The Mercenary Major Read Free Page A

letters had never hinted at such wealth. She had called her home snug and had invited him to come to London to be cozy . No wonder George Bertram had teased him.
    “Sit, Jack,” she repeated, then turned to the butler. “Briggs, some tea for me, please, and Madeira and a cold collation for the major.”
    Jack took the seat she indicated. While her attention was turned from him, he tried to determine precisely what it was about her that reminded him of his mother. His mother had been the older of the two sisters, and had she lived, she would now be forty-four, so his aunt must be . . . forty, though she seemed younger. She was youthfully slim in a dress of the palest blue he had ever seen, but her girlishness lay more in the way her coppery curls, looking soft as down, peeped from under her lace cap and framed the delicate oval of her face. Her voice, too, sounded sweet and clear with no deeper notes of maturity. Unwilling to be caught staring, he looked away as she seated herself across from him.
    “I daresay I am not very like your mother,” she said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Your mother would have gone to Spain to get you, you know, had she been the aunt and I, the mother. Helen was courage itself. But,” she continued, “though it took me seven years to find you and seven more to get you here, I truly am your aunt, Jack.”
    The directness and conviction of these words and the earnestness of the gaze that accompanied them again roused the warning voice in Jack’s head. A silence fell, and he was glad of the butler’s timely reappearance with the tea tray. While his hostess busied herself with the tasks of arranging the tray and pouring their drinks, he considered what he knew of his Aunt Letty.
    He had often heard of her before his parents died. She was the one relative his mother mentioned with affection, but in his young mind Aunt Letty had been no more real than Guinevere or Scheherazade or any of the other characters in the stories his mother read to him as he drifted off to sleep at night. The Aunt Letty of his boyhood had had no claim on him, and he had not thought to seek her after his parents died. He had learned that she was searching for him through Hengrave and Gilling, who had insisted he answer her letters.
    Later he had come to look forward to those letters though he could not have said why. He had come to London only because there was no real soldiering left to be done now that Boney was confined to his island and because Paris was a faithless mistress who guillotined brave men for their loyalty to Napoleon and blackened the name of the victor. He had accepted Lady Letitia’s invitation because his friends needed every penny he could spare them.
    Instinctively, Letty knew her guest’s guard was up, and she searched for some light topic with which to put him at ease. “Is Paris as charming as we are led to believe?” she asked, handing him a glass of Madeira. For an instant his gaze seemed to measure her intent. Then he answered, and she listened, offering him questions, and delicacies from the tea tray until she saw his stiff wariness relax. When he had accepted a second glass of wine, she ventured to bring the conversation back to their present circumstances.
    “I think it only fair to warn you, Jack,” she said, “maiden aunts are eccentric creatures, and you must be prepared to humor me in my oddest whims.” To her relief he did not grow wary again at her words, but rather looked at her with something of a challenge in his eyes.
    “Do you mean to scare me off . . . Lady Letitia?” he asked.
    “Not Lady Letitia! Aunt Letty. Your eccentric Aunt Letty”
    “I have seen no eccentricities yet.”
    “When you hear what entertainments I have planned for you, you will be sure I am eccentric.”
    “Entertainments?” he asked.
    Letty was pleased to note that his smile was less reserved now than it had been when she had first seen it. “Yes—the Royal Exchange—they do have the