The Captive Read Online Free Page A

away, only to have to slow his step when Christian didn’t quicken his own. Blevins’s embarrassment was not the product of a lapse in manners, but rather, pity for one who had parted from both his reason and his shaving kit some time ago.
    “Afraid the fare is humble, Your, er, Grace. Well-cooked beef, boiled potatoes with salt and butter, the inevitable coarse bread, but it sustains us. Things are better since old Wellie put Soult in his place. The locals are happy to feed us, you see, because we pay them for their bread, unlike their own army.”
    The words, English words, flowed past Christian’s awareness like so much birdsong at the beginning of a summer day. Easterbrook was coming, and Easterbrook could see Christian to England, back to the arms of his devoted if not quite loving duchess, and their children. Evan would be walking and talking by now, losing his baby curls, perhaps even ready to be taken up before his papa for a quiet hack.
    Christian had enjoyed many discussions with his infant son while enduring Girard’s hospitality. He’d chosen the boy’s first pony—a fat, shaggy piebald—read him his favorite bedtime stories, and picked out a puppy or two.
    In his mind, he’d gently explained to the child that papa had a few Frenchmen to kill, but would be home soon thereafter.
    The scent of roasted beef interrupted Christian’s musings like a physical slap. He categorized his perceptions to keep his mind from overflowing with sensory noise. Scents were English, or rural, or French. Cooked beef was definitely English. The pervasive mud smelled merely rural. The damned orange cat with the matted fur stropping itself against Christian’s boots was French.
    He bent carefully and tossed the cat—he did not pitch it hard, as he wished to, or wring its neck—several feet away. Cats were definitely French.
    “Shall I fetch you some tea, Your Grace?” Blevins’s adoption of proper address had become enthusiastic, if not quite ironic. “The wives are good about keeping us supplied with tea even when the quartermasters can’t.”
    “Hot water will suffice. My thanks.” For even the thought of tea sent Christian’s digestion into a panic.
    This time, Blevins succeeded in keeping a straight face to go with his, “Very good, Your Grace.”
    Did dukes no longer thank their servants? Blevins’s expression cleared, and he hustled away. Perhaps the man thought Christian would finally be shaving.
    Soon enough, Easterbrook would come, and then on to England, where Christian could begin to plot a just fate for Anduvoir and Girard, and all would at last be well again.
    ***
    “Not hoping must be hard,” St. Just said as he and Easterbrook made their way toward the officers’ mess. The tent lay on high ground, and gave off the same beguiling, smoky aroma as every mess St. Just had had the pleasure of approaching from downwind. “Mercia is your cousin, after all.”
    He kept his observation casual, because something about Easterbrook’s reaction was off. If any of St. Just’s family had turned up missing, and then been reported found, he’d be dancing on the nearest fountain and bellowing the good news to the hills.
    While Easterbrook’s mannerisms suggested dread.
    “Mercia is a young man,” Easterbrook replied. “If it is him, and he still has his reason, and his health is not entirely broken, he could get back to his life, or a semblance of it.”
    Anybody held by the French for months would have reserves of resilience St. Just could only envy, though the creature they found in the mess tent was pitiful indeed.
    He sat alone at the end of one table, taking small bites of boiled potato, setting his fork down, chewing carefully, then taking another bite. His beef was untouched, his appearance unkempt, his bearded features sharp, like a saint newly returned from a spate of praying and wrestling demons in the wilderness.
    “A real duke has pretty manners,” Easterbrook said, approaching the table,