by Mary Balogh
He belted on his sword, slid her knife inside his belt, and hoisted both his rifle and her musket onto his right shoulder. There was only a little food left. They had better postpone their breakfast in case they did not find anywhere to replenish their supplies during the day.
“Ready?” he asked.
“For anything,” she said, smiling dazzlingly at him. “Lead the way, sir.”
He led the way, wondering when the novelty would wear off and aching muscles and blistered feet would wipe the smile from her face. And when the heat of the day would have her begging him to stop. And when hunger would make her cross and irritable. But for the moment, all was adventure for her.
He looked back to make sure she was following him closely down the slope. She smiled at him again.
And God, it was hard not to smile back. It was hard not to revel in the feeling of relaxed well-being that the night’s two lovings had brought to his body.
19
BY early evening they had reached another ravine, more shallow than the one where Duarte’s band had been camped, less wooded, with the stream narrower and more shallow. But nevertheless it provided welcome shelter from the sweltering hot late-August day. They had passed two remote farms, but had stopped at neither. They were close to Almeida, Captain Blake had said. He wanted to have a look at it before proceeding with his orders.
“There is no point in forcing these poor people into leaving their homes and burning everything they leave behind them,” he had said, “until it is necessary to do so. Perhaps Almeida will hold out until the autumn rains and the French will decide not to advance into Portugal this year after all.”
And so they had trudged onward, not even stopping to replenish their food supplies. But in the heat of the day they were not hungry. Only thirsty. And so the sight of water was welcome indeed.
Joana sank down on her knees beside the stream and drank deeply and gratefully before lifting her head to find that the captain was doing the same thing.
“I thought we would not stop,” she said. “I thought you would force me on. That is partly what today has been all about, is it not, Robert? To see how much endurance I have? To see how loudly I would lament the absence of my carriage and my servants?”
She knew it was the reason. There had been no sign of pursuit all day, and they really should have stopped at those farms, if only to warn the inhabitants of what might be expected of them at any moment. When he sat on the bank, cross-legged, and did not look at her or smile, she was even more certain. He would love to hear her whine and complain and beg for mercy.
She slipped off her sandals and lowered her feet into the water, wincing with the cold and—yes—with some pain too. She wriggled her toes.
“What are you planning to do at Almeida?” she asked. “Raise the siege single-handed?” She swished her feet in the water and wriggled her toes again. She could see that he was watching them.
“See if Cox and the garrison there are holding out,” he said. “If they are, Joana, and we move off to the west, I will be safe and you will be doomed. Your lover will not dare follow you deeper into Portugal until the fort has fallen.”
“Then I shall have to hope that it falls without delay,” she said.
“I would not count on it.” He turned his head to look at her. “Cox is a stubborn devil and Almeida not an easy fortress to storm.”
She shrugged and looked back at him. “Marcel will come,” she said. “I know he will. No matter what the danger.” And she believed her own words. He would come. He had to come. She would not believe that she had found him at last and ensnared his heart, only to lose him because she had wanted to kill him in Portugal rather than in Salamanca. “Are we going to stay here tonight?”
He looked about with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It seems as good a place as any. There, I think.” He pointed to a group of trees that was denser than any other. “We will be well-hidden and well-sheltered. We will find a more comfortable bed there than last night’s.”
She smiled at him. “My bed was very comfortable last night,” she said.
He was not pleased by the new turn their relationship had taken. She could tell that by the way he had walked all day a little ahead of her, saying nothing beyond purely mundane remarks concerning their journey. Nothing personal. No looks that revealed his awareness that they had become lovers the night before.
She had been glad all day long that she was walking a little behind him. For her looks had revealed that awareness. She had watched him as he walked, his long powerful legs and slim hips and waist, his broad back and shoulders, his wavy blond hair curling over his collar, his effortless carrying of two heavy guns as well as his sword. And she had shamelessly undressed him with her eyes and liked what she had seen. And she had deliberately relived his lovemaking and knew, inexperienced as she was, that he was an expert lover and that he knew far more than he had shown her the night before.
She wanted more. She wanted all his expertise. And she wanted soft looks from him and soft words too. But for the time being she would settle for the expertise.
“Are we going to make love again tonight?” she asked him.
He picked up a stone and sent it splashing into the stream. “We had better eat what remains of our food,” he said, “and move our things into the trees.”
“Is that yes or no?” she asked him, smiling. “Robert, may I borrow my knife for a minute?”
“No,” he said, getting to his feet.
“Are you not going to ask why I want it?” She sighed. “Must you assume that I want to carve my initials into your chest?”
“If you have a legitimate need for a knife,” he said, “I will use it for you.”
“Will you?” She looked up at him. “You will be pleased at this, Robert. It will confirm all your suspicions about me and my soft living. I have a blister that needs to be burst. And it hurts like a thousand devils.”
“Show me,” he said, and he stooped down on his haunches beside her.
She lifted one foot out of the water and showed him the large blister on the inside of her heel, just below her ankle, where the strap of her sandal had been rubbing her all day.
“Joana.” He sounded angry rather than sympathetic. “That must have been giving you agonies for hours. I suppose you were too proud to complain.”
“Too stubborn,” she said. “It is just what you expected of me, is it not? I slipped the strap down so that it was no longer rubbing.”
He took her foot in his hand and touched gently the tender skin around the blister. “You should have told me,” he said.
His hand was warm against the chilled flesh of her foot. His head was bent close to her own. He smelled of dust and sweat. He smelled rather wonderful.
“What would you have done?” she asked. “Carried me?”
“We might have stopped at one of the farms,” he said.
“And you could have had a marvelous time scowling and sneering with an I-told-you-so look all over your face,” she said. “No, thank you. A little pain does not quite kill.”
He tested his thumb to the blister. It was sore and definitely needed bursting.
“Lend me the knife,” she said. “If you wish, you may stand ten feet off and point your rifle between my eyes.”
He drew the knife from his belt with his free hand and felt its tip. “You could do real damage with this,” he said.
“That is the whole idea.” She smiled up at him.
“You had better look away,” he said.
She continued to smile at him as he frowned in concentration, pricked the blister, and lowered her foot into the water again. His face was still looking somewhat battered from his week’s ordeal, but the bruises succeeded only in making him look even more tough and attractive.
“We will bind it tomorrow morning before continuing on our way,” he said.
>
“With what?” She laughed lightly. “Oh, but I know the answer. You are going to be unutterably gallant and tear strips from your shirt, aren’t you?”
“Actually,” he said, and she knew him quite well enough to know that he almost grinned, though he caught himself in time, “I was thinking of the hem of your dress.”
“So that it would be shorter and you could brighten your days by staring at my ankles,” she said. “For shame, Robert.”
He reached for his pack and handed her some bread and cheese, both of them rather dry. But after a day’s abstinence, the meal tasted marvelously satisfying.
“A glass of wine, sir?” she asked when they had finished eating, pointing to the stream. And she knelt again and lowered her mouth to the water. He stayed where he was and she knew he was watching her. She cupped her hands and washed her face and neck and her arms to above the elbows.
He was moving their packs back among the trees when she finally got to her feet. He returned with a leafy bough to obliterate traces of their presence at the bank of the stream.
He spread one blanket beneath the trees, and they sat down on it, side by side, peering outward to the stream and the opposite sloped bank.
“Why did you do it, Joana?” he asked softly after a few minutes of silence. “How could you betray your mother’s people and your husband’s?”
“My father’s people are the French,” she said. “My father is an ambassador in Vienna. It seems I have to betray one side or the other.”
“You could have been neutral,” he said. “You could have decided to be a typical lady.”
“Typical? Me?” She smiled quickly at him. “I could never be that, Robert. And neutral? It is not in my nature to be neutral.”
“And so,” he said, “you were willing to see your adopted country destroyed and your mother’s countrymen driven from the continent.”
“Ah,” she said, “but I still hold to my story that I am one of Arthur’s spies, as you are, that I was in Salamanca working for the same cause as you.”
“A strange way you had of doing it,” he said. “If you were on my side, Joana, I would hate to have had you against me.”
“I did not know you would be beaten again,” she said. “I did not think they would dare. You would have beaten off Marcel and two of the soldiers, I do believe. I was glad I had had the forethought to make sure that there were more than just the three there.”
“Thank you,” he said. “And you were on my side?”
She smiled. “Would you have left Salamanca with Duarte and the Spanish partisans if that had not happened?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said. “I had given my parole.”
She turned her hands palm-up. “I rest my case.”
“I believe you could persuade most people that black is white if you set your mind to it, Joana,” he said. “What about the Lines of Torres Vedras?” He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Are they real or are they a myth?”
“You know the answer as well as I,” she said. “I do not need to answer your question, Robert.”
“There, you see?” he said. “You will not give me an answer because you fear that it will be the wrong one and that I will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are a liar.”
“There is a shadow of a doubt, then?” she asked. “You would like to believe me, would you not, Robert?”
“I would like to believe that there is no such being as the devil,” he said. “But I know that there is.”
“You would like to believe it,” she said, “because you have made love to me and because you love me just a little, even though you will not admit as much even to yourself. And because you want to make love to me again tonight. You feel disloyal making love to the enemy, don’t you?”
“I can see how you have salved your conscience through the years,” he said. “You have persuaded yourself that sex is love, Joana, that all your sex partners have been lovers. I suppose I am a lover too. I suppose you persuade yourself that you love me—just a little.”
“I told you so once,” she said.
“Yes, I remember it well.” He looked across at her, his expression stony. “And a moment later your thugs were upon me. They would still be amusing themselves with me every day if things had not turned out as they did.”
She reached out to touch his arm, to run her hand down the rough fabric of his sleeve. She could not resist working on his vulnerability—or giving in to her own. And she knew suddenly, as perhaps she had known unconsciously for some time, that she had found in Robert Blake what she had been searching for all her adult life.
But she was given no chance to wallow in the thought. He flinched away from her hand and turned on her, his face fierce, his blue eyes blazing.
“Listen, Joana,” he said, “we may be together for days or even weeks. I have no intention of living with this tension between us all that time. I have no wish to spend every day and every evening debating the question of whether we should or whether we should not, of whether we are going to or whether we are not. Let us have it settled once for all. Are we to be sex partners or are we not? The choice is yours. But let me warn you. If the answer is yes, it will happen, daily and nightly, without any pretense of either seduction or romance. And with no pretense of love or even tenderness. It will happen because we are a man and woman alone together and because we both consent to the physical pleasure to be taken from uniting our bodies.”
“And if the answer is no?” She smiled at him and touched his arm again. She was not afraid of his anger. It would be unleashed in only one way if he lost control. He would never hurt her. She knew that with the instinctive knowledge she seemed to have of him. “Would you be able to live with the daily tension, Robert?”
“There would be none,” he said. “If the answer is no, then there is nothing to cause tension. I will not take what is not freely given.”
“You think we could be together and celibate and feel no tension?” she asked him. “I think you are a liar, Robert. Or else you have no imagination.”
His jaw tightened. “Then you had better try me,” he said.
She grimaced. “I wish you had not said that,” she said. “You know I cannot resist a challenge, Robert. But on this occasion I believe I must. My answer is yes, you see. I think we had better be lovers while we are together. Or sex partners, if you prefer the term. Yes, that is my choice. Are you glad or sorry?”
He was removing his coat. And then unbuckling his sword belt, holding her eyes with his own the whole time. And she knew what he was doing, what he was going to do. He was not going to wait until darkness fell, until the right moment came for love. He had meant it when he said no romance and no seduction. He was going to take her then, quite dispassionately, to prove to her that they were to be in no way lovers. Only sex partners.
Well. She smiled slowly. Two could play at that game. And if he cared to throw down the gauntlet—as he was in the process of doing—then she would pick it up even before it touched the ground. She unbuckled her belt and dropped it beside the blanket. Then she got to her feet, pulled down her undergarments and stepped out of them, and crossed her arms to draw her dress up over her head. She dropped it on top of her other garments. And she lay down naked on the blanket and looked at him.
He was angry. She knew it, though he said nothing. She had stolen his fire. He had meant her to be dismayed, disconcerted, embarrassed—any number of negative things. He had not expected her to prepare herself in as matter-of-fact a way as he was doing. She almost asked him what the delay was, but that would have been going too far. He would have known if she had spoken the words that she merely mocked him. He would have known that she was indeed dismayed. She did not want to be taken with no semblance of love at all.
But she would win eventually, she decided. If he thought that he could be intimate with her for days or even
weeks without his feelings being in any way engaged, then clearly he did not know her even half as much as she knew him. She would allow him his daily and nightly couplings if they gave him a feeling of power over her. But all the time she would be weaving a golden spell of love about him. Oh, yes, she would.
He had changed his mind, she saw. If he had meant to completely undress, he would have removed his boots first. But now he was removing them, and his shirt, and his trousers too. And oh, yes, she thought, watching him, he was every bit as magnificent as she had been picturing him in her imagination all day. Except that she had not pictured the scars, especially the large and still-purple one below his left shoulder, only just above his heart.
Like his facial scars, the ones on his body did nothing to detract from his overall attractiveness. He was beautiful. She wanted to tell him so, but this was supposed to be a dispassionate sexual encounter. So be it, then. And so it would be.
There was to be no kissing, no caressing, it seemed. She felt regret, but she parted her legs for him at the first nudging of his knees and watched him as he positioned himself and came into her in one swift thrust. She smiled up into his eyes.
“If this is to be for pleasure only, Robert,” she said, “then I expect to be pleasured.”
“Oh, you will be.” His voice and his eyes were hard as he brought his body down on hers and she was reminded of the weight of all those muscles bearing down on her, the ground at her back. “You will be, Joana.”
“And I expect to give pleasure,” she said, her hands sliding over warm flesh until her arms were about him and her legs slid up the sides of his and over the tops of them until she wormed her feet between. “I will not give pleasure merely by lying like a fish until you have finished inside me.”
“Do what you wish,” he said. “We have a mutual agreement.”
Undressing in front of him and watching him undress had excited her quite as much as kissing and fondling would have done. When he had come into her, he had come into wetness, and she was throbbing there, and her breasts were tender and aching and hard-tipped, and her desire for him was pulsing through her.