The Captain and His Innocent

by Lucy Ashford

  Monique bent to kiss him, but when she stood up again, Ellie saw that she was brushing fresh tears from her eyes. ‘My husband, Anthony—’ her voice broke a little ‘—told me that Harry and I meant everything to him. And he always said—he said...’

  ‘Oh, madame.’ Ellie’s heart overflowed with pity. ‘Sit, please. Sit here with me.’ She was already spreading a blanket over a stone ledge, then she took Monique’s hand and they sat together, close to Harry.

  Monique’s tears were falling freely now. ‘Anthony always said to me, “If anything should happen to me, my darling, you must get Harry to my brother, Luke, in England”.’ She raised her eyes to Ellie’s. ‘And the worst did happen. Anthony disappeared. I lost him.’

  Ellie squeezed her hand tightly. ‘If it distresses you to talk...’

  ‘No. No! I want to talk about him! I want there to be hope—do you understand?’

  Ellie nodded; Monique drew a deep breath and went on, ‘We met three years ago, when Anthony was travelling in France, and we married in the summer. My Anthony was brave. Too brave. He was in such danger, always—and he knew it. “Go to Luke,” he always told me—’ She broke down again.

  ‘You did exactly as he said,’ Ellie soothed. ‘And Anthony was right—Luke will keep you safe, I’m sure of it. But Monique—what happened to your husband? He was in the British army, wasn’t he?’

  Monique was gazing at Ellie with grief-filled eyes. ‘Yes, he was in the British army. But he was betrayed. He was the most courageous man in the world—but even he could not save Les Braves.’

  ‘Les Braves,’ Ellie echoed. The Heroes. The letter in Lord Franklin’s library. I would suggest that we give our instructions to the group known as Les Braves...

  ‘Indeed, that’s what they called themselves. They laughed about the risks they ran, they took life and death lightly, but they were truly heroes indeed, and they were sent to their deaths through treachery—’ Her voice broke. ‘And now I’m tired. So tired.’

  Gently Ellie wrapped a blanket around her, and Monique leaned back against the wall with a little sigh, her eyelids already drifting shut. Ellie sat there with her mind whirling.

  ‘Anthony was betrayed,’ Luke had once said. ‘Betrayed by high-ranking cowards.’

  She reminded herself that Luke Danbury was in conflict with the law. He had stolen her father’s precious compass to force her to get access to Lord Franklin’s library. He was using her with a cold ruthlessness she felt she’d scarcely yet glimpsed.

  And yet—she’d never met a man who’d made such an impact on her. A man who made a bone-deep longing for something surge through her veins with simply one look of his. Even down here, in the coldness of this underground hideout, heat flooded her anew at the memory of that afternoon in the garden when he’d trapped her in the snow-covered pavilion, trapped her with his hands cupping her cheeks and his mouth sweetly tasting hers...

  For almost two years she’d been on the run. She’d been in fear for her life—but never, she realised, had she been as truly afraid as she was now, because she’d made herself terribly vulnerable, thanks to the wild emotions this man aroused in her.

  And she could not afford to give way to such treacherous feelings, because Luke was absorbed in the fate of his brother and in some feud with Lord Franklin. He’d been engaged to an heiress—Mary had told her so—and quite likely wanted her back, so she, Ellie, must remember that she had no place in his future at all.

  * * *

  Monique and Harry slept on as the minutes went by. Ellie sat alert with the pistol in her pocket, although she got quickly to her feet when she thought she heard heavy footsteps upstairs and the sound of doors slamming, followed by gruff, questioning voices. She hurried to extinguish the solitary lantern and felt her heart hammering. If the soldiers come down here and find us...

  Silence returned. She sat and tried to relax, but jumped to her feet the instant she heard the low door opening. Already she had her pistol drawn. Monique woke and was on her feet, too, gasping in French, ‘Oh, God help us...’

  It was Tom. ‘It’s all right for you to come up now, miss.’

  ‘They’ve gone?’ asked Ellie quickly. She handed him back the pistol.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ answered Tom in a grim voice. ‘But they’ve hurt the captain, the wretches.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He objected to their demands to search the house—but the officer in command told him to keep his mouth shut, and they all looked round anyway. Of course they didn’t find a thing to charge him with and that made them mighty cross. So afterwards they dragged him outside for questioning.’ He scowled darkly. ‘Well, they called it questioning. But I heard it, and what they really did was taunt him for quitting the army. Taunt him about his brother.’

  His brother again. Ellie felt her heart pounding. ‘And he just had to stand there and take it?’

  ‘He didn’t have to, miss. He could have taken on the lot of them and we’d have helped him—I was with the captain in the war, in Spain, and it’s hard to see a friend of yours being abused with lies, you know? But he told us—the Wattersons and me—before they came for him, to stay well out of it. He said, “Lads, they’re not worth it.” Of course, he’s right. And let me tell you this, ma’am—there’s lots of things been said about Captain Luke Danbury, but he’s as good and brave a man as you’ll find in the land.’

  Ellie stood stricken. Then why did he live like this, so shabbily, so disreputably? Why did he have such bad enemies?

  ‘Anyway,’ Tom said gruffly, shining the lantern around the room, ‘the French lady and her little boy—they’ve survived their ordeal, miss?’

  ‘They’re quite all right,’ Ellie said. ‘As you’ll see.’ She’d noted that Monique had already gone to Harry and lifted the sleeping child in her arms. ‘But they need to get back to their bedroom, Tom. They need to be warm and comfortable.’

  ‘Of course. And Captain Danbury’s waiting to speak to you, miss, in the dining hall.’

  Once they were out of the cellar, Mrs Bartlett herded Monique and Harry away like a mother sheep with her lambs. And—Now, thought Ellie. Now, I must get Luke to tell me everything.

  * * *

  He was standing with his back to her, gazing into the fire. But he must have heard her footsteps, because he turned slowly round.

  And she saw that one side of his face was marked by a livid bruise. She moistened her lips to speak, but could say nothing, because he was coming towards her, his eyes inscrutable. As though nothing at all had happened.

  ‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that you kept Monique and her little boy safe and calm. I’m extremely grateful to you.’

  She was shaking her head. Her heart was thundering against her ribs. ‘Luke. I’m so sorry about all this. If only I’d warned you—’

  He was close enough now to touch her. She gazed blindly up at him. Oh, his face. Lean, stubbled. Beautiful. Even with that fresh bruise, everything about him was beautiful, and she so wanted to trust him—and for him to trust her—that it hurt.

  ‘Let me repeat, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I don’t honestly think, even if you’d told me what Lord Franklin said, that I could have done anything to stop those soldiers turning up here and searching the place. Do you?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ she breathed. ‘But what did they want?’

  His eyes still burned into her. ‘I told you—there was a vague rumour about Frenchmen landing, but they had no proof. There are always stories about smugglers and foreigners along this part of the coast.’

  He was making light of it for her sake, she knew. ‘But to pick on you. Tom told me. Your face—’

  ‘My fault. I started it.’

  He gave a bleak smile, but Ellie didn’t smile back. ‘Luke,’ she said, ‘do you think it was Lord Franklin who ordered this?’

 
; He was walking slowly over to the fire, but at that he swung round. ‘What can I say about him, Ellie? When many people think that he’s your protector and saved you from poverty and homelessness?’

  ‘But surely,’ she cried out, ‘you remember that I ran from him, although you ordered me to go back? I never, ever felt I could truly trust him! And now I know it for sure—because he’s no relative of mine! You suspected this from the start, didn’t you, Luke? Didn’t you?’

  He didn’t answer at first, but Ellie felt how the air in the room resonated with tension.

  ‘It did occur to me,’ he said. ‘But how did you find out for certain?’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose I found out in the traditional manner of scheming females everywhere. It was a simple matter of eavesdropping.’

  ‘Eavesdropping?’

  ‘I heard him talking to his mother, the formidable Lady Charlotte. By the way—did you realise her ladyship can walk?’

  Luke’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘No! The old schemer—after attention, I suppose. Tell me what you heard of her conversation with Lord Franklin.’

  ‘It was short and to the point. He was instructing her that I must never, ever, be allowed to guess that he lied to me about my mother being some distant cousin.’

  He’d come over to her again—close, too close, and her heart shook because suddenly she wanted more than anything to lean into his strength, his warmth. But she had to be strong, she had to be.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said at last. ‘I did suspect something of this from the start. And, Ellie, you need expert advice—guidance—on this. Lord Franklin is a powerful man.’

  ‘So I gather,’ she said, still trying to keep her voice light. ‘With powerful friends and hidden motives. I already guessed as much, when I found that my room had been searched in London.’

  ‘You found...’

  ‘Yes. Someone had been through all my things. Nothing was taken, and everything was put back very carefully. But I knew.’

  He nodded, frowning. Believing in her, she realised. ‘Is there anyone else you can talk to?’ he asked. ‘Anyone else in London, whom you can go to for help? Some of the other French émigrés, perhaps?’

  She gazed up at him, her eyes very bright. ‘I know no one in London. Lord Franklin made completely sure of that. Anyway, who would listen to me? Who would believe me if I tried to speak out against Lord Franklin, of all people?’

  ‘I would,’ he said softly. ‘I would.’

  Something in the way he said it—something in the way he was watching her—made her blood pound and her breath tighten in her throat.

  The door opened and Tom was there. ‘A word, Captain,’ he said.

  Ellie watched Luke leave the room, feeling something unfurling almost painfully inside her. Society scorned Luke Danbury, and certainly he made no attempt at all to present himself as a gentleman. But every word he spoke seemed filled, to her, with honour and integrity.

  And that bruising on his face tore at her very heartstrings.

  She would never forgive herself for letting her father’s compass fall into Luke’s hands. She still very much feared that her association with him could be disastrous. But all the same, just the brush of his fingers against her wrist sent shivers racing through her blood. And the way that he spoke her name—almost with tenderness—pulled at some corner of her heart that she hadn’t even known existed.

  As the light of the tallow candles flickered softly around the room, she went to sit at the big table and rested her face in her hands. As a child in Paris, she’d been a sheltered innocent, secure and happy in the love of her parents. By the time she might have started thinking as other girls did of pretty clothes and flirtations, she was absorbed in caring for her sick mother—and then, after her mother’s funeral, she and her father were on the run together, travelling by night, hiding by day.

  If, during those terrible months, Ellie gave any thought at all to her appearance, it was to make sure that she drew absolutely no attention to herself.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ellie. Really I am,’ her father would say fretfully as he gazed at her travel-worn clothes. ‘You should be enjoying yourself at parties, with friends. I can only hope that some day, when our running is at an end, you will find a man to love you as much as I loved your dear mother.’

  She would stop him by hugging him and saying, over and over, ‘Papa, I’m lucky to have you. I don’t need anybody else.’

  Or so she’d thought. But Luke! Luke only had to come into the room for her to feel that she wanted something from him in a way that she’d never wanted anything before. And the last thing she needed was for him to guess it.

  Thinking she heard footsteps—him, coming back—she tried to gather her scattered thoughts and reached for a book that lay open on the table.

  And her heart shook again with poignant memories, because it was a star atlas—just like the kind her father used to own. She gazed blindly at its pages, overwhelmed with emotion, while almost without her realising it, Luke came back in to draw up a stool and sat next to her.

  * * *

  You ought to send her back now, you fool, Luke told himself. The chilling voice of conscience inside his soul, inside his heart, was chiding him as bitterly as it had ever done in his life.

  Ellie Duchamp was brave and vulnerable and alone. She was also quite possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on—especially since she wasn’t even aware of her own beauty. She conducted herself with integrity and honesty through a life that must have been difficult beyond belief—and did she never even look in a mirror? Had no man ever told her that she had the most exquisite figure and a face that most men could only picture in their dreams?

  He clamped down hard on the freshly surging desire that flooded his body and looked, as she did, at the star atlas. The book was open at the constellation of Orion. ‘This book was my brother’s,’ he said quietly to her. ‘Anthony knew and loved the night sky. Do you know anything about the stars, Ellie?’

  ‘My father...’ she began in a halting voice. ‘My father loved the stars, too...’

  Tears were glittering in her eyes, he noticed. He also noticed that she was trying to wipe them away without him seeing.

  ‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry about this. About involving you. About everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, almost with fierceness. She’d pushed the star atlas aside jerkily and got to her feet, almost knocking her stool backwards. ‘None of what’s happened to me is your fault. It’s mine. Do you hear me? I was a fool to trust Lord Franklin. A fool. I’ve made so many mistakes...’

  Luke suppressed a low oath. She’d gone to stand with her back to him, gazing out of the window at the night sky above the sea; perhaps looking for the familiar winter stars that Anthony had loved so much.

  He felt himself quite shaken by the urge to protect her. And more.

  The best thing you can do, he told himself bitterly, is to send her back to Bircham Hall and never, ever see her again.

  But he couldn’t. It was as simple as that. He couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving his life. Especially when she turned to him and whispered, ‘Please, Luke. Tell me about your brother.’

  And he did.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Anthony,’ Luke began, ‘was two years younger than me. Our mother died giving birth to him and we saw very little of our father, who spent most of his time living the high life in London and trying to kill himself with drink. He died when I was ten.’

  He ushered her back to a chair by the fire and sat close to her. ‘It was my grandfather, Edward Danbury, who ran this house and the tenant farms—but times were difficult during the war, although he did his very best to hold the estate together.

  ‘Anthony was always desperate to join the army.
And when our grandfather died in 1810, Anthony went to join the Hussars in the Peninsula. As the heir, I stayed to look after the estate. But it was heavily burdened with debts.’

  He shrugged, as if it were of no matter, but she saw how his blue eyes were haunted with memories. ‘I did my best,’ he went on, ‘to hold everything together, arranging more loans to keep the farms going. At first Anthony wrote to me regularly, about the campaigns and the battles against the French. He wrote that the stars were different, there in Spain...’

  He was staring into the fire, and Ellie saw how the light from the flames was flickering softly against his profile. That bruise. It hurt her almost unspeakably to think of him defying the soldiers, for the sake of his brother’s wife and child.

  Why had he become such an outcast? She clasped her fingers in her lap and found she was imprinting his features in her memory: the mane of dark hair, the proud brow and strong nose, the stubble-roughened jaw and expressive mouth. It must be past midnight and here she was, in this dangerous house, alone with this dangerous man—but she wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere in the world.

  And his eyes were bluer and more intense than ever as he turned to her and began talking again. ‘After my brother had been in the army for a year or so, someone—Wellington himself, quite possibly—discovered that he spoke fluent French and Spanish. Anthony was recruited to the British secret service and was sent on a mission to the south-west of France, to make contact with the Royalist rebels who were fighting there to defeat Napoleon and get their exiled king back on the French throne.

  ‘In the spring of last year—as you’ll know—Napoleon’s armies were defeated and Napoleon himself was banished to Elba. In the meantime, my brother had disappeared in France—either a prisoner or dead. A natural risk of the job, some might say. But I had reason to believe he was betrayed by the people he worked for. By the British secret service.’

  She whispered, ‘How do you know this, Luke?’

  ‘Because I’d joined the army myself,’ he said. ‘As you know. I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have abandoned the estate, the farms. But I did, and by the October of 1813 I had crossed with Wellington and his army over the border into France. After that we were pretty much stuck there for the winter—Wellington wanted to wait till spring for the weather to improve, before striking up north towards Paris. But there were skirmishes with the enemy still, and one December night I was put in charge of a group of French prisoners. It turned out that one of them had known my brother.’