Page 4 of The Captive Duke
Easterbrook took a nip of brandy, then passed his fellow officer the bottle, because a victorious army was supposed to be a gracious, cheerful institution—also because, like many who rode dispatch, St. Just had the ears of the generals. Brandy, alas, constituted the sum total of the amenities available in Easterbrook’s tent, unless one counted the occasional camp whore.
Colonel St. Just was built like a dragoon, big, muscular, and capable of wielding rifle or sword with deadly intent. Easterbrook did not envy the larger man his dispatch rides, though. For the sake of the horse, the rider traveled light, and for the sake of the orders, he traveled hard, taking routes more direct than prudent.
“One shouldn’t swill decent brandy, Easterbrook.” St. Just tipped a finger’s worth into his glass. “Bad form.”
St. Just had been born on the wrong side of the blanket, but it had been aducalblanket. Easterbrook poured himself three fingers into a chipped glass and moderated his reply accordingly.
“One develops a certain tolerance for lapses of form during war.”
“Does one bloody ever.” St. Just swirled his drink, held it under his not-exactly-delicate nose, then set it on the table untouched. “Tell me about this lost duke. He’s the talk of the entire camp, though we hadn’t heard of him up in Paris.”
A small mercy, that.
“The lost duke is a legend here in the South and around the passes,” Easterbrook said, wondering why, of all vices, St. Just had to be willing to gossip. “The eighth Duke of Mercia was attached to Wellington’s Peninsular Army, serving mostly on His Grace’s staff. He’d produced his heir and bought a commission in the family tradition.”
“One baby does not a ducal succession ensure.”
No, it did not, alas for the poor duke, though ifmemory served, St. Just had a proper litter of legitimate siblings.
“You’d have to have known Mercia,” Easterbrook said. “Had all the brass in the world. As arrogant as only a duke born and bred can be, and as his cousin, I can assure you, the succession was not in jeopardy. My father was younger brother to the ducal heir, though Papa took the surname of his bride as a condition of the marriage settlements. I am every inch a Severn.”
“You know His Grace?”
As if a duke would not associate with a mere cousin?
“He was my only living adult relation on my father’s side, his father having been my eldest uncle. In any case, Mercia bought his colors and served honorably, but simply disappeared one morning last summer. We found his uniform, shaving kit, and his horse near a stream running north of the camp, and concluded he’d drowned while bathing.”
Though as a boy, Christian had swum like an otter. Easterbrook had even said as much to the investigating officers, who’d viewed it as possible evidence of desertion.
Desertion, by a peer and an officer. The board of inquiry hadn’t been very fond of their ducal comrade. Pity, that.
St. Just was apparently not impressed with the brandy, for he ran his finger around the top of the glass rather than consume his portion. “A grown man drowned in a stream?”
“You served in Spain?”
“For years, clear back to Portugal,” St. Just said, that finger pausing in its circumnavigation of the rim. “Yes, I know: sudden floods, tinkers, locals sympathetic to the French, French deserters… His Grace would have been well blessed to die by drowning.”
“He might agree with you, were he still alive. Smoke?” Easterbrook certainly agreed with him.
“I don’t indulge.” He didn’t indulge, he rode like the wind, and he’d paused a moment, eyes closed, before consuming his midday peasant fare of black bread, butter, boiled potatoes, and beef cooked to mush. After the belching, farting company in the officers’ mess, such a paragon should have been a refreshing change, and yet, Easterbrook was not enjoying St. Just’s company.
Easterbrook clipped off the end of a cheroot, because hedidindulge.
“A few weeks after Mercia disappeared, we heard rumors the French had captured a high-ranking English officer out of uniform.”
St. Just shifted his stool a foot closer to the tent flaps tied back to catch the prevailing breeze. “Poor sod.”
“I know men who wouldn’t bathe, lest they lose the protection afforded them by their officer’s uniform.” For the French considered any English officer captured out of uniform a spy, and indulged their interrogatory whims on such unfortunates without limit or mercy.
“I certainly kept my colors handy,” St. Just mused.
Easterbrook passed the cut end of the cheroot underhis nose and took a whiff of privilege and pleasure, however minor.
“I was seldom out of uniform myself. When the rumors died down, a letter was carried from parts unknown to one of Wellington’s aides, unsigned, but purporting to be from a French doctor. Said a titled English officer was being held under torture and should be quietly ransomed.”
St. Just paused, his glass halfway to his lips. “That’s unusual.”
Ransom was unusual and officially unavailable, both sides having decided to hold prisoners for the duration of the hostilities. At last count, some Englishmen had enjoyed the dubious hospitality of Verdun for more than ten years.
