Soldier of the Queen by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online

turn of phrase, Colby. Most men’s letters are so dull and I’m such a silly with them myself. Yours make everything clear.’
    His thoughts busy, he didn’t answer. What he had taken in the past for unrequited love, he decided, was really nothing but honest-to-God lust, because she appeared to have the brains of a newt and when they’d ridden together he’d noticed disgustedly that she was frightened of her mount and flopped about in the saddle as if she were boneless. Into the bargain, until his return, she’d been carrying on a heavy flirtation with Claude Cosgro, and any girl who could feel affection for a Cosgro, he felt, must surely have a fatal flaw in her somewhere.
    ‘What a wonderful thing it was you did,’ she was saying. ‘Mr Tennyson’s poem made us all realise.’
    ‘Nothing much,’ he said offhandedly. ‘Just first over the line in the mile-and-a-half at the Balaclava meeting. Known now as Cardigan’s Bloodhounds. Every man in the regiment, whether he was there or not, thinks himself better for it.’
    She drew a deep breath. ‘You looked so strong and soldierly when you came home, Colby.’
    His eyebrows rose. ‘I was rotten with malaria.’
    ‘When must you return to the regiment?’
    Colby grinned. ‘If I have my way,’ he said, ‘not for a long time. That ass, Cosgro, takes six months off regularly.’
    Her lips tightened because she suspected he was taking a dig at her, but she pressed on. ‘Your medals look so splendid. Especially the one they gave you for Balaclava. It was terribly brave of you to save that man’s life.’
    ‘“That man,”’ Colby said coldly, ‘was Tyas Ackroyd from Braxby and having Russians shooting at me wasn’t half so frightening as the thought of what my father would have said if I’d let him be killed.’
    ‘But you put your own safety at risk by giving up your horse.’
    Colby grunted. ‘Didn’t make much damn difference,’ he said. ‘The Commissariat, the Russian winter and that fool, Raglan, and his staff killed her off in the end.’
    ‘I’m sure they did their best.’
    Colby sniffed. Criticising the staff always seemed to be regarded as something lacking in good taste if not even bordering on the sacreligious. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘it was about as good as a snot-nosed drummer boy could produce without trying. Raglan’s tendency to avoid giving orders made him about as effective on a battlefield as a regimental mascot, and eighteen thousand casualties, of which less than two thousand died in battle and most of the rest of neglect, seem to indicate he was also a bit bonehead.’
    She noticed he grew more brusque and forceful on the subject of the army, and brought the conversation back to where she could cope with it.
    ‘They say you got your medal from the Queen herself.’
    ‘That’s right. Special parade. Hyde Park.’
    He had stood rigid in the sunshine as the small plump figure had walked between the lines and, as he had looked down on the homely shape of his monarch, the thought that had been in his mind, he remembered, had not been one of pride or awe, but simply that she’d have made a damn good Goff.
    Georgina’s eyes were on him again. He had changed a lot in the years he had been away, broader across the shoulders and leaner in the body with the puppy fat gone. He was not tall but he was slim-hipped, fierce-eyed in a dark Spanish way, and strong-faced with an assured manner that made her suddenly doubt her ability to handle him.
    ‘The malaria,’ she said, ‘has left you thin.’
    ‘And yellow as a bloody Chinee!’
    His replies, devoid of the flattery she was used to, left her at a loss. She wracked her brains and, for something to say, tried to remember what she’d read in The Times that morning. ‘This war that has started in America,’ she came out with. ‘It’s a terrible thing, don’t you think? Men are always wanting to fight.’
    ‘You could hardly expect ’em to behave like middle-aged