“Well, no,” Robert said, “I don’t think I could go quite as far as that.” He grinned at her. “I don’t say I might not have tried if I thought I could get away with it, but he’s sure to hear somehow. However, you needn’t be afraid he’ll order me to send you home. Sir Arthur is extremely chivalrous, and he tends to think of women as rather helpless creatures. When he hears your distressing story, he will be most sympathetic. Only, for God’s sake, don’t tell him you ‘enjoyed’ this little trip, careening around with muleteers and the dregs of the Portuguese army.”
“No, no,” Esmeralda assured him, her color restored and the mischief returning to her eyes. “I shall say no more than that setting me adrift alone in England would be the very greatest cruelty to my delicate sensibility. And I shall flutter my eyelashes.” She batted them exaggeratedly.
“I don’t think you’ve got the style of that exactly right,” Robert said, chuckling, “and I’m afraid the delicate sensibility won’t go over very well, either, unless you claim to have been in a faint the entire way down from Oporto.”
“A shudder or two, then?” Esmeralda suggested. “And an expression of pained fortitude?”
Robert laughed, released her hands, which were now relaxed, and lay down again. He did feel one tiny prick of guilt because he had not said a single word to suggest that there were things he could do to pave her way in England, but it passed. She would be much happier, he told himself, if he took her home personally. Besides, then he himself could see to the settlement of her business with her father’s bankers, make sure that the competence she expected was really adequate, and explain her situation to Perce and Sabrina, who would then sponsor her and arrange for her to meet the right people so that she would be properly established.
It would not be long before he was free to ask for leave, he thought. Probably they would go into winter quarters by November or at the latest by December His eyes closed, and he was asleep almost immediately, too quickly for him to be disturbed by the wave of satisfaction that enveloped him when he thought that Merry would be around for months.
Chapter Ten
They stayed at Coimbra that night in considerable luxury, for it was a large town. The next day, after getting the men started, Robert rode ahead to discover whether the troops were ashore yet and where Sir Arthur desired him to bring the stock. He was confident that the men would not desert or allow the animals to stray this close to the end of the journey. He was delighted to find the Riflemen already some miles inshore, and fortunately came across General Henry Fane, who greeted the news that baggage animals were on the way with considerable enthusiasm and tried to lay claim to most of them. Between the heat and the sand, he remarked dryly, he was likely to lose more men from exhaustion than from action. Unmoved, Robert said the stock was still a day’s march eastward and asked for Sir Arthur who, he learned, was at Figueira da Foz.
Leaving the Riflemen to their unhappy struggles with the heat and the miserable ground, Robert rode to the temporary headquarters, where Sir Arthur received his report with a curt word of commendation. He then summoned his secretary and directed him to write an order absolutely forbidding any of his officers to preempt the animals and nodded dismissal at Robert. However, when Robert did not move, Sir Arthur lifted his head from the papers on the table to which he had returned his attention without noticeable irritation.
“Could I have a moment, sir?” Robert asked as the secretary left the room.
“You had trouble with the bishop?” Wellesley asked.
“Only in the sense that he wouldn’t lend me money,” Robert answered. “In fact, no one would give me credit or even change more than one or two pounds for Portuguese money.”
“That’s not—” Sir Arthur began, and then asked, “What the devil did you need credit or more than a pound or two for? Good God, Moreton, don’t tell me you’ve taken to gambling?”
“No, sir, of course I haven’t,” Robert replied. “But I hadn’t much to do for a few days so I thought I’d ride around the country just to take a look, show myself, and see if I could scare up a few more beasts, and I found this girl—”
“Moreton!” Sir Arthur exclaimed in an exasperated voice. “Don’t you know better than—”
“No sir, you don’t understand,” Robert interposed hastily. “I know her. She’s British. I’d met her in Bombay. She and her father had been shipwrecked going home to England.”
“You’d better sit down,” Wellesley said. “I have a feeling this is going to take longer than one minute.”
Although it did, of course, take Robert longer than one minute to tell the story, he managed not try his commanding officer’s patience since he had spent the hours it had taken him to ride to Figueira composing his tale. He explained everything to Sir Arthur, including the pretense of marriage and his reasons for it.
“Nothing else you could have done,” Wellesley said in his abrupt way, nodding approval. “It’s unfortunate, but the country round about here seems to be clear of the French, at least as far south as Leiria. There shouldn’t be any immediate danger. You had better bring…er…Mrs. Moreton here. It will take several days longer to disembark the troops, and she can rest. After that we may have to move pretty fast, though.” He paused, and his voice had changed, carrying a roguish note when he added, “Pretty girl, eh?”
“Er…not a beauty, no sir.”
Robert was not prevaricating. He knew Sir Arthur to be a flirt, and possibly more than a flirt, particularly with attractive married women. There had been rumors that his relationship with Mrs. Freese in India was not totally innocent, however, that was not the reason for his ambivalent reply. Robert did not fear Sir Arthur would do Esmeralda any harm since he knew her to be still an innocent girl. Actually he was really puzzled for an answer to his commanding officer’s question. His recent impressions of Esmeralda were at war with his earlier impression that she was not attractive.
“But she is a very sensible girl,” Robert added, “not at all given to vapors or complaining.”
He had meant to assure Sir Arthur that Esmeralda would be as little trouble as it was possible for a woman in an armed camp to be, but Sir Arthur merely nodded again, waved dismissal, and looked back at the papers on the table.
Robert left the building with an inexplicable feeling of happiness. He knew part of it was relief. He had expected Sir Arthur to behave precisely as he had behaved, but there had always been the chance that some military order or some other stupidity of the Horse Guards would have exasperated him. In that case, he might have lost his temper over Robert’s adventure to give a relatively harmless expression to his spleen. He would not have blamed Robert for his actions, but he could have provided funds enough to leave Esmeralda at Coimbra and have insisted that Robert do it.
If Robert associated his high spirits and sense of relief with anything, it was Sir Arthur’s seeming satisfaction with the military situation. And when Lord Fitzroy pursued him out of the building, ostensibly to hand him the orders he had forgotten to take, but immediately said, “What sort of cock-and-bull story did you feed Sir Arthur? He called me in and told me to give you a hundred cruzados out of his private purse as a wedding present ‘to outfit your bride’ when you got back with the transport animals. What bride, damn it?” Robert found himself mischievously amused.
“Esmeralda Mary Louisa, née Talbot, now Moreton,” Robert said, perfectly straightfaced, although his blue eyes sparkled. “And it isn’t a cock-and-bull story. How kind of Sir Arthur.”
“Kind!” Fitzroy Somerset sounded totally bewildered. “Mad, I call it. What the devil do you need money for, Moreton? I mean, you’re plump enough in the pocket, even if you did get married. No, I don’t believe it. Damn it all, how could you get married?”
“It isn’t very hard,” Robert said. “You just stand up in church and repeat—”
Lord Fitzroy made a sound remarkably like grrr, and his face took on an alarming hue, so Robert stopped.
“As to the money,” he went on, “wait until you get away from camp and ask a Portuguese banker to change pounds. I virtually had to get down on my knees and plead. And credit is completely out of the question.”
This explanation scarcely contented Lord Fitzroy. He still looked as if he were about to explode, and his voice was dangerously gentle when he asked, “But why does the bride need outfitting? Surely that’s her parents’ business.”
“Oh, that. Well, she was shipwrecked.” Robert laughed as Somerset raised a doubled fist. “No, no, I’m not joking. That’s the truth, I swear it. Look, I promise to explain it all when I bring the beasts in. Meanwhile, give me those orders so I can get back. Merry’s alone with that troop of halfwits Freire sent along as guards. I was just going to see if Mars or Jupiter had been brought ashore yet. If they haven’t been, I’ll have to borrow a mount from you or from one of the others. Hermes is about done up from racing up and down the line like a sheepdog.”
Somerset’s mouth opened to protest that last remark. He could not imagine Robert using his fine horse to herd cattle, but then an expression of strong self-control settled on his features, and all he said was, “Yes, the horses are ashore. We have taken over that barn,” he pointed, “for a stable. I haven’t had time to look the animals over, so you had better walk down yourself and see which of your mounts stood the voyage best.” However as Robert turned away, having tucked the order into his breast pocket, Lord Fitzroy seized his arm. “We will all be waiting to meet Mrs. Moreton when you arrive this evening,” he said slowly and threateningly.
Not a muscle moved in Robert’s face. “I am certain you will find her delightful,” he said, and did not permit himself to begin laughing at his friend’s expression until he was safe in the barn, although the restraint nearly choked him.
Under the circumstances, it was not at all surprising that Robert and Esmeralda were met about three miles from headquarters by a half-dozen neatly attired young men on exquisite mounts. A few of the ADCs were on duty, and a number were still on the ships arranging the disembarkation from that end. All who were free, however, had ridden out of the camp as soon as the orderly they had set on watch had come galloping back to report that a huge cloud of dust was approaching. Of course, Robert had warned Esmeralda that this might happen.
“How the devil they imagine I planned to get away with it, I can’t guess,” Robert had said after he had assured himself that everything was under control with regard to the animals in his care and had come to ride beside Esmeralda. “After all, I served with Sir Arthur. By the by, a lot of the ADCs call him ‘the Beau’ because he is always so neat in his dress. As I was saying, I served with him in India, and I’m not likely to underestimate him. Still, Fitz, I mean Lord Fitzroy Somerset, clearly believes I picked up some Portuguese…er…”
“Light-skirt,” Esmeralda supplied when Robert ran down, obviously realizing all of a sudden that he was saying something vastly improper.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive,” he said, rather chagrined, “but you’re devilish easy to talk to, Merry, and I end up forgetting myself.”
“And so you should,” Esmeralda assured him. “It will give us away completely if you do not feel free to say anything at all to me.”
This, Esmeralda knew, was not necessarily true. She was not unaware that some husbands treated their wives as witless dolls, and sometimes with good reason. However, her primary purpose was to addict Robert to her company, and one of the ways to accomplish that was to make him as comfortable with her as he was with his male friends. Moreover, there was a double benefit, in that his conversation would be far more interesting for her if he felt free to talk about anything at all.
“Will it?” Robert asked, frowning in doubt. “Don’t think m’ father says anything he thinks to m’ mother.”
Esmeralda laughed. “I am quite sure you will not say anything to me that your father would not say to your mother. If you really believe that your mother is innocent of the existence of ladies of light and easy virtue at this time of her life and that your father would not mention them to her—in an impersonal way, of course—you are much mistaken. Probably your mother would not speak to you about such women—”
“You mean my mother thinks I am innocent?” Robert said incredulously. “I am seven and twenty years of age!”
Esmeralda laughed again. “I cannot imagine she thinks anything of the sort. Nothing you have ever said to me has given me reason to think your mother is a fool. But she would not wish to embarrass you. It is not the kind of thing a woman discusses with her sons, but that is no reason to think she is unaware.”
“Well, I didn’t think— Damn it, Merry, how did we get onto this stupid subject anyway?”
“You were saying that you did not know how your fellow ADCs thought you intended to pass off a Portuguese light-skirt on Sir Arthur as your wife,” Esmeralda reminded him obligingly.
“Yes, well, that was not where I should have begun. The point is that they are very curious, and we should have a reasonable story to offer.”
“It would be best, I believe, to stay as close to the truth as possible,” Esmeralda said slowly. “I do not think we can completely conceal your chivalric motives.” Robert made an uncomfortable noise, but Esmeralda continued without giving him a chance to interrupt. “Presumably your friends know of your past determination not to marry until you were ready to terminate your military career, and I am not the kind of girl over whom a man would suddenly lose his head—”
“Not in those clothes I found you in, anyway,” Robert admitted, grinning.
A sense of satisfaction rose in Esmeralda. She was certain that only a few days ago Robert would simply have agreed with her statement or, if he had remembered to be tactful, have remained silent. He would not have attributed her lack of beauty to ill-fitting, unclean garments. Perhaps she had reason to hope that he was beginning to think of her as somewhat attractive.
“And Fitz already knows you were shipwrecked,” Robert continued, unaware of what he had betrayed about himself and the pleasure he had given Esmeralda, “because Sir Arthur was kind enough to contribute a hundred cruzados toward a new wardrobe for you. But I could have…er…been enamored in Bombay.”
Esmeralda giggled. “Not unless you were demented,” she reminded him, but hope flared up again simply because he could say such a thing now. “And being aware that one is badly dressed makes one awkward, which only adds to the bad impression. However, there can be no harm in implying that we knew each other better than we really did and that you found me a pleasant kind of girl.”
“It’s true, too,” Robert said. “I mean that you’re a pleasant girl. Fitz and the others will see that for themselves at once.”
“I hope so,” Esmeralda answered most earnestly.
She did, indeed, hope to make a good impression on Robert’s friends. It would be fatal to her plans if, after their first surprise was over, they continued to express wonder at what had made Robert so foolish as to marry her. That would of course imply that he would not have done so under normal circumstances and continually remind him that he did not intend to remain married. On the other hand, if his companions soon began to regard the marriage as reasonable, perhaps enviable, although she could not really hope for that, it would be another inducement for him to maintain the status quo.
“That will do it, I think.” Robert nodded thoughtfully. “Sir Arthur said there was nothing else I could have done, and if we were friends in Bombay, all the others will agree.”
Esmeralda was not so certain of that, but she raised no objections and, indeed, hoped it was true. Now that the basic tale was settled, she began to ask Robert questions about the men she would meet, which he answered with as much interest as she had in listening, realizing that he was clarifying to himself facets of his fellow officers’ characteristics that were useful to understand.
He had just said, “Burghersh is the best of fellows, but he
will not make a soldier,” when a sound of shouting came from behind them. An expression of irritation crossed Robert’s face as he looked around. He hated to have a conversation with Merry interrupted, but the noise did not diminish. He turned his horse and, looking back just as he started off, laughed and warned her, “And they are all top-of-the-trees, so, for God’s sake, take off that hat before we see them.”
Esmeralda only waved gaily. She had never intended to allow the elegant gentlemen of Sir Arthur’s staff to see her hat before they knew her well enough to appreciate the joke rather than to think she was unaware of good style. But actually, it might not have mattered if Esmeralda had worn it. It was apparent that the gentlemen who had come to meet them were so surprised by her quite ordinary appearance, her cultured voice, accent, and manners—all undeniably British—that they probably would not have noticed. Quite clearly Somerset had spread the word that Robert had married, with startling suddenness, a completely destitute female about whom he had told their commander some fantastic story. Considering Robert’s own breathtaking appearance and his previous resistance to feminine charms, all had expected to see a ravishing beauty, perhaps no better than she should be, who had sprung a trap that proved irresistible.
The shock, which left the young men incapable of doing anything beyond acknowledging Robert’s introductions, placed all the advantage in Esmeralda’s hands. Thus, after the introductions, general greetings and remarks had been exchanged, the party had sorted itself out somewhat, and Esmeralda found herself beside Lord Burghersh. She seized her opportunity at once by asking eagerly how the landing was progressing.
“I know that it cannot be easy on this dreadful coast,” she said, making her eyes large. “I will never forget my terror when I saw the cliffs and that huge surf.”
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