Brussels
28 May 1815
My dearest friend and compatriot,
How much, do you think, can a man march on Parade before that man considers death at the hands of the enemy a blessed release? I feel badly for the troops I drill daily, as we all cool our heels and wait on that damned Boney. You joked when you named your gelding after the man. Would that he had been similarly castrated, eh?
And yet, with Blücher and his army still an uncomfortable distance from Brussels, I suppose we should be glad that Boney is dragging his heels. Leave it to the French to always be late, yes?
Wellington is a cagey one. Outwardly, he is all parties and balls and graciousness, while behind the scenes he has us all scouring the countryside for sight of the enemy, and charting possible battlefields and the various strategies he might employ.
There is no denying it, old friend, a momentous battle is coming, and soon. I’m sure you read the dispatches, and they all say the same thing. One fight, one tumultuous day in the field, one victory, and the nightmare is over.
And then, I fear, you and I may enter into our own battle, for I will say something now that will probably infuriate you.
I love your sister, Rafe…Your Grace. I know, I know. She’s only a child, just seventeen, while I am suddenly ancient at six and twenty. Which is why I give you my solemn vow that I will do nothing to influence Lydia in any way, not until she’s had her Season next year.
It’s only because I’m far removed from Grosvenor Square and you can’t call me out or knock me down, that I’m brave enough to confess what’s in my heart…who is in my heart.
I’m nothing but a soldier, Rafe, with little to offer a duke’s beloved sister save a run-down Irish estate and my complete and utter devotion. But if you will at least consider my suit, and my heart, I will pray that I might be allowed to harbor the hope of one day gaining your blessing.
For now all I can ask is the obvious, that you keep my dearest Lyddie safe. I miss her so terribly, her smile, her sweet ways, her gentle humor and her fine mind. For the first time, Rafe, I fear battle, now that I have so much to lose…
Your Devoted Servant and Humble Petitioner,
Captain Swain McNulty Fitzgerald
P.S. For God’s sake, Rafe, burn this letter! I sound like a silly, superstitious old woman!
WITHOUT A WORD, Rafe handed Fitz’s letter to Charlotte, who had been sitting quietly in his study, working her embroidery hoop, and then returned to his seat behind his desk.
He steepled his hands in front of his face and lightly tapped the sides of his fingers against his mouth, watching her as she read.
Her eyes scanned the pages, once, and then again, before she laid the letter in her lap and looked across the room to Rafe, her eyes swimming with tears.
“Oh, Rafe,” she said quietly, her voice breaking slightly. “This is both beautiful and sad. And so very frightening.”
“I know.” He brought a fist down on the desktop. “Damn him!”
“Rafe!” Charlotte got to her feet and walked over to the desk, confronting him across its surface. “Fitz may be seen by some to be reaching above himself, above his station, but we know his heart is pure and—”
“That’s not it, Charlie. Christ, I couldn’t ask for better for Lydia,” Rafe interrupted her, slamming back his chair and heading for the drinks table to pour himself a measure of strong spirits.
“No, of course not. Because he’s your friend, and we know what a fine, exemplary man Fitz is….”
Rafe drank the two fingers of brandy in one swallow, and then poured another measure before returning to his chair. “He’s maudlin, Charlie. He’s feeling sorry for himself, and thinking like a man more worried for his own survival than defeating the enemy.”
“Wouldn’t any rational person feel that way?”
Rafe shook his head. “No, not a soldier. A soldier thinks only of the battle, only of the men under his command. To think about yourself, about the chance you might not survive the day? That’s worse than cursing yourself. That brings you to cautions that often end with your destruction. Fitz knows that. This isn’t to be his first battle, the first time he’s faced the enemy. He knows that!”
“But what can we do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go to Brussels. He’d know I’d come to nursemaid him, and that would only make things worse. He’s a grown man. He’s a fine soldier, better than a fine soldier. Brave. Fearless. He’s saved my life more than once. Damn it, why did he have to fall in love now?”
“I doubt many people plan falling in love, Rafe.” Charlotte retrieved the letter and put it down in front of him. “He’s said what he felt he needed to say. And it would seem he knows he’s being dramatic. When the time comes, when Bonaparte finally appears, he’ll be fine. He’s just spending too many days and nights waiting, that’s all. There’s been too much time to think about the battle.”
Rafe picked up the pages, scanned them again. “You’re probably right. No, you are right. His first words were of his men, of Wellington and the battle. I can see him now, sitting alone, his candle and the level in the bottle at his elbow both lowering as he wrote, until he finally said some things he almost immediately wished he hadn’t.”
“He wants you to know he loves Lydia. I think that’s wonderful.”
He looked up at Charlotte. “Thank you, Charlie. As always, you’re the sensible one. Besides, if I wrote to him to tell him not to be maudlin, what good would it do? Better to write that he should not be a horse’s ass, and get himself home safe so he can court Lydia.” He opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a sheaf of paper with his ducal crest on it.
Charlotte handed him his pen and pushed the ink pot closer to him. “That’s what he wants, Rafe. Your blessing.”
He was already scratching out his salutation. “Well, then he’s a bloody fool to think he wouldn’t get it. My God, he’s my friend, and I love the idiot. I don’t know what I’d do without either one of you, damn it.”
“Either one of us idiots,” Charlotte said cheerfully, turning to leave the study. “Ah, Your Grace, you do have a silken tongue.”
“Charlie, wait—” he said, looking up at her. “No, never mind. You know what I meant, what I mean.” And then he smiled, seeing her enjoyment. “I’m a soldier still, and as smooth around the edges as I was the day I left Ashurst Hall a raw youth of nineteen.”
“Yes, you really do have to work on acquiring some consequence, Rafe,” she told him, clearly holding back a laugh. “Perhaps you should take up pinching snuff, or carrying a quizzing glass? Think how that would please your mother.”
“The devil with pleasing my mother. She’d have me trumped out like some mummer, whirling about uselessly in Society, and bracketed to a pudgy heiress who is as brainless and shallow as she is. I much prefer you, Charlie.”
“Again, Your Grace, your compliments fair bid to overwhelm me,” Charlotte said, gathering up her embroidery hoop. “Now, tear up whatever it is you wrote, and pen Fitz a cheerful note that gives him your blessing and says nothing else save that you’re looking forward to his return so the two of you can get yourselves shamelessly drunk while he tells you tales about Bonaparte.”
Rafe looked up at her, realizing what she’d just done. “You have just tried to tease me out of being maudlin. Haven’t you, Charlie?”
“Perhaps. Did it work?”
“It did. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said quietly, looking at him in a way that, once again, gave him hope that everything would end happily for them both, together.
He’d been at the War Office nearly day and night, sometimes even sleeping on the couch in the office he’d been provided. Marshal Ney, changing allegiances as often as most men changed their linen, had gone over to Bonaparte again, as had many others. Rafe and the others working with him had been considering strategies from every angle for weeks now, and just when they thought they knew what Bonaparte would do next, something like Ney’s defection would rear its ugly head.
But the inevitable battle would come, Bonaparte would be defeated once and for all time, and he and Charlotte would return to Ashurst Hall, where they could devote themselves entirely to themselves. How he longed for that day.
“Charlie…” he ventured, and then hesitated, not knowing what to say.
She seemed to know that, too, and said, “You have to hurry, you know, as you already told me you’re needed for something at the War Office, and you’ll want to catch the afternoon post with that letter. We’ll see you at dinner?”
He nodded, and then turned back to his letter.
THE FOYER CLOCK HAD JUST struck midnight when Charlotte decided that she was being silly remaining in the drawing room, one ear cocked toward the hallway, waiting to hear that Rafe had returned from the War Office or wherever he’d been since their time together that afternoon.
She knew he’d been genuinely upset by Fitz’s most recent letter. She also worried about Fitz, who was a good, kind man, but Rafe’s concern must be ten times hers. Especially since they’d been soldiers together for so many years. There had to be a special bond between soldiers that she, a mere woman, could not hope to understand, never having risked her life on a battlefield.
Rafe hadn’t returned for dinner, but had only sent a note round explaining that matters would keep him at the War Office until at least nine o’clock, and they should simply dine without him.
Charlotte understood that, too, that nine o’clock had been a possibility, but that she could not hold him to that hour, and he would remain where he was as long as he was needed.
Still, she’d hesitated about going upstairs to bed until she saw him again, hoping that he was no longer so worried about Fitz.
And then there were those attempts on his life. He knew someone had tried to kill him at least three times, maybe more. He knew that she knew it. That was why he’d taken the time to send a note earlier, why he always notified her if he was not going to be back in Grosvenor Square when he said he would be there.
Because she’d worry, even though there had been no further attempts or problems since the day Hugh Hobart had saved them from the falling masonry. And, as Rafe reminded her when she spoke of that incident, he also had not seen Mr. Hobart peeking out from any alleys since then. It was as if the entire incident hadn’t happened.
Still, she worried. She worried while attempting to appear as if she didn’t worry.
But now that Lydia and Nicole had gone upstairs, and even “The Buzzing Bees,” as Nicole called Mrs. Beasley and Mrs. Buttram, had given up their incessant chattering and taken themselves off to bed, Charlotte felt rather uncomfortable sitting here alone, and so obviously waiting for Rafe.
She put down the embroidery she hadn’t been paying attention to anyway and walked into the foyer, picking up one of the small braces of candles left there to light the mansion’s inhabitants to bed. She gave a look to the remaining brace of candles, those reserved for Rafe, and sighed. Really, he was a grown man, and she was being ridiculous, worrying about him.
But he’d been so upset by Fitz’s letter…
Lifting her skirts with her free hand, Charlotte nodded a good-night to the lone footman waiting for the return of the duke, and made her way up the winding staircase, pausing near the top when she thought she heard voices below her.
Rafe. He was back.
Should she hurry to her room so he didn’t see her and realize she’d been waiting for him? Should she stand her ground and ask him if he really believed it was nine o’clock? Should she ask him if he’d eaten, or if he’d like her to ring for something from the kitchens?
Should she stop behaving like a hysterical ninny?
“Rafe,” she said as nonchalantly as possible when she heard his footsteps behind her on the stairs. “I was just now going up to bed and—”
As she spoke, she’d slowly turned around, and one look at his face was enough to make her forget whatever else it was she had been about to say.
“Rafe? Rafe, what’s wrong?”
He put a hand to his forehead, pale beneath dark hair that was damp and curling on that forehead. His other hand gripped the railing as if he might fall if he let go.
“Nothing…nothing’s wrong. Just…I think I fell asleep at my desk at some point. Stupid…”
She hurried up the few remaining steps to the landing and then stood aside as he joined her. Even in the flickering light of the candles she held and those burning in wall brackets along the hallway, she could see that he wasn’t well. His eyes were too bright, his cheeks unnaturally flushed.
She put the back of her hand against one of those flushed cheeks, and quickly drew it away. “My God, Rafe, your face is on fire! You’re ill!”
“No…no, I’m not,” he said, pushing past her, fairly lurching down the hallway toward his bedchamber. “It’s just this…this damn fever that plagues me sometimes. It comes, it goes. I’ll be fine by morning. Don’t…don’t worry about me, Charlie. Go to bed.”
Charlotte watched as he struggled to depress the latch and enter his bedchamber. Go to bed, would she? The devil she would! The man was ready to fall down!
“Stop that,” she said tersely, slapping his hand away from the latch so that she could open the door for him. “Now go inside and let me ring for Phineas. Oh, drat! Phineas isn’t here, is he? It’s his free day, and he’s with his mates, gossiping and drinking themselves cockeyed.” She took Rafe’s hand—his hot, dry hand—and pulled him into the chamber, quickly setting down her candle on a nearby table. “Come on, you need to get into bed.”
“I think so, too,” Rafe muttered, already attempting to strip off his neckcloth. “Hot in here…”
“Yes, yes, of course. Hot in here,” Charlotte said, still maneuvering him across the large room and toward the high, four-poster bed. Once there, she turned him about and began pulling off his jacket, which wasn’t easy, as his tailor had done a fine job of molding it to Rafe’s tall, well-muscled body.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this fever? I’ve heard that some of our soldiers who served on the Peninsula contracted fevers. Why didn’t you say anything?”
He dipped his head down, touching his forehead to hers. “Nosy little Charlie, has to know everything,” he said almost boozily, as if he could be deep in his cups. His breath was hot on her face. “Want to know something else? Want to know what I think about, Charlie? How I want to lay you down in soft grass and take the pins from your hair and the clothes from your body. And then touch you, everywhere, all over…and kiss you, and then sink deep inside you…”
Charlotte fought the quick, panicked urge to leave him where he stood and run from the room.
But he didn’t know what he was saying. It was the fever, that’s all. He wasn’t like Harold or George. He wasn’t! What he wanted from her wasn’t ugly; it couldn’t be ugly, not with Rafe.
“Yes, yes,” she steeled herself to say brightly, “that all sounds simply wonderful, Rafe. Now give me your arm, because your sleeves are so tight that—ah, there’s a good soldier. Now the other one.”
The jacket joined the neckcloth on the floor and she quickly unbuttoned his waistcoat and urged him to shrug it off his shoulders, leaving him clad only in shirtsleeves and buckskins.
She began unbuttoning his shirt.
She shouldn’t feel attracted to him at this moment. But she did. Was it because he seemed so vulnerable? She certainly couldn’t be afraid of him, not right now. Not that she had ever been afraid of him. She ran her fingertips down his bared chest, marveling at his hard muscles, and she shuddered inside. He was so very male, every inch of him.
Then he swayed where he stood, and she shook off her foolish thoughts.
“Your shoes. Rafe, your shoes.” She went down on her knees in front of him. “Lift your foot, Rafe. Yes, that’s good,” she praised him, slipping the evening shoe from his foot. “Now the other one. Ah, perfect.”
She got to her feet, catching him as he began to weave from side to side.
“Cold. So cold in here,” he said, his eyes closed. “Damn this godforsaken place, Fitz. We either freeze or burn…”
Barely able to support his weight, Charlotte prayed quietly, “Sweet Jesus, help me, please. I have to get him into bed.” To Rafe she ordered, “Stop that, Captain Daughtry! Stand still, soldier! Good. Now stay like that until I can turn down the covers.”
She roughly pulled at the satin coverlet, sending pillows flying everywhere, her one hand gripping Rafe’s upper arm to keep him steady on his feet.
“There! Now help me, Rafe. You have to help me. Rafe? Rafe, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Fitz, I hear you. Don’t want to bed her, but at least she’s warm. She could wash my shirt…” he said, and then tried to swallow. “Thirsty. Many apologies, ma chérie. You are very lovely, but I am very weary.”
Charlotte didn’t know what he meant about the woman, and at the moment she didn’t much care. She just wanted Rafe to lie down before he fell down, probably toppling her to the floor with him.
“Sit down on the bed and I’ll get you something to drink. I promise.”
She gave him a little push and he obeyed her, half slumping on the side of the mattress. Gracious, why had she never before realized just how big Rafe was, how much stronger than she, even dreadfully sick and half out of his head?
“Good,” she said, and then she put both her hands against his chest and gave him a mighty push, sending him backward onto the bed. She then picked up his feet, and by dint of perseverance, some shoving that brought her hands into extremely personal contact with his body—she’d think about that later, while she was making up excuses for not ringing for some servants to help her—managed to get his legs up on the bed and beneath the covers.
Nearly exhausted by her efforts, Charlotte looked about the dim chamber, at last spying a pitcher and a tooth glass on a high chest in his dressing room. With shaking hands, she poured a measure of cool water into the glass and ran it back to the bed.
“Here, Rafe,” she said, holding out the glass, “drink this. Rafe, open your eyes! You need to drink this.”
He tried to lift his head from the pillow, but his body didn’t seem to want to obey him. With another muffled prayer that was probably more of a curse, Charlotte yanked up her skirts and climbed onto the mattress. She knelt there, doing her best to raise his head from the pillows and not spill the water as she brought the glass to his lips.
He drank thirstily, but his teeth began to chatter so violently that she was forced to pull the glass away, fearful he’d bite straight through it.
“Cold, Fitz…” he whispered, his body shaking all over. “So bloody cold. Can’t get warm…”
Rafe’s rambling words repeated themselves in Charlotte’s head as she watched him react to the fever. She felt so powerless.
He was already under the covers. There was a fire in the grate, but his was a large room, and even in May, large rooms like this could be very cool at night.
Poor darling. He was burning up, yet he was cold. Shivering. And out of his head. Talking about some unknown woman. Talking to Fitz as if the man was in the room with him. His teeth chattering.
Don’t want to bed her, but at least she’s warm.
Charlotte understood now.
The woman wasn’t here. Fitz wasn’t here. But she was here. She was warm….
Charlotte slid off the bed, slipped out of her shoes, took a deep breath and then lifted the covers, crawling in beneath them until her body was up against Rafe’s.
He didn’t seem to notice. He was still shivering, still burning up with fever.
She wasn’t helping him. Yet she’d come this far, dared this much.
She lifted his arm away from his body and moved closer, pulling his arm around her as she snuggled tight against his side.
She smelled the maleness of him, felt the outline of his body pressed against hers, was amazed at the blazing heat coming from him.
There was a moment of panic, one so swift and frightening that she nearly bolted from the bed. But this wasn’t Harold. This was Rafe. Who needed her. Who’d never hurt her.
Closing her eyes, she slid her hand across his chest, half hugging him, willing him to feel the heat she was giving him, to take from her, to heal himself. She levered her left knee up and across his thigh, until she was completely wrapped around him, as if protecting him from some unseen enemy.
His body moved against hers, turning slightly onto his side as if seeking even more heat, and he slid his arm toward her beneath the covers. His hand somehow found and closed around her left breast.
Oh God…
His sigh was deep, audible, and his body seemed to at last relax. His breathing became more measured, less rasping.
Charlotte waited. For days, years, aeons, she waited, her body melded to his, his hand still cupping her breast. She felt strange, as if something delicious was curling somewhere in her stomach—warm, welcome. She felt a need to give, to share.
Which was ridiculous.
“Rafe?” she said at last. “Rafe, are you all right?”
His only answer was a soft snore and another sigh as he at last moved his hand from her breast—only to slide his arm around her back and pull her even closer. His sigh had been one of pure contentment.
She’d done that? She’d brought him contentment?
Then why didn’t she feel content herself? Why did she feel that there should be so much more than that?
Why did she want so much more than that?
Stop it! Stop it!
He’d told her he’d be fine by morning. She imagined he should know the truth of that.
But there were a lot of hours between now and morning, and she didn’t like where her mind was going. Or perhaps she did like it, but also knew she shouldn’t….
She tried to move, slip out of his grasp, but he only tightened his grip on her in his deep sleep.
His body was so hot, yet she wasn’t really uncomfortable. And she was helping him. She’d just stay a while longer, until he was a little bit better, and then she’d leave him, go to her own chamber and try to forget any of this had happened.
Yes, that’s what she’d do. With her cheek pressed hard against his chest, with the length of his body so intimately clinging to hers, with his arm around her as he sought her warmth, Charlotte made her decision.