The Sergeant Major's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

regiment?”
    “The 23rd Light Dragoons, my lord.”
    “My brother was with the 12th. He died with General Hay at the siege of Bayonne, when hostilities were all but ended.”
    There was that in his voice which made her feel she must have misjudged him. She said impulsively, “I’m sorry. You were close?”
    “Very close.” His voice was curt. “But we are not speaking of my affairs, Miss Vale. Your father was killed at Waterloo?”
    Felicity’s mind, still half-engulfed in searing memory, shied away. She nodded.
    “And your mother?”
    The thunder was rolling nearer—louder now. On the still, heavy air the scent of roses was overpowering.
    “We knew she was dying,” Felicity said. “The doctors could do little for her and she refused to leave my father. When she became suddenly worse, Mrs. Patterson insisted on taking her in. They had known one another a long time—were two of a kind, in fact. The Colonel managed to arrange for my father to come—just for a few hours.” She could only guess what it must have cost Papa—sitting on her mother’s bed, smiling, her hands clasped tightly in his—and promising in that gruff, yet gentle voice he kept only for her, “This time we’ll fix ‘Boney’ for good, dearest—then it’s back to England for us—we’ll have you on your feet in no time at all...”
    The Earl, watching her face, found it extraordinarily revealing and totally at odds with her prosaic account of events.
    How many young women of his acquaintance, he wondered, would have had the stomach to stay beside a dying mother in a panic-torn city ravaged by terrible thunderstorms, the streets clogged by mud-caked fugitives and streams of wounded, while a troop of Hanoverian cavalry stormed through, scattering everything in its path and shouting that all was lost .
    And for this girl all had been lost. Yet here she was telling him, with only a slight faltering in her narrative, of riding out to the battlefield with one of her father ’ s men, to bring his body home on a handcart so that she could bury her parents together in a little local churchyard, where pink cabbage roses climbed over the walls ...
    The reality defied imagination. “A harrowing experience, Miss Vale,” he said at last.
    “It was not easy, but it had to be done,” she said simply, her voice a little huskier than usual. Talking had been an ordeal, but it had been worthwhile; she felt empty—yet, in a carious way, released. “Afterward there were so many wounded to be cared for; it left little time for personal grief.”
    “But you had friends?”
    “Oh yes! Many, many friends. People were unbelievably kind. The Pattersons in particular — I had stayed with them often over the years, helping with the children.
    “However, with my father gone, I no longer had any place on the army’s strength — nor could I accept for long the hospitality of friends, however willingly offered.” She met his eyes with a shade of the old defiance. “ Besides, there were too many memories.”
    “So?”
    “I found a note from Amaryllis among Mamma s effects, telling of her own mother’s death. It bore this address, so on an impulse I wrote to acquaint her with my own altered circumstances, hoping she might help me to find an agreeable situation—and set off without waiting for a reply.”
    In the light streaming from the windows of Cheynings the Earl’s glance was, to say the least, quizzical.
    “Yes, I know,” she agreed ruefully. “I see now, of course, that it was an idiotish thing to do.
    “As far as I could remember, Amaryllis and I had dealt tolerably together as children, though our paths seldom crossed. It was my Aunt Eugenie who couldn’t stand me — a skinny brown hoyden, all arms and legs and no manners, was how she described me, as I recall—and I daresay she was right!”
    To Felicity’s surprise, Stayne laughed. “That sounds like Lady Whitney! I collect your mother and she were not much alike?”
    “ Only