Chapter 15
Fifteen
Sebastian had left the ballroom after his dance with Lady Frances. He returned in time for the second dance’s conclusion, and saw Madelaine being led from the dance floor by Captain Littleton. It seemed her dance with the duke had swiftly led to another invitation.
The man took her to the side of the room, where his wife sat with her sisters. From the smiles, it looked as though introductions were being made.
Mrs Littleton’s sisters were the Gretna Getaways, as Sebastian had once named the flighty, giddy Miss Parlings. He suspected they both knew it, but they still eyed him with smiling interest as he drew up at Mrs Ardingly’s side. Like the captain, she was standing, the other three women sitting down.
“I wonder,” Mrs Ardingly addressed the captain, not seeming to notice Sebastian’s arrival, “did you or any of your military colleagues read the article on army floggings published in The Examiner?”
Ah. Of course that was to be the topic.
“Yes. I read it.”
“And you don’t agree?”
“That it’s barbaric? I agree with that, all right.
And that it’s a waste of men—not just the one punished, but all those who then have to take care of the wretch.
But I was also at Badajoz, and I saw the looting there.
I know what atrocities can take place when discipline breaks down.
It was the darkest irony that men who helped us win that unwinnable battle and survived those odds should then be hanged by their own officers.
But Wellington had little choice. And it worked to stop the foulness, foul as it may have been. ”
He pulled a face, uncomfortable shadows in his eyes as he looked away to the ceiling, the floor, the gallery where the musicians rustled and retuned.
The shadows were at odds with his slight, boyish frame and his jolly red coat. They were at odds with the spirit of the ball.
“The thing is, Mrs Ardingly,” the captain went on, “you’re right about the effects of cruelty on men.
Most soldiers—the common sort who fill the ranks and take the brunt of everything—aren’t there through choice.
A lot of them are rough and brutal even before they face war.
They’re escaping from starvation, from crimes, or they’ve nowhere else to be and no other way to earn coin.
And then you have a handful of officers, used to having servants leap at their every command, who’re put in charge of those men and responsible for creating such discipline as to make them march for mile after mile in killing heat and make camp and break it, night after night, and live on starvation rations, on rotten meat and fouled bread and never enough water. ”
Yes, certainly an odd topic for a ballroom, but Sebastian stood and listened alongside Mrs Ardingly. The man’s wife and her sisters were chatting amongst themselves.
“There are two ways of being an officer, Mrs Ardingly. You can lead from the front and by example. Or you can push from the back and prod your men along with a sharpened stick. It’s a damn sight harder to be the first kind.
There aren’t many men who can. And those who can’t…
I think they live in fear of that mass of men before them turning and fighting back…
Mutiny, I suppose. That’s why they order the floggings.
It’s why such punishments are written into army law.
There aren’t many ways for a handful of men to control a hundred others—control them to the point where they will go obediently to their deaths. ”
But no, there is a third type, Sebastian silently interjected. Men like my uncle, who flog and punish merely because they enjoy it and it makes them feel strong.
“But you said you thought I was right,” said Mrs Ardingly to the captain, “about the effects of such cruelty?”
He nodded, grim. “I’ve seen more men flogged than I’d ever care to remember.
Those who survived it…do you think they ever wholeheartedly followed a command again?
Or ever grew to love an officer? Bitter resentment, you called it, and that’s an apt description.
Resentment and distrust. Those men who were flogged are the ones most likely to hold back at a vital moment, or to desert, or to turn on their own officers.
” He gave a cold laugh. “We treat those men like animals—they’ve been treated little better since birth—and then we ask them for such bravery as a knight from legend rarely shows. ”
He glanced around, perhaps feeling he was neglecting his wife. The woman met his look with a very wifely smile—all patience and understanding.
Thus fortified, he turned back to finish his piece. “I think you’re right, Mrs Ardingly, that if we want better people, we need them to receive better treatment. We know it with young horses. Why not with men? Count me in, madam. I will gladly support your cause.”
He gave a smart little military salute and turned to attend to his wife.
Perhaps Mrs Ardingly had known Sebastian was there all along, because now she looked round at him with a beaming smile, her current mood apparently good enough to make her forget she hated him.
With a few polite words and a bow, he detached her from the group under the guise of taking her to get some cooling lemonade.
She was flushed. Pink and pretty and almost girlish as she told him all about meeting the Duchess of Cumbria and her friends.
“They are going to subscribe! And the duchess might even become a patron. And Captain Littleton has committed himself too. I believe he might join our board.”
“He will do you good. Society has decided to make rather a darling of the heroically injured captain.”
“They are right to do so!”
“He’s won you over too, has he? It’s always very easy to like people who say exactly what one wants to hear.”
“If you ever do”—her voice was as tart as an unripe apple—“I’ll be sure to let you know.”
He let out a breath of laughter, stepping aside to usher her through a narrow doorway before him.
He could think of some things she might like to hear, though they wouldn’t be about how well the slip of blue satin she wore became her or how pleasingly it skimmed her figure.
No, he’d tell her about the boy, Tonks, and how he’d complained unceasingly about his bath today—surely a sign he was feeling better.
He’d tell her how the boy had eaten a whole slice of cake.
That would make her smile.
But before he could begin, Mrs Ardingly slowed her step, turning her head toward him. One of the dark curls of hair hanging at her neck caught on the chain of the necklace he’d given her.
“I owe you a thank you.”
Her grudging reluctance almost made him laugh again. Instead he crooked a brow. “Oh?”
“It was you who manufactured the meeting between me and the duchess. I suppose you knew about her school plans.”
“Of all the notable persons here tonight, she seemed the most likely recruit. I also spoke with Pembroke while you danced with the captain. He’s now on your board.”
She turned fully toward him, stopping in the stream of people and causing the portly man following them to take a wide sidestep to avoid a collision. “He is?”
“Don’t expect he’ll be much use. He largely agreed so that I’d stop talking to him and leave him alone to hide in the library. But it’ll look good having a marquess in your ranks.”
“Yes,” she breathed happily, turning away and resuming her walk. “So that might be two. It’s a good start for one evening’s work.” She flashed him a smile. “I’ll even let you count the captain as one of your ten. You made the introduction possible, after all.”
“You must be in a good mood.”
“No doubt you’ll soon ruin it.”
It was said with a bantering smile, tossed across to him as they walked together, but it sent a hot flash of annoyance through him. At her? At himself?
“The captain disproves your theory, at any rate,” she said.
“How so?”
“He was educated at home, by his parents, who never once raised a hand against him. And yet surely his career proves he possesses every attribute a gentleman ought to—bravery, discipline, duty, honour. You once told me that schoolboys needed to be beaten in order to be worthy leaders of men, or even simply strong enough to face the world. I have my own brothers as evidence that isn’t the case, but as you’ve not met them, and clearly my word doesn’t suffice, I give you instead the irrefutable example of Captain Littleton. ”
“He certainly seems your ideal of everything a gentleman should be.”
She gave him a very unimpressed look, but she’d married a naval lieutenant, hadn’t she? Perhaps that was her type. Suicidally heroic young men in uniform.
“Besides,” he continued, “one could argue that the brutality of war is the crucible on which such men are formed. Violence still played a part in forming the captain’s character.”
The tilt of her chin suggested she raised her eyes to the heavens. He wished they were having this conversation standing still, facing each other, where he could feel the disdainful flash of her eyes.
“I suppose no other type of man exists for you,” she said.
“Men like my brothers—one a tutor, one a curate, one studying medicine—I suppose those types of men, whose strength is in their minds and their generosity and their desire to care for others—I suppose to you they aren’t true men at all; those qualities are all weak and womanish, no doubt. ”
“I do deplore weak men, but not of the kind you imagine. What I believe, Mrs Ardingly, is that you’re determined to paint me in the blackest shades you can because otherwise you might be in danger of liking me.”
Her laugh was scathing. “There’s little danger of that, fear not. Any time I get close, you begin to talk.”
I could occupy my mouth in ways you might like better.
But, of course, he did not say that. Instead, as they reached the lemonade table, he pushed down what was threatening to become a remarkably tetchy mood. “Ah,” he murmured, as he stepped past to procure her glass of lemonade, “but you do get close.”
He turned back to pass her the glass, amused to discover her expression as sour as though someone had forgotten to sugar the lemons.
She took the glass, sipped it, and glided—yes, she was gliding, good girl—to where the doors stood open to the terrace. An evening breeze came through them to cool the overheated guests.
They stepped through. Torches on the terrace’s balustrade guttered as the breeze tugged them this way and that, some of them smoking black.
They felt much like his mood. As did the petals fallen from the wilting wreaths festooning the place, dirty and bruised on the stone floor. Always too much of everything, the Allinghams.
Mrs Ardingly stopped just outside the terrace door. Even here, there was a crowd. Sebastian stood close by her—there were no other options—his elbow brushing hers. They stood in silence for some time.
“He’s well.”
She looked up in confusion.
“The boy,” he elaborated. “Tonk. Though I’ve told him he’s going to be Tom from now on. It’s as good a name as any.”
“Tom’s a very good name. If he takes to it.”
“He’s had another bath. He’s eaten—cake and bread, some meat, some cheese, and an orange I fed him, piece by piece.”
“You don’t want to overfeed him. Not at first. His stomach won’t be used to so much.”
“I know.” But those ribs… “He thought I was joking about the orange at first. He’d never had one, didn’t know how to eat it. And then he tried the first piece and almost spat it out, said it hurt his tongue. But he got used to it.”
She looked at him for a moment, but it seemed she couldn’t quite think what to say. It seemed to trouble her anyway. She sipped her lemonade and stared out through the movement of people on the terrace, gaze seeking the dark garden beyond.
“What?” he prompted. “I suppose you’ll tell me I’m doing it wrong. That it ought to be gruel. Or that I’m spoiling him with oranges before he goes back to wherever it is he’s going back to.”
“No. You are just…”
“What?”
“Almost making me like you again.”
A smile stole over his face. He savoured it for a moment, rolling the words around his mind as though they were fine wine. They might as well have been, so complex was the flavour.
“Dance with me, Mrs Ardingly. I believe I’m promised to you.”
Her smile met the rim of the lemonade glass as she took another sip—a long swallow, the contours of her throat moving with the liquid. She continued to look at the dark garden before cutting her gaze sideways to his.
“Why yes, my lord. I believe it’s the only thing left to make my victory here tonight complete.”
She thought she was being sarcastic, but it was only the truth.
He turned to her and bowed in the small space left available to them by the press of people all around, the dip of his head a hands-breadth and one breath from hers. Then he took her hand upon his and led her to the dancing.