His arms closed around her, pulling her against him.
She tried to push him away, but he just held her closer, aware of the tremble through her body.
‘Listen to me.’
‘No.’ She shook her head and pushed harder at his chest. ‘Leave me!’
‘Josephine.’ He gazed down into her eyes, needing to reach her, needing to make her understand. ‘I did not steal your portmanteau. What need had I to do such a thing? Had I wanted to search it, do you not think that I would have come in here and done just that?’
Josie looked up into Dammartin’s eyes, and his words permeated the mist that had clouded her brain. The air she had been holding tight and still within her lungs escaped in a single fast breath.
He was right. Dammartin would have emptied her whole portmanteau before her very eyes without the slightest compunction.
‘I…’ She shook her head, unwilling to betray her father further by admitting the existence of the journals. Dammartin was still French. He was still her enemy. ‘You are mistaken, Captain, there were no journals within my portmanteau.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, but she knew that he was not convinced.
‘I would just like to have my possessions returned to me, that is all.’
He looked deep into her eyes. ‘A portmanteau is not so easy to hide on the war trail. If it is here, then it shall be found. I will discover who is behind this, mademoiselle.’ He was French. He was her enemy. But in that moment she believed what he said. And now that the panic had gone she became aware that she was still standing in the French Captain’s arms, and that he was staring down at her with an intensity that made her shiver.
‘You are cold,’ he said quietly.
‘No,’ she whispered, conscious that she was trembling. She should have pulled herself free, for the grip of his hands had gentled. But Josie just stood there.
His hand moved up and she felt the stroke of his thumb brush against her mouth and her lips burned where he touched.
There was only the sound of their breath between them.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he whispered, and not once did the intensity of his gaze falter. His eyes had darkened to a smoulder that held her so completely that she could not look away. It seemed as if she were transfixed by him, unable to move, unaware of anything save him, and the strange tension that seemed to bind them together.
Her eyes flickered over the harsh, lean angles of his face, over the straightness of his nose, over the dark line of his scar, down to his lips. And she was acutely conscious of the hardness of his chest and hip and, against her, the long length of his legs. The breath wavered in her throat, and she was sure that he would hear its loud raggedness.
‘Josephine,’ he said, and she could hear the hoarse strain within his voice. ‘God help me, but you tempt me to lose my very soul.’
His hand moved round to cradle her head. His face lowered towards hers, and she knew that he was going to kiss her. Slowly Josie tilted her face up in response, and the blanket slipped from her shoulders to fall upon the groundsheet.
A noise sounded from outside: a noisy tread over the grass, a man clearing his throat.
They froze.
‘Captain Dammartin,’ a man’s voice said.
The spell was broken.
The truth of Josie’s situation hit her. One of Dammartin’s hands was threaded within her hair, the other rested against the small of her back. Her blanket lay upon the floor, showing Rosa’s dress and just how much it revealed. Their bodies seemed to cling to together.
Dammartin released her and moved towards the tent flap, opening it by the smallest crack so that whoever stood there would not have a view of Josie.
There was the soft, fast lilt of French voices. They spoke so low she had to strain to hear them. She did not catch every word, but she heard enough of them to know why Sergeant Lamont had seen fit to interrupt his captain. The lantern within the tent created the perfect lighting for a shadow show. The Captain’s actions and those of Mademoiselle Mallington were clear to see for anyone outside the tent…and their actions were not going unnoticed by the men. Josie’s face scalded with heat.
If Dammartin was embarrassed, there was no sign of it upon his face as he let the tent-flap drop and faced her.
‘Pardon, mademoiselle…I must go.’
She bit at her lip, uncertain of what to say, knowing what they had been on the brink of doing.
He gave her one last look before he turned and was gone.
Chapter Nine
In view of Lamont’s words, Josie extinguished the lantern before undressing for bed. She kept on only Rosa’s shift and laid the blankets on to the bed once more before climbing within.
She lay there in the darkness, and the silence. Her heart was beating with a strong, steady thud, and her body tingled with awareness of what would have happened had not Lamont interrupted. Dammartin would have kissed her and she would have kissed him back. She was sure of it. Not a kiss that had started as a punishment, not a kiss to humiliate her before his men, but a real kiss between a man and a woman.
Her fingers touched to her mouth, exploring gently just as Dammartin had done. She knew that she had wanted him to kiss her—Captain Pierre Dammartin, the man responsible for her father’s death, her enemy. It was a sobering realisation, and one that brought a wave of guilt and shame. Lord help her, what would her father have said? She was supposed to be fighting the enemy, not fraternising with him. And she remembered what Dammartin had said of Rosa and the terrible consequences of the accusations against her.
She groaned and whispered into the darkness, ‘Papa, forgive me.’ She lay there for a long while, contemplating what she had come so close to doing, and the madness of it and the badness of it.
Josie had been around soldiers and the army for most of her life. There had been many officers who had been friendly towards her, there had been some who had taken her hand, but not one had ever tried to kiss her. Men did not see Josie in that light. Not even during that awful year in England when she had been dangled before every young man in the hope of catching her a husband. Josie, who could ride a horse faster than most men and shoot a rifle with accuracy, and make good of the hardship of the campaign trail, had floundered and stumbled beneath the ridicule. The men had thought her gaucherie something to be laughed at; the women had been more spiteful.
Dammartin was different: he did not laugh at her; he did not make her feel foolish or inept. Indeed, he made her feel alive and tingling and excited; he made her want to press her lips to his and feel his strong arms surround her. With him she forgot all else—the journals and her papa and the bandits and Telemos. There was only the French Captain and the prospect of his kiss…and the realisation both shocked and appalled her.
Her eyes peered though the darkness as if she could see through two layers of canvas, into the neighbouring tent, which housed Lamont and Molyneux and… Dammartin. A tingle ran down Josie’s spine just at his name. She closed her eyes and prayed for the strength to resist her own wanton nature.
But Dammartin was not in the nearby tent. Only Molyneux sat in there. Dammartin and Lamont stood across the field beneath a copse of trees that, while being distant from the tents, showed a clear view of them. Lamont was smoking his long clay pipe, drawing the tobacco in the pipe head to glow like a small orange spot in the darkness. The sweet scent of tobacco smoke surrounded them. Occasional droplets still dripped from the tree’s bare branches, remnants of the day’s downpour.
Lamont sucked at his pipe and seemed content to stare up at the dark grey cloud that covered the night sky above them.
There were no stars. The brightness of the moon was masked by the dense cover. The night was dark and gloomy.
Lamont sniffed. ‘You want her, the English mademoiselle.’
Dammartin stared over at his tent which now lay in darkness. ‘She is the daughter of my father’s murderer; she bears the family name that I have for so long lived to hate. She is British, my ver
y enemy, the one woman of all that should repel me.’ His mouth curved in a crooked smile filled with irony. ‘And none of it is enough to stop me.’ He glanced round at his sergeant. ‘That is a problem indeed, Claude.’
‘Some problems are easily solved.’
‘Not this one.’
Lamont said nothing.
‘Where Mademoiselle Mallington is concerned, it seems that I can no longer trust in my own resolve. Had it not been for your interruption…’
‘I am sorry to have spoiled things, but I thought that you would wish to—’
‘You did right.’ Dammartin cut him off. ‘I am grateful that you stopped me.’
‘Are you really?’ Lamont turned his gaze upon his captain.
Dammartin looked right back at him. ‘Do you think I want to insult the memory of my father?’
‘I know what his murder did to you, Pierre.’
Dammartin turned his gaze back to the tent.
‘What of the girl? From what I saw tonight, she is not averse to your interest.’
Dammartin thought of the softness in Josephine Mallington’s eyes, of the parting of her sweet lips as her face tilted up to his, of the way she had stood within his arms, so trusting. ‘It makes no difference. It is all of it still wrong.’
‘There has been something between the two of you from the very beginning, a spark, an attraction, call it what you will. You cannot fight such a powerful desire, for it will always win in the end. If you truly do not wish to have bedded her before we have reached our destination, then there is only one thing you may do: send her into another’s care—Emmern, La Roque or one of the infantry officers, it does not matter who, just as long as she is no longer here with you. Otherwise…’ He shrugged. ‘It is your choice.’
Dammartin rubbed at the stubble on his chin. ‘I am sure that she still holds information regarding Mallington that may be of use. If I let her go, then I lose my last hope of understanding why Mallington killed my father.’ He looked at his sergeant. ‘And there is another matter to consider, Claude.’ He thought of the journals. ‘The loss of Mademoiselle Mallington’s portmanteau is perhaps not as straightforward as it seems. I suspect she had her father’s journals hidden within some kind of secret compartment within the portmanteau.’
‘I understand now why the mademoiselle was so upset to hear the portmanteau was gone. So how did the thief know of the journals?’
‘I do not know. Mademoiselle Mallington is not foolish enough to speak of them to anyone here. There was a mention made of the journals when I walked with her the other evening, but we were some distance from the camp and we were alone. I suppose that there might have been an eavesdropper.’
Lamont looked grim. ‘Were that the case, it would have to have been one of our own men.’ He sucked harder on the pipe. ‘I do not like it.’
‘I am not enamoured of the idea myself.’
Lamont’s small, beady eyes glittered in the darkness. ‘There is something uneasy in the air, Pierre.’
‘I sense it too.’
They sat in silence. Pipe smoke drifted up and disappeared into the night sky. ‘What will you do with Mademoiselle Mallington?’ asked Lamont.
The two men looked across the field to Josie’s tent.
‘I do not know, my old friend, I really do not know.’
The next morning was grey, but without rain. For all its absence the ground was still sodden.
Josie awoke feeling surprisingly calm. Last night, with Dammartin, had been an aberration, a temporary madness that would not happen again. She had been drenched through and exhausted. She had suffered the loss of all her possessions and her father’s precious journals. And Dammartin had guessed the truth of the journals. It was little wonder she had been rendered…susceptible…to strange fancies. But morning was here and Josie was strong again, strong enough to face the French captain. ‘Mademoiselle Mallington?’
She jumped, her heart suddenly racing, for the voice that called her name came from immediately outside her tent.
‘It is I, Lamont.’
She scrabbled from beneath the blankets, wrapping one around her shoulders.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said again, and she recognised the Sergeant’s accented tones.
‘Sergeant Lamont,’ she said quickly, trying to forestall his entry. ‘I am coming.’
But Lamont was not like Dammartin; he merely stood by the door and waited.
‘The Captain, he sends me with food for you.’ He passed a mug and mess tin into her hands.
The heat rose in her cheeks. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Swirls of steam rose from the mug. The smell of the coffee and warmed bread spread with honey caused her stomach to growl. ‘I do not understand…’
The little Sergeant looked at her knowingly.
Her cheeks grew hotter as she remembered just what Lamont and all the rest of Dammartin’s men had witnessed last night.
‘The fires, they are put out,’ Lamont said by way of explanation. ‘We leave soon. Captain Dammartin has sent me to collect your bedding and wet clothing to be transported. I will wait here until it is ready, mademoiselle.’
She gave a nod and disappeared back inside the tent to hurriedly dress herself in Rosa’s dress and woollen stockings before returning with her own clothing, neatly folded and still damp, on top of the blankets and pillow.
Lamont said nothing, just took the pile from her and walked back across the field, leaving her standing there in the stark morning light in the revealing Spanish dress and her hair flowing long and loose around her shoulders.
She watched him go, her focus shifting to look beyond him across the field. There, in her line of vision, was Captain Dammartin talking to a trooper. He was dressed just as he had been last night in full uniform, the green jacket neatly brushed, its carmine collar clean and bright, the long curved sabre hanging down by his left leg. He was without his helmet, his hair being ruffled by the breeze; his stance was relaxed and easy. As her gaze rested upon him, he looked up and for a moment their eyes met across the field.
Josie, her cheeks burning hotter than ever, retreated quickly into the tent. With shaky hands, she drank the coffee and ate the bread and eventually her heart slowed enough to allow her to fix some semblance of order to her hair. The trudge of boots sounded outside, troopers’ voices—Dammartin’s men come to dismantle the tent. Grabbing her damp woollen cloak and her small leather satchel, she squared her shoulders and walked out to face the day.
In the light of Lamont’s words the previous evening, Dammartin was taking great care to stay well away from Josephine Mallington, but although he had sent his sergeant to collect her clothing, as he would have him deliver it again this evening, it was his own portmanteau into which Dammartin packed the clothes.
There has been something between the two of you from the very beginning, a spark, an attraction, call it what you will. You cannot fight such a powerful desire, for it will always win in the end. The words haunted him. But Dammartin would fight it and, contrary to Lamont’s warning, he would win…he had to, for the sake of all that he believed in, for the sake of his father.
The luxury of Major La Roque’s tent made Dammartin’s look like something fit for a peasant. Normally the Major preferred to take over some local’s house when he camped. Tonight, in the middle of the mountains with no buildings as far as the eye could see, he had had no choice but to sleep under canvas the same as the rest of his officers and men. Canvas is where the similarity ended.
Firstly, the Major’s tent was enormous, with partitions that separated it into two rooms. Secondly, it was decorated with fine rugs and a few items of furniture. Within the impromptu dining room where the Major was hosting dinner there was also a long dining table on which a white tablecloth, matching napkins, china plates, bowls and crystal glasses had been set. Along the longitudinal midline of the table were three silver-branched candelabras, in which beeswax candles burned extravagantly. Decanters of red and white wine sat on a small
tray, their cut-crystal bodies sparkling in the glow of the candles. The brandy would not be brought out until later. There were ten guests for dinner, all of them commissioned officers.
Each man’s jacket was spotless, the blue of France’s liberty or the green of her dragoons and chasseurs, the uniforms decorated with cording and frogging, sashes and epaulettes. Spirits were good, and the Major was in generous mood as usual. The dinner, served by the Major’s staff, made the men’s mess taste like pig swill, and not for the first time Dammartin wondered that a meal of such superior taste and quality could be prepared in a field kitchen with provisions that had been carried by mules for days across country.
They spoke of their mission and that soon they would reach Ciudad Rodrigo. They spoke of Bonaparte and of Paris. They spoke of the whores that followed the army. They ate. They drank. They smoked cigars. They took snuff. The waxing moon was high in the sky when the Major drew a close to the evening, each man deep in his cups, and each one happier for having spent the evening in Major La Roque’s company.
Dammartin let the others leave first, waiting until they had all gone before he spoke. ‘I wondered if I might talk to you, sir…in an informal capacity.’
‘Of course, of course, Pierre.’ La Roque clasped a friendly arm across the young captain’s shoulders. ‘Come, boy, sit down. Let us have a drink together, mmm?’ He poured some brandy into two glasses and handed one to his godson. ‘So, how are things with the 8th Dragoons?’
‘They are well.’
‘The presence of your prisoner is not causing any problems?’
‘None,’ replied Dammartin, wondering if the Major had come to hear of last night.
‘Good, good. I am glad to hear it. I had thought that the fact she is Mallington’s daughter might affect your sensibilities.’
A vision of Josephine Mallington in that revealing dress with her fair hair all tumbling down across her shoulders and her lips parted and moist, ready for his kiss, swam into his head. ‘Nothing I cannot deal with,’ he said with a great deal more confidence than he felt.
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