Beyond the Sunrise (10 page)

“It is to make sure at all costs that the French army comes this way, sir,” Captain Blake said.

“That they neither stay where they are nor head south,” Viscount Wellington said.

“Yes, sir,” the captain said. “I understand.”

“You will, of course, have questions after you have thought about all that I have said,” the general said. “Do you have any now, Captain?”

Captain Blake licked his lips. “Am I to be a hostile prisoner, sir?” he asked. “Or am I to give my parole if offered the chance?”

“Oh, your parole, by all means,” Lord Wellington said. “I would not wish your captivity to be an uncomfortable one, Captain.”

“You would not wish me to try to escape, then, sir?” Captain Blake asked.

“Certainly not if your parole has been given and your captors do their part by treating you with courtesy,” the viscount said with raised eyebrows. “You will be exchanged for a French captive of equal rank in due time, Captain Blake. Are there any more questions?”

“None at the moment, sir,” Captain Blake said. His heart felt as if it were in his boots. After months of incarceration in a hospital in Lisbon, he was to have a brief glimpse of freedom only to lose it again quite deliberately for who knew how long. While his company and his regiment and his army prepared for battle, he would be a prisoner of their enemy. And once his parole was given, honor would not even allow him to try to escape.

“If an exchange is made soon enough,” the general said, “or if you find yourself freed for any other reason, Captain, I will expect you to help our cause by persuading the inhabitants of the country to burn all behind them as they and you retreat on our army. That task will take precedence over rejoining your regiment.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Blake said, but his spirits were not lifted. It was unlikely that there would be any exchange of prisoners before
the summer's campaign was over. He rose to his feet and saluted smartly.

“Oh, Captain,” the viscount said before he had left the room, “you have received or will receive an invitation to a ball being given by the Countess of Soveral tomorrow evening. She is the marquesa's aunt, you know. I believe the lady wishes to express her gratitude to you for escorting her niece safely from Lisbon. Tiresome affairs, these. But we must maintain friendly relations with our host country. I will expect you to attend.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Blake said, and left the room, since there seemed to be nothing else to be said.

And if there were a lower place than his boots for his heart to be, he thought, then that was where it was. He was going to have to see the bloody woman again, and on her territory—a ball at which it was entirely probable that the commander in chief himself would be in attendance. And he would wager that she had personally connived at getting him invited just so that she might witness his embarrassment and total discomfort. It had probably never once crossed the aunt's mind to thank him.

Hell, he thought. Hell and damnation! He should have taken the surgeon's advice and taken sick leave for the summer.

*   *   *

“I
do apologize for bringing you into a room that offers so little comfort for a lady,” Viscount Wellington said later the same day. “But it seemed safer to talk on such delicate issues here rather than at the countess's house.”

Joana laughed. “But you forget, Arthur, that I am not always a lady,” she said, “and occasionally know a great deal less comfort than this room affords. So I am to make a mortal enemy of Captain Blake,
am I? It will not be difficult, I think. He neither likes me very well nor approves of me.”

The viscount looked at her and frowned. “He treated you with discourtesy?” he asked. “I shall have him hanged.”

She laughed again. “Oh, no, no,” she said. “He did not behave amiss. But I was La Marquesa at her best, you see. You told me that I must get to know him, and I assumed that meant I must flirt with him. I flirted. But I am afraid that your captain is made of stern stuff. He does not approve of flirts—not that he ever said so.” Joana smiled rather ruefully as she remembered being called a bitch.

“This is a very delicate and dangerous matter, Joana,” Lord Wellington said. “I have agonized over it. But it seems the only idea that might work. Captain Blake must be carrying the actual plan for the Lines of Torres Vedras.”

“But it is to be sealed and he is not to realize the truth,” she said.

“He is a good man,” the viscount said. “He has proved it on many occasions. But I do not know if he adds acting skills to his others. It will be best, I have decided, if he is not acting. Of course he will deny that the papers are real when they are discovered and he sees them. And the French will suspect that he bluffs but will be afraid that the bluff is itself the bluff. They will not know quite what to believe. And that will be where you come in, Joana.”

“I will convince them that Captain Blake is your most highly skilled spy,” she said, “and that he deliberately had himself captured in order to confuse them, in order to make them believe by his denials that the real defenses are in the north. I understand, Arthur. So even as he realizes that I am unwittingly helping his cause, he will hate me as he would hate poison. Delightful!”

“You do not have to do this, Joana,” Lord Wellington said with a frown. “I can still take a chance on what I almost believe, which is that the French have no idea whatsoever of a possible trap awaiting them. I hate to see you put yourself into danger. Is Wyman still particular in his attentions to you? The very safest place for you at present would be England.”

“The safest place for Maria and Miguel would have been England too,” she said, both her expression and her voice changing. “No, the job will be done, Arthur. The French will come this way and will believe that they have free passage to Lisbon. Perhaps at some time in the future I will have a chance to apologize to your poor captain. And what pieces of useful and useless intelligence may I take with me to Salamanca?”

“Oh.” Lord Wellington waved a hand in the air. “You may tell them that I am here, Joana. They doubtless suspect as much even if they do not know for sure. You may tell them that I am poised for flight with the forces stationed in the north to help repel the invasion by the southern route but that I dare not leave here yet for fear that they might come this way. Is that information carrot enough?”

“Oh, Arthur, may I tell them about the pathetic peasant attempts to fortify Torres Vedras?” she asked him, smiling. “They did look pathetic, you know, rather like one small person standing in the middle of a river in flood, trying to hold back the waters. The French would be delighted by my description. I should do it so well. And it will make Captain Blake's ‘bluff' seem so much more laughable.”

“By all means,” he said. “Entertain them, Joana.”

“And perhaps this time there will be new troops, new officers in Salamanca,” she said with a sigh. “Perhaps
he
will be there this time. I live for the day.”

The commander in chief looked at her broodingly. “If he is, Joana,” he said, “it will be a job for your brother. You must not try tackling him yourself.”

She smiled brilliantly at him. “Once I have betrayed poor Captain Blake, my task is done?” she asked.

“Just one more thing if it can be arranged,” he said. “He will doubtless be offered parole and has been instructed to give it. But he
is a restless young man and will be most unhappy if he cannot spend at least a part of the summer among his beloved riflemen. Besides, I need at least a few men in uniform—and with a knowledge of the Portuguese language—to persuade these poor people to leave their homes and destroy all behind them. If you can find any way for his parole to be broken without loss of honor to him, Joana . . .”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ah, a challenge,” she said. “Accomplishing the impossible. I shall see what I can do, Arthur. And then the marquesa can disappear for a while?”

He frowned. “The hills will be dangerous with the French coming through them, Joana,” he said. “They are not kind to captured partisans, you know. And we have never been able to persuade them that the Portuguese Ordenanza is a type of military organization and that its members are therefore entitled to be treated as soldiers. I would prefer that you make for Lisbon with all speed—as the marquesa.”

She smiled. “But I do not intend to be captured,” she said. “And I shall explode into a thousand pieces if I cannot be free for at least a few weeks.”

“I have no power over you at all, of course,” Lord Wellington said. “But be sure to proclaim your French citizenship loudly and clearly if you are caught, Joana. Not that you are likely to be believed, of course, unless you have the good fortune to be taken by someone who knows you.”

She got to her feet and extended a hand to him. “You will be at the ball tomorrow night?” she asked. “Duarte's godmother will be disappointed if you are not. My aunt.” She smiled. “I have so many aunts.”

“I would not miss it,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. “I have instructed Captain Blake to attend.”

“Ah,” she said. “So I am to work even during a ball, am I? I fear he will dread the evening more than going into battle. Who is he, Arthur? What was he before he enlisted?”

“He is one of my officers,” he said, his face quite impassive. “The past is of no significance to me, Joana.”

“Ah.” She laughed. “A slap across the fingers. I deserved it. But of course I am more intrigued than ever. I shall have to tease the information out of the captain himself. I take it that flirtation would be the best treatment tomorrow evening?”

The viscount smiled. “I do not believe I need to teach you your job, Joana,” he said. “Until tomorrow evening, then.”

“I shall look forward to it,” she said.

But as a staff officer handed her into her carriage a few minutes later, she was not at all sure that she did. She would see him again and have a chance to flirt with him again, and that in itself posed an interesting challenge. Captain Blake was not good at flirtation, perhaps, but she suspected that he was very good indeed at what she had never allowed to follow flirtation.

Though she had almost allowed it with him. She remembered quite vividly that terrifying embrace at Obidos—terrifying because she had almost lost control of both the situation and herself. And she still felt shameful regret that she had not allowed matters to proceed at least one step further. Though she knew with a woman's instinct—certainly with nothing she had learned during her marriage—that one step further would have taken them to the point of no return. And then perhaps she would have been lost forever.

She would see him again the following evening. And she would flirt with him. And then in Salamanca she would betray him, laugh at him, make him into a fool, the butt of French humor. And she would have to give him an honorable way out of his parole—his promise given not to try to escape. She already had an idea. It would be the only workable one. And it would be one more thing to give him a disgust of her, to make him hate her.

Joana sighed. She did not want Captain Robert Blake to hate her. But that was a foolish thought. There was a war to be fought, and she would fight it in any way she could contribute. She would fight against the French, even though she was half-French herself, even
though her father was French and in Vienna working for the French government. She would fight the French because one Frenchman deserved to die at her hands.

It did not matter that one English officer would come to hate her even if he did not do so already. She would be helping him accomplish his mission, though he would not realize it. And she would be helping him escape so that he might rejoin his regiment and get himself killed in the next pitched battle.

Perhaps at some time in the future she would be able to explain to him. But if she did not, it did not matter. He was just one soldier and she another.

“A
H
, yes. Captain Blake.” The Countess of Soveral at least looked relieved that he had spoken to her in her own language. But she smiled vaguely at him, welcomed him to her home and her ball, and turned politely to greet the next new arrivals.

Captain Blake would have grinned if the whole thing had not made him feel so damned uncomfortable. Far from lavishing him with gratitude for having brought her niece safely all the way from Lisbon, the countess had appeared not to know who the devil he was.

It was rather like a repeat of the Angeja ball in Lisbon, except that there were fewer shadowy corners into which to melt and except that he felt less free to withdraw after a decent time. He supposed that he must wait until the end, or, if he were fortunate, until he had been noticed sufficiently by both the marquesa and the Beau that he could make his escape.

He would rather be creeping about Salamanca, waiting to be captured, he thought as he strolled into the ballroom trying to look both casual and inconspicuous. He would rather be going into battle, out ahead of the infantry lines with his skirmishers, waiting for an enemy skirmisher to pick him off. He would rather be anywhere else but where he was.

It was not hard to spot the Marquesa das Minas, or at least the place where she was. It was dense and abuzz with the officers who sported all the most gorgeous uniforms and the most lavish displays of silver and gold lace.

“Bob!” a cheerful voice hailed him as he moved to the other side of the ballroom. “There you are. I heard you were in town.”

He turned and grinned in some relief at Captain Rowlandson of the Forty-third, whose gap-toothed smile was welcome in a sea of generally unfamiliar faces.

“Ned,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“Messenger boy,” the other said. “Came in last night. On my way out at first light tomorrow. Had to come tonight, though, to pay my respects to the marquesa. Or probably not to pay my respects, actually. ‘Worship from afar' is more like it. You were appointed to escort her here from Lisbon, I hear. Lucky dog! Tell me all about it.”

“We traveled fast,” Captain Blake said with a laugh. “I was only one day later arriving here than I would have been on my own. What is happening on the Coa?”

“Johnny trying to sneak past and the division holding him back,” Captain Rowlandson said. “Crauford in his element. Expect major heroics when the push really comes. He likes to think he is more effective than the whole bloody army put together. Makes for an interesting—and probably short—life, though. You survived, then, Bob? There was a wager on, but no one would wager that you would not. Too stubborn by half to die just because a bullet missed your heart by an inch, Reid said, and he don't want to owe his captaincy to your dying anyway. Are you coming back with me?”

Captain Blake grimaced. “I have some business here first,” he said. “Tedious stuff. Save some of the fighting for me, though, Ned. Don't take all of the glory for yourself.”

Captain Rowlandson laughed heartily. “I want to dance with the tall dark-haired beauty in green,” he said. “Across the room there, Bob. Do you see her? I've met her eyes at least three times in the last half-hour and I don't think it is a coincidence either. Perhaps she fancies red hair, eh? It is a distinct disadvantage not to have any Portuguese, though. Come and speak to her chaperone for me?”

Captain Blake would really have preferred not to, since the beauty in question was seated quite close to where the marquesa was
standing, laughing and flirting with a court that was surely larger than the one in Lisbon. Sometimes, he thought, following Captain Rowlandson across the floor, he regretted his handiness with languages.

The matter was soon settled, the tall girl and her chaperone seeming only too pleased to accept the offer of partnership of a British officer despite the fact that they did not have a word of English between them. Captain Blake turned away from the chaperone with a bow as the couple stepped onto the floor for the dance that was about to begin.

The marquesa was in white, he discovered without surprise when he could not resist glancing her way. The gown shimmered with silver thread. Her dark hair was more severely drawn back from her face than usual. The smooth style shone in the light of the candles. The cascade of curls at the back of her head was softer, fuller than usual.

And then he regretted the temptation to look, and even to stare. He caught her eye and inclined his head in some confusion. But before he could look away, she raised her white-feathered fan to her lips and her eyes laughed at him over the top of it and held his. It would be boorish to withdraw his eyes and walk away. And yet without even having to look down, he knew that his carefully brushed green coat and his painstakingly polished boots looked more than shabby in contrast with the gorgeous uniforms surrounding her. He drew a deep breath and walked toward her.

“Captain Blake,” she said, and lowered her fan to smile fully at him, “you are late and each of these gentlemen is ready and eager to slap a glove in your face and call you out for having reserved the first dance with me.”

“No one deserves to dance with you when he does not deign to stroll up until the music is almost beginning, Joana,” a captain of the Guards said, looking at Captain Blake with mingled disdain and amusement. “You should send the fellow on his way with a few sharp words.”

“What, Joana?” a lieutenant colonel of the King's German Legion said with a good-natured laugh. “We have all been ousted by a mere captain of the damned Rifles, begging pardon for my German. They all think themselves the elite just because they are the best shots in the army. Blake, is it? The hero of last summer's retreat from Talavera? Well, if you must dance with a rifleman, Joana, it might as well be with a hero, I suppose.”

She set a hand on the captain's arm, smiling at the disappointed group of her admirers. “You were late coming, Captain,” she said, laughing up at him when they were on the dance floor. “Do you dance, by the way?”

“I do, ma'am,” he said. He did not smile back at her. He had never danced at a grand ball, and he had no wish to dance with her, knowing that half the male eyes in the room would be on them. And he did not like being maneuvered and made to feel like a puppet on a string again.

“You see how I am thanking you for your escort?” she said. “I am granting you the first dance of the evening, Captain, before you could even ask for it. Do you have any idea how many men did ask?”

“I could probably make an educated guess, ma'am,” he said. But the music began at that moment and saved them from further conversation for a while as they moved into a quadrille.

“Ah,” she said after a few minutes, “you
do
dance, and very well too. You must have had a good teacher.”

“My mother,” he said.

She smiled. “She enjoyed dancing?” she asked. “She danced a great deal?”

“With me, yes,” he said. “And occasionally with my father.”

He must have been very young. He could remember watching in delight as they performed the steps of courtly dances and sprightly ones while his mother hummed the tune and his father laughed. He could remember plucking at his mother's skirts and his father's breeches until one or other of them had lifted him up and continued
the dance. Those were the days when he had considered their family life normal and happy.

It
had
been happy.

“Captain Blake,” the marquesa said, “you are neglecting me. You have gone into a dream. Did they dance at
ton
events? And are they both in the past tense? Have you lost your father as well as your mother?”

He looked at her and wondered that she had not recognized him at all. Had he changed so completely in eleven years? Or had he meant so little to her that she had forgotten him as soon as her father's carriage took her out of sight of Haddington Hall? She had not changed so very much except that the bright girl with her dreams of growing up and enjoying life had matured into the flirtatious woman who perhaps enjoyed life too much for happiness. He wondered if for all the lovers she must have had, she had ever loved. He wondered if she had loved her husband.

Not that love mattered a great deal to him either, of course.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said.

She sighed. “I should have learned by now,” she said, “that you will answer only one question at a time, Captain—the last that I ask. I should have remembered to ask only one at a time. Did you love your mother?”

“She was the anchor of my happiness and security as I grew up,” he said.

“And your father grieved so deeply after she died that he went all to pieces?” she said. “That is why you enlisted in the army?”

“I enlisted,” he said, “because I wanted the challenge of making my own way in life.”

She sighed again and then laughed. “I did it again,” she said. “I asked two questions and had the least important answered. I am an inquisitive person, Captain. And usually it is easy to find out everything there is to know about men. Ask them a single question and they will rush eagerly into a life history. I can understand why you are a spy. Ah, and there is Arthur. I am so glad he came. My aunt
would have considered herself forever a social failure if he had neglected to put in an appearance. Have you spoken with him yet since our arrival?”

“I have exchanged a few civilities with him, ma'am,” he said.

She favored him with her brightest, most charming smile. “Oh, Captain,” she said, “I will wager that you have exchanged a little more than that. It is difficult talking and dancing at the same time, is it not?”

It was. She was light on her feet and bright-eyed and beautiful. And she wore the same perfume he had noticed at Obidos. The evening they had spent there seemed now rather like dream and nightmare all rolled into one. The feel of her, small and warm and shapely in his arms, the smell of her, the taste of her mouth, the desire that had flared in him, the wonder of her response. And the painful ending of the embrace and her laughter and teasing and the knowledge that she must look at him and know that he was just as vulnerable to her charm as any of her numerous admirers.

“You must reserve another set with me, Captain,” she said, her eyes laughing with the familiar teasing glow. “Immediately after supper? Yes, that is not yet spoken for. I do not allow dances to be reserved far ahead of time, you know, for I never know with whom I will wish to dance. But in your case I will make an exception. And we will not dance, but walk out in one of the courtyards—my aunt's, which is more private than the main courtyard? Very well, then, I shall risk it without dragging Matilda out there too. Matilda hates the outdoors at night. I like your suggestion, Captain. By that time of the evening I shall be tired of dancing and ready for some cool outdoor air. Thank you. I accept.” She laughed gaily.

“Does any man ever say no to you?” he asked. He was not returning her smile.

She looked up as if she were thinking. “No,” she said. “No man ever does. Are you planning to be the first, Captain? How tiresome. You will not dance with me again or walk out in the courtyard with
me? I shall have to find a corner in which to pout. Or better still, I shall stamp my foot here and fly into a passion and have a fit of the vapors. Shall I?”

“I have the feeling,” he said, “that if I decided to call your bluff, I should find that it was not bluff at all. Am I right?”

Her eyes danced with merriment. “Ah, Captain,” she said, “where would be the fun of the situation if I were to answer that question? You must either play craven and come back to me after supper or you must risk the consequences. Which is it to be?”

For one unguarded moment he grinned back at her. “If it were a gun you were pointing at my head,” he said, “which might or might not be loaded, I think I would call your bluff, ma'am, and risk having my brains blown out. But a lady's screams I do not think I could face. May I reserve the dance after supper? And would you perhaps prefer to stroll outside than to dance?”

“Yes and yes, sir,” she said. “How kind you are. Is the music coming to an end? How sad. I wanted to ask more questions about your mother.” She sighed.

“But alas the music
is
coming to an end,” he said.

“Captain Blake,” she said, “when you smile—or grin, I think would be the more appropriate term—you are more handsome than any other man in the room despite the fact that someone did not set your nose quite straight after it was broken and despite the fact that someone tried to carve a path across your cheeks and nose with some sharp instrument and had considerable success in doing so.”

She laughed merrily at his expression. How did one answer such words?

“I have dozens of questions about those old wounds too,” she said as the music ended and he escorted her back to the side of the ballroom where her court was already gathering. “We will not lack for conversation after supper.”