by Mary Balogh
“I have the feeling,” he said, “that if I decided to call your bluff, I should find that it was not bluff at all. Am I right?”
Her eyes danced with merriment. “Ah, Captain,” she said, “where would be the fun of the situation if I were to answer that question? You must either play craven and come back to me after supper or you must risk the consequences. Which is it to be?”
For one unguarded moment he grinned back at her. “If it were a gun you were pointing at my head,” he said, “which might or might not be loaded, I think I would call your bluff, ma’am, and risk having my brains blown out. But a lady’s screams I do not think I could face. May I reserve the dance after supper? And would you perhaps prefer to stroll outside than to dance?”
“Yes and yes, sir,” she said. “How kind you are. Is the music coming to an end? How sad. I wanted to ask more questions about your mother.” She sighed.
“But alas the music is coming to an end,” he said.
“Captain Blake,” she said, “when you smile—or grin, I think would be the more appropriate term—you are more handsome than any other man in the room despite the fact that someone did not set your nose quite straight after it was broken and despite the fact that someone tried to carve a path across your cheeks and nose with some sharp instrument and had considerable success in doing so.”
She laughed merrily at his expression. How did one answer such words?
“I have dozens of questions about those old wounds too,” she said as the music ended and he escorted her back to the side of the ballroom where her court was already gathering. “We will not lack for conversation after supper.”
He bowed over her hand, feeling his back stiffen as he became aware of at least a dozen pairs of eyes watching him, and withdrew to the opposite side of the room, where he stood cursing his luck. Having danced with her and felt the eyes of Viscount Wellington on them as they danced, he should now have been able to withdraw with a clear conscience. He might have begun to focus his mind on the difficult days ahead and to clear it of a woman who despite the efforts of his will had been using him as a toy ever since their first encounter in Lisbon.
Instead of which he had to wait around for at least two hours until the time came to stroll with her in her aunt’s private courtyard—without her chaperone. The very thought set his mind to cursing—and his loins to aching.
* * *
Summer was upon them. It was a warm evening and the countess’s courtyard was still and shaded, protected from whatever breeze there might have been. There were trees to offer coolness to a summer’s day and flowers to add fragrance even to an evening.
“How clever of you to suggest strolling out here,” Joana said, her arm linked through Captain Blake’s. “It is blessedly quiet and cool.” She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of fresh air.
“Extremely clever,” he said, “considering the fact that I did not know of its existence.”
She laughed. She was feeling both exhilarated and sad. Exhilarated because she was to be alone with him for half an hour, and for all his seriousness and incommunicativeness he was more fascinating than any of the numerous gentlemen in the ballroom who would have given a right arm for the privilege of taking his place. Sad because she must deceive him and because she could not be quite herself with him.
Her sadness and the reasons for it disturbed her.
“I suppose,” she said, “we will stroll mutely here if I do not rattle off a whole series of questions. You have talked with Arthur, have you not? He has an assignment for you?”
“I am to return to my regiment tomorrow, ma’am,” he said, “with letters for General Crauford.”
She looked at him and laughed. “The hero of the retreat from Talavera and the occasional reconnaissance officer for the commander in chief,” she said, “brought out of his way to Viseu merely to deliver a lady safely to the bosom of her aunt and to carry letters from one general to another like a little schoolboy running errands? Am I expected to believe that, Captain?”
“Frankly, ma’am,” he said somewhat stiffly, “I do not care what you believe.”
“Oh, do you not?” She slipped her arm from his and stopped walking in order to look up into his face. She smiled at him. “Do you really not care? Dozens of men do. Must you be different in that too? Must you be the only one who does not care whether I am alive or dead?”
“You have broadened the meaning of my words,” he said. “I did not say that.”
“Then you do care?” She ran one finger down his sleeve from elbow to wrist.
“You are playing word games with me,” he said. “I have no skill in them. Your questions presuppose answers, but if I give them, I may be led into saying what I do not wish to say or mean.”
“Ah,” she said, and sighed. “You will be leaving tomorrow, Captain? Will you not be sorry never to see me again?”
He looked down into her eyes and said nothing. And she knew that he had just given her one reason for her fascination with him. He would not allow himself to be led along in conversation like other men. She could not make him say what she wished him to say.
“Never is a long time,” she said, laying a light hand on his sleeve.
He looked down at her hand. “You should not flirt with me,” he said. “We do not inhabit the same world or play the same games, ma’am. Socially speaking, I am a nobody, as I have told you before, and you are a somebody. I am dangerous to flirt with, as you should have learned on a previous occasion. I know neither the rules nor the boundaries of the game.”
He was right. One part of her was terrified. But another part was excited beyond measure. She remembered the feeling of helplessness and the temptation to surrender when he had lifted her against him until only her toes had rested on the floor. She remembered the feel and taste of his tongue deep inside her mouth. And she knew there was danger, danger that the next time he would not stop, danger that the next time she would not stop him.
“Who said anything about flirting?” she said. Her next words surprised her. They were unplanned. “I wish you were not going. I am not ready to say good-bye.”
Her hand was still resting lightly on his arm. She could feel the muscles tense.
“Robert,” she said softly. “It is a lovely name. I knew another Robert once.”
There was a spark of something in his eyes as they looked intently back into hers.
“He was a sweet and gentle boy,” she said, “quite unlike you. Except that he had your blond hair, which he wore long, and your blue eyes, which dreamed and smiled. He died.”
His arm beneath her hand was almost trembling with tension.
“Ah, Robert,” she said, “you do not play fair. You warn me not to flirt, but what choice do I have when you just stand there and will make no move of your own? Are we to return to the ballroom and say a civil good-bye and never see or think of each other again?”
“Why would you wish to see or think of me after tonight?” he asked.
“Why?” She looked up into his eyes and shrugged. “Perhaps because you are different. Perhaps because you have been the only man for a long time who does not want me. And yet you did want me in Obidos, did you not?”
She watched him swallow in the darkness. And she felt strangely like crying. She would see him again. He did not know that, but she did, and she did not want it to happen—not in that way. Damn Arthur and his devious schemes. Why could not Robert have everything explained to him? Why could not his own acting skills be put to the test? Why did she always have to play the eternal flirt? And with the last man on earth she wanted to flirt with?
She sighed. “This has not been a good idea, has it?” she said. “We had better return to the ballroom. There are gentlemen enough there waiting to dance with me or to fetch me drinks or to hold my fan while I adjust a curl. I need not be out here trying to make conversation with a sile
nt man or trying to coax a marble statue to kiss me. It is cold.” She shivered. “Is it not cold?”
“No.” His hands were on her bare arms, large and strong and warm, moving up and down them. “No, it is not cold.” He drew her against him and wrapped his arms warmly about her. She turned her head and rested a cheek against his heart and closed her eyes. And one hand smoothed gently over the top of her head. “And no, I do not want to leave tomorrow, knowing that I will never see you again. But it is a foolish thought. We are from different worlds, ma . . . ma’am.”
“Joana,” she whispered.
“Joana.”
“Robert,” she said, and her eyes were brimming with tears and her throat constricted with them. “Forgive me.” But how could she ask forgiveness in advance without telling him all? She was losing control again. She never lost control. That was what made her so good at her self-imposed job and what gave her command of her own life and destiny.
“For what?” She felt his cheek against the top of her head.
“For Obidos.” She lifted her head and smiled up at him, hoping that in the night light her eyes would appear merely bright. “I behaved abominably.”
He smiled slowly down at her. “Obidos should not have happened,” he said. “This should not be happening.”
“What?” She gazed up into his eyes, her hands spread across the broad expanse of his chest. “What should not be happening?”
“This,” he said, and he kissed her forehead, her temples, her eyes, and her cheeks. And he looked deeply into her eyes as his mouth hovered close to hers.
“But it is,” she said.
“But it is.” He closed the gap between their mouths, kissing her softly and openmouthed.
She moved her hands up to his shoulders and about his neck. One hand played with his close-cropped hair. And she arched her body into his, wanting to feel his hard-muscled length with every part of her. And she wanted him closer and closer yet. She wanted to feel his tongue, but he would do nothing but lick at her lips with it. Of course, she had hurt him at Obidos.
She experimented, touching his lips with her own tongue, pushing it beyond and up behind his upper lip. She pushed beyond his teeth and felt his arms tighten about her suddenly as he sucked inward and she moaned with mingled fear and desire.
“Robert.” She threw her head back, eyes closed, as his mouth moved down to her throat and his hand pushed her gown away from one shoulder and down her arm, exposing one breast. And then his palm was against her nipple, circling it, and his fingers curled in to caress the soft flesh. Her mouth opened in a silent cry and then her fingers twined in his hair as he took the hardened tip of her breast into his mouth and sucked on it, flicking his tongue across it.
She realized in that moment that for all the knowledge and experience she had of sensual matters, she might still be a virgin, though she was not. And she knew why she had both feared and been fascinated by this man since she had first set eyes on him.
And then his face was above hers again, his eyes looking down into her own, and he was drawing her gown back up over her breast and her shoulder.
“A good-bye kiss,” he said. “Doubtless you would get more from another man, but you would not remember with pleasure having given yourself in a moment of passion to a man who is not even a gentleman.”
She felt blinded by hurt at his assumptions about her morality—assumptions that she had fostered by the part she played. And she ached with disappointment, with a purely physical dissatisfaction. Oh, yes, and with an emotional one too.
She smiled. “A kiss?” she said. “Do you call that a kiss, Robert? It was rather naughty, was it not? Perhaps I should report you to my aunt. Or to Arthur.”
“And they will wish to know how I discovered such a conveniently deserted trysting place,” he said. “Perhaps it would be wiser to say nothing.”
“Perhaps it would.” She continued to smile.
“Good-bye, then,” he said briskly, straightening up and brushing at his sleeves. “I shall be taking my leave now.”
“Will you?” she said. “Kiss and run, Robert? How lacking in chivalry you are. The least you could do is mope in a corner for the rest of the evening, looking lovelorn.”
“That is not in my style,” he said, grinning at her briefly so that her knees turned to jelly all over again. “I am expected to be silent and morose and rather uncouth, but definitely not lovelorn. I am supposed to be incapable of such a fine emotion. Besides, I must leave tomorrow and need some sleep.”
“Ah.” She set one hand against his chest and tiptoed two fingers up to his chin. “Take care of yourself, Robert. Don’t go getting yourself killed.”
“I was told just tonight that I am too stubborn to die,” he said, capturing her hand in his and bringing the palm against his mouth. “Don’t worry about me, Joana. And forget about me. I am not worth another thought to you.”
“You are right.” She sighed. “So many new officers arriving here every day, and each one more handsome than the last. It is enough to make a lady wish that the wars will never come to an end.” She laughed lightly. “Escort me back to the ballroom, Robert, and then you may make your escape.” She set a hand on his sleeve.
The crowds had spilled out of the ballroom so that they were surrounded by people long before he left her at its open doors. She smiled brightly at him.
“Au revoir, then,” she said, slipping her hand from his sleeve. “I will not say good-bye, Robert, for I do not really believe in good-byes. We will meet again, I believe, and perhaps sooner than you think. And there are at least half a dozen officers not fifty paces away, all glowering at you, all with itching sword hands. I believe you kept me away for longer than the one set, Captain. For shame!” She tapped his arm sharply with her fan.
And she whisked herself away without giving him a chance to reply. And did not look back to see whether he stood there in the doorway looking after her or whether he hurried away without a backward glance.
She felt, she thought, as she waved her fan before her face and set her eyes to dancing, as if she could sit down in the middle of the dance floor and howl with misery.
Just as if she had fallen in love with Captain Robert Blake or something equally foolish and ridiculous.
10
DESPITE his determination to concentrate on his mission, to put everything out of his mind except Salamanca and what faced him there, Captain Blake found that as he traveled back westward into the hills to meet the Ordenanza leader, Duarte Ribeiro, who was to guide him to the Spanish border, he could do no such thing.
There were two reasons, one trivial to his own mind, the other a heavy weight.
The trivial reason was Joana da Fonte, the Marquesa das Minas. He tried to think of her by her full title, not just as Joana. He tried to distance himself from her. He tried not to remember how she had seemed to move beyond mere flirtation on that final evening into a real fondness for him. He tried not to believe that she had been in any way fond of him.
She was an accomplished flirt and by her own admission he was one of the few men not to fall to her charms. She had been forced by her very nature, perhaps, into using tactics other than her usual ones. She had been forced into trying what had seemed very like sincerity. Sometimes he felt guilty about suspecting her of using just another form of flirtation. And sometimes he called himself fool for wondering if she had been sincere.
He thought of all the questions she had asked, of the way in which she had tried to find out more about him and about the reason for his summons to headquarters. And at such times he remembered that she was half-French and wondered if the commander-in-chief knew that fact and if it were of any significance anyway. After all, she was also half-English and had been married to a Portuguese nobleman.
He wanted to rid his mind of her, but whenever he was not consciously thinking of something else, there she was in his
thoughts and in his dreams and emotions. In his blood. There were times when he regretted pulling back from that final embrace, when he had sensed her surrender. When he might perhaps have possessed her. And perhaps have worked her out of his system once and for all.
He hated pining for what could not be had. He hated himself for reaching beyond his grasp—for forgetting who and what he was.
And then there was the weight and the burden on his mind that made him forget for minutes and even hours at a stretch that he was going voluntarily into danger and perhaps death, that he was expecting the humiliation of capture and the difficult task of convincing his captors that the sealed paper in his boot heel was an authentic diagram of the British defenses of Lisbon. That perhaps many weary months would pass before he was exchanged for a captive French officer.
During his almost eleven years in the army he had heard from his father three times. He had written back only once—with condolences on the death of his father’s wife almost eight years before. Another letter had found him at Viseu mere minutes before he had been planning to leave, an old letter that had come to headquarters and been sent on to the Light Division at the Coa and sent back for redirection to the hospital at Lisbon. But someone had had the presence of mind to know that he was in Viseu.
It was not from his father. It was from his father’s solicitor informing him that according to his father’s will he had been left an estate of moderate size in Berkshire and a sizable fortune. It seemed that another letter informing him of his father’s death must have gone astray. The bulk of the property and fortune, of course, had gone to his father’s heir, a second cousin and the new Marquess of Quesnay.
His father was dead, and there was no point now in regretting the bitterness and disillusion that had caused him to break off all relations with him. He had broken away because when all was said and done he was to his father only a bastard son, to be provided for because it made his father feel magnanimous to do so.