Jane Feather - [V Series]

by Violet

  Tamsyn shuddered, her mouth twisting in disgust. She knew that the old feudal rules of warfare still applied. If a besieged city surrendered in a gracious and timely fashion once it was clear it couldn’t hold out, then its conquerors would be magnanimous. If it didn’t, it was assumed its inhabitants asked for what they would get when the victorious besiegers poured through the breaches.

  Soldiers, she thought. Savage beasts, whatever uniform they wore, whatever righteous cause they would tout. They were all the same.

  The aide-de-camp came back, followed by an orderly with a carafe of water and a glass. Tamsyn turned from the window, and the power of the unfocused loathing in her violet eyes made them both draw back for an instant. Then it was gone, and she accepted the glass with a neutral nod of thanks.

  Within the commander in chief’s sanctum it was warm, a fire burning in the grate against the dullness of the day. Wellington poured wine for himself and St. Simon. “So you wrested her from Cornichet’s hands. Much trouble?”

  “Not too much.” Julian sipped his wine. “At least not at that point.”

  Wellington raised an eyebrow at this caveat but didn’t pursue it. He moved to stand in front of the fire, his back to the cheerful glow. “How much had she told them?”

  “Nothing. We arrived in the nick of time … quite literally.” He explained briefly how he’d discovered La Violette. “We were away from there with no casualties and made camp a few hours later.”

  He paused. He was coming to the tricky part of his narrative. “The next morning the girl had personal needs to attend to. I escorted her beyond the camp to the river where there was an outcrop of rock. She was tethered by the ankle to my sword belt.” He drank again. Wellington remained silent.

  “She has a giant of a bodyguard. A Scotsman. He managed to escape from Cornichet’s camp under cover of the fire we’d set. He followed us, and I’m afraid he sprang out at me while I was waiting for Violette to …”

  “Quite so.” Wellington waved a hand in comprehension. “He disarmed you?”

  Julian nodded morosely. “I was a damn fool.” If you only knew how much of a fool.

  “But you still brought her in?”

  “Yes, with my assurance that she’s free to leave whenever she chooses; but she’s prepared to sell her information for the right price.”

  “Which is?”

  Julian shook his head. “As yet, she hasn’t said.”

  “And this gigantic bodyguard?”

  “She sent him off on some errand. He’s to find her here on his return.”

  “A mysterious mercenary,” mused the commander. He rubbed his backside meditatively in the fire’s warmth, his eyes resting on the colonel’s countenance. He could read the man’s chagrin, his sense of having failed in his mission, although by any standards it was only a technical failure. But Julian St. Simon didn’t tolerate failure from anyone and least of all from himself.

  “Let’s invite her in,” he said after a moment. “Hear what she has to say.”

  Julian nodded and said slowly, “By the way, she’s not quite what you might expect. She’s half-English. By some extraordinary quirk of circumstance her mother was Cornish, or so she claims. And gently bred into the bargain.”

  Wellington whistled. “A gently bred Englishwoman bedded with a notorious brigand! It’s beyond belief.”

  “I agree. But why would she invent such a tale?”

  Wellington scratched his long, bony nose. “No reason that I can think of.”

  Julian shrugged his own incomprehension. He strode to the door and opened it. “Violette.”

  Tamsyn slid off the windowsill and came over to the door, leaving her empty glass on the brigade-major’s desk. She cast the colonel a sideways glance as she brushed past him into the presence of the commander in chief.

  Wellington inclined his head in a slight bow of greeting, his eyes running over the small figure in her shabby, mud-splattered britches and boots. She still wore her bandolier, her rifle slung over her shoulder, the knife at her belt. And yet, despite this, he thought there was something almost forlorn about her. She seemed very young and very alone as she stood there regarding him with an indefinable air of challenge.

  “I understand you have something to sell me,” he stated.

  “If the price is right,” she agreed.

  “And what is your price?”

  Tamsyn shook her head. “Forgive me, but I’d like time to rest before we begin to negotiate. I don’t know as yet exactly what you wish me to tell you.”

  She cast St. Simon another sidelong glance, one so redolent of sensual languor that it took his breath away. “Perhaps the colonel could show me where I may rest for a while.”

  Abruptly his body sang with memory, his blood flowing hot and swift. God’s grace, but she could become an addiction.

  He had to get away from her, from the dangerous temptation in those wicked violet eyes, in that lean, compact little body.

  He’d brought the girl in, his task was over. How Wellington conducted the negotiations was none of his business.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, I must return to my brigade,” he said frigidly, turning to leave. As he did so, the girl suddenly swayed on her feet, her hand reaching blindly for something to hold on to.

  “What is it?” He’d reached her in one stride, encircling her with his arm. Immediately she leaned into him, a tiny, vulnerable figure against his own physical breadth.

  Tamsyn closed her eyes, keeping her head bowed against his tunic to hide her satisfaction. Cecile hadn’t been exaggerating about the English gentleman’s foolish chivalry. She wanted Lord St. Simon at her side throughout her stay in Elvas, and she was quite willing to resort to trickery to achieve that purpose.

  “What is it?” he repeated. “Are you ill?”

  “I’m just very tired,” she said, her voice weak. “I’m sorry … so silly of me, I feel quite faint.”

  “Come to the fire.” Wellington was all concern and consideration. “Take a glass of wine, that’ll revive you.” He poured a glass, looking worriedly over his shoulder as the colonel half carried the girl to a chair by the fire.

  “Here we are.” Wellington handed her the glass. “Drink it down, now … that’s the ticket.” He nodded approvingly as obediently she sipped.

  She raised her head and smiled at him, a faint, tremulous little smile. “So kind … thank you, sir.”

  Julian was still leaning over her, one arm at her back. Suddenly he withdrew it as if he’d been scalded. The little diablillo was up to her tricks again, he was convinced of it. He moved away and stood resting one arm along the mantelpiece, regarding the drooping, bravely smiling bandit with a sardonic glare. What the devil was she up to?

  “Julian, we must find her a comfortable billet at once. I’ll ask young Sanderson what he can come up with.” Wellington bustled to the door to consult with the brigade-major, whose main task was to fix and contrive and organize for his commanding officer, however bizarre the circumstances.

  “What are you up to?” the colonel demanded softly. “You’re not fooling me with this swooning-maiden act, Violette.”

  Tamsyn raised her eyes, her expression hurt. “I don’t know what you can mean. I can’t even remember when I last slept in a bed. I’m exhausted.”

  She had every reason to be, and yet he remained unconvinced.

  “Sanderson … a remarkable young fellow … knows just the billet, hard by the hospital.” Rubbing his hands, Wellington came back to the fire. “He says there’s a pleasant woman there who’ll attend to you, my dear. And when you’ve rested, you’ll dine with me and m’staff.”

  His eyes rested on her face, and they were sharp and shrewd despite his apparent geniality. “We’ll discuss how we can assist each other a little later.”

  “You’re too kind, sir,” she said with a weary smile.

  “Julian, you’ll see her settled and bring her back here to dine,” the commander in chief said, suddenly brisk. />
  “I really should return to my brigade, sir.”

  “Yes … yes, of course. But later, man, later.”

  There was nothing for it. Julian sighed and acceded with a curt nod in Tamsyn’s direction. “Come.”

  She rose to her feet a little unsteadily, but Lord St. Simon seemed to have lost his chivalrous instincts. He remained standing by the fireplace, his unwavering gaze as sardonic as before. Oh, well, Tamsyn reflected with an inner shrug, she’d achieved what she’d intended for the moment. Wellington regarded her with sympathy rather than hostility, and the colonel was still at her side.

  She offered Wellington another feeble smile of thanks and tottered to the door, the colonel on her heels. Her demeanor changed once they were outside, the door firmly closed behind them. She glanced up at her companion with a mischievous wink.

  He inhaled sharply, then spun around to address the brigade-major. “Lieutenant, where am I to find this lodging?”

  “A widow called Braganza, sir,” Sanderson said. “The whitewashed cottage beside the hospital. I’ve sent an orderly to alert her, so she’ll be expecting you.” He stared with now unabashed curiosity at Violette. “She speaks only Portuguese. Does … does …”

  “Yes, of course I do,” Tamsyn said with a touch of impatience at what struck her as an absurd question. She’d spent her life roaming across the borders of Portugal, Spain, and France.

  Julian said nothing, merely strode ahead of her down the stairs and out into the street. Tamsyn had to run to catch up with him. “Don’t go so fast, I really am exhausted.”

  “You may pick some other gull for your tricks,” he said tautly. “I don’t know what the devil you’re up to, and I don’t give a damn. The sooner I can wash my hands of you, the happier I shall be.”

  “Temper, temper,” Tamsyn murmured. “I wish I knew what I’d done to arouse it. It seems most unjust to me, but then I suppose you’re one of those people of uncertain temper who vent their frustrations whenever the whim takes them. I’ve heard of such people, although I count myself fortunate that until now I haven’t had many dealings—”

  “Have you finished?” He interrupted this meandering muse, unsure whether he wanted to laugh or scream his vexation to the four winds.

  “I hadn’t,” she said, sounding aggrieved. “But if you don’t care for plain speaking …” She shrugged.

  “On the contrary,” he declared, tight-lipped. “I’m something of an exponent myself. Do you wish to hear a little?”

  Tamsyn didn’t answer. She sidestepped a puddle with an agile leap that made nonsense of her claims to exhaustion and said cheerfully, “That must be the widow’s house up ahead on the left. It’s the only whitewashed one on the street.”

  Senhora Braganza, well accustomed to the sight of women partisans, showed little amazement at Tamsyn’s appearance. Insisting they inspect the accommodations, she showed them upstairs to a small whitewashed chamber under the eaves.

  “This will do beautifully,” Tamsyn said, interrupting the widow’s voluble description of the chamber’s amenities. “All I need is a bed. And hot water.”

  The widow returned downstairs to see to the water, and Julian, who’d been standing by the window looking out on the street in front of the cottage, said brusquely, “I’ll be on my way.”

  “Oh, don’t be in such a hurry.” Tamsyn went swiftly to the door, leaning against it, barring his way. She smiled at him. “Why so prudish, milord colonel? We have the time, we have even a bed.”

  “I do not have the inclination,” he declared harshly. “Move aside.”

  She shook her head, that mischievous smile in her eyes again. She tossed her rifle onto the bed and with a deft movement shrugged off the bandolier, letting it fall to the floor. Then her hands were at her belt and he seemed powerless to move, watching as if only his eyes were alive, imprisoned in a body of stone, as she pushed off her britches and began to unbutton her shirt. The small, perfect breasts were revealed, their rosy crowns pertly erect. She moved away from the door and stepped toward him, her eyes never leaving his face.

  He put his hands on her breasts, feeling how they filled his palms. He gazed down at the delicate tracery of blue veins beneath the milk-white skin. The pulse at her throat was beating fast, and the intricate silver locket quivered against her flesh.

  Tamsyn didn’t move, merely held herself still for his touch as his hands slid down her rib cage, spanned the slender waist, slipped to her back, his fingers insinuating themselves into the waist of her drawers, creeping down over the taut roundness of her buttocks.

  “Goddamn it, girl,” he said, his voice husky in the quiet, dim room. “Goddamn it, girl, what are you doing to me?”

  “It’s more a case of what are you doing to me?” she said as his hands squeezed her backside, pressing her against his loins where his flesh thrust iron hard against the constraint of his britches.

  The sound of heavy footsteps laboring up the wooden stairs outside broke his enchantment. The mist of passion left his bright-blue eyes, and he pulled his hands loose from her skin as if she were a burning brand.

  And then he was gone from the room, brushing past Senhora Braganza as she toiled up the stairs with a steaming copper jug, and out into the lowering afternoon filled with the incessant sound of the bombardment.

  He walked fast to the stables to reclaim his horse, and the groom quailed at the blue blazing light in the colonel’s eyes beneath the thick red-gold eyebrows, and the close-gripped mouth in the grim set of his jaw. He rode out of Elvas and into the encampment to his own tent and the reassuring sanity of his own men. He must be losing his mind. She was a grubby, manipulative, unfeminine, mercenary hellion, and she stirred him to the root of his being.

  Tamsyn watched him from the window as he strode down the street as if all the devils in hell were on his heels. “How very ungallant of you, milord colonel,” she murmured to herself. “Whatever can you be afraid of? Not of me, surely?”

  A tiny smile quirked her lips as she turned from the window to discuss with the widow Braganza the sorry condition of her clothes.

  Chapter Six

  “WHERE’S OUR GUEST, JULIAN?” THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF asked as the colonel entered his apartments before dinner that evening.

  “I’ve sent Sanderson to escort her here,” Julian said, nodding a greeting to the five men, all members of the commander in chief’s staff, gathered to join Wellington for dinner.

  “So what d’you think of her, Julian?” Major Carson handed him a glass of sherry. “We’re all agog.”

  “I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I can throw her,” St. Simon stated flatly.

  “Considering what a tiny little thing she is, that would be quite a distance.” Wellington laughed at his own witticism, the sound remarkably like the neighing of a horse.

  Julian’s smile was dour. “You fell for that little act she put on this afternoon.”

  “Act?” Wellington raised an eyebrow.

  “Trembling and swaying and tottering all over the place. She was exhausted, I grant you that. I don’t suppose she’s had more than a few hours’ sleep in the last five days, and that mostly in the saddle, but swooning … La Violette … pull the other one.” He took a disgusted gulp of his sherry.

  “You don’t like the lady, Julian?” Brigadier Cornwallis said with a grin.

  “No, I dislike her intensely. And I have to tell you, Cornwallis, that ‘lady’ is a vast misnomer. She’s a duplicitous, mercenary, untrustworthy vagabond.”

  There was an instant of silence at this brief but comprehensive denunciation; then Colonel Webster said, “Ah, well, Julian, you never did take kindly to being outsmarted.”

  You don’t know the half of it. But Julian contented himself with another dour smile and said, “Not to mention being dragooned into charging across the countryside to remove Cornichet’s epaulets.”

  “What?” There was a chorus of exclamations, and the colonel obliged with a brief narrative that had e
veryone but himself chuckling.

  “Uh … excuse me, sir.” Lieutenant Sanderson appeared in the doorway.

  “Well?” Wellington regarded him with a touch of irritability. It was clear the brigade-major was alone.

  “La Violette, sir, she—”

  “She’s not run off?” Julian interrupted, snapping his glass down on the table.

  “Oh, no, Colonel. But she’s asleep, sir, and Senhora Braganza couldn’t awaken her.”

  “Perhaps we should let her sleep, then,” Wellington suggested.

  “Oh, she’s not asleep,” Julian stated. “It’s one of her tricks. I’ll have her here in fifteen minutes.” With that he strode from the room.

  “Well, well,” murmured Colonel Webster. “I can’t wait to meet our guest. She seems to exercise a most powerful effect on St. Simon.”

  “Yes,” agreed the commander in chief, frowning thoughtfully. “She does, doesn’t she?”

  Senhora Braganza greeted the irate colonel’s arrival with a voluble flood of Portuguese and much hand waving. Julian, who had a smattering of her language and relatively fluent Spanish, divined that the “poor child” was sleeping like a baby and it would be a crime to awaken her. The partisans could do no wrong among the local populations of Portugal and Spain, and it rather seemed as if the widow was prepared to do battle to protect the sleeping one upstairs.

  Julian was obliged to move her bodily aside as she defended the bottom of the stairs. He went up them two at a time with the senhora berating him on his heels. He flung open the door to the small chamber under the eaves and then stopped, something holding him back.

  Moonlight from the single round window fell on the narrow cot where Violette lay. She slept on her back, her hands resting on the pillow on either side of her head, palms curled like a sleeping child’s.