Dark Angel (Lescaut Quartet)

by Tracy Grant

  An enticing aroma greeted them when Caroline opened the door of the cottage. Adela was standing over the fire that burned in the center of the mud floor, stirring a stew for the midday meal. The baby was asleep in the crate that served as her cradle, and two-year-old Ramon was playing with rocks and bits of twig in the far corner.

  Adela looked up at their entrance, the line of worry between her brows fading. Then she turned back to the stew and said she was glad they were back, but dinner was not quite ready and perhaps they would like to play in the garden.

  The relief of the girls, Juana in particular, was palpable. With Ramon trailing behind, they ran through the back chamber and out into what had been their mother's vegetable garden before the English army requisitioned its contents during the disastrous retreat from Burgos.

  "You and Emily will stay to dinner, of course," Adela said, turning to Caroline. When the door closed behind the children, she added, "Thank you for bringing them back. They were at the stream?"

  Caroline nodded. "Emily loves the water. There was a pond in the park in Lisbon where I used to take her." She sank down on a stool beside the rickety table that was the room's main piece of furniture. Her fear when she realized Emily had left the village and her sorrow at having to deny her daughter such simple recreation as going wading with her friends brought back the guilt she had felt increasingly in recent weeks. "I should have left Emily in Lisbon.”

  "Then she would be confused and frightened now," Adela pointed out, "with only strangers to comfort her. I think perhaps it is better for children to be with their parents, however bad things are."

  That was what Caroline had told herself when she received word of Jared's wounds and set about frantically looking for a guide who would take her to join him. "I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't just being selfish," she told Adela. "I didn't want to leave her."

  "If you had, she would not have had a chance to say goodbye to her father."

  Caroline was grateful for the meager light in the cottage, for the innocent mention of Emily's father stirred a host of unwelcome memories. "Yes," she said, in a voice kept level with effort. "Yes. There is that."

  Adela left the fire and sat at the table opposite her friend. "You were very brave, Caroline. Jared was not the first wounded Englishman to be left in the village, but you were the only woman who came after her husband."

  "I had to," Caroline said in a low voice. "If it wasn't for me, Jared wouldn't have been here."

  It was only when Caroline raised her eyes and saw the surprise on Adela's face that she realized she had said more than she intended. Adela had been a wonderful friend to her these past months, but Caroline could not tell her that Jared had only joined the army because he had been ruined by a man seeking vengeance against his wife. "It was because of me that Jared found himself compelled to leave England," Caroline said instead. "He was never suited to the army." She stared down at her chapped hands and the tarnished gold of her wedding ring. "I didn't come after him because I loved him desperately. I came because I didn't love him enough."

  It was more than Caroline had confided in all the months of their friendship, but Adela merely nodded in her quiet way. Caroline knew Adela had seen little of her own husband since the start of the war, for he had joined one of the bands of guerrilleros opposing the French, but at least Adela did not doubt her love for him. On the other hand, Adela had been forced to cope with the ravages of war while Caroline was still living in the relative comfort of her lodgings in Lisbon.

  "I'm sorry," Caroline said, getting to her feet. "I didn't mean to be morbid." She went to a low shelf against the wall and began collecting dishes for the midday meal. Adela smiled and for a moment looked like the young woman she was. As she set the earthenware bowls out on the table, Caroline wondered how much she herself had aged in the past three months. She had long since ceased looking in her battered mirror save to be sure her face was clean, but she could feel how dry her skin had become, and the looseness of her gown told her she had grown as thin as everyone else in the village.

  "When spring comes, the army will begin to march again," Adela said, returning to the fire.

  "Which one?" Caroline asked with a dry smile.

  Adela grinned. "Both. But surely one of the English officers will see you to safety."

  Caroline nodded, though she knew even the most chivalrous soldier would not be able to leave his regiment in order to return a woman and child to Lisbon. She and Emily might find protection traveling with the army. Many other women did, though they were wives, not widows. But even if she managed in some way to reach Lisbon, what then? Her money was virtually gone and Jared's family would have nothing to do with her. If she returned to England, she would be forced to rely on her brother's charity—not a pleasant prospect. What worried her more, though, was that the army itself would never come within miles of Acquera, and all they would see were foraging parties from both sides. Some of these men might be polite and orderly, leaving receipts for what they took, but most would simply take what they could get. And in addition to food and livestock, that might include women.

  Caroline pushed some loosened strands back into the straggling knot in which her hair was confined. She was no longer the girl Jared had married, nor even the foolish young woman who had so recklessly tried to plead with Adam five years ago. She had traveled from Lisbon to northern Spain in the dead of winter, when everyone claimed it could not be done. She had nursed Jared, and watched him die, and buried him. She had seen to it that neither she nor Emily starved. Somehow, she would manage.

  A cry from the baby ended her reflections. While Adela coped with her youngest child's demand for food, Caroline spooned the stew into the bowls and called the children in from the garden. They fell upon the food with enthusiasm, scarcely seeming to notice that the stew contained no meat and few enough vegetables. Adela had a genius for using herbs to create savory dishes out of virtually nothing.

  Emily seemed to have forgot her disappointment over the stream. When she and Caroline at last left for their own cottage, she skipped happily over the rough cobblestones of Acquera's single street, stopping to call greetings to friends or to pet some of the goats that had survived the winter. Caroline smiled and nodded at acquaintances. When she had first arrived, the villagers had viewed her with a mixture of suspicion and hostility, but the trials of the past months had done much to destroy any sense that she was different from them.

  Though it was still afternoon, the sun had drifted behind a bank of clouds and there was a chill in the air. The cold never seemed to bother Emily, but Caroline could not grow used to it. Wondering if the fire had gone out, she opened the door of the cottage, abandoned when its owners fled south the previous summer, that she and Emily now called home. She stepped through the narrow doorway and froze, all her worst imaginings brought vividly to life.

  A man was standing on the far side of the room, beyond the dying embers of the fire. The light was poor, especially after the brightness outside, and she could tell little about him, save that he was tall and did not seem to be wearing a uniform. Instinctively, Caroline stepped back, shielding Emily from view.

  It was only then that the man turned around, though he remained in the shadows. "Mrs. Rawley?" He spoke softly, but the English accent was unmistakable.

  At the sound of his voice, a frisson of alarm coursed through her, but it was gone before she understood its cause, drowned by her relief. Caroline reached for the doorframe to steady herself, feeling as if her knees were about to give way. The joy of knowing that rescue might be at hand, coming so soon after her fears of a moment before, was almost more than she could bear. "You're English."

  "I am."

  There was amusement in his voice this time, but also that hauntingly familiar note which once again sent her heart hammering in her throat. Dear God, no, it was impossible. Caroline's fingers dug into the soft wood of the door frame as Adam Durward stepped into a shaft of gray light from the window and back into her li
fe for the first time in five years.

  Shock held her motionless and even her breathing seemed suspended. Coherent thought was impossible, but a wave of longing swept through her, dredged up from the recesses of her memory, from some last remaining fragment of a part of her she had thought long since dead and buried. She wanted to run to him, to fling her arms round his neck and hide her face against his chest, seeking comfort as she had when she was a little girl escaping the torment of her brother and sisters.

  But another part of her, which she had thought, if not dead, at least decently submerged, wanted to run to him for very different reasons, to feel his lips against her own and his hands working their magic on her body, blotting out the horrors of the past and the terrors of the future.

  Adam stared at Caroline across the barren room. His worst fears had been, allayed when the villagers directed him to her cottage. At least she was alive. Even so, the relief he had felt when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway was overwhelming. For the past four weeks, he had kept his fears at bay, knowing that if he allowed himself to dwell on them he never would be able to complete the journey. Only now could he acknowledge the terror that had gripped him since he learned Caroline had been mad enough to leave the safety of Lisbon and seek her husband in a remote Spanish village behind enemy lines.

  But when he stepped forward and looked her full in the face, relief gave way to shock and anger. Anger at himself, for setting in motion the events which had brought her to this; at Jared, for leading her into such a hell; and at Caroline for being foolish enough to follow him. The face that had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember was sun-burned and wind-chapped and pitifully thin. The body he had caressed so often in his memory was thin as well. The loose cuffs of her dress showed that even her wrists were gaunt.

  When he last saw her she had been exquisitely gowned and jeweled, her hair soft and silky and finely dressed, the fragrance of hyacinth and roses clinging to her skin. All, Adam reminded himself, in an effort to seduce him for the sake of her husband, the same husband for whom she had risked her life and been brought to the condition in which she now stood before him. "Is your husband well enough to travel, Mrs. Rawley?" Adam asked with careful formality.

  Caroline stared blankly at him, as if she could not comprehend the question. His eyes on her face, Adam scarcely noticed the stir of movement beside her until a young voice said softly, "Papa's dead."

  A little girl was clinging to Caroline's faded skirts and looking up at him with cautious eyes. Her heart-shaped face marked her indelibly as Caroline's daughter, but it was a moment before Adam could make sense of this. Neither the officials in Lisbon nor the officers in Jared's regiment nor any of the people he had questioned on his journey had mentioned a child. Nor had the villagers who directed him to Mrs. Rawley's cottage. They had also not told him that Mrs. Rawley's husband was dead.

  The sound of her daughter's voice seemed to return Caroline to reality. "This is Mr. Durward, Emily," she said, putting an arm round the little girl. "I knew him in England, a long time ago, and I need to talk to him now. Wait for me in the other room. I won't be long."

  Emily nodded solemnly and walked toward the door to the cottage's second room, giving Adam a wide berth but staring at him with curiosity as she passed. "Put your shawl on, querida," Caroline added as Emily reached the door. "It's cold."

  Adam watched the small figure vanish into the inner room, then turned back to Caroline. "I'm sorry about Jared."

  "Please, Adam. Hypocrisy was never one of your sins." Caroline moved to a broken-down chair that stood beside the table where she and Emily ate their meals. Disgust at the treachery of her thoughts had ended her paralysis. Anger had restored her to sanity. She could not make sense of Adam's sudden appearance, but she knew she could not trust him.

  "Very well," Adam said. "I'm the last person to offer sympathy when it isn't wanted. How soon can you be ready to leave?"

  "Leave?" Caroline thought she had recovered from the shock of seeing him, but this last took her by surprise.

  "Yes, that's the idea," Adam said in a brisk voice. "Or did you think I followed you to sample the delights of village life? Believe me, these past years I've seen enough of poverty and disease to last a lifetime."

  Caroline stared up at him. In the fading afternoon light, his face seemed little changed, but it appeared harsher, the mouth more firmly set, the eyes cold and implacable. He had not looked like that the last time they met, at least not for the whole of that devastating encounter. But to recall the way Adam's eyes could be lit with passion or tenderness, or the way his mouth softened just before it claimed her own, was to risk shattering her fragile self-command. "You're saying you came all this way just to look for me?" she demanded.

  "And Rawley," he reminded her. "And Emily, though I wasn't aware of her existence until a minute ago."

  His voice, Caroline noted with relief, was perfectly level. There was no reason he should suspect that the shattering night they had spent together was responsible for the one thing that still made her life worth living. "Why?" Caroline asked. "Did the British Embassy send you?"

  The mistrust in her voice brought a bitter taste to Adam's mouth. Even after five years, even after he had convinced himself he was long past caring, she could still stir a tumult of emotions in him. "You could say so, if it makes you feel better," he said evenly. In fact, it was Adam who had gone to Sir Charles Stuart, the British Ambassador in Lisbon, and insisted he be given leave to find Caroline. "This is scarcely the time to debate minor details. When can you be ready to leave?"

  Caroline could not have said whether it was the bland certainty in his voice, or the memory of his betrayal, or the even more disturbing memory of his passion, but she knew without question that no matter how desperate her circumstances she could not accept his help. "You never were a fool, Adam," she told him. "Do you think I would go as much as two miles with you, let alone halfway across Spain in the middle of a war?"

  Adam moved, suddenly and decisively, so that he was facing her across the table, his hands spread firmly on its scarred top. "God damn it, Caroline, there are two armies out there. Once the spring thaw begins, they're both going to start to move. You're English, and a woman, and you're beautiful—don't laugh, you know as well as I that it would take more than the ravages of a Spanish winter to destroy your looks. You'd be fair game for any French soldier and for more than a few of our own. This is no time to be swayed by petty vindictiveness."

  "You expect me to take your advice on the evils of petty vindictiveness?" Caroline asked, getting to her feet so they were on an equal level.

  "Why not?" Adam returned. "You should admit I'm an expert on the subject."

  Caroline gave a harsh laugh. "Don't try to get round me with words, Adam. I'm not a child anymore. I can't be bamboozled and I can't be bullied."

  "I don't doubt it. You are also, I trust, mature enough to put the welfare of your child before your own anger."

  "How dare you." Criticism of her care of Emily was more than Caroline could bear. She would not let herself pause to consider the possible justice of this remark. "If you imagine for one moment that I don't think about Emily every minute of every day, that I don't remember that if it wasn't for me she wouldn't be here—" To her own disgust, Caroline felt tears welling in her eyes. Her legs began to buckle again and she gripped the table for support.

  "Caro—"Adam reached out to her, his voice suddenly soft.

  Caroline recoiled as if she had been struck. "I want you to leave, Adam. Now."

  Even as she spoke the door from the street swung open. "All set," said a cheerful voice. "Oh." The speaker, a dark-haired, compactly built man, drew up short at the sight of Caroline. "Sorry, ma'am. Didn't realize you were back."

  "You remember Hawkins, Caroline," Adam said smoothly, as if she could possibly forget anything that had happened on the night they had last met. "You've seen to the horses?" he asked, turning to Hawkins.

  "Righ
t." Hawkins closed the door. "We can leave whenever the lady and her husband are ready."

  "My husband is dead," Caroline informed him, "and I am not going anywhere."

  "Ah." Hawkins looked from Adam to Caroline. "I understand the problem, Mrs. Rawley. Durward often rubs people the wrong way. But in this case you'd be wise to listen to him."

  Caroline felt her resolution waver, but the sight of Hawkins's cheerful face and the memory of the last time she had seen him decided her. "No."

  Adam did not reply, for he was staring past her, his whole body suddenly tense. Caroline looked at him in puzzlement. Then she heard it too: hoofbeats, loud enough to indicate that the riders had reached the cobblestones of the street. They slowed abruptly, and the clip of the horses' hooves gave way to a medley of screams and, louder than all the rest, a volley of shots.

  The sound banished all thought from Caroline's head but an image of Emily, sitting patiently in the back room while destruction threatened to burst through the door at any moment. "You said you had horses," she said.

  Adam shook his head. "If we run, we're prime targets." His gaze moved to Hawkins. "There's a little girl in the back room. Stay with her. Keep her quiet, keep her calm. Tell her her mother will be with her presently. Caroline," he continued, stripping off his coat and casting it over a chair back, "I'm going to need your help."

  Before Caroline realized what was happening he had crossed to her side and his hands were closing on her arms. "I'm sorry," he said, as she flinched, "but they'll be here at any moment and this charade has to be convincing."

  Caroline looked up at him, suspicion warring with the knowledge that he was her only hope. "What charade?"

  "That you're my mistress," Adam said.

  Knowing there must be some logic behind his words, Caroline bit back a protest. "And who are you?" she demanded.

  "Captain St. Juste of the French Army," said Adam, drawing her to him.