Valentine Read Free Page B

guilty, my lord.
Yes, of course: Not guilty, my lord. But was he? If only he could remember those moments before the bayonet struck. If only Gerard had testified to what Sylvester believed had happened: He’d been holding an impossible position at Vimiera; Gerard was to come up in support; but before he could do so, they’d been overwhelmed and suffered the greatest military disgrace to befall a regiment—they’d lost the colors. Gerard, his boyhood friend, said he’d been on his way in support. He hadn’t been aware of a renewed French attack on the isolated outpost … but whatever had happened, they’d arrived too late. Major Gilbraith had been taken prisoner, his men left for dead, the colors captured.
    Major Gilbraith’s head wound had kept him lingering between life and death in a foul French prison for a twelvemonth, until he’d been exchanged and brought home to face a court-martial Had there been a renewed French attack before Captain Gerard could come to his aid? Or had he yielded his colors prematurely?
    No one had an answer. Sylvester could remember nothing of the minutes before the bayonet had driven into his skull. Gerard said he’d seen nothing and could have no opinion on the issue of honor. And there the matter lay. There was no concrete evidence to convict … but neither was there concrete evidence to exonerate.
    And people believed what they chose. It was clear enough what Gerard believed. His shoulder had been the first to be turned.
    That ominous feeling crept up the back of Sylvester’s neck, the little prickles, the weird surge of unfocused energy in his head, tightening his scalp. His hand went to his forehead, to the slash of the scar, as he tried to relax, to will the promise of pain to disappear. Sometimes he could divert the coming agony if he caught it at the very beginning and was able to be still, close his eyes, change the seething thoughts, defeat the rise of this hideous panic.
    But he was standing in hot, bright sunlight, far from the cool darkness he would need. A jagged flash of light appeared in the corner of his vision, and he knew it was too late. He had perhaps twenty minutes before the ghastly, degrading pain took over … twenty minutes to reach his room at the inn.
    Theo Belmont stared. What was happening to him? He looked as if he were standing in a graveyard alive with spirits. His face was deathly white, his eyes suddenly dulled, his shoulders sagging. It was as if muscle and sinew, his very life-blood, had been leached out of him. Abruptly he turned from her and stumbled over to his horse tethered at the stand oftrees. He mounted clumsily and rode off, slouching in the saddle, his head lowered almost to his chest.
    Who was he? Not that it mattered. Strangers passed through Lulworth often enough, rarely causing a ripple on the surface of tranquil village life. Generally, though, they kept to the roads, not straying onto other people’s property.
    She shrugged and bent to wring out the dripping folds of her smock, thrusting her feet into her sandals. Absently, she rubbed her backside … it had been a very hard fall. The stranger clearly made no concessions when it came to avenging himself—but then, he’d had a pretty hard fall himself.
    She grinned, remembering the neatness of her maneuver. Edward would be proud of her.
    Theo made her dripping way along the bank toward the stone bridge. She crossed and hurried up the hill toward the house, shivering as a stiffening sea breeze pressed her wet clothes against her skin.
    “Theo, whatever happened to you?” Clarissa appeared on the long stone-flagged terrace outside the drawing room. “I saw you coming up from the stream.”
    “I fell in, if you must know,” Theo said, for some reason reluctant to give a full account of the encounter. She hadn’t exactly come out of it bathed in glory, and honesty forced her to admit that she
had
been playing a game that could have given the stranger the wrong