by Tracy Grant
The bearded man gave a grunt of pain and surprise. The noisy room went suddenly still, as if in expectation of entertainment. "Only trying to even up the odds," Adam said. "Your friend appeared to be outnumbered."
"Outnumbered?" the bearded man bellowed. "I'll teach you about outnumbered, you damned interfering bastard." With a cry of rage, he launched himself at Adam.
As he dodged out of his assailant's path and aimed a counter blow, Adam heard a roar go up about him, followed by the crash of overturned benches and the joyous cries of men who had been spoiling for a fight. There was no help for it. They were in for a regular brawl.
A scruffy man at a nearby table sprang to his feet and hit the bearded man between the shoulders. The bearded man whirled on him, giving Adam a moment's respite. Narrowly avoiding a stray blow from a heavyset man who seemed too drunk to know whom he was fighting, Adam glanced about for the youth who had been the bearded man's first victim. There was no sign of him. Hawkins, Caroline, and Emily were crouched behind their table. When Adam met his eyes, Hawkins gave a brief nod and the three of them began to inch about the edge of the room toward the door.
They would make for the stable. Adam had only to extricate himself and follow them. But though the bearded man was temporarily out of sight, extricating himself was no easy task. The entire room seemed to have sprung to life. Adam was caught in a buffeting sea of unwashed bodies. It was difficult to tell who was on which side. Most of the men seemed to be cheerfully pummeling anyone handy. Though he could not see across the room, Adam knew where the door was. He pushed his way toward it, dodging and ducking when he could, using his fists when necessary. He had just caught sight of the lintel, when he saw the bearded man pushing his way through the crowd toward him.
Only two more men and an overturned bench stood between Adam and the door. He elbowed his way between the men— earning a string of curses and a blow to the ribs—and jumped over the bench, only to find the door blocked. Adam met the eyes of the man who stood there and realized with a shock of surprise that it was the youth who had first appealed for his help.
There was nothing helpless about the young man's stance or the flinty look in his eyes. For an instant they stared at each other. Then Adam moved forward and heard the bearded man, who was still trapped in the crowd, shout, "Stop him, you fool."
With the swift instinct of a seasoned fighter, the young man reached beneath his loose vest. The lamplight glanced off the metal of a blade. Adam whirled round, seized the bench he had jumped over, and hurled it at the young man as he lunged forward. The impact knocked the youth to the floor for the second time in minutes. This time Adam did not offer assistance. Hearing a cry of rage from the bearded man, he pushed open the door and stumbled out into the still night air.
As he ran round the side of the inn toward the stable, Adam heard nothing but the roar of the river and the clatter of his own feet. The men were not following. Like the bandits by the Carrión. The thought came unbidden and he pushed it aside. He had reached the crude wooden shed which served as a stable. Inside he found Hawkins and Caroline saddling the horses, assisted by the stableboy.
Emily, perched on a hay bale, greeted Adam with an excited cry. Caroline looked up and met his eyes, her own filled with relief. Hawkins continued adjusting Baron's saddle girth. He and Adam had been in too many similar situations for him to betray concern.
Within minutes they were ready to leave. Adam pressed some coins into the stableboy's hand, checked to see that the inn-yard was still empty, then nodded to the others. Even Emily did not speak as they made their way out of the village. They galloped across a mile or so of open country, but there was no sign of pursuit. Adam turned off the main road and headed for the lights of a farm that looked large enough to offer shelter. Leaving Hawkins with Caroline and Emily, he approached the house alone and on foot.
A shaft of moonlight slipped from behind the clouds and illumined the house. It had two chimneys, and a climbing vine softened its stone walls, but the moonlight showed broken shutters on the windows and tiles missing from the roof. Adam rapped loudly on the wooden door. A long silence followed. He heard a faint creak and thought someone was peering at him through the shutters. Then suddenly the door was pulled open. A man appeared, taller than Adam, with shoulders which spanned the width of the doorway.
"What do you want?" His voice was commanding, but it cracked on the last word. For all his height, his face showed him to be no more than fifteen.
"My brother and sister and I have lost our way," Adam said. "My sister and her child are dropping from exhaustion. I don't think they can make it to the next village. I would be most grateful if we could seek shelter in your barn for the night. I would of course be willing to pay you for your trouble."
The boy's face lit up at the mention of money. But he hesitated, his eyes filled with doubt. He shifted his position, and Adam saw shadowy figures grouped about a table in the room behind him. "Perhaps I could speak to one of your parents," Adam suggested.
"My mother's dead and my father's away. I'm looking after my sisters and grandmother," the boy said proudly. "Father put the farm in my care. He and my brothers are fighting the English."
"Then they must be brave men," Adam said, echoing the words he had used with Emily earlier in the day. It was true. There were brave men on both sides.
The boy gave a cautious smile, but he continued to hesitate. There was a stir of movement behind him. "Francisco? What is it?" A girl who looked to be a year or so older than Francisco pushed him aside and looked at Adam in inquiry. "Señor? You are seeking shelter?"
Adam repeated his story. When he offered to pay for their lodgings, a look of relief crossed the girl's face. "But of course you must stay," she said. "I will make up a pallet for the lady and her child by the kitchen fire and there will be blankets for you and your brother in the barn."
"Dolores—" the boy protested.
"Don't be foolish, Francisco," Dolores said. "Father wouldn't want us to turn them away. Besides, we need the money." She looked apologetically at Adam. "I'm sorry, Señor. But one must think of such things."
Adam smiled at her. "So one must," he agreed.
While Dolores prepared the bedding, Adam returned to the stand of trees where he had left the others. Caroline and Hawkins were quiet and tense but Emily was running round a tree trunk, eyes bright from their adventure.
"Try to look sleepy," Adam told her. "I said you were dropping with exhaustion."
Emily grinned and flopped her head to one side.
"Is it all right?" Caroline's voice was taught with strain.
Adam nodded. "They've agreed to shelter us. But mind what you say. They're French sympathizers."
Caroline's eyes widened.
"You may not have met many in Acquera, but they're all over the country," Adam told her. "You'll find they're remarkably like the rest of us."
Though Francisco still eyed them with suspicion, Dolores and her sister and grandmother greeted them warmly when they reached the house. Caroline was given the best seat near the fire and Emily was given a precious glass of goat's milk to drink. Even Francisco unbent a little when he showed Adam and Hawkins to the barn.
When he and Hawkins had unsaddled the horses, Adam finally had leisure to think about what had happened. The fight had been planned. He was sure of it. He dropped down on a pile of straw and began to remove his boots. The two men had deliberately set out not only to cause a brawl but to embroil him in it. Why? To steal his purse? It seemed an elaborate way to go about it.
Adam pulled off one boot and massaged his aching foot, then tugged at the second one. He thought again of the shots on the riverbank. Two mysterious attacks in as many days. He would be tempted to think they were connected, if there were any reason for it. He worked the second boot off his foot. As he did so, he felt a hard ridge beneath the lining. The dispatch. He swore and dropped the boot.
"Wound troubling you?" Hawkins, unburdened by such reflections, had alrea
dy removed his own boots and coat and was lying in the straw with one of the blankets drawn over him.
"No, I just feel like a bloody fool." Adam explained how the fight had developed after Hawkins left the tavern. "If I'm right, it was those same two men who fired on us yesterday."
Hawkins's brows drew together. He was sitting up now, arms wrapped round his blanket-covered knees. "Not that I'm objecting, mind," he said, "but why? We hardly look wealthy and for once we aren't carrying anything that might interest the French." He met Adam's gaze suddenly. In the dim light from the single lamp Francisco had given them, Adam saw his eyes narrow. "Or are we?"
Adam drew his feet up onto the straw and leaned against the rough-hewn wall behind him. "Victor Soro was carrying an intercepted dispatch to British Headquarters. I agreed to take it for him so he'd have time to visit his family."
"Damn’ quiet about it, weren't you?"
"Caroline has enough to worry about and I don't want Emily to know. I didn't have a chance to tell you."
"It's all right." Hawkins waved a hand. "It may be a blow to my self-regard but I'm man enough to take it. Did the other guerrilleros know Soro gave you the dispatch?"
"Victor could have told them after we left. I suspect one of them is less than devoted to his cause."
Hawkins frowned. "You think one of the guerrilleros sent word to the French and the French managed to pick up our trail in the space of less than a day?"
"I doubt it," Adam said. "But he might have had time to alert some friends near the encampment."
"So the bearded man and the skinny fellow are working on their own?" Hawkins pulled a loose straw from his hair.
"More or less. They must know the French will pay them handsomely for the dispatch if they can recover it."
"All right. Their friend the traitorous guerrillero tells them there's money to be made and they gallop off after us and just happen to be on the hill when we cross the Carrión."
"We stopped to buy bread," Adam reminded him.
Hawkins's eyes widened. "Damnation."
"My sentiments exactly. The men knew our general direction. They must have asked questions at the surrounding villages and managed to pick up our trail. Then they were able to get to the Carrión ahead of us—presumably they're traveling lighter. They knew roughly where we'd have to cross the river. They were lucky. We weren't."
"Clever bastards, aren't they? If they managed all that, it would have been easy enough for them to find us again today. God knows we stopped to talk to enough people." A brown and white goat, perhaps wakened by the voices and light, wandered over and pressed its face against Hawkins, Hawkins scratched it behind the ears. "So. Do we try to outrun them?"
"I'm not sure we can. But they haven't given chase after either attack. I suspect they're afraid to risk a direct confrontation."
"Do we try to avoid being seen?"
"On the contrary. We greet anyone we happen across with great affability and drop hints that our way lies north, toward Zamora. It may not deceive our friends, but it's worth a try." Adam hesitated, staring at the wavering flame of the lamp that hung on the wall beside him. "I'd rather not tell Caroline. There's nothing she can do and it would only give her one more cause for concern."
"Right you are," Hawkins agreed. "Besides, if we tell her, ten to one young Emily will guess something's amiss."
There was nothing more to be said. It was hardly the first time they'd faced such a situation. Save that in the past there had not been Caroline and Emily to think of. Hawkins gave the goat a final pat. Adam stood, picked up a blanket, and turned down the lamp. He had set out to get Caroline and her child to safety and now he had placed them in fresh danger. Not exactly the stuff of heroes, but little good would come of dwelling on it.
Adam wrapped himself in the blanket and lay down in the musty straw. He had an image of Caroline on the ride from the village, her face glowing in the moonlight, her eyes bright from the cold and the danger. And then he saw Caroline as a girl, galloping through wooded countryside, her hair streaming free, her skirts bunched up so she could ride astride. It had been a hot summer day just before he returned for his last year at Oxford. They had been racing and she had been a little ahead, so he had seen her fall to the ground when her horse took a jump badly.
Adam felt again the horror that had gripped him in that moment. He had flung himself down on the ground beside her and gathered her in his arms. Caroline had opened her eyes and looked up at him, dazed but unhurt. Adam had hugged her to him. And then, for the first time, he had kissed her, overwhelmed by the pent-up longings he had scarcely acknowledged even to himself.
At first, Caroline had responded with an ardor nearly equal to his own. But when, knowing he would soon be unable to stop, he had ended the kiss, he had seen the passion in her eyes give way to confusion. Later she refused to speak of it, insisting on behaving as though nothing had changed between them. By the time he left Oxford the next year, she had become engaged to Jared Rawley. For the first time, it occurred to Adam that Caroline's confusion had really been fear of the force of their passion.
But the inexperienced girl of seventeen had grown into a passionate woman. Adam closed his eyes on the gloom of the barn and listened to the sound of small creatures scurrying through the straw and tried not to think about how he had planned to spend the night.
He wasn't successful.
Caroline looked from the robin's-egg blue of the sky to the hazy line of mountains in the distance. They had crossed the Duero without difficulty, the brawl at the inn in Norilla was a thing of the past, and all seemed calm and peaceful. Save for the sound, as clear and bright and cheerful as the morning, of her daughter chattering to Adam. Caroline subdued the urge to interrupt them as she had on the previous day. But when Adam burst into laughter, the sort of spontaneous laughter she had shared with him when they were children, she turned her gaze toward him involuntarily. His eyes glinted with amusement, his face was lit by a smile, his dark head was bent down to say something to her daughter.
Their daughter. An intense longing tightened Caroline's chest and brought a lump to her throat. She looked away, startled and unsettled. She wanted Adam and Emily to be friends. Until now, she hadn't realized how much she wanted it. But two days ago she had convinced herself that it would be better for all of them if she did not tell Adam the truth about Emily's birth. One night of intimacy with Adam didn't change her determination to give Emily the protection of a legitimate name.
Caroline shivered. Her night with Adam had given her renewed strength, a strength that was reinforced whenever she looked into his eyes, whenever he touched her in the lightest, most casual way. But her lie about Emily hung between them, a reminder of the past she did not want to think about and the future she refused to consider.
They were entering mountainous country again, though not as steep as that round Burgos. Adam had startled her that morning by telling a shepherd they met that they were bound for Zamora. Caroline had known enough to hold her tongue. When she questioned Adam about it afterward he said there was no point in advertising their direction. In reality they were riding southwest and would be near Salamanca by nightfall.
Caroline stole another glance at Adam, secure in the knowledge that his attention was on Emily. They would stay in an inn tonight. That meant she and Emily would have their own room instead of blankets on the floor of a farmhouse kitchen. And it meant that she would be able to slip from the room after dark and visit Adam's bed.
She felt hot, betraying color flood her face. She hadn't made up her mind, she told herself. She wouldn't even let herself think about it until she knew how they were situated. Perhaps Emily would be restless and she would be unable to leave her. Perhaps Adam would sleep in the stable or share a room with Hawkins. Perhaps they would not be able to find an inn and would stay at a farm again.
She kept up this pretense of indecision through the rest of the day's ride; through supper at an inn in the town of Bunedo, some twenty miles fro
m Salamanca; through saying goodnight to Hawkins, who was to sleep in the stable and keep watch on the horses, and to Adam, who had a room upstairs, two doors down the narrow passage from her own chamber; through tucking the covers round Emily and watching her drift off into a deep sleep. Only then, as her body began to ache with anticipation, was Caroline forced to admit that her decision was no decision at all.
She hesitated a moment outside his door, then raised her hand and knocked. To walk in unannounced would be to assume a degree of intimacy they did not yet have between them, however passionate the night they had spent together. Adam opened the door almost at once. His eyes raked her face, blazing with hunger, but he said nothing, merely stepped aside to allow her to enter the room.
While he closed the door Caroline had a moment to note that the room was larger than the one he had had in Talcona and that there was a bed rather than a pallet. Then Adam turned and met her gaze. She saw longing in his eyes, and relief, and a mirror of her own uncertainty. If they put one foot wrong they could go crashing through the web of happiness they had spun for themselves into a dark, angry abyss.
Adam started to speak, but Caroline walked forward quickly and placed her hand over his lips. "No words," she said. "We don't need them."
His eyes not leaving her face, Adam pulled the pins from her hair and let it drift slowly through his fingers. The feel of the strands falling against her skin was like a caress. Caroline shivered and stepped closer to him, lifting her face. His hands stilled. His lips brushed against her temples, then her eyes, her cheek, and finally, when she thought she would scream with longing, took her mouth in a kiss of aching tenderness.
Warmth enveloped her. His lips were rough and wind-chapped. His mouth tasted of wine. He lifted his head, still holding her face between his hands, and traced her features, as if committing them to memory. Then he slid his hands down her neck and pushed her hair aside and found the strings on the back of her gown.
