White Horses

by Joan Wolf

  Clearly, she did not want to be alone with him.

  Fine, he thought as he sat silently in one of the salon chairs and listened to the three-way conversation. If that’s the way she wants to handle things, then that’s the way they’ll be. She knew all along that I was going to leave. What else did she expect me to do?

  Mathieu and Isabel finally went to bed and Leo said grimly, “I think you’ve run out of excuses, Gabrielle. You’re going to have to come upstairs with me.”

  She gave him a look that was almost hostile. “We can share a bed, Leo, but I am not going to make love with you. All that is finished between us.”

  “Gabrielle.” He crossed the floor, ready to take her in his arms. “I don’t want us to end like this.”

  She took a step backward. “I can’t take any more goodbyes, Leo.” She sounded almost desperate. “It has be this way. I’m sorry.”

  “But why have you changed so suddenly?” He was truly bewildered. “You always knew I was going to have rejoin my regiment.”

  “It isn’t that,” she said.

  “Then what is it? I don’t understand.”

  She shrugged. The gesture was so familiar that it hurt him to see it. “I have been deluding myself, Leo,” she said. “I let myself forget the way this affair would have end. I just went on, day after day, never letting myself look ahead. Well, I can’t do that anymore. You are leaving and I can’t hide from the truth of our relationship any longer. We had what we had, but it’s over, Leo. As I told you before, you aren’t good for me.”

  “But I’m not leaving you forever, Gabrielle! I have told you that I would come and spend the winter with you.”

  She shook her head. She was very pale. “I can’t be your mistress, Leo. I have a responsibility to be a good example to the boys. And I have my own self-respect to think about, too. What you have to offer me just isn’t good enough, Leo. That’s what this is all about.”

  He was angry. He never thought of her as his mistress. He had thought that what they had between them was something rare and special. But evidently she didn’t think the same way.

  “Fine,” he said in a hard voice. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  They went up the stairs in silence, and without exchanging a word, they turned their backs on each other and got undressed.

  I can’t believe we are back to where we started, Leo thought. Then, with anger at his own stupidity, I never should have told her I’m an earl.

  At breakfast the following morning, Leo told everyone that a message from home had been delivered to his room informing him that his father was dying.

  “I must go at once,” he said.

  Everyone understood and offered their sympathies.

  “We will miss you,” Henri said. “You are a good ringmaster and a good person, Leo. I hope your father recovers. I will pray for him.”

  Leo looked into Henri’s sincere brown eyes and felt guilty for lying to him. He said gruffly, “Look out for Gabrielle for me.”

  “Of course, my friend,” Henri said.

  Albert was almost in tears. “We will miss you, Leo,” he said. “I’ll pray for your safety.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” Leo said. And he realized that he would miss these two young brothers of Gabrielle. He had grown quite fond of them during his time with the circus.

  Mathieu shook his hand firmly. “Goodbye, Leo,” he said. “I’ll pray for your safety as well.”

  Leo shook hands all around. Then he said to Gabrielle, “Come upstairs with me while I get my clothes together.”

  She looked at him, knowing there was no way she could refuse his request with everyone looking on. Silently the two of them left the breakfast room and climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Once they were inside, he thrust a piece of paper at her. “Take this,” Leo said. “It has my address at home and in the army. I want you to have it- just in case something happens.”

  She looked at his outstretched hand. “Nothing is going to happen.”

  “Please,” he said, “do me this last favor. Take it. I feel better knowing you can contact me if you find it necessary.”

  “Nothing will happen,” she repeated.

  “Suppose Carlotta’s herbs didn’t work,” he said quietly.

  She stared at him, her brown eyes huge. “Take it,” he said.

  Slowly she reached out her hand and took the folded paper from him.

  He reached out, caught her to him and lowered his mouth to hers. His kiss was full of passion. He raised his head. “Goodbye, Gabrielle,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Leo,” she returned. She had tears in her eyes.

  He hesitated, as if he would pull her into his arms once more, then he turned and left the room, never looking

  Thirty-Five

  Wellington himself sent for Leo when he arrived at the British camp in Freinada, Portugal, just outside Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain. The general looked up from some papers on his desk when Leo walked in. “The troops are five months in arrears,” he began. “The staff has not been paid since February and the muleteers not since June 1811. We are in debt in all parts of the country. Your contribution in getting this coin to us is inestimable, Lord Branford.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Leo said. “We owe a great debt of thanks to the brave owner of the Cirque Equestre who carried it through France for us.”

  “Good job,” the commander-in-chief said brusquely. “Good job by all. Now I can pay my troops and get on with the business of pushing the French out of Spain for good.”

  The campaign was to begin in six weeks’ time. Leo knew that Wellington had hoped to move forward in the first weeks of May, but the crops were late and without grass the horses would starve on the advance. So Leo and the rest of Wellington’s officers remained at the decaying town of Freinada, where the streets were immense masses of stone and holes, with dung all around, and where houses were nothing but farm kitchens with stables underneath. But Freinada was in the middle of good fox-hunting country, and Leo and his friends passed the time chasing Portuguese foxes and taking occasional trips to Oporto to buy pipes of port for their families back at home.

  He should have been happy. He was where he had wanted to be ever since his injury, back with his comrades. They were on the brink of the biggest event of the Peninsula War—the major advance that would push the French troops under Napoleon’s brother, King Joseph finally and forever out of the Iberian Peninsula and pave the way for Wellington’s triumphant entry into France. The mood of the officers and the troops was exuberant. But Leo’s mind was somewhere else.

  How was Gabrielle faring without him? She did well enough before you came along, he told himself. But he remembered the money he was paying the doctor in Rouen to take care of Franz; he remembered the time he had chased the hecklers out of the circus tent; he remembered going to the jail to bail out Pierre. Who knew what other incidents would occur, and he wouldn’t be there to help her with them. She needs a husband, he thought. But he couldn’t bear to picture Gabrielle with anyone but him.

  Outwardly, Leo was the same man who had left the army with an injury sustained at Burgos. He galloped over the countryside with his friends, speculated with them on Wellington’s plans, looked forward with enthusiasm to the upcoming campaign.

  Inwardly, however, he was quite a different person. Inwardly, he belonged to Gabrielle.

  On May 22, the long-awaited advance into Spain finally began. The French believed that any English thrust would have to be made through central Spain, so Wellington fostered that assumption by sending an army under General Hill in the direction of Salamanca. Hill’s advance guard was six brigades of cavalry and Leo was in charge of two of them. Behind the cavalry, however, there was an army of only 30,000 men. The rest of Wellington’s men, numbering some 66,000, were ascending into the mountains to the north, to outflank and swing down behind the French defensive line while it was drawing up to face the advancing General Hill.

  The plan worked perfectly, and by June 19 b
oth arms of Wellington’s army were just a short distance from Vitoria, which Wellington had chosen to be the venue for this decisive battle.

  The battlefield of Vitoria lay along the floor of the valley of the Zadorra, some six miles wide and ten miles in length. The eastern end of this valley was open and led to the town of Vitoria itself, while the other three sides of the valley consisted of mountains. The river Zadorra wound from the southwest corner of the valley to the north, where it ran along the foot of the mountains. The river was crossed by four bridges to the west of the valley and four more to the north.

  Wellington divided his army into four columns. Hill’s column on the right was to secure the defile of La Puebla and drive up the main road toward Vitoria. To do this, Hill was allotted the First and Fifth Divisions, two in-

  dependent Portuguese brigades, five battalions of light infantry, and two cavalry brigades under Leo.

  On the extreme left Thomas Graham, with a column of similar strength, was to strike in behind Vitoria by the Bilbao road. The left center column under the Earl of Dalhousie was to cross the rugged Monte Arato and cross the Zadorra by one of the bridges. Wellington himself commanded the right center column, with the remaining four brigades of cavalry.

  The battle began with an advance by Hill. He started by sending a brigade up the steep hillside beside the main road to secure the defile of La Puebla high above them.

  The hill was steep and overgrown in many places with underbrush and trees. After a short time, Hill reinforced the brigade with a second, and the men eventually established themselves on the crest of the hill, seemingly securing the road beneath.

  “You were hit pretty badly, sir,” one of the men said. “I think we better get you back to the hospital tent.”

  “Finish this up first,” Leo gritted out. “Come back for me when it’s over.”

  The two men, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, looked at each other.

  “Go,” Leo ordered.

  “You go,” one of them said to the other. “I’ll get the colonel off the mountain and then come back.”

  Leo was sweating and the pain was making him dizzy. “I’ll be all right,” he managed to say.

  “Can you sit up, sir?” one of the youngsters asked.

  “Certainly,” Leo said. One of the boys put an arm around him and tried to boost him to a sitting position. His arm hit the wound in Leo’s back and Leo’s world went black.

  The battle that day was a brilliant success for Wellington and his allied forces. Hill’s division cleared the Puebla heights after withstanding a furious French counterattack. With this done, the other three columns began their attack. Gradually, all avenues of escape for the French were closed down as they were herded back to the village of Vitoria. Finally King Joseph gave the order for a withdrawal along the Pamplona road. The whole French army took to its heels, abandoning not only its heavy equipment but in many cases its personal arms and accoutrements. The withdrawal quickly turned into a rout as troops, government officials, camp followers and civilians crowded the narrow escape route. The retreat never stopped until the army was safely over the border and into France. Few armies had ever been so thoroughly beaten.

  Leo missed the rout. Left to themselves, the two youngsters had loaded Leo onto one of their horses and led the horse down the mountainside to rejoin Hill’s main command, still waiting on the road. Hill immediately commanded that Leo be taken off the field of battle back where Dr. McGrigor had his hospital tents pitched.

  Even on the field of battle, it still counted for some- thing to be an earl.

  Now, he was in one of the hospital tents having a ball taken out of his back. He was enormously lucky in that the bullet had not touched either of his lungs; it had broken one rib and lodged behind another. He was in much pain, but he was going to be all right.

  That night, as he lay awake under the canvas tent en- during the pain, one thought kept going round and round n his mind: I might have been killed. I might never have seen her again.

  He had never thought very much about being killed— even though he had taken a bullet once before. In the way of young men, he supposed, he had always vaguely thought that he was immortal. But that ball smashing into his back had done more than torn his flesh; it had torn his peace of mind as well.

  What was I thinking, to leave her like that? Did I really think I was going to live the rest of my life without her?

  What could I have been thinking?

  He had gone into their love affair with the clear idea that it would be temporary. It had never once crossed his mind that he, the Earl of Branford, might marry a circus girl. But Gabrielle had turned out to be so much more than he had ever imagined any woman could be.

  He pictured her in his mind: as she looked when she rode Noble; as she looked when she was petting Colette; as she looked when she was lying beside him in bed.

  Slowly his mind came to accept what his heart had always known.

  He loved her.

  “Gabrielle.” His lips moved, forming her name.

  I love her, he thought. I deeply love her.

  What am I going to do about it?

  The answer came quickly. I’m going to marry her.

  She owned a circus, he thought. She performed in public. She was not the kind of girl earls married. And did he care?

  No, he did not.

  If I marry Gabrielle, I can get her away from the circus and all its responsibilities. She can bring her horses to Branford Abbey, where they’ll live like kings. I can take care of the boys. All of her problems will be solved.

  He pictured Gabrielle’s face when she saw the Bran- ford stables, and he smiled.

  We’ll be married and we’ll go back to Branford Abbey to live.

  He thought about the important position the Earl of Branford played in the neighborhood, in the county, in the country. He thought about the kind of social life that was expected of an earl and his wife. It would be very painful for Gabrielle if she was not accepted by his peers.

  We can always live at Branford Abbey and the hell with the rest of the world, he thought.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted to happen. He wanted her to take her full place in society as his wife. He wanted to show her off, to be proud of her. He wanted other people to value her as he valued her. And she would hate being spurned by English society.

  There must be something I can do to fix this. He spent the rest of the pain-filled night cudgeling his brain to come up with a solution.

  The first light of dawn was beginning to stain the sky when he found an answer.

  Thirty-Six

  Leo returned home at the beginning of July, crossing to England on a naval ship and arriving at Branford Abbey on a beautiful day of clear skies and fluffy white clouds. Branford stood on the West Downs of Sussex, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century it had been substantially remodeled from the stone abbey it once was into a house befitting an earl. Most of the house was still the Jacobean edifice built by the first earl, from the front hall—one of the grandest in all England—with its massive fireplace and spectacular screen, its awe-inspiring staircase, to the ornate and stately rooms on the second floor with their displays of portraiture and paintings and fine furniture.

  Leo loved his home, but he had spent most of his life living away from it, first at school and then in the army. As he dined in state all by himself in the magnificent dining room, he thought how wonderful it would be to make this house a home again, to bring Gabrielle here, with her laughter and her greatheartedness. They would have children to fill up the nurseries, he thought, and Albert could have a studio and Mathieu a study to work a mathematical formulas.

  “Do you know if my mother is in residence at Marley Manor?” he asked his butler as one dish was removed and another one served.

  “I don’t know, my lord,” replied the venerable retainer, who had served his mother when she was Lady Branford. “I can have one of the grooms ride over there to ascertain if she
is.”

  “Do that,” Leo said. “Have him go tomorrow morning. I’ll give him a note to deliver in case she is there. If she isn’t, have him find out where she has gone.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the butler replied.

  He was very tired after dinner. That was one thing about being wounded; you got tired very easily. But the bandages had come off the wound and his ribs were healing and, all in all, he was in good shape, considering how serious things might have been.

  He retired to his chambers, picturing how Gabrielle would look beside him in the high four-poster bed.

  Leo’s butler sought him out following breakfast the next morning. “Lady Rivers is in residence, my lord, and she sent you this reply to your note.”

  He offered the note, which reposed upon a silver salver, to Leo. Leo took it and unfolded it. Come when you wish, I will be home all day.

  “Henderson, have the curricle brought to the front door,” he said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Half an hour later, Leo was on his way to visit Marley Manor, the home of his mother and her husband, Lord Rivers. Marley was eight miles away from Branford Abbey, and Leo had never once set foot in it during all the eleven years that his mother had been re-wed.

  The home of Lord Rivers was a pleasant brick building, less than a quarter the size of Branford Abbey. There was a butter to answer the door, however, and Leo was shown into the house with great reverence.

  His sister was just coming down the stairs as he came in.

  “Leo!” she cried. “Is that really you?”

  “It’s I,” he replied. “How are you, Dolly? You are looking very pretty this morning.”

  She was wearing a chip straw hat over her blond curls and a sprig muslin dress was tied under her high young breasts. On her feet she wore serviceable boots.

  “I’m going to cut flowers for Mama in the garden,” she said. “Whatever are you doing here? Are you all right? We heard that you were wounded again!”

  “I’m fine,” he replied. “I came to see Mama.”