“That too. She was uncomfortable. Physically uncomfortable.”
“Cordial with a tot of the poppy,” Powell said. “My sisters, who know everything, swear by it.”
“If you were my brother, I’d take to tippling too,” MacKay replied. “You need a woman, Goddard, to speak to the lass. To explain the things men don’t know.”
“What don’t we know?” Powell retorted, crossing his arms and putting his booted feet up on a hassock. “If that girl spent any time on the streets, she knows where babies come from. Live demonstrations take place nightly mere steps from the theaters.”
“There’s more to it than that,” MacKay said. “Mess and pain, calendars and tisanes. Mysterious female whatnot. What will you do, Goddard?”
“I thought I’d consult men with more experience than I have.” The sight in Rye’s left eye was improving, at least under low light. Compared to the months immediately following his injury, when he’d dared not open his bad eye in full sunlight, he’d come far.
“Consult your sister,” Powell said, closing his eyes. “Sisters know everything. They are born knowing everything. Witness, my sister Bronwen suggested I join up. Wellington would still be toiling his way across Spain if I hadn’t lent him a hand.”
MacKay smacked Powell’s arm. “Wellington was dead stuck until I arrived, and you know it.”
Rye had been dead stuck until these two had shown up in the officers’ mess. He’d been close to them in his youth, and they’d brought with them memories both happy and embarrassing.
Only Rye had been saddled with a knighthood, but for each man, peacetime posed a special kind of problem.
“The way I see it,” Powell said, “Benny is still one of your lads. You put the situation to her same as you would any difficult mission. There’s an objective, terrain, enemy lookouts, the usual hazards. What is the objective, by the way?”
To keep the girl safe. The objective was always to keep the rank and file safe from avoidable perils. “That’s part of the challenge. Benny has some say in what the objective is, doesn’t she?”
“Nothing for it,” MacKay said, leaning past Powell to appropriate a sip from Rye’s glass. “You must talk to the girl. Have a straight-up, man-to-man, er… well, an honest talk with her.”
“Good luck.” Powell’s words held not a hint of teasing.
“You two have been no help whatsoever,” Rye replied, getting to tired feet. “I believe I’ll frolic in the rain rather than waste any more of my time here.” The temptation to fall asleep in the exquisitely comfortable chairs by the roaring fire in the company of good friends was nigh overwhelming.
But Rye avoided leaving the children without an adult in the house overnight, and MacKay was right: An honest conversation with Benny was unavoidable.
“You’ve made out your will, right?” Powell said as Rye stretched in the fire’s heat. “I get the horses.”
“MacKay gets Scipio, you get Agricola, but you have to agree to take some of the lads too.”
“I’ll send them to my sisters,” Powell said. “Look how well I turned out, after all.”
MacKay didn’t dignify that with a riposte.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Rye said, “for a pleasant meal.”
“Let us know how it goes.” MacKay saluted with Rye’s drink. “Women are complicated, and they develop that quality earlier in life than is convenient, to my way of thinking.”
“I wouldn’t know.” On that statement of lowering fact, Rye left his friends to their brandy. They were conversing softly in what passed for their common language as he closed the door to the reading room.
Did he and Benny still have a common language? He pondered that question all the way home, but still had no satisfactory answer when he summoned her for an audience in the morning.
The pain had eased, as Miss Ann had said it would. The awkwardness of facing the colonel was growing by the moment.
Benny stood at attention before the great desk, while Colonel Goddard flicked beads on an abacus before her. They were never to call their commanding officer Sir Orion, though he’d been knighted along with hundreds of other brave soldiers.
Once upon a time, Benny had wanted to be a knight.
“So how did you make Miss Pearson’s acquaintance?” the colonel asked, putting down his pencil.
“You had us watching the marchioness last spring, and I… the scents from the Coventry’s kitchen are ever so lovely. I took to biding in the maple tree in the garden there, and Miss Ann smelled me.”
The colonel regarded her with that slightly raised eyebrow the boys dreaded. He wore his eye patch today, doubtless to hide the scars, but all that patch did was make him look more fierce.
“Gracious, child, is bathing really all that distasteful?”
Benny shook her head.
“Ah,” the colonel said, coming around the desk and propping a hip on one corner. “You wore camouflage. Soot on the cheeks, dirt on your elbows. Clever of you.”
Benny flicked a confused gaze at him. “I deceived you, sir.”
“Have a seat.”
Benny would rather have leaped out the window, but Miss Ann had said the business would result in others viewing Benny differently. The colonel had never invited Benny to have a seat before, for example. The business was awkward, but also grown up. That wasn’t all bad, was it?
Benny sank into a chair and nearly did bolt out the window when the colonel took the chair beside hers.
“I never did inquire whether you were a boy or a girl, did I?” he mused. “You did not deceive me, so much as I deceived myself. Do the boys know?”
This conversation was extraordinary because it was a conversation, a discussion rather than an interrogation or handing down of orders.
“I ’spect Otter does. He kept mum, though.”
“Otter excels at keeping mum. How are you feeling?”
Benny had the oddest sense the colonel was stalling. “Fidgety. Miss Ann said there’s no reason to give my courses more than a passing thought, and soon I will pay no more attention to them than I do a monthly bout of hay fever. I do not care for the bellyache part.”
“What lady would? But that’s the problem, Benny, you are a lady, a female, and this is a bachelor household. You cannot continue to bide here unless I find a housekeeper to live in, and even then…”
Benny nodded. She’d had two good years with the colonel. Plenty to eat, a safe place to sleep. A roaring hearth in winter, books to puzzle over, and mates, even if the boys weren’t exactly her friends. She had learned to read properly, made a start on French—she could speak it passably already—and learned some ciphering.
“I’ll go, sir. I can apply to the agencies for a maid’s post, and I’m a hard worker.”
A silence stretched, and the ache in Benny’s throat eclipsed yesterday’s tearing pain in her vitals. She had hoped for the impossible and put off the inevitable as long as she could.
“Who are your people, Benny? You speak well enough when you want to, and you’re taller than the average urchin. You were given a name worthy of a preacher’s daughter, and—”