Hero in the Highlands Read online

  Wellington had been offered a villa on the far edge of Salamanca for his use, but as usual he kept to his large, plain tent where he could have ready access to his officers and men. The man lived as much on information as he did on beef and bread. When Gabriel reached the lieutenant general’s lodgings, a slender young man looking no older than twelve saluted. “Major Forrester.”

  Gabriel returned the gesture. “Evans.”

  “Lord Wellington is about to sit for dinner, sir.”

  Stifling a sigh at how long he was likely to have to wear his heavy wool coat now, Gabriel nodded. “I’ll await his convenience, then. Please send me word when he’s avail—”

  “Lord Wellington asks that you join him, sir.” Taking a step back, Corporal Evans pulled the tent flap aside and gestured him to enter.

  Blast it all. He’d sat for officers’ dinners with Wellington before, and had on occasion joined the earl and other officers for drinks—and once, for a painful trio of hours at some local lordling’s house to listen to all the young misses in the area sing and play the harp and the pianoforte. There’d always been a distraction, or other, more clever-tongued people to carry on the conversation. This was different. Still, he supposed, it would be more agreeable to be dressed down over dinner than with naught to show for it.

  The tent had been partitioned into several sections, to give the appearance that those inside had at least a degree of privacy. In the middle sat a table with room for a dozen or so officers, though at present only two chairs and two settings were visible. A private approached to take his hat and gloves, while another one pulled a chair out from the table.

  Perhaps he’d been killed this afternoon, after all; with the candlelit gloom of the command tent and the prospect of carrying on a prolonged conversation with his famously reticent commanding officer, this was shaping nicely into his idea of hell. When the chair-holding private cleared his throat, Gabriel blew out his breath and sat.

  In the next heartbeat Wellington stepped into sight, and Gabriel stood again. “General.”

  “Major. You are going to remain for the meal, I trust? Not gallop off halfway through the roast mutton to go fling buttons at enemy soldiers?”

  Damnation. Gabriel brushed at the front of his uniform. “My aide-de-camp asked that I not do so, my lord. He worries the army will run short of buttons and we’ll look too shabby to ride into Madrid.”

  “And I second his very wise request. And his worry. Sit down, Major. Redding, wine.”

  One of the privates scurried over to the tent’s liquor cabinet and unlocked the large mahogany tantalus. Wellington might scoff at soft beds and other luxuries, but the man knew his liquor. Personally Gabriel would have preferred something stronger than wine, especially if he was about to be reassigned to a desk in the Horse Guards, but he was very clearly in Rome, so to speak. Tonight he would drink wine.

  Once Private Redding poured, the tent seemed to empty of all staff. It must have been prearranged, because accustomed as Gabriel was to looking for subtle signs, shifts in the battlefield, he hadn’t detected anything at all. The deep red drink was too sweet by far for his taste, but that meant it was likely more expensive than anything he could have afforded on his own, so he sipped at it and tried to look mildly impressed.

  “I had a plan for the battle today,” Wellington said into the silence, his own glass sitting untouched. “A feint by my center to lure in the French cavalry, with cannons to smash them to bits while my foot soldiers ground theirs into paste.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m aware of that.”

  “And you informed your Lieutenant Humphreys of this, as well, I assume?”

  “I did.” Gabriel took a breath. The lad didn’t deserve defending, but if he had truly learned his lesson today, he had the makings of a competent officer. “The smoke obscured the flags. Humphreys knew if he lagged that he would leave an opening for the cavalry to escape. In his … inexperience, he rushed forward instead of looking for confirmation.”

  “So if you’d been there as you’d intended, you would still have all your uniform buttons?” Finally sitting back, the earl lifted his glass and took a long, slow drink.

  “In theory, I suppose, though I have no way of knowing in what condition my uniform might have ended.”

  “I won’t say you single-handedly won the battle of Salamanca,” the lieutenant general mused a moment later, “but I will say that you single-handedly kept us from losing it, Major. If they weren’t already praising your actions at Bussaco, you’d be the Savior of Salamanca after today.”

  That didn’t precisely sound like a drumming-down. Yet, anyway. “I am a soldier, sir. I do what is required to win.”

  “Just as well. Nicknames are tricky things to live up to.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I don’t care what anyone calls me, as long as I’m permitted to do my duty.”

  “Mm. Very humble of you. And now that I consider it, rather ironic.”

  A frown pulled at Gabriel’s face. “Beg pardon? I know you ordered me to the command hill, General, but I have never sought personal glory from the blood of my men. That—”

  “A great many officers serve under me, Major Forrester,” Wellington cut in. “Do you imagine that the loss of one from my side—even a competent, capable one—would cause me to surrender?”

  “Of course not.” And there was the boot he’d been expecting.

  “It irritated me when you galloped off. Not because I required your counsel, but because I know you ride pell-mell into battle, and I had reason to wish you kept from harm.” He reached into one of the pockets of his blue coat and produced a much folded letter, which he set down and slid across the table. “This arrived by special messenger before dawn. A second note is inside, addressed to you.”

  Frowning, Gabriel leaned forward and picked up the thick note. “I don’t—”

  Wellington took a breath. “I have written letters to lords, informing them that their precious thirdborn sons—not as precious as their firstborn sons, of course—have been killed in battle. This one”—and he gestured at the missive—“is out of even my experience. I invited you here tonight because it seems the sort of news one should hear from a sympathetic soul rather than read on one’s own in the middle of a foreign country and a damned war.”

  “I … Are you certain this is meant for me? My parents are long dead, and I have but one sibling. A younger sister, living in London.” His heart thudded. “Has something happened to Marjorie?”

  “No.” Wellington tilted his head. “You have no cousins, either, I presume.”

  “No. What—”

  “You do have an uncle. A second uncle, rather. Or is it third? I can never keep the distant ones numbered correctly.”

  Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I remember my mother talking about a great-uncle she detested, and I know there was bad blood in the family…” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t take up your time with my boyhood recollections, sir. This has something to do with the—my—second or third uncle, I presume? If he’s died and left me some debt, I would appreciate if you simply told me. Any creditors will find it difficult to squeeze blood from this turnip.”

  “He has died, but he has not left you any debt. Rather, you have something of an inheritance coming to you.”

  For a moment the look in Wellington’s steely blue eyes was almost sympathetic, and Gabriel’s gut tightened. Whatever could make a battle-hardened general feel pity couldn’t be good. He wanted to look at the missive, but Wellington had made it clear that he wanted to deliver the news, himself. Since he’d already disobeyed his general once today, doing so again seemed ill-advised. “My lord,” he finally said, when the earl seemed content to allow the moment to draw out to the horizon, “first the offer of dinner and now this … reluctance of yours to deliver me the information you possess is rather alarming.”

  “Yes, I would imagine it is.” Wellington paused. “You’ve proven yourself a damned fine, ferocious officer, Gabrie
l Forrester, and not just by your actions today. I—and the British army—shall miss your service.” Finally he sat forward and tapped the paper Gabriel held clenched in one hand. “Your distant uncle was the Duke of Lattimer, owner of several small estates in England and one exceedingly large one in Scotland. They, and the title, are now yours, Your Grace.”

  Chapter One

  “For God’s sake!” Gabriel exploded, momentarily mollified at seeing the quartet of wig-wearing fellows seated across from him jump. “Stop talking!”

  “But Your Grace, this is all necess—”

  Jabbing a finger at the one still making sounds, Gabriel stood, sending the ornate chair behind him over backward. “Stop talking,” he repeated. Once the man subsided, Gabriel turned to his one ally, seated in the far corner of the room. “Kelgrove, what do you make of all this claptrap?”

  The sergeant cleared his throat. “It’s like walking through briars, but I make out that you’ve three estates, Major. Your Grace. The one in Devon, Langley Park, is being overseen by a Mr. Martin Graves, who’s a fine and honest fellow. The one in Cornwall, Hawthorne, is just as well taken care of, by a Mr. George Pointer, who’s also a fine and honest fellow.”

  “And the third one, Sergeant?” Gabriel urged, grateful all over again for his aide-de-camp, who after eight years in his company practically knew his thoughts before he had them and who also stood ready to assist with thrashing foes as necessary. Today, Kelgrove was very close to deciding that events definitely called for some thrashing.

  “That would be Lattimer Castle, Your Grace. Your seat, I believe they call it, being that you’re the Duke of Lattimer.”

  Gabriel pinned the lead solicitor with his gaze. “You were the one charged with keeping my uncle’s affairs in order during his illness.” Never mind that referring to the late duke as his uncle still felt odd on his tongue, much less in his mind. These were his circumstances, and he would deal with them as they stood—doing anything else would be pointless, no matter what he preferred.

  “I … Yes, I was, Your Grace. Lattimer, though, is—well, it’s in Scotland. In the Highlands.”

  Evidently that one word explained everything, though Gabriel couldn’t see what difference it made. He knew Scottish soldiers, and they were damned fine warriors. “Yes, I saw it on the map, Mr. Blething. With the other estates you’ve told me the annual income, expenses, number of servants and livestock. You’ve said nothing about Lattimer, and have altered the subject every time I asked you about it. That makes me suspicious, and no amount of your prattling will make me forget it. The problem can’t merely be that it’s in the Highlands.”

  The paper man exchanged a look with his fellows, and Gabriel mentally leaned forward. For the devil’s sake, he’d practically made a profession out of hearing all the words that went unsaid. Those carefully not-uttered words frequently ended up saving both his life and the lives of his men.

  “I’m waiting,” he prompted after another moment of silence.

  “Well, some of it is pure nonsense, of course.” Blething cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a bird trying to swallow a worm. “The Lattimer estate used to be known as MacKittrick Castle, up until about a hundred years ago. That was when King George—the first one—tired of the Earl of MacKittrick and his family’s very vocal Jacobite leanings. He had the patriarch hanged and handed the castle and property over to an ally he wished to promote. The first Duke of Lattimer.”

  Gabriel waited for more, but that seemed to be the end of the story. “That’s well and good, but what makes it nonsense?”

  Another of the paper men grimaced. “There’s a legend, or a rumor, that when MacKittrick stepped up onto the gallows, he cursed the newly minted Lattimer title and everything that went with it.”

  “What’s the curse?” Gabriel asked, folding his arms over his chest. If it was something about contented soldiers being pulled away from their duties for no good reason other than to listen to scrawny men who refused to give straight answers about anything, it was time for a drink.

  “It’s the nonsense of which I was speaking, Your Grace. The curse is merely an excuse for the steward to use every time something goes wrong.”

  “Mr. Blething, the four of you have been throwing figures and papers at me for three days with the relentlessness of an invading army. In that time you have regaled me with every useless bit of inane information at your disposal.” Gabriel took a slow breath, trying to keep hold of his temper. “Tell me something useful.”

  In all likelihood the Lattimer curse was a basketful of idiocy, but the reluctance of the solicitors to discuss it made it more interesting than anything else he’d heard since he’d left Spain, and far more intriguing than deciding whether to sell Ronald Leeds’s collection of rooster portraits or use them for target practice.

  The second paper man found an old, stained piece of vellum. “Evidently while frothing at the mouth in either madness or fury, Malcolm MacKittrick declared that in English hands the land would turn to ruin, that any who allied with the English usurper would perish, and that the Lattimer line would fail.”

  “Considering it took you and the Crown better than six months to find an heir for Ronald Leeds,” Kelgrove noted, “it seems like part of that might’ve come true.”

  “Nonsense,” Blething stated again. It seemed to be the solicitor’s favorite word. That and “income.” “The new Duke of Lattimer is here. The line hasn’t ended.”

  “The line took a ball through the arm the day your letter reached him.”

  “What about the rest of it?” Gabriel asked, figuring Kelgrove had won that argument. “The ruined land and the dead allies?”

  “I’m certain no one’s perished because of a curse, Your Grace.”

  “You’re certain, are you? And the ruin?”

  “Your Grace, you must understand that—”

  “I understand that I’m beginning to lose my sense of humor.”

  The solicitor grimaced. “It is a complicated matter. I have, over the past eight or nine months, since the duke’s—the former duke’s—illness, sent correspondence to Mr. Kieran Blackstock, Lattimer’s steward. The first four letters went unanswered. The fifth letter, which I couched in sterner language because of His Grace’s death, was returned to me five months ago. Inside, over my writing, I found scrawled the words ‘Threaten me again and you’ll find a dirk through your gizzard, English.’” He cleared his throat.

  Ah, battle. Gabriel didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “Let’s see it.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You said the letter was returned five months ago. Show it to me.”

  These men thought him an idiot best suited to shooting and punching, he knew, but they still did what he ordered them to do. Not out of respect or a sense of duty, but because he now controlled that flimsy thing known as purse strings. These paper men clung to those like a babe to its mother’s teat.

  As the solicitor on the far left nodded at his fellows and then bent down to dig through a file of papers, Gabriel clenched his jaw. He knew all about paper men. Paper men far away from war decided how many deaths were an “acceptable” loss and whether ten or a dozen lead balls would be sufficient per soldier to win a battle. They saw numbers and profit, not sweat and death. Generally he stayed as far away from accountants and solicitors as he could manage, and now here four of them were bowing to him and employed by him—four being, he assumed, the correct number required to tell him what he now owned.

  Finally the missive appeared. He grabbed it out of the paper man’s soft hand before any of them could decide he was incapable of reading all the words himself. The solicitor’s letter was of course many-syllabic and fairly threatening, with words like “legal action,” “required by law,” and “easily replaceable” sprinkled throughout. Crossways over the neat lines of words, and written in a large, bold script, sprawled the gizzard threat in heavy black ink.

  “Kieran Blackstock, you said?” he commented, handin
g the letter over his shoulder to Kelgrove. A large part of him wished he’d made that same response when they’d sent the letter naming him a duke.

  “Yes, Your Grace. A Scotsman, who inherited the position from his father, I believe.” Blething’s tone implied that the fellow’s employment hadn’t been his doing.

  Gabriel stood. “Then we have our orders, don’t we, Sergeant?”

  “That we do, Major. Your Grace.”

  The paper men all scrambled to their feet. “I assure you, Your Grace, we have been overseeing the Lattimer finances for decades. This Blackstock barbarian will be replaced, as soon as we receive your approval, by someone more reasonable and duty-minded. We will have a report on the financial status of the estate by … by the end of the month.”

  “No.”

  “I … No?”

  “No,” Gabriel repeated. “You go on putting your numbers in columns and rows. I will see to Lattimer Castle, Mr. Blackstock, and to finding a replacement steward who better knows his duty. And it won’t take me a damned month.” He settled his officer’s shako over his head. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “But we haven’t yet settled on your monthly allowance, or where you wish to set up residence, the hiring of new staff—a valet, for goodness’ sake—or—”

  “I’ve given you three days already. If you fling another figure at me, I will suffer an apoplexy. And then you’ll lose Lattimer and your income from it to the Crown, after all. Send whatever else you think I require today to the Regimental Tavern in Knightsbridge. I’m leaving for the Highlands in the morning. You know that address, I assume.”

  “But as we told you three days ago, you have an estate here in London. Leeds H—”

  “Leeds House. Yes, you did mention that. Several times. I’ll be at the Regimental.” Stuffing Blething’s letter and its response into his glove, he made for the door. Now that a path had revealed itself, not a damned thing was going to keep him in this tastefully appointed room for another bloody minute. He had a destination, a task, and from the numbers being flung at him by the paper men, the monetary means with which to accomplish it.