by Carla Kelly
‘I can’t forgive them for what they did to the priest and to Sister Maria Madelena,’ she murmured, half to herself, later that day.
‘Nor should you, or trust them for even a second,’ Hugh said. ‘Still, if we had met these men while strolling in Vauxhall Gardens, we would probably just have nodded and smiled. War changes everyone.’ His hands tied, he nuzzled aside her hair with his lips and kissed her ear, biting gently on her earlobe. ‘Maybe even you, Brandon.’
She looked around, but the Sergeant was not watching them. ‘Hugh, darling, you are taking advantage of me,’ she said, feeling that warmth again.
‘And who would not, in my boots?’ he said complacently. ‘Polly, dear.’
There wasn’t even a deserted village for shelter that night. They dismounted into mud and gravel. When the rains came, Sergeant Cadotte rummaged in his pack for an oiled slicker, which he draped over Hugh’s shoulders. Polly shivered in his arms, unable to keep her teeth from chattering with the cold.
She had not complained when the cold rain started to fall. Come to think of it, she never complained, Hugh realised as he held her close. She said nothing about her empty belly, even though he heard her stomach growl and she winced from the pain of it. She had grown quieter and quieter as the hours passed, and Hugh wished with all his heart that he could make her comfortable, even if for only a moment.
They were not in as bad shape as one of the Sergeant’s men, a Private gone unconscious with the cold and deprivation. There was no shelter beyond the dripping trees for a bivouac that night, but two Dragoons had put their slickers together and with some sticks, created a rude shelter for their companion.
‘Poor man,’ Polly said, as she stood in the shelter of Hugh’s arms. ‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’
‘Probably. You’ll have to ask your brother-in-law why some men are impervious to a little cold, and others succumb. He’s the enemy, Brandon,’ Hugh reminded her.
‘I know. I know. Still…’ She let the sentence trail away.
She surprised him by turning around to face him, burrowing her head into his chest as they stood together, hands tied in front of them. She took his hand and raised it to her breast. ‘I don’t want to die before I have even lived,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let that happen to me, Hugh, if you are my friend.’
‘I’m your husband, Polly,’ he whispered, feeling exactly that. ‘I’m proud of you, the way you have borne up under this misery. You’re brave and kind.’ Unsure of himself, he knew he should make light of what he was saying. ‘And an excellent mother to our child.’
She glanced up at him then, her pretty blue eyes so tired and filled suddenly with tears. ‘Don’t tease me about that, Hugh,’ she whispered back. ‘I…I don’t want to die before I have a child! Don’t ever tease me any more about that.’
Words failed him. He raised his bound hands, wanting to pull them free so he could caress away her tears; scrabble in the sparse vegetation to find something—anything—to feed her. In the horror that was São Jobim, he had sworn to protect her with all the fervour with which he had sworn, as a lad of fifteen, to defend King and country. In fact, the two were inextricably bound together in his mind. He wanted to touch her gently until they were content enough in this miserable wilderness where the heavens had opened up. He wanted to assure her that she would not die until she had lived, but he could promise her nothing of the kind.
‘No more teasing, Brandon,’ he said. ‘Don’t let me shock you, but I feel exactly the same way about the very same thing.’ It struck him then that he understood her completely. ‘I…I don’t think I have even started to live yet, either, and we know how old I am.’
She hesitated and he leaned closer to her. He thought he knew what she was too shy to ask, this young woman who had been raised properly and carefully, but who must have been aroused as he was aroused when he kissed her ear and then her neck, earlier that afternoon. This was all so strange—no one could seriously fall in love under such conditions.
Or could one? He didn’t dare think it was possible. Lord knew he had tried to think of the Brittles’ objections to him. But as the rain thundered down, he kissed her with all the fervour of his heart. Because the others were gathered around the dying trooper, this was the most privacy they had enjoyed since the granary. To his joy, she kissed him back, little inarticulate murmurs coming from her throat that made his body yearn for her as he had never yearned for any female in his life. He knew without a qualm that for the rest of his life, he would cherish and protect this woman to the end of his strength. He had sworn to do it, on his honour as a Marine. Was there more? Time might tell, if there was time, and he had his doubts.
He kissed her nose next, then stepped back, shrugged out of the slicker and left it wrapped around his love. Without a word to her, he strode to the circle of Dragoons, calling for the Sergeant. When he had the harried man’s attention, Hugh just held out his hands wordlessly. ‘S’il vouz plaît,’ he said simply.
Brandon was beside him then, doing the same thing. ‘Please, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can help your man.’
‘And do what?’ Cadotte snapped.
Hugh knew that whether seconds or decades would be allowed to pass in the life of his loved one, he would never be more proud of Polly Brandon than he was then. ‘I can hold him in my arms,’ she said. ‘Men are well enough, Sergeant, but women are better. You know they are.’
Cadotte looked at the two of them. Without a word he untied their hands. Polly bobbed a small curtsy that made her look suddenly young. She gave Hugh such a look that he felt his insides begin to smoulder, then shouldered her way through the troop of Dragoons, those men who only a week ago would have raped and killed her, and sat down beside the unconscious Dragoon.
Humming softly, she let one of the men help her lift the dying man into her lap. After only the slightest hesitation, she began to smooth his dirty hair from his forehead. Someone handed her a dry stocking, and she wiped the grime from his face, bending lower over him until her breasts touched his chest. She did it deliberately, wanting the dying man to know he was with a woman.
Hugh watched in humble amazement as his green girl sent her enemy to his death peacefully. She unbuttoned the Dragoon’s ragged green tunic and pressed her hand against his chest, stroking him until his eyes flickered open. He tried to speak and she leaned closer.
‘Emilie?’ he asked, with the smallest bit of hope in his voice.
‘Oui,’ she replied. ‘Dormes-toi, mon chéri.’
With a look of surprising contentment, he died. Polly Brandon closed his eyes and began to cry. As Hugh listened, she seemed to cry every tear that had ever been shed over every soldier in every war since the Lord God Almighty cast Satan from heaven and the trouble really started.
Still enveloped in the too-large slicker, Polly Brandon stood as chief mourner as the troopers buried their comrade. Hugh helped dig the grave, needing the release of hard work to calm the fires in his body. He could have cried at his own weakness, when he had to stop because he was exhausted. No one noticed because all the men, equally starved, were taking turns.
No one said anything over the grave. Polly cried. Hugh held her close, then turned around, walked to the Sergeant and held out his hands, to be bound again. Cadotte shook his head. He pointed to the foot of a large tree. ‘Sleep there,’ was all he said. ‘We ride at dawn. I’ll bind you then.’
Without a word, Hugh wrapped the slicker around both of them and sat Brandon down under the tree. His hands free, he pulled the slicker over them, protecting their heads from the rain, and pulled Brandon close. With a sigh, she rested her head on his chest, her arm possessively around his body. In a matter of seconds, she was breathing evenly.
‘Please, Polly, I need your comfort,’ he whispered, wishing she could hear him.
She did, which humbled him beyond anything. Without a word spoken between them, without even opening her eyes, she unbuttoned her dress. She untied the cord holding her ch
emise together, took his hand, and placed it on her bare breast with a sigh. It was warm and softer than he could have imagined. He cupped her breast carefully in his hand as his eyes closed, too. He tried to open his eyes when she put her hand inside his tunic and shirt and stroked him as she had caressed the French Dragoon. All he could do was succumb to his best night’s sleep in recent memory, as the rain poured down.
Chapter Fourteen
If the burial didn’t change everything, crossing an unnamed mountain stream did. What surprised Hugh about saving Sergeant Cadotte’s life was the ferocious way Polly Brandon did all he demanded without question. She had the heart of a Marine, and this unexpected discovery bound him to her tighter than the cords shackling them. Not only did he love her; he respected her as a brother in arms.
They had come to the river at dusk one week later. They had been slowly winding their way down to it for most of the day on the precipitous switchbacks that Portuguese mountain passes were notorious for. He knew how terrified Polly was, shrinking back against him as they travelled the dangerous trail, their hands bound and at the mercy of the Corporal, who had roped their horse to his.
One of the Dragoons on the narrow file in front of them had lost his life around a sharp turn when his horse made a misstep and trod upon thin air. The man shrieked all the way to his death. Polly’s sharp intake of breath and the shaking of her shoulders told him volumes about her own state of mind.
She had borne up well against the journey. Even the Sergeant had remarked on that to him the night before, when he had tied them to a picket stake and laid down next to them, spreading his blanket over them all, which had touched Hugh.
‘I wish matters were different for your lady,’ was all the Sergeant said, and it was quietly spoken, as Cadotte turned on his side to sleep, his back to them.
My lady, Hugh thought, as he cuddled Polly close. He knew her body well by now. His acquaintance with it had begun on the voyage from Plymouth, but he had taken pains not to embarrass her, even as they had to manage private functions in sight and sound of each other. She had accepted their constant closeness for her protection. There was nothing missish about Polly Brandon, which eased his plight. When she had so generously comforted him two nights ago, he knew he was in her debt for ever.
He wished she did not continue to chafe about the impulsive gesture that had caused him to jump into the barco in Oporto. He knew it still bothered her that he could be safe downriver, and by now, at Ferrol Station, or even in Plymouth. Not even the reality of her probable fate at the hands of Cadotte’s troopers seemed to assuage the guilt she felt at endangering his life, because she had insisted upon accompanying Sister Maria Madelena on the ill-fated journey.
‘It’s my fault you are here,’ she told him after the Dragoon fell to his death.
‘Polly, dear, life is strange,’ he had said, and it sounded so facile to his own ears, something uttered vapidly in a drawing room to impress fops.
Obviously unimpressed with his philosophising, she had said nothing more to him. It chafed him that she felt so alone in her misery. He knew she liked him, but he also suspected she had not invested her heart in him, as she would have if they were actually married, instead of submitting to a great fiction to stay alive. Something told him she needed to discover how much she loved him, if she even did.
They came to the ford of the stream before dusk. The Sergeant sat in his saddle, his leg across the pommel, in that casual way of his that Hugh could only envy. Cadotte watched the stream for some moments, as if weighing the value of crossing now or waiting until morning. The mist that had been falling on them for days must have fallen as rain higher in the mountains, because the stream boiled along like a river. To cross now or not? Hugh almost smiled to himself; he knew what command decisions felt like.
‘We will cross now,’ the Sergeant said finally, and gestured his men forwards.
‘How?’ Polly murmured, into Hugh’s tunic.
It was a good question. There was little remaining of the stone bridge that had once spanned the stream, more properly a river now. One army or another had blown it into gravel years ago, leaving behind only stone pillars at either bank. Some enterprising soul had rigged a rope across the expanse. Hugh pointed this out to Polly.
‘I suppose we are to grip the rope as the horse does his best,’ he told her, trying not to sound as dubious as he felt.
‘Then the Sergeant had better free our hands,’ was all she said.
The Sergeant seemed disinclined to agree, which hardly surprised him. What did surprise him was the way Polly argued with the Frenchman, holding her bound hands in front of her and then waving them about, which made the Sergeant’s face twitch in what Hugh had decided was as near as the man ever got to smiling.
‘You insist?’ the Sergeant said finally.
Polly stared him directly in the eyes and nodded vigorously. ‘I insist.’
‘You have no power to make me do anything, Madame Junnit,’ he said.
‘I know that, but I still insist,’ she replied.
Sergeant Cadotte turned to him and threw up his hands in a Gallic gesture. ‘Is she always so much trouble?’
‘This and more,’ Hugh answered. ‘Humour her.’
The Sergeant did, gesturing for his Corporal to untie them. The Sergeant had the sapper find him a longer rope and told his Corporal to tie it around their waists, binding them together.
‘We would be safer if you didn’t fetter us,’ Hugh said.
‘I don’t care about your safety,’ Cadotte snapped, obviously weary of decisions and complainers. ‘I want you across the river together, or not at all.’
Cadotte sent half his troopers across the stream. Hugh watched as they guided their mounts into the swift-moving water, grasping the rope as the water tugged at them.
‘I do not think it is more than four feet deep. I fear the current. Can you swim?’
Polly nodded, her eyes on the water. ‘Miss Pym is a modern educationist. She took us river bathing in the Avon.’ She glanced back at him, and he saw the worry in her face take on a calmness that impressed him. ‘However, the Avon never looked like this. It’s rushing so fast.’
He kissed her cheek impulsively. ‘D’ye know, Brandon, one of the many things that impresses me about you is that you’re not afraid to admit you’re afraid, but you plug along anyhow.’
His reward was a faint smile and a shake of her head, as if she thought him two-thirds barmy. Perhaps she did; maybe he was. Who understood women?
The Corporal crossed next, holding tight to the rope and calling for them to do the same, as he kept a firm grip on the rope around their waists. The stream caught them, and Hugh felt the mighty pull of the water. Polly whimpered, then was silent as she glided her hand along the rope. He could feel how tightly she gripped the horse’s flanks with her legs.
‘You’ll do, Polly, dear,’ he said loud in her ear, to be heard above the sound of the water.
When they reached the opposite shore, he had to coax Polly to let go, finally just twisting her fingers from their death grip on the rope that spanned the stream. Her face was pale and her eyes huge in her head, as the Corporal tugged their mount on to the bank. Only then did her shoulders slump. ‘Thank God,’ she said simply.
Hand possessively on her shoulder, he turned in the saddle to watch Cadotte cross. No sooner than it took him to blink, Hugh watched as the Sergeant plunged headfirst into the river as his horse stumbled over rocks slippery with moss. He came up sputtering and grasping frantically for his mount, but he was already downstream of any aid.
‘Stand up, man,’ Hugh muttered to himself as he quickly undid the knot tying him to Polly. ‘It’s not that deep.’
As he had remarked to Polly before their crossing, it wasn’t the depth, but the current that was playing merry hell with Sergeant Cadotte. He retied the rope around Polly and dismounted, his eyes on the Sergeant, who was watching his startled troopers with desperate eyes. He tried to speak as he was
swept downstream.
‘Polly, I’m going in,’ Hugh said as he took off his tunic and gorget and handed them to her. ‘Convince the Corporal to let loose of our horse and follow me along the bank with that rope. Get ahead of me and think of something!’
As he unbuckled his shoes he looked back to see some of the men unlimbering their weapons. Fools, he thought. And the French think they will win this war? He dived into the water.
There was no thought in Polly’s mind except to do exactly as the Colonel said. Scarcely breathing, she watched him make powerful strokes to the middle of the stream, then let the current carry him towards the floundering Sergeant as he tried to swim. Polly pulled at the rope connecting her horse to the Corporal’s to get his attention. ‘Let me go,’ she shouted. ‘Then follow me. And for God’s sake, stop them from firing. Hugh is trying to help!’
The Corporal must have thought she could do some good. After a spare second to stare at her and mull her demand, he did as she said, untying the rope from his pommel and tossing it to her. Grasping the reins for the first time, she dug her heels into the horse and was rewarded with an unexpected burst of speed from an animal probably as tired and hungry as she was. She could hear the Corporal shouting something to her in French, but she ignored him, putting all thoughts aside of what would happen to her if both men died in the river and she was left to face the troopers alone.
To her relief, she heard the Corporal pounding his horse along behind her. She watched the river, which had narrowed and deepened, and the Colonel, who swam with one arm clasped around the Sergeant now. She urged the horse on until they were nearly parallel to the men in the river. In another hundred yards of pounding along the bank, she was ahead of them.
Once through the narrow gorge, the river widened again and the current slowed. She glanced over her shoulder to see Hugh gradually angling towards the shore, fighting the lessening current. He tried to stand up once, but the river yanked them down again.
