The Luck of the Devil by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online Page A

worse."
    "Things could have been worse" became the motto of the men serving under the Honorable Harmon Carrisbrooke Delverson. Carey got his troops into—and out of—more scrapes than any other junior officer serving under Sir John Moore. Sir John wanted to put the bold hellion on the general staff, to make use of his daring strategies and lightning decisions, but the lieutenant preferred to stay in the field. "The men appreciate when their commands come from someone they trust."
    "Aye, and someone willing to die alongside them. Loyalty's worth more than the few shillings we pay the poor sods. The men need you. See that you stay alive for them."
    Carey did, rising to captain at Coruña. He took a musket ball in one shoulder and a saber slash in the thigh, and still stood to rally his men and get them back to the lines. As he rode to the rescue of one besieged recruit who found himself holding a piece of his ear in his hand, Carey called out, "Things could have been worse. The frog who did it is missing part of his skull." He rode on into one skirmish after another, in remarkable displays of horsemanship and sword-work, with a smile at the end for the troops gallant enough to follow him.
    The men adored him and considered Carey some kind of talisman. From being one of the Delverson Devils, he became the Lucky Devil. He might get lost behind enemy lines, but he came back, with a sack of fresh-killed chickens. The replacement drummer may have beat charge instead of retreat, but the Frenchies were just as confused, and fled.
    Delverson's legendary good fortune was quirky, never without cost. A cannonball at Oporto that missed him by inches would have taken his head clean off, if his favorite mount had not just got shot out from under him, leaving Carey with a knee wrenched so badly he used crutches for a month.
    The left-handed luck extended past the battles, in escapades that made the captain's name a byword in mess tents and officers' clubs, such as the night an irate Madrileño esposo went berserk and shredded every item in Captain Delverson's tent. He would have shredded Carey too, if the Devil had been sleeping in his own bed. Instead he was busy having his nose broken by another irate husband coming home unexpectedly. Another time Carey foolishly sat in at a high-stakes card game at a local taberna. He'd had too much to drink to pay attention to his hand and went down heavily, losing far more than he could afford. So did the winner, who was found the next morning with his throat cut, victim of a neighborhood scheme to rebuild the local economy.
    As for women, ah, the Spanish women with their dark eyes and red lips were nearly Carey's downfall, luck or not. The daughter of a grandee almost had him trapped into marriage, her duenna screeching when her mother rushed into the room and hysterically claimed El Diablo Delverson as her lover. All three women turned on him, with vases, chamber pots, and crucifixes. It could have been worse, of course. He could have been married to one of the shrews.
    Such exploits kept the men in spirits, if anything could on the hard, hot drive across the Peninsula. The marches were dusty, the landscape painted in barren ocher tones. Insects, diseases, and Spanish banditos made conditions hellish; Soult's tactics of dividing up the British troops, separating them from their slower supply trains, made commands near impossible, ambushes likely, hunger and thirst daily companions. It could have been worse, the captain reminded: They could have been in the navy.
     
    Sometimes it couldn't get any worse. Between battles, when the furious action left no time for thought, and after the victory celebrations to forget the losses and the exhaustion, sometimes Captain Delverson did not feel lucky at all. He reread his cousins' infrequent letters of races and wagers months past, and his father's missives about crops and country neighbors. Lord Delverson wrote that he was proud of his son, but missed him too,