The Captain's Forbidden Miss

by Margaret McPhee

  ‘Captain Dammartin.’ She got to her feet.

  ‘Sit down,’ he commanded in English.

  She felt her hackles rise. There was something in the quietness of his tone that smacked of danger. She thought she would defy him, but it seemed in that moment that she heard again her father’s voice, Trust him, Josie. Trust him, when her every instinct screamed to do otherwise? She hesitated, torn between obeying her father and her own instinct.

  He shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. ‘Stand, then, if you prefer. It makes no difference to me.’ There was a silence while he studied her, his eyes intense and scrutinising.

  Josie’s heart was thrashing madly within her chest, but she made no show of her discomfort; she met his gaze and held it.

  Each stared at the other in a contest of wills, as if to look away would be to admit weakness.

  ‘I have some questions that I wish to ask you,’ Dammartin said, still not breaking his gaze.

  Josie felt her legs begin to shake and she wished that she had sat down, but she could not very well do so now. She curled her toes tight within her boots, and pressed her knees firmly together, tensing her muscles, forcing her legs to stay still. ‘As I have of you, sir.’

  He did not even look surprised. ‘Then we shall take it in turns,’ he said. ‘Ladies first.’ And there was an emphasis on the word ‘ladies’ that suggested she was no such thing.

  ‘My father’s body… Is he… Have you…?’

  ‘Your father lies where he fell,’ he said harshly.

  ‘You have not given him a burial?’

  ‘Did Lieutenant Colonel Mallington take time to bury Frenchmen? Each side buries its own.’

  ‘In a battle situation, but this is different!’

  ‘Is it?’ he asked, and still their gazes held. ‘I was under the impression, mademoiselle, that we were engaged in battle this day.’

  She averted her gaze down to the floor, suddenly afraid that she would betray the grief and pain and shock that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Battle’ was too plain, too ordinary a word to describe what had taken place that day in the deserted village of Telemos. Twenty-seven lives had been lost, her father’s among them. Only when she knew that the weakness had passed did she glance back up at him. ‘But there is no one left to bury him.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  His answer seemed to echo between them.

  ‘I would request that you give him a decent burial.’

  ‘No.’

  She felt her breath rush in a gasp of disbelief. ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ he affirmed.

  She stared at him with angry, defiant eyes. ‘My father told me that you were an honourable man. It appears that he was grossly mistaken in his opinion.’

  He raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing.

  ‘You will leave him as carrion for wild animals to feed upon?’

  ‘It is the normal course of things upon a battlefield.’

  She took a single step towards him, her fingers curled to fists by her sides. ‘You are despicable!’

  ‘You are the first to tell me so,’ he said.

  She glared at him, seeing the dislike in his eyes, the hard determination in his mouth, this loathsome man to whom her father had entrusted her. ‘Then give me a spade and I will dig his grave myself.’

  ‘That is not possible, mademoiselle.’

  Her mouth gaped at his refusal.

  ‘You wish Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s body to be buried? It is a simple matter. It shall be done—’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘It shall be done,’ he repeated, ‘as soon as you answer my questions.’

  Fear prickled at the back of Josie’s neck, and trickled down her spine. She shivered, suspecting all too well the nature of the French captain’s questions. Carefully and deliberately, she fixed a bland expression upon her face and prayed for courage.

  Pierre Dammartin watched the girl closely and knew then that he had not been wrong in his supposition. ‘So tell me, Mademoiselle Mallington, what were riflemen of the Fifth Battalion of the 60th Regiment doing in Telemos?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Come now, mademoiselle. I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Why so? Surely you do not think my father would discuss such things with me? I assure you that it is not the done thing for British army officers to discuss their orders with their daughters.’

  He smiled a small, tight smile at that. ‘But is it the done thing for British army officers to take their daughters on campaign with them? To have them fight alongside their men?’

  ‘It is not so unusual for officers to take their families, and as for fighting, I did so only at the end and out of necessity.’

  He ignored her last comment. ‘What of your mother, where is she?’

  The girl looked at him defiantly. ‘She is dead, sir.’

  He said nothing. She was Mallington’s daughter. What had Mallington cared for Major Dammartin’s wife or family? The simple answer was nothing.

  ‘Tell me of your father’s men.’

  ‘There is nothing to tell.’ Her voice was light and fearless, almost taunting in its tone.

  ‘From where did you march?’

  ‘I cannot recall.’

  He raised an eyebrow at that. The girl was either stupid or brave, and from what he had seen of Mademoiselle Mallington so far, he was willing to bet on the latter. ‘When did you arrive in Telemos?’

  She glanced away. ‘A few days ago.’

  ‘Which day precisely?’

  ‘I cannot remember.’

  ‘Think harder, mademoiselle…’ he stepped closer, knowing that his proximity would intimidate her ‘…and I am sure that the answer will come to you.’

  She took a step back. ‘It might have been Monday.’

  She was lying. Everything about her proclaimed it to be so: the way her gaze flitted away before coming back to meet his too boldly, too defiantly; her posture; the flutter of her hands to touch nervously against her mouth.

  ‘Monday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many men?’

  ‘I am not sure.’

  ‘Hazard a guess.’ Another step forward.

  And again she edged back. ‘A hundred,’ she uttered with angry defiance.

  ‘A large number.’ He raised an eyebrow, knowing from the scattering of corpses that there had been nowhere near that number of men.

  ‘Yes.’

  He watched her. ‘Did you ride with your father, or walk with the men, mademoiselle?’

  She looked up at him, and he could see the puzzlement beneath the thick suspicion. There was the shortest of pauses before she said, ‘I rode a donkey, the same as the other women.’

  ‘You are telling me that the unmarried daughter of the Lieutenant Colonel rode with the company’s whores?’

  ‘They were not whores,’ she said hotly. ‘They were wives to the men.’

  ‘And your father was happy to leave you with them while he rode ahead with his officers on horseback? How very caring of him,’ he ridiculed.

  ‘Do not dare to judge him. You are not fit to speak his name!’

  ‘Only fit to kill the bastard,’ he murmured in French.

  ‘Scoundrel!’ she cursed him.

  He smiled. ‘Who took the horses?’

  All of the anger drained from her in an instant. She froze, caught unawares. He saw the tiny flicker of fear in her eyes and knew that he had guessed right.

  ‘I do not know what you mean,’ she said, but the words were measured and careful.

  ‘There are only two horses stabled at the monastery. Where are the others?’

  Beneath the glow of the lantern her face paled. There was a pause. ‘We shot the others for food.’

  ‘Really,’ he said, ‘you shot the horses and left the donkeys?’

  ‘Yes.’ One hand slid to encase the other and she stood there facing him, with her head held high, as demure as any lady, and lying through
her teeth.

  ‘I see.’ He watched her grip tighten until the knuckles shone white. He looked directly into her eyes and stepped closer until only the lantern separated them.

  She tried to back away, but her legs caught against the wooden crate positioned behind her and she would have fallen had he not steadied her. Quite deliberately, he left his hand where it was, curled around her upper arm.

  ‘You would do better to tell me the truth, Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said quietly. He saw the pulse jump in her neck, could almost hear the skittering thud of her heart within the silence of the cellar. Her eyes were wide and her skin so pale as to appear that it had been carved from alabaster. She was smaller than he remembered from the shoot-out in the room in the monastery, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulder. Perhaps it was the rifle that had lent her the illusion of height. They were standing so close that he could see the long lashes that fanned her eyes and hear the shallowness of her breath.

  ‘Do you want to start again?’ The softness of his words did not hide the steel beneath them.

  She shook her head, and he noticed the fair tendrils of hair that had escaped her pins curl around her neck. ‘No, sir.’ Her words were as quiet as his, and Dammartin could only admire her courage.

  ‘Very well.’ He knew what he must do. The task was not pleasant, but it would give him the answers that the girl would not. Yet still he stood there, staring at her, as much as she stared at him, until he stepped abruptly away. ‘We shall continue our conversation at a later time.’ And he was gone, leaving her once more in the dark solitude of the cellar.

  Josie still glared at the door long after it had closed behind him. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought she might faint, but still she did not move to sit down. Her eyes strained through the darkness, seeing nothing, her ears hearing the steady climb of his feet back up the stairs. Her arm throbbed where his hand had been even though his grip had been so light as to barely be a restraint.

  She pressed her fingers hard to her lips as if to catch back all of the words she had spoken.

  What had she revealed? Nothing that he would not already have known, yet Josie knew that was not true. The Frenchman’s face had told her it was so. He knew about the horses, and if he knew about that, then it would not be so very long before he knew the rest.

  Her lies had been feeble, obvious and pathetic. Dammartin did not believe her, that much was evident. And he would be back. Her stomach turned over at the thought.

  It had taken an hour for twenty-seven men and women to die so that General Lord Wellington might be warned of Massena’s scheme. In the space of a matter of minutes Josie had almost negated their sacrifice if Captain Hartmann and Lieutenant Meyer had not yet reached Wellington. How much time would it take the two men to weave their way back to Lisbon? The future of the British army at the lines of Torres Vedras rested on that and Josie’s ability to prevent, or at least delay, Dammartin’s discovery that the messengers had been sent. And that was not something in which she had the slightest degree of confidence.

  Not for the first time Josie wondered if her father would have done better to let her die with him in the monastery. For all Papa’s assurance of Pierre Dammartin’s honour, she had a feeling that the French Captain was going to prove a most determined enemy.

  It took almost half an hour for Dammartin, his lieutenant, Molyneux, and his sergeant, Lamont, to finish the gruesome activity that the girl’s reticence to talk had forced them to. The night was dark, the moon a thin, defined crescent. They worked by the light of flambeaux, moving from corpse to corpse, examining the uniforms that garbed the stiffened, cold bodies that had once been a formidable fighting force for Britain, noting down what they found. And with each one Dammartin felt the futility of the loss. As prisoners of war they would have lost no honour. They had fought bravely, and the French had acknowledged that. Yet they had laid down their lives seemingly in a pointless gesture of defiance.

  Three times Dammartin had given them the opportunity to surrender, and three times Mallington had rejected it. Time had been running out. Dammartin knew he had already delayed too long, that General Foy and Major La Roque would arrive to take over if Dammartin did not bring the matter to a close, and Dammartin’s chance would have been lost. In the end he had been forced to storm the monastery, just as La Roque had ordered.

  He pushed such thoughts from his mind and forced himself to concentrate on the task before him. It seemed a long time before they had finally been able to rinse the blood from their hands and make for the stables.

  With the flambeaux held low, they scrutinised the marks and patterns of feet and hooves impressed upon the ground.

  ‘What do you think?’ Dammartin asked of his lieutenant. Molyneux had been trained in tracking, and when it came to his expertise in this field, there was no one’s opinion that Dammartin trusted more.

  ‘Two men and two horses heading off in the direction of the track over there. Prints are still fairly fresh. They probably left some time this afternoon.’

  ‘It is as I thought,’ said Dammartin. ‘We have found what we were looking for.’ It all made sense. Now he understood why Mallington had fought so hard for so long. Not for Telemos. The village was of little importance to the British regiment. But time was, and time was what they had bought for their messengers, and paid for with their lives. He gave a sigh and moved to instruct a pursuit team.

  Josie was in the midst of a dream in which the battle of Telemos was being fought again. She shouted the warning to her father, snatching up the dead man’s weapon, running up the staircase, loading and firing at the pursuing French. Her bullet travelled down the gun’s rifled barrel, cutting with a deadly accuracy through the air to land within the Frenchman’s chest. Smoke from the gunpowder drifted across her face, filling her nose with its stench, catching in her throat, drawing a curtain before her eyes so that she could not see. She heard the stagger of his footsteps, and then he was there, falling to his knees before her, his blood so rich and red spilling on to the hem of her dress. She looked down as the enemy soldier turned his face up to hers and the horror caught in her throat, for the face was that of Captain Pierre Dammartin.

  She opened her eyes and the nightmare was gone, leaving behind only its sickening dread. Her heart was thumping in her chest, and, despite the icy temperature of the cellar, the sheen of sweat was slick upon her forehead and upper lip. She caught her breath, sat up from her awkward slump against the stack of wooden boxes, and rubbed at the ache in her back. As she did so, she heard the step of boots upon the stairs and knew that he was coming back, and her heart raced all the faster.

  She struggled up to her feet, ignoring the sudden dizziness that it brought, felt herself sway in the darkness and sat rapidly back down. The last thing she wanted Dammartin to see was her faint.

  And then he was there, through the door before she was even aware that the key had turned within the lock.

  He looked tired and there was fresh dust upon his coat and a smear of dirt upon his cheek. The expression on his face was impassive, and she wondered what he had been doing. How much time had passed since he had questioned her? Minutes, hours? Josie did not know.

  He set the lantern down upon a box at the side of the room and moved to stand before her. Josie knew that this time there was a difference in his attitude. His eyes were filled with such darkness and determination that she remembered the stories of interrogation and torture and felt the fear squirm deep in the pit of her stomach. Tales of bravery and singular distinction, men who had defied all to withhold the information that their enemy sought. And something in Josie quailed because she knew that she had not a fraction of that bravery and that just the prospect of what Dammartin could do to her made her feel nauseous. She swallowed and wetted the dryness of her lips.

  If Dammartin noticed that she had forsaken her defiance of refusing to remain seated, he made no mention of it. Instead he drew up a crate and sat down before her, adjusting the lo
ng sabre that hung by his side as he did so.

  She waited for what he would do.

  ‘Do you wish to tell me of the horses, Mademoiselle Mallington?’

  ‘I have told you what I know,’ she said, feigning a calmness, and looked down to the darkness of the soil below her feet.

  ‘No, mademoiselle, you have told me very little of that.’

  In the silence that followed, the scrabble of rodents could be heard from the corner of the cellar.

  ‘Your father sent two men to warn your General Wellington of our march.’

  She felt the shock widen her eyes, freeze her into position upon the discomfort of the hard wooden crate. He could not know. It was not possible. Not unless… She stayed as she was, head bent, so that he would not see the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Have you nothing to say, mademoiselle? Nothing to ask me?’

  The breath was lodged, unmoving in her throat at the thought that Hartmann and Meyer might be captured. She forced its release and slowly raised her head until she could look into his eyes. There she saw ruthlessness and such certainty as to make her shiver.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There is nothing.’ Her voice was gritty with the strain of emotion.

  His eyes were black in the lantern light as her gaze met his. They stared at each other with only the sound of their breath in the dampness of the cellar, and the tightness of tension winding around them.

  ‘Denial is pointless. I know already the truth. Make this easier for us both, mademoiselle.’

  She could hear the chilling determination in those few words so quietly uttered. The worst of imaginings were already crowding in her mind.

  He was still looking at her and the distance between them seemed to shrink, so that the implacable resolution of the man was almost overwhelming.

  It was as if there was something heavy crushing against her chest, making it hard to pull the breath into her lungs and she could feel a slight tremble throughout her body. She curled her fingers tight and pressed her knees together so that the Frenchman would not see it. She swallowed down the lump in her throat, praying that her voice would not shake as much as the rest of her.