Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

  “Come to the fire.” Wellington was all concern and consideration. “Take a glass of wine, that'll revive you.” He poured a glass, looking worriedly over his shoulder as the colonel half carried the girl to a chair by the fire.

  “Here we are.” Wellington handed her the glass.

  “Drink it down, now… that's the ticket.” He nodded approvingly as obediently she sipped.

  She raised her head and smiled at him, a faint, tremulous little smile. “So kind… thank you, sir.”

  Julian was still leaning over her, one arm at her back.

  Suddenly he withdrew it as if he'd been scalded. The little Diablillo was up to her tricks again, he was convinced of it. He moved away and stood resting one arm along the mantelpiece, regarding the drooping, bravely smiling bandit with a sardonic glare. What the devil was she up to?

  “Julian, we must find her a comfortable billet at once. I'll ask young Sanderson what he can come up with.” Wellington bustled to the door to consult with the brigade-major, whose main task was to fix and contrive and organize for his commanding officer, however bizarre the circumstances.

  “What are you up to?” the colonel demanded softly.

  “You're not fooling me with this swooning-maiden act, Violette.”

  Tamsyn raised her eyes, her expression hurt. “I don't know what you can mean. I can't even remember when I last slept in a bed. I'm exhausted.”

  She had every reason to be, and yet he remained unconvinced.

  “Sanderson… a remarkable young fellow… knows just the billet, hard by the hospital.” Rubbing his hands, Wellington came back to the fire. “He says there's a pleasant woman there who'll attend to you, my dear. And when you've rested, you'll dine with me and m'staff.”

  His eyes rested on her face, and they were sharp and shrewd despite his apparent geniality. “We'll discuss how we can assist each other a little later.”

  “You're too kind, sir,” she said with a weary smile. “Julian, you'll see her settled and bring her back here to dine,” the commander in chief said, suddenly brisk.

  “I really should return to my brigade, sir.”

  “Yes… yes, of course. But later, man, later.” There was nothing for it. Julian sighed and acceded with a curt nod in Tamsyn's direction. “Come.”

  She rose to her feet a little unsteadily, but Lord St. Simon seemed to have lost his chivalrous instincts. He remained standing by the fireplace, his unwavering gaze as sardonic as before. Oh, well, Tamsyn reflected with an inner shrug, she'd achieved what she'd intended for the moment. Wellington regarded her with sympathy rather than hostility, and the colonel was still at her side.

  She offered Wellington another feeble smile of thanks and tottered to the door, the colonel on her heels. Her demeanor changed once they were outside, the door firmly closed behind them. She glanced up at her companion with a mischievous wink.

  He inhaled sharply, then spun around to address the brigade-major. “Lieutenant, where am I to find this lodging?”

  “A widow called Braganza, sir,” Sanderson said.

  “The whitewashed cottage beside the hospital. I've sent an orderly to alert her, so she'll be expecting you.” He stared with now unabashed curiosity at Violette. “She speaks only Portuguese. Does… does…”

  “Yes, of course I do,” Tamsyn said with a touch of impatience at what struck her as an absurd question. She'd spent her life roaming across the borders of Portugal, Spain, and France.

  Julian said nothing, merely strode ahead of her down the stairs and out into the street. Tamsyn had to run to catch up with him. “Don't go so fast, I really am exhausted.”

  “You may pick some other gull for your tricks,” he said tautly. “I don't know what the devil you're up to, and I don't give a damn. The sooner I can wash my hands of you, the happier I shall be.”

  “Temper, temper,” Tamsyn murmured. “I wish I knew what I'd done to arouse it. It seems most unjust to me, but then I suppose you're one of those people of uncertain temper who vent their frustrations whenever the whim takes them. I've heard of such people, although I count myself fortunate that until now I haven't had many dealings-”

  “Have you finished?” He interrupted this meandering muse, unsure whether he wanted to laugh or scream his vexation to the four winds.

  “I hadn't,” she said, sounding aggrieved. “But if you don't care for plain speaking… “ She shrugged.

  “On the contrary,” he declared, tight-lipped. ''I'm something of an exponent myself Do you wish to hear a little?”

  Tamsyn didn't answer. She sidestepped a puddle with an agile leap that made nonsense of her claims to exhaustion and said cheerfully, “That must be the widow's house up ahead on the left. It's the only whitewashed one on the street.”

  Senhora Braganza, well accustomed to the sight of women partisans, showed little amazement at Tamsyn's appearance. Insisting they inspect the accommodations, she showed them upstairs to a small whitewashed chamber under the eaves.

  “This will do beautifully,” Tamsyn said, interrupting the widow's voluble description of the chamber's amenities. “All I need is a bed. And hot water.”

  The widow returned downstairs to see to the water, and Julian, who'd been standing by the window looking out on the street in front of the cottage, said brusquely, ''I'll be on my way.”

  “Oh, don't be in such a hurry.” Tamsyn went swiftly to the door, leaning against it, barring his way. She smiled at him. “Why so prudish, milord colonel? We have the time, we have even a bed.”

  “I do not have the inclination,” he declared harshly. “Move aside.”

  She shook her head, that mischievous smile in her eyes again. She tossed her rifle onto the bed and with a deft movement shrugged off the bandolier, letting it fall to the floor. Then her hands were at her belt and he seemed powerless to move, watching as if only his eyes were alive, imprisoned in a body of stone, as she pushed off her britches and began to unbutton her shirt. The small, perfect breasts were revealed, their rosy crowns pertly erect. She moved away from the door and stepped toward him, her eyes never leaving his face.

  He put his hands on her breasts, feeling how they filled his palms. He gazed down at the delicate tracery of blue veins beneath the milk-white skin. The pulse at her throat was beating fast, and the intricate silver locket quivered against her flesh.

  Tamsyn didn't move, merely held herself still for his touch as his hands slid down her rib cage, spanned the slender waist, slipped to her back, his fingers insinuating themselves into the waist of her drawers, creeping down over the taut roundness of her buttocks.

  “Goddamn it, girl,” he said, his voice husky in the quiet, dim room. “Goddamn it, girl, what are you doing to me?”

  “It's more a case of what are you doing to me?” she said as his hands squeezed her backside, pressing her against his loins· where his flesh thrust iron hard against the constraint of his britches.

  The sound of heavy footsteps laboring up the wooden stairs outside broke his enchantment. The mist of passion left his bright-blue eyes, and he pulled his hands loose from her skin as if she were a burning brand.

  And then he was gone from the room, brushing past Senhora Braganza as she toiled up the stairs with a steaming copper jug, and out into the lowering afternoon filled with the incessant sound of the bombardment.

  He walked fast to the stables to reclaim his horse, and the groom quailed at the blue blazing light in the colonel's eyes beneath the thick red-gold eyebrows, and the close-gripped mouth in the grim set of his jaw. He rode out of Elvas and into the encampment to his own tent and the reassuring sanity of his own men. He must be losing his mind. She was a grubby, manipulative, unfeminine, mercenary hellion, and she stirred him to the root of his being.

  Tamsyn watched him from the window as he strode down the street as if all the devils in hell were on his heels. “How very ungallant of you, milord colonel,” she murmured to herself “Whatever can you be afraid of? Not of me, surely?”

 
A tiny smile quirked her lips as she turned from the window to discuss with the widow Braganza the sorry condition of her clothes.

  Chapter Six

  WHERE S OUR GUEST, JULIAN? THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF asked as the colonel entered his apartments before dinner that evening.

  “I've sent Sanderson to escort her here,” Julian said, nodding a greeting to the five men, all members of the commander in chief’s staff, gathered to join Wellington for dinner.

  “So what d'you think of her, Julian?” Major Carson handed him a glass of sherry. “We're all agog.”

  “I wouldn't trust her any farther than I can throw her,” St. Simon stated flatly.

  “Considering what a tiny little thing she is, that would be quite a distance.” Wellington laughed at his own witticism, the sound remarkably like the neighing of a horse.

  Julian's smile was dour. “You fell for that little act she put on this afternoon.”

  “Act?” Wellington raised an eyebrow.

  “Trembling and swaying and tottering all over the place. She was exhausted, I grant you that. I don't suppose she's had more than a few hours' sleep in the last five days, and that mostly in the saddle, but swooning… La Violette… pull the other one.” He took a disgusted gulp of his sherry.

  “You don't like the lady, Julian?” Brigadier Cornwallis said with a grin.

  “No, I dislike her intensely. And I have to tell you, Cornwallis, that 'lady' is a vast misnomer. She's a duplicitous, mercenary, untrustworthy vagabond.”

  There was an instant of silence at this brief but comprehensive denunciation; then Colonel Webster said, “Ah, well, Julian, you never did take kindly to being outsmarted.”

  You don't know the half of it. But Julian contented himself with another dour smile and said, “Not to mention being dragooned into charging across the country side to remove Cornichet's epaulets.”

  “What?” There was a chorus of exclamations, and the colonel obliged with a brief narrative that had everyone but himself chuckling.

  “Uh… excuse me, sir.” Lieutenant Sanderson appeared in the doorway.

  “Well?” Wellington regarded him with a touch of irritability. It was clear the brigade-major was alone.

  “La Violette, sir, she-”

  “She's not run off?” Julian interrupted, snapping his glass down on the table.

  “Oh, no, Colonel. But she's asleep, sir, and Senhora Braganza couldn't awaken her.”

  “Perhaps we should let her sleep, then,” Wellington suggested.

  “Oh, she's not asleep,” Julian stated. “It's one of her tricks. I'll have her here in fifteen minutes.” With that he strode from the room.

  “Well, well,” murmured Colonel Webster. “I can't wait to meet our guest. She seems to exercise a most powerful effect on St. Simon.”

  “Yes,” agreed the commander in chief, frowning thoughtfully. “She does, doesn't she?”

  Senhora Braganza greeted the irate colonel's arrival with a voluble flood of Portuguese and much hand waving. Julian, who had a smattering of her language and relatively fluent Spanish, divined that the “poor child” was sleeping like a baby and it would be a crime to awaken her. The partisans could do no wrong among the local populations of Portugal and Spain, and it rather seemed as if the widow was prepared to do battle to protect the sleeping one upstairs.

  Julian was obliged to move her bodily aside as she defended the bottom of the stairs. He went up them two at a time with the senhora berating him on his heels. He flung open the door to the small chamber under the eaves and then stopped, something holding him back.

  Moonlight from the single round window fell on the narrow cot where Violette lay. She slept on her back, her hands resting on the pillow on either side 'of her head, palms curled like a sleeping child's.

  Julian closed the door in the face of the still wailing widow and crossed soft-footed to the cot, where he stood looking down at her. Her face in repose had a youthful innocence that startled him. The dark, thick lashed crescent of her eyelashes lay against the high cheekbones, the smooth, suntanned skin stretched taut across the bones. But sleep softened neither the firm line of her mouth nor the determined set of her jaw.

  “Tamsyn?” He spoke her given name softly, unaware that it was the first time he'd used it.

  She stirred, her eyelashes fluttered, a soft murmur of protestation came from her lips. But there was. Something about the response, about the speed of it, that convinced him absolutely that she had not been asleep… that she'd been aware of his scrutiny.

  His lips tightened. “Get up, Tamsyn. You're not fooling me with this playacting.”

  Her eyelashes swept up, and the deep-purple eyes gazed up at him with such a blend of sensual mischief that he caught his breath. Without taking her eyes off his face she drew up her feet in a sudden swift movement, caught the covers, and kicked them off, baring her body, creamy in the moonlight. She smiled up at him, quirking an eyebrow, passing her hands over her body in unmistakable invitation.

  Julian gasped at the sheer effrontery, the naked sexuality of the invitation. An invitation that he fought with clenched muscles to withstand. When he finally spoke, his voice grated in the lushly expectant silence.

  “I will give you ten minutes to be ready to accompany me to the dinner table. If you're not dressed by then, so help me, I'll carry you through the streets just as you are.” Then he turned and left the room, aware that he was almost running as if the devils of enchantment would still reach out and haul him back.

  Tamsyn swung off the cot and stretched. It was strange, but the English colonel was behaving unpredictably. In her experience men didn't refuse such invitations. Especially when as far as the colonel knew, there were no strings. He couldn't possibly guess what she was planning for his--or rather, their immediate future.

  Her protective landlady had provided her with clean undergarments, stockings, and a shirt. They were of rough homespun rather than the fine lawn, linen, or silk

  Tamsyn was accustomed to wearing next to her skin. El Baron's daughter had known only the best. But they were clean, as clean as her bathed skin and freshly washed hair. The widow had also brushed the buttersoft leather britches and polished the cordovan boots until the well-worn leather gleamed with a dull sheen. So Tamsyn was feeling more respectable than she'd been in many days when she jumped energetically down the stairs to greet the fuming and impatient Colonel, Lord St. Simon in the street outside the cottage.

  “There, milord colonel, I'm ready to go with you.”

  She smiled nonchalantly as if the charged moments in the bedroom had never taken place. “And I'm hungry as a hunter, so I trust your commander in chief keeps a good table.”

  Julian didn't deign to reply, merely walked rapidly through the cobbled' streets, lit by oil lamps at strategic intervals and still as busy as in broad daylight. The army didn't sleep, and the siege workings continued in the moonlight as busily as they did in the sunshine.

  The roomful of men turned as one to the door when St. Simon and his companion entered.

  “Ah, Violette.” Wellington stepped toward her. “I trust you're rested.”

  “Yes, thank you, I slept wonderfully.” Tamsyn took the hand he offered.

  “Gentlemen, may I introduce La Violette.” The commander in chief slipped his other hand around her waist as he presented her to his staff.

  Tamsyn didn't attempt to move away from the half embrace as she responded to the introductions with smiling nods. She'd heard of the duke's reputation as a flirt, and she was perfectly happy to encourage his attentions since they could only assist her purpose.

  Julian stood to one side, morosely sipping sherry, watching as the men in the room clustered around the small figure. La Violette certainly knew how to be the center of attention. Despite her masculine attire and the short, shining cap of hair, she was exuding feminine charm… female wiles, he amended. What the hell was she after? She'd come there to sell something, not reduce the entire high command of the English ar
my to a state resembling Circe's fools.

  A servant came in bearing a baron of beef on a wooden board. He placed it on the table set for dinner before the fire. “Sir, dinner is served.”

  “Good.” Wellington rubbed his hands together in hearty anticipation. “Come and sit beside me, my dear.” He swept Tamsyn into a chair on his right and took his place at the head. He raised his eyeglass and examined the offering on the table as servants unloaded steaming platters from their trays.

  “Now, what have we here? A dish of mutton chops, I do believe. Do let me help you… Tell me, must I call you Violette, or do you have another name?” He placed a chop on her plate together with several thick slices of beef

  “My given name is Tamsyn,” she said, hungrily helping herself to a dish of roast potatoes. “Violette… Violeta-they're the names by which I'm known among the partisans.”

  “Do the partisans all have code names?” the brigadier asked, filling her wineglass.

  Tamsyn flashed him a smile as she picked up a mutton chop with her fingers. “Maybe.”

  Julian watched as she tore at the flesh with her sharp white teeth, holding the chop between finger and thumb. When every last morsel of meat was off the bone, she licked her fingers, picked up her fork, and speared a potato. She ate with the natural efficiency of a hungry animal, using her fingers if they were more suitable to the task, or deftly filleting a brook trout with a couple of strokes of her knife. There was nothing distasteful about her table manners, but neither was there any formality. Food was to be enjoyed, an appetite both sensual and necessary.

  He noticed that while she drank several glasses of water, she merely took occasional sips of the wine in her glass.

  Casually, he turned his chair sideways to the table, resting his forearm on the white starched cloth, his fingers caressing the stem of his wineglass. “You don't care for the wine, Violette?”

  She looked up swiftly, and her eyes were sharp as they met his across the table. “On the contrary, milord colonel, in the right place and time I enjoy a good rioja as much as anyone. But I have to be careful, it tends to go to my head.” She smiled. “Cecile had the same difficulty.”