The Wedding Wager
The Wedding Wager
Deborah Hale
What had she agreed to? Leonora Freemantle had wagered high stakes that book learning, not birthright, produced a gentleman, but now with the roguish Sergeant Morse Archer under her tutelage, she was no longer sure of the outcome. Would it be polish, passion…or public outrage?If Leonora Freemantle couldn't spruce him up enough to pass muster with the Society swells at Bath, she'd be hastily married off. But not if he could help it, Rifleman Morse Archer vowed, for this beautiful bluestocking with her highbrow ideals and innocent charm was effortlessly teaching him the true language of love…!
“If we must dawdle in the library, let’s make it for a worthwhile purpose.”
Caught off balance, Leonora lurched into his lap. Though part of him would have liked to throttle her, another part thrilled to the sensation of her in his arms. In a deft motion that would have done credit to a trained pickpocket, he plucked the spectacles from her nose and the combs from her hair, tossing them onto the table.
“I’ve worked hard for you this week, Miss Freemantle. I think I deserve a reward.”
He hushed her inarticulate sounds of protest with a forceful application of his lips.
She froze in his embrace, her whole body going temporarily slack. Surrendering before his onslaught. Falling open. Inviting him deeper.
Then, with a shift so sudden it robbed him of breath, Leonora pried herself from his arms and slapped him soundly.
“How dare you, Morse Archer!”
The Wedding Wager
Harlequin Historical #563
Acclaim for Deborah Hale’s recent books
The Bonny Bride
“…high adventure!”
—Romantic Times Magazine
A Gentleman of Substance
“This exceptional Regency-era romance includes all the best aspects of that genre…Deborah Hale has outdone herself…”
—Romantic Times Magazine
“…a nearly flawless plot, well-dimensioned characters, and a flame that will set your heart ablaze with every emotion possible!”
—Affaire de Coeur
My Lord Protector
“Invite yourself to this sweet, sensitive, moving and utterly wonderful tale of love from the heart.”
—Affaire de Coeur
#564 THE MARSHAL AND MRS. O’MALLEY
Julianne MacLean
#565 THE SEA SPRITE
Ruth Langan
#566 THE VIRTUOUS CYPRIAN
Nicola Cornick
The Wedding Wager
Deborah Hale
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
DEBORAH HALE
My Lord Protector #452
A Gentleman of Substance #488
The Bonny Bride #503
The Elusive Bride #539
The Wedding Wager #563
For my parents, Ivan and Marion MacDonald,
who taught me so many important lessons,
and for my sons, Brendan and Jamie Hale,
who picked up where they left off.
Contents
Chapter One (#u9b573ca9-69df-5420-91ab-5e416b1dd321)
Chapter Two (#u386a50ce-0387-56c0-b46c-8c0762bdc855)
Chapter Three (#u1e9739e9-607c-5550-8c19-d13ff7fb048b)
Chapter Four (#u130366b2-5b24-5ff1-87f1-ff1613b56f4d)
Chapter Five (#ubf7406d8-4fe4-54f3-b0e8-4001b02a9ff1)
Chapter Six (#u5148eef9-cd70-5cda-8f6b-b9fbd0a55383)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Bramleigh Military Hospital for
Enlisted Men
1812
The whole place smelled of men.
Leonora Freemantle could almost feel her nose twitch and her muscles tense, like a hare or hind scenting predators on the wind. Looking neither left nor right, she strode down the ward behind Matron. As she passed bed after bed of convalescing soldiers, she sensed their covert glances, heard their muttered quips.
“Looks like Matron’s got a new dragon-in-training, lads.”
“D’yer reckon she’s sucking on a lemon?”
“Puts me in mind of me old drill sergeant.”
The derisive snickers dogged Leonora’s footsteps. Thrusting out her chin and stiffening her spine, she fiercely resisted the urge to adjust her spectacles and straighten her bonnet. They might take it as a sign of weakness. Never would she give them the satisfaction of thinking she cared for their opinion in the least.
Still, she could not quench the blistering blush that seared her face. How long had some of these men been without a woman? Yet they still found her laughably unappealing.
At least they were honest about their feelings. One could not say the same for most of their sex. That, Leonora had learned from bitter experience.
Matron veered into a small common room, heading straight for a clutch of men crouched in one corner. Leonora heard the muted click of dice tumbling along the hardwood floor. A shout went up, followed by a flurry of muttered curses.
“Knicked-it again, Archer!” cried one of the spectators in tones of grudging admiration. “Damned if you ain’t the luckiest elbow-shaker I’ve ever seen.”
At the mention of that name, Leonora perked up her ears. If this was the Sergeant Archer she’d come to see, it was encouraging to know he liked gambling.
The thrower scooped up his ivories with a practiced motion. “Luck’s got naught to do with it.” A note of teasing laughter warmed his words. “It’s skill, my boy, simple as that.”
“Ser’nt Archer!” Matron descended on the players like a terrier into a chicken coop. “How m’ny times have I told ye? Thar’s to be no gamblin’ in the hospital!”
The sergeant rose to his feet, unfolding the long, lean-muscled body of a Rifleman. For an instant he winced, as though the movement hurt him. Then his features blossomed into a smile of devastating charm, which he fixed upon Matron.
Leonora’s sensible, bluestocking heart began to flutter in a most unnerving fashion. Nothing in Cousin Wesley’s letters from the Peninsula had prepared her for the sight of his sergeant.
Stop it! she willed herself. Stop this foolishness, at once!
Her traitorous body mutinied. Her breath quickened.
Why should the sight of this man affect her so? Leonora asked herself as she watched him jolly Matron into a mood of exasperated tolerance. She hoped an intellectual consideration of the problem might bring her insurgent emotions back under control.
Why him? She’d seen far handsomer specimens—at least by the standard of the times. Smoother, blander, more uniformly proportioned.
There was nothing smooth or bland about this man’s face. Every feature was bold and definite. The nose and chin jutted out as though hewn from golden-brown stone, ready to take on the world. The wide, bowed mouth looked capable of a vast spectrum of expression, while the dark eyes wielded a provocative, penetrating gaze.
On a face less striking, the emphatic black eyebrows would have dominated. On Sergeant Morse Archer, they harmonized into an aspect of arresting appeal.
“What have we here?” He turned his piercing, hypnotic eyes upon Leonora, one full brow raised expressively.
Their color was a dynamic melding of green, brown and gold, Leonora realized as Sergeant Archer stepped toward her. For the first time in many years she yearned to be beautiful. His striking good looks made her all too aware of her own shortcomings. Though she told herself it was the height of folly, she could not help wanting him to like what he saw.
Matron answered his question. “A visitor for ye, Ser’nt Archer. Now mind yer manners.”
At a look from the sergeant, his gambling companions rapidly dispersed. Matron took up a post just outside the door. Whether she meant to guard the privacy of their conversation, or to act as some sort of chaperon, Leonora was not certain.
“What can such a lovely lady want with the likes of me?” asked Sergeant Archer once the room had cleared. His voice was as rich and mellow as well-aged brandy. Once again he unleashed his potent smile.
A shiver of icy wrath went through Leonora. Lovely lady? The liar! Did this cynical charmer expect her to lap up his spurious flattery? As she pulled off her glove, she longed to smack it against his cheek. Remembering how desperately she needed to win his cooperation, she curbed her ire and thrust out her hand for him to shake.
“Sergeant Archer, I’m Leonora Freemantle. I believe you know my uncle, Sir Hugo Peverill. I’ve come to make you a proposition.”
She could tell her words unsettled him, though he made a determined effort to hide it. Those expressive brows drew together and his mien darkened like a summer sky before a storm. His deep voice rumbled with the muted menace of distant thunder.
“Go away, Miss Freemantle. I’m not interested in your proposition.”
He tried to execute a crisp pivot on his heel. Apparently his wounded leg refused to cooperate. His stern frown crumpled into a grimace of pain as he staggered.
Before she had a chance to think better of it, Leonora reached out to steady him. The sleeves of his coarse-woven shirt were rolled up to the elbows. As she grasped his bronzed forearm, she felt the taut power of his muscle, the disconcerting warmth of his bare skin and the provocative caress of his dark body hair.
A jolt of mysterious energy surged in her. From the sensitive tips of her fingers and the palm of her hand, it radiated up her arm—to her throat and her bosom and the pit of her belly.
She hated it.
How dare this exasperating creature provoke her so? Even as he dismissed her without hearing a word she’d come to say. Long ago she had vowed never to submit to a man’s whims. She had no intention of starting now. Not with her whole future at stake.
When he tried to wrench his arm away, she tightened her hold. “I’ll let go when you agree to hear me out, Sergeant Archer.”
Animosity warred with amusement—every nuance of the battle showing on his vigorous, mobile face. Amusement won.
A row of square, even teeth flashed briefly in a fiendish grin. “This could turn out to be a very interesting day, if I choose not to listen.”
Leonora’s cheeks smarted. She knew what he would say next. Her own thoughts had raced ahead to the same conclusion.
“Not to mention an even more interesting night.” A warm, infectious chuckle bubbled up from some well of humor deep within him.
Abruptly, Leonora released his arm. Tears of impotent fury prickled in the corners of her eyes. She refused to let them fall. Why had Uncle Hugo chosen this infuriating man as the subject of their wager?
As he limped toward the door, she leveled a desperate parting shot at his back. “Strange. I didn’t take you for a fool, Sergeant.”
Her words found their mark. He hesitated in midstride, and his shoulder blades bunched, as though he had just taken a blow between them.
Leonora pressed her momentary advantage. “In my experience, only a fool shuts his ears to a proposal that might benefit him.”
Though he continued to face the door, Morse Archer lobbed his reply back at her. “When a woman like you comes with a proposition for a man like me, Miss Free-mantle, it isn’t often to his benefit. At least, not in the long run.”
A shriek of vexation rose in Leonora’s throat, but she stifled it—barely. She’d assumed Morse Archer would leap at the opportunity she offered him. Instead he had thrust her into the role of supplicant. One she abhorred.
It made her twice as determined to win Uncle Hugo’s wager and free herself from the need to go cap in hand to a man ever again.
“Pray, what do you mean by a woman like me, Sergeant Archer?”
“Don’t be thick, woman.” He rounded on her. “I mean a lady of your class.” The disdain in his voice was palpable.
At last—a scrap of leverage to use on him.
“Would it surprise you to learn that I care no more for the notion of class than you do?”
“It would.”
Drawing an unsteady breath, Leonora forced herself to look squarely into his penetrating gaze. “I believe all that separates the so-called upper and lower orders of our society is education.”
“Do you then?” He crossed his arms over his chest in a pose that demanded, And what’s that to me?
At least he made no further move to quit the room.
“I do. That is why I’m here. Uncle Hugo thinks I’m a crank, as does nearly everyone else of my acquaintance.”
One mercurial brow lifted a fraction, as if to cast his opinion with the rest. Leonora hurried on, before he took a notion to dismiss her again.
“My uncle has set me a wager, to test the validity of my theory.”
At the word wager, she sensed a subtle air of interest from Sergeant Archer.
Eagerly, she explained the plan. “I have three months to educate a common soldier and pass him off as a gentleman officer during a Season at Bath. If I win the bet, Uncle Hugo will finance a school for indigent girls, of which I shall be headmistress.”
“And I’m the common, ignorant soldier you plan to work your magic on?” The question sounded innocent enough, but the subtle curl of his lip conveyed scorn.
“If by magic you mean something easy or illusionary, you’re mistaken, Sergeant. It will be three months of very hard work for both of us. In the end, I believe you’ll find the result worthwhile. Will you do it?”
He smiled now—with his lips at least. “No, Miss Free-mantle. I will not.” His tone and posture were a parody of high courtesy. “Now please be so kind as to go away. You’ve taken up quite enough of my time for one afternoon.”
Didn’t he recognize the chance she was offering him? Couldn’t he see the noble cause it would serve?
“Are you devoid of ambition, man? Not the least bit interested in improving yourself?”
The insincere smile disappeared. Nostrils flared, he bore down on her like a charging bull. Against her will, Leonora retreated a step before his menacing advance. He stopped within a whisker of her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. He spoke with muted intensity, his whisper more intimidating than most men’s thunderous bluster.
“I have plenty of ambition, Miss Freemantle. On my terms. I happen to like who and what I am. So you can keep your improvements. I don’t need you or anyone else turning me into some mincing, mutton-headed gentleman.”
Leonora held her ground. Somewhere deep within her, she fought to quench a flicker of admiration for Morse Archer’s pride and independence. Remembering all she stood to gain…and lose, she forced herself to try one last time.
“Please, Sergeant. If not for yourself, think of my school.”
“Where you can turn wholesome farm girls into useless debutantes? An admirable cause, to be sure.”
With all the dignity she could muster, Leonora replied, “I don’t expect you to understand my motives. No one else does.”
“The trouble is, I understand all too well, Miss Free-mantle. I know all about having the charity of my betters crammed down my throat and having to tug a forelock and say ‘Thankee, ma’am’, even while I choke on it.”
His words smote her. Her school would be nothing like what he described…or would it? “We are not talking about charity, Sergeant.”
“Aren’t we, Miss Freemantle?” His burst of rage seemed to collapse on itself. Slowly he turned away from her and hobbled toward the door.
For a moment Leonora just stood, watching him go. Limp and spent, she felt as though she’d been buffeted by a violent storm. As she gathered up her courage to once again run the gauntlet of stares and whispers in the ward, she wondered how her uncle would react to this turn of events. He’d been so adamant on engaging this particular man.
Well, she had tried her best to recruit Morse Archer. He had refused. Uncle Hugo would simply have to pick someone else.
In some ways it was a pity. The sergeant seemed to possess a degree of intelligence, and his speech was not too rustic. Taken together with his arresting physical presence, it would not have been difficult to pass him off as a gentleman.
All the same, Leonora found herself breathing a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed was to spend three months in the close company of a man like Morse Archer. So stubborn. So intractable.
So compelling.
Morse watched Leonora Freemantle stalk off the ward, clearly oblivious to the winks and elbow digs with which the men greeted her departure. Turning to the window, he continued to stare after her as she climbed into her barouche and drove away. He wanted to make certain she was gone.
Or so he told himself.
“Give the ivories another rattle, Sergeant?” A young corporal from Morse’s regiment flashed a hopeful grin. The lad’s right arm had been severed below the elbow, but he’d learned to throw the dice pretty well with his left hand.
Morse shook his head in the manner of an elder brother who had better occupations than entertaining the little ones in the family. “You heard Matron, Corporal Boyer. No gambling on hospital property. I’m in hot water enough with the army. No need to go courting more.”
Boyer flashed him an awkward grin, then ambled off. This was the first time Morse had referred to the Board of Inquiry, though the matter must have been common knowledge among the convalescing soldiers at Bramleigh.
There was a good chance he would end up cashiered. Dismissed from the army in disgrace. Thinking of the Board made Morse think of the miserable retreat from Bucaso. His leg throbbed, just above the knee, where a French bayonet had pierced it.
During the British retreat from Bucaso.
Limping over to his cot, he sank down on it, stretching out his long frame. His heels projected two inches past the end of the thin mattress. To distract himself from the pain in his leg and the equally painful memories of that last rearguard skirmish, Morse turned his thoughts to Leonora Freemantle.
The gall of the woman! To stroll in like Lady Bountiful with her Christmas basket and offer to turn him into a gentleman. In the instant before she’d opened her mouth, something about her had attracted him. Now Morse was damned if he could decide what it might have been.
She had little in common with the type of woman he usually favored. In the first place, her figure was too lean and angular for his taste. He seldom paid much heed to women’s clothes, but in her case they were too ugly to ignore. He often noticed women’s hair, but Miss Freemantle had kept hers pulled back so severely and covered by her bonnet that he could not have sworn as to its color. There might have been something to her eyes—color or clarity, but tight little spectacles detracted from their modest charms.
Altogether a prim, bluestocking spinster.
None of these had roused Morse’s antagonism, though. Her voice had done that.
Since joining the army, during his service in India and Spain, he’d seldom had occasion to hear an English lady speak. There was only one female at the Bramleigh hospital—if you could call her that. Matron, the old gargoyle, spoke in Cornish dialect so broad Morse often had trouble understanding her. Nothing in her gravelly voice evoked painful memories. Morse could not say the same for Leonora Freemantle.
To make matters worse, her first words to him had concerned a proposition. True, it was not the kind of proposition Lady Pamela Granville had made him on the day before he enlisted. The emotional echo stung just the same. It had made him resist Miss Freemantle’s offer even before he heard it. Now, as his leg throbbed and he tried to block out the persistent din of the ward, Morse wondered if he’d been a fool to reject her proposal out-of-hand.
His other options were depressingly limited. He couldn’t stay on at Bramleigh much longer, since he was past danger of amputation and he could use the leg, however haltingly. Even if the Board of Inquiry didn’t drum him out of the service, he could not go back to soldiering. The doctors were optimistic that his mobility would return with time. Until then, his lameness would make it all but impossible to find the sort of job his limited education had equipped him for.
The dinner bell rang. With a weary sigh, Morse hauled himself up from his cot and joined the tail end of the queue headed for the refectory. There, he spooned the tepid, watery stew into his mouth with little interest or enjoyment. Boyer and a few of the other lads from his regiment took their places with Morse at their accustomed table. In one way or another, they were all casualties of the retreat from Bucaso.
They were the lucky ones.
“Yer comp’ny didn’t stay long, Sergeant.” There was an implied question in Boyer’s innocent remark. “Not exactly your kinda woman, were she?”
The men exchanged grins all around the table. Their sergeant’s way with women was a point of pride among his men. They knew he had a taste for pretty, plump, saucy barmaids. They also knew he seldom had trouble attracting them.
Without glancing up from his stew, Morse cut their amusement short with a single muttered sentence. “The lady was Lieutenant Peverill’s cousin.”
A muted “Oh” rose from the men, breathed with obvious regret and perhaps a little shame. The late Lieutenant Wesley Peverill had enjoyed universal esteem among the enlisted men in his company. None more than his sergeant—Morse Archer.
Just then, Morse realized what had drawn him to Miss Freemantle in the instant before she spoke. It was the likeness to her cousin. Lieutenant Peverill had been a short, slight man with a deceptive air of delicacy. Yet that unpromising frame had housed the guile of a serpent, the tenacity of a badger and the courage of a lion. For as long as he lived, Morse Archer would rue his young lieutenant’s senseless death.
He had glimpsed something of Lieutenant Peverill’s cleverness and ferocious bravery in the woman. She had stood her ground and peppered him with every scrap of ammunition she could muster. When he’d turned on her with the full force of his wrath, she had scarcely flinched. He’d been skeptical of her claim that social class meant nothing to her. Now, remembering her kinship to the lieutenant, he could believe it.
Boyer spoke up again. “Came to thank ye, did she, Sergeant?”
Morse nodded. “Something like that.”
The men knew Sir Hugo Peverill had called on their sergeant soon after they’d all arrived at Bramleigh. The old man had come to thank Morse for risking his life to rescue the lieutenant from certain death. Unfortunately, the young man’s wounds had proven too grave to survive. But his heartbroken father had cherished the small consolation that the lad had died and been buried at his home in England rather than some shallow, unmarked grave in Portugal.
Sir Hugo had offered Morse money, a job, anything he might ask. Morse had declined with rather ill grace. He took no pride in his actions during the retreat. His desperate charge into a forest of French bayonets had been too little, too late. To accept a reward for it only compounded his sense of guilt.
Apparently the wily old Sir Hugo was unwilling to take no for an answer. Thus the transparent stratagem of this wager with his niece. Morse did not go so far as to suspect Leonora Freemantle knew it was a ruse. She could not have entreated him so passionately unless she believed it to be genuine.
Gnawing on a crust of hard bread, Morse imagined the food he might have received at Sir Hugo’s estate, Laurel-wood. When rations had been tight in Portugal, Lieutenant Peverill had often waxed lyrical about the contents of his father’s larder and the talent of his kitchen staff. More such stories recurred to Morse as he lolled around the ward after dinner feeling curiously restless.
That night he dreamed of a fine, fat feather bed made up with linen that smelled of sunshine and clover. A warm, cheery fire blazing in the hearth. A plump roast goose laid out on the sideboard with all the trimmings, its skin brown and crisp over juicy dark meat. Morse woke to find his mouth watering.
No doubt about it, Laurelwood would have made a soft billet for the next three months, while he recovered the full use of his leg. A snug roof over his head. Meals the like of which he hadn’t eaten in years. And nothing required of him but to suffer the tutelage of Sir Hugo’s bluestocking niece. For a wonder, the idea rather appealed to him.
It was too late now, though.
No doubt Miss Freemantle had gone straight out and acquired a more willing subject. A sharp fellow who didn’t let pride and foolish memories blind him to a good thing.
Morse recalled his father’s gruff admonition. “When a man’s got nothing, he can’t afford pride, son.”
He also remembered the bitter elegy he’d muttered over the unmarked graves of his family. “When a man’s got nothing, pride’s all he can afford.”
One of these days, Morse Archer decided with a rueful shake of his head, his misbegotten pride was going to land him in serious trouble.
Chapter Two
“Dash it all, Leonora. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer, my dear.” Sir Hugo Peverill glanced up from his eager ingestion of the roast goose, an expectant gleam in his eye. “How soon can he come?”
To delay her reply, Leonora pretended an intense concentration on her dinner. She was hungry. It had been a long, cold ride to Bramleigh and back, with only her indignation to keep her warm on the return journey.
“Well? How soon?” repeated Sir Hugo.
Still, Leonora hesitated to speak the words. She was no coward. Cousin Wesley had often claimed she possessed more courage than a field officer—denying society’s expectations by remaining unwed and devoted to her scholarly pursuits.
It was one thing to deny society. Quite another to deny Sir Hugo when he took hold of an idea. Leonora often compared her late aunt’s husband to a Royal Mail coach. Thundering toward his destination. Waving away objections like the Royal Mail speeding through toll stations. Impatient of the slightest delay or detour.
He wouldn’t be happy with the detour she was about to deliver him. No sense in forestalling the inevitable, however.
“He isn’t coming, Uncle.” Though she tried to sound indifferent, Leonora braced for the backlash. “We’ll simply have to find someone else. I’m certain there are plenty of men with the sense to recognize a unique opportunity when they’re presented with one.”
“Not coming? Ridiculous. Rot!” Sir Hugo’s white side-whiskers bristled aggressively and his prominent Roman nose cleaved the air. “Of course he’s coming.”
Leonora almost expected him to add, Sergeant Archer just doesn’t know it yet.
She shook her head. “No, Uncle. He was quite adamant on the point. I had a devil of a time even persuading him to give me a hearing. When I finally won the opportunity to state my business, he accused me of trying to cram charity down his throat.”
“Then you must’ve gone about it all the wrong way.” Eerily pale blue eyes shone with a glacial light that terrified many people. “Knew I should’ve gone with you. You’re a fine filly, Leonora, but you don’t reckon with the importance of a man’s pride.”
Leonora pushed her plate away. Her stomach suddenly felt sour. She longed to remind Sir Hugo that she’d seen her family’s fortune decimated, all in the name of assuaging male pride. Noting how the ruddy flesh of his jowls had taken on a deep mulberry cast, she refrained from engaging him in a full-scale argument.
For all his overbearing will and eccentric whims, he was a warmhearted, generous creature. With only a tenuous claim of kinship by marriage, he had been more of a father to her than any of the men her mother had married.
“Don’t get yourself into a state, Uncle.” She did her best to soothe him. “Can’t we just find someone else? I don’t believe Sergeant Archer will do it no matter who asks or how we coax him. He’s an impossibly stubborn fellow.”
“Stubborn?” Sir Hugo brandished his bread knife like a sword. “Poppycock! Resolute, you mean. It took a resolute character to defy orders and take on a dozen Frenchmen with bayonets to save Wesley.”
Leonora could well picture Morse Archer fighting off an entire French battalion. It was no stretch to conceive of him defying orders. The difficult part was imagining him doing all that for the sake of someone else.
Long ago, she had reconciled herself to the notion that human beings were selfish creatures at heart. The sergeant had struck her as a man well accustomed to looking out for himself. She had tried appealing to his sense of altruism by mentioning her school. He’d been positively insulting in his refusal, with more cant about unwanted charity.
The truth suddenly dawned on Leonora. “That’s what this wager is about, isn’t it, Uncle Hugo? Not me and my school. You’re just using them as an excuse to repay Sergeant Archer.”
“Harrumph! Excuse? Repayment? Nothing of the sort!” Sir Hugo took a deep draft of his wine, avoiding Leonora’s gaze.
“He wouldn’t accept your help when you offered it outright.” She persisted. “So you hit on the idea of this wager. You might have been frank with me.”
A look of relief came over Sir Hugo’s florid features. An unusually forthright man, he could not have enjoyed misleading her.
“I’ll own that was part of it. I hadn’t much hope of Wes getting off the Peninsula alive. You’ll never know what it meant to me, having him here at the last. There’s scarcely enough in this world I can do to repay Archer for making that possible. Wish I could make him understand.”
He spoke that last sentence on a sigh heaved from deep within his stout frame. Leonora could almost feel the weight of his debt on her own heart.
“I can’t say I care to be manipulated like this, Uncle,” she chided him, but gently. More in hurt than in anger. “I thought you were in earnest about our wager.”
“So I am, my dear. Whatever gave you the notion I wasn’t? I take our wager very seriously indeed.” His gaze rested on her with tangible fondness. “I want to see you settled and happy with a good man and a brood of lively young ones I can spoil rotten in my dotage.”
“Uncle!” Leonora could not keep a hint of asperity from her voice. “We’ve been over this territory a hundred times at least. You know I’d never be happy in a marriage, any more than Wesley would have been happy as a civilian.”
Too late, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Not for anything in the world would she add to her uncle’s pain.
Sir Hugo replied with a long, level look. “How happy do you think he is now, eh?” he asked at last. “I should have done more to dissuade Wes from taking a commission. I’ll not sit by and make the same mistake with you, my dear. Just because Clarissa never met a blackguard she wouldn’t marry is no reason to condemn our whole sex…”
“I’ll thank you to keep my mother and her men out of this,” Leonora snapped.
Her uncle held up his hands in a parody of surrender. “No need to till that ground again. I’m only saying—since I haven’t been able to convince or cajole you—I’ve been driven to the extremity of this wager. If you fulfill its conditions, I’ll endow that school you’re hankering after.”
“And?” prompted Leonora.
“And,” he grumbled, “provide you with a settlement that ensures you never need to marry.”
The very thought made a smile of contentment blossom on Leonora’s face.
“Just be sure you don’t forget your part of the bargain.” Sir Hugo stabbed the table with his forefinger.
Her budding smile withered, as if by a briny blast from the North Atlantic. “I’m not apt to forget, Uncle.”
How could she with stakes as high as her future happiness? Lose the wager and she had sworn to marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. If she had not wanted her school so desperately she never would have agreed to Sir Hugo’s terms.
“Another thing you’d better remember is that I have the sole right to choose the subject for our wager. I won’t settle for anyone but Morse Archer.”
“But, Uncle, I told you…”
“So you did. Now I’m telling you, Leonora—if Archer won’t agree to come, the wager’s off.”
“You can’t mean that.” Leonora blanched. Without this one chance, however slim, she’d never have her school.
“I assure you, I do mean it. Now, don’t look so stricken, child. I’ll go along with you, and between the two of us I’m sure we can win Sergeant Archer ’round. Why don’t you spruce yourself up a bit for our visit. Haven’t you any colored gowns?”
She wanted to protest that her appearance was the last consideration likely to sway Sergeant Archer. A maypole tricked out in ribbons was still a stick.
“Gray’s a color, Uncle.”
“’Tisn’t. Not in a gel’s frock, anyhow. Neither is black, brown nor that dull green. Do something with your hair, while you’re about it. Can’t you twist it up some way to make it curl?”
“Yes, Uncle.” Leonora sighed. There was no talking sense to him in such a mood.
She did not look forward to her return visit to Bramleigh. Sharing the same room with two of the most exasperating men she’d ever met, Leonora wondered how she’d resist the urge to knock their heads together.
When Lieutenant Peverill’s father and cousin tracked him down on the hospital grounds, Morse was hobbling along a mud-churned footpath with a stout tree branch for support.
It was a cold winter for Somerset, even to people who hadn’t spent a decade baking in the heat of India and Iberia. Experiencing his first English winter in ten years, Morse felt the cold more keenly than he’d expected. Be that as it may, he could not stand being cooped up in the ward a moment longer.
He was an outdoorsman, a man of movement, a man of action—well suited to life in the Rifle Brigade. Whether the army discharged him or not, the time had come to hang up his green jacket. He would miss it.
In spite of the danger, the bad food, the miserable pay, the heat, the flies, the hatred of the local people, the blinkered stupidity of the officer corps and the occasional loneliness. It was all he had known for ten years. He felt rather empty and adrift to think of leaving it all behind. All the more, when he considered the bleak future that lay before him.
“Halloo! Sergeant Archer!”
Morse glanced up to see Sir Hugo Peverill bearing down on him, Leonora Freemantle coasting along in her uncle’s wake. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Morse found himself approving the way she walked. Chin up. Eyes firmly fixed on her target. No mincing along, fussing about the mud that might spatter the hem of her cloak and gown.
“Wondered if we were ever going run you to ground, man.” Sir Hugo gasped for breath.
With a start, Morse realized what they must want with him. The notion of three months at Laurelwood lured him like a beacon in an otherwise murky future. If only his cursed pride would not rear up and spoil everything.
Morse extended his hand. “Good to see you again, sir.”
“Indeed. I believe you’ve met my niece, Miss Free-mantle.” Sir Hugo pushed the young woman forward by the elbow, until her hand met Morse’s.
Their previous interview flashed in Morse’s mind. He remembered the touch of her hand on his bare arm, and the crude jest he’d made when she would not let him go. Little wonder she thought he could do with some gentlemanly polish.
Determined to show her he was not devoid of manners, he bowed over her hand. “I have had that pleasure.”
The wind had whipped a few spirals of dark hair loose from beneath her bonnet—a less severe piece of headgear than she’d worn on her previous visit. The cold had coaxed an engaging spot of color into the ivory flesh over her high cheekbones. Her spectacles had slipped down to the tip of her nose, leaving unguarded a pair of most attractive gray-green eyes.
Eyes that shot him a look of censure, which he could not fathom. What had he done wrong now?
She snatched her hand back, as if she feared he might bite it. “You did not appear very pleased with our first meeting, sir.”
Morse felt his own cheeks tingle. Perhaps it was time to come in from the cold. “I must beg your pardon for that, miss. There are days this place would try the patience of a saint. I’m sorry you had the misfortune to catch me on a bad one.”
Sir Hugo clapped his niece around the shoulders, but he addressed his words to Morse. “Only natural, my boy. Of course, Leonora will pardon you. She’s one of those rare females who doesn’t hold a grudge.”
“Rare, indeed.” Morse smiled again into those gray-green eyes, hoping to make peace.
Leonora Freemantle replied by abruptly jamming her spectacles back into place. It was as though she had slammed a heavy door in his face. Morse took an involuntary step back.
Sir Hugo raised a hand to anchor his hat against a strong gust of winter wind. “We’d like to talk to you again, if we may, Sergeant?” He shouted to make himself heard over the rising rush of the wind. “No sense freezing our giblets out here, though. If you’re not ready to go back in just yet, perhaps we could take a little drive around the neighborhood?”
“Very well, sir.” It had been many a year since he’d driven in a good carriage.
“Capital!” Sir Hugo flashed an open, appealing grin.
It reminded Morse so forcefully of his young lieutenant that a choking lump rose in the back of his throat.
Sir Hugo pivoted and strode toward the driveway, calling back over his shoulder. “Lend the sergeant your arm, Leonora. This ground looks uneven.”
She shot Morse a look that might have been apology or defiance—it was difficult to tell behind those grim spectacles.
Then she took his arm, as bidden.
Morse fought back a smile that tickled at the corner of his mouth. Plenty of women would have been delighted to take his arm. Leonora Freemantle looked positively martyred by the effort. No question that she was an unusual creature, unique in his experience. That novelty attracted Morse. He wouldn’t mind getting better acquainted with her.
“Go ahead and grin, Sergeant.” She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. “I know you want to. Enjoy my humiliation.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, miss. You don’t look much humbled to me.”
Between the sturdy fabric of his greatcoat and the thick wool of her pelisse, there was no real contact between his arm and hers. Not like their previous meeting, when she’d clutched his bare arm with her naked hand. As a vivid memory of that instant rose in his mind, Morse felt a queer rush of heat that defied the bitter wind. He found himself counting back, trying to recall when he’d last had a woman.
Before he finished his count, they reached the carriage.
“Come along!” Sir Hugo sang out, motioning to them through the open door.
Again Leonora Freemantle spoke, as though she had hoarded her words till the last minute so there would be no time for discussion.
“You needn’t have begged my pardon, Sergeant. I am the one who owes you an apology. Of everything you said to me when we last met, it appears you were right in almost every particular. Save one. My school will not be charity—at least not of the wretched type you’ve experienced. I beg you to reconsider helping me.”
Morse understood about pride. He could appreciate what it cost her to speak those words. If only she’d left him with a moment to reply. The best he could do was a little show of gallantry, helping her into the carriage. As he caught a glimpse of one trim ankle encased in a fitted leather boot, Morse felt that confounded surge of warmth again.
Impatient with himself, he tried to tamp down the feeling. It did not yield to his control.
Climbing in behind Miss Freemantle, he sank gratefully into the seat opposite her and Sir Hugo. If he’d needed any reminder of the comfortable life he could expect at Laurelwood, the elegantly appointed interior of the barouche provided it—in spades. Mahogany, oiled and polished to a gleaming finish. Fine brass fittings. Supple leather upholstery.
Reaching up with his ivory-handled walking stick, Sir Hugo rapped on the ceiling of the carriage. Without a moment’s hesitation, the barouche rolled smoothly away on the frozen road.
Sir Hugo fixed his intent gaze upon Morse. “I’ll come to the point straightaway, Archer. No shilly-shallying about. I know you military chaps haven’t much patience for that. The fact is, Leonora and I need you most desperately to help us with our wager.”
“Yes, well…sir…as a matter of fact…I must tell you…” Morse groped for the words that would allow him to accept Sir Hugo’s largesse while surrendering as little of his self-respect as possible.
“Say no more, my boy,” interjected Sir Hugo in a manner that brooked no gainsay.
Both his tone and the my boy set Morse’s oversensitive pride abristle, though he tried in vain to quell the feeling.
“I know just what’s on your mind,” Sir Hugo continued. “My niece and I can hardly expect you to relinquish several months of your life, not to mention putting all your plans in abeyance, while we settle a philosophical conundrum of no consequence to anyone but ourselves.”
When the older man paused for breath, Morse tried to voice his objection. “No, no, Sir Hugo. That’s not—”
Sir Hugo raised a stout hand to bid Morse be quiet. “Hear me out, young fellow. At least don’t refuse us until you’ve heard the compensation I mean to offer you.”
Morse wanted to laugh. Compensation? They meant to pluck him out of the cold, hungry, jobless life that awaited him, and cast him into the lap of luxury. Now, on top of that, they proposed to compensate him for doing it. He was hard-pressed to imagine how they reckoned to sweeten the pot. Curiosity, together with his respect for Sir Hugo, kept him from interrupting further.
“If you’ll agree to help us,” said Sir Hugo, “I’ll engage on your behalf the best legal counsel money can buy. I’ll also bring to bear every scrap of influence I can muster. No false promises, of course, but I should be very much surprised if the Board of Inquiry doesn’t throw out your case.”
Morse felt his jaw go slack. What could he say? Here was Sir Hugo offering to smooth out all the wrinkles of his life as casually as a housemaid straightening the bedsheets.
As he struggled to find his voice, Miss Freemantle spoke. “Don’t forget the rest, Uncle.”
Morse could not believe his ears. There was more?
“Of course, my dear.” Sir Hugo took a deep breath. “My niece advises me that you should have a stake in the success of her little experiment. An inducement for you to give it your best effort.”
Morse experienced a momentary pang of affront at the notion that he would ever give less than his best. Sir Hugo’s next words drove the slight from his mind.
“If you succeed in passing yourself off as a gentleman officer at Bath, I’ll see you set up somewhere that a man’s caste isn’t of such consequence. Any British colony you want to name—the Caribbean, North America, Botany Bay. I’ll wangle you a decent grant of land and provide you with gold to buy equipment, stock and seed. Whatever you need. That should make it worth your while putting up with our foolishness, what?”
His generous mouth spread into a broad grin as he waited for Morse’s answer.
Morse clamped his own lips together, to keep from saying the first thing that came into his mind.
Damn! He’d managed to curb his pride enough to accept Miss Freemantle’s original offer. Now, with the kindest intentions in the world, Sir Hugo had heaped a double helping of charity on top of the first. Much as the prospect tempted him, Morse knew it was too rich a dish for him to stomach.
“It’s a generous offer, sir.” Morse strove to keep his temper in check. The old man meant well, after all. He just didn’t understand. “But I can’t accept.”
The curve of Sir Hugo’s smile pulled straight and taut. The color began to rise in his face. He looked like a man struggling to contain an outburst.
Morse was suddenly aware of Leonora Freemantle, too. She looked quite stricken. Though why the founding of a school should mean that much to her, Morse could not fathom. Neither could he fathom the unaccountable urge he felt to take her in his arms and comfort her.
He wished he could find it within himself to oblige them. To oblige himself for that matter. If he could have contrived some way to appease his damnable pride, he’d have leaped at Sir Hugo’s offer.
“Are you mad, boy? How can you think of turning up your nose at—”
“There, there, Uncle. Don’t fret yourself.” Miss Free-mantle patted his arm.
She cast Morse a look as frigid as the crust of snow that blanketed the surrounding fields. Perhaps he’d only imagined her instant of vulnerability. “It’s clear Sergeant Archer does not feel himself equal to the challenge of our wager.”
Her words struck Morse like a leather glove whipped across his cheek. His pride, already piqued to quivering pitch, dove to take up the gauntlet.
“Challenge? You call that a challenge, to masquerade as some arrogant puppy of an officer? I’ve suffered enough of those fools that I could do it tomorrow, without your three months’ tutoring.”
She appraised him with her eyes, and he returned the insult. Somewhere within him, Morse felt a flash of admiration for a worthy opponent and a yearning to win her admiration in return.
“Prove it, Sergeant. Take the wager.”
“I have nothing to prove to you, or to anyone else, Miss Freemantle.” Morse felt reason and control slipping from his grasp like a greased rope, but he could not tamely swallow this woman’s baiting.
“Admit it, Sergeant. You haven’t the nerve to try.”
“I never heard such confounded rot.”
“It isn’t rot.”
“’Tis.”
“Then you’re up to the challenge?”
“Bloody right.” The words were out of his mouth before Morse realized what he’d said. He saw a flicker of triumph in his opponent’s striking eyes. “I mean, no. I can’t. I could, but I won’t.”
“Now, now, Archer,” interjected Sir Hugo. “Don’t tell me a Rifleman would go back on his word. You accepted. Heard it with my own two ears. I mean to hold you to it.”
Part of Morse longed to call back the acceptance he’d flung at Leonora Freemantle during their childish tit for tat. The greater part surrendered to a wave of relief that she had galled him into doing what he’d wanted to do all along.
“Since you’ve left me no choice, how soon can we start?”
Sir Hugo appeared to rouse himself from his amazement at Morse’s abrupt turnabout. “If the sawbones at Bramleigh will pronounce you fit enough, we can load your gear and be back to Laurelwood in time for tea.”
Morse stared at Leonora Freemantle with a gaze that held its own challenge. “That suits me.”
His stomach growled just then, though the others politely ignored the sound. The notion of tea at Laurelwood set his mouth watering, and his stiff muscles yearned for the luxurious embrace of a feather bed. After a hard decade of soldiering, surely this Rifleman deserved a soft billet. Then he noticed Leonora Freemantle eyeing him with the speculative gaze of a drill sergeant sizing up a raw recruit. A shiver of apprehension ran through him.
Or was it excitement?
Chapter Three
A soft billet?
For the hundredth time in the past fortnight, Morse gave an ironic groan at the thought of that rose-colored dream. Rolling onto his stomach, he clamped the feather bolster over his head almost tight enough to suffocate him. It still wasn’t enough to drown out the persistent tapping on his door.
“G’way, Dickon!” he hollered at the young footman. “Give me a few more minutes’ sleep.”
His plea was futile, and Morse knew it.
The tapping stopped, but that only meant Dickon had let himself in. As he’d been ordered to by that she-devil. Morse clamped his fingers onto the thick linen of the pillowcase.
It was no use.
Dickon, who must have weighed twenty stone, had fingers the size of country sausages. He removed the pillow from Morse’s head with a restrained but irresistible force.
“Time to get up, sir,” he rumbled in an apologetic tone. “Don’t make me douse ye with the cold water, like yisterday.”
With a growl of resignation Morse struggled out of bed and let the footman help ready him for the day. It was a ritual he detested. More than ever, at this frigid hour long before dawn. However, Leonora Freemantle insisted he become accustomed to dealing with servants. Morse had discovered that, in all matters pertaining to him, Miss Free-mantle’s word was law.
Law be damned—it was tyranny!
“Dunno why you take on so, sir.” Steaming water splashed into the washbasin from the kettle Dickon had brought with him. “When you was a Rifleman, didn’t you have to be up at dawn?”
“Well…yes.” Morse muttered the grudging admission as he took a chair and let Dickon lather him up for his morning shave.
An hour before dawn to be precise. Sir John Moore—God rest his soul—had drilled that habit into his Riflemen. Daybreak was often a time the enemy chose to attack, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise.
“But that’s not the point.”
As the big footman shaved him, employing an unexpectedly deft touch with the razor, Morse mulled over his grievances against Leonora Freemantle.
Contrary to what he’d expected, meals at Laurelwood were tortured affairs involving the proper deployment of a bewildering array of cutlery and crystal. If he made so much as one hapless mistake in the choice of his fork, Miss Freemantle was not above depriving him of whatever dish he was about to eat. Worse yet were the endless hours each day sitting at a desk, staring at a book until his eyes fairly crossed. Laboring over a piece of written work with his pen clenched almost to the breaking point.
“It all comes down to this, Dickon.” Morse rinsed the residue of soap from his face. “I’m not much good at taking orders.”
“G’way, sir.” The footman handed Morse a pair of buff-colored breeches. “Soldiering all those years and no good at taking orders?”
A piece at a time, Morse donned the articles of clothing Dickon held out for him. The apparel was all well tailored in the finest quality fabrics. When he glanced in the mirror, Morse grudged a fleeting grin at the fashionable dandy who stared back at him.
Still, his body itched for the old green jacket that had once marked him as a member of the elite Rifle Brigade.
“A green jacket’s different, Dickon. The redcoats are drilled to follow orders without a second’s thought, but a Rifleman’s trained to think for himself. For all that, I was still a bit too independent for the Rifles. It landed me in trouble more than once. I’m well enough off if I respect the ability of my superiors and see the sense in what they’re asking me to do. To take senseless orders from a fool who ranks me, though—that’s my notion of hell.”
Sticking a finger under the edge of his stock, he tugged in vain to loosen the wrapping of linen that hugged his throat like a noose.
“Buck up, sir.” Dickon nudged him, flashing a broad wink. “It’s Wednesday night, remember?”
“Wednesday night.” Morse savored the words. The tension that bunched his shoulder muscles began to ebb.
Wednesday and Saturday nights were his only respite from the tyranny of General Freemantle. Without them, Morse was certain he’d have chucked the whole business, in spite of his debt to Sir Hugo.
True to his word, the old man had managed to dissuade the Board of Inquiry from pursuing charges against Morse, letting him muster out with no fuss.
“Think you can liberate us another few pints of that fine ale?” Morse asked the footman.
When Miss Freemantle went into the village on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, he took the opportunity to sneak off with Dickon for a pint or two in some deserted cranny of the house. While they drank and ate whatever cold collation Dickon could forage from the pantry, Morse told stories of his adventures as a Rifleman in the Fourth Somerset Regiment. It felt good to bask in the footman’s soldier-struck admiration. In fact, it was almost enough to buttress Morse against Leonora Freemantle’s persistent assault on his self-assurance.
“Better’n that sir. Do ye fancy a drop of hard cider?”
“Don’t I just! Could do with a drop this very minute.”
Dickon nodded his massive head in sympathy. “Be off, now, sir. Miss Leonora will be waitin’ on ye. I’m apt to catch the edge of her tongue if yer late. It’s the oddest thing. Before you came to the house I never heard a cross word from her. T’was all Would ye be so kind and Might I trouble ye for this or that. This past fortnight, though, she’s been as cranky as a badger sow.”
An involuntary smile rippled across Morse’s lips. He was certain it would be his last before nightfall. No doubt, Leonora Freemantle could badger with the best of them. Not to mention carp, reproach and downright bully.
Army life had been hard and dangerous by times, Morse admitted to himself. Apart from the pitiful pay, it had not been entirely thankless. He’d earned his promotions, won the affection and respect of the men in his command, gained the trust of his superiors—at least those superiors whose opinion mattered to him.
At Camp Laurelwood, however, he was reminded day and night that he could do nothing right.
Morse forced his feet down each step of the darkened staircase toward the library. Every soldier’s instinct in him shrank from tardiness. For ten years it had been dunned into him that he must be where he was expected, when he was expected, no matter what. The lives of his comrades might hang in the balance. He couldn’t make himself believe it was of any consequence whether he started lessons now, or two hours from now. It was all a pack of nonsense anyhow.
With a grunt of disgust, he thrust open the library door.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, Leonora glanced at the mantel clock. Once again Morse Archer was a quarter of an hour late for their prebreakfast lessons. This, in spite of her having sent Dickon to wake him half an hour early. Little wonder General Wellington’s Iberian campaign was all but lost, if he was commanding an army of surly idlers like her star pupil.
Drumming her fingers on the desktop, Leonora eyed the Latin grammar, open to a pitiful tenth page. Every day they slipped further and further behind on her meticulously constructed timetable. She had tried everything she could think of to challenge the man, but he obstinately refused to learn the most rudimentary Latin declension. His knowledge of English history was appalling. He couldn’t tell Agincourt from Hastings, and she sometimes wondered if he knew that Henry the Fifth came before Henry the Eighth. As for his ignorance of literature…
She could have forgiven the man if he’d proven an obvious dullard, incapable of learning. But that was not the case. In his dinner table conversation with Sir Hugo, she caught glimpses of the knowledge he’d gained while soldiering abroad. Morse Archer was too clever by half. If only she could curb his stubborn refusal to apply himself.
She’d tried everything short of cajolery. For some reason she could not bring herself to use a soft approach with him. Perhaps because his physical presence unnerved her so. Often when she should have been correcting his atrocious penmanship, she found herself instead staring at his hands. Blatantly staring at his powerful, shapely hands. Imagining them taking steady aim with his rifle, clamped around a bottle of Spanish wine or spanning the waist of some sultry Dulcinea.
Then he would glance up and catch her watching him. And his eyes would twinkle with mockery. Leonora willed herself to think of something else before she gave way to a shriek of vexation. Distracting her thoughts was no easy matter. A nauseating lump of panic rose in her throat as she pictured the days and weeks slipping away with so painfully little to show for them. Despite his hollow boasts to the contrary, at the rate he was going Morse Archer would not pass for a butler let alone a gentleman.
And when the petty nobility of Bath laughed him out of town, she would have to forfeit the wager. Marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. Surrender her dream of a school. Abandon the academic pursuits that were her only joy in life.
A briny mist stung her eyes.
Impatient with herself, Leonora pulled off her spectacles and roughly employed the cuff of her sleeve as a handkerchief. Not since the youngest years of her childhood had she allowed anyone or anything to drive her to tears. She was not about to yield that honor to a man like Morse Archer.
The library door burst open. Shutting it behind him with a bang that reverberated through the room, Morse lumbered over to the table and dropped heavily into his seat.
With a hiccup, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, Leonora pushed her spectacles back on again and stiffened her posture.
“If you learn nothing else from me in the next two and a half months, Morse Archer, I trust you will at least cultivate the civility of knocking before you barge into a room.”
He glared up at her, one eyebrow cocked insolently.
“Why should I waste my time knocking? Weren’t you expecting me?”
Leonora made herself glare back, hoping he would not notice the redness of her eyes. “I was expecting you a full quarter of an hour ago, as you should be well aware. That does not excuse the rudeness of your conduct. As penalty for lateness, we will work an additional half hour before taking breakfast.”
She ignored the groan with which he greeted this news. “And as penalty for your lapse in manners, I will expect you to spend an additional half hour reading history this evening before you retire.”
For some reason Morse showed no obvious dismay at this second punishment. Leonora was tempted to raise it to an hour.
“We have wasted quite enough time this morning. May I remind you that we have only ten weeks remaining until we must go to Bath. Let us begin with a review of yesterday’s Latin lesson. Translate the verb to eat, and conjugate it in the present tense if you please.”
“To eat?” Morse lounged back in his chair, not so much as glancing at the book open before him. “Last night’s dinner was so long ago, I’m not sure I recall the meaning of that word in English, let alone Latin.”
“Keep this up,” shot Leonora, her patience worn to a thread, “and it could be several hours before you get the chance to refresh your memory. Kindly apply yourself to the lesson and provide me with the translation and conjugation of the verb.”
Morse slammed his Latin grammar shut. “This is lunacy. Your wager is to pass me off as a gentleman soldier, not the Arch-bloody-bishop of Canterbury! If you’d just let me—”
“That is quite enough, sir!” Leonora’s simmering resentment threatened to boil over. “I am the teacher here. This wager is to test my skill. You understood that when you agreed to take part. I decide upon the curriculum. I choose the subjects. I set the lessons. You’d do well to master the role of pupil before you try usurping mine. Now let’s get on with it.”
She reopened the book and thrust it under his nose. If he insisted on behaving like a spoiled child, that’s how she would treat him from now on.
“Conjugation of the verb to eat, repeat after me…” She pointed out each word as she read it.
To her amazement, Morse did repeat after her. However, he did so in a flat, apathetic tone that left no doubt he’d forgotten each word the moment it left his lips.
For the next two hours Leonora persevered, bending over her pupil, straining to avoid any physical contact between them. As her outstretched finger glided beneath each line of text, she spoke the words of a dead language. Morse parroted her in a voice that sounded all but dead.
Her back and shoulder began to ache. Hunger gnawed at her innards. Worst of all, a painfully acute awareness of Morse Archer—the sight, sound and scent of him—set her senses aquiver. By half past eight, she wanted nothing more than to pick up the heavy Latin grammar and hurl it through the library window.
“Celo, celare, celavi, celatus.” Morse heard the words coming out of his mouth, as though from a distance. The page of Latin grammar was there before him and his eyes were open, but he did not see it.
“Habeo, habere, habui, habitus.” So much of army life had been numbingly boring physical routine. Morse had fallen into the habit of letting his hands or feet go through the familiar motions, while his mind fixed on some point of interest.
“Audio, audiere, audivi, auditus.” His speech organs produced the words by rote, while Morse found himself absorbed in the contemplation of Leonora’s hand.
Her fingers were slender and tapered. The nails were neatly kept, like five tiny translucent seashells. For all its daintiness, it was neither weak nor vapid. Instead it moved with an expressive, purposeful grace, which Morse found fascinating and strangely beautiful.
He scarcely realized what he was doing when his own hand reached for hers. She froze. With a stifled gasp, her recitation of Latin verbs ceased.
Once, in India, Morse had handled a priceless religious artifact, exquisitely carved in luminous pale jade. He held Leonora’s hand with the same breathless reverence, savoring its warmth and smoothness. It seemed the most natural impulse in the world to lift it to his lips in homage.
His curious trance shattered when Leonora ripped her hand from his grasp.
She found her voice again. “What is the meaning of this? How dare you take such liberties?”
Her face a livid crimson and her eyes gaping wide, she backed toward the door.
“I was just noticing what lovely hands you have.” Morse wondered that such a little thing had obviously upset her so. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She stared at her hand as if she was seeing it for the first time, and was not pleased in the least with what she beheld. “You would do well to take more notice of your studies, Sergeant Archer, and less of my…person.” The last word came out in a strangled squeak.
Morse endeavored to suppress a smile. He had never imagined his icy, implacable martinet could appear so flustered. And over such a trifle.
“Since you are obviously not…attending to the lesson, perhaps we had better adjourn…for breakfast. Afterward, I expect you to read the next twenty pages of Mr. Butler’s Hudebras.”
Morse opened his mouth to ask where she would be while he was reading. Before he could voice the question, though, Leonora had slipped out the door and fled.
She never did come to breakfast.
For the first time since setting foot in Laurelwood, Morse was able to relax and enjoy a meal in peace. As he tucked ravenously into a plate of eggs and broiled veal kidneys, he pondered the unaccountable events of the morning. What was there in an innocent touch and a trifling compliment to throw Leonora Freemantle into such a bother? He had no success in puzzling it out.
After a leisurely breakfast he returned to the library and found it deserted. For lack of any better diversion, he did read a few pages of Hudebras. When it failed to stir his interest, he got up and walked over to the window.
The bright winter sunshine and the steady drip of water from the eaves told Morse the day must be mild. Reasoning that a bit of fresh air might revive his powers of concentration, he called for his hat, greatcoat and walking stick.
Ambling along the path between high cherry laurel hedges, Morse found himself able to bear more and more weight on his injured leg. With a bit of regular exercise, perhaps he would regain his former easy stride.
By the time he returned to the house, he was in a better humor than he’d enjoyed since coming to Laurelwood. Whatever he had done to disrupt the endless routine of lessons, it was well worth trying again. If compliments flustered Leonora so…Morse chuckled at the very thought of how she’d respond if he called her by that name. Surely she had other features he could admire the next time he needed a respite from his studies.
Her slender, graceful neck, for instance. If he nuzzled her sensitive nape, she might take to her bed for several days with a fit of the vapors.
Morse grinned to himself, anticipating her reaction.
Immensely pleased at the cleverness of his plan, he took up his book again and devoured nearly a hundred pages of it by teatime.
Chapter Four
He had kissed her hand.
Several hours later it still tingled faintly and the memory of Morse’s lips on her skin continued to prompt a most ridiculous blush in Leonora’s cheeks. She had retreated to the sanctuary of her bedchamber, not trusting herself to face him again that day. On no account must that man see the foolish reaction he’d excited in her.
Pacing the carpet runner beside her bed, Leonora tried to dismiss the whole episode for the silly trifle she knew it to be. No doubt Morse Archer had kissed the hand of many a woman. More than their hands, too, unless she missed her guess.
Through the window she spied him striding the grounds of Laurelwood, his limp much less noticeable than when he’d first arrived. Some unaccountable force kept her rooted to the spot, watching Morse Archer until he disappeared from view.
Quite against her will, Leonora found herself slipping into a shameful reverie. Unbidden images cascaded into her mind, piquing her senses. Of all the places on women’s bodies where the attractive sergeant might have bestowed kisses.
On their lips, of course. Perhaps a bare neck or shoulder had enticed him to nuzzle. Might he have dropped one, delicate as a whisper, upon some pretty ear? Or pressed his face into a head of tousled tresses?
As each notion took hold of her, Leonora’s hand—her kissed hand—strayed to that part of her own person. Setting her lips aquiver as one fingertip brushed over them, gliding from shoulder, to neck, to ear. Extracting the pins from her hair.
When at last it fell in a fine, ebony billow around her shoulders, her strangely possessed hand reached up and threaded her fingers through the strands. Feeling and appreciating its delicate, silky texture for perhaps the first time in her life.
Catching sight of herself in the looking glass, Leonora almost did not recognize the face that stared back at her. That woman had a strange softness about her features. It made her look far younger than Leonora’s twenty-seven sensible years. Even her severe little spectacles could not disguise the dreamy shimmer in her gray-green eyes.
Leonora had seen that look before. Her stomach curdled and her throat constricted at the memory of it.
Mother.
Downy and pensive. Humming a little tune to herself. Fondling a nosegay of posies from her latest admirer. Such looks had meant only one thing. Clarissa Freemantle had welcomed a new suitor into her life. To Leonora, it had always spelled trouble.
Setting her mouth in a taut line, she squared her shoulders and willed that mooning creature in the mirror to vacate the premises forthwith. She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes, least of all over a shiftless, insolent ex-Rifleman that circumstances had forced upon her.
Leonora thrust her spectacles back up to the bridge of her nose. Plucking a hairbrush from the top of her dressing table, she coerced her locks into submission, plaiting them into such tight braids they made her head ache.
Dickon, the footman, almost dropped his water kettle the next morning when he arrived at Morse’s door to find the sergeant already awake.
“Don’t just stand there gaping, man.” Morse plucked the steaming kettle from Dickon’s hand and splashed a generous measure into his washbasin. “Lay out my clothes while I shave.”
“I didn’t reckon to find you in such fine fettle this morning, sir.” The burly footman rubbed his forehead. “Not after the quantity of cider you put away last night and how merry we was making.”
Morse worked his shaving soap into a good lather and smeared it on his face, inhaling the tangy aroma. “I’ve been up before dawn and in the thick of a battle after far worse debauches than last night’s wee tipple, man.”
He whistled a few bars of a Portuguese drinking song, the words of which he had never understood. “Sometimes a fellow’s all the better in the morning for a spot of revelry the night before.”
“If you say so, sir.” Dickon did not sound convinced. Clearly, he was paying a somewhat higher price for their evening’s merriment.
“I do say so, Dickon.” Morse rinsed his face and dried it off, flashing his reflection a wolfish grin. He wasn’t certain what had brought about his sudden bout of energy and high spirits. Perhaps his congenial evening with Dickon accounted for it. Or perhaps yesterday’s unscheduled holiday from his studies.
Or could it be…?
The fellow in the looking glass grinned more broadly still. Had he guessed the truth? That, at last, Morse had found himself an effective weapon in his running conflict with Miss Leonora Freemantle.
Until yesterday she had possessed all the artillery, not to mention strategic field position. His only recourse had been a dogged refusal to capitulate. Then, just when he’d thought himself all but beaten, Morse had discovered his own tactical advantage—Leonora’s agitated reaction to a little harmless flirtation.
This set them on even ground at last. The prospect of a well-matched contest stirred Morse’s blood as nothing had since the rout at Bucaso.
He eyed the suit Dickon had chosen for him. “Don’t suppose you can find something more colorful by way of a waistcoat? If a fellow has to act the gentleman, might as well look the part, eh?”
With a glance that questioned if he truly could be Morse Archer, Dickon rummaged in the wardrobe and produced a brocade garment of forest green shot with gold.
Once he had donned his gear, Morse looked himself over in the mirror, approving what he saw. Even that tiny hint of green in the waistcoat reminded him of his Rifle Brigade uniform. It heartened him for whatever battles might lie ahead today.
He let Dickon give his coat a final brush, then Morse descended the stairs to the drawing room as rapidly as his injured leg would allow. Finding the place dark and deserted, he rubbed his hands with gleeful anticipation.
If Sir John Moore had drummed one precept into the minds of the Rifle Brigade, it was the benefit of being first to arrive on the field of battle. One gained superiority of position together with the element of surprise.
Morse lit several candles and picked up the volume of Hudebras he’d been reading the previous day. Settling into his chair, he affected an air of one who had been in the throes of diligent study for some time. Fortunately, he did not have to keep up the pose for long before he heard Leonora’s footsteps.
Something stirred inside him at the sound, and he had to admit it was more than the anticipation of catching her off guard. His lips warmed at the memory of kissing her hand.
As the door eased open, Morse tried to rein in the eager grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“You are late, Miss Freemantle.”
Leonora gasped at the sound of Morse Archer’s voice. In the very next instant she berated herself for letting him catch her off guard—again.
“Considering this is the first morning you have managed to arrive on time, Sergeant, it ill-behooves you to criticize.”
Blast the man to kingdom come! She had been anxious to reassert her authority this morning and already he had put her on the defensive.
Morse closed his book. Had he read that much since yesterday? She heartily doubted it.
Leaning back in his chair, he swept her with a look that made Leonora break out in gooseflesh from head to toe.
“You mistake me, Miss Freemantle.” His tone sounded far too cordial for her liking. The warm baritone wrapped itself around her heart. “I didn’t mean to criticize, only to state the fact. If you took a few extra minutes to dress and fix your hair, I would be the last to complain. You look particularly charming this morning.”
Her heart hammered and her stomach clenched. How had he guessed that she’d dithered a full ten minutes in her choice of a gown? That, against all logic, she’d spent more precious minutes dressing her hair in a marginally less severe style.
Her feet itched to flee, but Leonora stood her ground. “I will thank you not to mock me, Sergeant. I am well aware I look a fright this morning.”
There’d been nothing she could do to remedy the sleepless smudges beneath her eyes.
“Not that it is any business of yours how I look.” She strode to the table. “I am here to teach you, not to provide you with an object to scrutinize. Is that understood?”
If she expected his usual surly retort, it was not forthcoming this morning. “I understand you better every day, Miss Freemantle.”
She could find no fault with his words, or with the cheerful tone in which they were uttered. Yet, Leonora could not escape the feeling that Morse Archer was having a sharp little jest at her expense.
Retrenching to more solid conversational ground, she pointed to the open book in his hand. “I see you have shown some ambition in your reading course.”
Teacher’s intuition whispered that she ought to appeal to his sense of pride by commending his initiative. Feminine suspicion warned her not to plunge headlong after what was in all likelihood a ruse. “What do you think of Colonel Hudibras’s adventures thus far?”
She waited, in smug assurance that he would hem and haw with embarrassment and in the end admit he hadn’t read a word.
“It’s interesting enough reading, I suppose.”
Leave it to Archer to try bluffing his way out.
Before she could devise a probing question to expose his ignorance, he continued. “I don’t think much of the colonel, truth be told. Treats that squire of his something shameful. When he made Ralpho take that whipping in his place, I wanted to leap into the book and throttle the blackguard.”
There could be no denying his violent indignation. Morse’s emphatic brows knit together and his jaw jutted forward. He had read the material, after all. What’s more, he had been moved by it.
The notion tugged at Leonora and would not let her go.
In a flash Morse’s umbrage changed to chagrin. “I’ve known too many ranking idiots like Colonel Hudibras in my day,” he muttered. For the first time that morning, his gaze faltered before hers.
“I dislike the character quite as intensely as you do, Sergeant Archer,” she confessed, taking a seat beside him. What galled her was the colonel’s mercenary pursuit of the widow. Like Morse, she had known too many loathsome creatures of that ilk. “Read on and I promise you’ll enjoy the part where he gets his comeuppance.”
“That I shall.” He leafed through the volume searching for his place.
“Would it surprise you to hear that the author is no fonder of Hudibras than we are?” Leonora pulled her chair closer to his. “It was Mr. Butler’s intent to satirize the Puritans, who had ruled England after the defeat of King Charles the First.”
Morse looked up from the book. “Are you saying there was a time we had no king?”
A lively discussion sprang up between them, about the history of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth and the eventual restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Then they went on to consider the nature of satire and its origins in the Greek literary tradition.
Leonora could scarcely believe it when Dickon gave a tentative knock on the sitting room door and inquired whether they wished to take breakfast that morning, after all. She glanced at the mantel clock, amazed to discover the hands within a few minutes of ten.
“I apologize, Sergeant Archer,” she stammered. “I had no idea the time had gotten away from me to such an extent. You’ll be starved.”
He appeared almost as surprised by the hour as she. “I am hungry,” he confessed. “Though I can’t say I noticed it until this minute. I fear I got caught up in your talk. You have a knack for making this dry-as-dust history and literature come to life, Miss Freemantle.”
His dark eyes glowed with admiration. Some long dormant feminine faculty within Leonora assured her it was quite genuine.
Just then she became acutely aware of his knee pressing against hers. How long had that been going on? Even through the substantial fabric of her skirt and his buckskin breeches, it had kindled a warmth between them. A rush of that warmth wafted from Leonora’s knee to her thighs.
She almost toppled the chair in her haste to put a safe distance between them.
“We had better get to breakfast before everything is stone cold or burned to a crisp.” She gasped the words, hard-pressed to catch her breath. “I fear Cook will be cross with us.”
She fled to the breakfast room before Morse Archer could reply. By the time he sauntered in, she had regained at least a crumb of her composure. Still, she was too flustered to correct his mess hall manners.
Several times he spoke with his mouth full. He ate bits of ham off the point of his knife. Over coffee, he hunched forward, resting his elbows upon the table. Had she made no headway at all with him in the past fortnight?
For all her disquiet on that score, Leonora had to admit their late breakfast was the most pleasant meal she had passed in his company.
One of the most pleasant she had ever passed, come to that.
Morse Archer picked up the thread of their prior conversation, plying her with any number of thoughtful, pertinent questions about the roots of the English Civil War and its effect upon the Scottish uprising of the last century. Evidently he had been listening to her and retaining what he’d learned. What made this morning’s lesson so different from those of the past two weeks?
Could it be because…?
Leonora could not deny the eagerness with which he hung on her words. The strange, piquant way he gazed at her from time to time. Was it possible he had taken a fancy to her?
She came to herself with a start, realizing he had just spoken to her. Really, she would have to exercise a good deal more self-control from now on.
“I asked if you would care for another splash of coffee, Miss Leonora.”
“I—” No other words would come just then. He had spoken her Christian name for the first time, each syllable gliding off his tongue like spiced honey. She had never thought a word could sound so beautiful.
“Yes—p-please,” she finally managed to stammer, though the prim schoolmistress within her protested. The beverage was a stimulant, after all. The last thing she needed at the moment was further stimulation.
Leonora cast about for any topic that promised to distract her from this adolescent preoccupation with Morse. Good heavens! Now she was thinking of him by his Christian name, as well.
“I hope Uncle Hugo didn’t miss our company at breakfast.” The sentence erupted from her in a breathless rush.
Morse’s eyebrows raised. “Did he not tell you he was going off to London? Of course—you weren’t at dinner last night. He said he’d be away for a few days. Some urgent matter of business. I’m afraid it’ll be just the two of us until he gets back.”
An unaccustomed giddiness expanded inside Leonora, as though she was one of those newfangled hot-air balloons inflated too quickly. She tried pulling herself back to earth, without much success.
“We must return to work now, Sergeant Archer.” How she despised the beseeching note she heard in her voice.
“That’s what I’m here for.” He walked around the table and pulled out her chair.
The backs of his fingers grazed her upper arm. Had it been accidental, or deliberate? Either way, it set her head spinning and her breath skipping.
Leonora made a last desperate attempt to regain mastery of the situation, and of herself. Her entire childhood had been spent at the mercy of forces beyond her control. At least she had been mistress of her own feelings—cool and detached where her mother was passionate and imprudent.
Now, this man, with the most insignificant look, word or touch, threatened to overpower her carefully cultivated composure and turn her whole world on its ear.
She jerked her arm away from his hand. “We must return to our Latin studies.”
When he met her suggestion with a groan, she flared up at him. “I warned you from the start this would not be a stroll through the park, Sergeant Archer! You boasted you were equal to the challenge, but until this morning I have seen no sign of it. At this rate, we will be laughed out of Bath. You will never see your estate in the colonies and I—”
She bit her tongue. It was none of his business what his indolence would cost her. If he knew, he would only take advantage of the power it gave him over her fate.
Fortunately he quit the breakfast room without asking her to finish her sentence. In all likelihood he did not care a whit about her dire stakes in the wager.
Summoning up every ounce of frosty aplomb she could muster, Leonora stalked off after him. They had dabbled in quite enough sensational subjects for the day. The rest of their lessons would be given over to mathematics, dead languages and anything else she could furnish that might throw cold water on her growing preoccupation with Morse Archer.
Leonora’s blatant insult to his diligence kept Morse focused on his studies until almost teatime. To his surprise, he found the Latin beginning to make sense. And he had always been good with numbers, particularly as they applied to situations in real life.
How many rounds could a Rifleman fire in so many minutes? How fast would a company have to march to be at such a place by such a time?
It still irked him that none of their lessons showed any practical application to Leonora’s stated goal of passing him off as a gentleman. Several times he had tried getting the point across to her. On each occasion she had almost bitten his head off for presuming to question her authority.
On that score, she put him in mind of two inept officers who’d been his superiors in Portugal. Their blinkered stupidity and blank refusal to accept advice from anyone of lower rank had contributed largely to the fiasco that had ended his military career.
And Lieutenant Peverill’s life.
Looking up suddenly from his book, he caught Leonora staring at him. Fresh from thoughts of his young lieutenant, Morse recognized an appealing family resemblance in her face.
“I never served under a better officer than your cousin.” He wasn’t certain what propelled those words out of him.
To his surprise, Leonora did not order him back to work at once. Neither did she question what had prompted him to speak of the lieutenant for the first time since coming to Laurelwood.
“Cousin Wesley mentioned you in his letters. I think he would be pleased to know you’re here.”
Her little chin, so intrepid for all its delicacy, betrayed a subtle quiver. Behind the bastion of her spectacles, Morse thought he spied a fine mist rising in Leonora’s eyes.
Ordinarily, Morse Archer was not a man who had any patience for tears or overwrought outbursts. Yet something launched him out of his chair and to Leonora’s side. His hands closed over her shoulders.
“I’m sorry I mentioned him. I didn’t mean to distress you, honestly.”
At the slightest provocation he would have taken her in his arms. But Leonora gave him no opportunity. And no quarter.
Twisting free of his chaste touch, she flew to the opposite corner of the room and pretended an exaggerated interest in whatever she saw out the window. The steady drip of icicles melting from the eaves, perhaps.
“You have worked well today, Sergeant.” She did not bother to turn and address him face-to-face. “As a reward, you are excused from lessons for the remainder of the day.”
Earlier in the week Morse would have welcomed the news with a whoop of glee. Now he cursed himself roundly. What should have been a reward felt instead like…exile.
Chapter Five
Leonora listened to Morse’s retreating footsteps with an exasperating mixture of relief and regret.
If she had not fled the warm invitation of his hands upon her shoulders, if she had not dismissed him from the room with her next breath, she might have surrendered to her impulses. She might have pivoted into his powerful arms and wept a woman’s weak tears against his sturdy shoulder.
The prospect tempted her, as much from curiosity as…anything else. She had no experience of seeking comfort from another person. Mother had always been too much in need of support herself to lend it elsewhere. And Leonora would have died under torture before betraying a hint of weakness to any of her detested stepfathers. By the time she had come to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Hugo, she was well past the age for tearful outbursts.
Yet somewhere in the mists of early memory there lurked the phantom fancy of a comforting embrace. The faint musk of horses and tobacco. The croon of a deep, affectionate voice. The subtle scratch of a serge coat against her cheek. It had been her one and only experience of security.
And it had been ripped away from her long before she was able to understand why.
Since then she had learned to rely upon herself alone. Not upon her looks, as she had seen some foolish women do. In time, creamy skin would wrinkle. Bright eyes would lose their sparkle. Shiny hair its luster.
Intelligence, determination and self-control—these would stand the test the time. Neither were they a happy accident of nature. They could be learned and properly cultivated in any girl so inclined.
Leonora returned from her reverie to find her hands balled into tight fists. So tight, in fact, that her fingernails bit into her palms.
She was determined to cultivate those serviceable virtues in other young women whom fate had placed at a disadvantage. In her school, she would recover the kind of security she vaguely recalled from her childhood.
But how would she ever win her school if she didn’t coax a better effort out of Sergeant Archer? He had shown some improvement today, in his attitude at least. Would it be enough?
“Oh, Wes,” she whispered. If her cousin’s spirit lingered anywhere in the mortal world, it would be here at Laurelwood. “You won his devotion and disciplined him into a good soldier. What am I doing wrong?”
No answer came. Nor had she expected one, being too fiercely practical to believe in communication from beyond the grave. Still, Leonora could not help feeling there was a lesson to be learned from Cousin Wesley’s style of command.
Though, what it was, she had yet to fathom.
“Up early again, sir?” Dickon handed Morse the kettle. “If you don’t mind my saying so, it makes a pleasant change from having to drag you out of bed.”
“Pleasanter for us both, Dickon.” Morse began to whistle a marching tune as he shaved.
“If you don’t mind my asking, sir—” the footman delved in the wardrobe for Morse’s clean linen “—what brought on the change?”
Morse’s razor froze in midstroke. He scrutinized his reflection in the glass as though to ask that Morse Archer to explain himself.
When the fellow unhelpfully mimicked his own puzzlement, Morse was forced to stammer, “I—couldn’t say—for certain.”
Recovering a shred of his old sangfroid, he added, “Just bowing to necessity, I suppose. Or getting used to the new routine. There wasn’t any need to get up early at the hospital.”
Dickon appeared satisfied with the explanation, for he nodded and continued his work without further comment.
Resuming his shave with a somewhat less steady hand, Morse was less convinced by his own rather lame reasoning. Bowing to necessity did not explain the recent lightness in his step or the merry tune that hovered on his lips of late, begging to be whistled. His inexplicable eagerness to begin the day must be more than merely adapting to a new routine.
He continued to puzzle the matter as he dressed. Conflicting impulses jousted within him. One urged haste, to get his clothes on and proceed downstairs as quickly as possible. The other counseled patience. Take his time in tying his stock. Let Dickon buff his boots properly. Arrive for his morning studies looking his best.
As he set off for the library, at last, a disquieting thought struck Morse. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he was trying to make a favorable impression on Leonora Freemantle.
But that was rank nonsense.
First of all, he had long since ceased to strive for any woman’s regard. The kind of female he liked, Morse attracted and won effortlessly.
Which led to the second consideration—Miss Leonora Freemantle was anything but the kind of female he usually preferred. She was too bookish, too determined.
Too challenging.
Was there such a thing? The notion brought him to an abrupt halt halfway down the stairs. All his life he had thrived on challenge and novelty. But not where women were concerned!
And besides, what would Miss Freemantle want with a chap like him? Ill-bred. Uneducated.
Even if he did fancy her—which he most emphatically did not—he could not afford to dally with a woman above his station. Not again.
So Morse told himself as he slipped into the study, uncertain whether to encourage or to suppress his eagerness to begin the day’s lessons.
“Early two days in a row, Sergeant Archer?” Leonora’s voice startled him. Roused him? “To what do we owe this unexpected development?”
Morse felt his cheeks begin to sting. A reaction to the shaving soap, perhaps?
No. It was more than that. Like any opponent worthy of his steel, Leonora had neatly turned the tables on him. Yesterday he had mounted a surprise attack, exploiting his advantage of being first to take the field. She had not let him enjoy that superior position for two days running.
In spite of himself, a grin of something like admiration rippled across Morse’s lips. He recalled a word Lieutenant Peverill had sometimes used when an opponent proved wilier than he’d expected. Touché.
Touché, Miss Freemantle. Touché, indeed.
Too late, Morse tried to cover his confusion with a scowl. “Why am I early? Perhaps because I want to win that bet with Sir Hugo as much as you do. Have you any idea what a fresh start in the colonies would mean to a man like me?”
Leonora stepped forward into the dim light of a single candle. No doubt about it—she’d been lying in wait to surprise him. Her smile, a rare and unexpected favor, erased Morse’s annoyance.
“I think I have quite a good idea what it will mean, Sergeant. That is why I suggested it to my uncle. I hope the knowledge and skills I can impart to the girls at my school will provide them with similar opportunities.”
The notion seized Morse and all but throttled him. “You suggested Sir Hugo offer me an estate in the colonies?”
She nodded. “Someone had to. Uncle is the most generous man in the world, but he can also be the most selfish in some ways. Or maybe selfish isn’t the right word. Just unimaginative when it comes to understanding what other people want.”
Her voice died away to a bemused murmur. “He can’t fathom why they should want anything but what he wants for them.”
And what did Sir Hugo want for his bluestocking niece that she didn’t? Morse found himself wondering.
Leonora seemed to become aware of his presence again, as though she’d been musing out loud. She blushed, a rosy cast Morse could easily detect even in the dim light of the library.
He detected other things, as well.
Like the wistful luster in her gray-green eyes. Perhaps it was the soft green shade of her gown that set them off so becomingly. This was the first time he’d seen her in anything but the dullest of dark hues. Lighter ones suited her complexion and coloring far better.
Why would a woman go out of her way to look unattractive, when in fact—?
“Sergeant Archer?”
Morse suddenly realized she had spoken his name for the second time. “Sorry. Woolgathering. The early hour, I expect. You were saying?”
“I was saying, perhaps we should take our seats and apply ourselves to today’s lesson. If we wish to have any hope of winning the wager, that is.”
“Of course.” Morse had the unpleasant sensation that he was losing command of the situation, and himself.
Then he remembered his secret weapon.
Striding toward their study table, he tried to disguise the hitch in his step. With a flourish, he pulled out Leonora’s chair and beckoned her to sit.
“To be frank, Miss Leonora, the inducement of your uncle’s wager is only part of my impatience to begin work this morning.”
Casting him a wary glance, she took the seat he offered. “Indeed? And what might the other part be?”
Morse settled into his usual place on the wider side of the table. During the course of yesterday’s lesson, his chair had migrated to his teacher’s end of the table.
Now as he leaned close to her, he spoke in a quiet voice that suggested intimacy. “Can you not guess…Leonora?”
The catch in her breath betrayed the lady’s awareness of the missing Miss, and all that its absence implied.
Before she could respond, Morse supplied the answer. “It’s a rare dolt of a fellow who wouldn’t grasp at the chance to spend all day in the company of such a fetching lass.”
Some scrap of insight warned Morse he was venturing far too close to the truth with his flattery.
Another thought drove that one from his mind altogether. What if Leonora reacted to his comment as she had to his previous liberties—bidding him away, or bustling off herself?
That had been his original plan, hadn’t it? Yet, at that moment, nothing could have been farther from Morse’s desire.
To his massive relief, Leonora dismissed his fawning with an ironic lift of one brow and a toss of her head. “Really, Sergeant, we must put you to work with a dictionary. A woman of twenty-sev—of my years, hardly qualifies as a lass.”
Touché again, Leonora!
“That’s as may be. What man in his right mind wants the company of a simpering miss?” Morse took up his Latin grammar, suddenly disinclined to press his advantage and risk frightening her away.
Why did it frighten her? he wondered—the romantic attentions of a man. Indignation or outrage, he could have understood from a woman of her character. Her anxious agitation puzzled and intrigued him.
As did the lady herself.
Though clearly reluctant to pursue their conversation further, Leonora Freemantle could not resist a parting comment. “In my experience, a simpering miss is precisely what most men do prefer. Now if you will indulge me by turning to page forty-three, Sergeant Archer. Perhaps we can attempt a short translation of Livy.”
Not content to let her have the last word on most men’s taste in women, he muttered, “More fools, them.”
Almost as if he meant it.
Of course he hadn’t meant it.
Leonora reminded herself of the obvious several times as she and Morse struggled over the Latin translation.
Still, part of her felt ridiculously grateful he’d said it—sincere or not.
How many times a day, during her girlhood, had Mother admonished her to get her nose out of a book, lest she never land a husband?
Every time, Leonora had clenched her lips to keep from hurling a disrespectful retort. If her mother’s later husbands were representative of the marriage pool, she would prefer to not fish for one at all.
Little had Mother guessed that she had taken the warning as wise counsel. Everything Mother cautioned to avoid—unflattering clothes, spectacles, too much book-learning, Leonora had taken pains to acquire. For a husband was obviously someone to be eluded at all costs.
All the same, something in her had hungered for the occasional pretty gown, the odd dance at a ball. Even, now and then, the counterfeit flattery of a handsome man.
Thinking of handsome men…
To her dismay, Leonora found herself hovering over Morse’s broad shoulder, prompting him when his translation faltered. The muted scent of his shaving soap and the rich cadence of his voice set her senses reeling.
They made her long to lean closer still, until she succumbed to the invitation of his thick, chestnut hair—running her fingers through it, or nuzzling it with her cheek.
And if she did—how might he react? What might he do in return?
Certainly Morse Archer had betrayed more interest in her than any other man ever had. Even before she’d begun making subtle improvements in her appearance. Apart from his rapidly healing leg injury, he was a healthy, vigorous, virile specimen of manhood. One who’d been denied the company of women for some little time. Yet she had no fear of catching him for a husband.
The notion took Leonora’s breath away.
That was the subject of the wager, after all. He was abetting her quest to avoid marriage. And if they failed, she would have to marry some aristocratic half-wit of Uncle Hugo’s choosing.
With a shudder of distaste, she banished that thought from her mind. Her preoccupation with Morse Archer had a will of its own, however. It would not be banished.
So Leonora reached a compromise with herself.
Uncle Hugo would be gone for a few days. Apart from the servants, she and Morse had Laurelwood to themselves. Perhaps tonight, after dinner, she might invite him to take a glass of port with her in the drawing room. They could put their studies aside and simply talk. About his experiences as a soldier. His plans for the future. Suddenly she was hungry to know everything about him.
Or she might offer to play the pianoforte. She imagined Morse sitting beside her, or leaning over her shoulder to read the words from her sheet music.
An unguarded sigh escaped from between her lips.
“Is something wrong?” Morse turned, then, to look at her.
Leonora knew she should pull herself away. Stand straight. Take a few steps back.
Her body refused to cooperate.
It hung there, bent over Morse, scant inches separating them. They could not have held that position for more than a few seconds, Leonora later reasoned. But in that time, as his eyes locked on hers and the brief space between them fairly shimmered with heat, it took all the self-control of a lifetime to not trespass that tiny distance and press her lips to his.
A tentative tap on the library door boomed like a cannonade in Leonora’s ears.
Seized by a spasm of shame, she wrenched herself away from Morse and called, “Yes. What is it?” in a high, breathless voice.
Dickon pushed the door ajar and peeked in. “Pardon me, miss, but you did give orders I was to knock if you and Sergeant Archer hadn’t come to breakfast by nine.”
Had she said that? Leonora’s thoughts whirled so that she could not swear to it.
“Thank you.” Her words came in little gasps. “We’ll be along in a moment.”
Morse rose from his chair and stretched. The way his muscles bunched under the tight fabric of his breeches made Leonora’s mouth go dry. There were so many things she didn’t know about men. And until this week, she hadn’t cared to find out. Now her freshly whetted curiosity knew no bounds.
“I think you could do with a good plate of breakfast and a strong cup of tea.” Morse cast her a solicitous look. “You don’t seem quite yourself this morning.”
It was all Leonora could do to keep from agreeing vocally.
She wasn’t herself. At least not the self she had shown the world for the past two decades.
Morse Archer’s obvious interest in her, and her curiosity about him, had kindled some long-quiescent ember of whimsy and excitement within her. Suddenly she was most anxious to see where it might take her.
Acting on a daring impulse, she reached for Morse’s arm. “I am feeling a trifle light-headed.” No lie, that. “Will you be so kind as to steady me on our way to breakfast?”
Her request appeared to catch him off guard. “I—don’t see why not,” he sputtered.
“We must make an effort to polish your social graces, Sergeant. The polite reply to a lady would have been, ‘I’d be honored, miss.’”
An embarrassed grin made him look endearingly boyish. “I am honored, Miss Leonora. Happy to be of service.”
She laughed. For the first time in how long? “You’re a quick student when you choose to be, Morse.”
The intimacy of his Christian name was out of her mouth before she realized it. The word felt very much at home on her tongue.
For a wonder, he politely refrained from comment, pulling out her chair from the breakfast table and making sure she was well settled before taking the seat opposite her.
Morse tucked into breakfast with his usual relish. Scarcely a wonder after the poor food he must have suffered during his days as a soldier. For her part, Leonora could not summon up much appetite.
Perhaps the odd sensations she was experiencing were only the symptoms of some malady, after all.
Chapter Six
“You’re looking very…well, this evening, Miss Freemantle.” As he watched Leonora descend the staircase, Morse congratulated himself on his restraint.
Part of him wanted to pay her a much more extravagant compliment. Tell her that the warm rose hue of her gown brought matching roses to her cheeks. Mention how the candlelight played frets of gold and copper through her loosely pinned hair.
Some wiser instinct urged caution. He did not wish to frighten her away tonight.
“Why, thank you, Sergeant Archer.”
Was it his imagination, or did she stand a little straighter, hold her head a fraction higher?
She awarded him a smile, glancing up suddenly through dense dark lashes. In any other woman, Morse might have suspected a hint of mischief or flirtation in such a look.
“Whatever slight indisposition I suffered this morning, I appear to have recovered.”
“Then you won’t need my arm to steady you?” Morse cocked his elbow anyway.
“Perhaps not.” A teasing note warmed her words. “May I take it just the same, simply because I wish to?”
The corners of Morse’s lips spread wide. “The best reason in the world for doing anything.”
They strolled into the dining room, where the long mahogany table had been set quite differently than for past meals. At those, Sir Hugo had occupied the head of the table while Morse and Leonora sat opposite each other halfway down the length of it. Tonight, their places had been set at one end, near the hearth, leaving the rest of the table empty.
Morse held Sir Hugo’s accustomed chair for Leonora. “Well, isn’t this cosy.”
Unfurling her napkin across her lap, she spoke without looking up at him. “While Uncle is away, I thought we might relax our formality a little. After your diligent work today, you deserve a pleasant evening.”
Barely suppressing a sigh of satisfaction, Morse took his own seat. He had this skittish filly eating out of his hand.
“I can imagine few pleasanter ways to spend an evening, than in your company, Miss Freemantle.”
She raised a brow. “Polishing your social graces, Sergeant?”
Morse grinned. “You said I should.”
Glancing down as the fish course was placed in front of him, he assessed his array of forks.
With exaggerated care, Leonora picked one up. “Begin at the outside and work your way in. When in doubt, watch your table companions for a cue. Now, let us have no more lessons for this evening. Tell me something about yourself, Sergeant. I know you served under Cousin Wesley with the Somerset Rifles. Were you born and bred in that part the country?”
“Aye…that is…yes, Miss Freemantle. Near Pocklington. Been Archers thereabouts for as long as anyone can recollect. My folk weren’t like yours—traveling from a great family seat in the country to a town house in London or Bath for the winter. We stayed put. I’m the first of my family to ever have gone abroad.”
She flinched at his words and the color drained from her face. “Don’t disdain permanence, Sergeant. Many people would envy you a place to call home.”
“Not if they saw it they wouldn’t.”
Morse could not keep a note of bitterness from his laughter. His family’s tenant cottage, with its smells and drafts that had contributed to the deaths of his three younger sisters—it would have fit inside Laurelwood’s vast dining room with space to spare.
“Is that why you chose to enlist, then? So you could travel far from Somerset?”
Now Morse flinched, remembering what had driven him into the army. “You might say so. A chance to get away from the past. I don’t suppose you can understand that, can you, Miss Freemantle?”
She laid her fork down upon the plate and waited for the serving girl to remove them. Then she looked up at him. “I may understand better than you think. I envy anyone who feels no need to escape his or her past.”
With a wide sweep of his arm, Morse indicated the damask draperies, the marble mantelpiece, the highly polished sideboard. “What could anyone want to escape in all this?”
After a long look Morse could not interpret, Leonora stretched her lips into a fleeting grin. “What, indeed? If you do not wish to dwell on your childhood, perhaps you might tell me about your days as a Rifleman. When did you meet my cousin Wesley?”
Eager for any distraction from painful memories, Morse seized her question. “In India. Did he never tell you the story?”
For a wonder, it did not bother him to speak of Lieutenant Peverill in India. Perhaps because the lad had been so much alive then, with years ahead of him. Or perhaps it was the bond of affection he shared with Leonora for her cousin. Could she be coaxed to share some stories from their childhood?
Indeed she could.
So passed one of the most enjoyable dinners Morse had ever eaten. As an audience for his soldiering stories, Leonora proved superior even to Dickon. The way her eyes trained upon him, her apt questions and perceptive comments, all made him feel proud of his modest accomplishments and minor adventures.
And when she spoke of long-ago summers spent in the country with her cousin, Morse almost felt himself a part of their merry escapades.
He watched with jealous eyes as the serving maid removed his final plate, thinking it a shame this meal must end.
Leonora seemed to divine his thoughts. “I know we must be up early tomorrow to resume our studies. But if you would care to join me in the drawing room, I could play for you on the pianoforte. A gentleman should cultivate some knowledge of music, after all.”
“I should like that very much.”
Morse caught himself staring at her hands again. For the first of many times that evening.
He had always liked a nice tune, but never before had he heard such music as Leonora played on the pianoforte. Her supple fingers danced across the ivory keys, coaxing forth rich harmonies, some sad, some sweet, that caught Morse by the heart and held him. At times she seemed unaware of his presence, lost in the golden echoes of her art. If he had ever thought Leonora lacked passion, he now knew better.
As the final notes died to a whisper, they both stirred from their trance.
She glanced up at him, a bright blush staining her cheeks. “I fear I am boring you, Sergeant.”
“No.” He strove to frame words of praise half fine enough, but failed. “Not in the least.”
He was only a common soldier, after all. One of the other ranks. A mere servant of his superior officers. How could he hope to appreciate such refinements as learning and art?
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Deborah Hale
What had she agreed to? Leonora Freemantle had wagered high stakes that book learning, not birthright, produced a gentleman, but now with the roguish Sergeant Morse Archer under her tutelage, she was no longer sure of the outcome. Would it be polish, passion…or public outrage?If Leonora Freemantle couldn't spruce him up enough to pass muster with the Society swells at Bath, she'd be hastily married off. But not if he could help it, Rifleman Morse Archer vowed, for this beautiful bluestocking with her highbrow ideals and innocent charm was effortlessly teaching him the true language of love…!
“If we must dawdle in the library, let’s make it for a worthwhile purpose.”
Caught off balance, Leonora lurched into his lap. Though part of him would have liked to throttle her, another part thrilled to the sensation of her in his arms. In a deft motion that would have done credit to a trained pickpocket, he plucked the spectacles from her nose and the combs from her hair, tossing them onto the table.
“I’ve worked hard for you this week, Miss Freemantle. I think I deserve a reward.”
He hushed her inarticulate sounds of protest with a forceful application of his lips.
She froze in his embrace, her whole body going temporarily slack. Surrendering before his onslaught. Falling open. Inviting him deeper.
Then, with a shift so sudden it robbed him of breath, Leonora pried herself from his arms and slapped him soundly.
“How dare you, Morse Archer!”
The Wedding Wager
Harlequin Historical #563
Acclaim for Deborah Hale’s recent books
The Bonny Bride
“…high adventure!”
—Romantic Times Magazine
A Gentleman of Substance
“This exceptional Regency-era romance includes all the best aspects of that genre…Deborah Hale has outdone herself…”
—Romantic Times Magazine
“…a nearly flawless plot, well-dimensioned characters, and a flame that will set your heart ablaze with every emotion possible!”
—Affaire de Coeur
My Lord Protector
“Invite yourself to this sweet, sensitive, moving and utterly wonderful tale of love from the heart.”
—Affaire de Coeur
#564 THE MARSHAL AND MRS. O’MALLEY
Julianne MacLean
#565 THE SEA SPRITE
Ruth Langan
#566 THE VIRTUOUS CYPRIAN
Nicola Cornick
The Wedding Wager
Deborah Hale
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
DEBORAH HALE
My Lord Protector #452
A Gentleman of Substance #488
The Bonny Bride #503
The Elusive Bride #539
The Wedding Wager #563
For my parents, Ivan and Marion MacDonald,
who taught me so many important lessons,
and for my sons, Brendan and Jamie Hale,
who picked up where they left off.
Contents
Chapter One (#u9b573ca9-69df-5420-91ab-5e416b1dd321)
Chapter Two (#u386a50ce-0387-56c0-b46c-8c0762bdc855)
Chapter Three (#u1e9739e9-607c-5550-8c19-d13ff7fb048b)
Chapter Four (#u130366b2-5b24-5ff1-87f1-ff1613b56f4d)
Chapter Five (#ubf7406d8-4fe4-54f3-b0e8-4001b02a9ff1)
Chapter Six (#u5148eef9-cd70-5cda-8f6b-b9fbd0a55383)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Bramleigh Military Hospital for
Enlisted Men
1812
The whole place smelled of men.
Leonora Freemantle could almost feel her nose twitch and her muscles tense, like a hare or hind scenting predators on the wind. Looking neither left nor right, she strode down the ward behind Matron. As she passed bed after bed of convalescing soldiers, she sensed their covert glances, heard their muttered quips.
“Looks like Matron’s got a new dragon-in-training, lads.”
“D’yer reckon she’s sucking on a lemon?”
“Puts me in mind of me old drill sergeant.”
The derisive snickers dogged Leonora’s footsteps. Thrusting out her chin and stiffening her spine, she fiercely resisted the urge to adjust her spectacles and straighten her bonnet. They might take it as a sign of weakness. Never would she give them the satisfaction of thinking she cared for their opinion in the least.
Still, she could not quench the blistering blush that seared her face. How long had some of these men been without a woman? Yet they still found her laughably unappealing.
At least they were honest about their feelings. One could not say the same for most of their sex. That, Leonora had learned from bitter experience.
Matron veered into a small common room, heading straight for a clutch of men crouched in one corner. Leonora heard the muted click of dice tumbling along the hardwood floor. A shout went up, followed by a flurry of muttered curses.
“Knicked-it again, Archer!” cried one of the spectators in tones of grudging admiration. “Damned if you ain’t the luckiest elbow-shaker I’ve ever seen.”
At the mention of that name, Leonora perked up her ears. If this was the Sergeant Archer she’d come to see, it was encouraging to know he liked gambling.
The thrower scooped up his ivories with a practiced motion. “Luck’s got naught to do with it.” A note of teasing laughter warmed his words. “It’s skill, my boy, simple as that.”
“Ser’nt Archer!” Matron descended on the players like a terrier into a chicken coop. “How m’ny times have I told ye? Thar’s to be no gamblin’ in the hospital!”
The sergeant rose to his feet, unfolding the long, lean-muscled body of a Rifleman. For an instant he winced, as though the movement hurt him. Then his features blossomed into a smile of devastating charm, which he fixed upon Matron.
Leonora’s sensible, bluestocking heart began to flutter in a most unnerving fashion. Nothing in Cousin Wesley’s letters from the Peninsula had prepared her for the sight of his sergeant.
Stop it! she willed herself. Stop this foolishness, at once!
Her traitorous body mutinied. Her breath quickened.
Why should the sight of this man affect her so? Leonora asked herself as she watched him jolly Matron into a mood of exasperated tolerance. She hoped an intellectual consideration of the problem might bring her insurgent emotions back under control.
Why him? She’d seen far handsomer specimens—at least by the standard of the times. Smoother, blander, more uniformly proportioned.
There was nothing smooth or bland about this man’s face. Every feature was bold and definite. The nose and chin jutted out as though hewn from golden-brown stone, ready to take on the world. The wide, bowed mouth looked capable of a vast spectrum of expression, while the dark eyes wielded a provocative, penetrating gaze.
On a face less striking, the emphatic black eyebrows would have dominated. On Sergeant Morse Archer, they harmonized into an aspect of arresting appeal.
“What have we here?” He turned his piercing, hypnotic eyes upon Leonora, one full brow raised expressively.
Their color was a dynamic melding of green, brown and gold, Leonora realized as Sergeant Archer stepped toward her. For the first time in many years she yearned to be beautiful. His striking good looks made her all too aware of her own shortcomings. Though she told herself it was the height of folly, she could not help wanting him to like what he saw.
Matron answered his question. “A visitor for ye, Ser’nt Archer. Now mind yer manners.”
At a look from the sergeant, his gambling companions rapidly dispersed. Matron took up a post just outside the door. Whether she meant to guard the privacy of their conversation, or to act as some sort of chaperon, Leonora was not certain.
“What can such a lovely lady want with the likes of me?” asked Sergeant Archer once the room had cleared. His voice was as rich and mellow as well-aged brandy. Once again he unleashed his potent smile.
A shiver of icy wrath went through Leonora. Lovely lady? The liar! Did this cynical charmer expect her to lap up his spurious flattery? As she pulled off her glove, she longed to smack it against his cheek. Remembering how desperately she needed to win his cooperation, she curbed her ire and thrust out her hand for him to shake.
“Sergeant Archer, I’m Leonora Freemantle. I believe you know my uncle, Sir Hugo Peverill. I’ve come to make you a proposition.”
She could tell her words unsettled him, though he made a determined effort to hide it. Those expressive brows drew together and his mien darkened like a summer sky before a storm. His deep voice rumbled with the muted menace of distant thunder.
“Go away, Miss Freemantle. I’m not interested in your proposition.”
He tried to execute a crisp pivot on his heel. Apparently his wounded leg refused to cooperate. His stern frown crumpled into a grimace of pain as he staggered.
Before she had a chance to think better of it, Leonora reached out to steady him. The sleeves of his coarse-woven shirt were rolled up to the elbows. As she grasped his bronzed forearm, she felt the taut power of his muscle, the disconcerting warmth of his bare skin and the provocative caress of his dark body hair.
A jolt of mysterious energy surged in her. From the sensitive tips of her fingers and the palm of her hand, it radiated up her arm—to her throat and her bosom and the pit of her belly.
She hated it.
How dare this exasperating creature provoke her so? Even as he dismissed her without hearing a word she’d come to say. Long ago she had vowed never to submit to a man’s whims. She had no intention of starting now. Not with her whole future at stake.
When he tried to wrench his arm away, she tightened her hold. “I’ll let go when you agree to hear me out, Sergeant Archer.”
Animosity warred with amusement—every nuance of the battle showing on his vigorous, mobile face. Amusement won.
A row of square, even teeth flashed briefly in a fiendish grin. “This could turn out to be a very interesting day, if I choose not to listen.”
Leonora’s cheeks smarted. She knew what he would say next. Her own thoughts had raced ahead to the same conclusion.
“Not to mention an even more interesting night.” A warm, infectious chuckle bubbled up from some well of humor deep within him.
Abruptly, Leonora released his arm. Tears of impotent fury prickled in the corners of her eyes. She refused to let them fall. Why had Uncle Hugo chosen this infuriating man as the subject of their wager?
As he limped toward the door, she leveled a desperate parting shot at his back. “Strange. I didn’t take you for a fool, Sergeant.”
Her words found their mark. He hesitated in midstride, and his shoulder blades bunched, as though he had just taken a blow between them.
Leonora pressed her momentary advantage. “In my experience, only a fool shuts his ears to a proposal that might benefit him.”
Though he continued to face the door, Morse Archer lobbed his reply back at her. “When a woman like you comes with a proposition for a man like me, Miss Free-mantle, it isn’t often to his benefit. At least, not in the long run.”
A shriek of vexation rose in Leonora’s throat, but she stifled it—barely. She’d assumed Morse Archer would leap at the opportunity she offered him. Instead he had thrust her into the role of supplicant. One she abhorred.
It made her twice as determined to win Uncle Hugo’s wager and free herself from the need to go cap in hand to a man ever again.
“Pray, what do you mean by a woman like me, Sergeant Archer?”
“Don’t be thick, woman.” He rounded on her. “I mean a lady of your class.” The disdain in his voice was palpable.
At last—a scrap of leverage to use on him.
“Would it surprise you to learn that I care no more for the notion of class than you do?”
“It would.”
Drawing an unsteady breath, Leonora forced herself to look squarely into his penetrating gaze. “I believe all that separates the so-called upper and lower orders of our society is education.”
“Do you then?” He crossed his arms over his chest in a pose that demanded, And what’s that to me?
At least he made no further move to quit the room.
“I do. That is why I’m here. Uncle Hugo thinks I’m a crank, as does nearly everyone else of my acquaintance.”
One mercurial brow lifted a fraction, as if to cast his opinion with the rest. Leonora hurried on, before he took a notion to dismiss her again.
“My uncle has set me a wager, to test the validity of my theory.”
At the word wager, she sensed a subtle air of interest from Sergeant Archer.
Eagerly, she explained the plan. “I have three months to educate a common soldier and pass him off as a gentleman officer during a Season at Bath. If I win the bet, Uncle Hugo will finance a school for indigent girls, of which I shall be headmistress.”
“And I’m the common, ignorant soldier you plan to work your magic on?” The question sounded innocent enough, but the subtle curl of his lip conveyed scorn.
“If by magic you mean something easy or illusionary, you’re mistaken, Sergeant. It will be three months of very hard work for both of us. In the end, I believe you’ll find the result worthwhile. Will you do it?”
He smiled now—with his lips at least. “No, Miss Free-mantle. I will not.” His tone and posture were a parody of high courtesy. “Now please be so kind as to go away. You’ve taken up quite enough of my time for one afternoon.”
Didn’t he recognize the chance she was offering him? Couldn’t he see the noble cause it would serve?
“Are you devoid of ambition, man? Not the least bit interested in improving yourself?”
The insincere smile disappeared. Nostrils flared, he bore down on her like a charging bull. Against her will, Leonora retreated a step before his menacing advance. He stopped within a whisker of her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. He spoke with muted intensity, his whisper more intimidating than most men’s thunderous bluster.
“I have plenty of ambition, Miss Freemantle. On my terms. I happen to like who and what I am. So you can keep your improvements. I don’t need you or anyone else turning me into some mincing, mutton-headed gentleman.”
Leonora held her ground. Somewhere deep within her, she fought to quench a flicker of admiration for Morse Archer’s pride and independence. Remembering all she stood to gain…and lose, she forced herself to try one last time.
“Please, Sergeant. If not for yourself, think of my school.”
“Where you can turn wholesome farm girls into useless debutantes? An admirable cause, to be sure.”
With all the dignity she could muster, Leonora replied, “I don’t expect you to understand my motives. No one else does.”
“The trouble is, I understand all too well, Miss Free-mantle. I know all about having the charity of my betters crammed down my throat and having to tug a forelock and say ‘Thankee, ma’am’, even while I choke on it.”
His words smote her. Her school would be nothing like what he described…or would it? “We are not talking about charity, Sergeant.”
“Aren’t we, Miss Freemantle?” His burst of rage seemed to collapse on itself. Slowly he turned away from her and hobbled toward the door.
For a moment Leonora just stood, watching him go. Limp and spent, she felt as though she’d been buffeted by a violent storm. As she gathered up her courage to once again run the gauntlet of stares and whispers in the ward, she wondered how her uncle would react to this turn of events. He’d been so adamant on engaging this particular man.
Well, she had tried her best to recruit Morse Archer. He had refused. Uncle Hugo would simply have to pick someone else.
In some ways it was a pity. The sergeant seemed to possess a degree of intelligence, and his speech was not too rustic. Taken together with his arresting physical presence, it would not have been difficult to pass him off as a gentleman.
All the same, Leonora found herself breathing a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed was to spend three months in the close company of a man like Morse Archer. So stubborn. So intractable.
So compelling.
Morse watched Leonora Freemantle stalk off the ward, clearly oblivious to the winks and elbow digs with which the men greeted her departure. Turning to the window, he continued to stare after her as she climbed into her barouche and drove away. He wanted to make certain she was gone.
Or so he told himself.
“Give the ivories another rattle, Sergeant?” A young corporal from Morse’s regiment flashed a hopeful grin. The lad’s right arm had been severed below the elbow, but he’d learned to throw the dice pretty well with his left hand.
Morse shook his head in the manner of an elder brother who had better occupations than entertaining the little ones in the family. “You heard Matron, Corporal Boyer. No gambling on hospital property. I’m in hot water enough with the army. No need to go courting more.”
Boyer flashed him an awkward grin, then ambled off. This was the first time Morse had referred to the Board of Inquiry, though the matter must have been common knowledge among the convalescing soldiers at Bramleigh.
There was a good chance he would end up cashiered. Dismissed from the army in disgrace. Thinking of the Board made Morse think of the miserable retreat from Bucaso. His leg throbbed, just above the knee, where a French bayonet had pierced it.
During the British retreat from Bucaso.
Limping over to his cot, he sank down on it, stretching out his long frame. His heels projected two inches past the end of the thin mattress. To distract himself from the pain in his leg and the equally painful memories of that last rearguard skirmish, Morse turned his thoughts to Leonora Freemantle.
The gall of the woman! To stroll in like Lady Bountiful with her Christmas basket and offer to turn him into a gentleman. In the instant before she’d opened her mouth, something about her had attracted him. Now Morse was damned if he could decide what it might have been.
She had little in common with the type of woman he usually favored. In the first place, her figure was too lean and angular for his taste. He seldom paid much heed to women’s clothes, but in her case they were too ugly to ignore. He often noticed women’s hair, but Miss Freemantle had kept hers pulled back so severely and covered by her bonnet that he could not have sworn as to its color. There might have been something to her eyes—color or clarity, but tight little spectacles detracted from their modest charms.
Altogether a prim, bluestocking spinster.
None of these had roused Morse’s antagonism, though. Her voice had done that.
Since joining the army, during his service in India and Spain, he’d seldom had occasion to hear an English lady speak. There was only one female at the Bramleigh hospital—if you could call her that. Matron, the old gargoyle, spoke in Cornish dialect so broad Morse often had trouble understanding her. Nothing in her gravelly voice evoked painful memories. Morse could not say the same for Leonora Freemantle.
To make matters worse, her first words to him had concerned a proposition. True, it was not the kind of proposition Lady Pamela Granville had made him on the day before he enlisted. The emotional echo stung just the same. It had made him resist Miss Freemantle’s offer even before he heard it. Now, as his leg throbbed and he tried to block out the persistent din of the ward, Morse wondered if he’d been a fool to reject her proposal out-of-hand.
His other options were depressingly limited. He couldn’t stay on at Bramleigh much longer, since he was past danger of amputation and he could use the leg, however haltingly. Even if the Board of Inquiry didn’t drum him out of the service, he could not go back to soldiering. The doctors were optimistic that his mobility would return with time. Until then, his lameness would make it all but impossible to find the sort of job his limited education had equipped him for.
The dinner bell rang. With a weary sigh, Morse hauled himself up from his cot and joined the tail end of the queue headed for the refectory. There, he spooned the tepid, watery stew into his mouth with little interest or enjoyment. Boyer and a few of the other lads from his regiment took their places with Morse at their accustomed table. In one way or another, they were all casualties of the retreat from Bucaso.
They were the lucky ones.
“Yer comp’ny didn’t stay long, Sergeant.” There was an implied question in Boyer’s innocent remark. “Not exactly your kinda woman, were she?”
The men exchanged grins all around the table. Their sergeant’s way with women was a point of pride among his men. They knew he had a taste for pretty, plump, saucy barmaids. They also knew he seldom had trouble attracting them.
Without glancing up from his stew, Morse cut their amusement short with a single muttered sentence. “The lady was Lieutenant Peverill’s cousin.”
A muted “Oh” rose from the men, breathed with obvious regret and perhaps a little shame. The late Lieutenant Wesley Peverill had enjoyed universal esteem among the enlisted men in his company. None more than his sergeant—Morse Archer.
Just then, Morse realized what had drawn him to Miss Freemantle in the instant before she spoke. It was the likeness to her cousin. Lieutenant Peverill had been a short, slight man with a deceptive air of delicacy. Yet that unpromising frame had housed the guile of a serpent, the tenacity of a badger and the courage of a lion. For as long as he lived, Morse Archer would rue his young lieutenant’s senseless death.
He had glimpsed something of Lieutenant Peverill’s cleverness and ferocious bravery in the woman. She had stood her ground and peppered him with every scrap of ammunition she could muster. When he’d turned on her with the full force of his wrath, she had scarcely flinched. He’d been skeptical of her claim that social class meant nothing to her. Now, remembering her kinship to the lieutenant, he could believe it.
Boyer spoke up again. “Came to thank ye, did she, Sergeant?”
Morse nodded. “Something like that.”
The men knew Sir Hugo Peverill had called on their sergeant soon after they’d all arrived at Bramleigh. The old man had come to thank Morse for risking his life to rescue the lieutenant from certain death. Unfortunately, the young man’s wounds had proven too grave to survive. But his heartbroken father had cherished the small consolation that the lad had died and been buried at his home in England rather than some shallow, unmarked grave in Portugal.
Sir Hugo had offered Morse money, a job, anything he might ask. Morse had declined with rather ill grace. He took no pride in his actions during the retreat. His desperate charge into a forest of French bayonets had been too little, too late. To accept a reward for it only compounded his sense of guilt.
Apparently the wily old Sir Hugo was unwilling to take no for an answer. Thus the transparent stratagem of this wager with his niece. Morse did not go so far as to suspect Leonora Freemantle knew it was a ruse. She could not have entreated him so passionately unless she believed it to be genuine.
Gnawing on a crust of hard bread, Morse imagined the food he might have received at Sir Hugo’s estate, Laurel-wood. When rations had been tight in Portugal, Lieutenant Peverill had often waxed lyrical about the contents of his father’s larder and the talent of his kitchen staff. More such stories recurred to Morse as he lolled around the ward after dinner feeling curiously restless.
That night he dreamed of a fine, fat feather bed made up with linen that smelled of sunshine and clover. A warm, cheery fire blazing in the hearth. A plump roast goose laid out on the sideboard with all the trimmings, its skin brown and crisp over juicy dark meat. Morse woke to find his mouth watering.
No doubt about it, Laurelwood would have made a soft billet for the next three months, while he recovered the full use of his leg. A snug roof over his head. Meals the like of which he hadn’t eaten in years. And nothing required of him but to suffer the tutelage of Sir Hugo’s bluestocking niece. For a wonder, the idea rather appealed to him.
It was too late now, though.
No doubt Miss Freemantle had gone straight out and acquired a more willing subject. A sharp fellow who didn’t let pride and foolish memories blind him to a good thing.
Morse recalled his father’s gruff admonition. “When a man’s got nothing, he can’t afford pride, son.”
He also remembered the bitter elegy he’d muttered over the unmarked graves of his family. “When a man’s got nothing, pride’s all he can afford.”
One of these days, Morse Archer decided with a rueful shake of his head, his misbegotten pride was going to land him in serious trouble.
Chapter Two
“Dash it all, Leonora. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer, my dear.” Sir Hugo Peverill glanced up from his eager ingestion of the roast goose, an expectant gleam in his eye. “How soon can he come?”
To delay her reply, Leonora pretended an intense concentration on her dinner. She was hungry. It had been a long, cold ride to Bramleigh and back, with only her indignation to keep her warm on the return journey.
“Well? How soon?” repeated Sir Hugo.
Still, Leonora hesitated to speak the words. She was no coward. Cousin Wesley had often claimed she possessed more courage than a field officer—denying society’s expectations by remaining unwed and devoted to her scholarly pursuits.
It was one thing to deny society. Quite another to deny Sir Hugo when he took hold of an idea. Leonora often compared her late aunt’s husband to a Royal Mail coach. Thundering toward his destination. Waving away objections like the Royal Mail speeding through toll stations. Impatient of the slightest delay or detour.
He wouldn’t be happy with the detour she was about to deliver him. No sense in forestalling the inevitable, however.
“He isn’t coming, Uncle.” Though she tried to sound indifferent, Leonora braced for the backlash. “We’ll simply have to find someone else. I’m certain there are plenty of men with the sense to recognize a unique opportunity when they’re presented with one.”
“Not coming? Ridiculous. Rot!” Sir Hugo’s white side-whiskers bristled aggressively and his prominent Roman nose cleaved the air. “Of course he’s coming.”
Leonora almost expected him to add, Sergeant Archer just doesn’t know it yet.
She shook her head. “No, Uncle. He was quite adamant on the point. I had a devil of a time even persuading him to give me a hearing. When I finally won the opportunity to state my business, he accused me of trying to cram charity down his throat.”
“Then you must’ve gone about it all the wrong way.” Eerily pale blue eyes shone with a glacial light that terrified many people. “Knew I should’ve gone with you. You’re a fine filly, Leonora, but you don’t reckon with the importance of a man’s pride.”
Leonora pushed her plate away. Her stomach suddenly felt sour. She longed to remind Sir Hugo that she’d seen her family’s fortune decimated, all in the name of assuaging male pride. Noting how the ruddy flesh of his jowls had taken on a deep mulberry cast, she refrained from engaging him in a full-scale argument.
For all his overbearing will and eccentric whims, he was a warmhearted, generous creature. With only a tenuous claim of kinship by marriage, he had been more of a father to her than any of the men her mother had married.
“Don’t get yourself into a state, Uncle.” She did her best to soothe him. “Can’t we just find someone else? I don’t believe Sergeant Archer will do it no matter who asks or how we coax him. He’s an impossibly stubborn fellow.”
“Stubborn?” Sir Hugo brandished his bread knife like a sword. “Poppycock! Resolute, you mean. It took a resolute character to defy orders and take on a dozen Frenchmen with bayonets to save Wesley.”
Leonora could well picture Morse Archer fighting off an entire French battalion. It was no stretch to conceive of him defying orders. The difficult part was imagining him doing all that for the sake of someone else.
Long ago, she had reconciled herself to the notion that human beings were selfish creatures at heart. The sergeant had struck her as a man well accustomed to looking out for himself. She had tried appealing to his sense of altruism by mentioning her school. He’d been positively insulting in his refusal, with more cant about unwanted charity.
The truth suddenly dawned on Leonora. “That’s what this wager is about, isn’t it, Uncle Hugo? Not me and my school. You’re just using them as an excuse to repay Sergeant Archer.”
“Harrumph! Excuse? Repayment? Nothing of the sort!” Sir Hugo took a deep draft of his wine, avoiding Leonora’s gaze.
“He wouldn’t accept your help when you offered it outright.” She persisted. “So you hit on the idea of this wager. You might have been frank with me.”
A look of relief came over Sir Hugo’s florid features. An unusually forthright man, he could not have enjoyed misleading her.
“I’ll own that was part of it. I hadn’t much hope of Wes getting off the Peninsula alive. You’ll never know what it meant to me, having him here at the last. There’s scarcely enough in this world I can do to repay Archer for making that possible. Wish I could make him understand.”
He spoke that last sentence on a sigh heaved from deep within his stout frame. Leonora could almost feel the weight of his debt on her own heart.
“I can’t say I care to be manipulated like this, Uncle,” she chided him, but gently. More in hurt than in anger. “I thought you were in earnest about our wager.”
“So I am, my dear. Whatever gave you the notion I wasn’t? I take our wager very seriously indeed.” His gaze rested on her with tangible fondness. “I want to see you settled and happy with a good man and a brood of lively young ones I can spoil rotten in my dotage.”
“Uncle!” Leonora could not keep a hint of asperity from her voice. “We’ve been over this territory a hundred times at least. You know I’d never be happy in a marriage, any more than Wesley would have been happy as a civilian.”
Too late, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Not for anything in the world would she add to her uncle’s pain.
Sir Hugo replied with a long, level look. “How happy do you think he is now, eh?” he asked at last. “I should have done more to dissuade Wes from taking a commission. I’ll not sit by and make the same mistake with you, my dear. Just because Clarissa never met a blackguard she wouldn’t marry is no reason to condemn our whole sex…”
“I’ll thank you to keep my mother and her men out of this,” Leonora snapped.
Her uncle held up his hands in a parody of surrender. “No need to till that ground again. I’m only saying—since I haven’t been able to convince or cajole you—I’ve been driven to the extremity of this wager. If you fulfill its conditions, I’ll endow that school you’re hankering after.”
“And?” prompted Leonora.
“And,” he grumbled, “provide you with a settlement that ensures you never need to marry.”
The very thought made a smile of contentment blossom on Leonora’s face.
“Just be sure you don’t forget your part of the bargain.” Sir Hugo stabbed the table with his forefinger.
Her budding smile withered, as if by a briny blast from the North Atlantic. “I’m not apt to forget, Uncle.”
How could she with stakes as high as her future happiness? Lose the wager and she had sworn to marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. If she had not wanted her school so desperately she never would have agreed to Sir Hugo’s terms.
“Another thing you’d better remember is that I have the sole right to choose the subject for our wager. I won’t settle for anyone but Morse Archer.”
“But, Uncle, I told you…”
“So you did. Now I’m telling you, Leonora—if Archer won’t agree to come, the wager’s off.”
“You can’t mean that.” Leonora blanched. Without this one chance, however slim, she’d never have her school.
“I assure you, I do mean it. Now, don’t look so stricken, child. I’ll go along with you, and between the two of us I’m sure we can win Sergeant Archer ’round. Why don’t you spruce yourself up a bit for our visit. Haven’t you any colored gowns?”
She wanted to protest that her appearance was the last consideration likely to sway Sergeant Archer. A maypole tricked out in ribbons was still a stick.
“Gray’s a color, Uncle.”
“’Tisn’t. Not in a gel’s frock, anyhow. Neither is black, brown nor that dull green. Do something with your hair, while you’re about it. Can’t you twist it up some way to make it curl?”
“Yes, Uncle.” Leonora sighed. There was no talking sense to him in such a mood.
She did not look forward to her return visit to Bramleigh. Sharing the same room with two of the most exasperating men she’d ever met, Leonora wondered how she’d resist the urge to knock their heads together.
When Lieutenant Peverill’s father and cousin tracked him down on the hospital grounds, Morse was hobbling along a mud-churned footpath with a stout tree branch for support.
It was a cold winter for Somerset, even to people who hadn’t spent a decade baking in the heat of India and Iberia. Experiencing his first English winter in ten years, Morse felt the cold more keenly than he’d expected. Be that as it may, he could not stand being cooped up in the ward a moment longer.
He was an outdoorsman, a man of movement, a man of action—well suited to life in the Rifle Brigade. Whether the army discharged him or not, the time had come to hang up his green jacket. He would miss it.
In spite of the danger, the bad food, the miserable pay, the heat, the flies, the hatred of the local people, the blinkered stupidity of the officer corps and the occasional loneliness. It was all he had known for ten years. He felt rather empty and adrift to think of leaving it all behind. All the more, when he considered the bleak future that lay before him.
“Halloo! Sergeant Archer!”
Morse glanced up to see Sir Hugo Peverill bearing down on him, Leonora Freemantle coasting along in her uncle’s wake. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Morse found himself approving the way she walked. Chin up. Eyes firmly fixed on her target. No mincing along, fussing about the mud that might spatter the hem of her cloak and gown.
“Wondered if we were ever going run you to ground, man.” Sir Hugo gasped for breath.
With a start, Morse realized what they must want with him. The notion of three months at Laurelwood lured him like a beacon in an otherwise murky future. If only his cursed pride would not rear up and spoil everything.
Morse extended his hand. “Good to see you again, sir.”
“Indeed. I believe you’ve met my niece, Miss Free-mantle.” Sir Hugo pushed the young woman forward by the elbow, until her hand met Morse’s.
Their previous interview flashed in Morse’s mind. He remembered the touch of her hand on his bare arm, and the crude jest he’d made when she would not let him go. Little wonder she thought he could do with some gentlemanly polish.
Determined to show her he was not devoid of manners, he bowed over her hand. “I have had that pleasure.”
The wind had whipped a few spirals of dark hair loose from beneath her bonnet—a less severe piece of headgear than she’d worn on her previous visit. The cold had coaxed an engaging spot of color into the ivory flesh over her high cheekbones. Her spectacles had slipped down to the tip of her nose, leaving unguarded a pair of most attractive gray-green eyes.
Eyes that shot him a look of censure, which he could not fathom. What had he done wrong now?
She snatched her hand back, as if she feared he might bite it. “You did not appear very pleased with our first meeting, sir.”
Morse felt his own cheeks tingle. Perhaps it was time to come in from the cold. “I must beg your pardon for that, miss. There are days this place would try the patience of a saint. I’m sorry you had the misfortune to catch me on a bad one.”
Sir Hugo clapped his niece around the shoulders, but he addressed his words to Morse. “Only natural, my boy. Of course, Leonora will pardon you. She’s one of those rare females who doesn’t hold a grudge.”
“Rare, indeed.” Morse smiled again into those gray-green eyes, hoping to make peace.
Leonora Freemantle replied by abruptly jamming her spectacles back into place. It was as though she had slammed a heavy door in his face. Morse took an involuntary step back.
Sir Hugo raised a hand to anchor his hat against a strong gust of winter wind. “We’d like to talk to you again, if we may, Sergeant?” He shouted to make himself heard over the rising rush of the wind. “No sense freezing our giblets out here, though. If you’re not ready to go back in just yet, perhaps we could take a little drive around the neighborhood?”
“Very well, sir.” It had been many a year since he’d driven in a good carriage.
“Capital!” Sir Hugo flashed an open, appealing grin.
It reminded Morse so forcefully of his young lieutenant that a choking lump rose in the back of his throat.
Sir Hugo pivoted and strode toward the driveway, calling back over his shoulder. “Lend the sergeant your arm, Leonora. This ground looks uneven.”
She shot Morse a look that might have been apology or defiance—it was difficult to tell behind those grim spectacles.
Then she took his arm, as bidden.
Morse fought back a smile that tickled at the corner of his mouth. Plenty of women would have been delighted to take his arm. Leonora Freemantle looked positively martyred by the effort. No question that she was an unusual creature, unique in his experience. That novelty attracted Morse. He wouldn’t mind getting better acquainted with her.
“Go ahead and grin, Sergeant.” She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. “I know you want to. Enjoy my humiliation.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, miss. You don’t look much humbled to me.”
Between the sturdy fabric of his greatcoat and the thick wool of her pelisse, there was no real contact between his arm and hers. Not like their previous meeting, when she’d clutched his bare arm with her naked hand. As a vivid memory of that instant rose in his mind, Morse felt a queer rush of heat that defied the bitter wind. He found himself counting back, trying to recall when he’d last had a woman.
Before he finished his count, they reached the carriage.
“Come along!” Sir Hugo sang out, motioning to them through the open door.
Again Leonora Freemantle spoke, as though she had hoarded her words till the last minute so there would be no time for discussion.
“You needn’t have begged my pardon, Sergeant. I am the one who owes you an apology. Of everything you said to me when we last met, it appears you were right in almost every particular. Save one. My school will not be charity—at least not of the wretched type you’ve experienced. I beg you to reconsider helping me.”
Morse understood about pride. He could appreciate what it cost her to speak those words. If only she’d left him with a moment to reply. The best he could do was a little show of gallantry, helping her into the carriage. As he caught a glimpse of one trim ankle encased in a fitted leather boot, Morse felt that confounded surge of warmth again.
Impatient with himself, he tried to tamp down the feeling. It did not yield to his control.
Climbing in behind Miss Freemantle, he sank gratefully into the seat opposite her and Sir Hugo. If he’d needed any reminder of the comfortable life he could expect at Laurelwood, the elegantly appointed interior of the barouche provided it—in spades. Mahogany, oiled and polished to a gleaming finish. Fine brass fittings. Supple leather upholstery.
Reaching up with his ivory-handled walking stick, Sir Hugo rapped on the ceiling of the carriage. Without a moment’s hesitation, the barouche rolled smoothly away on the frozen road.
Sir Hugo fixed his intent gaze upon Morse. “I’ll come to the point straightaway, Archer. No shilly-shallying about. I know you military chaps haven’t much patience for that. The fact is, Leonora and I need you most desperately to help us with our wager.”
“Yes, well…sir…as a matter of fact…I must tell you…” Morse groped for the words that would allow him to accept Sir Hugo’s largesse while surrendering as little of his self-respect as possible.
“Say no more, my boy,” interjected Sir Hugo in a manner that brooked no gainsay.
Both his tone and the my boy set Morse’s oversensitive pride abristle, though he tried in vain to quell the feeling.
“I know just what’s on your mind,” Sir Hugo continued. “My niece and I can hardly expect you to relinquish several months of your life, not to mention putting all your plans in abeyance, while we settle a philosophical conundrum of no consequence to anyone but ourselves.”
When the older man paused for breath, Morse tried to voice his objection. “No, no, Sir Hugo. That’s not—”
Sir Hugo raised a stout hand to bid Morse be quiet. “Hear me out, young fellow. At least don’t refuse us until you’ve heard the compensation I mean to offer you.”
Morse wanted to laugh. Compensation? They meant to pluck him out of the cold, hungry, jobless life that awaited him, and cast him into the lap of luxury. Now, on top of that, they proposed to compensate him for doing it. He was hard-pressed to imagine how they reckoned to sweeten the pot. Curiosity, together with his respect for Sir Hugo, kept him from interrupting further.
“If you’ll agree to help us,” said Sir Hugo, “I’ll engage on your behalf the best legal counsel money can buy. I’ll also bring to bear every scrap of influence I can muster. No false promises, of course, but I should be very much surprised if the Board of Inquiry doesn’t throw out your case.”
Morse felt his jaw go slack. What could he say? Here was Sir Hugo offering to smooth out all the wrinkles of his life as casually as a housemaid straightening the bedsheets.
As he struggled to find his voice, Miss Freemantle spoke. “Don’t forget the rest, Uncle.”
Morse could not believe his ears. There was more?
“Of course, my dear.” Sir Hugo took a deep breath. “My niece advises me that you should have a stake in the success of her little experiment. An inducement for you to give it your best effort.”
Morse experienced a momentary pang of affront at the notion that he would ever give less than his best. Sir Hugo’s next words drove the slight from his mind.
“If you succeed in passing yourself off as a gentleman officer at Bath, I’ll see you set up somewhere that a man’s caste isn’t of such consequence. Any British colony you want to name—the Caribbean, North America, Botany Bay. I’ll wangle you a decent grant of land and provide you with gold to buy equipment, stock and seed. Whatever you need. That should make it worth your while putting up with our foolishness, what?”
His generous mouth spread into a broad grin as he waited for Morse’s answer.
Morse clamped his own lips together, to keep from saying the first thing that came into his mind.
Damn! He’d managed to curb his pride enough to accept Miss Freemantle’s original offer. Now, with the kindest intentions in the world, Sir Hugo had heaped a double helping of charity on top of the first. Much as the prospect tempted him, Morse knew it was too rich a dish for him to stomach.
“It’s a generous offer, sir.” Morse strove to keep his temper in check. The old man meant well, after all. He just didn’t understand. “But I can’t accept.”
The curve of Sir Hugo’s smile pulled straight and taut. The color began to rise in his face. He looked like a man struggling to contain an outburst.
Morse was suddenly aware of Leonora Freemantle, too. She looked quite stricken. Though why the founding of a school should mean that much to her, Morse could not fathom. Neither could he fathom the unaccountable urge he felt to take her in his arms and comfort her.
He wished he could find it within himself to oblige them. To oblige himself for that matter. If he could have contrived some way to appease his damnable pride, he’d have leaped at Sir Hugo’s offer.
“Are you mad, boy? How can you think of turning up your nose at—”
“There, there, Uncle. Don’t fret yourself.” Miss Free-mantle patted his arm.
She cast Morse a look as frigid as the crust of snow that blanketed the surrounding fields. Perhaps he’d only imagined her instant of vulnerability. “It’s clear Sergeant Archer does not feel himself equal to the challenge of our wager.”
Her words struck Morse like a leather glove whipped across his cheek. His pride, already piqued to quivering pitch, dove to take up the gauntlet.
“Challenge? You call that a challenge, to masquerade as some arrogant puppy of an officer? I’ve suffered enough of those fools that I could do it tomorrow, without your three months’ tutoring.”
She appraised him with her eyes, and he returned the insult. Somewhere within him, Morse felt a flash of admiration for a worthy opponent and a yearning to win her admiration in return.
“Prove it, Sergeant. Take the wager.”
“I have nothing to prove to you, or to anyone else, Miss Freemantle.” Morse felt reason and control slipping from his grasp like a greased rope, but he could not tamely swallow this woman’s baiting.
“Admit it, Sergeant. You haven’t the nerve to try.”
“I never heard such confounded rot.”
“It isn’t rot.”
“’Tis.”
“Then you’re up to the challenge?”
“Bloody right.” The words were out of his mouth before Morse realized what he’d said. He saw a flicker of triumph in his opponent’s striking eyes. “I mean, no. I can’t. I could, but I won’t.”
“Now, now, Archer,” interjected Sir Hugo. “Don’t tell me a Rifleman would go back on his word. You accepted. Heard it with my own two ears. I mean to hold you to it.”
Part of Morse longed to call back the acceptance he’d flung at Leonora Freemantle during their childish tit for tat. The greater part surrendered to a wave of relief that she had galled him into doing what he’d wanted to do all along.
“Since you’ve left me no choice, how soon can we start?”
Sir Hugo appeared to rouse himself from his amazement at Morse’s abrupt turnabout. “If the sawbones at Bramleigh will pronounce you fit enough, we can load your gear and be back to Laurelwood in time for tea.”
Morse stared at Leonora Freemantle with a gaze that held its own challenge. “That suits me.”
His stomach growled just then, though the others politely ignored the sound. The notion of tea at Laurelwood set his mouth watering, and his stiff muscles yearned for the luxurious embrace of a feather bed. After a hard decade of soldiering, surely this Rifleman deserved a soft billet. Then he noticed Leonora Freemantle eyeing him with the speculative gaze of a drill sergeant sizing up a raw recruit. A shiver of apprehension ran through him.
Or was it excitement?
Chapter Three
A soft billet?
For the hundredth time in the past fortnight, Morse gave an ironic groan at the thought of that rose-colored dream. Rolling onto his stomach, he clamped the feather bolster over his head almost tight enough to suffocate him. It still wasn’t enough to drown out the persistent tapping on his door.
“G’way, Dickon!” he hollered at the young footman. “Give me a few more minutes’ sleep.”
His plea was futile, and Morse knew it.
The tapping stopped, but that only meant Dickon had let himself in. As he’d been ordered to by that she-devil. Morse clamped his fingers onto the thick linen of the pillowcase.
It was no use.
Dickon, who must have weighed twenty stone, had fingers the size of country sausages. He removed the pillow from Morse’s head with a restrained but irresistible force.
“Time to get up, sir,” he rumbled in an apologetic tone. “Don’t make me douse ye with the cold water, like yisterday.”
With a growl of resignation Morse struggled out of bed and let the footman help ready him for the day. It was a ritual he detested. More than ever, at this frigid hour long before dawn. However, Leonora Freemantle insisted he become accustomed to dealing with servants. Morse had discovered that, in all matters pertaining to him, Miss Free-mantle’s word was law.
Law be damned—it was tyranny!
“Dunno why you take on so, sir.” Steaming water splashed into the washbasin from the kettle Dickon had brought with him. “When you was a Rifleman, didn’t you have to be up at dawn?”
“Well…yes.” Morse muttered the grudging admission as he took a chair and let Dickon lather him up for his morning shave.
An hour before dawn to be precise. Sir John Moore—God rest his soul—had drilled that habit into his Riflemen. Daybreak was often a time the enemy chose to attack, hoping to gain the advantage of surprise.
“But that’s not the point.”
As the big footman shaved him, employing an unexpectedly deft touch with the razor, Morse mulled over his grievances against Leonora Freemantle.
Contrary to what he’d expected, meals at Laurelwood were tortured affairs involving the proper deployment of a bewildering array of cutlery and crystal. If he made so much as one hapless mistake in the choice of his fork, Miss Freemantle was not above depriving him of whatever dish he was about to eat. Worse yet were the endless hours each day sitting at a desk, staring at a book until his eyes fairly crossed. Laboring over a piece of written work with his pen clenched almost to the breaking point.
“It all comes down to this, Dickon.” Morse rinsed the residue of soap from his face. “I’m not much good at taking orders.”
“G’way, sir.” The footman handed Morse a pair of buff-colored breeches. “Soldiering all those years and no good at taking orders?”
A piece at a time, Morse donned the articles of clothing Dickon held out for him. The apparel was all well tailored in the finest quality fabrics. When he glanced in the mirror, Morse grudged a fleeting grin at the fashionable dandy who stared back at him.
Still, his body itched for the old green jacket that had once marked him as a member of the elite Rifle Brigade.
“A green jacket’s different, Dickon. The redcoats are drilled to follow orders without a second’s thought, but a Rifleman’s trained to think for himself. For all that, I was still a bit too independent for the Rifles. It landed me in trouble more than once. I’m well enough off if I respect the ability of my superiors and see the sense in what they’re asking me to do. To take senseless orders from a fool who ranks me, though—that’s my notion of hell.”
Sticking a finger under the edge of his stock, he tugged in vain to loosen the wrapping of linen that hugged his throat like a noose.
“Buck up, sir.” Dickon nudged him, flashing a broad wink. “It’s Wednesday night, remember?”
“Wednesday night.” Morse savored the words. The tension that bunched his shoulder muscles began to ebb.
Wednesday and Saturday nights were his only respite from the tyranny of General Freemantle. Without them, Morse was certain he’d have chucked the whole business, in spite of his debt to Sir Hugo.
True to his word, the old man had managed to dissuade the Board of Inquiry from pursuing charges against Morse, letting him muster out with no fuss.
“Think you can liberate us another few pints of that fine ale?” Morse asked the footman.
When Miss Freemantle went into the village on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, he took the opportunity to sneak off with Dickon for a pint or two in some deserted cranny of the house. While they drank and ate whatever cold collation Dickon could forage from the pantry, Morse told stories of his adventures as a Rifleman in the Fourth Somerset Regiment. It felt good to bask in the footman’s soldier-struck admiration. In fact, it was almost enough to buttress Morse against Leonora Freemantle’s persistent assault on his self-assurance.
“Better’n that sir. Do ye fancy a drop of hard cider?”
“Don’t I just! Could do with a drop this very minute.”
Dickon nodded his massive head in sympathy. “Be off, now, sir. Miss Leonora will be waitin’ on ye. I’m apt to catch the edge of her tongue if yer late. It’s the oddest thing. Before you came to the house I never heard a cross word from her. T’was all Would ye be so kind and Might I trouble ye for this or that. This past fortnight, though, she’s been as cranky as a badger sow.”
An involuntary smile rippled across Morse’s lips. He was certain it would be his last before nightfall. No doubt, Leonora Freemantle could badger with the best of them. Not to mention carp, reproach and downright bully.
Army life had been hard and dangerous by times, Morse admitted to himself. Apart from the pitiful pay, it had not been entirely thankless. He’d earned his promotions, won the affection and respect of the men in his command, gained the trust of his superiors—at least those superiors whose opinion mattered to him.
At Camp Laurelwood, however, he was reminded day and night that he could do nothing right.
Morse forced his feet down each step of the darkened staircase toward the library. Every soldier’s instinct in him shrank from tardiness. For ten years it had been dunned into him that he must be where he was expected, when he was expected, no matter what. The lives of his comrades might hang in the balance. He couldn’t make himself believe it was of any consequence whether he started lessons now, or two hours from now. It was all a pack of nonsense anyhow.
With a grunt of disgust, he thrust open the library door.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, Leonora glanced at the mantel clock. Once again Morse Archer was a quarter of an hour late for their prebreakfast lessons. This, in spite of her having sent Dickon to wake him half an hour early. Little wonder General Wellington’s Iberian campaign was all but lost, if he was commanding an army of surly idlers like her star pupil.
Drumming her fingers on the desktop, Leonora eyed the Latin grammar, open to a pitiful tenth page. Every day they slipped further and further behind on her meticulously constructed timetable. She had tried everything she could think of to challenge the man, but he obstinately refused to learn the most rudimentary Latin declension. His knowledge of English history was appalling. He couldn’t tell Agincourt from Hastings, and she sometimes wondered if he knew that Henry the Fifth came before Henry the Eighth. As for his ignorance of literature…
She could have forgiven the man if he’d proven an obvious dullard, incapable of learning. But that was not the case. In his dinner table conversation with Sir Hugo, she caught glimpses of the knowledge he’d gained while soldiering abroad. Morse Archer was too clever by half. If only she could curb his stubborn refusal to apply himself.
She’d tried everything short of cajolery. For some reason she could not bring herself to use a soft approach with him. Perhaps because his physical presence unnerved her so. Often when she should have been correcting his atrocious penmanship, she found herself instead staring at his hands. Blatantly staring at his powerful, shapely hands. Imagining them taking steady aim with his rifle, clamped around a bottle of Spanish wine or spanning the waist of some sultry Dulcinea.
Then he would glance up and catch her watching him. And his eyes would twinkle with mockery. Leonora willed herself to think of something else before she gave way to a shriek of vexation. Distracting her thoughts was no easy matter. A nauseating lump of panic rose in her throat as she pictured the days and weeks slipping away with so painfully little to show for them. Despite his hollow boasts to the contrary, at the rate he was going Morse Archer would not pass for a butler let alone a gentleman.
And when the petty nobility of Bath laughed him out of town, she would have to forfeit the wager. Marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. Surrender her dream of a school. Abandon the academic pursuits that were her only joy in life.
A briny mist stung her eyes.
Impatient with herself, Leonora pulled off her spectacles and roughly employed the cuff of her sleeve as a handkerchief. Not since the youngest years of her childhood had she allowed anyone or anything to drive her to tears. She was not about to yield that honor to a man like Morse Archer.
The library door burst open. Shutting it behind him with a bang that reverberated through the room, Morse lumbered over to the table and dropped heavily into his seat.
With a hiccup, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, Leonora pushed her spectacles back on again and stiffened her posture.
“If you learn nothing else from me in the next two and a half months, Morse Archer, I trust you will at least cultivate the civility of knocking before you barge into a room.”
He glared up at her, one eyebrow cocked insolently.
“Why should I waste my time knocking? Weren’t you expecting me?”
Leonora made herself glare back, hoping he would not notice the redness of her eyes. “I was expecting you a full quarter of an hour ago, as you should be well aware. That does not excuse the rudeness of your conduct. As penalty for lateness, we will work an additional half hour before taking breakfast.”
She ignored the groan with which he greeted this news. “And as penalty for your lapse in manners, I will expect you to spend an additional half hour reading history this evening before you retire.”
For some reason Morse showed no obvious dismay at this second punishment. Leonora was tempted to raise it to an hour.
“We have wasted quite enough time this morning. May I remind you that we have only ten weeks remaining until we must go to Bath. Let us begin with a review of yesterday’s Latin lesson. Translate the verb to eat, and conjugate it in the present tense if you please.”
“To eat?” Morse lounged back in his chair, not so much as glancing at the book open before him. “Last night’s dinner was so long ago, I’m not sure I recall the meaning of that word in English, let alone Latin.”
“Keep this up,” shot Leonora, her patience worn to a thread, “and it could be several hours before you get the chance to refresh your memory. Kindly apply yourself to the lesson and provide me with the translation and conjugation of the verb.”
Morse slammed his Latin grammar shut. “This is lunacy. Your wager is to pass me off as a gentleman soldier, not the Arch-bloody-bishop of Canterbury! If you’d just let me—”
“That is quite enough, sir!” Leonora’s simmering resentment threatened to boil over. “I am the teacher here. This wager is to test my skill. You understood that when you agreed to take part. I decide upon the curriculum. I choose the subjects. I set the lessons. You’d do well to master the role of pupil before you try usurping mine. Now let’s get on with it.”
She reopened the book and thrust it under his nose. If he insisted on behaving like a spoiled child, that’s how she would treat him from now on.
“Conjugation of the verb to eat, repeat after me…” She pointed out each word as she read it.
To her amazement, Morse did repeat after her. However, he did so in a flat, apathetic tone that left no doubt he’d forgotten each word the moment it left his lips.
For the next two hours Leonora persevered, bending over her pupil, straining to avoid any physical contact between them. As her outstretched finger glided beneath each line of text, she spoke the words of a dead language. Morse parroted her in a voice that sounded all but dead.
Her back and shoulder began to ache. Hunger gnawed at her innards. Worst of all, a painfully acute awareness of Morse Archer—the sight, sound and scent of him—set her senses aquiver. By half past eight, she wanted nothing more than to pick up the heavy Latin grammar and hurl it through the library window.
“Celo, celare, celavi, celatus.” Morse heard the words coming out of his mouth, as though from a distance. The page of Latin grammar was there before him and his eyes were open, but he did not see it.
“Habeo, habere, habui, habitus.” So much of army life had been numbingly boring physical routine. Morse had fallen into the habit of letting his hands or feet go through the familiar motions, while his mind fixed on some point of interest.
“Audio, audiere, audivi, auditus.” His speech organs produced the words by rote, while Morse found himself absorbed in the contemplation of Leonora’s hand.
Her fingers were slender and tapered. The nails were neatly kept, like five tiny translucent seashells. For all its daintiness, it was neither weak nor vapid. Instead it moved with an expressive, purposeful grace, which Morse found fascinating and strangely beautiful.
He scarcely realized what he was doing when his own hand reached for hers. She froze. With a stifled gasp, her recitation of Latin verbs ceased.
Once, in India, Morse had handled a priceless religious artifact, exquisitely carved in luminous pale jade. He held Leonora’s hand with the same breathless reverence, savoring its warmth and smoothness. It seemed the most natural impulse in the world to lift it to his lips in homage.
His curious trance shattered when Leonora ripped her hand from his grasp.
She found her voice again. “What is the meaning of this? How dare you take such liberties?”
Her face a livid crimson and her eyes gaping wide, she backed toward the door.
“I was just noticing what lovely hands you have.” Morse wondered that such a little thing had obviously upset her so. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She stared at her hand as if she was seeing it for the first time, and was not pleased in the least with what she beheld. “You would do well to take more notice of your studies, Sergeant Archer, and less of my…person.” The last word came out in a strangled squeak.
Morse endeavored to suppress a smile. He had never imagined his icy, implacable martinet could appear so flustered. And over such a trifle.
“Since you are obviously not…attending to the lesson, perhaps we had better adjourn…for breakfast. Afterward, I expect you to read the next twenty pages of Mr. Butler’s Hudebras.”
Morse opened his mouth to ask where she would be while he was reading. Before he could voice the question, though, Leonora had slipped out the door and fled.
She never did come to breakfast.
For the first time since setting foot in Laurelwood, Morse was able to relax and enjoy a meal in peace. As he tucked ravenously into a plate of eggs and broiled veal kidneys, he pondered the unaccountable events of the morning. What was there in an innocent touch and a trifling compliment to throw Leonora Freemantle into such a bother? He had no success in puzzling it out.
After a leisurely breakfast he returned to the library and found it deserted. For lack of any better diversion, he did read a few pages of Hudebras. When it failed to stir his interest, he got up and walked over to the window.
The bright winter sunshine and the steady drip of water from the eaves told Morse the day must be mild. Reasoning that a bit of fresh air might revive his powers of concentration, he called for his hat, greatcoat and walking stick.
Ambling along the path between high cherry laurel hedges, Morse found himself able to bear more and more weight on his injured leg. With a bit of regular exercise, perhaps he would regain his former easy stride.
By the time he returned to the house, he was in a better humor than he’d enjoyed since coming to Laurelwood. Whatever he had done to disrupt the endless routine of lessons, it was well worth trying again. If compliments flustered Leonora so…Morse chuckled at the very thought of how she’d respond if he called her by that name. Surely she had other features he could admire the next time he needed a respite from his studies.
Her slender, graceful neck, for instance. If he nuzzled her sensitive nape, she might take to her bed for several days with a fit of the vapors.
Morse grinned to himself, anticipating her reaction.
Immensely pleased at the cleverness of his plan, he took up his book again and devoured nearly a hundred pages of it by teatime.
Chapter Four
He had kissed her hand.
Several hours later it still tingled faintly and the memory of Morse’s lips on her skin continued to prompt a most ridiculous blush in Leonora’s cheeks. She had retreated to the sanctuary of her bedchamber, not trusting herself to face him again that day. On no account must that man see the foolish reaction he’d excited in her.
Pacing the carpet runner beside her bed, Leonora tried to dismiss the whole episode for the silly trifle she knew it to be. No doubt Morse Archer had kissed the hand of many a woman. More than their hands, too, unless she missed her guess.
Through the window she spied him striding the grounds of Laurelwood, his limp much less noticeable than when he’d first arrived. Some unaccountable force kept her rooted to the spot, watching Morse Archer until he disappeared from view.
Quite against her will, Leonora found herself slipping into a shameful reverie. Unbidden images cascaded into her mind, piquing her senses. Of all the places on women’s bodies where the attractive sergeant might have bestowed kisses.
On their lips, of course. Perhaps a bare neck or shoulder had enticed him to nuzzle. Might he have dropped one, delicate as a whisper, upon some pretty ear? Or pressed his face into a head of tousled tresses?
As each notion took hold of her, Leonora’s hand—her kissed hand—strayed to that part of her own person. Setting her lips aquiver as one fingertip brushed over them, gliding from shoulder, to neck, to ear. Extracting the pins from her hair.
When at last it fell in a fine, ebony billow around her shoulders, her strangely possessed hand reached up and threaded her fingers through the strands. Feeling and appreciating its delicate, silky texture for perhaps the first time in her life.
Catching sight of herself in the looking glass, Leonora almost did not recognize the face that stared back at her. That woman had a strange softness about her features. It made her look far younger than Leonora’s twenty-seven sensible years. Even her severe little spectacles could not disguise the dreamy shimmer in her gray-green eyes.
Leonora had seen that look before. Her stomach curdled and her throat constricted at the memory of it.
Mother.
Downy and pensive. Humming a little tune to herself. Fondling a nosegay of posies from her latest admirer. Such looks had meant only one thing. Clarissa Freemantle had welcomed a new suitor into her life. To Leonora, it had always spelled trouble.
Setting her mouth in a taut line, she squared her shoulders and willed that mooning creature in the mirror to vacate the premises forthwith. She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes, least of all over a shiftless, insolent ex-Rifleman that circumstances had forced upon her.
Leonora thrust her spectacles back up to the bridge of her nose. Plucking a hairbrush from the top of her dressing table, she coerced her locks into submission, plaiting them into such tight braids they made her head ache.
Dickon, the footman, almost dropped his water kettle the next morning when he arrived at Morse’s door to find the sergeant already awake.
“Don’t just stand there gaping, man.” Morse plucked the steaming kettle from Dickon’s hand and splashed a generous measure into his washbasin. “Lay out my clothes while I shave.”
“I didn’t reckon to find you in such fine fettle this morning, sir.” The burly footman rubbed his forehead. “Not after the quantity of cider you put away last night and how merry we was making.”
Morse worked his shaving soap into a good lather and smeared it on his face, inhaling the tangy aroma. “I’ve been up before dawn and in the thick of a battle after far worse debauches than last night’s wee tipple, man.”
He whistled a few bars of a Portuguese drinking song, the words of which he had never understood. “Sometimes a fellow’s all the better in the morning for a spot of revelry the night before.”
“If you say so, sir.” Dickon did not sound convinced. Clearly, he was paying a somewhat higher price for their evening’s merriment.
“I do say so, Dickon.” Morse rinsed his face and dried it off, flashing his reflection a wolfish grin. He wasn’t certain what had brought about his sudden bout of energy and high spirits. Perhaps his congenial evening with Dickon accounted for it. Or perhaps yesterday’s unscheduled holiday from his studies.
Or could it be…?
The fellow in the looking glass grinned more broadly still. Had he guessed the truth? That, at last, Morse had found himself an effective weapon in his running conflict with Miss Leonora Freemantle.
Until yesterday she had possessed all the artillery, not to mention strategic field position. His only recourse had been a dogged refusal to capitulate. Then, just when he’d thought himself all but beaten, Morse had discovered his own tactical advantage—Leonora’s agitated reaction to a little harmless flirtation.
This set them on even ground at last. The prospect of a well-matched contest stirred Morse’s blood as nothing had since the rout at Bucaso.
He eyed the suit Dickon had chosen for him. “Don’t suppose you can find something more colorful by way of a waistcoat? If a fellow has to act the gentleman, might as well look the part, eh?”
With a glance that questioned if he truly could be Morse Archer, Dickon rummaged in the wardrobe and produced a brocade garment of forest green shot with gold.
Once he had donned his gear, Morse looked himself over in the mirror, approving what he saw. Even that tiny hint of green in the waistcoat reminded him of his Rifle Brigade uniform. It heartened him for whatever battles might lie ahead today.
He let Dickon give his coat a final brush, then Morse descended the stairs to the drawing room as rapidly as his injured leg would allow. Finding the place dark and deserted, he rubbed his hands with gleeful anticipation.
If Sir John Moore had drummed one precept into the minds of the Rifle Brigade, it was the benefit of being first to arrive on the field of battle. One gained superiority of position together with the element of surprise.
Morse lit several candles and picked up the volume of Hudebras he’d been reading the previous day. Settling into his chair, he affected an air of one who had been in the throes of diligent study for some time. Fortunately, he did not have to keep up the pose for long before he heard Leonora’s footsteps.
Something stirred inside him at the sound, and he had to admit it was more than the anticipation of catching her off guard. His lips warmed at the memory of kissing her hand.
As the door eased open, Morse tried to rein in the eager grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“You are late, Miss Freemantle.”
Leonora gasped at the sound of Morse Archer’s voice. In the very next instant she berated herself for letting him catch her off guard—again.
“Considering this is the first morning you have managed to arrive on time, Sergeant, it ill-behooves you to criticize.”
Blast the man to kingdom come! She had been anxious to reassert her authority this morning and already he had put her on the defensive.
Morse closed his book. Had he read that much since yesterday? She heartily doubted it.
Leaning back in his chair, he swept her with a look that made Leonora break out in gooseflesh from head to toe.
“You mistake me, Miss Freemantle.” His tone sounded far too cordial for her liking. The warm baritone wrapped itself around her heart. “I didn’t mean to criticize, only to state the fact. If you took a few extra minutes to dress and fix your hair, I would be the last to complain. You look particularly charming this morning.”
Her heart hammered and her stomach clenched. How had he guessed that she’d dithered a full ten minutes in her choice of a gown? That, against all logic, she’d spent more precious minutes dressing her hair in a marginally less severe style.
Her feet itched to flee, but Leonora stood her ground. “I will thank you not to mock me, Sergeant. I am well aware I look a fright this morning.”
There’d been nothing she could do to remedy the sleepless smudges beneath her eyes.
“Not that it is any business of yours how I look.” She strode to the table. “I am here to teach you, not to provide you with an object to scrutinize. Is that understood?”
If she expected his usual surly retort, it was not forthcoming this morning. “I understand you better every day, Miss Freemantle.”
She could find no fault with his words, or with the cheerful tone in which they were uttered. Yet, Leonora could not escape the feeling that Morse Archer was having a sharp little jest at her expense.
Retrenching to more solid conversational ground, she pointed to the open book in his hand. “I see you have shown some ambition in your reading course.”
Teacher’s intuition whispered that she ought to appeal to his sense of pride by commending his initiative. Feminine suspicion warned her not to plunge headlong after what was in all likelihood a ruse. “What do you think of Colonel Hudibras’s adventures thus far?”
She waited, in smug assurance that he would hem and haw with embarrassment and in the end admit he hadn’t read a word.
“It’s interesting enough reading, I suppose.”
Leave it to Archer to try bluffing his way out.
Before she could devise a probing question to expose his ignorance, he continued. “I don’t think much of the colonel, truth be told. Treats that squire of his something shameful. When he made Ralpho take that whipping in his place, I wanted to leap into the book and throttle the blackguard.”
There could be no denying his violent indignation. Morse’s emphatic brows knit together and his jaw jutted forward. He had read the material, after all. What’s more, he had been moved by it.
The notion tugged at Leonora and would not let her go.
In a flash Morse’s umbrage changed to chagrin. “I’ve known too many ranking idiots like Colonel Hudibras in my day,” he muttered. For the first time that morning, his gaze faltered before hers.
“I dislike the character quite as intensely as you do, Sergeant Archer,” she confessed, taking a seat beside him. What galled her was the colonel’s mercenary pursuit of the widow. Like Morse, she had known too many loathsome creatures of that ilk. “Read on and I promise you’ll enjoy the part where he gets his comeuppance.”
“That I shall.” He leafed through the volume searching for his place.
“Would it surprise you to hear that the author is no fonder of Hudibras than we are?” Leonora pulled her chair closer to his. “It was Mr. Butler’s intent to satirize the Puritans, who had ruled England after the defeat of King Charles the First.”
Morse looked up from the book. “Are you saying there was a time we had no king?”
A lively discussion sprang up between them, about the history of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth and the eventual restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Then they went on to consider the nature of satire and its origins in the Greek literary tradition.
Leonora could scarcely believe it when Dickon gave a tentative knock on the sitting room door and inquired whether they wished to take breakfast that morning, after all. She glanced at the mantel clock, amazed to discover the hands within a few minutes of ten.
“I apologize, Sergeant Archer,” she stammered. “I had no idea the time had gotten away from me to such an extent. You’ll be starved.”
He appeared almost as surprised by the hour as she. “I am hungry,” he confessed. “Though I can’t say I noticed it until this minute. I fear I got caught up in your talk. You have a knack for making this dry-as-dust history and literature come to life, Miss Freemantle.”
His dark eyes glowed with admiration. Some long dormant feminine faculty within Leonora assured her it was quite genuine.
Just then she became acutely aware of his knee pressing against hers. How long had that been going on? Even through the substantial fabric of her skirt and his buckskin breeches, it had kindled a warmth between them. A rush of that warmth wafted from Leonora’s knee to her thighs.
She almost toppled the chair in her haste to put a safe distance between them.
“We had better get to breakfast before everything is stone cold or burned to a crisp.” She gasped the words, hard-pressed to catch her breath. “I fear Cook will be cross with us.”
She fled to the breakfast room before Morse Archer could reply. By the time he sauntered in, she had regained at least a crumb of her composure. Still, she was too flustered to correct his mess hall manners.
Several times he spoke with his mouth full. He ate bits of ham off the point of his knife. Over coffee, he hunched forward, resting his elbows upon the table. Had she made no headway at all with him in the past fortnight?
For all her disquiet on that score, Leonora had to admit their late breakfast was the most pleasant meal she had passed in his company.
One of the most pleasant she had ever passed, come to that.
Morse Archer picked up the thread of their prior conversation, plying her with any number of thoughtful, pertinent questions about the roots of the English Civil War and its effect upon the Scottish uprising of the last century. Evidently he had been listening to her and retaining what he’d learned. What made this morning’s lesson so different from those of the past two weeks?
Could it be because…?
Leonora could not deny the eagerness with which he hung on her words. The strange, piquant way he gazed at her from time to time. Was it possible he had taken a fancy to her?
She came to herself with a start, realizing he had just spoken to her. Really, she would have to exercise a good deal more self-control from now on.
“I asked if you would care for another splash of coffee, Miss Leonora.”
“I—” No other words would come just then. He had spoken her Christian name for the first time, each syllable gliding off his tongue like spiced honey. She had never thought a word could sound so beautiful.
“Yes—p-please,” she finally managed to stammer, though the prim schoolmistress within her protested. The beverage was a stimulant, after all. The last thing she needed at the moment was further stimulation.
Leonora cast about for any topic that promised to distract her from this adolescent preoccupation with Morse. Good heavens! Now she was thinking of him by his Christian name, as well.
“I hope Uncle Hugo didn’t miss our company at breakfast.” The sentence erupted from her in a breathless rush.
Morse’s eyebrows raised. “Did he not tell you he was going off to London? Of course—you weren’t at dinner last night. He said he’d be away for a few days. Some urgent matter of business. I’m afraid it’ll be just the two of us until he gets back.”
An unaccustomed giddiness expanded inside Leonora, as though she was one of those newfangled hot-air balloons inflated too quickly. She tried pulling herself back to earth, without much success.
“We must return to work now, Sergeant Archer.” How she despised the beseeching note she heard in her voice.
“That’s what I’m here for.” He walked around the table and pulled out her chair.
The backs of his fingers grazed her upper arm. Had it been accidental, or deliberate? Either way, it set her head spinning and her breath skipping.
Leonora made a last desperate attempt to regain mastery of the situation, and of herself. Her entire childhood had been spent at the mercy of forces beyond her control. At least she had been mistress of her own feelings—cool and detached where her mother was passionate and imprudent.
Now, this man, with the most insignificant look, word or touch, threatened to overpower her carefully cultivated composure and turn her whole world on its ear.
She jerked her arm away from his hand. “We must return to our Latin studies.”
When he met her suggestion with a groan, she flared up at him. “I warned you from the start this would not be a stroll through the park, Sergeant Archer! You boasted you were equal to the challenge, but until this morning I have seen no sign of it. At this rate, we will be laughed out of Bath. You will never see your estate in the colonies and I—”
She bit her tongue. It was none of his business what his indolence would cost her. If he knew, he would only take advantage of the power it gave him over her fate.
Fortunately he quit the breakfast room without asking her to finish her sentence. In all likelihood he did not care a whit about her dire stakes in the wager.
Summoning up every ounce of frosty aplomb she could muster, Leonora stalked off after him. They had dabbled in quite enough sensational subjects for the day. The rest of their lessons would be given over to mathematics, dead languages and anything else she could furnish that might throw cold water on her growing preoccupation with Morse Archer.
Leonora’s blatant insult to his diligence kept Morse focused on his studies until almost teatime. To his surprise, he found the Latin beginning to make sense. And he had always been good with numbers, particularly as they applied to situations in real life.
How many rounds could a Rifleman fire in so many minutes? How fast would a company have to march to be at such a place by such a time?
It still irked him that none of their lessons showed any practical application to Leonora’s stated goal of passing him off as a gentleman. Several times he had tried getting the point across to her. On each occasion she had almost bitten his head off for presuming to question her authority.
On that score, she put him in mind of two inept officers who’d been his superiors in Portugal. Their blinkered stupidity and blank refusal to accept advice from anyone of lower rank had contributed largely to the fiasco that had ended his military career.
And Lieutenant Peverill’s life.
Looking up suddenly from his book, he caught Leonora staring at him. Fresh from thoughts of his young lieutenant, Morse recognized an appealing family resemblance in her face.
“I never served under a better officer than your cousin.” He wasn’t certain what propelled those words out of him.
To his surprise, Leonora did not order him back to work at once. Neither did she question what had prompted him to speak of the lieutenant for the first time since coming to Laurelwood.
“Cousin Wesley mentioned you in his letters. I think he would be pleased to know you’re here.”
Her little chin, so intrepid for all its delicacy, betrayed a subtle quiver. Behind the bastion of her spectacles, Morse thought he spied a fine mist rising in Leonora’s eyes.
Ordinarily, Morse Archer was not a man who had any patience for tears or overwrought outbursts. Yet something launched him out of his chair and to Leonora’s side. His hands closed over her shoulders.
“I’m sorry I mentioned him. I didn’t mean to distress you, honestly.”
At the slightest provocation he would have taken her in his arms. But Leonora gave him no opportunity. And no quarter.
Twisting free of his chaste touch, she flew to the opposite corner of the room and pretended an exaggerated interest in whatever she saw out the window. The steady drip of icicles melting from the eaves, perhaps.
“You have worked well today, Sergeant.” She did not bother to turn and address him face-to-face. “As a reward, you are excused from lessons for the remainder of the day.”
Earlier in the week Morse would have welcomed the news with a whoop of glee. Now he cursed himself roundly. What should have been a reward felt instead like…exile.
Chapter Five
Leonora listened to Morse’s retreating footsteps with an exasperating mixture of relief and regret.
If she had not fled the warm invitation of his hands upon her shoulders, if she had not dismissed him from the room with her next breath, she might have surrendered to her impulses. She might have pivoted into his powerful arms and wept a woman’s weak tears against his sturdy shoulder.
The prospect tempted her, as much from curiosity as…anything else. She had no experience of seeking comfort from another person. Mother had always been too much in need of support herself to lend it elsewhere. And Leonora would have died under torture before betraying a hint of weakness to any of her detested stepfathers. By the time she had come to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Hugo, she was well past the age for tearful outbursts.
Yet somewhere in the mists of early memory there lurked the phantom fancy of a comforting embrace. The faint musk of horses and tobacco. The croon of a deep, affectionate voice. The subtle scratch of a serge coat against her cheek. It had been her one and only experience of security.
And it had been ripped away from her long before she was able to understand why.
Since then she had learned to rely upon herself alone. Not upon her looks, as she had seen some foolish women do. In time, creamy skin would wrinkle. Bright eyes would lose their sparkle. Shiny hair its luster.
Intelligence, determination and self-control—these would stand the test the time. Neither were they a happy accident of nature. They could be learned and properly cultivated in any girl so inclined.
Leonora returned from her reverie to find her hands balled into tight fists. So tight, in fact, that her fingernails bit into her palms.
She was determined to cultivate those serviceable virtues in other young women whom fate had placed at a disadvantage. In her school, she would recover the kind of security she vaguely recalled from her childhood.
But how would she ever win her school if she didn’t coax a better effort out of Sergeant Archer? He had shown some improvement today, in his attitude at least. Would it be enough?
“Oh, Wes,” she whispered. If her cousin’s spirit lingered anywhere in the mortal world, it would be here at Laurelwood. “You won his devotion and disciplined him into a good soldier. What am I doing wrong?”
No answer came. Nor had she expected one, being too fiercely practical to believe in communication from beyond the grave. Still, Leonora could not help feeling there was a lesson to be learned from Cousin Wesley’s style of command.
Though, what it was, she had yet to fathom.
“Up early again, sir?” Dickon handed Morse the kettle. “If you don’t mind my saying so, it makes a pleasant change from having to drag you out of bed.”
“Pleasanter for us both, Dickon.” Morse began to whistle a marching tune as he shaved.
“If you don’t mind my asking, sir—” the footman delved in the wardrobe for Morse’s clean linen “—what brought on the change?”
Morse’s razor froze in midstroke. He scrutinized his reflection in the glass as though to ask that Morse Archer to explain himself.
When the fellow unhelpfully mimicked his own puzzlement, Morse was forced to stammer, “I—couldn’t say—for certain.”
Recovering a shred of his old sangfroid, he added, “Just bowing to necessity, I suppose. Or getting used to the new routine. There wasn’t any need to get up early at the hospital.”
Dickon appeared satisfied with the explanation, for he nodded and continued his work without further comment.
Resuming his shave with a somewhat less steady hand, Morse was less convinced by his own rather lame reasoning. Bowing to necessity did not explain the recent lightness in his step or the merry tune that hovered on his lips of late, begging to be whistled. His inexplicable eagerness to begin the day must be more than merely adapting to a new routine.
He continued to puzzle the matter as he dressed. Conflicting impulses jousted within him. One urged haste, to get his clothes on and proceed downstairs as quickly as possible. The other counseled patience. Take his time in tying his stock. Let Dickon buff his boots properly. Arrive for his morning studies looking his best.
As he set off for the library, at last, a disquieting thought struck Morse. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he was trying to make a favorable impression on Leonora Freemantle.
But that was rank nonsense.
First of all, he had long since ceased to strive for any woman’s regard. The kind of female he liked, Morse attracted and won effortlessly.
Which led to the second consideration—Miss Leonora Freemantle was anything but the kind of female he usually preferred. She was too bookish, too determined.
Too challenging.
Was there such a thing? The notion brought him to an abrupt halt halfway down the stairs. All his life he had thrived on challenge and novelty. But not where women were concerned!
And besides, what would Miss Freemantle want with a chap like him? Ill-bred. Uneducated.
Even if he did fancy her—which he most emphatically did not—he could not afford to dally with a woman above his station. Not again.
So Morse told himself as he slipped into the study, uncertain whether to encourage or to suppress his eagerness to begin the day’s lessons.
“Early two days in a row, Sergeant Archer?” Leonora’s voice startled him. Roused him? “To what do we owe this unexpected development?”
Morse felt his cheeks begin to sting. A reaction to the shaving soap, perhaps?
No. It was more than that. Like any opponent worthy of his steel, Leonora had neatly turned the tables on him. Yesterday he had mounted a surprise attack, exploiting his advantage of being first to take the field. She had not let him enjoy that superior position for two days running.
In spite of himself, a grin of something like admiration rippled across Morse’s lips. He recalled a word Lieutenant Peverill had sometimes used when an opponent proved wilier than he’d expected. Touché.
Touché, Miss Freemantle. Touché, indeed.
Too late, Morse tried to cover his confusion with a scowl. “Why am I early? Perhaps because I want to win that bet with Sir Hugo as much as you do. Have you any idea what a fresh start in the colonies would mean to a man like me?”
Leonora stepped forward into the dim light of a single candle. No doubt about it—she’d been lying in wait to surprise him. Her smile, a rare and unexpected favor, erased Morse’s annoyance.
“I think I have quite a good idea what it will mean, Sergeant. That is why I suggested it to my uncle. I hope the knowledge and skills I can impart to the girls at my school will provide them with similar opportunities.”
The notion seized Morse and all but throttled him. “You suggested Sir Hugo offer me an estate in the colonies?”
She nodded. “Someone had to. Uncle is the most generous man in the world, but he can also be the most selfish in some ways. Or maybe selfish isn’t the right word. Just unimaginative when it comes to understanding what other people want.”
Her voice died away to a bemused murmur. “He can’t fathom why they should want anything but what he wants for them.”
And what did Sir Hugo want for his bluestocking niece that she didn’t? Morse found himself wondering.
Leonora seemed to become aware of his presence again, as though she’d been musing out loud. She blushed, a rosy cast Morse could easily detect even in the dim light of the library.
He detected other things, as well.
Like the wistful luster in her gray-green eyes. Perhaps it was the soft green shade of her gown that set them off so becomingly. This was the first time he’d seen her in anything but the dullest of dark hues. Lighter ones suited her complexion and coloring far better.
Why would a woman go out of her way to look unattractive, when in fact—?
“Sergeant Archer?”
Morse suddenly realized she had spoken his name for the second time. “Sorry. Woolgathering. The early hour, I expect. You were saying?”
“I was saying, perhaps we should take our seats and apply ourselves to today’s lesson. If we wish to have any hope of winning the wager, that is.”
“Of course.” Morse had the unpleasant sensation that he was losing command of the situation, and himself.
Then he remembered his secret weapon.
Striding toward their study table, he tried to disguise the hitch in his step. With a flourish, he pulled out Leonora’s chair and beckoned her to sit.
“To be frank, Miss Leonora, the inducement of your uncle’s wager is only part of my impatience to begin work this morning.”
Casting him a wary glance, she took the seat he offered. “Indeed? And what might the other part be?”
Morse settled into his usual place on the wider side of the table. During the course of yesterday’s lesson, his chair had migrated to his teacher’s end of the table.
Now as he leaned close to her, he spoke in a quiet voice that suggested intimacy. “Can you not guess…Leonora?”
The catch in her breath betrayed the lady’s awareness of the missing Miss, and all that its absence implied.
Before she could respond, Morse supplied the answer. “It’s a rare dolt of a fellow who wouldn’t grasp at the chance to spend all day in the company of such a fetching lass.”
Some scrap of insight warned Morse he was venturing far too close to the truth with his flattery.
Another thought drove that one from his mind altogether. What if Leonora reacted to his comment as she had to his previous liberties—bidding him away, or bustling off herself?
That had been his original plan, hadn’t it? Yet, at that moment, nothing could have been farther from Morse’s desire.
To his massive relief, Leonora dismissed his fawning with an ironic lift of one brow and a toss of her head. “Really, Sergeant, we must put you to work with a dictionary. A woman of twenty-sev—of my years, hardly qualifies as a lass.”
Touché again, Leonora!
“That’s as may be. What man in his right mind wants the company of a simpering miss?” Morse took up his Latin grammar, suddenly disinclined to press his advantage and risk frightening her away.
Why did it frighten her? he wondered—the romantic attentions of a man. Indignation or outrage, he could have understood from a woman of her character. Her anxious agitation puzzled and intrigued him.
As did the lady herself.
Though clearly reluctant to pursue their conversation further, Leonora Freemantle could not resist a parting comment. “In my experience, a simpering miss is precisely what most men do prefer. Now if you will indulge me by turning to page forty-three, Sergeant Archer. Perhaps we can attempt a short translation of Livy.”
Not content to let her have the last word on most men’s taste in women, he muttered, “More fools, them.”
Almost as if he meant it.
Of course he hadn’t meant it.
Leonora reminded herself of the obvious several times as she and Morse struggled over the Latin translation.
Still, part of her felt ridiculously grateful he’d said it—sincere or not.
How many times a day, during her girlhood, had Mother admonished her to get her nose out of a book, lest she never land a husband?
Every time, Leonora had clenched her lips to keep from hurling a disrespectful retort. If her mother’s later husbands were representative of the marriage pool, she would prefer to not fish for one at all.
Little had Mother guessed that she had taken the warning as wise counsel. Everything Mother cautioned to avoid—unflattering clothes, spectacles, too much book-learning, Leonora had taken pains to acquire. For a husband was obviously someone to be eluded at all costs.
All the same, something in her had hungered for the occasional pretty gown, the odd dance at a ball. Even, now and then, the counterfeit flattery of a handsome man.
Thinking of handsome men…
To her dismay, Leonora found herself hovering over Morse’s broad shoulder, prompting him when his translation faltered. The muted scent of his shaving soap and the rich cadence of his voice set her senses reeling.
They made her long to lean closer still, until she succumbed to the invitation of his thick, chestnut hair—running her fingers through it, or nuzzling it with her cheek.
And if she did—how might he react? What might he do in return?
Certainly Morse Archer had betrayed more interest in her than any other man ever had. Even before she’d begun making subtle improvements in her appearance. Apart from his rapidly healing leg injury, he was a healthy, vigorous, virile specimen of manhood. One who’d been denied the company of women for some little time. Yet she had no fear of catching him for a husband.
The notion took Leonora’s breath away.
That was the subject of the wager, after all. He was abetting her quest to avoid marriage. And if they failed, she would have to marry some aristocratic half-wit of Uncle Hugo’s choosing.
With a shudder of distaste, she banished that thought from her mind. Her preoccupation with Morse Archer had a will of its own, however. It would not be banished.
So Leonora reached a compromise with herself.
Uncle Hugo would be gone for a few days. Apart from the servants, she and Morse had Laurelwood to themselves. Perhaps tonight, after dinner, she might invite him to take a glass of port with her in the drawing room. They could put their studies aside and simply talk. About his experiences as a soldier. His plans for the future. Suddenly she was hungry to know everything about him.
Or she might offer to play the pianoforte. She imagined Morse sitting beside her, or leaning over her shoulder to read the words from her sheet music.
An unguarded sigh escaped from between her lips.
“Is something wrong?” Morse turned, then, to look at her.
Leonora knew she should pull herself away. Stand straight. Take a few steps back.
Her body refused to cooperate.
It hung there, bent over Morse, scant inches separating them. They could not have held that position for more than a few seconds, Leonora later reasoned. But in that time, as his eyes locked on hers and the brief space between them fairly shimmered with heat, it took all the self-control of a lifetime to not trespass that tiny distance and press her lips to his.
A tentative tap on the library door boomed like a cannonade in Leonora’s ears.
Seized by a spasm of shame, she wrenched herself away from Morse and called, “Yes. What is it?” in a high, breathless voice.
Dickon pushed the door ajar and peeked in. “Pardon me, miss, but you did give orders I was to knock if you and Sergeant Archer hadn’t come to breakfast by nine.”
Had she said that? Leonora’s thoughts whirled so that she could not swear to it.
“Thank you.” Her words came in little gasps. “We’ll be along in a moment.”
Morse rose from his chair and stretched. The way his muscles bunched under the tight fabric of his breeches made Leonora’s mouth go dry. There were so many things she didn’t know about men. And until this week, she hadn’t cared to find out. Now her freshly whetted curiosity knew no bounds.
“I think you could do with a good plate of breakfast and a strong cup of tea.” Morse cast her a solicitous look. “You don’t seem quite yourself this morning.”
It was all Leonora could do to keep from agreeing vocally.
She wasn’t herself. At least not the self she had shown the world for the past two decades.
Morse Archer’s obvious interest in her, and her curiosity about him, had kindled some long-quiescent ember of whimsy and excitement within her. Suddenly she was most anxious to see where it might take her.
Acting on a daring impulse, she reached for Morse’s arm. “I am feeling a trifle light-headed.” No lie, that. “Will you be so kind as to steady me on our way to breakfast?”
Her request appeared to catch him off guard. “I—don’t see why not,” he sputtered.
“We must make an effort to polish your social graces, Sergeant. The polite reply to a lady would have been, ‘I’d be honored, miss.’”
An embarrassed grin made him look endearingly boyish. “I am honored, Miss Leonora. Happy to be of service.”
She laughed. For the first time in how long? “You’re a quick student when you choose to be, Morse.”
The intimacy of his Christian name was out of her mouth before she realized it. The word felt very much at home on her tongue.
For a wonder, he politely refrained from comment, pulling out her chair from the breakfast table and making sure she was well settled before taking the seat opposite her.
Morse tucked into breakfast with his usual relish. Scarcely a wonder after the poor food he must have suffered during his days as a soldier. For her part, Leonora could not summon up much appetite.
Perhaps the odd sensations she was experiencing were only the symptoms of some malady, after all.
Chapter Six
“You’re looking very…well, this evening, Miss Freemantle.” As he watched Leonora descend the staircase, Morse congratulated himself on his restraint.
Part of him wanted to pay her a much more extravagant compliment. Tell her that the warm rose hue of her gown brought matching roses to her cheeks. Mention how the candlelight played frets of gold and copper through her loosely pinned hair.
Some wiser instinct urged caution. He did not wish to frighten her away tonight.
“Why, thank you, Sergeant Archer.”
Was it his imagination, or did she stand a little straighter, hold her head a fraction higher?
She awarded him a smile, glancing up suddenly through dense dark lashes. In any other woman, Morse might have suspected a hint of mischief or flirtation in such a look.
“Whatever slight indisposition I suffered this morning, I appear to have recovered.”
“Then you won’t need my arm to steady you?” Morse cocked his elbow anyway.
“Perhaps not.” A teasing note warmed her words. “May I take it just the same, simply because I wish to?”
The corners of Morse’s lips spread wide. “The best reason in the world for doing anything.”
They strolled into the dining room, where the long mahogany table had been set quite differently than for past meals. At those, Sir Hugo had occupied the head of the table while Morse and Leonora sat opposite each other halfway down the length of it. Tonight, their places had been set at one end, near the hearth, leaving the rest of the table empty.
Morse held Sir Hugo’s accustomed chair for Leonora. “Well, isn’t this cosy.”
Unfurling her napkin across her lap, she spoke without looking up at him. “While Uncle is away, I thought we might relax our formality a little. After your diligent work today, you deserve a pleasant evening.”
Barely suppressing a sigh of satisfaction, Morse took his own seat. He had this skittish filly eating out of his hand.
“I can imagine few pleasanter ways to spend an evening, than in your company, Miss Freemantle.”
She raised a brow. “Polishing your social graces, Sergeant?”
Morse grinned. “You said I should.”
Glancing down as the fish course was placed in front of him, he assessed his array of forks.
With exaggerated care, Leonora picked one up. “Begin at the outside and work your way in. When in doubt, watch your table companions for a cue. Now, let us have no more lessons for this evening. Tell me something about yourself, Sergeant. I know you served under Cousin Wesley with the Somerset Rifles. Were you born and bred in that part the country?”
“Aye…that is…yes, Miss Freemantle. Near Pocklington. Been Archers thereabouts for as long as anyone can recollect. My folk weren’t like yours—traveling from a great family seat in the country to a town house in London or Bath for the winter. We stayed put. I’m the first of my family to ever have gone abroad.”
She flinched at his words and the color drained from her face. “Don’t disdain permanence, Sergeant. Many people would envy you a place to call home.”
“Not if they saw it they wouldn’t.”
Morse could not keep a note of bitterness from his laughter. His family’s tenant cottage, with its smells and drafts that had contributed to the deaths of his three younger sisters—it would have fit inside Laurelwood’s vast dining room with space to spare.
“Is that why you chose to enlist, then? So you could travel far from Somerset?”
Now Morse flinched, remembering what had driven him into the army. “You might say so. A chance to get away from the past. I don’t suppose you can understand that, can you, Miss Freemantle?”
She laid her fork down upon the plate and waited for the serving girl to remove them. Then she looked up at him. “I may understand better than you think. I envy anyone who feels no need to escape his or her past.”
With a wide sweep of his arm, Morse indicated the damask draperies, the marble mantelpiece, the highly polished sideboard. “What could anyone want to escape in all this?”
After a long look Morse could not interpret, Leonora stretched her lips into a fleeting grin. “What, indeed? If you do not wish to dwell on your childhood, perhaps you might tell me about your days as a Rifleman. When did you meet my cousin Wesley?”
Eager for any distraction from painful memories, Morse seized her question. “In India. Did he never tell you the story?”
For a wonder, it did not bother him to speak of Lieutenant Peverill in India. Perhaps because the lad had been so much alive then, with years ahead of him. Or perhaps it was the bond of affection he shared with Leonora for her cousin. Could she be coaxed to share some stories from their childhood?
Indeed she could.
So passed one of the most enjoyable dinners Morse had ever eaten. As an audience for his soldiering stories, Leonora proved superior even to Dickon. The way her eyes trained upon him, her apt questions and perceptive comments, all made him feel proud of his modest accomplishments and minor adventures.
And when she spoke of long-ago summers spent in the country with her cousin, Morse almost felt himself a part of their merry escapades.
He watched with jealous eyes as the serving maid removed his final plate, thinking it a shame this meal must end.
Leonora seemed to divine his thoughts. “I know we must be up early tomorrow to resume our studies. But if you would care to join me in the drawing room, I could play for you on the pianoforte. A gentleman should cultivate some knowledge of music, after all.”
“I should like that very much.”
Morse caught himself staring at her hands again. For the first of many times that evening.
He had always liked a nice tune, but never before had he heard such music as Leonora played on the pianoforte. Her supple fingers danced across the ivory keys, coaxing forth rich harmonies, some sad, some sweet, that caught Morse by the heart and held him. At times she seemed unaware of his presence, lost in the golden echoes of her art. If he had ever thought Leonora lacked passion, he now knew better.
As the final notes died to a whisper, they both stirred from their trance.
She glanced up at him, a bright blush staining her cheeks. “I fear I am boring you, Sergeant.”
“No.” He strove to frame words of praise half fine enough, but failed. “Not in the least.”
He was only a common soldier, after all. One of the other ranks. A mere servant of his superior officers. How could he hope to appreciate such refinements as learning and art?
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Deborah Hale
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Стоимость: 386.20 ₽
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: What had she agreed to? Leonora Freemantle had wagered high stakes that book learning, not birthright, produced a gentleman, but now with the roguish Sergeant Morse Archer under her tutelage, she was no longer sure of the outcome. Would it be polish, passion…or public outrage?If Leonora Freemantle couldn′t spruce him up enough to pass muster with the Society swells at Bath, she′d be hastily married off. But not if he could help it, Rifleman Morse Archer vowed, for this beautiful bluestocking with her highbrow ideals and innocent charm was effortlessly teaching him the true language of love…!