by Mary Balogh
“May I send for him now?” he asked. “Time is of the essence, Jeanne. We must know the truth.”
“Oh, by all means,” she said. “This I can scarcely wait for.”
“It may take a little while,” he said. “I do not know just where he is at the moment, the necessity of keeping him under close confinement having passed. And I would wish Captains Dupuis and Dionne to be present, as they were at his interrogation two days ago. And Colonel Leroux, whom I put in charge of it. I find talking with captives tiresome and a little demeaning.”
“Colonel Leroux?” Joana said. “Do I know him?”
“He has just returned from Paris,” he said. “You will like him, Jeanne. A handsome fellow.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling, “then you are sure to be right. I always like handsome men.”
“I shall have refreshments sent to you while you wait,” the general said, getting to his feet. “I shall have everyone here as quickly as possible.”
“There is no need to hurry,” she said, laughing. “The pleasure of this confrontation is to be anticipated and savored, General.”
Her smile held until he had left the room. And then she found that her hands were shaking in her lap and her legs were shaking against the chair on which she sat. And her breath came in uneven gasps.
He was safe, then. Oh, God, he was safe. She had scarcely dared hope that he was still alive. The whole scheme had seemed madder as she had drawn closer to Salamanca. And even now it seemed insane. But at least he was safe thus far. As was she.
She dreaded meeting his eyes. That was going to be the worst part. Once their eyes had met for the first time and he knew, or thought he knew, then it would be easier. But there had to be that first meeting of their eyes.
And she dreaded it more than she had dreaded anything else in her life.
* * *
Captain Blake buckled up his sword belt slowly, glanced at his rifle, which was propped carefully in one corner of the comfortable room he had been allotted—unguarded—in the confiscated manor where several French officers had their billets, and decided to leave it where it was. They wanted to talk to him again.
He had had a nightmare of a couple of days and nights, though he had had invitations galore and was being treated far more like an honored guest than like a captive. In all the tortured hours he had not been able to fathom how it had happened. How had the papers come to be switched? Carelessness on someone’s part—a quite incredible and criminal carelessness? Or had someone done it deliberately? Did the commander in chief have a traitor on his staff?
Incredibly, he had quite deliberately put himself and his paper into French hands, only to find that he had put there the destruction of the British and Portuguese armies and the whole of the European cause. If the British were expelled from Portugal, then the whole of Europe would be under Napoleon Bonaparte’s control again.
And he had unwittingly made that possible almost single-handedly.
He fussed over straightening his uniform, though all the fussing in the world could not make it look anything better than shabby and even though a French lieutenant waited politely outside his open door to conduct him to General Valéry’s rooms.
After two days in which to think, Captain Blake still did not know quite how to handle the situation. If he tried to persuade them that the plans were fake, that the French were meant to be misled by them, then they would realize that he lied. If they were fake, then it would be in his own interests to pretend that they were real. And yet if he kept his mouth shut and let them draw their own conclusions, then surely they would conclude that the plans were authentic.
With no time to prepare himself two days before, he had done both—scoffed at their belief at first, until he realized how his scorn would be interpreted, and then closed his mouth and opened it only to utter various obscenities when they pressed questions on him. He had even thought at one point in some horror that he was going to faint.
Damn Wellington, he thought as he strode to the door and nodded curtly to the lieutenant. And damn this spying business. And damn him for ever letting it be known that he had a gift for learning languages quickly. He longed to be with his riflemen again, taking charge of his company, which was what he was trained to do and had some skill at doing. An actor he was not. And even an experienced actor might balk at having to walk onstage without having learned his lines and with no script from which to learn them—and his director a few hundred miles away.
Well, he was about to step onstage—again.
* * *
“Do you know Captain Dupuis and Captain Dionne, Jeanne?” General Valéry asked, returning to the room with those two officers fifteen minutes after leaving it. “Jeanne da Fonte, Marquesa das Minas, gentlemen. Daughter of the Comte de Levisse, with the emperor’s embassy at Vienna.”
“Henri,” Joana said, smiling warmly at Captain Dionne. “How lovely to see you again. Have you recovered from the wound to your elbow?” She extended a hand for him to bow over. “Captain Dupuis? I have not had the pleasure.”
“It is all mine, my lady,” he said, clicking his heels together and bowing smartly.
“Blake has been sent for,” the general said. “Colonel Leroux is engaged in urgent business, but will be with us in a few minutes’ time.”
“Well, then.” Joana used her most charming smile on the three officers while her heart palpitated with the suspense. Part of her willed the door to open to admit him so that they might get this initial encounter over with. The other part willed someone else to come through the door to announce that he was nowhere to be found. “Henri will have time to tell me how he recovered from his injury. And Captain Dupuis . . .” She looked at him inquiringly.
“Antoine Dupuis, my lady,” he said, flushing and bowing again.
“And Antoine may tell me all about himself.” She watched the captain falling for her charms. “But first let me say how wonderful it is to be among my own people again and speaking French.”
The door opened again, and Joana, who had chosen to stand and position herself close to a window opposite the door, looked fixedly at the general, her smile held firmly in place, afraid to turn her head. Oh, God, the moment had come. And why she should so wish to avoid it, she did not know. She was, after all, merely doing a job, as was he. It did not matter what he thought of her, provided the job was done successfully.
But it did matter. For some reason that she was afraid to fathom, it did matter.
She turned her head to look with cool amusement at the man who had entered the room and stopped inside the door.
And forgot Captain Robert Blake. And forgot General Valéry and the other French officers. Forgot where she was and why she was there. Forgot everything except one afternoon three years before when she had hidden in an attic, more terrified than anyone ever deserved to be in this life, watching a French officer wrestle her struggling half-sister to the floor and rape her, making animal noises of appreciation as he did so, while three other soldiers stood and watched and awaited their turn, cheering and laughing and making bawdy comments. And then the same French officer, impatient, the sport over, jerking a thumb at one of the soldiers, who raised his bayonet . . .
“But my important business would have waited if you had but told me what beauty waited in your room, General,” the man who had entered said, smiling. “You said only that there was a lady here who might help throw light on our dilemma.”
A tall and handsome man with dark hair and mustache and experienced charm. A man who was used to getting what he wanted, especially the women he wanted. A man who expected women to fall in love with him and was not often disappointed. A man who raped for sport and ordered the execution of innocents with a jerk of the thumb.
Joana’s lashes swept down over her cheeks and lifted again slowly. Her smile reached her eyes and made them sparkle.
“Colonel Marcel
Leroux, Jeanne,” General Valéry said. “Recently returned from Paris, though he was in Portugal with Junot in ’07. Jeanne da Fonte, Marquesa das Minas, Colonel. Levisse’s daughter. She has just come from Portugal.”
Colonel Leroux hurried across the room. “You are the marquesa, by Jove?” he said. “The general has spoken of you. I am charmed, my lady.” He reached out a hand for hers.
“Oh, what has he been saying?” she said, setting her hand in the colonel’s and feeling the terrible, almost irresistible urge to shudder and snatch the hand away. “Dreadful things, no doubt, and not a one of them true. I shall have to have a good long talk with you myself—Marcel? May I call you that?—and set straight a few misunderstandings.” Her lips parted as he raised her hand to his lips.
“I find myself all impatience for the clearing up of those misunderstandings, my lady,” he said. “All impatience.”
“Jeanne,” she said softly, and her eyes fluttered to his mouth before rising to his eyes again.
And then the door opened once more and she remembered in a flash and very nearly panicked in earnest. For she had had no time to prepare herself. She felt naked and exposed. Colonel Leroux moved to one side so that he could face the door. Foolishly she turned her head and watched him, and then it became next to impossible to turn her head back again.
But no one had spoken. She wondered if minutes or merely seconds had passed. She looked toward the door. And her lips pursed slowly and her eyes lit up with amusement.
“Why, Robert,” she said, “it is you. How very amusing. But why did you not tell me that this is where you were being sent? I might have had the pleasure of looking forward to meeting you again. Perhaps you might even have escorted me here, as you escorted me to Viseu. But do tell me.” She took two steps forward and smiled dazzlingly at him. “Did you really come here as a spy, as General Valéry says? How very naughty of you. You swore to me that you were returning to your regiment.”
He stood inside the door, his feet slightly apart, one hand frozen a few inches above the hilt of his sword, his face pale and expressionless, looking at her. There was a yellow-and-purple bruise along his right temple and spreading along his eyelid. His eye was bloodshot.
“Hello, Joana,” he said finally, when it seemed that the silence must have extended for five full minutes. His voice sounded quite relaxed. “I suppose I might have expected to find you here among your own people. Foolish of me to have been surprised momentarily.”
She had guessed a thousand things he might say first. None of them was even close to what he actually had said.
She laughed with light amusement.
13
HE had never seen her dressed in anything but white. Now she was wearing a dress of vivid emerald green and looking more beautiful than any woman had a right to look. Her hair was curled about her face so that her eyes looked shadowed and even more alluring than usual.
Those were the first foolish thoughts that rushed into his mind as he stepped into General Valéry’s room and saw her standing at a window directly in his line of vision.
The next thought, which came almost simultaneously, was that she was a prisoner too, that they were going to use her to get the truth out of him, threaten to harm her if he did not speak. His hand moved without conscious volition to his sword.
The third thought stilled his hand. She was French. Of course. She was French.
And then she turned to look at him and she spoke to him with her customary mockery and he knew that the game was up, that he had lost, and that England had lost, and Portugal too. And he felt a curious relaxation now that it was all over, and a reluctant admiration for France’s most unlikely—and therefore, of course, it’s most likely—spy.
He did not hate her—yet. They were, after all, in the same business. They just happened to be on opposite sides.
“Hello, Joana,” he said “I suppose I might have expected to find you here among your own people. Foolish of me to have been surprised momentarily.”
She laughed. “My own people?” she said.
“You were Jeanne Morisette before you acquired your present title,” he said. “Daughter of the Comte de Levisse, former royalist.”
She laughed again. “I underestimated you, Robert,” she said. “I could find out nothing about you, much as I tried. I did not even realize that you were trying to find out about me. Not many people in Portugal know what you know.” She turned to smile at General Valéry. “Do you see what I mean about this man being one of Lord Wellington’s most able spies?” she said.
Captain Blake kept his eyes on her. What a strange thing to say, he thought, but he kept his face expressionless.
“Shall we all take a seat?” the general suggested. “There are several things to be said, I believe.”
“I would prefer to stand,” Captain Blake said, not removing his eyes from Joana. She looked back, not one whit abashed by her duplicity, which had just been revealed to him.
“So would I.” She smiled slowly at him.
And so all the gentlemen were forced to remain on their feet.
“Captain Blake,” General Valéry said, “according to the paper that was hidden in your boot, the main British defenses are centered in three lines north of Lisbon, stretching as far north as Torres Vedras.”
No question had been asked, but the general paused.
“Yes,” Captain Blake said, “that is what the paper shows.”
“And yet you claimed two days ago that the paper was a fake, designed to mislead us.”
“Yes,” the captain said. “I did say that.”
“And what do you say now?” General Valéry asked. “Now that we have our own source of information, what do you say?”
“I say that the paper is genuine,” Captain Blake said, “as was a previous, less-detailed one that fell into your hands. I say that it is genuine but that you are meant to believe that it must be false. Or is it the other way around? I forget my part in the presence of such dazzling beauty. Yes. I believe I am supposed to say that it is fake so that you will believe that it must be authentic. Devil take it, I really do not know. Perhaps you should ask me again, General, when the lady is not present.”
She smiled at him.
“What do you know of this, Jeanne?” Colonel Leroux asked. “Do you know the truth? As matters stand now, the paper is worse than useless to us.”
Her smile turned into laughter. “Robert,” she said, “do you not remember escorting me from Lisbon to Viseu less than two weeks ago?”
He said nothing. But it was all over, he knew. She must remember as clearly as he the Pass of Montachique.
“Do you not remember the long tedious days of travel?” she said. “Do you not remember our laughing at the few pathetic attempts the peasants were making to protect themselves against attack? Do you not remember the long evening at Torres Vedras, when you made sure that my chaperone was not present and we talked and talked and then you tried to make love to me? Are you blushing, Captain? You need not. Everyone tries to make love to me.” She shrugged. “Only the favored few succeed.”
She looked sideways beneath her lashes at the colonel.
Captain Blake stood quite still and chose to say nothing. Her version of what had happened was somewhat distorted, he thought, and she seemed completely to have forgotten that it was at Obidos, not at Torres Vedras, that something similar had taken place. But those details were unimportant. It was the rest of what she was saying or not saying that mattered. Was it possible that she was not now putting two and two together even if she had not done so at the time? He began to see a glimmering of hope.
“I remember our commenting on the peacefulness of the scene at sunset,” she said. “And we were at that moment right in the center of the most northerly of these formidable defenses? We had already passed through the other two lines?”
Captain Blake shrug
ged.
“Oh, come now.” She laughed merrily again and took several steps toward him. “It was a very poor try, Robert. There is nothing there at all, is there? Once Marshal Massena takes the border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, only the English forces of Viscount Wellington and the sorry forces of Portugal will stand between him and Lisbon. Why else would the English forces be concentrated in northern Portugal? Why would Arthur himself be there? Would they not all hide safely behind these impregnable defenses or else be in the south to defend the weak route to Lisbon?”
Hope was hammering with the blood through his temples. He had a part to play. He still had a part. But everything depended upon his not overacting.
His nostrils flared.
“What do you say, Captain?” the colonel asked.
“I say nothing,” he said curtly. “The lady is undoubtedly right. Ladies always are, I believe.”
Joana finally sat down on the nearest chair. She crossed one leg over the other and swung one foot, slippered in green to match her dress. She looked faintly bored.
“But your tone would imply that you know her to be wrong,” the colonel said.
Captain Blake shrugged.
“It is a pity,” Joana said, “that I decided to journey to Lisbon and back when I did. A pity for the English, that is. I feel almost sorry for you, Robert. Have you ever failed before? This will damage your reputation, will it, and Arthur will think twice about sending you on another such mission? Poor Robert. You may be doomed yet to having to fight with your regiment. But perhaps all will be well. Neither you nor Arthur could have known that I would be following you here, I suppose.”
“You devil!” Captain Blake said with quiet menace. “Lord Wellington respected you sufficiently to provide you with an escort from Lisbon.”
The general coughed. “I would ask you to remember that you are addressing a lady, Captain,” he said.