“Blown off by cannon fire at Emsdorf on the Continent,” Oates said. His color was unnaturally high, as if he was feverish. “Back in sixty.”
Reynaud nodded. He strolled to the table littered with medicine bottles of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a medicine in the world that could put a man’s legs back on once lost. “Did she tell you I was with the Twenty-eighth Regiment of Foot in the Colonies?”
“She did.” He laid his head back against the pillow as if exhausted. “I was in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons. Much more dashing than a foot soldier—until, of course, one gets shot off one’s horse.”
“Battle is never as romantic as one thinks,” Reynaud said.
He remembered well his boyish romanticism of the army. It had died fast on the reality of rotten food, incompetent officers, and boredom. His first skirmish had destroyed what little illusion still survived.
“Our regiment was newly formed,” Oates said, “and we hadn’t yet seen action. Many of the men were London tailors who’d been on strike and had to join. We never stood a chance.”
“You were defeated there?”
Oates smiled bitterly. “Oh, no. We won the day. One hundred and twenty-five men killed in my regiment alone, over a hundred horses dead, but we won the battle. I went down in our second charge.”
“I’m sorry.”
Oates shrugged. “You know as well as I the wages of war—perhaps more so than I.”
“I won’t debate the matter. I came for something else entirely.” Reynaud sat in the chair that was beside the bed. “What are you to her?”
The other man arched his brows as if amused. “I’m Jeremy Oates, by the way.”
There was nothing for it but to stick out his hand. “Reynaud St. Aubyn.”
Oates took his hand and shook it, looking in his eyes as if searching for something. His fingers were as thin as twigs. “Pleased to meet you.” The odd thing was he sounded sincere.
Reynaud took back his hand. “My question?”
Oates half smiled, his eyes closing as he lay against the pillows. “Childhood friends. I played hide-and-seek with her in my family’s sitting room, helped her with her geography lessons, escorted her to her first ball.”
Reynaud felt a jolt somewhere in the region of his breastbone at the other man’s words. Perhaps it was the lingering aftereffects of that sharp poke, but he rather thought it might be jealousy instead.
Jealousy. He’d never felt the emotion before.
True, he’d been enraged this morning to learn that Miss Corning had already left to visit her mysterious beau. He’d come here at once with the intent to confront them and thrash the other man if necessary, but he hadn’t stopped to examine his emotions. Mine, his instinct had said, and so he’d acted on it without thought. The realization now that his reaction was emotional was an unwelcome shock.
“Do you love her?” he asked.
“Yes,” Oates said simply. “With all my heart. But not, I believe, in the way you mean.”
Reynaud shifted in the chair, uncomfortable with his need to know exactly what the other man meant. “Explain.”
Oates smiled and Reynaud saw that he’d once been a handsome man before illness had carved lines of suffering into his face. “Beatrice is dearer than any blood sister could ever be to me.”
Reynaud narrowed his eyes. The man might say his relationship with Miss Corning was fraternal, but she wasn’t in fact related. How, then, could their friendship be as innocent as he claimed?
“So you wouldn’t have married her even if that hadn’t happened.” He jerked his chin at the other man’s missing legs.
Most would have taken offense, but Oates merely grinned. “No. Although Beatrice has brought up the idea of marriage to me more than once.”
That was an unpleasant jolt. Reynaud straightened. “What?”
And Oates’s grin widened, making him realize he’d risen to the bait.
“What game are you playing?” Reynaud growled.
“A game of life and death and love and hate,” Oates replied softly.
“You’re babbling.”
“No.” The grin abruptly vanished. “I’m completely serious. You’ll take care of her.”
“What?” Reynaud frowned. Sometimes invalids became confused from the pain and the drugs they took to mask it. Was Oates floating in some drug-induced haze?
“Promise you’ll take care of her,” the other man said, and although his voice was weak, his tone held the ghost of a good officer’s command. “Beatrice is a special woman, someone to be cherished for herself. She wears a mask of practicality, but underneath she’s a romantic and prone to heartbreak. Don’t break her heart. I won’t ask if you love her—I doubt you know yourself—but promise me you’ll take care of her. See to it she’s happy every day of her life. Lay down your own life for her if need be. Promise.”
And suddenly Reynaud understood. His emotions had blinded him to the reality that lay in front of him. He’d seen this look in other men’s eyes before, and he knew damned well what it meant.
So he said simply and sincerely, “I swear on everything I hold dear that I’ll take care of her, keep her safe, and do my damnedest to make her happy.”
Oates nodded. “I can ask for nothing more. Thank you.”
HOW DARE HE?
Beatrice opened the front door of Jeremy’s town house and went outside for a badly needed breath of fresh air. She’d already browbeaten Putley into keeping quiet about Lord Hope’s violent invasion of the house, but she was still dealing with her own reaction to his suspicions. And what terrible suspicions they were! Insulting both to Jeremy and herself. When had she ever given him cause to think her a wanton? And how he thought he could just barge in and dictate to her, she did not know.
Beatrice stamped her feet, both to keep warm and to emphasize her own anger.
There were three men loitering in the street below—two scrawny fellows in ragged brown coats and a taller man in black. The taller man turned to look at the sound of her stamping. His right eye rolled to the corner of the socket, revealing rather horribly the white membrane of the eyeball. She glanced quickly away from the poor man. She should go back inside, but she was still angry. She wanted to be composed when next she saw Lord Hope—the better to tell him exactly what she thought of him.
A brewer’s cart went by, rattling on the cobblestones, and one of the loitering men shouted something to the driver.