Beyond the Sunrise (8 page)

“Matilda,” she called to her companion, who was fussing over their bags in the hall, “leave that to the servants. You are banished. Totally and completely. I have not forgotten, you see, that you have a sister in Obidos and that you see far too little of her. You are to take yourself off to visit her now—without delay at all—and you are not to reappear before dawn tomorrow, at which time I have no doubt Captain Blake will be riding into the courtyard chafing at the bit ready to leave.”

Matilda argued. Her ladyship would need to have hot water ordered for a bath, and refreshments brought up. And it would be unseemly for her to spend the evening alone in the house, with only the servants for company. Besides . . .

“Besides nothing,” Joana said, waving a dismissive hand. “I shall have my bath and refreshments whether you are here or not, Matilda. And I would be a very dull companion for you this evening, since I am weary and intend to retire early with a book. So there. Go. Now.” She smiled her most charming smile and felt only a twinge of guilt when Matilda showered her with gratitude and went. After all, she was no girl to be needing chaperones wherever she went.

Even though, she thought as she made her way to her room and the bath she longed for, she had never entertained a man alone before. Except for Luis, of course, but that did not count. She had always considered that there was safety in numbers. The trouble with Captain Blake was that if there were anyone else present but her and him, he would be likely to fade away into the furniture. He would not be able to do that with her alone. She would not allow it.

She smiled at the prospect. And felt a little breathless with apprehension. She was not at all sure that the captain could be counted upon to behave predictably in a given situation. But then, maybe she did not wish him to do so.

*   *   *

There
was no sign of either dinner or her chaperone when he returned to the villa a little more than an hour after taking his leave of her. Only the marquesa, clad inevitably in white, her dress softly flowing, her pelisse embroidered with silver thread, a bonnet swinging from one hand: She was in the low hall of the villa, looking at a painting. She smiled at him.

“Ah, Captain,” she said, “you are late. Deliberately so? It is too early for dinner and the weather is too fine to be missed and Obidos is too pretty a town not to be viewed. You are to take me walking, if you please.”

“Where is your companion?” he asked.

“Probably talking nonstop with her sister, a niece or a nephew on each knee,” she said. “I do not know. I am not her keeper. And don't scowl at me, Captain, as if I were a naughty schoolgirl about to escape from her chaperone. I will be safe with you, will I not? Arthur recommended you.”

He stiffened. “You will be safe with me, ma'am,” he said.

“Oh, bother.” She laughed lightly. “Shall we go? I shall take you up onto the town walls. There is a lookout path extending right around them. And flights of steep stone steps leading up to it. I hope you have recovered sufficiently from your wounds not to get too breathless.”

She had set out to charm him. That was very clear to him. She smiled at him and chattered to him and clung to his arm as they walked. For reasons of her own she was trying to make him her latest conquest. Perhaps it was necessary to the woman to make every man her slave. He looked about him and tried to ignore his awareness of the small, delicately perfumed female at his side. And he wished he had brought Beatriz with him. She had wanted to come, to follow the army about as so many women did. He had said no
because he was Captain Blake, not Private Blake. But he wished now he had said yes.

The lookout path provided them with a magnificent view down into the town and out across the surrounding countryside.

She unlinked her arm from his and leaned her arms along the outer wall and gazed outward. She looked as delicate as a girl, he thought—that girl who had thrown her arms wide at the top of the ruined castle on his father's land and turned her face to the wind. But when she turned her head to look at him now, he was reminded afresh that she was now a woman, with all a woman's allure.

“Did you know,” she said, “that centuries and centuries ago, when Dom Dinis was passing through here with his young bride and she admired these ramparts twining like ribbon about the white houses inside, he made her a present of the town? And from that time on Obidos was always the wedding present given to Portuguese queens? Did you know that?” She laughed. “And do you feel enriched by the knowledge?”

“History is always interesting,” he said, watching the breeze blow the ribbons of her bonnet.

“Do you not think it a wonderfully romantic story?” she asked. “Would you give such a present to the woman you loved, Captain?”

“On a captain's pay,” he said, “I could not give anything so lavish.”

“Ah,” she said, “but would you want to? What would you give the woman you loved?”

She was still looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes sweeping over him in a manner that was clearly meant to make him uncomfortable, and was succeeding. He took a few steps forward and stood beside her at the wall. He gazed out at the lowering sun.

“A length of real ribbon perhaps,” he said.

She laughed softly. “Only ribbon?” she said. “It must be that you do not love her enough.”

“The ribbon would be beneath her chin when she wore her
bonnet, and tied in a bow beneath her ear,” he said. “A part of me would be that close to her.” He had not thought of love for a long time.

“Oh, well done,” she said. “You have exonerated yourself.”

“Or a star perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps a whole cluster of stars. They are free and bright and would always be there for her.”

“She is a fortunate woman,” she said, looking sideways up into his face. “Is she Beatriz?”

He looked down at her, startled.

“I told you that I like to know something about the men who are my servants or escorts,” she said. “Do you love her?”

“She is—or was—my mistress,” he said stiffly.

“Ah.” She laughed softly and they fell silent, watching the lagoon—the Lagoa de Obidos—below them and the ocean in the distance. And the growingly lovely sunset beyond.

It was a setting most men would kill to have alone with her, Joana thought with a wry smile. And yet she was not sorry that she did not have to share it with a man who would have ruined it with courtly speeches and abject worship. And certainly Captain Blake could not be accused of abjectly worshiping her. She turned her head and looked up at him. His features were sharpened by the light of the sinking sun. He looked almost relaxed.

And she felt a sudden sharp stab of nostalgia and reached about in her mind for its source. A tower. Ramparts. Wind and sun. A dreamy, gentle, handsome boy whom she had kissed when she came down off the tower.

Robert.

And yet the walls of Obidos were nothing like that old castle at Haddington Hall, and Captain Blake was nothing like Robert, except that they shared a given name and except that they had the same hair and eye coloring. And an indefinable something that escaped her
conscious mind. Would Robert—
her
Robert—have resembled him in any other way had he lived? Would Robert have grown as broad and muscular? And would his face have grown as tough and disciplined? Would he have become a military hero? She was sure the answer to all those questions was no. Robert had dreaded being bought a commission. He had thought it would be impossible to kill.

Perhaps, she thought, it was as well that he had died. And yet for a moment she felt a surging of the old grief— for the first and only man she had loved, for the young girl she had been, with her belief in the happily-ever-after. For a long-ago dream.

She was staring at Captain Blake. She realized the fact only when he turned his head and looked steadily back at her. Their elbows were nearly touching on the wall. She could nearly feel the heat from his.

“Do you not love a sunset, Captain?” she asked him. “Perhaps it is another gift you can give your lady.”

“I think not,” he said, not moving his eyes from her. “The beauty of a sunset is deceptive. It is followed by the dark. A sunrise, perhaps. I would give her the sunrise and what is beyond the sunrise. Light and warmth and life. And love.”

“Ah,” she said, and her chest still ached with the inexplicable grief she had felt when he reminded her of Robert. “Then we must watch the sunrise together sometime, Captain.”

She had perfected the art of flirtation long ages before. But she realized the flirtatiousness of her words only when she heard their echo. Strangely, she had not intended them that way, although she had brought him up onto the walls with the sole purpose of flirting with him.

“Perhaps,” he said, still looking at her so that she felt breathless and almost frightened. She felt not quite in control.

“Perhaps?” she said, laughing. “You missed your cue, Captain. You were supposed to declare that you would move heaven and earth to bring on that day. Are you hungry? Let us return home for dinner.”

She took his arm and set herself to talking lightly and ceaselessly to him as they made their way down the darkened steps into the town and back to her villa.

H
E
breathed a sigh of relief when they entered the marquesa's villa. At least now they would be joined by the companion, and while conversation would not be easy, at least the tension would be gone. He had felt ready to explode with it up on the town walls. He had bristled with awareness of her and desire for her and contempt for his own reactions, since her own manner was so deliberately flirtatious. He felt rather out of his depth—again. He hoped suddenly that Lord Wellington would burn in some particularly hot corner of hell for giving him this particular assignment.

“Call Matilda,” she told a servant, taking the captain's arm and leading him in the direction of the dining room.

But the servant coughed delicately. Matilda, it seemed, had not returned to the villa.

“How provoking!” The marquesa frowned. “She has forgotten all about the passing of time, I will warrant. It is ever thus when she visits her sister. I daresay I shall not set eyes on her until tomorrow.” She sighed. “Companions can be very provoking, Captain Blake. They are not quite servants, and one does not like to scold them. We will have to dine tête-à-tête.”

He might have suspected her of scheming that it be thus if he had not noted when they entered the dining room that the table had been set for three.

“I shall return to my inn, ma'am,” he said.

But she laughed at him and told him not to be tiresome, and before he knew it they were seated at the table and he was sipping the wine while she sat and watched him, her chin in her hand. And
then he had the painful feeling that he had committed a breach of etiquette by lifting his glass before she did. He set it down.

“I am hungry,” she said, “and refuse to deliver a monologue all through dinner. You must hold up your end of the conversation, Captain Blake.”

There was nothing more sure to tongue-tie him. He picked up his glass again.

She watched him as the servants set out the food on the table. She refused to say another word for a while. She wanted to see how long it would be before he could think of something to say. And she let her eyes roam over his face and wondered what it was about him that made him such an attractive man. His close-cropped blond hair? She preferred men with overlong hair. The crooked nose and the very noticeable scar? But they only took away any claim he might have had to handsomeness. The bronzed skin, perhaps? The light blue eyes? The knowledge that he had killed, that he was a military hero? The awareness that he was from a world and a background alien to hers?

Finally she felt the tension again, as she had up on the town walls. But she was not supposed to feel tension. Only the gentlemen with whom she dealt were meant to feel that.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Where were you born? Who was your father? What was your childhood like? Why did you enlist? Speak to me, Captain.”

“I enlisted,” he said, “because it seemed the right thing to do at the moment I did it. On the whole, I have never been sorry.”

He had not answered her first three questions, she thought. But it was what she had learned to expect of Captain Blake. Unlike most men of her acquaintance, he did not like to talk about himself. Or about anything else, for that matter, it seemed.

And so, after all, she did most of the talking as they ate. Or as they picked at the food, to be more accurate. Her appetite was not usually affected by the company in which she ate. But this evening it was. She was aware of every mouthful she lifted to her mouth, of
every mouthful he lifted to his. And she was aware of every swallow.

His fingers were long and slim—an artist's fingers, she thought. But his nails were cut short and kept clean—a soldier's fingernails. She wondered what those hands and those fingers would feel like feathering over her back—her naked back—and quelled the thought.

The air was fairly crackling with tension.

And Captain Blake tried to eat as if he were dining with his fellow officers or men but found that he could not rid himself of the notion that she watched his every move—as he watched hers. And try as he would to think of some topic with which to sustain the conversation, his mind was blank and his only contributions were answers to questions. She had a habit as she talked of leaning forward so that her breasts almost brushed the edge of the table. It seemed that his temperature rose a degree every time it happened—and it happened frequently. And she had that way of looking at him that he had noticed before—her eyes sweeping up at him from beneath her lashes.

He cursed himself for not holding firm about returning to his inn when he learned that her companion had not returned. He wondered how long he must sit at the table before he could decently rise and excuse himself. He had no idea what was proper form in such circumstances. Perhaps there was no proper form in a tête-à -tête of this sort. It was all highly improper.

The room fairly pulsed with tension.

“Let's remove to the drawing room,” she said eventually, smiling at him. “If you have finished eating, that is.”

“Yes, thank you, ma'am,” he said, setting his napkin thankfully beside his plate and getting to his feet. “But I must leave. We should make an early start in the morning.”

She allowed him to pull back her chair as she got to her feet. And the relief of doing so, of no longer having to sit alone with him at the table, was enormous. But she could not let him go. Some foolish
stubbornness refused to allow her to do what she knew she ought to do and what she wanted to do—to let him go.

“It is not even late, Captain Blake,” she said, linking her arm through his. “And I shall be dreadfully bored if forced to spend the rest of the evening alone. You would not doom me to loneliness and boredom, would you?” She smiled and looked at him from beneath her lashes in a manner she knew drove men wild. And was more aware than she ever had been before of how large he was and how broad-shouldered and well-muscled. And there was a flutter of fear that she was playing with fire. She ignored the feeling.

He did not resist further. She was almost disappointed that he did not. She had half-hoped that he would insist on leaving. They must converse, she thought. They must fill up the silence.

“What languages do you speak?” she asked him as she led him into the drawing room. “I know you speak several. I know that you have been sent on many reconnaissance missions as a result.”

“Several Indian languages,” he said. “And some European ones too.”

She slipped her arm from his and walked about the room, fluffing cushions and repositioning ornaments. He was still standing just inside the drawing room door, his booted feet slightly apart, his hands clasped behind him.

“Do come and sit down and tell me about some of your spying missions,” she said. “Tell me about some you have carried out in the Peninsula.” She patted the back of a sofa and felt her heart pounding against her ribs.

“I had better go, ma'am,” he said.

He had more sense than she had. It was impossible, she thought, that he did not feel the tension between them as she did.

“You do not like the topic?” she asked him. “Then we shall choose something else. I shall tell you about Luis and life at court before the removal to Brazil. There are many amusing stories with which I can entertain you. Come and sit down.”

“I must go,” he said.

An inner voice told her to let him go. She was in much deeper than she had ever been before. Flirtation had always been a light, amusing, slightly boring game before. And very safe.
Let him go,
that inner voice told her again. But if she let him go, she would be admitting defeat. She could not let him go until she sent him away. She strolled across the room toward him, a smile on her lips.

He watched her come. And he stood there feeling like a gauche boy, wanting to take his leave, desperately wanting to be gone, and not knowing quite how to accomplish such a seemingly simple task. He clamped his teeth together rather than tell her once more that he must go. Almost any other man she might have chosen as an escort would have known how to take his leave, he thought.

She stopped when she was almost toe to toe with him—delicate white slippers almost touching heavy polished black boots. The top of her head was just beneath the level of his chin—smooth dark hair over the crown of her head and styled into a cluster of curls at the back. She wore a soft musky perfume that he had noticed while they were out walking.

“You are not afraid, are you, Captain?” she asked him, long lashes lifting to allow her eyes to travel up from his chin to look into his own. There was a hint of laughter and a hint of something else in her eyes.

He swallowed and wished he could have controlled the action. He was mortally afraid. He had never been in such a situation with any woman who was not a whore and his for the purchase. He had no experience in controlling himself in such situations. There had never been the need. And then one of her hands, for once ungloved—small, white-skinned, smooth—lifted so that one finger could trace the line of a seam beneath the shoulder of his coat.

“Almost threadbare,” she said.

“It has seen much service.” The heat from her finger burned along his collarbone.

“Some woman will have to mend it for you soon,” she said.

“Yes.”

Her eyes moved upward again, passing over his chin, lingering over his mouth, pausing at the scar across his nose, looking fully into his eyes. “
Are
you afraid?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

The style of her dress, falling in soft folds from beneath her bosom to the floor, made her appear light and slim. Yet she was even slimmer in reality. His hands almost met about her waist—there was a sharp memory of a similar impression from the time when she was fifteen.

He spread his hands downward behind her waist and brought her against him while she arched backward from the waist and set her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes with an expression on her face that was almost a frown. She was all light, warm, soft femininity. He slid his hands upward until her breasts touched his coat and flattened against it—he watched and felt their softness yield to the hardness of his chest muscles.

Jesus, he thought, and the blood pulsed through him like a hammerbeat. Lord God in heaven. But she was too small. For as long as they stood, she was too small. He bent at the knees, lifting her against him so that her feet almost left the floor.

And she knew that she had made a mistake. She knew that she had carried the flirtation too far. The fear she had had the moment she had first set eyes on this man was upon her. She had lost control. He had lifted her so that all her weight and all her balance were at his mercy. If he let her go suddenly, she would fall. And he had lifted her sufficiently that she could feel against her womb the hard swelling of his desire for her.

They had moved beyond the area of her own expertise—flirtation—into the realm of his—passion. And she had no experience—no, none whatsoever, not even in her marriage—with passion. She looked up into his light blue eyes, now burning with the fire of his passion, and she felt him with every part of her body and every nerve in it. He was all hard, magnificent masculinity.

And she was terrified. Terrified of him: the embrace he had begun was an embrace that led only to one place and to one ending. It
was an embrace fully intended to be taken to completion. And terrified of herself: her body was delighting in the sensations and the possession in store for it, and her mind was wanting to surrender.

It would be so good, she thought. She knew it would be good. It would erase, perhaps, the nauseating memories of her marriage bed. She wanted more than anything to surrender. Her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted as his head lowered to hers. She wanted to know what he would do with her. She wanted to know what a virile, passionate man would do to the woman he desired.

His mouth came down wide over hers so that for a moment she opened her eyes in shock. His tongue outlined her lips until she felt a sharp stabbing ache deep in her womb, and then it plunged warm and hard and deep into her mouth. She gasped and drew it deeper still.

And the terror was back, thrusting its way past the curiosity and the temptation. She had no control over the situation at all. She knew that it was a matter of mere minutes, perhaps less, before she was lowered to the floor and her skirts raised and her body penetrated. She would have surrendered control to a man—a man she did not know or understand. An enigma. Someone she was merely to work with.

She bit down hard on his tongue.

When he jerked back his head, she smiled at him and fought down terror and breathlessness and shaking knees. “Why, Captain,” she said, “was that not a little extravagant for a good-night kiss?”

“Why, you bitch!” he amazed her by saying, taking a step backward and frowning ferociously at her.

Terror curled itself into a fist inside her. She raised her eyebrows. “I did not hear that, Captain Blake,” she said. “A temporary deafness, I daresay. You had decided not to stay for port?”