Her Dearest Sin

by Gayle Wilson

  “I’m very sorry, your grace,” he said.

  The piercing eyes lifted again, seeming to search his face. “You’ve been a fine officer on the whole, Sin. A bit rash and impetuous at times, at least in comparison to the steadiness of Major Sinclair.”

  “Few men could live up to that standard, your grace. I beg you won’t compare me to Ian. Dare, on the other hand—”

  Wellington laughed, the distinctive sound that was almost a bray. His eyes had become less cold.

  “Perhaps I’m wrong in being disappointed in your decision,” he said. “To err on the side of caution is, in your case, probably a wise thing. I’m sure that we shall manage to function in Paris without your support. God speed you on your journey, Captain Sinclair. And please don’t forget to offer my congratulations to your brother on his recent nuptials when you see him again in London.”

  “Apparently none of the women are being allowed to board the ships.” As he talked, Malford’s eyes darted back and forth from Sebastian’s face to Pilar, who was sitting in the back of a small wagon with a group of other women.

  Given her vibrant beauty, she blended in with them as well as one could expect, Sebastian supposed. However, looking at the rough mob surrounding them, he could understand the batman’s diligence in keeping an eye on her.

  When they’d arrived in the French port, they had found nothing short of chaos. Far too many people were crowded into every available inch of space around the docks, some of them having been here for weeks.

  The Peninsular army was being disbanded. These hardened veterans were to be dispatched to England, Ireland or a variety of other postings. Some were destined to immediately join the British forces fighting in America.

  Now they were awaiting orders to board the transports that had been sent to collect them. And noisily waiting with them were the Spanish and Portuguese women who had followed this army during the course of the long war.

  “What do you mean they aren’t being allowed to board?” Sebastian demanded, raising his voice in order to be heard above the din.

  “Quartermaster general’s orders,” Malford said, shouting back. “Some of the troopers have documentation showing they’ve made a lawful union with their women. Even those are being turned away.”

  “This can’t be Wellington’s idea,” Sebastian said. “These women don’t speak French. If they’re left here without any means of support…”

  He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Malford knew as well as he what would become of them.

  Through the long years the English had fought in Iberia, the camp followers had washed their clothes, cooked their meals and cared for their sick and wounded. Although some had undoubtedly been passed from soldier to soldier, for the most part that had only been after their original protector had been killed in battle. With so few females to such a large number of males, it took no more than a few hours before a woman so deprived had moved her possessions into another soldier’s tent. To treat them now as nothing more than prostitutes seemed nearly criminal.

  There was nothing Sebastian could do to change the quartermaster general’s orders. Not even if, as he suspected, they had not been sanctioned by the commander in chief. His concerns were more immediate. And more personal.

  “I did exactly what you said, Captain Sinclair. I told them the lady was my wife, but they refused to let me take her on board. They didn’t even listen,” Malford said, his eyes troubled.

  “Perhaps they’ll listen to me,” Sebastian said. “Who did you talk to?”

  Malford pointed to the man seated at the end of one of the long tables where the lists of those boarding each transport were being compiled. Several soldiers could be seen arguing with him, their women wailing behind them. Although Sebastian was too far away to hear what was being said, the obstinate set of the man’s jaw and the way in which he answered each inquiry with a shake of his head spoke to the veracity of Malford’s claim.

  “Not even if they have their marriage lines, you say?” Sebastian asked, who had been wondering about the possibility of finding someone capable of forging such a document.

  “No matter what kind of papers they can produce. Unless, of course, you’re an officer.”

  “They’re letting the officers take women on board?”

  “With proof they’ve taken the woman to wife.”

  “What kind of proof are they accepting?”

  “I don’t know about the documents that are being presented, but I can tell you that they aren’t looking at any of them too closely. Even the quartermaster general don’t want to take a chance on insulting an officer’s wife by accusing her of being a camp follower.”

  With proof they’ve taken the woman to wife. The solution to the problem seemed obvious. And, Sebastian realized, just as obviously impossible.

  Pilar was not only the daughter of a Spanish grandee, she was undoubtedly a Catholic. He had promised he would convey her to England and that once there he would put her into the capable hands of his brother and under the protection of the Sinclair family and the crown. How could he now demand that she marry him in order to accomplish that?

  Besides, in this madness, how could he hope to arrange any kind of ceremony she would agree to?

  To arrange any kind of ceremony at all, he amended, looking around him.

  With the recent abdication of Napoleon, he wasn’t even sure which laws governed France right now. Of course, that might mean that no one else associated with the British army could be perfectly certain of them either.

  He had a vague recollection that religion had been abolished during the Revolution, but he wasn’t clear about what had happened to the churches under Bonaparte. And with the recent Bourbon restoration…

  Surely there were still priests in the country. The question was whether any one of them would agree to join in matrimony a Catholic girl to a heretic Englishman, albeit one in fairly good standing with his own church.

  Of course, admitting that might very well put a swift end to any attempt to get them wed. And without Wellington’s help or advice—

  “This woman says that none of the dependents are being let on board those ships.”

  He turned and found Pilar standing at his elbow. She was holding the arm of a woman who was dressed in clothing almost identical to that with which he had provided her.

  Despite the similarity of their costumes, the difference in the women themselves was striking. Pilar’s bearing seemed to shout she was an aristocrat playing at masquerade. He could only pray she did not stand out from this crowd as much as he was imagining she did.

  The woman with her was older and heavier, her face tight with anxiety. In her arms she carried a baby of perhaps three months, closely swaddled despite the heat. Her dark eyes looked hopefully into Sebastian’s, as if she believed he might be able to help them, perhaps because of the uniform he wore.

  “I’m afraid she may be right,” he admitted.

  The girl’s eyes widened, but instead of remonstrating about the news he had given her, she turned to the older woman beside her and repeated it. There was a few seconds of animated conversation, before Pilar turned back and spoke to him again.

  “She asks me what they are to do. Surely the English don’t intend to leave all these women behind in Bordeaux. They’ll starve.”

  “Or worse,” Malford said darkly. Seeing Pilar’s expression, he added, “Begging your pardon, my lady.”

  “Become whores? Is that what you mean? Is that what your great Lord Wellington intends for these women to do? To support themselves and their children by selling their bodies on the streets.”

  “I don’t believe the duke can be aware of what’s happening,” Sebastian said stiffly.

  “Then he should be made aware. These women have borne the children of his soldiers. Those men can’t mean to leave their families behind.”

  “They won’t have no choice, my lady,” Malford explained, his voice subdued by the reality of what was about to happen. “T
hey’ll board those ships when they’re told or they’ll be deserters.”

  “Leaving their wives and children behind to starve,” Pilar said, her disgust with the British army clear.

  She was right, of course. Whoever had made this decision, it was indefensible. And unless Sebastian could figure out something within the next hour…

  “We need a priest,” he said.

  “A priest,” Malford and Pilar repeated simultaneously.

  “She’s already married,” Pilar said, drawing the woman closer. “Show him your paper,” she instructed in Spanish.

  Obediently the mother of the baby drew a neatly folded sheet of paper from inside her blouse. She handed it to Pilar, her eyes still focused hopefully on Sebastian.

  “See. Magdalena Sistallo and John Ridgely,” Pilar read the names as she held the document out to him. “Joined in matrimony on the fourth of March, 1814.”

  “I didn’t mean a priest for her,” he said, without taking the proffered paper.

  After a second or two, her eyes lifted from it to fasten on his face. “Then…for whom do you need a priest?”

  “They’re allowing the officers to bring their wives on board if they can provide documentation of the marriage.”

  He hadn’t as yet confirmed what Malford had told him with anyone in authority, but he might as well gauge her reaction in case it turned out to be true.

  “Officers’ wives are being allowed to go?”

  “As long as they have documentation.”

  “Are you suggesting…?” Her voice faltered, but her gaze remained locked on his face.

  “It seems we have no alternative,” he said truthfully.

  Some infinitesimal change occurred in the depths of her eyes before they were veiled by the fall of her lashes. And when they lifted once more, whatever he had seen within them had disappeared.

  “I see,” Pilar said.

  “I’m not certain about the laws governing marriage in France at the moment, but surely, if we can find a priest who will agree to marry us—”

  “Are you Catholic, Captain Sinclair?”

  He noticed that she was no longer calling him Sebastian. “I am a member of the Church of England. In this situation, however—”

  “Because if you aren’t,” Pilar continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “then no priest is going to consent to celebrate a nuptial mass between us.”

  Sebastian could only assume she was right. After all, her knowledge of a priest’s likely response to that request was certainly more accurate than his.

  There was a prolonged silence as he tried to think of some other way to accomplish what he was realizing more with each passing minute must be accomplished. He was aware that the eyes of the woman with the baby, as well as the eyes of the girl he had promised to see safely to England, had not left his face.

  “If I may be so bold…” Malford said, drawing everyone’s attention.

  “If you have a solution, man, then for God’s sake offer it,” Sebastian said. He hadn’t intended that demand to sound so harsh, but the batman didn’t seem put off by his tone.

  “Somehow, I doubt our good John Ridgely is Catholic either,” he said.

  John Ridgely. The name of the man on the paper Pilar had tried to show him. John Ridgely, who was apparently married to—

  “Ask her,” he commanded Pilar as soon as he understood what Malford was suggesting.

  Pilar’s eyes held on his a moment longer before she turned to obey. The resulting exchange was rapid, and except for the occasional idiomatic word, he was able to follow it.

  “She says they were married in camp by…a heretic?” Pilar repeated uncertainly, when she had turned back to him.

  It took Sebastian only a moment to arrive at the correct translation. “Not a heretic. A dissenter. Some kind of lay preacher perhaps.”

  “There are a few of those with the army,” Malford offered. “Come over to save our immortal souls by preaching hellfire and brimstone at us, all the while protecting us from the dread influence of the Papists.”

  The batman was right. Some of the officers had objected to Wellington about the presence of the evangelists among the enlisted men. In the end no one had been willing to deny the possibility that they might provide spiritual comfort or some moral guidance to the troops, who had much need of both.

  “The question is will any of them have come to Bordeaux?”

  “It’s where the army is, isn’t it. The problem as I see it, Captain Sinclair, is going to be locating one of them in this mob.”

  Not to mention the problem of getting him to agree to perform the marriage. Sebastian had no idea what such a ceremony would involve, but he had seen a few drumhead marriages in camp. He wasn’t sure how binding that simple exchange of vows would be for two people, neither of whom shared the religion under which those vows were given.

  “What is a dissenter?” Pilar asked.

  Sebastian glanced at Malford, seeking help with the explanation. None was forthcoming. The batman shrugged his shoulders, leaving it to him to try to explain.

  “Someone who objects—”

  Sebastian broke off the sentence when he realized that knowledge of exactly which elements within the Church of England the dissenters objected to would not be helpful in convincing Pilar to let one of their preachers conduct the ceremony. If he could manage to convince one of them to agree to do so.

  “Someone who objects to certain elements contained within the practices of the Church of England,” he finished carefully.

  “They object to the church. That is allowed in your country?”

  “To some extent.” Far more than it had been during the previous centuries, he conceded.

  “And you believe that such a man would—”

  “Marry us?” he said, finally putting into words the gist of what they had been talking around. “I have no idea, but unless we can locate a priest who doesn’t have a problem with the fact that I’m not Catholic and you are, I think we’re going to be forced to find out.”

  After Sebastian had verified Malford’s information about the wives of officers being allowed to board, it had proven remarkably easy to locate an evangelist. All they had had to do was wander through the crowd until they found someone preaching loudly enough to be heard over the noise. The man had attracted a small group of troopers, most of whom appeared to be listening out of boredom rather than from any religious fervor.

  Of course, their boredom was understandable. These men no longer had a mission or a purpose. They had found themselves confined for several days in a city where most of them didn’t speak the language. And based on his firsthand knowledge of the British soldier, Sebastian speculated that they had probably drunk up or gambled away whatever pay had remained in their pockets. The evangelist’s harangue was for them simply a form of free entertainment.

  And not a very comforting one, Sebastian decided as he listened. The man seemed to be chronicling the gory punishments that would follow in the next world for every vice that had ever found favor with the British soldier.

  Most of which he himself had been guilty of at one time or another, he admitted. He couldn’t quite imagine the gentle, elderly vicar Dare maintained ever mentioning any of them in a sermon to his flock, however.

  “You intend to ask him to marry us?” Pilar asked loudly enough to cause a few heads to turn.

  “If he will,” Sebastian responded, lowering his voice in the hope that she would do the same.

  “Why would he refuse? We are respectable people.” It was obvious by her tone that she didn’t believe the evangelist was.

  “Considering the narrowness of his theology, I doubt many here would qualify as respectable. Besides, there is the additional problem of our own religions.”

  “This won’t be a mass,” she said. “He’s not a priest.”

  “He’s a minister. The marriage will, of necessity, not…be a mass,” he finished awkwardly.

  “And therefore not a real marriage.�
�

  Not to her, he realized. And Sebastian had already acknowledged he had no idea about the legal ramification of such a match. However…

  “It may possibly be considered real by the courts.”

  “The French courts or the English ones? What could either possibly have to do with this?”

  “If the question arose,” he hedged.

  “If Julián contested the marriage, do you mean?”

  That hadn’t been what he meant, but it was a consideration. “Your guardian or anyone else,” he said. “I know that to you any vows we exchange before this man would be meaningless. I’m simply telling you that to others they may not be.”

  “And to you? What would such vows mean to you?”

  What would they mean? he wondered, trying to be both logical and objective. Would he consider himself bound by such a union? “Til death do us part” bound?

  If, for example, Pilar chose to deny that the vows were binding once they reached England, would he still consider himself married. Then he realized that was not really the question.

  If she chose to deny those vows, would he be able to let her go? Would he be able to watch her hold her head at that proud tilt as she placed her hand on that of some simpering London fop and danced away from him? Even worse, would he let Delgado arrive, with all the pomp of the Spanish court behind him, and reclaim his fiancée?

  As he hesitated, her eyes held his. When the answer to her question had been delayed too long, she turned her face away, the angle of her chin rising even as he watched.

  “They would mean,” he said, putting his hands on her upper arms and forcing her to face him, “that I have no other way to get you out of France and away from your guardian. When we get to England, we can sort through the legal ramifications of what we’re being forced to do here.”

  For a moment, she said nothing. “Then perhaps it would be better if you conveyed me to Paris, Captain Sinclair.”

  “To… Delgado?”

  “At least I understand his motives.”

  “His motives in what?” he said, feeling a surge of resentment that, after all he had tried to do, she was comparing him unfavorably to that bastard. “His motives in killing your father,” he reminded her brutally.