by Mary Balogh
“Trust Captain Blake to have with him the only lovely woman left in this corner of Portugal,” one of the green-jacketed soldiers called loudly. Sergeant Saunders. Captain Blake grinned. He felt suddenly very much at home despite the deadly danger. There were perhaps a dozen of them against fifty French cavalrymen. He knew beyond a doubt that there was no ambush waiting over the crest of the hill.
“Just keep your head down,” he said to Joana, “and you will be quite safe.”
But she was peering downward quite as intently as he.
He supposed afterward that it all happened within a few seconds. So much happened. At the time it seemed to go on forever, as if time had been slowed to one-tenth its usual speed.
Before he knew what was about to happen, long before he could do anything to prevent it, Joana had scrambled to her feet so that she was in full view of the horsemen below, and she was waving both arms above her head.
Before she opened her mouth—and she shrieked at almost the same moment as she jumped up—he knew what she was going to say and he understood what was happening.
“Marcel!” she shrieked. “I am here. It is Jeanne. Marcel!”
And she was back down behind the bushes, pulling feverishly at her musket before Captain Blake reacted.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, and he threw himself on her, knocking the gun from her hands, catching at her wrists and twisting them behind her back without any thought to gentleness. “You vixen. You devil!”
“No!” she cried, her voice frantic. “Give me my gun. Give me my gun, Robert. I have to kill him. Oh, please, you don’t understand. I have to kill him.”
Rifles were firing from both sides of them. The horsemen must be coming up the hill. He did not look to see. He rolled her over onto her stomach, dragging her belt from her waist, and bound her hands as he had on a previous occasion. There was no point in a gag this time, even if it had been possible to gag her with his handkerchief fluttering halfway down the hill.
“And don’t even think of using your legs,” he said from between his teeth, rolling to her side again and grabbing for his rifle. “You are like to find one of them broken. You have probably got us all killed.”
Some of them, he saw, had ventured up the hill, Colonel Marcel Leroux in the lead. But the riflemen of the British army did not have their deadly reputation for nothing. Two of the horsemen were down and their horses running loose, and the others were clearly hesitant. Attacking a group of riflemen uphill was much like committing suicide, even if they could be sure that there were not hundreds or even thousands of silent troops awaiting them over the crest of the hill.
Joana did not stop pleading with him, though he did not listen. Most of her words went over his head.
“Please, Robert . . . oh, please . . . you must trust me. I must kill him . . . I have waited three years for this moment . . .”
Colonel Leroux was the last to retreat to the valley. His men had withdrawn behind them and stood their horses uncertainly in the valley. But it would have been unnecessary madness to attack. Even Colonel Leroux must have realized that. It was doubtless only Joana’s presence at the top of the hill that held him there so long, motionless even though he was well within range of the notoriously accurate rifles.
Finally he turned his horse and joined his men in the valley. A minute later they were returning the way they had come, taking their two wounded with them.
Joana had told him once, Captain Blake reflected, that her knowledge of profane vocabulary was lamentably small. One would not have thought so for the next minute or so. She swore with blistering venom in a grand mixture of English, French, and Portuguese.
“You!” Captain Blake turned on her, his eyes blazing fire, his voice contrastingly icy. “You could not have shot me in the back, could you? You had to endanger all these innocent men. And, yes, those men too. Two of them were injured, perhaps badly. Did you notice that? Merely so that you could make a theatrical gesture for the benefit of your French lover?”
“I hate you.” All the frenzied anger had gone from her voice and her eyes and her body. She lay facedown on the ground, her head turned his way, and looked up at him with lifeless eyes. “I will never forgive you for this, Robert. Never.”
And then other green-clad figures, each clutching a rifle, his comrades, came running and sliding down the hill toward them.
“It has been so long, I wouldn’t have thought to recognize you, sir.”
“Who could fail to recognize that crooked nose?”
“Trust you to have a whole company of French cavalry at your heels, you bastard, and to survive it.”
“Nice to see you again, sir. There are bets on as to whether you will make it back for the battle or not.”
“I’m certainly glad I bet on you, sir.”
“You have all the fun, you bastard. I bet the story behind this one would fill a book. Where is she going? Christ Almighty!” Captain Rowlandson had had a good look at Joana. “She’s the marquesa, Bob.” His eyes were almost popping out of his head.
Joana was walking slowly up the hill, her hands still tied behind her back.
“She won’t get far,” Captain Blake said grimly. “She is French.”
All the riflemen were gazing after Joana with fascination.
Captain Rowlandson whistled. “French?” he said.
“Your prisoner, Bob? Well, I always knew you had all the luck. Where the hell have you been?”
“Where I am going is more important,” Captain Blake said. “The army is making a stand up ahead?”
The captain grinned at him. “Wait until you see it, Bob,” he said. “It’s a beaut. Johnny will surrender after one look at it. They thought this was an uphill battle! It’s a good thing we were out on patrol in this direction, by the way. Are you coming back with us?”
“I have a few things to do first, Ned,” Captain Blake said. “But I’ll be there. I would not miss this battle for worlds.” He was squinting up to the top of the hill. Joana had disappeared. “I have to go. I’ll see you fellows within the next few days. And thank you.”
Noisy comments and friendly profanities followed him to the top of the hill.
She had not gone far. There was a pile of large boulders partway down the other side of the hill. She was seated on one of the lower ones, her arms pulled tightly behind her, her head bent forward so that her forehead rested almost on her knees.
By God, Captain Blake thought, striding down toward her, he would have to be careful not to kill her. What he wanted to do was give her a good sound thrashing.
* * *
She was not running away. She did not know quite where she was going. She sank down onto the boulder without even consciously choosing the spot. She tried to move her arms and remembered that they were tied. She did not struggle. She let her head fall forward until it almost touched her knees.
It was against her nature to despair. Very rarely was she even depressed. To Joana there was almost always hope, almost always something she could do. She was not a person to admit defeat—normally.
But she admitted it now. Total defeat. Total despair. There had been all those journeys into Spain, in among the French, looking always for one face. And she had found it finally and made her plans. Plans that were far too clever and far too unlikely to succeed. She could see that now. She should have killed him in Salamanca. She must have had dozens of chances there.
She had had another chance ten minutes before. The perfect chance. The one she had dreamed of. And she had failed again because of her own cleverness. She had had several weeks in which to get Robert to believe her story. She could have done it easily. As recently as the evening before, she could have done it. She had sensed then that he had been on the brink of believing her. But no, she had never liked anything to be too easy. She had enjoyed teasing him, keeping him in doubt.
And
so she could not blame him for what had just happened, even though she had told him that she hated him and that she would never forgive him. Of course, hearing her yell out like that and seeing her grab her gun like that would have forced him to pounce on her, wrestle the gun from her, and bind her hands. She could not blame him.
And so it was all over. Her chance to avenge Maria’s and Miguel’s deaths and those of Miguel’s family. All over. And all through her own fault. Joana sank deeper into despair. And she watched, fascinated and puzzled, as large drops of water fell onto her knees and darkened the fabric of her dress. She was crying! Misery washed over her.
She did not hear him come up. She saw his boots, a little apart from each other, to one side of her. She knew that soon she would be ashamed of herself and furiously angry with him for having witnessed her misery. But at the moment she was too miserable to care.
She felt hands at her back, deftly freeing her from the bonds of her own belt. She let her hands fall limply to her sides.
“Joana,” he said. His voice was as gentle as the hand that came to rest on the top of her head. “I am sorry.”
She sniffed and was aware that her nose was dripping as well as her eyes.
“I am a spy,” he said, “and therefore deal in the business of deceit. I can hardly blame you for doing the same. And I can hardly blame you for being on the opposite side from me. Your father is French and he works for the French government. And you love him. I am sorry that this has had to happen to you. But this is war and I cannot let you go. You were so close just now. I’m sorry.”
She sniffed again.
“Perhaps the wars will be over soon,” he said. “You will be able to go home and marry your Colonel Leroux.”
“Robert,” she said, “you are so very blind.” But her voice sounded abject. She was ashamed of it. “So bloody blind,” she said a little more caustically.
“You would have me believe that you really wanted to kill him?” He came down on his haunches and peered up into her face. “But that makes no sense. Why would you want to do that?”
“It does not matter,” she said. “You would not believe me anyway.”
“Try me,” he said.
“I did not want to kill him,” she said irritably. “I wanted to kill you so that he would admire me and love me more. Or perhaps I did want to kill him. Perhaps I am offended that he did not prevent my being taken as a hostage. Or perhaps he insulted me in Salamanca. Perhaps he was dallying with me when he already has a wife and I found out. Jealousy can create murderers, you know.”
“Looking into your face is like looking at the surface of a shield, you know,” he said. “How well do I know you, Joana? Do I know everything? Or do I know nothing? I begin to suspect the latter.”
She rubbed at her nose with the back of one hand. “Your shocked friend below the hill should see me now,” she said. “I look worse than a fright, don’t I?”
“You do rather,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “A gentleman would be pouring out reassuring compliments, Robert.”
“Would he?” he said. “But you would know that they were all lies. You lost my handkerchief.”
“Then I shall just have to sniff and use the back of my hand,” she said.
He drew a rather dirty-looking rag from his pack. “I wrap the muzzle of my rifle with it when it rains,” he said. “To keep it dry. You are welcome to it.”
She took it from him. “I wonder if there are any lower depths to which I can sink,” she said, drying her eyes and blowing her nose firmly. “I have not bathed in four days or washed my hair or my clothes in a week. I must . . . stink.”
“If you were your usual perfumed self,” he said with a grin, “you would not be able to stomach me within twenty yards of you, Joana. Perfumes are much overrated, you know.”
“And soap too?” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“I would probably sell your musket for a bar right now,” he said, and drew a laugh from her. “That is better. I thought that I had lost you.”
“I thought you would have been pleased to see me in tears and defeat,” she said. “It is what you have always wanted, is it not?”
His smile faded. “I don’t want to see your spirit broken, Joana,” he said. “These past weeks would have been very dull if you had not been . . . you.”
“Well,” she said, getting to her feet, “that was almost a declaration of love after all, Robert. Is that as close as you will get?”
“It was a declaration of respect,” he said quietly, straightening up too.
She sighed. “This is almost over, is it not?” she said. “I will be sorry. But then, all good things come to an end, just as bad things do. And life goes on. Where do we go now?”
“A zigzag trail to Bussaco,” he said, “to make sure we have not missed anyone.”
“Lead the way, then,” she said. “I am still your prisoner, it seems, but a woman never had a more desirable jailer, I believe. There will still be one more night, Robert? Perhaps two? I am going to make you remember these nights more than all the others put together. I promise.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I hope that not everything you say is a lie, Joana.”
She laughed. “You will find out,” she said. “Tonight. And if I have told the truth about this, then perhaps I have told the truth about everything, Robert. By tomorrow morning you will be tortured by doubts—again—and by guilt. For by tomorrow morning you will be all the way in love with me.”
She challenged him with her dazzling smile. Although he never responded openly to it as all other men of her acquaintance had always done, she knew instinctively that it had had its effect.
23
BY late afternoon Captain Blake realized that they had walked farther north than they needed to go. They had called at a cluster of houses, too few in number to be dignified by the name of village, and found the inhabitants either gone or on the point of leaving. It seemed that their own people had been there before him, members of the Ordenanza. Nevertheless he decided to continue yet another couple of miles farther north before looping back south again into what would more definitely be the path of the French advance. One of the villagers had mentioned a farm farther north.
“We will rest soon,” he told Joana, “and make our way to Mortagoa tomorrow. We will spend one more night there if it is still safe to do so, and then finally we will get behind British lines.”
“And I will stay there safely until the end of the great battle,” she said with a sigh, “and you will go out in front of it with your riflemen. It is not fair, Robert. Life is not fair to women.”
“Or to men,” he said. “Depending on which way you look at it.”
“The way that men look at it is the only way that counts,” she said. “Men believe that women like to be protected and kept safe from all harm.”
“And they do not?” he asked her.
“Bah!” was all she would say.
And then, almost before they could lapse into silence, they were both reaching for the sky after Captain Blake had sent his guns clattering to the ground, and they were surrounded by men variously armed, most of them grinning.
“Captain Robert Blake of the Rifles, English army,” Captain Blake said loudly and distinctly in Portuguese, cursing himself for walking like a novice into an ambush.
“And the woman?” one of the men asked, jerking his head in Joana’s direction.
“The mar—” he began.
But she interrupted him. “Joana Ribeiro, sister of Duarte Ribeiro,” she said. “And unarmed, you imbeciles. Since when have you begun ambushing your own allies and countrywomen?”
“Jesus!” Captain Blake muttered. There was a curved and wicked-looking knife pointed right at his stomach, no more than four feet off, and a woman beside him who was almost openly inviting its owner to make use of i
t.
The small, wiry man who appeared to be the leader of the group grinned and looked about at his men, who lowered their weapons. Captain Blake dared to draw breath again.
“The English are all fools,” the man said. “They wear scarlet uniforms and expect to blend into the countryside. Almost all the English, at least. Some are sensible enough to wear green. I was not sure, Captain. My apologies.”
One of his men picked up both the rifle and the musket and handed them, grinning, to Captain Blake.
News and plans were exchanged during the following hour as the two newcomers shared an evening meal with the Portuguese.
“The French will stay at Viseu for a day or two,” the leader told them, “and then they will march west through Mortagoa to Bussaco, where the English and our own army will be waiting for them. It will be a massacre—our own men will have the heights.”
It seemed that the men were heading for Viseu that night to harass the French in any way they could. When the army marched from the city, then the Ordenanza would be on their tails as they had been all the way from the border, doing as much damage as they could, trying to prevent their enemy from organizing properly for the battle ahead.
“There is no point in staying up here,” one of the men said. “We are too far north to clap eyes on a single Frenchman. We will miss all the fun. You should come with us, Englishman.”
Captain Blake smiled. “My way lies toward the army,” he said, “via Mortagoa.”
“Ah, yes,” the leader said. “That is where Duarte Ribeiro and several of his men live. And their women. The lady will wish to rejoin her kinfolk.” He nodded at Joana. “And I daresay Ribeiro will miss the fun for the next day or two. He will be busy moving everyone out ahead of the French. That is your job too, Captain?”
The group of Portuguese were heading south without further delay. But their leader stopped and looked thoughtfully at Captain Blake and Joana before he left.
“I have a small farm and a house not far away,” he said, nodding off to the northwest. “I have not burned it, since it is not on the route of the French army, though I have sent my wife and mother and my children away with everyone else just to be on the safe side. You are welcome to stay there for the night, Captain.” He grinned. “I did not consider it necessary to lock the doors.”
