by Mary Balogh
“Lord,” Captain Blake said, “if I had just anticipated your offer, Colonel, I would have secreted some scrap of paper in a pocket so that I could now produce it and retain my dignity. Alas, I did not have the forethought.”
“I shall conduct him to an anteroom with one of the sergeants for the search, if you wish, sir,” Captain Dupuis offered.
“Here,” the general said, still without turning from the window. “He will be searched here. And now.”
“Ah, regrettably, monsieur,” the colonel said, “I must have you searched. Will you cooperate and remove articles of your clothing one at a time, if you please? Or shall I give the task to one of the sergeants?”
Captain Blake turned and looked at the silent figures flanking the doorway. “One of them is not the clumsy soldier who hit me in the eye with my own rifle last night, is he?” he asked. “That was a trifle painful, as I suppose it was meant to be. No, don’t trouble yourself, Colonel. I have been out of a nurse’s care for a number of years and know well how to remove my clothes. Getting them back on again, of course, is a little more tricky but since there are no ladies present, I am not shy.”
He stood up, removed his coat, and handed it to a sergeant, who stepped forward at a nod from the colonel.
He was very much afraid half an hour later as he stood naked in the middle of the room, wrapping about his waist a towel that Captain Dionne had thoughtfully provided, that Wellington’s staff officers at Viseu had been just too clever for their own good.
“Nothing,” the colonel said.
“He had time to get rid of them,” the general said. “Have the area where he was found searched.”
“Or one of the partisans took them, sir,” Captain Dionne suggested.
“Or there never were any,” the colonel said. “All is committed to his memory, in all probability. And we do not even know if he came to bring information or to gather it. Perhaps there is nothing yet in his memory.”
“Captain Blake.” The general turned away from the window finally, and his pale gray eyes raked over his adversary from naked shoulders to bare feet. “You may be thankful this day that you are a British soldier in uniform and not a Spanish partisan. We know how to get information from our friends the Spaniards.”
“I can almost feel my fingernails and toenails being torn out,” Captain Blake said.
“It is, I believe, a little painful,” the general said. “Information comes long before all twenty are lost.”
“His boots are very new in comparison to the rest of his uniform,” one of the sergeants—the one Captain Blake would have labeled as the less intelligent—muttered to his companion. Captain Blake could have hugged the man, and wanted to tell him to speak up. But his words had been heard.
“Your boots are new, Captain?” the colonel asked, frowning at them.
“The others walked off my feet one day when I was not watching,” Captain Blake said.
“As your coat seems about to do,” the general said. “But you have not had a new coat, Captain.”
Captain Blake shrugged. “New boots this year, perhaps a new coat next,” he said. “One does not make a fortune as a captain in the British army, sir. Perhaps French captains do?” He looked politely at Captains Dupuis and Dionne.
“Nothing behind the leather, sir,” the unintelligent sergeant said, running his hands hard all over the surface of the boots.
“The toes,” the colonel said. “The heels.”
Captain Blake smiled nervously. “How am I to walk home without my boots?” he asked. “Has this not gone far enough? Must you make yourselves look quite ridiculous?” He shrugged and tried to look nonchalant as both the general and the colonel looked keenly at him. But he allowed one hand to open and close at his side.
The colonel nodded to the sergeant.
“We will replace your boots, Captain,” he said. “As a gift.”
And so the paper was found at last and unsealed and spread on the top of the desk as the general finally walked over from his far window. He bent over the paper with the colonel while the two captains craned their necks from the two sides of the desk for a glimpse of the diagram.
“Ah, Captain,” the colonel said, looking up after a silent minute, “you may dress yourself and take a seat again. Your boots, I am afraid, are ruined, but I do not believe the floor is too cold. Is it?”
“Damn your eyes,” Captain Blake said from between his teeth.
The colonel shrugged. “Pardon, Captain,” he said, “but we have a job to do, just as you do.”
Captain Blake was in the process of unwrapping the towel from his waist when the general finally spoke.
“So that other paper was correct, though much vaguer than this,” he said. “We are expected from the north, and our way to Lisbon is being effectively barred.” He banged a fist on the table. “Now the time of indecision is past. Now the marshal will know which route to take.” He looked up at Captain Blake, whose hand held a corner of the towel as if frozen to it. “We have that damned Wellesley at last—right where we want him. Or Wellington, as he is called now.”
Captain Blake took one step forward and looked down at the diagram. Even upside down he could see at a glance that it was not the paper he had been shown, the one that he had thought to be in his boot heel. What he was looking at was a perfect diagram of the Lines of Torres Vedras.
Oh, Christ, he thought. There seemed suddenly to be no air left in the room. Christ! And he stood perfectly still and expressionless, sending up frantic prayers to a God who could hear in silence.
12
THE “aunt” with whom Joana stayed when in Salamanca was in reality a former governess her mother had employed for the children of her first marriage. If anyone were to try to make a count of the number of aunts she had in the Peninsula, Joana sometimes thought, he would begin to wonder about her grandparents. She could probably discover an aunt in almost every city in Spain and Portugal if she had to.
Señora Sanchez—Aunt Teresa—lived on a quiet street in Salamanca, close to the Plaza Mayor. The white-and-gold carriage of the Marquesa das Minas arrived there late one afternoon, but the marquesa who stepped out of it was a different one from the one who had stepped in at Viseu. This marquesa wore her hair in softer curls about her face and she wore a dress and pelisse of vivid royal blue.
If she must be basically the same, Joana had decided a few years before—rich, spoiled, flirtatious—then at least she would change incidentals. There had to be some variety to add spice to life. In Portugal she was the pale Portuguese marquesa; in Spain she was the flamboyant French marquesa. There must be subtle differences.
It did not take long for word of her arrival to circulate, though the very lateness of the hour forced several impatient officers to cool their heels overnight before they could decently call upon her the next morning.
Colonel Guy Radisson and Major Pierre Etienne were the first to arrive—and they appeared on Señora Sanchez’s doorstep almost simultaneously.
“Guy! Pierre!” she exclaimed as she entered the salon where they waited. And she hurried across the room, a hand outstretched to each, and smiled as each lifted a hand to his lips.
“Jeanne,” Colonel Radisson said, “the sun has risen on Salamanca again this morning.
“Madame,” Major Etienne said, “now our reason for wishing to invade Portugal no longer exists.”
She withdrew her hand from his and tapped his arm. “Do not let the emperor hear you say that, Pierre,” she said. “But how wonderful it is to be home—home among my people, even if not home in my own land. Portugal grows to be a bore.”
“Then you must allow me to escort you home to France, Jeanne,” the colonel said. “I shall be returning there soon, I believe. Though if you are to remain here, perhaps I shall request an extended tour of duty.”
She laughed and drew her other hand aw
ay from his. “But I cannot leave Portugal,” she said. “All of the property that Luis left me is there. All my wealth. And how could I live without my wealth? I am afraid luxury is the breath of life to me.”
She waved the gentlemen to chairs, sent for refreshments, and resigned herself to a morning of visits and conversation. She was not wrong. She had seven visitors in all—all gentlemen—in addition to four notes and one bouquet of flowers.
“Such a wonderful welcome home,” she murmured to her admirers as they finally began to take their leave. “Ah, no, Jacques, I will not be able to attend Colonel and Madame Savard’s soiree this evening. How sad I am. But I have just had a note from General Valéry, you see, inviting me to dinner. Wait, Guy, if you please. I have need of your escort.”
If Colonel Radisson had other duties to rush back to, he did not show any impatience as he waited for the last of the visitors to take their lingering leave of the marquesa. She turned to him finally with a brilliant smile.
“Everyone is so kind,” she said. “Rushing here to pay their respects almost before I have arrived.”
“Kindness has little to do with it, Jeanne,” he said. “Do you really grow more beautiful every day, or does it merely seem that way?”
She thought for a moment. “I think not,” she said. “Every second day, Guy.” And she laughed gleefully, her eyes shining at him.
“Ah, Jeanne,” he said, “have you ever regretted your rejection of my marriage proposal? I would renew it in a moment if you were just to say the word.”
“I regret it every moment, Guy,” she said, reaching out both hands for him to clasp. “But it would not do. I am too restless for you and too . . . oh, changeable. Yes, and too expensive too. I am dreadfully expensive, you know. And selfish. I am enjoying my freedom. Can we not merely be friends?”
“Better friends than nothing at all,” he said with a sigh. “How may I be of service to you?”
“Take me to General Valéry,” she said. “He wishes to see me before tonight.”
“Ah, I have a general for a rival, then?” he asked.
She pulled her hands from his and clucked her tongue. “He is old enough to be my father,” she said. “In fact, he is a friend of my father’s. We have business to discuss.”
“Is it as I have suspected, then?” he asked. “Do you bring information out of Portugal, Jeanne? It is dangerous. I hate to think of such a delicate lady putting herself into danger.”
“Bring information out?” She laughed. “How absurd you are, Guy. Who would entrust me with any information that might be of use to an enemy? I should blurt it out without thinking to the very next person to whom I spoke. Papa used to call me a featherbrain. I am afraid, alas, that there was some truth in the insult. Will you escort me?”
“Of course,” he said with a bow. “Anyplace, anytime, Jeanne. You have only to ask.”
“I shall fetch my bonnet,” she said, “and order the carriage.”
Less than an hour later she was seated in an elegant room which had been assigned to General Valéry at the French headquarters. He had handed her a glass of wine and they had politely reminisced about her father.
“So,” he said, “you have returned, Jeanne. Did you have any trouble leaving Portugal? The English have been guarding the border so diligently that we have been able to gain little idea of what is going on in Portugal itself.”
“Oh,” she said with a wave of one hand, “I am allowed to come and go as I please. What threat can a mere woman be, after all?” She smiled sweetly at him and fluttered her eyelashes.
“You do it so well, Jeanne,” he said. “Anyone who did not know you would think you quite harmless and entirely—pardon me—giddy.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “one grows tired of constantly playing a part. It is good to be home.”
“And what is going on in Portugal?” he asked, seating himself opposite her and looking intently at her so that Joana knew that at last the meeting had really begun.
“Oh,” she said, “the Viscount Wellington—he allows me to call him Arthur, General. Is that not droll? The Viscount Wellington is in Viseu in the north, as is the bulk of the army. A small part of it is still in the south. They are waiting for you to attack. I am sure you must know all this. I am afraid I always feel inadaquate when I come to report to you. I always wish I could bring more information. But I am just a woman, you see. All I can do is observe and keep my ear to the ground. No interesting documents ever fall into my hands and no one ever confides top secret information. It is sad.”
“But you do very well, Jeanne,” he said. “You are a keen observer. Sometimes your observations are more important than you realize. Where have you traveled recently?”
“Before coming here?” she said. “To Lisbon and back to Viseu again. I had to make an excuse to go to Lisbon—I was bored at Viseu, you know, and had to go to seek more entertainment. I wanted to go, knowing that I was coming here soon and hoping to pick up some information for you. But alas, there was nothing.”
“Nothing at all?” he asked.
“Only balls and flirtation and endless travel,” she said. “It was very tedious and very pointless.”
He sat forward in his chair. “We have an English captive,” he said. “Recently arrived. A captain. An impudent fellow. A spy, of course.”
“Not a very skilled one, if he allowed himself to be caught,” she said. “What was he doing?”
“Trying to communicate with some partisans within the city,” he said. “Others who were with him escaped, more is the shame, or we would have wrung more information about the whole scheme before they died. We cannot torture or execute a British soldier. And we have been forced to give him parole and return his sword and rifle to him.”
“Rifle?” She raised her eyebrows.
“I would have liked to smash it into a thousand pieces,” he said. “Damned weapons. Why our own light infantrymen cannot have been supplied with them by now, I will never know. They are twice as accurate as muskets.”
“An officer of the Rifles?” she said.
“Blake,” he said. “A captain. He had nothing but impudence to throw in our teeth until we found his paper, and then he admitted that he was to show the paper to the partisans in this part of the world so that they could do all in their power to make us behave like Wellington’s puppets during the summer campaign in order to give him the advantage.”
“Captain Blake,” Joana said laughing. “I know him. He was assigned to escort me to Viseu. He came here and you caught him? Oh, he will not like that.”
“I gather he was not too pleased,” General Valéry said.
“I understand that he is one of Lord Wellington’s most trusted and successful spies,” she said.
“Is he, by thunder?” the general said. “Now, there you are of value, you see, Jeanne, without even realizing the fact. The man was bumbling, aghast, stuttering, and stammering when we saw his paper, at one moment telling us that it was a bluff and laughing at us for thinking Wellington would send an accurate diagram of his defenses right into enemy territory, and the next moment clamping his lips shut and turning as white as chalk and refusing to say another word except the occasional string of unrepeatable insults.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Doubtless he is a good actor. He would have to be to have won such a reputation, would he not?”
“There is the problem, though, Jeanne,” he said. “What are we to believe? The diagram shows formidable and quite impregnable defenses about Lisbon that would make it madness for us to begin the assault on the northern fortresses that are ready to be begun any day now. And the diagram confirms what we had earlier reasons to believe might be the case. And yet there is the puzzling problem of why the English would allow this diagram to come so close to our hands—and right into them, as it turns out. If the partisans were to be alerted, would it not have made m
ore sense to have Captain Blake merely tell them from memory? We have learned everything and nothing from the capture of this spy.”
“Where are these formidable defenses supposed to be?” she asked.
“North of Lisbon,” he said. “Three separate lines stretching from the sea to the river. We could take Portugal, Jeanne. The marshal and I are both convinced of that. But what would be the point if we cannot take Lisbon and drive the English out of Europe once and for all? It seems that we must go south after all and tackle the fortress of Badajoz. But it is getting late in the year to be taking that slower route. The siege may last for months. And perhaps it is all unnecessary if that dratted diagram is a hoax.”
Joana was laughing. “North of Lisbon?” she said. “Three lines of formidable and impregnable defenses? Absurd, General. Absolutely absurd. I traveled through that area just two weeks ago—with Captain Blake. Oh, I would just like to see his face if he were to see me here. Would his acting skills hold up, I wonder?” She laughed again and drew a lace handkerchief from her reticule in order to dab at her eyes.
The general looked at her fixedly. “It might work, too, by thunder,” he said. “Would you be willing, Jeanne?”
Her laughter stopped as she looked across at him again. “To confront Captain Blake?” she said. She smiled slowly. “Why not? Oh, I think it would be a great pleasure, General. Yes, indeed it would. Oh, let us do it.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.
“It might mean that you will never be able to return to Portugal,” he said quietly.
She sobered again. “Ah, but before the summer is out, Portugal will be a part of the empire, as it was always intended to be, will it not?” she said. “I will return, General.” She smiled slowly. “I shall enter Lisbon on your arm. I shall give a ball in your honor and in the honor of Marshal Massena. Oh, it will be wonderful to be in Portugal and home all at the same time.”