Page 7 of The Captive Duke
In his mind, he’d gently explained to the child that papa had a few Frenchmen to kill, but would be home soon thereafter.
The scent of roasted beef interrupted Christian’s musings like a physical slap. He categorized his perceptions to keep his mind from overflowing with sensory noise. Scents were English, or rural, or French. Cooked beef was definitely English. The pervasive mud smelled merely rural. The damned orange cat with the matted fur stropping itself against Christian’s boots was French.
He bent carefully and tossed the cat—he didnotpitch it hard, as he wished to, or wring its neck—several feet away. Cats were definitely French.
“Shall I fetch you some tea, Your Grace?” Blevins’s adoption of proper address had become enthusiastic, if not quite ironic. “The wives are good about keeping us supplied with tea even when the quartermasters can’t.”
“Hot water will suffice. My thanks.” For even the thought of tea sent Christian’s digestion into a panic.
This time, Blevins succeeded in keeping a straight face to go with his “Very good, Your Grace.”
Did dukes no longer thank their servants? Blevins’s expression cleared, and he hustled away. Perhaps the man thought Christian would finally be shaving.
Soon enough, Easterbrook would come, and then on to England, where Christian could begin to plot a just fate for Anduvoir and Girard, and all would at last be well again.
“Not hoping must be hard,” St. Just said as he and Easterbrook made their way toward the officers’ mess. The tent lay on high ground, and gave off the same beguiling, smoky aroma as every mess St. Just had had the pleasure of approaching from downwind. “Mercia is your cousin, after all.”
He kept his observation casual, because something about Easterbrook’s reaction was off. If any of St. Just’s family had turned up missing, and then been reported found, he’d be dancing on the nearest fountain and bellowing the good news to the hills.
While Easterbrook’s mannerisms suggested dread.
“Mercia is a young man,” Easterbrook replied. “If it is him, and he still has his reason, and his health is not entirely broken, he could get back to his life, or a semblance of it.”
Anybody held by the French for months would havereserves of resilience St. Just could only envy, though the creature they found in the mess tent was pitiful indeed.
He sat alone at the end of one table, taking small bites of boiled potato, setting his fork down, chewing carefully, then taking another bite. His beef was untouched, his appearance unkempt, his bearded features sharp, like a saint newly returned from a spate of praying and wrestling demons in the wilderness.
“A real duke has pretty manners,” Easterbrook said, approaching the table, “but he’d be tearing into that beef if he’d been kept away from a good steak for months. I’m Easterbrook.”
He sat across from the skinny, quiet fellow with the brilliant blue eyes, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“My teeth are loose, Colonel,” the man said. “I cannot manage the beef, because the French became too parsimonious to feed me the occasional orange. Or perhaps they ran out of oranges themselves.”
“Ah, but of course—shame upon those niggardly French.” Easterbrook shot a long-suffering glance toward the several officers malingering two tables over. “Perhaps we should take this discussion outside.”
St. Just would have preferred to shoo their audience away, because the cool mountain air would cut right through the wraith at the table.
“We should take the discussion outside, Your Grace, Marcus,” said the wraith—softly.Ducally, in St. Just’s informed opinion.
“My apologies,” Easterbrook replied, “Your Grace, indeed.” His tone was so punctiliously civil as to be mocking.
The man rose slowly—perhaps he could not abide leaving his potatoes unconsumed—and nobody moved to help him. St. Just discarded the notion given the determination in those blue eyes.
“Look here,” Easterbrook said when they’d drawn a few steps away from the mess tent. “If you were Christian Severn, Duke of Mercia, you’d bloody well not be sporting that beard. You look like you haven’t shaved in weeks, your hands are dirty, and without putting too fine a point on it, I wouldn’t want to stand downwind of you on a hot day.”
None of which, in St. Just’s opinion, had any bearing on the present situation.
“My hands shake too badly to wield a razor, Cousin, though less so now.” His Grace—why the hell not refer to him as such?—held out a right hand that did, indeed, suffer a minute tremor. “The French would not shave me, because I might succeed in slicing open my throat against the razor, regardless of the barber’s skill. They clipped my beard occasionally instead.”
This was more logic, but Easterbrook waved an impatient—and also slightly unsteady—hand.
“The Duke of Mercia was a man in his prime, for God’s sake. You’re skin and bones and you have no uniform, no signet ring.”
Which, of course, the French would have takenpossession of immediately upon capturing the fellow. Inside the mess tent, shuffling and murmuring suggested the audience had shifted close enough to hear the exchange.
“I was fed enough to keep me alive, not enough to keep me strong. You insult your cousin, Easterbrook.” The man spoke softly, as if he refused to entertain a lot of bored officers who at midday were not yet drunk.
“Half the camp knows I was cousin to Mercia,” Easterbrook spat as Anders led his horse up. “Having me identify the imposters has become a standing joke. My cousin was left-handed, you ate with only your right hand. Explain that.”
