Gallant Rogue (Reluctant Heroes Book 3)

by Lily Silver

  Chloe hardly blinked and three men had surrounded Jack and quickly had him restrained. She turned about to see what could be done and Marta flew into her arms, weeping with abject terror like a little child needing a mother’s assurance. Chloe placed an arm about the cringing girl as she assessed their situation. Both Jack and Jinx were subdued by the French troops. They were outnumbered. Lt. Morgan was not present. She assumed he was out back with the horses.

  She turned once more to her host. “These men were merely given the task of escorting me safely to my uncle’s home. They are employed by my husband’s family in the Indies. Let them return to their master there. They are neither soldiers nor spies. They are seamen, merchant sailors who work for a French planter, as we told you, Le Comte du Rochembeau.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of the man. He was a prisoner in the Bastille many years ago. Suspected of treason. He escaped France during the revolution and fled to America. If he is your master, you are not as innocent as you claim,” the Frenchman replied. “Take them below; they can join the marquis.” His men struggled to keep Jack restrained.

  “Stop.” Jack protested. “My lady speaks the truth. I was given the task of delivering her to her uncle’s home, nothing more. I’m an American—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s all true,” the French leader said in a bored tone as he waved to his men, gesturing for them to take him away. “Until we have a full confession of your loyalties and your mission here, you may give your lady’s regards to ‘dear old Uncle’ Miguel.”

  “If you harm her—“ Jack said in a savage growl as he was dragged forcefully away.

  “You will do nothing,” the French captain taunted, “Because you will be locked up.” He waved the men away. His attention returned to Chloe and the weeping Marta. “Now then, my pretty lady, what are we to do with you?”

  The cell had one lantern. Jack waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light before approaching the slight man lying on the straw pallet. “Marquis del Amico?” he asked in Spanish as he stepped closer to the crumpled, bearded fellow and crouched down near the cot.

  “Si, and you are?” The man’s voice was rough, as if he’d not had much to drink recently.

  “Captain Rawlings, sir. And this is Mr. Jenkins, Jinx as we like to call him.”

  Jinx came to stand behind Jack and peer over his shoulder at the wounded man.

  “We have sailed from the West Indies to deliver a precious package to your door.”

  “A precious package?” The man sat up and grimaced with the effort. “I expected nothing from the Indies or elsewhere. Did he send you down here to trick me?” The gentleman took to coughing and wheezing. His fist covered his mouth as he bent forward and attempted to clear the phlegm from his throat so he could speak again.

  “Here, sir.” Jinx held out his traveling canteen.

  The marquis took it and drank heartily. “Thank you,” he said, in a cleaner voice as he handed the leather cask back to Jinx.

  Jack glanced about the dingy room. It smelled of earth. It was cool here, like a subterranean cavern, a perfect place to store fine wines and port. Or a prisoner, depriving him of daylight, the warmth of the sun and the passage of time. “Think, my lord,” Jack said, crouching down on his heels so he was level with the man. “What was in the West Indies that might have been sent to you? Or shall I say … whom?”

  The Spaniard cleared his throat. He studied Jack and his fellow and those dark almond shaped eyes lit up with expectation. “Little Chloe.”

  “Aye,” Jack said, smiling at the fellow as he saw how the man’s features suddenly gained hope. “She’s not so little anymore, sir. She’s a grown woman.”

  “Why would Juan send her here alone? He wrote that he would bring her when the time was right, when she was grown and the ghosts of the past had ceased to threaten him. Has something happened to my brother, Captain?”

  Jack’s head dipped. He did not expect to be the one to break the news to the marquis. “Juan Ramirez died some years ago. His daughter married, but is recently widowed. That is what brings her here.”

  “Mind if I have a look at that, your lordship?” Jinx was leaning over Jack’s form as he was poised on his hunches near the bed. Jinx pointed at the man’s calf, where dried blood and pus seemed to be festering.

  It was only as Jinx pointed out the wound that Jack noticed the foul smell in the room. He pulled back and stood, allowing Jinx to take his place in crouching beside the pallet.

  The Spanish lord nodded and gestured for Jinx to do his worst. “I was shot three days ago, trying to escape that brutal fiend. He killed my servants, all but Tomas. He is kept in shackles so he cannot escape and bring help. Oow. Careful, there,” he winced as Jinx began to pull at the fabric clinging to his leg. “Where is Chloe?”

  Jack didn’t answer. His lips were stiff and taut. He felt as if his jaw would break if he opened his mouth.

  “Where is she?” Ramirez pushed Jinx hand away and made to get up. “Tell me where my niece is, Captain. Is she here, in his clutches?”

  “We didn’t know there was a trap. Who are they waiting to intercept, my lord?”

  Ramirez sank back onto the pallet, his faint energy spent now. “It is of no significance now. The man was to arrive weeks ago. I can only assume he is dead.”

  “We need to get him to a doctor.” Jinx put in as he stood up. He turned his back on their cell mate and walked to the door. Jack followed him, and as they stood at the bars, Jinx turned his head to gaze at Jack with severity. “The wound is infected. It will turn to gangrene in this filth. If we don’t get him help, captain, he’ll die.”

  *

  The street outside the Marquis del Amico’s home seemed too quiet. It was an eerie quiet portending only bad things to come. The years spent in battle had left their mark. Lt. Morgan could feel a tension in the air and he didn’t like that feeling, not while standing in a near deserted street in a foreign land in the middle of the day.

  Morgan had been ordered to take care of the horses. He should go around to the back and knock to be let inside through the stable gate. Instead, he took the three horses and moved down the street a pace, the better to get a sense of what was wrong.

  Two men in low hats were leaning against a white stucco wall about fifty feet away. Morgan felt the sweat bead along his neck and between his shoulder blades as he walked past them in an attempt to appear casual. He watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were dressed in plain clothing, not military. That didn’t signify too highly in his book. Captain Rawlings was prone to dress in gentleman’s attire when he went about in port. The captain said it helped him take a measure of his surroundings while not drawing attention to his true station.

  He walked toward the whitewashed church. Surely the padre sitting outside might give him news of the town. He arranged the reins of his charges in one hand and draped his free hand on the hilt of his sword as he walked. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck in a leisurely pose to mark the position of the men in proximity to his own mark.

  They were no longer leaning against the wall. The two men were following him.

  Morgan hurried his step. As he neared the church, the black clad padre sitting on a bench under the shade of a tree closed his book and stood up as if to greet him. “Lt. Morgan! A word, por favor?”

  Morgan turned on his heels. He looked over the horse’s gleaming brown neck. The two men were just behind him and the padre before him. The padre was not alone. There were men behind him. Morgan swallowed. He was hemmed in by them.

  “Come with us, please.” The two men following him had come up behind and each took an arm. His hands were wrestled free of the lead reins as someone else took the horses from him.

  Damn it. He was not going to tell his captain he’d been tricked out of their horses. Not this time. They came too far and through too much treachery to lose their horses a third time. It seemed that horses were like currency in this god-forsaken land.

  He tw
isted free of their grasp, turned and punched the taller man in the gut.

  The younger fellow pulled a cord about Morgan’s neck, stopping him from further action. “Be still, come quietly, and no harm will come to you Lt. Morgan.”

  The fact that they knew his name startled him more than the cord about his neck. They could easily garrote him on the spot and steal the horses and his weapons. They seemed to have other plans for him. Morgan was led into the church, through the sanctuary and to a back room.

  “Marco, let him go, now.” The voice of the leader, the one Morgan gut punched, sounded oddly familiar.

  “How do you know my name?” Morgan turned to tackle the man, once the rope was free of his neck. The leader removed his hat and bowed. Morgan stared at the fellow, recognizing him from the ambush in the woods nearly a week ago. “We’ve met before.”

  “Si.Your captain named me Rodrigo the Bold.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chloe cast about the parlor for a weapon, any weapon. There was a suit of armor in the corner, but it lacked a sword. Marta was clinging to her like a sea star stuck to a rock at low tide. She jiggled her arm in an attempt to shake off the girl’s grip. There were swords above the fireplace mantle, crossed swords. They would be difficult to reach and bring down quickly.

  “Madame O’Donovan. How pleased I am that you saw fit to pay a visit to your uncle here in Marbella. It has been a boring campaign. I welcome a change from the tedium of soldiering.” Captain Mortier was watching her move about the room. He had two armed guards inside the door. “Would you like a glass of sherry or some fine Madeira wine from your uncle’s cellar? He has an exceptional collection.”

  She turned from her perusal of the far wall and the iron mace hanging beside the tapestry to regard at the man holding her prisoner. Dark and swarthy, like those born in the Gascony region of France, he was not an ugly fellow. Rather, he might be considered handsome, if not for the sinister manner and that odd glint in his eye. “I would like to see my uncle.”

  Mortier took a few steps closer to her. Chloe sidestepped his approach, putting a chair between them as she sought the refuge of the fireplace–and the iron poker leaning against it. She hoped her skirt would conceal the weapon behind her as she pushed herself into the corner.

  “You will join him in time. I thought you and I might become better acquainted first. You are a widow; you must be very lonely. So lonely, in fact, you decided to travel the countryside in the company of English spies? That is an unusual arrangement, is it not?” He cocked his head at her, and those dark eyes–almost black–gleamed with malice. “Had you no fear for your reputation, Madame O’Donovan?”

  “I was not alone. I had my maid traveling with me,” she replied in a tight voice, attempting to bridle her anger at the suggestion of impropriety.

  “Yes, this one.” Mortier tossed his head in the direction of the shrinking maid. He ran at Marta with his arms out, as if to capture her.

  Marta’s shrieks filled the room as she bolted away from her pursuer.

  “Ah, yes.” Mortier laughed as he stopped dead and turned to Chloe once more. “I see your point. Your escorts would not dare attack you with this brave soul to defend your honor.”

  She was shocked by the man’s crude behavior. “My escorts were paid by my husband’s family to see me safely here. They are not spies, nor am I. We came from a small island in the Caribbean. We know nothing of your war. May I please see my uncle now?”

  “I will make the determination of innocence, not you,” Mortier snapped. “Guards, restrain the cowering maid.” His dark eyes never left Chloe as he gave the order. “We will start with her first. You, madame, will have a seat, now.” His fingers snapped, and he pointed to the chair as if he expected her to obey him like a well-trained dog.

  Marta was seized by the guards. She shrieked and writhed in their arms, to no avail. They lifted her so her feet were no longer on the floor and carried her to their captain.

  While the men were focused on Marta, Chloe grasped the iron poker and slipped it behind her. She stepped close to the captain, behind him as he made to grasp Marta’s chin in his hands. She raised the poker, intent upon breaking his skull with it.

  A guard let go of the squirming Marta and lunged forward to wrest the iron from Chloe’s hand. The captain turned to her, his face a mask of hate. His fist slammed against her brow, just above her eyes. Chloe’s vision blurred, and the room faded. The taste of blood filled her mouth as she met the hard tile floor with a painful thud.

  *

  “We’ve been watching the house for a week,” the padre told Lt. Morgan. “We noticed no one has come in or left. Tomas goes to market, but with armed guards escorting him. French guards. We cannot even get close to talk to him.”

  “Tomas is the house servant?” Morgan asked, trying to clarify the details of their hurried speech in his mind. Spanish was not easy for him. He could follow directions, go five miles and then due south, but many words these men used left holes in his understanding as he did not grasp their meaning.

  “Yes, an old and kind soul who has served the Ramirez family here for many years,” the cleric continued. “He does not go to market for the household. The women do. The women have not been seen outside the walls of the house for over a week, nor has the marquis. If he were ill, he would ask for a priest to visit him. He has not.”

  “Why didn’t you stop my captain and the lady he was escorting from going inside?” Morgan had been given a cup of wine and some stew to eat while Rodrigo and his crew stood about questioning him on their business in Marbella, and specifically their business with the Marquis del Amico. “We didn’t know there were soldiers in the city.”

  Rawlings had been uneasy and so had Jinx and Morgan. They’d entered the town and found the marquis’s home easily, as it was the most prominent one on the hill. They did not span the perimeter or linger in the market square, as Rawlings had done in previous places where they stopped. The captain was distracted and seemed eager to finish this mission and return home.

  “The French are sending flying columns west to take over the cities near the sea,” Rodrigo explained.

  Morgan was familiar with that term, having served his time for king and country before signing on with Jack’s merchant crew. A flying column was a small, independent land unit able to move fast through rough terrain. It was usually an ad hoc unit formed quickly during the course of operations. They used fast transport—horses— and had no cannon or heavy equipment to impede their progress. The independent columns were sent in to enemy territory ahead of massive ground troops to secure key holdings. The small troop they had hidden from in the hills before making it to the villa near Guaro had likely been a flying column, too.

  “The French took Barcelona a few weeks ago, by stealth. They tricked the Spanish into opening the gates as they pretended to have carts of dead soldiers to return to their families. The carts were full of live soldiers, Lt. Morgan, and once inside, they took the city. Their orders are to move into the interior and take as many key forts and cities as they can,” Rodrigo explained.

  Morgan nodded. Rodrigo said the Spanish, meaning he was not Spanish. Morgan tucked that bit of information to the back of his mind as he focused on the conversation at hand.

  “And there is rumor that our king has abdicated his throne,” the padre put in, crossing himself. “They say Napoleon means to rule us through a puppet king, either Ferdinand will take King Carlos’s place or it may even be the Emperor’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte.”

  “And what are we to do about this?” Morgan spat, mad as a hornet for being detained by insurgents when all he wanted to do was go help his captain. “I am a sailor aboard a merchant ship, a ship that ferries goods between St. Kitts and London.”

  “You are English, yes?”

  “I am no longer in military service. I am a merchant sailor,” Morgan explained. The men around him were staring at him with speculation. The last thing he wanted was to be pressed i
nto service for the Spanish in a war against the French. “My loyalty is to Captain Rawlings, and his employer, Count—” he caught himself just in time, just before he said Rochembeau. Jack said not to reveal their employer’s French heritage, if they could help it. “O’Donovan. Count Rourke O’Donovan.” Morgan improvised, recalling his employer’s habit of pretending to be Mr. O’Rourke on occasion.

  “You are a soldier, just the same, eh? Trained in the art of war?”

  Morgan did not like that assessment, not one bit.

  *

  Jack could see his own weapons lying across from the iron cell door. They were leaning up against the stone wall in a neat pile: his rifle, his sword, and his pistols. He should have concealed a knife in the shaft of his boot. In his pirating days, he’d done so, but the leisure of recent years had made him lax in that habit.

  All he had in his boot were the hundred pound British notes he’d split with Chloe. Little good they did in providing a weapon with which to escape. He swore aloud and paced back toward the bed, and the wounded marquis.

  Jinx had taken the lantern down from the wall and was examining the Spaniard’s leg.

  “The bullet is still in the wound,” Jinx commented, when Jack came to stand behind his first mate. “It will have to come out.”

  “Your kindness comes too late, sir,” the marquis spoke in English, with a heavy Spanish accentuation. “I am to be hung in the village square the day after tomorrow. The bullet will go with me to my grave. I do thank you, however, for your good intentions.”

  “What is happening here?” Jack demanded. He probably should be more respectful toward the Spanish lord, but his patience was at an end. “Why are you being held captive in your own wine cellar? Why are there soldiers in your home? What would they want with Chloe?”

  The salt and pepper head lifted, so that Jack could see the nobleman’s face. He was bathed in sweat, likely feverish. This was not going to end well.

  “I have been in contact with the British. They have made certain …” His voice cracked, and it was apparent the man had been deprived of the necessities during his stay down here, water being one of them.