A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove #1)(9)

Bram nodded. “And while I’m here, I wonder if you’d be interested in an apprentice. My cousin has a knack for destruction, and not much else.”

“You refer to Payne?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord. You want me to take on a viscount as an apprentice?” Sir Lewis chuckled into his whiskey.

“He may be a viscount, but for the next several months he’s still my responsibility. Unless someone gives him a useful occupation, he’ll have ruined us both by year’s end.”

“Why don’t you give him a useful occupation?”

“I won’t be here,” Bram said, leaning forward and giving the older man a pointed look. “Will I?”

Sir Lewis removed his spectacles and set them aside, rubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger. Bram didn’t like the looks of this. Temple rubbing wasn’t the sign of a decision going one’s way.

“Listen, Bramwell . . .”

“Bram.”

“Bram, I admired your father a great deal.”

“So did I. So did the nation.” Bram’s father had distinguished himself in India, rising to the rank of major general and earning a great many honors and awards. “My father admired you and your work.”

“I know, I know,” Sir Lewis said. “And I was grieved indeed when news reached me of his death. But our friendship is precisely the reason I can’t help you. Not the way you’ve asked.”

Bram’s gut turned to stone. “What do you mean?”

The older man ruffled his few remaining wisps of silver hair. “Bram, you were shot in the knee.”

“Months ago now.”

“And you know very well, an injury of that nature can take a year or more to heal. If it heals completely at all.” Sir Lewis shook his head. “I cannot, in good conscience, recommend you for field command. You are an infantry officer. How do you propose to lead a battalion of foot soldiers when you can barely walk?”

The question struck Bram in the solar plexus. “I can walk.”

“I’ve no doubt you can walk across this room. Perhaps to the end of the pasture and back. But can you cover ten, twelve, fourteen miles at a grueling pace, day in and day out?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I can march. I can ride. I can lead my men.”

“I’m sorry, Bram. If I sent you back into the field like this, I would be signing your death warrant, and perhaps those of others in your command. Your father was too good a friend. I simply can’t.”

His palms went damp. Devastation loomed. “Then what am I to do?”

“Retire. Go home.”

“I don’t have a home.” There was money enough, to be sure, but his father had been a second son. He hadn’t inherited any property, and he’d never found time to purchase an estate of his own.

“So buy a home. Find a pretty girl to marry. Settle down and start a family.”

Bram shook his head. Impossible suggestions, all. He was not about to resign his commission at the age of nine-and-twenty, while England remained at war. And he damned well wasn’t going to marry. Like his father before him, he intended to serve until they pried his flintlock from his cold, dead grip. And while officers were permitted to bring their wives, Bram firmly believed gently bred women didn’t belong on campaign. His own mother was proof of that. She’d succumbed to the bloody flux in India, a short time before young Bram had been sent to England for school.

He sat forward in his chair. “Sir Lewis, you don’t understand. I cut my teeth on rationed biscuit. I could march before I could speak. I’m not a man to settle down. While England remains at war, I cannot and will not resign my commission. It’s more than my duty, sir. It’s my life. I . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t do anything else.”

“If you won’t resign, there are other ways of helping the war effort.”

“Deuce it, I’ve been through all this with my superiors. I will not accept a so-called promotion that means shuffling papers in the War Office.” He gestured at the alabaster sarcophagus in the corner. “You might as well stuff me in that coffin and seal the lid. I am a soldier, not a secretary.”

The man’s blue eyes softened. “You’re a man, Victor. You’re human.”

“I’m my father’s son,” he shot back, pounding the desk with his fist. “You cannot keep me down.”

He was going too far, but to hell with boundaries. Sir Lewis Finch was Bram’s last and only option. The old man simply couldn’t refuse.

Sir Lewis stared at his folded hands for a long, tense moment. Then, with unruffled calm, he replaced his spectacles. “I have no intention of keeping you down. Much to the contrary.”

“What do you mean?” Bram was instantly wary.

“I mean precisely what I said. I have done the exact opposite of keeping you down.” He reached for a stack of papers. “Bramwell, prepare yourself for elevation.”

Three

Susanna, pull yourself together.

After excusing herself to hurriedly tame her disheveled hair and exchange her torn, muddied frock for a fresh blue muslin and matching gloves—in the process, speaking more sharply to Gertrude than the poor maid deserved—she joined Lieutenant Colonel Bramwell’s companions in the Red Salon.