The Earl’s Intended Wife

by Louise Allen

  ‘Yes.’ He looked so appalled that her frayed nerves broke and she snapped, ‘Well, what else could I do? I wasn’t feeling very enchanting. I doubt if emerging and seeing if I could turn them into swine would have worked.’

  ‘How did you keep me quiet?’

  ‘You were only muttering by then, and they were very noisy,’ she said, with perfect truth. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Damn the coffee. Look at me, Hebe.’ She met his eyes and almost cried at the deep, warm, admiration in them. ‘I can’t think of any man I know who would have gone through what you have had to endure these past few days and managed as well, or have stayed as calm. Or have had the humour to tease me at the end of it,’ he added ruefully.

  It was suddenly very difficult to breathe, let alone speak. Hebe stammered, ‘I owe you my life, I was not going to throw it away by doing something stupid.’ She went and picked up the coffee pot. ‘If you do not want this, I am most certainly going to drink it.’

  She turned back to find Alex had swung his legs out of the bed and was sitting on the edge, regarding his bare limbs as they emerged from under the blanket. ‘And I suppose you asked a Frenchman politely to help me out of my clothes and into a nightshirt?’

  Hebe reached past him for a battered tin mug and poured the coffee. ‘No, I did it, of course. It was hard enough trying to keep you comfortable like that, let alone if I had left you dressed in those awful clothes.’ He took the mug, but his eyebrows were raised incredulously. ‘Oh, for goodness sake! I have seen nude statues, do not flatter yourself that you are any different.’

  ‘No fig leaf,’ he commented wickedly, taking a deep swallow of coffee. ‘That is quite the worst coffee I have ever had, but I can’t think when I have been more grateful for it.’

  Hebe ignored the jibe about the fig leaf and held out her hand for the mug. ‘Have you left any? Thank you. Yes, it is awful, but something hot is wonderful. I am going to put some water on the embers; it will at least get it warm. Then I am going to dress that knife cut and you can have a wash.’

  ‘Only if I can have my trousers back and you leave the room.’

  ‘I cannot dress that cut if you have your trousers on.’ She balanced the water bucket in the embers and stood regarding him, hands on hips. ‘Oh, wrap yourself in the blanket and take off your shirt, Alex—or are you afraid I will hurt you?’

  He glared back. ‘You sound—and look—like my old nurse. Very well, turn your back.’

  Patiently waiting while muttered oaths marked Alex’s unsteady progress towards a decent covering, Hebe wondered if his fever-clouded memory of what had happened last night was colouring the way he was reacting to her now. She supposed it must be, even if he did believe it was a dream. Whatever he had felt for her before Clarissa’s letter arrived he had suppressed, and in their mutual struggle to survive he had treated her simply as a companion. Now all his consciousness of her as a woman had returned. Her problem was how she was going to hide her own new knowledge of him as a man.

  She carried the bucket over and found another piece of old sheet to tear up, then gently freed the old bandage. It was impossible to do it without touching him, encircling him with her arms, resting her cheek against the flat planes of his chest as she unwrapped the bandage. She felt him sitting unnaturally still, and thought he was holding his breath.

  The slash was, by some miracle, starting to heal without any sign of infection. Hebe rebandaged it, found Alex his trousers, a clean shirt and the soap and went outside, expecting him to call when he had finished.

  To her horror she heard his voice just behind her at the door of the hut. ‘Is this all the bread that’s left?’

  ‘Get back to bed!’

  He was holding on to the door jamb with a visible effort, the lines of strain visible even through the stubble which was now heavy on his face.

  ‘No, we leave just as soon as we’ve eaten. I’ll make breakfast, if you can fetch the mule.’

  ‘I’ll not go a step until you promise me you’ll ride and I’ll walk,’ she said.

  He grinned at her belligerent tone. ‘I can promise you that, Hebe, but I’m sorry to do this to you—it is a steep climb now.’

  The mule was patiently standing where she had tethered it, and seemed more than willing to follow her down and be saddled up. Hebe brought out extra blankets, a canteen of water and all the remaining food, and went back to board up the secret cupboard again. When she came out Alex was in the saddle, white about the mouth and with his eyes closed. Hebe took the rope and began to lead the mule up the path again. After a few hundred yards she came to a point where the track split. One path went up, the other, wider and heavily marked by the boots of yesterday’s French troops, turned along the flank of the mountain.

  ‘Up?’ she asked, turning to look at Alex.

  He opened his eyes and smiled at her. ‘Up,’ he agreed ruefully.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hebe found she enjoyed the climb up the steep track as it zigzagged through the scrubby, rock-strewn pasture. The wide trousers were a revelation to someone who had always had her desire to stride out and enjoy a walk hampered by clinging skirts. After two days of being tied to the confines of the hut the freedom and fresh air were wonderful and the physical exercise and the need to concentrate on her footing stopped her brooding.

  The mule followed sturdily behind, nimble on its neat hooves. At first Hebe stopped herself from looking back every few yards as she was tempted to do. She had no wish for Alex to feel she was clucking over him like a mother hen. Considering how frustrating it must be for him to feel so weak when his instincts and his pride were all driving him to protect her, he was being extraordinarily good tempered. In Hebe’s experience, wounded male pride normally showed itself in thorough-going irritation.

  Finally they reached a sharp hairpin in the path where Hebe thought she could legitimately stop to rest. She turned, taking in the breathtaking panorama spread before them with a gasp of pleasure. ‘How wonderful! I have never been so high up before—look, Alex, you can see the sea.’ Round their feet the short turf was studded with spring flowers, flowering later in the cooler mountain air than those down on the plains.

  After a few minutes Hebe felt that she had demonstrated an admirable disinclination to fuss and looked at Alex. He was sitting, the musket lying across the saddle in front of him, the reins looped casually in one hand and his head tipped back to watch the vultures circling lazily overhead in the cloudless sky. He appeared to feel her eyes on him and looked at her, smiling. ‘Are you out of breath yet?’

  ‘A bit,’ she confessed. ‘But I love this: it is so good to be able to walk freely, scramble about. Do you think I could start a fashion for divided skirts when I get back to England? I had no idea trousers would be so…liberating.’

  He considered her strange costume seriously. ‘I think you would set all the old Society tabbies by the ears. But if you marry a man with a large country estate, why, then you can wear what you choose and stride about to your heart’s content.’

  Hastily Hebe turned away and started to climb again. After last night she was never going to be able to accept a proposal of marriage, whoever it came from. ‘Or I shall become an eccentric spinster and have a country cottage,’ she tossed back over her shoulder in an attempt at lightness.

  They went on in silence for another hour, interrupted only by Alex calling to her to stop and drink from the canteen at the saddlebow. She insisted he drink first, noting with relief the colour that was coming back into his face and the sharp, alert look in his eyes as he scanned the slopes around them.

  ‘Are we likely to see any French?’ she asked, made uneasy by his constant watchfulness.

  He shrugged, shifting his grip on the musket. ‘I doubt it. They hold territory on the other side of the border almost to Gibraltar, so they have no need to patrol unless they have intelligence that a guerrilla band is on the move. You were unlucky with that group last night; I suspect they were moving
along the flank of the mountain to provide high-level lookouts over the coast.’

  ‘So we are no safer when we cross the border?’ Hebe twisted in the cork and handed the canteen back to him.

  ‘Much safer. The French are on enemy territory there, and I know the partisans.’ He pointed up the mountain-side. ‘You see that break of slope there? We will stop at that point and have something to eat. After that it gets much steeper.’

  Hebe squared her shoulders and climbed on, beginning to realise that, despite taking far more exercise than most of her friends, long rambles on Malta were not at all the same as scrambling over the foothills of a mountain range. She could feel her face glowing and damp and her hair, despite being tied back, kept blowing irritatingly into her eyes.

  She flopped down when they finally reached the natural rock step that Alex had pointed out and tried not to look up. Above them the surface seemed to be entirely composed of frost-shattered rocks through which the narrow mule track was a hardly visible thread, looping its way to the top.

  Alex threw his leg over the pommel and slid to the ground, stretching with a deep sigh of relief. He looked so much better Hebe could hardly credit it. She supposed that underlying strength and fitness told, even after his sharp bout of illness. He pulled the remains of their food from the saddlebag and came to sit beside her, pulling the knife from his belt to cut the bread and cheese.

  They ate in companionable silence, so quiet that a blue rock thrush flew down in a flash of iridescent wings and perched on a rock for a few moments, and the mewing of the buzzard circling overhead reached them clearly.

  Hebe looked up at it, then pushed her hair out of her eyes irritably.

  ‘Let me.’ She could feel Alex untying the knot in the strand of wool that held her hair back at her nape, and then his fingers began to comb through the long, tangled mass, carefully teasing it out. ‘What have you been doing to it?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘It is remarkably clean, but it feels as though it has never been combed.’

  The rhythmic movement was strangely soothing, despite the occasional tug when his gentle teasing failed to untangle a knot. ‘I had just washed it when the French came. I was sitting on the edge of the terrace in the sun, drying it when I saw them. I suppose it never got combed out properly.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I have done the best I can, but it is hardly…I know.’ She could feel his fingers working again, more purposefully now, and realised he was braiding her hair into a long tail. The closeness of him and the touch of his fingertips against her nape made her want to lean back into his embrace, twist in his arms until she could kiss him…

  ‘Where did you learn to plait?’ Hebe said, trampling firmly on the clamorous demands her body was making.

  ‘It is no different than plaiting a horse’s tail,’ Alex said prosaically, knotting the thread at the end of the long braid. ‘There, that will keep it out of your eyes.’

  Hebe stood up. The sooner they got going again the better. The closeness of him, the warmth of his body so near to hers, the touch of his fingers were all potent reminders of last night.

  ‘You ride now, Hebe.’ He stood by the mule, obviously waiting to toss her up into the saddle.

  ‘No! I am perfectly all right, and it is far too early for you to be exerting yourself.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Hebe, come here and get on this mule. Now!’

  ‘No. And do not shout at me, I am not one of your troopers.’

  ‘More’s the pity, they do as they are told.’ There was a long pause, then he turned away sharply and said, in quite a different tone, ‘Hebe, please do as I ask. If you fall and break your ankle on that slope I will never be able to lift you on to the mule. Can’t you tell I am half-crazy with worry about you? Don’t make me have to beg you to help me.’

  Hebe choked down a shocked sob. ‘Alex, I am so sorry, yes, of course I’ll ride the mule if you think that is best. I don’t mean to be a burden to you.’ She felt quite sick at the reproof and at the thought that she had forced him to admit his weakness. His face was unreadable as he lifted her into the saddle, but as he picked up the long rein and turned to start walking Hebe caught a glimpse of an expression of wicked amusement on his face, transforming the lean, strained, heavily stubbled countenance.

  ‘Major Beresford!’ she stormed, kicking the mule to try to bring it alongside him. ‘That was the most unprincipled, dishonest, ungentlemanly trick to play on me!’

  ‘I agree, Miss Carlton,’ he replied calmly, but with a hint of a laugh in his voice. ‘But it worked.’

  Hebe subsided into fulminating silence. She knew she was sulking and that it was a completely unworthy thing to be doing, but she was suddenly tired of coping and being cheerful and pretending that last night had not happened. She just wanted to be taken in Alex’s arms and to have a good cry. As that was obviously impossible, being furious with him was the next best thing.

  For the next hour she sat on the mule, hanging on to the pommel as it lurched and clambered up the slope, glaring at Alex’s back and keeping herself from worrying by rehearsing all his numerous faults. Unfortunately she could not find any, other than being as stubborn as the animal she was riding, and having the poor judgement to fall in love with a red-headed beauty called Clarissa.

  They reached the pass so suddenly that it was a shock to find the mule standing on level ground. ‘Downhill all the way now,’ Alex said with satisfaction, leaning against the animal’s shoulder. He twisted round to look at Hebe. ‘Are you talking to me again?’

  ‘No,’ she said tightly. ‘You almost made me cry.’

  ‘I can’t believe that, Hebe, you are much too brave to cry. Come on, we’ll be with friends by evening.’

  He set off down the track into Spain and Hebe kicked her heels and followed him, biting her lip. She knew he was not intending to be unkind, and was trying to bolster her spirits by complimenting her on her courage, but his words were having quite the opposite effect to that he had intended.

  She blinked hard and swallowed. Hebe, capable, sensible Hebe wouldn’t cry, of course. And as for Circe, well, whenever she was upset she probably just went out and turned a few more hapless sailors into animals, so she didn’t need to cry. But she was not either any longer. She was a new Hebe: a ruined woman, a woman in love with a man who did not love her, an Englishwoman cast adrift in a foreign, enemy-occupied country—and this new Hebe wanted a good weep.

  ‘Wait!’ she called. Alex stopped and turned round. ‘I want to get down.’

  ‘Why?’ He came and lifted her from the saddle.

  Hebe glared at him. ‘Because that shrub over there is the first bush I have seen in over three hours and I intend to take advantage of it.’ She stalked off and took refuge behind the spiny foliage, not emerging until she had rubbed all the tears out of her eyes and blown her nose.

  The track snaked down into the valley, becoming wider and less rocky as they descended. It was much easier going and they seemed to be covering miles after the steep climb of the morning. Hebe noticed that the slopes were greener on this side and that great stands of sweet chestnut cast welcome shade from the sun, which was now low in the sky.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ she asked, and was answered by Alex’s gesture to further down the slope where thin columns of smoke could just be seen. The track suddenly met a wider cart track at right angles and Alex turned on to it, then stopped. Around the bend, approaching them, came the sound of voices and the rumble of wheels.

  ‘Leave the talking to me,’ he said urgently as a group of people accompanying two laden carts came into view.

  Hebe held her breath. They were all civilians, four men and two younger women, and by the look of them they were returning to their village after a day gathering wood or looking after animals on the pastures. Alex stood quietly by the side of the road, one hand on hers as it rested on the mule’s neck, his eyes on the approaching group, who were regarding the pair of them with undisguised curiosity as they came.

  Then the
re was a cry of ‘Major Alex!’ and they were in the centre of a laughing group, slapping Alex on the back, grinning at her, firing rapid Spanish at him despite his efforts to slow them down. Hebe sat, weak with relief, and studied them, liking what she saw. They were all dark, the men rather stocky and dressed very much alike in knee breeches over rough woollen hose with heavy buckled shoes. Their shirts were generously cut and on top some wore leather waistcoats, others jackets. One woman was about Hebe’s age, shy and long haired in a plain gown kirtled up to show her sturdy shoes and dusty petticoats; the other was a little older, with a thin, expressive face. She sat up on the box of the first wagon, the oxen’s reins held loosely in her hand, her eyes vivid as she smiled at Alex.

  The excited group suddenly fell silent and turned as one to look down the cart track towards the village. They had heard what it took Hebe a moment longer to recognise, the beat of many hooves on the hard-packed surface.

  ‘Los francès!’ one of the men said and before she knew what was happening Hebe was sitting in the back of one of the wagons, a sack thrown over her trousers and the musket tucked down beside her. One of the men had clapped his hat on Alex’s head, the mule was hitched on behind and suddenly the little group had acquired two more weary workers returning home for the evening.

  They stood aside, sullen, but showing no obvious hostility, as the small troop of cavalry swept past them, the officer giving them a sharp, dismissive glance as he passed. Then they were walking again, keeping to the pace of the oxen. Hebe let her head fall back against the side of the cart and fell into a doze of sheer weariness.

  She was woken by Alex shaking her gently by the shoulder to find they had stopped in the tiny square of the village. Whitewashed houses interspersed with others built from the local granite formed three sides, with the church on the fourth. Lanes ran off from it, busy with small children playing and chasing chickens and dogs; old women sitting outside their front doors preparing vegetables and their menfolk wearily making their way home.