William had stood at attention behind Sir Henry’s chair at dinner, his back against the tent wall, listening attentively while the plans were drawn up. Had in fact had the honor of carrying the formal written orders to von Knyphausen, whose troops were to march to Middletown, while Clinton’s brigade would form up at the rear, to engage the Rebels while my lord Cornwallis’s escorted the baggage train on to safety. That’s why he’d been so late getting to bed.
He yawned suddenly, surprising himself, and settled back, blinking. Maybe he could sleep a bit, after all. Thinking of dinner and orders and such mundanities as the color of von Knyphausen’s nightshirt—it was pink silk, with purple pansies embroidered round the neck—rather than the oncoming battle had calmed his mind amazingly. Distraction. That’s what he needed.
Worth a try, he supposed. . . . He squirmed into the most comfortable attitude he could manage, closed his eyes, and began mentally extracting the square roots of numbers greater than one hundred.
He’d got to the square root of 117 and was muzzily groping for the product of 12 and 6 when he felt the sudden stir of air on his damp skin. He sighed and opened his eyes, thinking that Merbling had got up for a piss, but it wasn’t Merbling. A dark figure stood just inside the tent flap. The flap wasn’t closed, and the figure was clearly visible against the faint glow from the banked campfires outside. A girl.
He sat up fast, groping one-handed for the shirt he’d tossed to the foot of his cot.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he whispered, as softly as he could.
She’d been hovering, uncertain. But hearing him speak, she came straight for him, and next thing he knew, her hands were on his shoulders, her hair brushing his face. He put up his own hands in reflex and found that she was in her shift, her br**sts free and warm under it, a few inches from his face.
She pulled back, and in what seemed like the same motion, skimmed the shift off over her head, shook out her hair, and straddled him, her moist round thighs pressing his.
“Get off!” He grabbed her by the arms, pushing her away. Merbling stopped snoring. Evans’s bedclothes rustled.
William stood up, snatched up her shift and his shirt, and, taking her by the arm, marched her out of the tent, as quietly as he could.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Here, put that on!” He thrust the shift unceremoniously into her arms and hastily pulled his shirt on. They were not in full view of anyone, but might be at any moment.
Her head emerged from the shift like a flower popping out of a snowbank. A rather angry flower.
“Well, what do you think I was doing?” she said. She pulled her hair free of the shift and fluffed it violently. “I was trying to do you a kindness!”
“A—what?”
“You’re going to fight tomorrow, aren’t you?” There was enough light to see the shine of her eyes as she glared at him. “Soldiers always want to f**k before a fight! They need it.”
He rubbed a hand hard over his face, palm rasping on his sprouting whiskers, then took a deep breath.
“I see. Yes. Very kind of you.” He suddenly wanted to laugh. He also—very suddenly—wanted to take advantage of her offer. But not enough to do it with Merbling on one side and Evans on the other, ears flapping.
“I’m not going to fight tomorrow,” he said, and the pang it caused him to say that out loud startled him.
“You’re not? Why not?” She sounded startled, too, and more than a little disapproving.
“It’s a long story,” he said, struggling for patience. “And it’s not your business. Now, look. I appreciate the thought, but I told you: you’re not a whore, at least not for the time being. And you’re not my whore.” Though his imagination was busy with images of what might have happened had she stolen into his cot and taken hold of him before he was fully awake . . . He put the thought firmly aside and, taking her by the shoulders, turned her round.
“Go back to your own bed now,” he said, but couldn’t stop himself from patting her very nice arse in farewell. She turned her head and glared at him over her shoulder.
“Coward!” she said. “A man that won’t f**k won’t fight.”
“What?” For an instant, he didn’t think she’d really said it, but she had.
“You heard me. Good—fucking—night!”
He reached her in two strides, seized her shoulder, and whirled her round to face him.
“And who gave you that bit of wisdom, may I ask? Your good friend Captain Harkness?” He wasn’t truly angry, but the shock of her unexpected arrival was still reverberating in his blood and he was annoyed. “Did I save you from buggery so you could throw my circumstances in my face?”
Her chin drew back, and she breathed hard, but not in apparent distress.
“What circumstances?” she demanded.
“I told you—bloody hell. Do you know what the Convention army is?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s the long story, and I’m not telling you it standing in my shirt in the middle of camp. Now, bugger off and take care of your sister and the lads. That’s your job; I’ll take care of myself.”
She exhaled sharply, with a puh! sound.
“Doubtless you will,” she said, with the maximum of sarcasm and a pointed glance at his cock, which was poking absurdly at his shirt, making its own urgent preferences known.
“Scheisse,” he said again, briefly, then grabbed her in a bear hug that pressed her body against his all the way down and kissed her. She struggled, but after the first moment he realized that the struggle was not meant to procure her release but to provoke him further. He tightened his grip until she stopped, but didn’t quit kissing her for some time thereafter.