Becket, don’t make me regret this bit of charity even more than I do now, which is considerably, by the way. We go to Brussels, where your sister will be placed in the house I’ve taken there—locked inside a room there if she protests—and you and I will continue with our business.”
Fanny would have hugged the man’s neck, except that she’d also rather die than do anything so foolish. “Thank you, my lord.”
Brede removed the cheroot once more, smiled down at her—my, he was tall. “Oh, no, Miss Becket. Don’t thank me. You’ll only regret it later.”
CHAPTER SIX
THEY RODE INTO Brussels with the sun just sliding behind the Gothic buildings at the heart of the teeming city filled beyond overflowing with, Valentine thought, imbeciles.
Had half of fashionable London gotten together to say, “Here’s a brilliant thought. Bonaparte has escaped, he’s marching somewhere on the Continent with a reformed Grande Armeé, there will be a terrible battle, perhaps a terrible war—what say we all go watch? What fun! Jolly good time, what?”
Idiots. Fools. Did they plan to ride out in their fine open carriages, picnic on some grassy hill overlooking whatever battlefield might present the best view of the carnage?
There were times Valentine Clement heartily despised his fellow Englishman. Or perhaps he was tired, weary to the heart. Of war. Of the things he had witnessed, things he had done.
He’d not spoken above a few words to young Lieutenant Rian Becket, and less to his sister, in the past several hours, but had turned inward, considering what he’d learned on his last foray into French territory, and how best to present that knowledge to Wellington and the others.
Everyone was so sure the battle was still weeks away, and the Russians and Austrians would have by then swelled the ranks of the British and Prussians, turning that battle into a rout.
But if they were all wrong and he was right? What then? If he was right, even Blücher’s Prussians might not arrive in time, leaving Wellington’s depleted force alone to face what could be more than seventy thousand Frenchmen. All those French soldiers and, much worse, the most gifted, charismatic commander the world had seen in a long time.
And, while he should be thinking—gathering the right words, the most convincing arguments—Valentine was instead playing nursemaid to a foolish young girl whom he’d deem as having more hair than wit, if it weren’t for the fact that she’d damned near shorn herself like a spring sheep in a ludicrous attempt to pretend she was a man.
With eyes like that? Granted, her brother was a shade too handsome to be taken seriously, but at least he was obviously male. This Fanny Becket, with her catlike, tilt-tipped green eyes, could no more conceal her sex than she could climb to the top of that bell tower over there and hang from the steeple while singing verses of “God Save the King.”
