George meant to keep walking, but an overheard snatch of conversation among some of the breakfasting riflemen arrested him. He leaned against an oxcart and pretended to inspect a worn spot on one of his boots.
“It’s no wonder Sergeant Atkins is tired,” Bailey said, leaning a little closer to his confidantes, Robertson and Flaherty.
“Why’s that?” Flaherty asked.
“His bedroll was empty when I came back from sentry duty just after midnight, and then when I happened to wake again, not long before dawn, I saw him creeping back into camp. He must have a woman in the village.”
“You can’t say that just because he was away from his blanket.” Robertson said. “Maybe he ate something that disagreed with him.”
Bailey shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was a night last week when I was visiting some of the ladies of San Miguel—”
“—whose company you paid for,” Robertson interjected.
“Naturally,” Bailey said with perfect aplomb. “In any case, the sergeant was missing part of that night, too.”
“I hope she comes with us when we march,” Flaherty said. “We need more women in this company.”
Robertson shook his head. “If he has a woman, and she were that kind, he would’ve already brought her here. If he’s sneaking off in the night, she’s not someone he can see openly.”
“That’s so,” Bailey said. “She’d be a married lady, or a girl from a decent family.”
“The sergeant wouldn’t seduce a married lady,” Flaherty said firmly. “But a girl whose father wouldn’t want her keeping company with an Englishman and a Protestant, maybe so. She’d do better with an Irishman.”
The conversation degenerated into nationalistic insults from there. George ignored them, consumed by his own suspicions. Sergeant Atkins and Mrs. Arrington had been alone together for days. But as far as George knew, not a whisper of suspicion had attached to them. Despite the scandalous circumstances of her husband’s death, Mrs. Arrington was known for her modesty and good conduct. Atkins too was a general favorite, likewise praised for steady good sense.
Could he prove it? The lady was an heiress, and he desperately needed money. He felt a brief qualm over what he meant to do—but he had no choice. His sisters needed him, and if Mrs. Arrington had truly stooped so low as to take a common sergeant as her lover, she deserved her fate.
***
Before nightfall George moved his tent within sight of the sergeant’s bedroll—a tricky proposition, because Atkins slept at the edge of camp, screened by a baggage wagon.
The first night passed uneventfully. But a little after midnight the next night, George’s patience was rewarded when Atkins slid out of his bedroll and crept toward the village. After waiting a moment, George trailed him.
Though he followed a good distance behind, his task was made easy by just enough moonlight to keep his quarry in sight. They skirted the western edge of the village and climbed through an olive grove toward a house on the hill. George wanted to clap his hands. While the Sixteenth was escorting the convoy back to the army, he’d heard Major Gordon remark upon the comfort of their isolated billet. No other property met his description.
He hung back at the edge of the olive grove and watched as Atkins made his unerring way to a ground floor window on the back side of the house and climbed through it. George smiled. He had the information he needed, and tomorrow he would put it to use. He had no reason to linger here—he would return to his tent and sleep the sleep of the just.
For the first time in years, George Montmorency felt genuinely happy. His troubles were over at last.
***
One morning over breakfast Alec told Anna and Helen the regiment would leave San Miguel the next day and ride southward. Anna dared not ask if the Ninety-Fifth would travel with them.
She and Helen spent the day packing belongings they had scattered about the house during their long stay. By the time she went to bed, Anna had put away everything but her nightdress, her clothing for the next day, and her pistol. She meant to carry it with her, holstered in her donkey’s saddle, so she left it out, loaded and primed, on the table in the corner of the room.
The day had been cloudy and warm, and shortly after nightfall a storm struck, high wind and driving rain punctuated by flashes of lightning and bursts of thunder like none-too-distant artillery fire. Despite her ongoing exhaustion, Anna couldn’t sleep. Just after midnight she heard another sound—footsteps at her window. Will should’ve been on sentry duty, but perhaps he’d managed an exchange to buy them one more night together.
She sat up. “Will?”
The intruder laughed. “Not Will, Mrs. Arrington.”
Unfamiliar hands, wet and clammy, groped for her in the darkness, and a strange figure loomed above her. Instinctively Anna kicked, twisted and clawed. Her knee connected with his groin, a glancing blow, but enough to make him loosen his grip. Her heart racing, she rolled away and scrambled to her feet.
She edged away from the bed and took a deep breath, fighting to quell her panic. She must think. She recognized her attacker’s voice. “Lieutenant Montmorency?” she asked incredulously.
“Correct.” He sounded smug, yet nervous underneath. She strained to see his face, but the night was pitch black between lightning flashes.
She sidestepped, putting more distance between them. “Leave this instant.”
“Oh, I think not, Mrs. Arrington. We have much to discuss.”
Somehow he must have found out about her and Will. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“But I have much to say to you. You need only listen.”
If only she could reach her pistol, she would gain the upper hand. But he stood between her and the desk. Slowly, she must circle him until she could reach it in one lunge. She took a step backward, another to the side, and forced herself to breathe.
“For instance,” he said, “we could discuss how I witnessed Will Atkins climbing through this very window last night. Where did you acquire such low tastes, ma’am?”
Anger began to supplant her panic. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And how dare you force your way into my room?”
There came that unpleasant laugh again. “I hardly call it forcing when the shutters were unlatched. Anyone might conclude you were expecting someone.”
Lightning illuminated the room, followed instantly by a crack of thunder. In the brief burst of light, Anna saw a tall, pale young man, drenched to the skin and shivering, but with a petulant set to his full lips and hateful determination in his eyes.
“I suppose you mean to extort payments from me,” she said, striving for a bored tone as she edged closer to the desk. “But why should anyone believe your word rather than mine?”
“No, Mrs. Arrington, I had something else in mind.”
A chill ran down Anna’s spine at the naked triumph in his voice. “Oh?”
“Yes. Tomorrow you will announce that you have accepted my marriage offer. As soon as we find a chaplain to perform the ceremony, you will be my wife.”
She swallowed a wave of nausea and forced herself to speak calmly. “No. I’d rather you told the entire camp what you saw last night—rather you sent a letter to the Gazette to tell all England—than marry you.”
“Really? You astonish me. But would your answer change if your beloved Will’s life were at stake?”
“What?” Her heart beat out a drumroll.
“It’s the simplest thing in the world, for an officer to send the men under his command into an untenable position.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Dreadfully smoky things, battles. A man might shoot a member of his own regiment, quite by accident, and no one would be the wiser.”
Anna gasped. Not even Sebastian would have dreamed of something so evil. “You are a despicable man.”
“I’m sorry to hear you speak so of your future husband, ma’am.”
“I’ll never marry you.”
“Do you hold your
lover’s life so cheaply?”
“Why do you even want to marry a woman with such low tastes?”
“Money, my dear madam. You have it. I need it.”
Just a few steps more. “I’ll make your life hell,” she promised.
“I care not, as long as I have your money.”
“I’m barren.” Perhaps that would dissuade him. If so she would never again regret her childless state.
“No matter. I own that it would be a disappointment to be the last of my line, but at least I needn’t worry that I’d be forced to give the Montmorency name to Will Atkins’s by-blow.”
Anna’s mind whirled in desperation. How could she marry him? It would be beyond comparison worse than her life with Sebastian. Better she live in torment for the rest of her days than allow Will to be murdered, but there must be another way.
She was almost to the desk now. Stretching out her hand, she groped for the pistol. “I will never marry you,” she said. “But I’ll give you ten thousand pounds, if you leave the army and never have any contact with me or Sergeant Atkins again. Now get out.” Her questing fingertips found the smooth metal of the pistol’s barrel, and she slid her hand down to its grip.
“No. It’s marriage, or he dies.”
Another flash of lightning lit the room, and Montmorency’s eyes widened at the sight of her hand on the pistol. He lunged for it as she seized it and brought it to bear. He grabbed the barrel—Anna tightened her grip—the pistol fired.
Its report, in so enclosed a space, nearly deafened her. She stood stunned, the pistol dangling from her hand, as Lieutenant Montmorency slumped against the wall and sagged to the floor.
Chapter Nineteen
Ears still ringing, Anna knelt beside Lieutenant Montmorency, set the pistol down and checked his throat for a pulse.
Dead. She had killed him. Only then did she notice her hands and forearms were spattered with tiny droplets of blood. Shouldn’t there be more? The warm wetness and coppery smell coupled with the lingering scent of gunpowder made her stomach lurch. She just managed to turn aside in time for her vomit to land neither on the body nor on herself.
Running footsteps approach her room, and someone pounded on the door. “Anna!”
Before she could find her voice, the door burst open and Alec and Helen tumbled inside, barefoot and clad only in their nightrails. Alec brandished a saber, and Helen a pistol and a lit candle. Behind them stood Señora Romero and her granddaughter, and Anna heard the servants’ alarmed voices and the children wailing from the staircase.
“Good God, Anna!” Helen exclaimed. “What happened?”
She wanted to speak but couldn’t find words. She rose to her knees and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her breath came faster, mingled with sobs.
Helen and Alec exchanged a look, set their weapons down and crossed to her.
Helen took her hands. “Anna, darling. Slowly. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.”
Soothed by the familiar voice, she tried to comply.
“Yes. Much better.”
Through blurred eyes she watched Alec check the body and shake his head. Then in Spanish he asked Señora Romero to bring more light and a glass of wine, and told Beatriz and María to assure Nell that Cousin Anna was well, and that they had not heard a shot, merely thunder.
When they were gone, Alec joined his wife. “Anna. We want to help you—and whatever this is, I’m sure you were in the right—but you must tell us what happened.”
She swallowed on a fresh wave of nausea. “I’m not a murderer.”
“Of course you aren’t, darling,” Helen soothed.
“I’m not. I never meant to shoot him, only he wouldn’t leave, and he tried to take the gun.”
Señora Romero returned, a lit three-branched candelabra in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other.
“Stay with us, please, señora,” Alec said in Spanish. “This concerns you, too.”
“Gracias.” She set the candelabra on the table, drew its chair several feet away from Montmorency’s body and sat.
Helen drew Anna to her feet, made her sit on the bed and put the glass of wine into her unresisting hands. “Drink.”
Anna obeyed, though the fruity smell of the wine seemed unnaturally strong, and blended horribly with the stench of blood and vomit to make her gorge rise again. But she swallowed hard, sipped the wine and was glad of it. It washed the sour taste from her mouth and steadied her nerves.
“I’ll translate for Señora Romero,” Helen murmured to her husband. “Anna shouldn’t have to think in Spanish on top of everything else.”
He nodded curtly and faced Anna like an interrogator while Helen stepped back to stand by Señora Romero.
“Anna, we will find a way out of this,” Alec said. “But you must tell me what happened. Who is he? He looks familiar.”
She took another sip of the wine. “George Montmorency. A lieutenant in the Rifles.”
“Now I remember. He dined with us on our way back with the convoy. He struck me as a nonentity. What was he doing here? I can’t imagine this was a lovers’ quarrel.”
She shuddered. “Absolutely not. But he wanted my fortune and meant to force me to marry him.”
“How? By rape? Some threat against you?”
“The latter. But I think he had the former in mind, too, until I fought him.”
“What hold could he possibly have over you?”
She had been planning her lie since she had calmed enough to think, judging it best to stay as close to the truth as possible. “One of his own invention,” she said. “He imagined an affair between Sergeant Atkins and me because we were alone together for days. He said if I didn’t marry him, he’d order Sergeant Atkins into peril or kill him himself in the confusion of battle.”
Alec’s face twisted. “Good God. I’m glad you shot him. The army is well rid of anyone who’d even consider doing such a thing to his own soldiers. I just wish I knew what to do with his body.”
“I’m sorry, Alec.”
“Don’t apologize. What’s done is done, and we’ll find a way to hide it.”
“Couldn’t we tell the truth?” Anna asked tentatively.
“Are you mad, lass?”
“If I explain that it was accidental and in self-defense…”
Alec shook his head. “No. I’m not saying you’d hang for it…”
Anna raised a hand to her throat.
“But there would be a trial,” Alec continued, “and a scandal. Another scandal. You’d be ruined—not even your fortune would be enough to save you.”
“I don’t care if all the world cuts me dead as long as I’m welcome at Dunmalcolm. I only want to go home and stay there.”
“After all that’s happened, I don’t blame you,” Helen said, “but you’re two-and-twenty. Do you truly want to spend the next fifty years as an outcast?”
“What Anna wants is immaterial,” Alec said. “I won’t have such a scandal in our family, and I’m sure Father and my cousin Selsley would say the same. Wouldn’t you agree, Anna?”
Slowly she nodded, bowing to the weight of familial authority.
“But where can we hide the body?” Helen asked.
Alec shrugged helplessly. “There’s the rub. We could leave it in an alley near a tavern, but I cannot think how to do so without being seen.”
“The old dry well west of the barn,” Señora Romero said in Spanish. “No one will think to search there.”
“We’ve already involved you too much in our troubles,” Anna said in the same language.
Their hostess shook her head. “No. Your cousin is right. You should not have your life ruined for that man’s evil.”
“Gracias, señora.” Alec acknowledged her with a small bow.
“De nada. When the rain stops, José will show you the way. I can vouch for him and Felipa. They will say nothing.”
“Good,” Alec said, switching back to English. “This storm is a blessing, really—if the nigh
t had been still, that shot would’ve roused the village. As it is, there will be questions when he turns up missing—so, Anna, you won’t be here. You ride for Lisbon in the morning.”
“I…what? How?”
“I’ll find some kind of post or dispatches important enough to send straightaway, with a dozen troopers as escort. I’ll lend you Dulcinea so you can keep pace.”
“But why?” Anna asked.
“Because I know you, lass. You’ve a soft heart, and you’re a terrible liar. If this fellow’s colonel turns up to ask about him, you’ll confess—unless you feel so guilty you do it of your own volition by nightfall. Do you really want to stay, with this hanging over you?”
She thought of Will. If she saw him again, she would be unable to stop herself from telling him. That in turn would place a terrible burden on his shoulders, to choose whether to protect her or tell the truth to his regiment. “No. I’ll go.”
“She cannot go alone,” Helen said. “I’ll ride with her.”
“But the children—” Alec began.
“Will do very well with Beatriz and María for a few weeks. I’ll say we received word from Lisbon that my mother is ill—I’ll send a note to Papa so he’ll know not to worry—and that she has sent for me to nurse her. Then it will look as if the journey is for my sake, with Anna along to bear me company and to find passage home.”
Alec agreed to Helen’s plan, and Anna’s fate was removed from her hands. Helen led her upstairs to the room she shared with Alec, gave her a clean shift in place of her blood-spattered nightdress—“We’ll burn it in the morning”—and insisted she attempt to sleep. “We’ll pack what we need in saddlebags as soon as it’s light,” Helen assured her. “And Alec will sleep in the parlor, once the business with the well is done.”
Much to her amazement, Anna did sleep, albeit fitfully and disturbed by vivid dreams of Lieutenant Montmorency’s body sliding down the wall. Before dawn she awoke and crept downstairs. There remained one thing she must do.
By the time she reached her room, which was now blessedly clean, there was light enough to open her trunk, find paper and writing materials, and pen a brief note. She took out her old miniature, folded the note around it and sealed it.
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