A Rose for Major Flint. Louise Allen
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the pain. She focused on Adam and felt her breathing calm.
He had reached the chair and was pulling on the trousers of his uniform, filthy and ripped. Then he turned and she saw the cloth was a bandage and the skin around it was reddened and inflamed. He was hurt.
Something in her head cleared and came into focus. He was wounded and she knew what to do about that. Rose slid out of bed, tugging down the nightgown that had risen to her thighs. Adam glanced away and she saw the colour come up over his cheekbones. She had shocked him? She swept the clothing from the chair to the floor and pointed at the seat, then poked at his chest for good measure. He sat down, eyebrows raised. Apparently Adam Flint was not used to being pushed around.
The bandage was knotted tightly and she broke a nail undoing the ends. It had hardened over the wound and she went to the washbasin, poured out water and wetted a cloth to soak it off. Adam sat still while she worked, not flinching when she peeled off the bandage, even though it must have hurt. She shook her head at the sight of the long slash. It had lifted a flap of skin and that, she supposed, was full of cloth fragments and sweat and goodness knows what else that would irritate and fester. He made to get up and she shoved him hard in the chest. Stay there! It was like pushing a wall, and when he got to his feet despite her efforts she stumbled and fell against him.
‘Bossy little creature, aren’t you?’ he said and put his arms around her. Instinctively Rose stepped closer, laid her forehead against the flat plane of his bare chest above his right nipple. He had washed after a fashion last night, she realised, inhaling the scent of just-woken man, plain soap and a lingering tang of black powder and sweat. She turned her head and rubbed her cheek against him and her lips brushed his nipple. It hardened and he became instantly still.
She did not know what to do, only that she had never felt like this before. Adam sat down abruptly, his hands on her forearms. Those blue-flame eyes narrowed as he studied her. Gradually her breathing steadied.
‘Why won’t you speak to me?’
Didn’t he understand that she could not? Rose shrugged.
‘You can trust me.’
She glanced down to where, even in her ignorance, his arousal was very plain. Of course I can. I know that. Although why she knew was another mystery. If he wanted to take her, then she would have no chance of resisting him.
With the knowledge came some confidence. She wagged a finger at him and pointed again, sternly. Stay. It worked with dogs. It worked, so it seemed, with big men. He narrowed his eyes at her, but did not move. She suspected he was amused.
The kind, soft woman would be somewhere below. Rose shot Adam one last look, then opened the door and went down the stairs. She followed her nose to the kitchen, her stomach grumbling. When had she last eaten?
The room was full of men. Men in trousers and no shirts, men in shirts and no trousers, men draped in blankets.
‘Gawd!’ someone said and there was a mass scramble for the back door.
Rose was left with the kind woman, who was at the range stirring a pot of something that smelled delicious, and a thin man with a beak of a nose and a wooden leg. He glanced at her enveloping nightgown and looked away out of the window.
‘You shouldn’t be out of bed, lovie,’ the woman said. ‘I was going to bring up some tea in a minute.’
The place seemed as familiar and comforting as a childhood memory. Rose smiled. It was getting easier now she had remembered how to. There was a kettle steaming on the fire. She pointed to it and then looked round the kitchen until she saw a bowl of salt on the table next to a pile of neatly rolled bandages. She picked it up and took two of the bandage rolls.
‘You want the hot water for the major, lovie? He’s hurt?’ the woman asked. ‘Keep an eye on the stew, Moss, I’ll see what’s going on.’ She wrapped a cloth around the handle and hefted the kettle off the hook as though it was a teacup. ‘Come along, then.’
Adam was sitting where Rose had left him, his expression somewhere between amused and resigned. ‘Caught her, did you, Maggie?’
‘Caught her? Your lass here came down and made it quite clear what she needs.’ She dumped the kettle on the nightstand and came to peer at the raw wound on Adam’s side. ‘And no wonder—although how she got a good look at it is best not to ask, I’d guess.’
‘I woke up and there she was.’ He did not smile, but there was a rueful twist to his lips.
‘Seems as though you’ve got yourself a woman, then, Major.’ Maggie winked at Rose. ‘You know what to do about that?’ From the jerk of her head towards Flint she might have meant either the injury or the man.
Yes. Rose nodded, sure about one and not at all certain about the other.
‘I do not need a woman,’ Flint growled, scowling at Maggie’s retreating back.
Yes, you do, you need me. Rose poured hot water into the basin and ignored the way his brows drew together and his fingers drummed a rhythm on the arm of the chair. You have to need me, because otherwise who am I and where do I belong if not with you?
‘You seem to know what you are doing,’ Adam remarked. Rose could feel his gaze on her as she swirled salt into the water. ‘Did your man get wounded often?’
No. She shook her head and tried to work out why she was so sure of that. Of course, she had not been with Gerald long enough for him to be hurt...only killed. There were memories of bandages and salves, of pouring medicines, but that seemed to be in domestic settings. Humble rooms. Children, old people, a presence she sensed was her mother instructing her. Our tenants, our duty.
Wounds must be cleaned, salt water helped healing, she knew these things as she knew that her eyes were hazel without having to look in a glass.
Rose glanced at Adam, frowning with the effort to recall something more, something useful about who she was, and his gaze sharpened. ‘I’ve seen you before. Where the blazes? Yes, after Quatre Bras, with the Seventy-Third’s camp followers. Is that your man’s regiment? I’ll help you find him.’
No, he is dead. And he was never my man, not really. I was a fool who thought herself in love. How did she know that when everything else was a blur? How to make Adam understand? Rose gestured to the floor, then covered her face with her hands in a pantomime of grief.
‘Dead? You are certain?’
She nodded and busied herself with the cloths and water, the memory coming back in frustrating flashes. His name had been Gerald and the belief that she loved him had lasted as long as it took to realise she did not know him at all. But after that there was no going back. She had made a commitment and she must stay with him, give him her loyalty even as his courage dissolved into the rain and mud and the dashing officer turned into a frightened boy in her arms. But how had they met, where had she come from? Who am I?
That could wait, she thought, surprising herself with the firmness of the intent. The traumatised, clinging creature of the day before was retreating, although she had no idea who would emerge in her place. Whoever she was, her true self was stubborn and determined, it seemed. Rose put the bowl on the floor beside Adam and set herself to clean the wound.
He sat like a statue as she explored the slash with ruthless thoroughness. Under her hands she felt the nerves jump and flinch in involuntary protest, but all he said was, ‘There’s some salve in my pack.’
Rose found it and smoothed the green paste on, wondering at Adam’s stoicism. Was he simply inured to pain after so many wounds or was it sheer will power that kept him silent and unmoving? She rested one hand on his shoulder as she leaned over him to wind the bandage around his ribs and felt the rigid muscles beneath her palm. Will power, then. She knotted the bandage, touched her fingers to his cheek in a fleeting caress and sat back on her heels. Finished.