Virtue

7

The village of Quatre Bras stood at a crossroads. To Judith's eyes it was a village out of Dante. The battle still raged and a heavy pall of gunsmoke hung over the shattered cottages and farmhouses along the road. The dead and the wounded lay anywhere a spare place could be found for them, and from the surgeons' field hospital, the sounds of agony rose, pitiable, on the evening air.

The main street of the village was clogged with men and horses; a wounded horse struggled in the traces of an overturned limber, screaming like a banshee as a group of soldiers fought to cut the traces and right the cannon.

"Dear God, you shouldn't be here," Marcus muttered to Judith. ''What the devil am I going to do with you?"

"You don't have to do anything with me," Judith declared. "I'm getting down here. There's work to be done."

Marcus glanced sideways at her, took in the resolute set of her white face, and drew rein. They were behind the front line but still close enough for danger. He laid a restraining hand on her arm as she prepared to jump from the cart. "Just a minute."

"We're wasting time," she said impatiently.

"It's not safe," he said.

"Nowhere's safe," she pointed out, gesturing to the chaos around them. "I'll be careful."

Marcus frowned, then shrugged in resignation. "Very well, then. Keep your head down and stay out of the open as much as possible. I'm going to Wellington's headquarters. Stay in the village and I'll find you when I know what's happening."

She nodded and jumped down. Gathering up her skirt, she ran across the narrow street to where a group of unattended wounded lay in the shade of a hedge.

For many hours, long after sunset brought an end to the day's fighting and the incessant bombardment of the cannon finally ceased, Judith fetched water for the parched, bandages from the field hospital to staunch the more accessible of wounds, and sat beside men as they died or drifted into a pain-filled world of merciful semi-consciousness. She heard dreams and terrors, confessions and deepest desires, and her heart filled with pity and horror for so much suffering, for such a waste of so many young lives.

Throughout the endless evening she was constantly on the watch for Sebastian, her ears pricked for the sound of his voice. He must surely be somewhere in this carnage. Unless he'd found his way to the battlefield, and some stray shot had… but she couldn't allow herself to think such a thought.

Marcus found her in the field hospital, holding the hand of a young ensign while a surgeon amputated his leg. The lad bit down on a leather strap and his fingers were bloodless as they clutched Judith's hand. Marcus watched from the shadows until the moment came when the patient entered the dark world beyond endurance and his hand fell inert to the table. Judith massaged her crushed fingers and looked around for where she might be most useful next.

She saw Marcus and gazed at him wearily as he came over to her. Her face was streaked with dust and soot from the gunfire, her skirt caked with blood, her eyes filmed with exhaustion. She brushed her hair away from her forehead, where it clung, lank with sweat, in the fetid heat of the hospital tent.

"What's happening?"

"The army's retreating to a new line at Mont St. Jean," Marcus said. "Wellington and his staff are still here, taking stock." He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped her forehead, then took her chin between finger and thumb and wiped a black streak off her cheek. His eyes were somber. "I'm trying to find some news of Charlie. The losses have been horrendous."

"I've been hoping to come across Sebastian." Judith glanced around the hospital. Lanterns now cast a blood-red glow over the scene, throwing huge shadows against the tent walls as the surgeons and their assistants moved between the tables laden with wounded. "What do we do now?"

"You're exhausted," Marcus said. "You need food and rest."

Judith's head drooped, as if her neck were no longer strong enough to support it. "There's still so much to do here."

"No more tonight. There'll be as much and more to do tomorrow." He took her arm, easing her toward the tent opening. Her foot slipped in a pool of blood and she clutched at him desperately. His arms came strongly around her, holding her up, and for a moment she yielded to his strength, her lithe, tensile frame suddenly without sinew.

Marcus held her against him, feeling the formlessness of her body, like a small animal's. She smelled of blood and earth and sweat, and he was surprised by a wash of tenderness. It was not an emotion he was accustomed to, and certainly not with Judith, who aroused him, annoyed him, challenged him, amused him -often all at once- but hadn't sparked a protective instinct before. He dropped a kiss on her damp forehead and led her outside into the relatively cool night air.

"Before we do anything else," he said, "there's some business we have to attend to. I've arranged matters so that it'll be very discreet."

"What business?"

He took her left hand, which still bore his signet ring, and frowned down at her. "Your presence here with me has to be explained, and there is only one explanation. I intend to make it good without delay. There's a Belgian priest in the village who's prepared to perform the ceremony. It won't take long."

Judith realized that for some reason she'd expected the traditions to be observed when they formalized their relationship. Marcus was obviously interested only in expediency. It hurt, even though she told herself that her own motives were purely pragmatic. This was no love match. It was a simple bargain. But she couldn't help asking "Must it be now? In the midst of all this carnage?"

"It's a matter of honor," he replied curtly. "Mine… if not yours."

Judith detected his sardonic inflection and flushed with annoyance. "The last time we discussed my honor, I had a pistol in my hand," she reminded him, squaring her shoulders despite her weariness.

Marcus's reply was cut off at birth by a loud hail.

"Judith… Ju-!" They both turned to see Sebastian in the shadow of a doorway.

"Sebastian!" Judith ran toward her brother, forgetting about Marcus and disputed honor. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

"What the devil are you doing here?" he demanded, hugging her. "I left you in Brussels."

"You didn't expect me to stay there, did you?" she retorted with a tired grin.

He shook his head ruefully. "Knowing you, I suppose I shouldn't have." He noticed Marcus for the first time, and his eyebrows lifted. "How d'ye do, Carrington."

"You haven't seen Charlie, have you?" Judith asked her brother abruptly before Marcus could respond to Sebastian's greeting. "Marcus has been trying to get news of him."

"Oh, I saw him a few hours ago," Sebastian replied. "He was with Neil Larson. Larson was wounded and Charlie carried him off the field. They were putting Larson into one of the wagons heading back to Brussels."

Judith felt the tension leave Marcus as if a black goblin had leaped from his shoulders. "Thank God for that," he murmured, the hardness gone from his eyes, the tautness from his mouth. His gaze suddenly focused on Sebastian. "Davenport, you're just in time to perform a very useful service."

"Oh?"

"Yes, you may give your sister away."

"I may what?"

"Marcus, would you mind if I talk with my brother privately for a few minutes?" Judith said quickly.

Marcus made a rather formal bow. "Or course not. The cure's house is beside the church, as you might expect. I'll meet you both there when you've done your explaining."

Judith watched him stroll off in the direction of the small roadside church, its steeple tumbled by a cannon ball earlier in the day.

"Tell," her brother demanded.

Judith explained as best she could. But it was awkward, for all her intimacy with her brother, to admit to the compulsion of that wild passion that had thrown her so far from their chosen track.

Sebastian was very still as he listened, his expression giving no indication of the turmoil or his emotions. He was astounded that his usually clear-headed sister could have lost her grip on reality so completely, yielding to a moment of madness that now bade fair to ruin everything they'd worked for. He tried to see Marcus Devlin as his sister's lover, to understand what it was about the man that could arouse such passion in Judith, but the image filled him with such a confusion of dismay and discomfort that he pushed it from him.

When he remained silent at the end of her story, Judith said tentatively, "Are you angry?"

"I don't know if that's the right word," he said slowly. "But, yes, I suppose I am." Angry and something else, he recognized. He was jealous of Marcus Devlin, who had broken into the tight exclusivity of their relationship. He didn't want to share his sister, Sebastian realized with a shock. He was ten months older than Judith and couldn't remember a time in his life when she had not been there, so close to him that sometimes it seemed as if they inhabited one skin. They shared everything: thoughts, dreams, desires, nightmares. They laughed at the same things and cried at the same things. And now Judith would have someone else to turn to… to share these things with.

"Do you want to marry him?" he asked abruptly. "Or are you doing this because you must?"

Judith bit her lip. "It doesn't really matter how I feel. I created this mess and I have to put it right. This is the only way we have open to us now to do what we must. And it'll be perfect, Sebastian. As Marchioness of Carrington, I'll be perfectly placed to befriend Gracemere, and as my brother, your position in Society will be assured. Nothing could be better, could it?"

"No, I suppose not." He stared, frowning into the darkness. Maybe if he could put it into the context of furthering their plan, it would hurt less. "What if Carrington ever discovers that you've used him?"

Judith shrugged. "Why should he?"

Sebastian ran his hands through his hair, clasping his temples with a distracted frown. "We'll have to make damn sure he doesn't, Ju. I don't know the man, but I'll lay odds he'd be a devilishly uncomfortable adversary."

Judith had formed a similar opinion, but she tried to make light of it. "Oh, the worst I know of him is that he's an autocrat. But I ought to be able to handle that. I'm sure he doesn't have any hideous vices or perversions." She laughed a little nervously. "I'm sure I'd sense something like that after… I mean, when…"

"Yes, I know what you mean," Sebastian interrupted dryly. "And if it's all the same to you, I prefer not to dwell on it."

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"Oh, well, I'll get used to it," he said, suddenly all business. "And if you're sure about going through with it, we can certainly turn your position to good use. Besides, you have to get married sometime. I ought to be relieved to see you well established."

Judith was not wholly convinced by her brother's sudden briskness, but chose not to question it. "Let's go and do it, then," she said with matching determination.

Marcus was waiting for them in the little garden of the priest's house. He watched them come down the road, arm in arm, heads together, deep in conversation. What were they discussing - him? How easily he'd been manipulated?

He abruptly dismissed his suspicions. Judith and Sebastian understandably had a great deal to discuss. It was perfectly natural and didn't mean anything sinister. Judith was unconventional and unscrupulous, but that didn't mean she was a designing Delilah.

And despite everything, as he looked at her, at her luminous beauty barely dimmed by the blood and sweat of her day among the wounded, at the lithe frame, still graceful despite her bone-deep weariness, he wanted her now as powerfully as he had wanted her the night before. She would make him no ordinary wife, of that he was certain. She was too mercurial, had as many facets as a polished diamond, and he couldn't imagine tiring of her.

He stepped toward them as they turned into the garden, and held out his hand. "Well, Sebastian, I hope your sister has your permission. I suppose I should have asked for it formally myself."

Sebastian took the offered hand in a firm clasp. "Ju's never needed anyone's permission to do anything. And anyway," he said with a slight smile, "in the circumstances…"

Marcus found himself responding to the infectious, colluding smile, so like Judith's. "Quite so," he agreed. "Shall we go in? Oh, Judith, you'd better give me back the ring."

The cure seemed to consider this duty no more out of the way in the middle of a battle than ministering to the dying, as he'd been doing all day. He was as weary as the rest of them, took in Judith's blood-smeared, bedraggled state with a comprehending nod, summoned an ancient crone from the kitchen to act as the second witness, and escorted them into the ruined church. He mumbled through the service at high speed, his accent so local that even Judith, who had been speaking French from earliest childhood, had difficulty following.

But there amid fallen masonry, before an altar standing open to the sky, in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by the hideousness of war, Judith Davenport married Marcus Devlin, Marquis of Carrington, in the eyes of the church. He placed his signet ring upon her finger, saying quietly, "We'll find something more suitable when we get to London." Following convention, he laid his lips lightly on hers.

"M'sieur… madame… s 'il vous plait …" The priest appeared from the vestry, carrying a leather-bound tome. "Le registre."

Judith and Marcus signed the book under the scrawled and mostly illegible marks of their predecessors. "Eh, vous aussi, m 'sieur." The priest nodded at Sebastian, who wrote his name beneath his sister's. The crone put a large X.

An awkward silence fell suddenly in the dark, ruined church. Judith cleared her throat just as Sebastian said with an unconvincing heartiness, "Well, that seems to be that. Congratulations." He kissed his sister and shook his brother-in-law's hand. "I've a bottle of cognac in my saddlebag. We should drink a toast."

Marcus nodded. "Why don't you two go outside while I settle up with the cure?"

Judith was staring down at the page on the register, at the three signatures. A curious cold crept up the back of her neck, and her scalp crawled.

"Let's go outside," Sebastian said, taking her arm. Numbly she let him lead her out into the garden.

"It's not legal," she said in a shaky whisper.

He stared down at her. A fine crescent moon was just visible through the cloud and smoke pall. It gave her pallor a waxen hue. "Whatever do you mean?"

"The names," she whispered. "They're not our legal names."

"Sweet Jesus!" Sebastian whistled softly. "We haven't been known by our baptismal names since we were babies. I never even think about it."

"What should we do?"

"Nothing," he said. "No one will ever know. If we go back in there and try to put it right, Marcus will have to know everything."

Judith shivered. "This is absurd. I'm married but I'm not."

"Judith Davenport is married," Sebastian said firmly. "Charlotte Devereux hasn't existed since she was two years old."

"But what about children?" she said almost wildly. "They'll be illegitimate."

"No one knows except the two of us," her brother stated, gripping her hands in a hard clasp. "No one will ever know. We create our own facts… our own truths… We always have."

"Yes," she said, taking herself in hand. "Yes, you're right. What's in a piece of paper?"

The door of the church banged shut, and in startled reflex they jumped guiltily apart. Frowning, Marcus came toward them, his suspicions flaring anew. "Am I intruding on family secrets?" His voice was stiff.

Desperately, Judith sought an answer that was not wholly an untruth. Her smile was strained, but she made an effort to speak naturally. "We were talking about our father. He died last year in Vienna."

"He would have been happy to see Judith married." Sebastian stepped in smoothly. "He didn't have much happiness in his life."

"No," Judith agreed. "Our mother died when we were babies and he never recovered." She passed the back of her hand over her forehead. "If I don't sit down soon, I think I'm going to fall over."

"You need to eat," Marcus said immediately, the gnawing rat of mistrust for the moment appeased. "We'll go to the duke's headquarters."

Sebastian chose to return to his friends in the village tavern while Marcus hustled Judith into a stone farmhouse, one of the few buildings with its roof still intact, where they found Wellington's staff sitting around a table. The duke himself was chewing a hunk of barley bread as he fired off dispatches to a steady stream of runners.

Francis Tallent offered Judith a pewter cup of rough red wine, greeting her pleasantly and without surprise. Fleetingly, Judith wondered what he must have thought that morning when she'd drifted into the taproom with her shirt unbuttoned and her hair tumbling about her ears. It was best not to speculate, she decided, taking a seat at the table.

It didn't take long before she was completely at ease. The condition of her clothes, her exhaustion that matched their own, the part she'd played in the last hours, provided her pass into this group of battle-weary veterans. Even Wellington greeted her with an absent yet friendly acceptance, accused Marcus of being a secretive dog to keep his marriage plans under wraps, and suggested she try to wash the blood from her skirt with a mixture of salt and water.

Judith spent what was left of her wedding night wrapped up in a military greatcoat, asleep on a table at the end of the room, while the military conference went on around her. Marcus looked across at her and tried not to dwell on how they would have been spending this night in more traditional circumstances. He took off his coat, rolled it up into a pillow, and gently lifted her head, slipping it beneath her. Her eyelids fluttered, and she mumbled something inarticulate. He smiled, stroked her hair, its usual burnish faded, and returned to the table.

Judith was awakened just before dawn by an orderly, who touched her shoulder tentatively. "Ma'am… there's coffee, ma'am. We're on the move."

She opened her eyes and blinked up at him in bemusement. Slowly memory returned and she struggled into a sitting position, swinging her legs over the edge of the table. She took the steaming mug from the orderly with a grateful smile. Apart from the two of them, the room was empty.

"Where is everybody?"

"Outside, ready to move, ma'am," he said. "His lordship's waiting for you."

"Thank you." She slid off the table and made her way outside into the damp, gray light, her hands cupped around the comforting warmth of the mug.

Men and horses milled around the front door. Wellington was mounted on Copenhagen, his favorite charger, and the beast pranced impatiently, tossing his head, sniffing the wind. The village seemed quiet, after the frenzy of the previous evening, and a line of wagons moved away from the field hospital toward Brussels, transporting those the surgeons had managed to patch up. Burial parties were at work in a neighboring field, turning the sod with their shovels, wraithlike figures in the dawn mist.

Marcus, holding the bridle of a black stallion, stood talking with Francis Tallent. Judith hurried over to him. Colonel Tallent greeted her cheerfully, then made his excuses and went to join the duke.

Judith examined her husband. He looked tired but calm. "Are we to leave straightaway?"

Marcus gave her his own searching look. "As soon as you're ready. Are you rested at all? The table made a hard bed."

She laughed. "I've slept in many a hard place in my time, sir. Indeed, I'm very rested. I must have slept for three hours." She took an appreciative gulp of the coffee. "This is the elixir of the gods."

Marcus smiled. "A lifesaver I agree. You'll have to manage the cart today on your own, I'm afraid. Just keep up as best you can."

Judith looked at the stallion. "You're riding?"

"Yes, one of Francis's spares."

"I suppose he doesn't have one for me," she said disconsolately.

Marcus regarded her calmly. "It wouldn't matter if he did. After 'borrowing' -as you so charmingly put it- the cart and horse, it's your responsibility to look after it and make sure it's returned to its owner no worse for wear."

Judith pulled a face but couldn't dispute the justice of this. "I hadn't expected to keep it for so long."

A glimmer of amusement appeared in the ebony eyes. "No, I'm sure you hadn't. But then, rather a lot of unexpected things have happened in the last day or so."

"They have," agreed Judith with a tiny answering smile. "But I daresay the owner will be happy with a handsome compensation. I'm sure the tavern keeper will find him for me when we get back to Brussels."

"Conscience conveniently quietened?" he mocked.

Judith laughed. "My conscience was never uneasy. However, if I can't ride with you, then I'll stay here today. There's still work to be done at the hospital."

Marcus frowned, considering. She'd proved herself competent enough yesterday. "I suppose I could allow you to do that. I'll send someone for you later. When he comes, though, you're to go with him without delay. He'll have orders to bring you to me at once, because there's no knowing how long we'll be in any one place. If you delay, I may lose you. Is that clear?"

It had been a short moment of accord. "Yes, it's perfectly clear, and would have been equally so without your sounding so autocratic," she pointed out, reflecting that it was never too early to start her program of reform. "I'm not in the schoolroom."

"For heaven's sake, Judith, I don't have time to squabble with you in the middle of a war!"

"Oh, listen to you!" she exclaimed in a fierce undertone. "That's exactly what I mean."

Taking her shoulders, he pulled her toward him. "Maybe I am a trifle autocratic, but you're as bristly as a porcupine this morning." Despite the irritation in his voice, he couldn't control the flicker of desire in his eyes. Although her cheeks were flushed with indignation, dark currents of promise lurked below the surface of her eyes, and he could feel in memory the print of her soft mouth on his. "Porcupine or not, I want you," he murmured. "Somehow, I'll contrive something for later." He ran his finger over her mouth. "And we'll be a world away from any schoolroom, I can safely promise you that." His eyebrows rose and his eyes gleamed. "Will that guarantee your obedience, lynx?"

Judith grinned, her irritation vanished. "I'll come when I'm called, sir."

He caught her face and kissed her, a hard, assertive salute that left her lips tingling and heated her blood. "A further promise," he said, then turned, swung onto his horse, and rode off with a backward wave.