4

REGIMENTAL BUSINESS

WINSTEAD TERRACE WAS A small row of discreetly fine townhouses that faced a similar terrace on the other side of a private park, its privacy protected by a tall fence of black iron and a locked gate.

Hal reached through the iron bars of the fence and carefully broke a twig from one of the small trees that pressed against it.

“What are you doing?” Harry demanded, stopping in mid-stride. “Picking a posy for your buttonhole? I don’t think Grierson’s much of a dandy.”

“Nor am I,” said Hal equably. “I wanted to see if this is what I thought it was, but it is.”

“And what’s that, pray?” Harry came back a step to look at the twig in Hal’s hand. The foliage was cool on his fingers; it had rained a bit earlier and the leaves and flowers were still wet, water droplets sliding down his wrist, disappearing into the cloth of his frilled cuff.

He transferred the twig to his other hand and shook the water off, absently wiping his hand on his coat. He liked good linen and a well-fitting suit, but in fact he wasn’t a dandy. It was necessary to impress Donald Grierson favorably, though, and to that end, he and Harry were both wearing semi-dress uniform, with a discreet but visible amount of gold lace.

“Cockspur,” he said, showing Harry the two-inch thorns protruding from the twig. “It’s a hawthorn of sorts.”

“I thought hawthorns were hedges.” Harry jerked his head toward the terrace, and Hal nodded, coming along.

“They can be. Or shrubs or trees. Interesting plant—the leaves are said to taste like bread and cheese, though I haven’t tried.”

Harry looked amused.

“I’ll remember that, next time I’m in the country and not a pub in sight. Ready, are you?”

Hal might have felt annoyed at Harry’s solicitousness, but his friend was—all too clearly—honestly worried for him. He drew breath and straightened his shoulders, admitting to himself that, in all honesty, he couldn’t dismiss that worry as unfounded. He was getting better, though. He had to—there was the devil of a lot of work to be done if he had any hope of getting the regiment on its feet and ready to fight. And Major Grierson was going to help him do it.

“There’s something else about hawthorn,” he said, as they reached Grierson’s door.

“What’s that?” Harry was wearing his bird-dog look, alert and intent on the prey to be flushed, and Hal smiled privately to see it.

“Well, the green of the leaves symbolizes constancy, of course, but the flowers are said to—and I quote—‘have the scent of a woman sexually aroused.’ ”

Harry’s intent look switched instantly to the flowering twig in Hal’s hand. Hal laughed, brushed the flowers under his own nose, then handed them to Harry, turning to lift the brass boar’s-head knocker.

Good lord, it’s true. The whiff of insinuating musk so distracted him that he scarcely noticed when the door opened. How the devil could something smell…slippery? He closed his fist involuntarily, with the very disconcerting feeling that he had touched his wife.

“My lord?” The servant who had opened the door was looking at him with a slightly puzzled frown.

“Oh,” Hal said, snapping back to himself. “Yes. I am. I mean—”

“Major Grierson is expecting his lordship, I think?” Harry inserted himself between Hal and the inquiring face, which nodded obligingly and withdrew into the house, gesturing them to follow.

There were voices coming from the morning room to which they were escorted: a woman, and at least two men. Perhaps Grierson was married and his wife was accepting callers…?

“Lord Melton!” Grierson himself—a big, bluff-looking, sandy-haired chap—rose from a settee and came to meet him, smiling. Hal’s heart rose; he’d not met Grierson before, but his reputation was stellar. He’d served with a famous regiment of foot for years, fought at Dettingen, and was known as much for his organizational abilities as his courage. And organization was what the fledgling 46th needed, above all.

“So pleased to meet you,” Grierson was saying. “Everyone’s buzzing about this new regiment, and I want to hear all about it. Pansy, my dear, may I present his lordship, the Earl of Melton?” He half-turned, extending a hand to a small, darkly pretty woman of about his own age—which Hal estimated as thirty-five. “Lord Melton, my wife, Mrs. Grierson.”

“Charmed, Mrs. Grierson.”

Hal made a leg to Mrs. Grierson, who smiled at the attention—but his own attention was slightly distracted by Harry, behind him. Instead of advancing to be introduced and pay his own compliments, Harry had uttered a sort of throaty noise that might have been a growl in less-civil company.

Hal glanced in Harry’s direction, saw what Harry was seeing, and felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach.

“We’ve met,” said Reginald Twelvetrees, as Grierson turned to introduce him. Twelvetrees rose to his feet, cold-eyed.

“Indeed?” said Grierson, still smiling but now glancing warily between Hal and Twelvetrees. “I’d no idea. I trust you have no objection to Colonel Twelvetrees meeting with us, Lord Melton? And I trust that you, sir”—with a deferential nod to Twelvetrees—“have no objection to my inviting Colonel Lord Melton to join us?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Twelvetrees, with a twitch in one cheek that was by no means a token smile. Still, he sounded as though he meant that “not in the slightest,” and Hal began to feel a certain tightness in his chest.

“By all means,” he said coolly, meeting Twelvetrees’s stony gaze with one of his own. Reginald’s eyes were the same color that Nathaniel’s had been, a brown so dark as to seem black in some lights. Nathaniel’s had been black as pitch, facing him in the dawn.

Mrs. Grierson excused herself and went out, saying that she would have refreshments brought, and the men settled, in the uneasy fashion of seabirds jealous of their rocky perches.

“Quite to my surprise, gentlemen, I find myself in the enviable position of being a valuable commodity,” Grierson said, leaning affably forward. “As you may know, I fell ill in Prussia, was shipped home to recover, and fortunately did so. But it was a long convalescence, and by the time I was fit, my regiment had…well…I’m sure you know the general situation; I won’t go into the particulars just now.”

All three of his guests made small grunts of assent, with a few murmurs of decent sympathy. What had happened was that Grierson had been bloody lucky in falling ill when he did. There had been a truly scandalous mutiny a month after his removal to England, and when the mess had been cleaned up, half the surviving officers had been court-martialed, fifteen mutineers had been hanged, and the remnants dispersed to four other regiments. The original regiment had formally ceased to exist, and Grierson’s commission with it.

The normal thing for a man in his position to do would be to buy a commission in another regiment. But Grierson was, as he bluntly put it, a valuable commodity. Not only was he a very capable administrator and a good commander—he was popular, with other officers, with the War Office, and with the press.

Hal needed Grierson’s expertise; he needed even more Grierson’s connections. With Grierson on his staff, he could attract officers of a much higher caliber than he could do with money alone.

As to what Twelvetrees, colonel of a long established and very solid artillery regiment, might want with him, that was fairly obvious, too: he wanted Hal not to have Grierson.

“So, Lord Melton, tell me how things stand with you,” Grierson said, once they’d got stuck into the wine and biscuits that Mrs. Grierson had sent in. “Who are your staff officers, to begin with?”

Hal set down his glass carefully and told him, in a calm voice, exactly who they were. Competent men, so far as he knew—but almost all of them quite young, with no experience of foreign campaigns.

“Of course,” Harry put in helpfully, “that means that you would be quite senior in the regiment: have your pick of companies, postings, aides…”

“Just how many troops have you on your muster roll, Colonel?” Reginald didn’t bother trying to sound neutral, and Grierson glanced at him. Not with disapproval, Hal saw, and his heart sped up a little.

“I cannot tell you exactly, sir,” he said, with exquisite politeness. Sweat had begun to dampen his collar, though the room was cool. “We are conducting a major campaign of recruitment at the moment, and our numbers rise—substantially—each day.” On a good day, they might get three new men—one of whom would not abscond with the bounty for signing—and from the smirk on Twelvetrees’s face, Hal knew he was aware of this.

“Indeed,” said Twelvetrees. “Untrained recruits. The Royal Artillery is at full strength presently. My company commanders have been with me for at least a decade.”

Hal kept his temper, though he was beginning to feel slightly breathless from suppressed rage.

“In that case, Major Grierson may have less space in which to distinguish himself,” he riposted smartly. “Whereas with us, sir…” He bowed to Grierson and felt momentarily giddy when he raised his head. “With us,” he repeated more strongly, “you would have the satisfaction of helping to shape a fine regiment in…your own likeness, so to speak.”

Harry chuckled in support, and Grierson smiled but politely. He’d also have the not-inconsiderable risk of failure and knew it.

Hal felt Harry stir uncomfortably next to him and took a deep breath, preparing to say something forceful about…about…The word had gone. Simply gone. He’d breathed in, and a trace of scent from the cockspur in Harry’s buttonhole had touched his brain. He closed his eyes abruptly.

Major Grierson had luckily asked a question; Hal could hear Twelvetrees replying in a gruff, matter-of-fact way. Grierson said something else and Twelvetrees’s voice relaxed a little, and quite suddenly it was Nathaniel’s voice, and he opened his eyes and saw nothing of the cozy morning room, of the men there with him. He was cold, shaking with cold…

And his fingers were squeezing the cold pistol in his hand so hard the metal would leave marks on his palm. He’d fucked Esmé before he left to kill her lover. Waked her in the dark and taken her, and she’d wanted him—ferociously—or perhaps she had pretended it was Nathaniel in the dark. He knew it was the last time…

“Colonel?” A voice, a dim voice. “Lord Melton!”

“Hal?” Harry’s voice, full of alarm. Harry, with him on the lawn, rain running down his face in a sunless dawn. He swallowed, tried to swallow, tried to breathe, but there was no air.

His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see anything. The cold was spreading down the sides of his jaws, and he realized suddenly that…

He looked straight into Nathaniel’s eyes and felt the bang and then it was…

HARRY HAD INSISTED on calling a carriage to take them home. Hal refused brusquely and strode—knees shaking, but he could walk, he would walk, dammit—away from Winstead Terrace.

He made it to the far side of the private garden—well away from the cockspur tree—where he stopped and gripped the cold black iron of the fence and carefully lowered himself to the pavement. His mouth tasted of brandy; Grierson had forced it down him, when he could breathe again.

“I’ve never bloody fainted in my life,” he said. He was sitting, back against the fence, forehead on his knees. “Not even when they told me about Father.”

“I know.” Harry had sat down beside him. Hal thought briefly what flats they must look, two young soldiers got up in scarlet and gold lace, sitting on the pavement like a pair of beggars. He really didn’t care.

“Actually,” Hal said after a minute, “that’s not true, is it? I passed out in the ham at tea last week, didn’t I?”

“You just felt a bit queasy,” Harry said stoutly. “Not eating for days, then two dozen sardines—enough to fell anyone.”

“Two dozen?” Hal asked, and laughed despite everything. Not much of a laugh, but he turned his head and looked at Harry. Harry’s face was creased with anxiety but relaxed a little when he saw Hal looking at him.

“At least that many. With mustard, too.”

They sat a few moments, feeling easier. Neither of them wanted to say anything about what had just happened, and they didn’t, but each could tell the other was thinking of it—how could they not?

“If it falls apart…” Harry began at last, then bent and looked at him searchingly. “You going to faint again?”

“No.” Hal swallowed twice, then took a shallow breath—the only kind he could manage—and pushed himself to his feet, holding on to the iron fence. He had to let Harry know he could go, that he didn’t have to try to carry on with this doomed enterprise, this fool’s game. Though the thought of it made his throat close. He cleared it, hard, and repeated Harry’s words: “If it does fall apart—”

Harry’s hand on his arm stopped him. Harry’s face was six inches from his own, the brown eyes clear and steady.

“Then we’ll start again, old man,” he said. “That’s all. Come on; I need a drink, and so do you.”