“Oh, that.” He caught the coin and said, “It’s a boring story, really.”
“Do I detect a deep aversion to the notion ofboredom,Northumberland?”
“Ah, I do not manage well with idleness,” he remarked, “if that’s what you mean.”
“And that is why you dread being duke?”
“That is why I dread beingidle. Which is the very embodiment of being duke. So yes, that is why. Well, that is one reason.”
The words came out more bitterly than he intended. Surely now they were even. He’d spelled out her dubious parentage in ungentlemanly detail, and she’d identified his gnawing impatience. Now they could move on.
“Tell me how you were recruited,” she said.
Or perhaps they would not move on.
He tossed the coin again and let out a sigh. He glanced at her. She was so pretty, even wind-whipped and seasick and huddled in a cloak. It was her eyes. Curious, alight with intelligence. They were the opposite of idle, and he need only glance at her to feel the opposite of bored.
“Fine,” he sighed. “It was Spain. The Royal Army. I was captain at the time. My company was part of a regiment facing down French troops near Salamanca.We were in a stalemate because the French had positioned themselves around a working orphanage, and my colonel refused to engage with children in jeopardy.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she proclaimed, instantly enthralled. Jason felt a surge of gratification at her rapt attention but tried to ignore it. He’d been a soldier and spy too long to bask in the admiration of a pretty girl.
“We were correct to stand down obviously,” he said. “But after three days and nights of crouching in a sodden field, I was losing my mind.”
“The idleness,” Isobel surmised.
Jason shrugged. “I took it upon myself to, er, approach the French colonel and ask him to kindly distance himself from the children so we could have a proper fight or move on. I made this request without asking my own command. Oh and I recruited nuns from a nearby church as sort of... humanitarian shields to wade into the enemy camp with me.”
She laughed. “I can only imagine the nuns’ resistance to a handsome officer enlisting them to protect orphans.”
“The holy sisters? Very cooperative. Every soldier should enjoy such courageous comrades in arms. The nuns and I snuck into the camp at dawn. It wasn’t an infiltration so much as a very stealthy and unexpected social call.”
“No one endeavored to shoot you? You weren’t taken captive?”
“I’ve a way with people,” Jason commented, flicking his coin.
“I’ve seen your way,” she said.
You’ve seen nothing yet, he thought, but he said, “I began talking, an aide translated, the sisters joined in,chanting prayers. We overwhelmed the man, honestly. He’d not yet had coffee.”
“But what did you propose?”
Jason took off his hat, scratched his head, and then reseated it. “We suggested it was ‘unsporting’ to employ orphans as a strategic cover, and surely this was not what Napoleon intended. We proposed the nuns be allowed to evacuate the children.”
“And he agreed,” guessed Isobel.
Jason shrugged. “The conversation never progressed so far. I’d positioned my company at the farthest corner of what would have been the field of battle and instructed them to ever so slightlyantagonizeany French soldiers within earshot. A skirmish ensued, confusion and panic began to seize the camp. The officers became suspicious, and the colonel’s attention was divided. He ordered me taken prisoner but I’d manage to, er, vanish—”
“Of course you did.”
“The nuns sprang into action, wielding their crosses aloft and ferrying the children to safety.”
“You left the nuns to evacuate the children on their own?”
“Well, perhapsvanishis too strong of a word for what I’d done.” He flipped the coin again, very high, so high they both tipped their heads to watch it rise and fall.
“The next bit,” he ventured, “is almost too boring to relate.” Another coin flip.
“Oh yes, heroics are ever so boring. But can you tell me how this led to the Foreign Office?”
