Trusting Miss Trentham

Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

“So that’s the famous major,” Lucas said, trotting slowly on Letty’s left. “Not what I expected.”

“Not what I expected either,” Tom said, on her right. “He’s altered almost past recognition.” He cast a frowning glance back at the distant figure on horseback. “I don’t like that gray. Hope it doesn’t throw him.”

Letty didn’t like the gray either. She twisted in her saddle and watched Reid for a moment. “An unusual man. He seems fairly . . . taciturn.”

“Wouldn’t say that,” Tom said.

Letty waited for an enlargement of this comment, but none was forthcoming. She glanced back at Reid again. He’d disappeared from sight. “So how would you describe his character?”

“Reid? Oh, he’s a great gun. A regular Trojan!”

“Yes, but what’s he like?” she said, exasperated.

Interest sparked in Tom’s eyes. “Fancy him, do you, Tish?”

Letty felt her cheeks grow pink. “Of course not. I’m curious, is all.”

Tom looked as if he didn’t believe her, but he let it slide. “You couldn’t find a better soldier. Reid didn’t purchase his promotions; he earned them. The men all respected him. He was Wellesley’s favorite.” He shrugged, as if this said everything, and urged his horse into a leisurely canter. “The downs or the river? Your choice.”

Letty tried a different tack that evening; she asked to see Tom’s sketchbooks of Portugal. “If you want to,” Tom said, and fetched them down from his room.

Being Sunday, there was no card-playing after dinner. The younger members of the party were loudly debating the merits of cross-questions over jackstraws, their more sober elders were settling themselves on various sofas, settees, corner chairs, and bergères, Almeria’s two daughters were at the pianoforte arguing over the sheet music, and the pug was yapping. “The library,” Tom said, with a jerk of his head.

They retired to the library. Lucas came, too. The three of them settled by the fire, pulling the winged armchairs close together.

Tom had four dog-eared sketchbooks from Portugal: one large, and three small enough to fit in his coat pocket.

Letty took the large one first. She turned the pages, marveling at Tom’s skill, quite forgetting that she was trying to learn more about Reid. How on earth did he do it? A few pencil strokes, a dab of watercolor, and he created scenes that were so vivid, so textured, that she could almost smell Portugal. She glanced up at Tom. “These are incredible.”

Tom shrugged. “Pretty rough. Didn’t have a lot of time.”

Letty went through the entire sketchbook slowly, and then flicked back through it: scrubby hillsides, villages of stone houses with pantiled roofs. “Is this Vimeiro?”

“Roliça. Vimeiro’s later.” He showed her.

Letty stared at the page. A cobbled square. A church with a small peak-roofed belltower. Two tethered donkeys. A flower pot on a step. The sky was tinted with a wash of palest blue, the church roof was terracotta, the donkeys dun and black, and the flowers a cheerful poppy red.

Vimeiro looked quiet, sleepy, rustic—and yet terrible things had happened there.

Letty closed the sketchbook soberly and picked up the first of the small ones. It was filled with drawings dashed out in pencil: donkeys and mules, mongrel dogs, goats and goatherds, peasant women wearing headscarves, a priest in his cassock. And soldiers. Soldiers eating, talking, laughing, playing cards, sleeping stretched out on the ground.

A middle-aged man with a jutting nose featured in several of the sketches. “Who’s this?”

“General Wellesley.”

Letty turned more pages. Here was Grantham, looking sweaty and peevish, and here Dunlop, with an irritable set to his mouth, and here, with his head thrown back laughing, was Reid.

“My goodness,” Letty said, her voice incredulous. “That’s Mr. Reid!”

Lucas craned closer. “So it is. Lord, I’d scarcely recognize him.”

“I nearly didn’t this afternoon,” Tom said. “Got a deuce of a shock. Looks ten years older. Thin as a damned skeleton.”

Letty stared at the sketch. So this was what Reid looked like when he was happy. That laugh on his face, the carefree way he sat, slouching, his arm slung over the back of the chair next to him . . .

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest. She hastily turned the page. Here was the man with the large nose again. Reid’s general. Wellesley. And here a donkey carrying panniers. And here a peasant with a face creased into a thousand wrinkles. And here was Reid again.

Reid featured twice in that sketchbook—once laughing; once with Wellesley, both men frowning over a map—and once in the next book, dozing on a bench.

Letty stared at that sketch. Reid was half-asleep, his eyes heavy-lidded, his head tilted back against the wall behind him. He looked weary, but not in the way he was weary now. This wasn’t the strained exhaustion of a man worn almost to the bone. This was the physical tiredness of a strong, healthy man.

She closed the book. “May I see the last one?”

Tom handed it to her. It was the tattiest of the three little sketchbooks. “Not much in it. Spilled tea over it.”

Tom had indeed spilled tea over it. The pages were warped and stained and only a quarter of them were used, but one sketch was of Reid. It was one of Tom’s two-minute portraits. Reid stared directly out from the page, his face captured in a few slashing pencil strokes. Letty stared back at him. This was Reid as he’d been three months ago. A man in his prime. Alert, focused, vigorous.

“You’re right; he does look ten years younger.” Reid was smiling ever so faintly, humoring the artist, a slight quirk to his lips, a minuscule lift to his eyebrows. “And not nearly as grim as he does now.”

“Grim?” Tom said indignantly. “Reid’s not grim!”

Letty closed the sketchbook. “How would you describe him, then?” she said, handing it back.

“Good sense of humor. Gets along with everyone. I’ve never seen him lose his temper.”

That wasn’t the Reid she knew.

Letty had a flash of memory: Reid half-throttling Dunlop.

She picked up the first small sketchbook again and flicked through it. Tom had captured his subjects with quick pencil strokes, hasty shadings, rough smudges of his thumb—and yet they were so alive, she almost expected them to move. “Your landscapes are beautiful, but the people . . .” She touched a portrait of a grimy-faced foot soldier. The man’s lips were slightly parted. He seemed on the verge of drawing breath, of speaking. “How on earth do you do it, Tom?”

“Good, isn’t he?” Lucas said, as proudly as if the sketch were his own.

Tom was better than good; he was superb.

Letty turned the pages until she came to Reid laughing. Again, her heart clenched painfully in her chest. What terrible thing had happened to alter him so greatly?

She gave the sketchbook back to Tom. “Tom . . . when I first met him, Reid told me a little about Vimeiro. He said he and his scouts were captured, and the scouts were killed.”

Tom blinked. “Reid told you that?”

Letty nodded. “Do you know anything about it? Do you know what happened?”

“Know?” Tom grimaced. “I was the one who found him.”

“Found him?”

Tom stacked the sketchbooks one on top of the other, not looking at her. His mouth was compressed, his eyebrows drawn down.

“Was it very bad?” Letty said hesitantly.

“Bad? Not really. Not like battle.” Tom put the sketchbooks to one side, got up, stirred the fire with the poker, added another log.

Letty glanced at Lucas. Lucas shrugged.

Tom prodded the log, adjusting its position.

Letty waited silently. So did Lucas.

Tom turned away from the fireplace and settled back in his armchair. His lips were still pressed together and his eyebrows still drawn down. Letty exchanged another glance with Lucas.

“What did Reid tell you?” Tom asked, finally.

“That he was caught close to dusk, when he met up with his scouts, and that the scouts were summarily executed as spies, but he wasn’t, because he was in uniform.”

Tom grunted. “The liaison officer was killed, too, and he was in uniform.”

“Liaison officer?”

“Portuguese lieutenant. Pereira. Acted as translator. Reid can’t speak Portuguese, y’ know.”

Letty raised her eyebrows. Reid hadn’t spoken of a liaison officer. “They executed him, too?”

“No.” Tom shifted in his armchair, shifted again, blew out a breath. “The battle was over by midday. Reid still hadn’t returned, been missing all night, so Wellesley sent me to look for him. Took half a dozen men with me.”

Silence fell. The crackle of the log burning was loud.

“And you found him?” Lucas prompted.

“Found them all, in a gully. Reid’s rendezvous point. The scouts had been shot. The liaison officer . . .” Tom kicked the heel of one boot against the armchair. “Don’t know what killed him, but I can guess.”

Silence fell again.

“What?” Lucas asked.

Tom kicked his heel against the armchair, thock, thock, thock. “They drowned him.”

Letty put up her eyebrows. “Drowned him?”

“There was a creek.”

Half a minute of silence elapsed. “And . . . ?” Lucas said.

Tom sighed, a deep exhalation of air. “Reid and Pereira were on the ground, bound hand and foot. Pereira was dead, Reid was alive. Both soaked to the bone. It hadn’t rained. They’d been in the creek for sure.”

Letty digested this information. “What did Reid say?”

“Nothing, far as I know.” Thock, thock, thock. “He was out cold when I found him, not breathing that well. Portugal in August, it’s hot, but he was shivering like it was the middle of winter. He came down with a fever and inflammation of the lungs, was out of his mind for weeks, nearly died three or four times.”

Letty looked down at her lap and plucked at a fold of silk. “Had he been injured at all?”

“No.”

Letty twisted the silk between her fingers, and then smoothed it and looked up. “Do you think . . . the French were torturing him?”

Tom jerked back in his chair. “What? No. Of course not!”

“What, then?”

Tom grimaced, and looked at the fire. “I think they were having some sport and it went too far.” His boot began to swing again: thock, thock.

“Nasty,” Lucas said quietly.

Tom shrugged. “Battle’s far nastier. Wait till you’ve seen a man get disemboweled. Or a horse—” He stopped kicking the chair and sat upright. “I beg your pardon, Tish. Not a topic for your ears.”

Letty surveyed him soberly. “You don’t draw those things.”

“Who would want to?”

The library door opened. “There you are, Letitia! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Tom, his back to the door, pulled a face.

“Oh, Lord,” Lucas muttered under his breath.

Bernard entered the library and closed the door with an irritated snick. “What are you doing in here?”

“Looking through some of Tom’s sketches,” Lucas said mildly.

Bernard sniffed. “I should have thought daylight was better for that. Lucas, Thomas, if I may please have a private word with my stepsister?”

Lucas hesitated, and climbed to his feet. Tom gathered up his sketchbooks.

Bernard stood primly beside the fireplace while they left the room, his lips pursed, his hands clasped behind his back.

Letty used the few seconds to compose her face into a courteous expression.

“Really, Letitia, I’m disappointed,” Bernard said, once the door had shut behind Tom. “Lord Stapleton came all this way to further his acquaintance with you, and you persist in spending your time with your cousin and Matlock! One would think you’re avoiding the earl.”

Letty fixed her gaze politely on Bernard’s face and said nothing.

“And now I find you hobnobbing in here with them. Alone. At night!”

Hobnobbing? Letty almost snorted. “I’ve always spent a great deal of my time with Lucas and Tom,” she said calmly. “You’ve never objected before.”

Bernard gave another of his sniffs. “That was when Julia was alive. It’s different now. It would give Stapleton a very odd notion of your character if he’d seen you in here with them.”

“Why should it?” Letty said, holding on to her temper. “Lucas is my cousin, and Tom’s practically family. I’ve known him since I was a child.”

“You’re not a schoolgirl now!”

“I haven’t been a schoolgirl for a long time. I’m twenty-seven, Bernard. Old enough to be in the library alone with my two oldest friends.” Letty stood. “Is that all?”

“I wish you to spend more time with Lord Stapleton,” Bernard said stiffly.

“I’ve no intention of marrying Stapleton.”

“He’s barely in debt—”

“Stapleton inherited a fortune, and gambled it away in less than two years. I shall not give him my fortune to gamble away, too!”

“He’s barely in debt,” Bernard repeated. “And he’s an earl.”

“What has his title to do with anything?” Letty said, cool amusement in her voice.

Bernard’s cheeks seemed to quiver. His nostrils pinched. He stood a little straighter. Letty recognized the signs; her stepbrother was about to lose his temper.

“Is Lord Stapleton in the drawing room now?”

“Of course he’s there now,” Bernard snapped.

“Then I shall speak with him.” Letty gave Bernard a civil smile, and left the library.