At the pace he set, it was hardly more than a quarter hour before he saw the low thatched roof and cheerful smoke rising up through the sleet. As he pushed open the door, the scent of damp, sweaty wool and home brew engulfed him, carried outside on the rumble of laughter and talk.
He shoved his way in among the crowd of laborers and idle sportsmen. The Bluebell was clearly one of those places deplored by moralists in lecture and print, where all levels of society mingled on free terms. A convivial gathering to escape the weather, relentlessly masculine but for a barmaid who could give back as good as she got-it was just the situation Trev preferred at the moment. He used his smile to ruthless advantage, obtaining a tankard from the barmaid and a jeer from the table she ignored on his behalf, but he bought them all a round and dragged up a stool, downing his ale in one long draught. He knew well enough how to purchase a welcome here.
The crowd was in the middle stages of alcoholic mirth, singing bawdy songs and wagering on whether a carter could lift a table on his back with five men atop it, when a pair of gentlemen joined the company. They stood near the door, peeling out of wet overcoats and checking the oilskin covers on the locks of their rif les.
Trev left off watching the carter's losing struggle and glanced at the newcomers as they hiked their guns into a rack. It took him a moment to recognize Major Sturgeon, dressed as he was for shooting and wet to his skin. The two men seemed in excellent humor in spite of the weather, hanging a bulging game-bag beside their guns. Sturgeon's companion appeared to be some respected local squire. Men touched their forelocks and vacated the inglenook by the fireplace, leaving the best seats open for the new arrivals.
Trev set his stool back on two legs, his elbows propped behind him on a table. The others were laughing and yelling at the carter now, goading him for his defeat, while he shouted back, red-faced, demanding another try and making himself look a fool on top of a failure. He was clearly not the sort to take a ribbing.
Trev lifted his mug in the air and began to sing "The British Grenadiers." He raised his voice over the carter's hot complaints. "Whenever we're commanded to storm the palisades," he bellowed in good John Bull style, "our leaders march with firelocks, and we with hand grenades!" By the time he got to "tow, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers!" he had his own table singing along at the top of their drunken lungs. He finished off his ale and saw Sturgeon looking at him with a cold gaze. The rest of the tavern had taken up the song in loud chorus, forgetting the carter in their new enthusiasm.
A familiar sense of waywardness possessed Trev, a moody antagonism riding on the lift of ale and latent violence that he could always find in a place such as this. He f lipped an insolent salute to Sturgeon. The officer only stared back. His good humor seemed to have evaporated.
Trev wondered if the major had realized what basis they had for acquaintance beyond their meeting at the Antlers. From his scornful expression, Sturgeon appeared to bear Trev a marked dislike, considering only their brief contact the day before. So Trev followed up the grenadiers with more songs in a military mode, offering a few British camp tunes he'd learned from the wounded Light Bobs who'd hobbled alongside him in the baggage train. None of those tattered infantrymen had been in a patriotic mood, and the lyrics were all highly disrespectful, in addition to being lewd, taking cheerful and deadly aim at worthless officers and lack of pay. As he'd expected, there were enough worn-out soldiers in the Bluebell to approve this theme. They took it up with fervor.
Trev could see Sturgeon's face growing ever more rigid. As the major's lips curved in disgust, Trev sat back, gulping ale, abandoning the thin skin of gentility. He knew this wild temper in himself-he'd regret it later, but at the moment it was amusing. Sturgeon deserved an insult, by God, for crying off on Callie.
With a wink and a lift of his mug toward his prey, Trev plunged into a song about a deserter, singing merrily in celebration of cowardice. It was a lampoon of "The British Grenadiers," set to the same melody, but the words turned upside down. Instead of storming the palisades, this grenadier hero repaired to town a little too early in the verses, and found a girl who cried "Hurrah, boys," and fondled his grenades. The twist in the usual words had the men at Trev's table laughing so hard that they were spitting.
Trev could see the furious color rise in Sturgeon's face. Still he grinned and plowed into the next stanza, where the craven grenadier turned tail, stuck branches in his unmentionables to impersonate a bush, and ended up with a promotion. In the original ditty, he'd been made into a grenadier sergeant, but Trev slotted "major of dragoons" into the verse instead, which fit the cadence better anyway. His tablemates were almost prostrate with hilarity. The man next to Trev gripped his shoulder as they all leaned together and howled, "Tow, row, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers!"
He was well into the third round when the voices round him died away to a sudden quiet. Trev recov ered his balance as his neighbor let him go. His chair legs hit the f loor, an audible thud in the new silence.
Sturgeon stood over him, white and stiff. "You puling French bastard."
Trev rose from his seat. "Oui, Monsieur?" he said politely and made an unsteady bow. He had not expected to draw blood so soon.
"Shut up, you fool."
Trev gave him a sweet smile. "But what have I said to offend you?"
Someone giggled drunkenly behind him. Sturgeon's lip curled. "It's enough to know what you are."
"Indeed." They were of a height, with Sturgeon at an advantage in weight. Trev drew a breath to clear the ale fumes from his brain. "But explain further, my friend. What am I?"
"Blackmail," Sturgeon hissed through his teeth, almost a whisper, so low that Trev wasn't sure if he'd caught the word or if the major had called him a blackguard. He wondered if he was more inebriated than he had thought.
"I fear you must speak more plainly," he said, "if you wish for everyone to hear."
The major drew his lips back over clenched teeth. He reached out and gripped Trev's lapel, but said nothing.
Trev pried his fist loose, thrusting it away. "You may unhand me," he said coolly. "And be sure that I know what you are. We've just been singing about it, eh?"
The major seemed to swell, the blood beating in his temple. "Shut up! You nauseating bloodsucker, shut up."
"I'll tell you what's nauseating," Trev said in a conver sational voice. "A man who insults a lady and then comes skulking back and bleating for her favor. Keep your distance, Sturgeon; she doesn't wish to see you."
"You dare! You!"
"Of course I dare. Do you suppose she has no friends to take her part?"
Sturgeon was dead white with rage. "By God, I ought to kill you, you slimy little French worm."
"You son of a whore," Trev said calmly. And then he repeated it in French, for good measure.
Sturgeon stood so still that Trev could see the faint tremor in his fingers as he yanked off his glove. In the slow instant, Trev felt his own blood rise with a mad pleasure. A decade of rage pressed in his chest, lost years, impotent shame that he had stood and taken that blow from Callie's father and left her to be slighted by a man like this. With a sense of fascinated doom, he watched Sturgeon fold his glove over his fingers and lift his arm.