by Mary Balogh
He looked uncomfortable. “My place is with my company of the Ninety-fifth Rifles, ma’am,” he said. “Leading them against the enemy skirmishers—the tirailleurs and voltigeurs—is a fascinating life.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, “you are the simple soldier at heart, it seems. And you were one of those riflemen, Captain, before you donned a sword.” She looked down at the curved cavalry saber at his side and was somehow not surprised to note that it gleamed and exhibited none of the shabbiness of his uniform.
“And still am, ma’am,” he said. “I still carry a rifle into battle as well as my sword.”
“Ah,” she said, “so you still like slumming, Captain.”
She watched his lips tighten and his already firm jawline tense.
“And you feel capable of protecting me during the long journey from here to Viseu?” she asked.
“There is no danger, ma’am.” Was that contempt in his voice? she wondered. “The French are still across the border in Spain. All the forces of England and Portugal—the best troops in Europe—will be between you and danger.”
“Not to mention the Ordenanza,” she said.
“The Portuguese militia?” he said. “Yes, they do a good job, ma’am, of harassing the French and keeping them back, as do the Spanish guerrilleros. You will be quite safe. And I shall protect you from any incidental dangers of the road.”
“I am sure you will, Captain,” she said. She smiled inwardly. Clearly the man was less than delighted by an assignment that a dozen or more officers of her acquaintance would have killed for. “How could I not feel safe in the care of a man who almost single-handedly held back the French who would have destroyed the British forces during the retreat to La Coruña under Sir John Moore’s generalship over a year ago and who did something very similar just last year during the retreat from Talavera?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked warily at her. “I do what I must to protect the lives of my comrades, ma’am,” he said, “and to destroy the enemy. It is my job.”
“And one you do exceedingly well, by all accounts,” she said. “Do you enjoy killing, Captain Blake?”
“No one enjoys killing, ma’am,” he said. “It is something that, as a soldier, one must do. It is satisfying to kill the enemy during battle. Never enjoyable.”
“Ah,” she said. “Interesting. So if I were threatened during our journey to Viseu, Captain, you would kill for me if necessary, but you would not enjoy rendering me such a service?”
He did not immediately reply and her eyes mocked him. How could he answer truthfully without appearing ungallant?
“I would do it, ma’am, because it would be my duty to protect you,” he said. “I will do my duty. You need have no fear.”
“Duty,” she said with a sigh. “It would not be your pleasure to protect me?”
That look was there in his eyes again for a moment, the one that could quicken her breathing, the one that challenged her to break him, to make of him merely another abject, easily manipulated follower, like many of the men then proceeding to get themselves intoxicated and merry in her salon. The look that left her hoping he could not be broken. But it was gone in a flash.
“I enjoy my job, ma’am,” he said. “To me duty is pleasure.”
She almost laughed. Captain Robert Blake might be no gentleman, but he would make an admirable politician or diplomat. It was a masterly answer.
“You are keeping me from my guests, Captain,” she said in order to have a little revenge on the only man to have bested her in the game of flirtation—though of course he had not been flirting.
He looked immediately uncomfortable again. “I shall take my leave then, ma’am,” he said, “and return for you at dawn tomorrow.”
“You will not stay longer?” she asked, walking past him to the door and pausing for him to notice that she waited for him to open it. “You need your beauty sleep, Captain?”
He noticed what she was waiting for and strode toward her. He reached past her to open the door—she had deliberately stood in his way—almost brushing her breast with one hand. He did not answer her question and she mentally scored one point for herself.
“But of course,” she said, “if you are to protect me from all the dangers of the road, you must be alert. You are dismissed, Captain.”
She stood and watched him before reentering the salon, from which the sounds of boisterous merriment signaled that the more advanced stage of the party had begun since they had left the room. He bowed curtly and strode to the front door into the main courtyard, barely halting long enough for a servant to open it for him. He had said nothing to her beyond a bare good night and did not look back.
Joana smiled in self-mockery at her disappointment. But then, she would see him again at dawn, she reminded herself. And would be as safe with him in the coming days, she suspected, as she would be if a whole squadron of heavy cavalry surrounded her carriage. As if she needed his protection or anyone else’s. Dear Arthur. Sometimes he could be quite amusing. But of course the purpose of her journey in company with Captain Blake was not just for her protection, she reminded herself.
The Marquesa das Minas turned toward the door into the salon and prepared to be sociable.
* * *
He arrived at the marquesa’s palacio when dawn was little more than a suggestion in the eastern sky. He was in a sullen mood purely because he knew that only one small fact held him from an exultant mood. He had been freed from the hospital and the surgeon’s care and he was feeling fit after months of convalescence and weeks of private exercising and swordplay. He was leaving Lisbon and heading into the wild hills farther north and toward the bulk of the British and Portuguese armies. Soon he would either join his regiment on the Coa with the certain knowledge that soon the French summer campaign would begin and he would be in the very front lines, or be sent on some challenging mission by Wellington and know all the exhilaration of being in danger with only his strength and his wits to keep him alive.
He could have been in an exultant mood. But there was that one small fact—that one small lady with whom he was to spend the next week. It would surely take them all of a week to reach Viseu, though he could have got there far sooner had he been alone. And Wellington had wanted to talk with him as soon as possible, his staff officer had said the day before. But Wellington had also directed that he escort the Marquesa das Minas. Lord Wellington, of course, had to be careful always to defer to the sentiments of his Portuguese hosts even though he was there risking his life and the lives of thousands of Englishmen in order to save their hides.
She was probably still in bed, Captain Blake thought, hoping that she was, hoping that he would have a definite grievance to excuse his mood. Her reception had not lasted all night. The house was quiet. He would doubtless have to wait while the lady got herself out of bed and dressed and ready to face the world and breakfasted. And by that time it would probably be as well to have luncheon before they set out on their way. They would be fortunate to be well clear of Lisbon before dark. They would be fortunate to reach Viseu within two weeks.
Captain Blake had succeeded in whipping up a mood of sullenness into one of active resentment against the fate that had made him into a nursemaid. He hammered none too gently on the outer door of the palacio courtyard. Probably her servants would have to be roused before they in turn could rouse her.
But the door opened almost immediately and all was bustle and activity in the courtyard beyond it. A white-paneled coach, looking more like a coronation coach than a carriage fit for travel along the roads and among the hills of Portugal, stood with its doors open to reveal luxurious golden upholstery. The four horses, which stood obediently in their traces and yet snorted and pawed the ground in their impatience to be moving, were all pure white with golden plumes and golden ribbons plaited into their manes.
Captain Blake sco
wled as he rode his horse into the courtyard. Jesus, he thought, he was to be ringmaster to a bloody circus. He nodded to the servants and the plump woman dressed all in black who was directing the loading of one small valise on top of several trunks tied to the back of the carriage.
“Good morning,” he said curtly in their own language.
And then he saw that he had done not only her servants an injustice in his mind but the marquesa too. She was standing in the doorway, he saw as soon as he had ridden to a place where the carriage no longer obstructed his view of it, looking as bright and fresh as if it were the middle of the morning and there had been nothing to do all night but sleep. She turned her head and smiled at him.
He felt that growingly familiar churning somewhere in the region of his stomach. And the equally familiar hostility. She was dressed—as always, it seemed—in white, from the hat worn at a jaunty angle, its large soft feather curling about her ear and touching her chin, to the supple and dainty white leather boots peeping from beneath her carriage dress. The only part of her apparel that was not white was the gold embroidery on her frogged jacket and the gold fringes on its epaulets.
She looked as fragile as a single swan’s feather and as beautiful as . . . Well, he had been of a poetic turn of mind once upon a time. But no longer. She could not be more unsuitably dressed for a rugged journey if she had deliberately studied to be. Christ, it would take them a month.
She was everything that was exquisite and expensive—and trivial. And he had once held her and kissed her and believed her protestations of love. Poor foolish young lad—he looked back on his former self with a tender sort of pity, as if he had been someone else entirely. It was hard to believe that that boy had been he and that that life had been his. That life of privilege and degradation.
He swung down from his saddle and found that his loins were aching for Jeanne Morisette as she had become in almost eleven years. He clamped his teeth together in self-contempt.
“Good morning, Captain.” Even her voice was seductive—low-pitched yet clear. He could not remember Jeanne’s voice being so. “I thought perhaps you had overslept.”
And mocking. She had mocked him the night before and he had felt like a gauche and awkward boy, terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing. Feeling rather like the proverbial bull in a china shop.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said even more curtly than he had spoken to her servants a few moments before. “You are ready to leave?”
“As you see.” She held out her gloved hands to the sides and smiled at him. “I have my carriage and my horses and my baggage. And now I have you to protect me from all the dangers of the road.” She slanted a smile up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “And Matilda to protect me from you.” She indicated the plump female in black.
“You are quite safe from me, ma’am,” he said, “I do assure you.”
For a moment he was not quite sure what he was intended to do with the slim hand she extended to him. But before he could make an utter idiot of himself by taking it and kissing it—he turned hot with discomfort at the realization that he had been about to do that—he understood the lady wished to be handed into her carriage.
He took her hand and looked down at it as he led her to the open door of the carriage. It was almost lost in his own—small and slender. And warm. It burned him through the white glove so that he wanted to snatch his own away. But she was talking.
“I would guess, Captain,” she said, “that your escorting me to Viseu is only a small part of your assignment?”
“Ma’am?” he said.
“I do not imagine that Arthur has directed you to escort me merely for the sake of your health,” she said. “You are too valuable to the army to be wasted on such a trivial duty, surely?”
Hell and damnation, he thought, why had Wellington not assigned this task to a man born and bred to gallantry? He was aware that she had given him his cue to bow and simper and lavish her with pretty speeches. She was begging to be flattered and adored and worshiped.
“I am rejoining my regiment, ma’am,” he said. “I am pleased if I can be of some service to you.”
“Pleased.” Her eyes laughed at him as she paused at the foot of the carriage steps. “But your regiment is not at Viseu, Captain. Are not most of the riflemen watching the border?”
“I believe so, ma’am,” he said.
“Perhaps you go to Viseu because Arthur is there, then,” she said. “Viscount Wellington, that is. Perhaps he has some . . . special mission for you?” It was a question.
He was suddenly reminded forcefully that she was French, and dredged his mind for some pretty words. He was not about to be interrogated by a lovely and wily woman, especially one who was half-French.
“Perhaps he does, ma’am,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And perhaps that special mission will be accomplished when I deliver you safe and sound to your friends in Viseu.”
“Ah.” She laughed outright. “I understand, Captain. But it was nicely said. How far do we go today?”
“I thought perhaps Montachique,” he said.
“Montachique?” She raised her eyebrows. “We could go there for an afternoon stroll, Captain. I was merely hoping you would not try to push farther than Torres Vedras. I have friends there.”
He felt somewhat cheered as he handed her into the carriage and watched her seat herself beside her plump chaperone. A dove beside a hawk. An angel beside the devil. And he was growing feathers for brains. Unless her words were mere bravado, perhaps after all she was willing to travel and would not forever be calling for stops along the way.
“Very well, ma’am,” he said. “Torres Vedras it will be for tonight. You will inform me if you tire before then and I will make other arrangements.”
She looked at him and laughed, the sound one of pure amusement.
And he was relieved about one other thing too, he thought as he closed the door of the carriage, stepped forward to confer for a moment with her coachman, and mounted his horse again. She had friends with whom she could stay at Torres Vedras. He would not, then, at least for the first night, have to procure her rooms at a public inn.
His scowl returned as he followed the white fairy-tale coach on its slow progress out through the archway from the courtyard and onto the streets of Lisbon.
6
“AH,” Joana said, leaning forward in her seat and peering out through the carriage window, “a royal send-off, Matilda. Do you suppose Captain Blake will be annoyed? I had the distinct impression that he was less than pleased at the sight of my white carriage and horses. He expects nothing but troubles and delays from them, merely because they are white. Do you think he disapproves of me?”
But her companion was given no chance to reply. The marquesa was lowering the window and smiling and extending a hand.
“Duncan,” she said. “You have come to see me on my way. And Jack.” She removed her hand from Colonel Lord Wyman’s and placed it in Major Hanbridge’s. “How wonderful.”
Captain Blake, she saw with some satisfaction, was scowling at the necessity of drawing his horse to a halt even before they had left Lisbon.
“I have time to ride only a short distance with you, Joana,” the colonel said. “As far as the pass, maybe. Hanbridge, the lucky dog, will be able to accompany you all the way to Torres Vedras.”
“Will he?” she said. “What is at Torres Vedras, Jack?”
He shrugged. “Unimportant business, Joana,” he said. “A mere nuisance, except that it gives me the opportunity to ride beside your carriage.”
“Ah,” she said, “military matters. I understand. Duncan, do give my coachman the signal to move on. Captain Blake is looking stern and unamused.” She turned her most charming smile on her official escort. He did not smile back.
“And so,” she said to Matilda, sitting back in her seat again, “the tedium of the
journey is to be relieved at least for a while.”
And normally it was a tedious journey, along a winding road and up hills and down hills. But she had no intention of letting this one be as dull as the journey from Viseu had been no more than a week before. She had planned that already. Now her plan was certain of success.
And so when they stopped for luncheon, she sighed and looked wistful. “Men are so fortunate,” she said, “not to be obliged to travel everywhere in stuffy carriages. How I would love to be on horseback, feeling the fresh air against my face, smelling the orange groves and the vineyards. How lovely it would be to ride over the Montachique Pass.” She rested her elbow on the table and set her chin in her hand and stared off into the middle distance.
“If I had had the forethought to bring a lady’s saddle with me,” Jack Hanbridge said gallantly, “you might have ridden my horse, Joana, while I rode in your carriage.”
She smiled dazzlingly at him.
“I shall take you up before me, Joana,” Lord Wyman said, “so that you may ride over the pass.”
“How sweet of you, Duncan,” she said, touching her fingers briefly to the back of his hand. “But you do not have the time to ride over the pass. You have to get back to Lisbon.”
“I wish I did not,” he said. And then he turned to the silent member of their party, as she had known he would. “You must take her up, Blake.”
He was not pleased. She could see that. He was not going to be easy to flirt with—a thought that she found stimulating. She looked at him and her eyes laughed at him. The wistfulness was gone.
“You would be more comfortable in your carriage, ma’am,” he said.
“But comfort can be tedious,” she said.
“Then it is settled,” Lord Wyman said briskly. “I must be on my way, Joana, though I hate to leave you.”
And so a mere ten minutes later Joana had had her way—as she always did—though no one seemed particularly pleased about it except her, she thought. Duncan had been dejected over having to take his leave of her, Matilda was sitting in disapproving silence in the carriage, Jack was berating himself as a slowtop for not thinking of suggesting that he take her up before him, and Captain Blake was merely looking displeased.