by Violet
A little humiliation and a degree of discomfort were nothing. Tamsyn could hear the baron’s voice. “Hija, you must learn what can be endured and what must not; which battles are worth fighting and which are not.”
But when would the softening up cease? When would they start seriously? She could simply give them what they wanted, of course, probably even demand a price for it. But this was a battle worth fighting for. She could not aid the French, betray the partisans, without betraying her father’s memory. So when would it start?
As if in answer to her silent question, Major Cornichet stood up and strolled over to her. He looked down at her, one hand stroking the curled waxed mustache above a cruel mouth. She met his gaze as fearlessly as she could.
“Eh, bien,” he said. “You will talk to me now, I believe.”
“About what?” she returned. Her mouth was dry, and despite the cold and the wet, she felt hot and feverish. The daughter of El Baron was no coward, but you didn’t have to be a coward to fear what she must now face.
“Don’t try my patience,” he said almost affably. “We can do this without pain, or we can do it with. It matters not to me.”
Tamsyn folded her arms, rested her head nonchalantly against the wall at her back, ignoring the trickle of water, and closed her eyes.
The rope attached to the collar was suddenly jerked hard, and she was hauled to her feet, the collar pulling tight against her throat as the colonel jerked upward again and she came up on her toes, fighting for breath.
“Don’t be a fool, Violette,” Cornichet said softly. “You will tell us in the end. Everything we wish to know and much that we don’t if it will stop the pain. You know that. We know that. So let’s spare ourselves the time and the trouble.”
She wouldn’t be able to hold out. Not forever. But she could endure for some time.
“Where is Longa?” The soft question hissed against the monotonous backdrop of the drumming rain.
Longa led the partisan bands in the north. His guerrillas were wreaking havoc on Napoleon’s forces with their darting forays, their sneak attacks coming out of the blue, harassing struggling columns, picking off stragglers, laying waste to the land so there was no foraging to be done for an army that survived off the land as they marched.
Tamsyn knew where Longa was. But if news of her capture could reach the guerrilla leader before she broke, then he would be able to disappear. She had to pray that someone was aware of it, that the news was even now traveling to Pamplona. Her men had scattered in the ambush—those who hadn’t been killed—all except for Gabriel. And where was Gabriel? Somewhere in this wretched hole, if they’d left him alive. Perhaps he was even now breaking free. It was impossible to imagine that giant oak of a man held captive by ordinary human bonds. And if Gabriel freed himself, then he would come for her.
She had to endure.
The rope slackened and she came back on her feet again, but the colonel’s hand was on her shirt. Instead of ripping it, he unbuttoned it slowly and deliberately.
Her skin was now icy as she saw the knife he held in his other hand. Bitter nausea rose in her throat. Of all things, she dreaded the knife the most. Could Cornichet know that? Know of her invincible terror at the sight of her own torn skin, her own crimson blood escaping … Black spots danced in front of her eyes, and she clung to consciousness with every last fiber of her being.
One of the other men came over, smiling. He moved behind her and pulled the shirt from her as the last button came undone. He grasped her wrists, dragging her arms behind her so that her breasts were pushed forward. Rough rope cut into her wrists. She could feel the soft tremble of her breasts on her rib cage.
“Such a pity,” murmured Cornichet, moving the knife around the small swell of her right breast. “Such delicate skin. One wouldn’t expect it of a brigand, a thief and a plunderer.” The tip traced the circle of her nipple. “Don’t make me do this,” he said, cajoling. “Tell me where Longa is.”
She said nothing, trying to take her mind away from the hut with the flickering candlelight and the ceaseless drumming of the rain; trying not to feel the cold flat of the knife, pressed now against her breast so that the edge was sharp on her flesh, but not yet cutting.
“You will tell me where Longa is,” the colonel continued in the same almost pensive tone. “And then you will describe the passes through the Guadarrama heights—the ones you and your friends use.”
Still she said nothing. Then she was spinning on the end of the rope as the man behind her whirled her to face the wall. The rope was pulled tight, and she came up on her toes again as they fastened it to a hook much higher on the wall. She felt the knife on her back now, and it was worse, much worse, when she couldn’t see it. The tip scribbled down her spine, and she waited for the first nick. It would be a slow flaying, she knew; innumerable little cuts, drawing beads of blood until the stream flowed.
There was a strange smell. For a second Tamsyn didn’t recognize it as she fought the terror for control, waiting for the next touch of the knife. Someone coughed behind her. Her breath caught in her throat. The tightness of the collar and her fear … but, no. It was smoke. Thick black smoke creeping under the door. Oily, sullen smoke billowing through the hut, defying the rain. Acrid, choking smoke.
Cornichet cursed, whirling toward the door. One of the others was there before him, wrenching it open. He fell back before the black rolling cloud.
A bugle sounded. An impudent clarion call. And then chaos broke out. In the choking smoke men struggled with black-clad wraiths who seemed to appear from nowhere, swords drawn. The sharp crack of rifles mingled with the curses and exclamations. A scream of pain.
Tamsyn tried to swing herself on her toes away from the wall, but with her hands bound she could get no leverage and could only imagine what was going on in the acrid darkness behind her. Her mind was racing as she tried to think of some way of capitalizing on this amazing piece of good fortune. But strung up as she was, there seemed nothing she could do to help herself. Could it be Gabriel causing this chaos?
Then miraculously the rope holding her to the wall parted. The tension was abruptly released, and she fell to her knees.
“Get up!” a voice said in English. A knife sliced through the bonds at her wrists.
Tamsyn wasted no time questioning her good fortune. She struggled to her feet, choking as the greasy black smoke curled around her.
“Quickly!” the same voice commanded. “Move!” A hand in the small of her back propelled her forward.
There was something irritatingly peremptory about her rescuer, but circumstances didn’t lend themselves to protest. Her eyes stung with the smoke, and her lungs heaved. She ducked sideways away from the propelling hand to catch up her shirt, glimmering white on the floor at her feet. She thrust her arms in the sleeves before covering her mouth and nose with her forearm, then staggered forward, that hard hand in her back again, pushing rather than guiding her toward the door.
All around her, men swayed, cursed, coughed, fought for the door. Outside it was hardly better. Every hut seemed to be smoldering, sending greasy clouds into the rain, and men ran hither and thither grabbing up possessions, shouting orders.
Again the bugle sounded and she recognized the note of retreat. The man still pushing her forward bellowed, “The Sixth to me.” Then her feet left the ground and he was carrying her, running with her through the mud and the rain and the confusion, dodging blue-uniformed Frenchmen.
Men wrapped in dark cloaks were racing to a clearing where twenty horses pawed the ground and whickered, the whites of their eyes showing as they smelled smoke.
Colonel St. Simon threw his light burden upward onto the back of his charger and was up behind her in almost the same movement.
“Gabriel!” the girl shouted incomprehensibly. “I must find Gabriel.” Taking the colonel by surprise, she hurled herself sideways, landing neatly on the balls of her feet.
St. Simon had no time to think. He leaped from hi
s horse and plunged after his prize as she darted into the darkness. He caught her before she’d gone more than a few yards, his hand closing over her wrist.
“Goddamn it! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Tamsyn couldn’t see him clearly, was conscious only of the shape and mass of his body in the shadowy, flickering darkness. Again his tone set her hackles rising, but remembering that whoever he was, she owed him some considerable debt, she bit back a sharp rejoinder and spoke with impatient moderation.
“Thank you very much for rescuing me from such an uncomfortable situation, sir. I don’t know why you should have done so, but I’m truly grateful. However, I can manage perfectly well now, and I must find Gabriel.” She tugged at her captive wrist.
An uncomfortable situation! She called seminaked, strung up by the neck, facing the slow agony of the knife, an uncomfortable situation! And she was thanking him as if she believed either he’d acted out of pure altruism or her rescue was a coincidence. In any other circumstances St. Simon might have found such a wild misapprehension amusing.
Flame shot up in the air from somewhere in the encampment, and a burst of rifle fire punctuated the confused shouts and bellows. Julian heard one of his own men yell urgently from the clearing behind them. This was no time to be bandying words with La Violette. His grip on her wrist tightened as she fought to break his hold.
“You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension,” he declared, unclasping his heavy black boat cloak with his free hand. “You are now a guest of His Majesty’s Army of the Peninsular, my dear girl. I trust you’ll find our hospitality quite satisfactory.”
With a flick of his wrist he set the cloak whirling through the air. It swirled around the slight twisting figure, capturing her limbs in its folds. Her stream of invective was cut off abruptly as he swaddled her tightly in the garment and scooped her into his arms again, turning her head against his chest.
Tamsyn had had time to see the scarlet tunic and the insignia of a colonel before the cloak enfolded her, and her nose was now pressed against gold braid and glittering buttons. Her situation seemed to have changed dramatically for the second time in as many minutes, and if she was still being held by soldiers, it couldn’t have changed that much for the better.
Her rescuer turned captor mounted, apparently unhampered by his burden. An order rang out in the clearing, and the small group of black-cloaked figures wheeled their horses and melted into the darkness.
Tamsyn realized rapidly that struggling against the swaddling folds was futile. The arm holding her was an iron band, preventing her from twisting away from the broad expanse of scarlet chest, and the horse beneath her was pounding the ground at such a speed that it would be suicidal to attempt to fling herself from his back, even if such a thing were possible.
She let her body relax while her mind raced. What did the English want with her? The same as the French, presumably. Would they use the same tactics? Goddamned soldiers—they were the same savage animals whatever uniform they wore. Blue, red, green, black. And gold braid and epaulets made no difference either.
Her mind filled with the nightmare images of that hideous night when the soldiers had come to Pueblo de St. Pedro. Her ears rang with the screams, and the hot reek of blood was in her nostrils as vividly as if she and Gabriel, helpless, were watching the massacre again.… Where was Gabriel?
The thought that Gabriel was still in the hands of the French while she was being carried away God knows where by an English cavalry officer banished the ghastly images under a clear wash of fury, and she fought against her bonds with a sudden desperate energy.
The arm tightened around her, a hand pressed against her scalp, forcing her face into his tunic so that she gasped for air. It was an effective way of discouraging her struggles.
Tamsyn lay still again. This mad ride would end at some point, and she’d do well to preserve her energies for an escape then. She focused her mind on possible courses of action once she felt solid ground beneath her feet. Some pompous, peremptory English cavalry officer would be no match in wits or speed for La Violette. She knew this territory like the back of her hand, and she was a past master at getting out of tight corners.
Julian could feel the currents of energy surging through the seemingly fragile bundle he held pinioned against him. Even when she was lying still and apparently compliant, he sensed determination and purpose. La Violette was a law unto herself, as her father, El Baron, had been, and she’d proved expert at outwitting the cumbersome mechanisms of two armies when she went about her profitable and lawless business. Julian had no intention of dropping his guard simply because at the moment he had this brigand’s spawn physically secured.
The cavalcade reached the bank of the Guadiana and halted. There was no sound of pursuit, only the rushing water of the river. The night sky was black as pitch, and it was impossible to tell in the dark whether the river could be safely forded at this point.
“Sergeant!”
“Sir.” One of the black-cloaked figures separated itself from the men and rode up to the colonel.
“We’ll bivouac here until dawn and then look for a ford. Let’s see if we can find some shelter from this blasted rain. Try those trees.” The colonel gestured with his whip to an isolated clump of trees on the plain.
The sergeant gave the order and the cavalcade cantered off, the colonel following, his brow furrowed as he considered what he was to do with his captive once they were on the ground.
The copse yielded a deserted wooden shack, half its roof intact, and a ruined barn. The men of the Sixth were accustomed to bivouacking in the most unpromising circumstances. During the four-year struggle to drive Napoleon out of Spain and Portugal, the broiling summers and freezing, rain-swept winters in the Iberian Peninsula inured a man to ordinary discomforts. The horses were tethered under the trees, and men gathered sticks to make fires in the shelter of the barn walls. Even wet wood could be coaxed to produce a sullen flame with the dry tinder they all carried with them.
The colonel swung down from his horse, still holding his presently unresisting captive, and strode into the shack.
“Light a fire in ’ere, sir, an’ you’ll be snug as a bug in a rug,” the sergeant pronounced, following him inside. “The men ’ave got dry tinder left from the attack on the Froggies, an’ I reckon a pannikin of tea wouldn’t come amiss.”
“Sounds wonderful, Sergeant,” the colonel said somewhat absently. “Post pickets around the wood. We don’t want the fires drawing unwelcome attention.”
He glanced down at the figure in his arms. La Violette had turned her head away from his chest as his grip had changed, and he found himself looking into a pair of dark eyes in a heart-shaped face. She returned his scrutiny with an expression of mild curiosity that could have lulled a less cynical man into a false sense of security.
“What now, English Colonel?” Her English was so faintly accented, it would take a sharp ear to detect it, he thought in surprise.
“You speak good English?”
“Of course. My mother was English. Are you going to put me down?”
“If I do, will you give me your word you’ll not attempt to run?”
A glint of mocking laughter appeared in her eyes. “You’d accept the parole of a brigand, English Colonel?”
“Should I?”
She laughed aloud. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Colonel.”
There was something unpleasant beneath her mocking laughter. A wealth of antagonism that struck Julian as almost personal. Obviously it had slipped the brigand’s mind that her present comfort was dependent upon his goodwill.
“Thank you for the warning,” he said dryly. “I’ll heed it.” He glanced around the small, inhospitable space. “I suppose I could utilize that neat dollar Cornichet put on you and secure you in that fashion.”
Tamsyn pulled herself up sharply. This was not a man to mock, clearly. A different attitude was required.
“That
won’t be necessary,” she said swiftly, her eyes suddenly soft and conciliatory. “Please put me down, Colonel. How could I possibly escape with all your men around?”
Quite a little actress, La Violette, Julian thought with a grim inner smile. But that little-girl-lost look wasn’t fooling him. “I’ll put you down with pleasure,” he drawled. “But you’ll have to forgive me if I take certain precautions. Sergeant, bring me a length of rope.”
Tamsyn cursed her stupidity. Clearly she’d underestimated this particular example of the flower of Wellington’s cavalry. She’d allowed her anger to get the better of her and indulged her contempt and loathing for the entire pompous, conceited breed with their gold braid and their buttons, but it seemed this colonel was not quite as blind and stupid as her prejudice had dictated.
She was set on her feet, her limbs still immobilized by the tight folds of the cloak.
“Do seat yourself, señorita,” the colonel invited, his voice as smooth as silk. “The floor is a trifle damp, but I’m afraid my hospitality is somewhat limited at present.” He took the length of rope the sergeant handed him, and when Tamsyn didn’t immediately avail herself of his invitation, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down.
Resistance was again futile. Tamsyn didn’t fight the pressure but folded herself onto the floor, leaning against the wet wall. It was a horribly familiar position, and she reflected dismally that she’d been flipped from the frying pan to the fire with remarkable ease. She waited grimly for him to fasten the rope to the collar she still wore, but to her relief, he bent and hobbled her ankles and then tied the free end to the buckle of his sword belt. The rope was long enough to allow him to move around the small space while effectively restraining his prisoner, but it was nowhere near as uncomfortable or as hideously humiliating as to be tethered by the neck.
With her hands free she was able to loosen the folds of the cloak, and it was always possible she’d have the opportunity to untie her ankles if this sharp-eyed colonel dropped his guard, or fell asleep. She reached up to unbuckle the loathsome leather collar and threw it as far from her as she could.
