by Lucy Ashford
‘Very well, milord. Now, I know you’ll be crucifyin’ yourself, what with her learning the truth about her father—’
Lucas turned to him, his eyes hooded. ‘Thanks to you, if you remember’.
‘Yes, but it was about time she knew it an’ all, milord,’ Bentinck softly exploded, ‘instead of blamin’ you for the whole buffle-headed mess!’
Lucas was silent a moment. ‘She loved him, Bentinck’.
Bentinck pulled down the corners of his mouth in a fierce scowl. ‘He didn’t deserve her love, that’s for sure. But she’s accepted the truth from you? That he was goin’ to sell the British army out to the Frenchies?’
‘I didn’t put it quite as crudely as that. Her world has been overturned. But she’s accepted it as the truth, yes’.
‘And the rest of it, milord? What did she say when you told her everything else?’ Bentinck pushed on remorselessly. ‘The very worst of it?’
Lucas was gazing out to sea again, his fine lips firmly pressed together.
Bentinck swore aloud. ‘You haven’t told her, have you? Beg pardon, milord, but you do realise there’ll be all hell to pay when she does find out?’
Lucas turned on him. Though his face was still calm, his eyes darkened to the opaque steely grey that signalled danger. ‘Then I very much hope that you won’t be the one to tell her, Bentinck’.
‘Of course not, milord!’ Bentinck said indignantly. ‘What do you take me for, some kind of snitch? But I’m blowed if—’
Lucas cut in. ‘Since our obliging Captain will shortly be taking his ship into Oporto,’ he said softly, ‘it’s time for us to get ready. And—Bentinck—kindly leave Miss Sheldon to me, will you?’
* * *
Oporto amazed Verena, with its colour and bustle. There was little sign here of the war that raged across Europe, as the native Portuguese went about their daily business of fishing and trading around this busy harbour where the River Douro flowed into the sea.
But Lucas warned her, as they alighted from the Goldfinch’s boat, that French spies could be anywhere, and that the small British presence here might soon have to be pulled out. For all military resources, he explained, were being concentrated on the race for the much more important city of Lisbon, nearly two hundred miles to the south.
Lucas left her briefly with Bentinck while he went to see the British military attaché. When he returned, he sent Bentinck off to secure Verena a suitable passage home and quietly told her the news.
‘So far Wellington is ahead of the French. But before the final push for Lisbon, he intends to make a stand in the hills above Coimbra, to slow down the enemy pursuit. He’s planned his route, and this resistance, for months, Verena; his victory very much depends on knowing the terrain’.
She concentrated on every word. Trying hard, for this last hour with him, not to think how she would miss this man: his sweet and tender kisses, his powerful, breathtaking lovemaking.
The time they’d spent together in that cabin would be for ever etched on her heart. She could finally be sure that this brave and honourable man loved her.
Yet every moment with him was still clouded by the knowledge of what her father had tried to do.
Now, she said, ‘So my father’s maps, Lucas, and those descriptions, in his diary…’
‘Will be vital,’ he assured her gravely. ‘No one mapped this country as well as your father did. I’m getting the diary to Lord Wellington as soon as possible’.
And going once more into danger. But it was all part of who he was, how he lived. And she loved him all the more for it.
She must show courage too. She voiced now the thoughts she’d had earlier, as she waited for him, with Bentinck.
‘Lucas, couldn’t the British army come down here, to Oporto? Why go all the way to Lisbon?’
‘Because Lisbon is Portugal’s capital and its heart. It has a vital harbour, and all of it is at this moment being fortified to withstand a long French siege. Wellington knows he’ll draw the French army after him, but it’s intentional. Alongside our Portuguese allies, he can hold the city indefinitely, because he can get reinforcements and supplies by sea. From there his army can march out again, to retake first Portugal, then Spain. A few months ago, Napoleon looked set to conquer all of Europe, Britain included; but Wellington is the one man who can stop him’.
And her father would have betrayed all of Wellington’s army, and his own country.…
‘Lucas,’ she whispered, ‘how many people know about my father?’
‘Very few,’ he assured her. ‘Like me, they are men who work in secret. They will say nothing’. He put a finger under her chin and tilted up her head so her eyes met his. ‘You must always remember your father was a desperate man, his mind twisted by his misfortunes. Now Bentinck will be back very soon. Are you ready to go, querida?’
He was glad to see that some colour had returned to her cheeks. ‘Only because I have to,’ she whispered. She put her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against his chest, then looked up into his ardent, handsome face. So dear to her. So precious. ‘Lucas. I can only hope some day to be worthy of your love. Your trust’.
‘You have proved yourself so already,’ he interrupted her, and kissed her sweetly, lingeringly. ‘Come. It’s time to take you to your ship’.
Bentinck, by some miracle, had found a merchant ship sailing for Portsmouth on the afternoon tide. He and Lucas briefly discussed the details, then Bentinck tactfully withdrew.
‘No Captain Brooks, I trust?’ She said it lightly to Lucas, but a shiver rippled through her.
‘No Captain Brooks’. Lucas looked down at her, smiling. ‘Bentinck informs me there are quite a few respectable passengers aboard this one. You will travel in relative comfort’.
‘I would rather travel aboard a complete wreck of a ship, if you were there to share my cabin,’ she said softly. ‘I will miss you, Lucas’.
‘And I you. I will be back soon. And then…’ he took her hand and pressed it to his lips ‘.…we will be married’.
‘At the Wycherley church!’ she said suddenly, her face alight. ‘Oh, I can see it now! With all the villagers there, and simple flowers from the fields and hedgerows—there will be dancing on the green—’
‘And you will be my harvest bride’. He kissed her tenderly. ‘My amber-eyed harvest maiden’.
Verena stood a moment, looking her last on the scenic city of Oporto and at the steep and hilly country beyond it, which Lucas would shortly be ascending. ‘Do you know, Lucas, where you’ll find Lord Wellington?’
‘Roughly, yes. The attaché told me he’s going to make a stand with his army on the ridge of Busaco’.
She nodded. ‘Busaco’. The name sounded somehow familiar.
‘Have you heard of it?’ His expression was suddenly intent.
‘Isn’t it mentioned in my father’s diary?’
‘No. I’ve read it from cover to cover’.
‘Then I must have imagined it. I’m sorry’.
He sighed a little, then took her hand and brushed it with his lips. ‘No matter. No matter at all. Come, meu amor. There is your ship’.
Though the vessel would not be sailing for two hours, she was allowed to board, and she knew Lucas must be eager to set off. She smiled back, though she hated, now, being parted from him for a moment. ‘I will think of you all the time,’ she breathed. ‘Goodbye, Lucas’.
He took her hands. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘Always remember that’. Then he tipped her face up towards his and bent to kiss her.
The touch of his lips against hers was sweet beyond bearing. Suddenly she flung her arms around his neck, drinking in the male strength of him, the warmth of his hard body against hers. ‘Lucas! Come back safely!’ she whispered desperately.
Then Bentinck was behind them, clearing his throat with unaccustomed tact, ready to escort her onto the ship back to England. To reality. Pippa and the servants—they would be half-crazy with worry. At least she could rel
y on Pippa to have the good sense not to have told her mother in London. She watched Lucas until he was out of sight.
Busaco.
Surely she’d come across that name recently? But she could not remember where. She turned to walk sadly towards the gangplank of the Portsmouth-bound ship, with Bentinck following behind. She had a small cabin to herself, but until the ship sailed she preferred to remain on deck, gazing at the hills while the sailors prepared for embarkation, thinking of Lucas making his way up there.
She pulled up with a start. Busaco. Her hand went to her pocket. Her father’s last letters.
She scoured each scrawled missive until she found the one she wanted. The letter with the map. The close-set writing, the detailed drawings.
She whirled round and called for Bentinck, who was hovering close by. She said, ‘There is to be no getting rid of you, is there, Mr Bentinck?’
‘None at all, ma’am,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘For which I do offer hearty apologies, I’m sure!’
‘No need to apologise at all,’ she answered in a thoughtful tone. ‘It is I who should apologise to you, for not trusting you. Now. Tell me about this place called Busaco to which your master is heading. Quickly’.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three days later—Busaco, Portugal
The place known as Busaco was a nine-mile ridge of rocky hillside, rising to nearly two thousand feet in places, and falling away vertiginously to pine and cedar forests on one side and the coastal plain on the other.
This was where Lord Wellington had decided, months ago, to stop and face the French army during the inevitable race to Lisbon. And he had relied on his scouts and intelligencers to help him achieve victory.
‘This war in the Peninsula is going to be won by whoever has the best knowledge of this upland terrain,’ he’d once said to Lucas. ‘We’ve got to out-think and out-plan the French at every step. I need maps, Conistone. I need you and your men to gather intelligence about every inch of ground from Lisbon all the way to Madrid’.
So Lucas, in the October of 1808, had resigned his commission, and agreed to be Wellington’s spy; outwardly a civilian, outwardly unconnected with the war, but secretly gleaning vital information not only in enemy terrain, but also in the lofty drawing rooms of Europe.
And the irony was that Lucas had been chosen because of Verena’s father.
When he was a boy, Lucas had listened avidly as Jack Sheldon talked to the Earl about his travels in Spain and Portugal. When Jack realised Lucas was interested, he taught him Portuguese, and some Spanish also; often Lucas had pored over Jack’s maps of wild and unexplored places, while Jack vividly described every detail.
Then the Earl and Jack had had their bitter falling-out and Jack had stormed off on his travels again, never to return. Deep in financial trouble, he’d started negotiating in secret with the French, who, anticipating a long struggle against the English forces in the Peninsula, were desperate to get hold of everything he’d written, every detail of his explorations.
And so, just a few days ago, Lucas, on board the Goldfinch, had been forced to tell Verena that her father was a traitor.
The trouble was that she still didn’t know everything. And Lucas’s problem now was, when to tell her? When the devil should he tell her it all?
Lucas rubbed his eyes wearily. Just now he had even more pressing matters on his mind.
The lost mines of Busaco were said, by the locals, to be part of an ancient network driven centuries ago into the hills; no one had found them, despite the rumours of South American gold hidden there by the returning conquistadores. When Lord Wellington, poring over his own maps months ago, had decided Busaco ridge would be the ideal vantage point to make a stand against the French army in the autumn, it was assumed that the stories of the mines were nothing but a myth.
But then Lucas, puzzling over Jack Sheldon’s boasts to both Verena and the Earl, began to wonder, What if Sheldon really had found those long-lost mines?
Easy to consider the task impossible, for the steep escarpment below the ridge was covered with loose scree and thorny scrub, and lower down trees grew thickly, their roots tangled amongst the rocks. But Lucas found that the whispers of gold persisted—whispers that Jack Sheldon had found those tunnels and recorded their whereabouts for himself. Yet though Lucas spent long nights on the Goldfinch, poring over Wild Jack’s diary by the light of a guttering candle, he could find no reference to Busaco or its lost tunnels.
And here, at Busaco, the French were expected daily.
‘They’ll outnumber us massively,’ Alec Stewart, who was already here, had said to Lucas. ‘Fortunately their intelligence is much poorer than ours’. He grinned. ‘Especially as your enterprising Portuguese companion—what was his name, Miguel?—fobbed off the French scouts with some fake maps, which sent their generals all over the mountains on their way here’.
Lucas gave an answering smile. ‘I hope the French paid him well’. Inwardly he saluted his diminutive friend: Obrigado, Miguel. My thanks.
‘No doubt they did’. Alec’s face became serious again. ‘But those lost tunnels—if only we’d found them, Lucas! We could have hidden men and cannon. And the French, as they marched up the valley, wouldn’t even have known where the attack was coming from!’
As if he didn’t know. As if he’d needed reminding.
Here Lucas still went by the name of Patterson, a scout of Wellington’s. While Alec wore his smart captain’s uniform, Lucas wore old civilian clothes and looked like a barbarian, or so Alec cheerfully told him. Here only Alec, Lord Wellington and a few close friends among the senior officers knew who he really was.
‘We have to give the French a mighty big surprise if we’re to win enough of a victory to get ourselves to Lisbon in time,’ Wellington had confided to him last night. ‘Conistone, you’re my man for tactics, you know this territory like the back of your hand…’
All except for the mines. Where the hell were Wild Jack’s maps of Busaco?
Lucas had risked all to find them. He’d risked, and nearly lost, the woman he loved. But those crucial maps seemed not to exist.
There was no rebuke from Wellington. The great general just said, in his curt way, ‘Perhaps those damned mines never existed. We’ll find another way to take the Frogs by surprise’.
Wellington had ranged his troops all along and behind the ridge, so that most of them would be hidden from view when the French marched up the valley tomorrow. And still Lucas hadn’t given up. With Alec’s steady help, he got all the soldiers who could be spared to clamber round the lower slopes, searching.
But it seemed that any mine entrances had long since been hidden by dense furze and thorn, ancient tree roots and areas of loose shale that were for ever sliding down the mountainside. If the tunnels had ever existed, they now looked lost for ever.
* * *
As the sun began to set, Lucas’s aide, who had prepared a camp fire, was trying to press food on him: some horse meat, boiled in a stew; days-old bread; rough Portuguese wine. Lucas had little appetite.
Then he heard voices. Familiar voices. He turned his head sharply, and got to his feet. No. Surely not.
There was the barked challenge of a sentry, and, in response, a belligerent male voice. An unmistakeable voice. In the name of God…
‘Now, there ain’t no use trying to stop me, however flash your pistols! We ain’t climbed up all this way from Oporto to be told Mr Patterson ain’t allowed no visitors, you hear? You step back, my man, or I’ll plant you such a facer as you won’t wake till old Boney’s been chased all the way back to Paris!’
Bentinck. What the hell…? As long as he was alone. As long as…
Lucas thrust aside his dish and got to his feet, striding across to the scene of the altercation. ‘What in damnation are you doing here, Bentinck? I told you to see that Verena sailed home on that ship!’
Bentinck swung round to him, his face a picture. ‘I’ll be blowed if that wasn’t my intention, M
r Patterson! But what you didn’t say was wot I was to do if the lady upped sticks and decided she wasn’t goin’ home after all, but was travellin’ all the way up here! On this mule that I’ll swear is as stubborn as her!’ He jabbed his finger towards the wiry-looking mule whose reins he grasped; and to the woman in a cloak who was sliding quickly from the mule’s saddle to step forwards, her hood falling back from her glorious chestnut hair as she lifted her head to him, almost defiantly.
‘Please don’t be angry with Bentinck, Mr Patterson!’ said Verena quickly. ‘It’s not his fault I’m here; it’s mine, because you see I absolutely insisted that he bring me to see you!’
A crowd of soldiers had gathered round, their jaws dropping at the sight of her. At her—yes, devil take it, at her sheer beauty. Lucas’s heart thudded. She might have struggled on muleback up here—an arduous journey if ever there was one—but, deuce take it, she was as cool, as fresh, as lovely as if she were appearing at a top-lofty London ball, and as tempting.
All the way up, from Oporto! Three days traversing steep tracks—even the goddamned mule must have had to be practically hauled up some of the most treacherous and narrow parts of the path.
He couldn’t believe it.
Yet—she was here. And seeing her revived all the love—and, be honest, all the lust—Lucas always felt in her presence. He wanted nothing more than to crush her in his arms and make love to her. But here they were, about to face a huge French army, and by this time tomorrow, half of them at least might well be dead, the rest embarked on a long, arduous retreat to Lisbon while fighting a desperate rearguard action.
He said, curtly because he was afraid for her, ‘Oh, Verena. Your reasons for coming here had better be good’.
She did not flinch. She lifted her lovely wide amber eyes to him and said honestly, ‘I think they are. You see—Mr Patterson—I think I can help your General Wellington win tomorrow’s battle’. She drew closer and dropped her voice. ‘I’ve found my father’s plans, of the ancient mountain-mines of Busaco’.