Page 15 of Miss Dauntless
“The chimney sweeps must be a worse fear for you,” he said, “or the street gangs and abbesses. By the time a fellow takes the king’s shilling, he has some sense. At Tommie’s age, a boy is a bundle of curiosity and invincibility.”
The words confirmed that Matilda’s fear for her son was reasonable rather than hysterical. Why had nobody else—ever—given her those words?
“Tommie is smart, but you are right—he hasn’t any sense of how wicked the world can be, and he is all…”All I have in the world. Matilda blotted her eyes and fumbled for a more dignified turn of phrase.
“All you have of your husband?” Tremont asked, opening the door to the pony’s stall and retrieving the water bucket. He took a brush down from a hook on the stall door, gave the bucket a thorough scrubbing, and tossed the water onto the cobbles.
“I wasn’t about to say that Tommie is all I have of Harry.”
Tremont set the bucket beneath a pump in the stable yard and worked the pump handle. “I was all my mother had of my father, or so she claimed. I did wonder if Lydia was a gift from the fairies, and I cannot imagine what my sister felt to be so overlooked. She’s married to Captain Dylan Powell now, and I daresay the boot is rather on the other foot. If I lined up a hundred comely, accomplished, fascinating women, Powell would have eyes only for Lydia, and conversely.”
Tremont returned the bucket to the pony’s stall, gave the beast a scratch beneath his hairy chin, and closed the stall door.
“Lady Lydia’s marriage is happy,” Matilda said. “A blessing, that. We should go back to the house, but I will not leave this stable without thanking you for finding my son.”
“Now, Mrs. Merridew, I distinctly heard the boy say he wasn’t lost.” Tremont offered his arm. Despite the gravity of that gesture, something in his gaze suggested he was twitting Matilda.
“Tommie was lostto me,” Matilda said, wrapping her hand into the crook of the earl’s elbow. “And that is more than sufficient to justify my thanks. I must thank the men as well. How does one make such a gesture to a lot of fellows who pride themselves on their toughness?”
“They rather do, don’t they?” Tremont held the garden gate for her. “And yet, the men enjoy a joke probably more than most and were forever pranking one another in camp.”
“Did they prank you?” Even as she asked the question, Matilda realized that Tremont had gently led the conversation away from missing little boys and onto safer footing.
“After a few initial gestures of welcome, they did not. I was considered a very slow top as an officer. I am younger than most of them, and I had no experience on campaign whatsoever. We had an absolute snake for a commanding officer. Dunacrewas all smiles and protocol when the generals came around, but delighted in ordering the men flogged or sent on forced marches in blistering heat. I suppose the rank and file pitied me because I was Dunacre’s preferred verbal whipping boy, though he could not order me beaten, in fact.”
“That’s awful, to have to fight the war on two fronts like that. Major MacKay said Napoleon was defeated in part because fighting in both Spain and to the east spread Napoleon’s forces too thin.”
“Those of us under Dunacre did fight a war on two fronts,” Tremont said, holding the door to the back hall for Matilda. “You are right about that, but the enemy was defeated, and now we face different challenges.”
“What happened to him?” Matilda asked, pausing on the threshold to study Tremont’s face. He exuded an air of amiable rectitude generally, but she had heard him in the library, doing more to organize the search in five minutes than the whole household had done in an hour of shouting and stumbling about.
Tremont could think quickly and strategically, despite his claim to be a plodder.
He’d divinedhowto find Tommie and thuswhereto find Tommie, suggesting a canniness that was kept well hidden, perhaps even from the man himself.
“Dunacre fell at Waterloo,” Tremont said. “Friendly fire, snipers—the stories vary. He was given a hero’s burial.”
Matilda thought back to Vicar Delancey’s eulogy for Harry. “More than he deserved. I’m glad he’s dead.”
The look Tremont gave her was hard to parse. Wistful, perhaps? “You are very fierce, Mrs. Merridew.”
She patted his chest. “So are you. That shall be our secret, though I suspect the men are on to you.”
She made her way to the library, where some of the searching party had reassembled. Tommie sat on Amos Tucker’s lap, holding forth about how dark the hay mow was and the great clatter the ladder had made when it plummeted to the ground.
“Let him have his moment,” Tremont said quietly, coming up on Matilda’s side. “He was brave. He kept his head. He meant no harm. You can scold him later for being a dunderhead too.”
And there it was again, proof that Tremont was not the dullard he portrayed himself to be. As Matilda watched a lot of former soldiers make much of a small boy, she wanted to cry. She instead squeezed Tremont’s hand, whispered a suggestion to him, and slipped from the room.
She heard Tremont announce that supper would be a roast of beef and that Tommie would choose a dessert from the selections available at the bakery. The safe return of any prodigal deserved a feast, news which was greeted with a great cheer from the men.
By the time Matilda reached the bottom of the steps, she was once again crying into his lordship’s plain linen handkerchief. Some prodigals who found their way home were given a feast in welcome.
Others were not.
CHAPTER FOUR
How does a woman learn to cry without making a sound?
