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?"
Fear blossomed anew in Gerard's flat brown eyes. "My sergeant," he mumbled.
"Ah…," Sylvester said slowly. "O'Flannery, wasn't it? Was he blackmailing you, Gerard?"
There was no answer from the bed, and Sylvester's face twisted in an expression of revulsion. He spun suddenly to face Edward, and his eyes were living coals beneath the blue-tinged scar. "Did you hear all that, Fairfax?"
"Yes, sir. Every word." Edward almost stood to attention, and Theo shrank back against the door, suddenly wishing to make herself invisible. Whatever was going on now in this room among the three of them was outside her own experience. It dealt with a world whose perils and rules she knew nothing about.
Sylvester nodded. He released the chain, and as Gerard struggled up on the bed, he took off his coat. Very deliberately, he began to roll up his sleeves. "Take Theo downstairs and wait for me in the curricle, Fairfax. I have some unfinished business that I believe I am going to enjoy."
Gerard's face was the color of whey as he sat massaging his throat, watching mesmerized as the powerful forearms were revealed, watching as Stoneridge flexed his hands, pulled at his fingers to loosen the joints.
Theo knew she couldn't let this happen, whether she understood the ramifications of the issue or not. She had no sympathy for the despicable Gerard, her skin still crawled at the memory of his touch, but she knew that if Sylvester yielded to his murderous need for vengeance, something dreadful and irretrievable would happen. And it would live with him forever.
She moved forward, laying a hand on her husband's arm.
He turned his pale anger onto her, and she flinched from it, but she said, "Sylvester, I know what you're feeling. I know you feel it's owed you, but you have what you came for. You'll kill him. He's no match for you – look at him. He's a louse; no, Rosie would say that's disparaging lice. He's despicable and a coward, but he's not worth your vengeance. What satisfaction will you get from pounding such a creature to a pulp?"
Slowly, Sylvester came back to the room on Ludgate Hill. He looked into Theo's impassioned eyes and heard her wisdom. He had been at the brink of control, and he knew that once his bare fist had smashed into the brittle bones and thin skin of the coward that was Neil Gerard, he would have lost himself in an orgy of blood vengeance for that eternity of confused shame and hideous self-doubt.
"Please," Theo said, softly now, reaching up to touch his cheek. "It's over, love. Let it go. I'm here, I'll help you."
He allowed himself to slide into the deep-blue pools of her eyes, to receive the balm of her words. He saw in her eyes what he'd seen when she'd been at his bedside during his agony, and slowly, the long anger slid from him. He clasped her wrist as she continued to stroke his cheek.
"Yes," he said with a twisted smile. "You're here, gypsy. And you're going to help me whatever I do or say."
"You married a Belmont," Theo responded, with a smile of her own now as she heard his changed tone and saw the light in his eye. "It goes with the territory. Like it or not."
He caught her chin, fixing her gaze with his own. "I find I like it." Bending his head, he brushed her lips with his own in a kiss as delicate as the flutter of a butterfly's wings. "And we have much to talk about, madam wife."
Theo simply nodded.
Edward said somewhat hesitantly, "Perhaps you should take the curricle, and if you'll trust your horse to me, sir, I'll ride him back to Curzon Street and pick up the curricle there."
"That sounds like a good plan," Sylvester said coolly. He picked up his coat, glancing at the cot where Gerard still cowered. "I suggest you take an extended trip abroad. I shan't press for a new court-martial, but it won't be necessary once Lieutenant Fairfax has reported your confession at Horseguards."
He put on his coat and for a moment toyed reflectively with one of the dueling pistols. "I'd challenge you, but a man doesn't match his honor against a coward. Come, Theo." He swept her ahead of him out of the dingy chamber and down the stairs. A scared face peeped out at them from a door in the lightless lower hall. A door that Theo noticed had a bullet hole in it
She thought of the blood on Edward's sword and wondered how many people in this malodorous hole were licking wounds. No one hindered their departure at all events.
Sylvester tossed Theo up into the curricle and sprang up after her. "Edward, we'll see you later." He leaned down, holding out his hand. "A man couldn't wish for a sounder ally."
"What about me?" Theo demanded with a touch of indignation. "I'm a very sound ally."