by Mary Balogh
“And Marcel too,” she said. “He will come.”
“Doubtless,” he said.
“Good,” she said. And then her tone sharpened. “What are you doing? Put me down at once!”
“If I do,” he said as she kicked her legs in the air, “it will be to give you a sharp slap where it most hurts, Joana. Now that I have started, I will not find it nearly so difficult the next time.”
“Oh, I wish you would,” she said. “I feel so humiliated, what with one thing and another, Robert, that I would like nothing better than the chance to smash your nose. I would feel loads better if I could break it for you again. That farm must be two miles away at the very least. Is it not amazing that those people had not even ventured out to discover what the explosion was all about? It must have been deafening at the farmhouse. They were frightened, I suppose. Put me down.”
“When I collapse beneath your weight,” he said, “you may pick yourself up off the ground, Joana, and walk the rest of the way. In the meantime, save your breath. And keep your hand away from those guns.”
“Damn you,” she said. “Where am I supposed to put it?”
“Try about my neck,” he said.
“Oh,” she said after a few minutes of silence, “this is humiliating. I have never lived through a more humiliating day.”
“It’s good for you,” he said. “Prisoners are supposed to feel humiliated.”
“Go to the devil,” she said.
21
SOMEHOW, Joana found, everything happened much more slowly than she had expected. She had expected that they would rush westward toward Coimbra within a few days, warning as many people as they could to evacuate and burn all behind them. She had expected that the French armies would hasten along at their heels. She had only hoped that in all the rush and confusion Colonel Leroux would find her and she could complete the task that had obsessed her for three years.
Things did not turn out that way at all. Governor Cox in Almeida surrendered the day after losing almost the whole of his ammunition supplies and half of his fortress and the people within it in the process. But the French did not immediately sweep through the open gate into Portugal. Marshal Massena and the main French forces had to come up from Salamanca. He had to consult with advisers and guides on the best route by which to advance on Lisbon, although the route he would take was a foregone conclusion. There was only one good road west to Coimbra, the one that followed the Mondego River toward the sea.
Their own retreat westward, Joana found, took them weeks rather than days, weeks that she shamelessly enjoyed despite everything. Yet they were not easy weeks. Every day they trudged from farm to farm, from village to village, Robert talking and persuading endlessly. It was not easy. How did one persuade men and women with homes and families to leave for an unknown part of the country with only what they could carry with them, and to burn everything that was left behind, including their homes and the crops that were still in the field?
The peasants were heroic. They accepted the arguments given them with stoic calm and followed orders with dogged determination and lack of complaint. On more than one occasion Joana watched them with a lump in her throat, their packs heavy on their backs, their children gathered about them, trudging away from the burning remains of all that was home to them. Very often the burning building was the one in which she and Robert had lain and loved the night before. It was as if their love was to have no roots, no past, just as it was to have no future.
Not that they ever called it love, of course. It was pleasure that they took together. But even their pleasure was burning up behind them, and destined to end soon, as soon as they came up with the bulk of the British army and Robert could rejoin his regiment.
She tried not to think of the future.
The wealthier people of the towns, particularly the merchants, were harder to persuade. They were angry at the incompetence of their government and the armies, which could not protect their property as well as their lives. They were defiant. Sometimes it took longer than one day to convince them that starving the advancing French, who always lived off the land over which they marched, was the surest way to their eventual defeat.
Captain Blake and Joana were not alone. They met a surprising number of British officers during their travels, some of them on the same errand as Robert’s, some of them scouting officers whose job it was to estimate enemy forces and watch their movements and constantly report back to headquarters.
They heard news from these officers, sometimes confused and out-of-date, but nevertheless received eagerly by two people starved of news for a long time. Headquarters was no longer at Viseu. Wellington had moved first to Celorico, closer to the border, and more recently back to Gouveia.
There was unrest in Lisbon, they heard, and loud grumblings in England. The governments of both countries were being blamed for the imminent disaster of all their expensive hopes. Viscount Wellington, in particular, was being called incompetent. There were loud clamors for his removal from the command.
As a result, they were told, Wellington was planning to silence his critics with one last final battle during the retreat to Lisbon. He had chosen a strong position on the southern bank of the Mondego at the Ponte Murcella on the road to Coimbra.
Robert ached to hurry there to rejoin his beloved riflemen, Joana knew. And the thought saddened her. What would she do when that time came? Return to Lisbon? Become the Marquesa das Minas again? She supposed she would do both. And in the meantime, would she see Colonel Leroux? Had she been mad to assume that he would search for her and find her? It seemed madness during those weeks. Finding her would be like finding the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack.
She tried not to give in to such depressing thoughts.
Occasionally they came across small bands of the Ordenanza, and those men—and some women—were excited by the prospect of action at last. It seemed almost as if they welcomed the approach of the hated French, even though it meant invasion of their country. Once Joana and Captain Blake even met Duarte briefly, when they had strayed north of the road to call at a village in the hills. He found them there.
“Rumor had it that there was a stray rifleman roaming the hills,” he said with a grin, extending his right hand to Captain Blake before setting an arm about Joana’s shoulders and kissing her cheek. “How goes the battle?”
He was elated because the French advance had finally begun. “We will not attack their main forces,” he explained. “We will let them pass on in peace to the burned and barren countryside, and then attack their supply trains. We will catch them in a giant nutcracker. And their advance will be slowed while they release large detachments to try to catch us.” He grinned. “How is Joana? Still in the path of danger? You should come with me perhaps and let me send you to safety.” He still had an arm about her shoulders.
Robert, she saw with some satisfaction, was scowling.
“Let’s talk about it,” she said, and she walked off a short distance with Duarte while two of his companions exchanged news with the captain. “How are Carlota and Miguel? Have you heard from them?”
“I sent to let them know we had got safely out of Spain,” he said. “Carlota is doubtless grinding her teeth with frustration at the inaction, but she is safe and far to the north of the advance. You are looking about as unlike the marquesa as you possibly could.”
“Yes.” She looked down ruefully at the dress, which was even more faded after its weeks of wear and several washes.
“I did not mean just the clothes,” he said. He looked at her critically for several silent seconds and then frowned. “Where are your knife and gun?”
“I am a prisoner,” she said. “They have been confiscated. This is the farthest from his person he has allowed me since we reentered Portugal.”
His frown deepened and then he chuckled. “You are serious?” he said.
“He will not believe my story,” she said. “Not that I begged and pleaded with him to do so. I would not so demean myself. He does not believe you are my brother. He thinks we became lovers the morning after you rescued us from Salamanca. He even gave me a scold about coming between you and Carlota and Miguel. He is taking me to Arthur to have me imprisoned as a French spy until the end of the wars.”
He chuckled again. “Well, that is all easily remedied,” he said. “I shall have a word with him, Joana.”
“No, you will not,” she said firmly. “Either he must believe me or he can believe what he wishes for the rest of his life. I do not care.”
“Joana.” He looked at her closely again. “Yes, now I know what it is. It is neither the clothes nor the absence of weapons. It is you. Your face—what is in it and what is behind it. You love him?”
She snorted. “Oh, certainly,” she said, “I am going to love a man who thinks me a liar and a slut.”
“Does he?” he said. “He has not fallen for your famous charm, then?”
“He actually tied me and gagged me once when Colonel Leroux and his men came close to us,” she said indignantly.
He laughed. “Ah, yes,” he said. “He is just the man you would fall for, Joana. I approve, by the way.”
“How foolish,” she said. “There is no possible future, Duarte. I am Luis’s widow and the Comte de Levisse’s daughter and he is a nobody who enlisted in the ranks of the English army. His life is the life of a soldier.”
“You would like there to be a future, then?” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “Poor Joana.”
“What nonsense you talk,” she said. “Kiss me. On the lips. He will be incensed.”
He kissed her on the lips and smiled at her. “You are sure you don’t want me to explain?” he said.
“Captain Robert Blake can go to hell with my blessing,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell him anything, Duarte.”
They strolled back to join the others, Duarte’s arm still about her. He kissed her again when he and his companions took their leave a few minutes later.
It was evening already. She retired almost immediately with Robert to the small and none-too-clean inn room they had taken for the night—and had a thoroughly satisfactory quarrel even though it had to be conducted in lowered voices.
“I want one thing understood, Joana,” he said, taking her by the upper arm and turning her to face him as soon as the door closed behind them. “For as long as you are my woman, you will remain faithful to me. There will be no flirting with other men or old lovers, and no kissing them. Your behavior was disgusting.”
She shrugged. “In England perhaps it is not the thing for brothers to kiss their sisters,” she said. “In Portugal it is.”
He shook her roughly by the arm. “It is no joking matter,” he said. “Perhaps it seems not greatly distasteful to you to kiss another man and allow him to keep his arm about you for all of twenty minutes while your current lover looks on. But it is distasteful to think of that woman and child awaiting his safe return in the mountains.”
“You are jealous,” she said, making a kissing gesture with her mouth. “Poor Robert. I think you love me just a little.”
“You disgust me,” he said. “You have no morals at all.”
“But I stayed with you,” she said, daring his wrath by reaching out one finger to run down his sleeve. “I might have gone with him, Robert. He wanted me to go.”
“I would like to have seen you try,” he said.
“He wanted to tell you the truth,” she said. “He wanted to tell you that he is my brother and that everything else I have told you is the truth.”
“You would not know the truth if it formed a fist and punched you in the nose,” he said.
“I don’t think you would either,” she said, stung at last. “You are a pompous, opinionated ass, Robert. You enjoy the image of yourself as the wronged man and the jailer. It gives you a feeling of power to walk about loaded down with your own weapons and mine. You are afraid of losing that power if you believe me.”
“It stings, does it not,” he said, his voice icy, “to know one man, and that man your jailer as you so rightly put it, who will not hang on your every word and believe every foolish piece of nonsense you speak? It angers you to have one man who can resist you.”
“Resist me?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him haughtily. “What you have been doing to me every night and day for weeks except for those four days when nature forced you to stay away from me has not seemed much like resistance, Robert. If that is resistance, I wonder what capitulation would feel like. It might be interesting.”
“You confuse respect with lust,” he said. “I have no respect for you whatsoever, Joana, and no liking. I would not trust you if my life depended on it—especially then—or believe a word that came from your mouth. All I feel for you is lust. I have never made a secret of that fact.”
“And I for you,” she said. “How could I like or respect someone so inflexible and so humorless? How could I like an Englishman, and one who came out of the gutter? How could I respect someone who sneers at every word I speak? But you have a body to die for and you know what to do with it in bed, and so I lust after you. Do you think I will even deign to look at you once I have been restored to civilization? You will be beneath my notice.”
“You will be a prisoner and beneath mine,” he said.
“I will be the Marquesa das Minas,” she said, “and you will be remarkably foolish. I shall have all of Lisbon and the whole of the British army laughing at you.”
“Lie down,” he said, his face set into angry lines as he unbuckled his sword belt. “I have had enough of you for one day.”
“Have you?” she said. “Do I take it that I may sleep peacefully throughout the night, then? A night of rest? That will make a change.”
“Hush, Joana,” he said. “You have an answer for everything.”
“Would you like it if I did not?” she asked him, pulling her dress off over her head before lying down on the narrow lumpy bed. “Would you not be bored if I were a meek mute? Yes, sir, and no, sir, and if you please, sir, and if I can be of service, sir?” She batted her eyelids at him.
“Hush, Joana,” he said, removing his coat and his shirt and his boots before lying down beside her. “I grow mortally tired of your taunting.”
“Please, sir.” She turned over onto her side and spread a hand on his chest. “Will you put your arms about me so that I do not take it into my head during the night to try to escape? And your leg over mine so that I will resist the temptation to kick you where it most hurts and then escape?”
“God, woman,” he said, “you are making me angry.”
“Making?” she said. “I thought you were made already.” She lifted herself on one elbow and rested the side of her head on her hand. She looked down at him, wooing him with her eyes. Her anger had passed long before. She was enjoying herself. “Please, sir, will you take off your trousers and come inside me? That is the surest way to prevent my escape.”
His anger had not abated. Not quite. “You like being taken in anger, then?” he asked her, his eyes firmly closed. “You like being hurt, Joana? Sex is not for punishment. It is for pleasure.”
“Let it be for pleasure, then,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder and gazing up into his face as her fingers tiptoed their way up his chest and over his chin to rest against his lips. “You are not really still angry, are you, Robert? How foolish you are. Do you think I would seriously flirt with Duarte Ribeiro or any other man while you and I are still together? Perhaps soon I will indeed be a prisoner or perhaps I will indeed be the marquesa again and looking down my nose at you. But not just yet. Now we are together. Tonight we are together. Take me for pleasure, then. Pleasure was never more pleasant than with you.”
“God!” He turned his head to look at her.
“Sometimes it takes the devil of an effort to remember that you never tell the truth, Joana. You want me? Very well, then. I want you too. Let us have each other. Let us take what pleasure is to be had.” His hands were undoing the buttons at his waist.
Sometimes, Joana thought, she was frightened by the force of her love and her need for him. Even after several weeks of frequent and lusty lovemaking she could not get enough of him. And yet it was not just the pleasure. It was not just his body or the ecstasy he could create on and in her own. It was he. She could not have enough of him. Her mind shied away again from the future as he freed himself from the last of his clothes and tossed them from the bed and as she opened her arms to him.
“Of course,” she said, smiling up at him, “if you are still angry, Robert, you may be a little rough. I like it when you are rough.”
She longed to have it slow and tender. She yearned for tenderness.
“You are shameless,” he said, his weight coming down on top of her.
“And how glad you are of it,” she said. “Ah, Robert, I don’t believe anyone else will ever feel as good as you there. Ah, yes, there. You feel so good.”
And since there would be no love and no tenderness, she abandoned herself to sheer wonderful sensation—both given and received.
* * *
They were within one day of rejoining the army when the shocking, almost unbelievable news reached them. They had done about as much as they could do. Almost every farm and village and town had obeyed the order eventually and the French would advance along a road denuded of food and other supplies, harassed in their rear by the Ordenanza, and facing a battle in a place of Lord Wellington’s choosing.
He had done enough, Captain Blake thought. He had been away from his regiment for a whole weary year, and for much of that time he had languished, idle and fretting and longing to be back. The next day he would be back, and within a week or two at the latest he would be fighting one more grand battle against the French. He was excited by the prospect. The days could not go fast enough for him. It had been such a long time.
