Sylvester took in the scene in one swift glance. Sweet relief seeped through his pores. Whatever they'd done to Theo, she was none the worse for wear. A glint of laughter appeared in his gray eyes as Theo put her head on one side in her habitual unspoken challenge, although he could detect a slightly apprehensive question mark in her gaze.
"Well, well, my dear," he drawled. "It seems you had no need of knights errant after all."
"I haven't exactly managed to get out of the house," Theo pointed out, anxious he shouldn't feel his efforts were unappreciated. Matters were tricky enough as it was.
"No, but perhaps you haven't had sufficient time," he said smoothly. "I can't imagine another reason."
Edward's chortle turned into a violent coughing fit.
"How did he hurt you?" Sylvester asked, and there was no amused drawl in his voice now.
Theo gingerly touched the back of her head. "Somebody hit me… but it wasn't that slimy piece of flotsam."
Sylvester nodded. "I'll still add it to the account. Secure the door, would you, Edward? I have some business to conclude, and I would hate to be interrupted."
He snapped his fingers for the key to the chain, and Theo handed it over. She wasn't at all sure how to read her husband in this mood. There was something infinitely dangerous about him, but she didn't feel threatened herself. Wisdom, however, dictated a course of passive compliance for the next minutes.
Edward bolted the door and stood with his back to it, the sword stick held lightly in his hand. There was blood on its tip, Theo noticed absently as the key turned in the shackle and her ankle was released.
Sylvester took the freed end of the chain and jerked it.
"Time for a little chat, Gerard," he observed pleasantly. "Edward, would you take note of everything that is said in this room?"
"That was my plan," Theo said, forgetting her resolution of a minute ago in this opportunity to salvage something of her grand design. "It's a good one, I believe."
"I'll deal with you later, gypsy. If you wish to minimize what's coming your way, you'll hold your tongue."
That was rather more along expected lines, but Sylvester never called her gypsy when he was truly displeased. Thoughtfully, Theo went to stand beside Edward, who grinned at her, his eyes glowing with jubilation. "I haven't lost my touch," he whispered against her ear, indicating the bloody sword stick.
"You were always a superb fencer," she said, smiling, kissing his cheek by way of congratulation. "Did you kill him?"
Edward shook his head. "No, merely pinked him, but it certainly stopped him in his tracks. He was wielding an ugly-looking cudgel."
"Let us return to Vimiera, Gerard," Sylvester was saying. He wrapped the chain round his wrist and moved behind the bed. "There's something I believe you want to tell me."
There was silence from the bed. "Come, now," Sylvester said softly. "You're not going to make this any harder on yourself than you must. I know you too well, Gerard. What was it?" The chain jerked again.
Gerard's voice rasped from the cot. "You were outnumbered."
"As we'd been all day." All expression left Sylvester's voice now, and he seemed no longer aware of either of his listeners. He was standing in a dank, ill-lit chamber off Ludgate Hill, but in memory he was back on a scorched plain, looking into the Portuguese sunset and the ever-advancing line of the enemy.
The line of French was coming up at them. His men were firing into the sunset. Sergeant Henley's face hung in his internal vision. He was saying something urgently. Telling him something he'd been expecting. They had two rounds of ammunition left. They could maybe beat off this attack, but after that they would be helpless.
Where the hell was Gerard? He was looking across the flat plain ringed by hills. A slice of blue sea peeped between two of the lower hills. Behind him was the bridge that he had to hold. Gerard would bring his reinforcements over that bridge.
Sylvester stared at the gibbering, craven wretch on the bed, but he barely saw him. His mind was racing across the red-tinged barren landscape of a Portuguese plain. Memories crowded in now – faces, snatches of conversation, the frustration and helplessness as he faced the prospect of losing now, after a long day of battling the odds, buoyed by the certainty of support hurrying to their aid. Now they were going to be defeated, and the lives of the boys lying on the scratchy earth round him had been expended in vain.
The void of amnesia was filling rapidly, like an empty bucket in a rainstorm. The face of the young ensign who'd been acting lookout in the topmost branches of a spindly tree appeared before him. The lad's eyes were wild, and he was out of breath after his mad dash from his post. He could barely speak as he brought forth his unbelievable message: Redcoats had appeared on the high ground beyond the bridge. He'd seen the sunlight flash off a glass as someone had surveyed the battleground before them. Then they'd disappeared.
Sylvester had been unable to grasp this message. He'd made the lad repeat himself. He'd told him that heat and fear had addled his brain, ruined his eyesight. But the ensign had stuck to his story.
They'd been abandoned. Captain Gerard's reinforcements were not coming. Why? And even as he'd been wrestling with this, the young ensign at his side had fallen, a musket ball through his throat, and the horde of French were racing across the plain screaming their war cry: Vive l'Empereur. And he'd ordered his men to lay down their now useless arms. Only the ensign and Sergeant Henley knew that the reinforcements were not coming.
And the sergeant had died under a French bayonet.
And at the court-martial Neil Gerard had said that he was coming up in support, but for some reason, a reason lost in the mists of amnesia, Major Gilbraith had surrendered his colors by the time the reinforcements had arrived. The captain's force had chased the French across the plain but hadn't been able to overtake them.
The bright light of memory flooded Sylvester's brain, and he felt as if some massive weight had been lifted from his spirit. Neil presumably assumed that Sylvester knew nothing of his retreat. It was only the sharp eyes of an ensign and an unlucky ray of sun that had given him away. All he'd had to do at the court-martial was insist he'd been following the orders they'd all received, and Major Gilbraith, with no living witnesses to his decision and convicted by his own actions even if his motive remained a mystery, couldn't gainsay him. But why had he then tried to kill him?
"Yes," he said, his voice startling in the dreadful silence that had fallen in the room. "Yes, we were outnumbered and you turned your back on us."
"We saw you. There was nothing we could do. Behind the hill facing you, there were three more regiments of French." Gerard was babbling now. "I had only a hundred and fifty men. We'd be slaughtered with the rest of you if we came up in support. Damn it, Sylvester, headquarters didn't know what they were asking."
"Yes, they did," Sylvester stated flatly. "If you'd come up, we could have held the bridge for the two hours necessary before the main army arrived. We were running out of ammunition, Gerard." His voice now was as deadly as a rapier thrust. "It was all that kept us from continuing."
"No. You're fooling yourself." Gerard's voice rose to a pitch of desperate conviction. "We'd all have been slaughtered. You were on the plain, you couldn't see what I saw from the hill."
"So you cut and ran," Sylvester said. "And we were destroyed and the colors were lost, and the bridge was lost. Quite a record of achievement one way and another. But tell me" – his voice became almost confidential – "just why did you need to kill me? You'd ruined me, forced my resignation from the regiment. Why try to deliver the coup de grace?"