It would be terrible to lie to her. Sarah hated people who told lies and she avoided telling them herself. Yet there was a difference, she’d always found, in letting people assume whatever they liked. Particularly if the absolute truth would cause too much awkwardness.
‘He is very gravely wounded,’ she therefore told Madame le Brun, neatly sidestepping the issue of his identity altogether.
‘I shall be nursing him myself, so it will be best to put him in my room. The room I had when I was here before.’ She smiled vaguely in Madame’s direction, but spoke to the men. ‘Careful how you get him up the stairs.’
At that moment Ben provided a welcome diversion by attempting to follow them inside.
‘Oh, no. This I cannot have,’ shrieked Madame le Brun, making shooing motions at the dog, who’d acquired an extra layer of mud since the last time she’d seen him. ‘The stables! The stables is the place for the animals.’
Ben took exception to anyone trying to get between him and the three members of his adopted pack who were already mounting the stairs. He bared his teeth at the landlady, and growled.
In the ensuing fracas, the Rogues manoeuvred the stretcher up the stairs and into Sarah’s old room. And no more questions were asked about the wounded man’s identity. By the time the landlady, the dog and Sarah caught up, in a welter of snapping teeth and loudly voiced recriminations, the Rogues had got their Major on to her bed.
‘Madame,’ said Sarah, ‘we can settle the question of what to do with the dog, who as you can see is very devoted to his master, later, can we not? What we really need, right now, is plenty of fresh linen, and hot water, and towels.’
Even though she hadn’t actually ever nursed anyone before, it was obvious that the first thing they needed to do was get the poor man cleaned up.
‘Oh, le pauvre,’ said Madame le Brun, crossing herself as she caught her first proper sight of the Major’s battered and semi-clothed body. ‘Fresh sheets, yes, and water and towels, too. Of course. Though the dog...’
‘Yes, yes, I promise you I will deal with the dog, too. He won’t be any bother. But please...’ Sarah allowed her eyes to fill with tears as she indicated Major Bartlett’s body.
‘Very well, my lady. Though I cannot think it is right for an animal so dirty to be in the room with one so badly hurt...’
‘The dog it was as found him,’ put in the First Rogue.
‘Yes, we owe Ben a great deal,’ said Sarah.
Madame le Brun grumbled about the invasion of her property by such a large, fierce and dirty dog, but she did so on her way out the door.
Sarah could hardly believe she’d won that battle. Why, only the night before, she’d cowered in the stables because Madame wouldn’t let the dog in the house, and Sarah had been afraid that someone trying to escape Brussels before the French forces arrived might try to steal her horse. She’d been too timid to do more than wheedle a blanket and some paper and ink from Madame. Today she’d got the dog and a wounded officer right into her very bedroom.
It was a heady feeling.
Which lasted only as long as it took for her to notice that the Rogues were intent on stripping the Major of his clothes. They’d already pulled off his one remaining boot. Ben pounced on it and bore it off to the hearthrug, from which vantage point he could keep an eye on proceedings while having a good chew.
‘You’ll be wanting to fetch those medical supplies, I shouldn’t wonder,’ the First Rogue suggested gruffly, pausing in the act of undoing the Major’s breeches. ‘While we start getting him cleaned up a bit.’
‘Yes, yes, I shall do that,’ she said in a voice that sounded rather high-pitched to her own ears. She turned away swiftly and scurried out of the room, thoroughly relieved the man had offered her a good excuse for making herself scarce.
She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks once she’d shut the bedroom door behind her. Her legs were shaking a bit, but she wasn’t going to succumb to a fit of the vapours just because she’d almost seen a man have his breeches removed.
She forced her legs to carry her to the head of the stairs and made her rather wobbly way down. She was going to have to get used to a lot more than glimpses of a man’s, well, manliness in the days to come, if she was going to be of any use.
In fact, she was going to have to breach practically every rule by which she’d lived. She’d always taken such pains to keep her reputation spotless that she’d never been without a chaperon, not even when visiting the ladies’ retiring room at a ball. She could scarcely believe she’d just encouraged two hardened criminals to install the regiment’s most notorious rake in her bedroom—nay, her very bed.
Where he was currently being stripped naked.
Oh, lord, what would people think? Actually, she knew very well what they would think. What they would say, if they found out.
Right, then. She squared her shoulders as she marched across the yard to the stables. She’d better think of some way of preventing anyone finding out what she was doing, or they’d all be up in arms.
At least all the gossipy society people she knew from London had fled Brussels. She’d seen many of the most inquisitive in Antwerp. Even if any of them had remained, Madame le Brun thought Major Bartlett was actually her brother, so she couldn’t let anything slip.
And as for Justin... She chewed on the inside of her lower lip, as it occurred to her he might still be in that tumbledown barn, too gravely ill to move, let alone worry about what his flighty little sister was getting up to. Actually, he might have no idea she’d returned to Brussels, if he was still unconscious. Not that she wanted him to remain unconscious.
She bowed her head and uttered a silent, but heartfelt, prayer. And immediately felt a deep assurance that Justin couldn’t be in more capable hands. Moreover, even when he began to recover, Mary wasn’t likely to mention anything that might hamper his recovery.
She retrieved the medicine pouch, then made her way back to the house, feeling sorrier than ever for poor Major Bartlett. Having to rely on such as her. Nobody, not by the wildest stretch of imagination, would ever describe her as capable.
A crushing sense of inadequacy made her pause outside her bedroom door. For on the other side of it lay an immense set of challenges. All wrapped up in the naked, helpless body of a wounded soldier.
She pressed her forehead to the door. She’d already decided she wasn’t going to be one of those people who thought propriety was more important than a man’s very survival. But even so, it wasn’t easy to calmly walk into a room that contained two rough soldiers and a naked man.
What if she tried to think of this as a sickroom, rather than her own bedroom, though? And of Major Bartlett as just a wounded soldier, rather than a naked and dangerous rake? Her patient, in fact. Yes—yes, that was better. She wasn’t, primarily, a woman who’d been forbidden to so much as speak to him, but his nurse.
It made it possible for her to knock on the door, at any rate. And, when a gruff voice told her she could come in, Sarah found that she could look across at the Major with equanimity—well, almost with equanimity. Because he wasn’t lying in her bed. He was in his sickbed. All she had to do was carry on in this vein and she’d soon be able to convince herself she wasn’t a sheltered young lady who regarded all single men as potential predators, but a nurse, as well.
A nurse, moreover, who’d promised, when his men had begged for her help, that she would do her best.
In her absence, Madame had fetched water and towels. And the men had put them to good use, to judge from the mounds of bloodied cloths on the floor.
‘He ain’t so bad as he looked,’ said the First Rogue. ‘A lot of bruising and cuts to his back where the wall fell on him, but nothing broken, not even his head.’