by Mary Balogh
Captain Blake had never been so glad in his life to reach a destination. In three days he had scarcely exchanged a word with the marquesa. And yet she smiled at him as usual, her eyes perhaps laughing at him—he never knew whether she mocked him or not. And it continued to be his task to hand her in and out of her carriage. But during those three days he was more aware of the slimness of her hand and the lightness of her body and that subtle perfume he had noticed first inside her villa at Obidos.
They were days during which he longed to be free of her and back with the army. He regretted the summons to Viseu. He wanted to be back with his company again, relieving Lieutenant Reid from the command of it he had had over the winter. He wanted to be done with women—and one woman in particular—for a while. He wanted to concentrate on his job. It was late June. The French would surely be making their move soon. It was amazing they had waited so long. There would surely be a major pitched battle before many more weeks had passed.
Joana’s aunt lived on the cathedral square in the city, a handsome area of noble houses, including the Episcopal Palace. He dismounted for the last time to hand the marquesa from her carriage.
“Captain Blake.” She set her gloved hand in his and smiled brilliantly at him. “We have arrived safely after all. I shall be sure to report to Arthur that you protected me from all the perils of the road.”
There was definite mockery in her voice. There had been no perils apart from the one that he himself had posed. And she had protected herself from that. His tongue still pained him when he drank anything hot.
He bowed over her hand when her feet touched the ground. “I hope the journey has not been too uncomfortable or tedious for you, ma’am,” he said.
“How could it be,” she said, and she laughed aloud, “when I had your conversation to enjoy, Captain Blake?”
Was he dismissed? Or did she expect him to escort her into the house? For the thousandth time he felt woefully lacking in knowledge of the niceties of polite behavior.
“I will not keep you,” she said. “You will be anxious to report to headquarters and find your billet. I fear it is too late to talk with the general today, though. Good day, Captain.” She had left her hand in his.
“Good-bye, ma’am,” he said. And he did what he thought—and hoped—was expected of him. He raised her hand to his lips. And he looked down into her face as he did so, to find her eyes on their hands and her lips parting. Lord, he could taste the sweetness of her still—and feel the sharpness of her perfect teeth. “Your aunt will be pleased to see you safe.”
She smiled and raised her eyes to his. “Never say good-bye, Captain,” she said. “It sounds so final. I daresay we will meet again.” And finally she withdrew her hand from his and signaled, in that quite imperceptible way that ladies were expert at, that he was dismissed.
He swung himself back into the saddle, turned to salute her, and felt all the relief he might feel when being released from a prison cell and certain execution. He hoped not, he thought fervently in reaction to her final words. God, he hoped not.
* * *
The French army intended for the invasion of Portugal—the Army of Portugal, as Napoleon Bonaparte liked to call it—was still stationed in and about Salamanca, Captain Blake had learned from fellow officers at his billet the night before. The fifty-two-year-old Marshal André Massena had just taken over its command. The bulk of the British and Portuguese armies, both under the command of Viscount Wellington, were still massed in central Portugal awaiting the expected invasion from the east. The Light Division was still patrolling the Coa River, protecting against any surprise French advance and preventing any intelligence from getting out to the French.
Nothing much had changed, although it was early summer already. Captain Blake paced an anteroom at headquarters the morning after his arrival at Viseu and wished he were at the Coa with his company. There would be danger, excitement, the feeling of being in an important place at an important time. He hoped that he would be sent there, that this detour to Viseu was merely for the purpose of picking up papers or a message for General Crauford, in charge of the division.
He was kept waiting for two hours before a staff officer came to summon him into the presence of the commander in chief.
Captain Blake was always struck by two contradictory impressions of Viscount Wellington. One was how ordinary and unassuming he appeared at first glance. He did not wear military uniform, but was almost always dressed in plain, rather drab clothes. The other was how commanding a presence he had once one was past that first glance. His face was stern, with its hooked nose and thin lips and compelling eyes. And yet an explanation of why all attention focused on him whenever he was present was not in either his face or his tall, slim person. It was more in the man inside that person.
“Ah, Captain Blake,” he said, looking up from the papers strewn over the surface of his desk and acknowledging the other’s salute with a nod of the head. “You have come at last, have you?”
“As fast as I could, sir,” Captain Blake said.
“And yet my messenger had returned and was reporting to me yesterday morning,” the viscount said, frowning.
Captain Blake swallowed his indignation. “I was directed to escort the Marquesa das Minas, sir,” he reminded the general.
“Ah. Joana.” Wellington set his quill pen down. “A delightful lady, would you not agree?”
Captain Blake inclined his head, assuming that the question was rhetorical.
“How is your French?” the viscount asked. “My own is indifferent.”
“I can both understand it and make myself understood in it, I believe,” the captain said.
“And your Spanish?” But the general waved a dismissive hand. “No, forget that question. I know your Spanish to be fluent. I need you to go to Salamanca for me.”
Captain Blake stood still and forced himself to refrain from either raising his eyebrows or repeating the name of the Spanish city. Explanations would doubtless be made.
“Right into the lion’s den or the hornet’s nest, so to speak,” Lord Wellington said. “You are to be captured, Captain Blake. Be sure to wear your uniform. As you are doubtless aware, the French treat their prisoners of war with courtesy, as we do ours. They treat prisoners out of uniform with a barbarity that leaves one wondering if they can be a civilized nation at all.”
It was harder this time to prevent his eyebrows from shooting upward. His task was to walk into the enemy camp and allow himself to be captured?
“You will not just walk into the city and surrender your sword, of course,” the general said, as if he had read the other’s thoughts. “You will be communicating with a band of Spanish guerrilleros—Antonio Becquer’s band—you may get the details later from my secretary. And you will be very reluctant to be captured. You will have papers carefully hidden about your person, but not carefully enough, of course.”
Captain Blake looked and listened. He knew that questions and comments were unnecessary at this point.
“Sit down, Captain,” the viscount said, getting to his feet himself. “I shall explain the situation to you. Suffice it to say that I do not like divulging important information to even a single person more than is necessary. Very few people, even among my senior officers, know what I am about to tell you. And before I do that, I must ask you. You are willing to undertake this mission for me? I do not need to point out to you that there is danger involved and that all such missions are voluntary.”
“I am willing, sir,” Captain Blake said, though he was not at all sure that he was eager. Captivity? The humiliation of losing his sword to the French? And the tedium, perhaps the degradation, of a lengthy incarceration?
“This, then, is for your ears only, Captain,” the general said. “It must not be repeated even under the stress of torture, which I do not anticipate to be your fate—provided you wear your uniform, of course
. Did you notice any unusual activity as you traveled north?”
Captain Blake thought. “Very little, sir,” he said, thinking of the Montachique Pass and Major Hanbridge’s uneasiness there. But that had not literally been activity. “Large bands of peasants seemed to be busy on some fortifications north of Lisbon to about Torres Vedras, but their efforts would seem to be pointless and rather pathetic. I saw no evidence of military activity.”
“Ah,” Lord Wellington said, “your words please me. My engineering officers are clever in more ways than one, it seems. Last autumn, Captain Blake, I gave orders for a chain—three concentric chains—of numerous and quite impregnable fortifications to be built north of Lisbon, the most northerly to pass through Torres Vedras, from the ocean to the Tagus River. Old castles and churches and towers are to be used, mountains are to be reshaped—I shall not go into full details. These defenses are almost ready, Captain—with my engineering officers I have been calling them the Lines of Torres Vedras. When they are finished and defended by an army of moderate size, they will be quite unpassable. Any army coming from the north can be held from Lisbon indefinitely. I do not intend, you see, that my army be pushed into the sea. We will retain our only foothold on the continent of Europe, and eventually we will have the strength to nibble away piece by piece at Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire. At present we simply do not have the numerical strength to advance ourselves.”
Captain Blake listened in fascination but said nothing.
“When Massena brings his army into Portugal,” the viscount said, “as he will surely do soon, once he has subdued Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, he will march a long distance through the hills, a long distance from his supply lines. And he will find little comfort in this country. The inhabitants will be encouraged to retreat before him, burning whatever food and supplies they cannot carry with them. He will not be too worried, believing firmly that soon he will be able to supply his troops from the treasure stores of Lisbon. When he reaches the Lines of Torres Vedras, Captain, he will have the choice between a difficult retreat late in the year with a half-starved army, and a pointless digging-in in the hope of blasting his way through the lines and getting to Lisbon. The destruction of a large part of his army should be certain.”
Viscount Wellington, who had been pacing about the room, returned to his desk and sat down, looking at Captain Blake.
“Only one thing can spoil my plan,” he said, “and that is Massena not doing what I fully expect him to do. He could, of course, march on Lisbon from the south, and we do have lines of defense south of the Tagus too, though they are not as formidable. But I do not expect him to go south. He will, I believe, act predictably—under one condition. An absolutely essential condition. The existence of the Lines of Torres Vedras must remain a total secret. Even my men will believe they are headed for annihilation as they retreat on Lisbon. They will curse me roundly, Captain Blake.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Blake said, and watched his commander in chief smile arctically. Thank heaven, he was thinking, that Major Hanbridge had rushed them through that pass before the marquesa’s questions had become more pointed.
“My army has done a superb job of sealing off the border to French intelligence,” Lord Wellington said. “The very positioning of the French army shows that they do not know what they will be facing. But things do leak out, Captain. Three details have somewhat disturbed me in the past few weeks. My own intelligence informs me that small groups of Massena’s men are scouting the southern route. And some of our Spanish friends have informed me that the French have their hands on some paper whose description sounds suspiciously like an unmarked diagram of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Are they beginning to suspect the truth? That is the question I have been grappling with. And third, they have not yet moved, though it is almost July. Clearly something is amiss, something troubles them. Again, is it that they suspect the truth? Will they, after all, swing to the south?”
He set his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. He looked broodingly at Captain Blake.
“You have to be caught with a diagram of the lines on you, Captain,” the general said. “A misleading diagram, of course, to convince our friends that we are expecting them from the south and have very shaky defenses indeed in the north. It will be up to you to convince the French officers who will interrogate you that the paper is authentic. It will be up to you to convince them that it is plausible for you to have such an important paper on your person as you travel in Spain. You will discuss the matter with my secretary and report back to me tomorrow. I expect you to be on your way within two or three days. Do you understand your mission?”
“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 rat
her 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!”