Beyond the Sunrise (19 page)

“It would seem not.” Duarte smiled at him apologetically.

But Joana could concentrate no longer. The words had drifted a long way off, so that she could hear only sound but no meaning. Her head was just too heavy for the rest of her body. The side of it touched something warm and solid and she gave in to the temptation to relax and to sleep.

“She is very tired,” Duarte said, looking at his sister asleep against Captain Blake's shoulder. The captain had not moved a muscle except to harden his jaw. “As we are too. I don't know why we sit here talking when time is so short. We must be well away from here before dark. In the meantime, let's sleep.”

He scrambled to his feet and leaned down to pick up Joana. But she awoke with a start as soon as he touched her, and looked up, startled, at Captain Blake, who was not even looking down at her. She was glad he was not. She was not one for blushes in the normal course of events, but she knew she was blushing now.

How unspeakably mortifying.

“Go to bed, Joana,” Duarte said. “And that is an order.”

Normally she would have had to refuse out of mere principle. But now she scurried toward her hut rather like a frightened rabbit, she thought in disgust. But she could not think. It was almost painful to think, too much of an effort. She lay down on the blanket spread on the ground and slept.

*   *   *

It
was late afternoon. Almost all of them were squinting off to the east, but if Colonel Leroux and the men he would bring with him were coming, it was not yet. The two sentries had just been withdrawn from the entrance to the valley and had reported that all was still quiet.

Even so, camp had been broken and they were to be well on their way from the ravine before nightfall. They would split up into small groups, Duarte had ordered, there being many places to visit if they were to carry out their orders from Lord Wellington with any thoroughness. Besides, small groups would form a smaller target for the French to spot.

“And we must never forget what our primary reason for existence is,” Duarte said, his eyes narrowing in an expression that made his face look cruel for a moment. “Our purpose is to keep Frenchmen out of our country and to kill those who try to enter it.”

Captain Blake, Duarte directed, should move south, toward Almeida. There was no particular hurry in persuading the populace until the fort fell, it seemed, but there might be very little time afterward. And there was no real doubt that Almeida would fall eventually. Perhaps it would hold out for a week or a month, but it would never withstand a determined siege by the French armies,

“She comes with me,” Captain Blake said, jerking his head in Joana's direction.

Joana lifted her chin as Duarte and all his men looked at her.

“It is I the Frenchmen will be looking for most determinedly,” Captain Blake said. “It is only fitting that I have their hostage with me. Besides”—his swollen eyes narrowed on Joana—“I have a score of my own to settle with her.”

Joana half-smiled at him and made no appeal to her brother.

“Very well.” Duarte shrugged. “Joana goes with you. I suppose she will be as safe with you as with any of us, even though the two of you will be on foot.” The southern route was the steepest. It would be impossible to take horses up the slope.

And so the huts were destroyed and dust kicked over the ashes of the fire—there was no point, the men had decided, in wasting time trying completely to camouflage what had so obviously been a camp—and hasty farewells were made and good-luck greetings exchanged.

Duarte took Joana in his arms and hugged her hard. “You will
not let me send you back directly to safety?” he asked her for the last time.

“When life is suddenly so full of meaning?” she asked, her face hidden against his shoulder. “Never, Duarte.”

“Then stay close to him,” he murmured into her ear. “He will protect you, I believe, once you have explained to him, and probably even if you do not.”

“And I shall protect him.” She lifted her face to his and grinned impishly at him. “I shall see you and Carlota and Miguel at Mortagoa, Duarte. Be careful.”

“Yes. And you.” He gazed into her face as if to memorize it, and then kissed her on the lips. “There is no half-relationship in my feelings for you, Joana. You are as dear to me as Maria and Miguel were. As dear as our mother was.”

She smiled and touched his face with one palm before pulling away and turning to face Captain Blake, who was standing a little distance away, stony-faced. She smiled at him.

“Well, Robert,” she said, “shall we go?”

He motioned her to the southern slope, steep and rocky and bare across the stream. The day was still blistering hot despite the advanced hour. Soon they were scrambling upward, using hands as well as feet in places. Their weapons and the food and blankets strapped to their backs were an encumbrance, but a necessary one. They were traveling as lightly as they dared.

He reached a hand across to help her in one particularly difficult place. But she turned her head and smiled at him.

“I can manage, Robert,” she said. “You do not have to play the gentleman.”

“I am no gentleman, as you know,” he told her, his voice and his eyes cold. “What I am playing, Joana, is guard. You will answer to Lord Wellington when I have got you to headquarters, probably with your freedom until the wars are over. You should be thankful that the British do not treat their prisoners out of uniform as your countrymen treat theirs. And in the meantime, you have to answer
to me. You will be sorry you did not beg your new lover back there to take you with him.”

“Duarte?” she said with a laugh. “Duarte is my brother.”

“That was not even an intelligent lie, Joana,” he said. “We both know that your father was French and your mother English. Remember? Duarte Ribeiro is Portuguese.”

“My mother was married to his father,” she said, “before she married mine. He is my half-brother.”

He clucked his tongue impatiently and reached across to smack her rather painfully on the bottom. “Move!” he ordered. “We are wasting time. Or rather, you in your usual way are forcing me to waste time. He has a woman who adores him, Joana, and a plump little baby on whom they both dote. Does it not touch your conscience at all that you forced him into being unfaithful today?”

“No!” She ground her teeth together and scrambled upward out of reach of his large hand. “I will not be satisfied until I have enslaved every man I have ever encountered, Robert, and slept with as many as it is possible to sleep with. Let their wives and women beware. And if any man resists me, well, then, he will be sorry, as you were sorry in Salamanca. They hurt you, did they not? I am glad. Very glad. I am only sorry that it did not last longer than five days.”

“Ah,” he said, moving up beside her effortlessly despite her burst of speed, “at last we have stripped away layers and come to the real Joana. I think I prefer her to the one everyone else knows. At least she is honest.”

They climbed the rest of the way to the top in silence, needing every breath to accomplish the steep climb.

Captain Blake paused at the top to look back down into the valley and away to the lower hills to the east. He shaded his eyes and reached out to take Joana's wrist in his grasp. Then he swore and jerked her down to lie on the ground beside him. He pointed.

“There comes lover-boy,” he said, “together with a whole company of horsemen. Panting with frustration after a whole night
without your favors, doubtless. And I was stupid enough to stand against the skyline. Well, Joana, it would be strange indeed if they did not see us. But don't allow hope to soar. I have no intention of relinquishing either my freedom or my life yet. I have even less intention of relinquishing you.”

“Am I to be flattered?” she asked sweetly.

He wormed his way back from the crest of the hill, drawing her with him, before pulling her to her feet and half-running with his hand still grasping her wrist over the barren, uneven country above the ravine. The horsemen had been miles off and perhaps had not spotted them. But he intended to find a safe hiding place before nightfall.

He found what he was looking for a few miles farther on when the gamble of climbing a lone peak paid off and offered a low cave that sloped inward for some distance and would hide them completely from the view of anyone below. He pushed Joana inside none too gently.

“They will not catch up with us tonight,” he said, “or even tomorrow, at a guess. And we will be difficult to track in this country. But we might as well establish a few ground rules from the start. You will not try to attract the attention of any Frenchman, Joana. If you do, I may be forced to slit your throat. And you will not try to escape from me. If you do, I shall use your belt to bind your hands and attach it to my own belt. And I shall have your weapons—now.”

“Don't be tiresome, Robert,” she said, turning to face him. “Do you not realize that I am on your side? That Lord Wellington sent me after you to make sure that your paper was believed to be a hoax? That I arranged for you to be freed from your parole? That I arranged for Duarte to come to rescue you and to take me hostage? That I am as much a British spy as you are?”

“Your weapons,” he said, standing in the entrance of the cave, his feet planted firmly apart, his expression implacable. “And I might yet
have to bind your mouth too, Joana. You must think me more of a fool than I have already proved if you think I will believe any more of your lies. And such outrageous and stupid lies. Your weapons!”

“Very well.” Her voice was quiet, sweet. “If you think I am going to beg and grovel and plead with you, Robert, then you are sadly mistaken. You will believe what you will, and you may go to hell with my blessing into the bargain.” She hitched the musket off her shoulder and dropped it with a clatter to the stone floor of the cave. “But don't expect me to be a docile prisoner.”

He scarcely saw her hand move, but the next moment her knife was pointed at his stomach, and she was crouched in a defensive stance.

“You want my knife, Robert?” she asked him sweetly. “Then come and get it.”

He was furiously angry—with her for trying after all she had done to him to make a dupe of him yet again, and with himself for expecting her, against all the evidence of his experience, to act as one would expect a woman to act and lay down her arms meekly.

“By God, Joana,” he hissed at her from between his teeth, “you are asking for trouble.”

She smiled at him that feline smile that he had seen once before. “Are you afraid, Robert?”

The foolish, the idiotic part was that he
was
afraid. Afraid of hurting her. He should go in, twist her wrist, and allow her to stab herself. That was what he should do. He cursed himself for being unable to do it. And so he circled her in the confines of the cave, feinted one way and then the other—and both times found the knife still trained on the very center of his stomach, and was finally forced to grab for her wrist at the same moment as he reached out with one boot to catch her smartly behind one ankle.

She went down with him on top of her and they wrestled soundlessly except for their labored breathing, while he slowly forced her hand up over her head and to the ground and then cut the circulation
from her wrist until her hand opened and the knife fell with a soft clatter to the stones.

“Bastard,” she said to him.

“Slut.”

“Coward and brute.”

“Traitor and siren.”

She snarled up at him.

He snarled back.

And then suddenly and quite unexpectedly she smiled at him, her eyes sparkling, her mouth curving appealingly. “Oh, God, Robert,” she said, “I would rather fight with you any day of the year than make love with another man. I don't know when I had such fun.”

He looked down at her guardedly. Always when he thought he had her finally figured out she ducked around and came at him from another angle. “You might have killed yourself with your own knife,” he said.

“Never.” She continued to smile and pant. “You would not have allowed it. Do you think I did not know at every moment that you were completely in control of that struggle? But only physically, Robert. Physically you can overpower me. But you can never overpower my will. Never. You will lose if you try. So don't try laying down rules for me. I never obey rules. When I left school at the age of sixteen, I vowed that never again would I obey a rule I did not like. And sometimes I break rules I do like just because they are there. You are heavy.”

“Am I?” he said. “But you do not have a mattress at your back, Joana, as you usually do when you have a man on top of you.”

“Do you think I would care?” she asked, and her eyes sparked up into his. “If we were making love, Robert, do you think I would care about a stone bed at my back or your weight on top? But we are not making love, are we? And you are heavy.”

He moved off her slowly, not taking his eyes from hers. He reached up, took the knife, and stuck it into his own belt. And he
moved the musket over into one corner and stood it there with his rifle.

“We had better eat,” he said, “while we have the dregs of daylight in which to do so. And then I will give you five minutes to go outside to make yourself comfortable. Five minutes. No longer. And I would advise you not to defy me by trying to escape, even if defiance is in your nature. Try to escape this time and you will never be allowed privacy again. Understood?”

She merely smiled at him as she sat up and smoothed her dress over her knees.

“Are you going to have the bedroom on the left or the one on the right tonight?” she asked. “There is so much choice.”

“We occupy the central bedroom,” he said, “together. You do not think I would allow myself to sleep without my arms firmly about you, do you?”