by Mary Balogh
He did not regret the break he had made. He would not have gone through life with the burden of a humiliation on him, with the knowledge that he owed everything to the generosity of the man who had fathered him. As if one did not have a right to the care of one’s father. As if such care were a privilege when one happened to have been begotten on the wrong side of the blanket.
And yet, he thought as he trudged his lone way through the hills, following the route outlined for him at headquarters, there were the memories that crowded his mind now that he was truly alone in the world. Memories of his mother’s happiness and of her loveliness on the days when his father was expected. Memories of the two of them, their hands clasped or their arms twined about each other’s waists, glowing in each other’s company and smiling—always smiling—at him. Memories of his father lifting him above his head and tossing him up toward the sky while his mother shrieked and his childhood self laughed helplessly.
Memories of love. And of innocence. Of a time when it had not seemed odd to him that his father, his mother’s lover, did not live with them but in the big house with his wife. Of a time when he had not known that that single fact would make all the difference in the world to him. When he had not realized that he would become something of a charity case to his father.
And now his father was dead and he himself was in a sense a gentleman. At least he had the property and the wealth to set up as a gentleman. He had the wealth to purchase his promotions if he so chose, instead of having to wait for vacancies caused more often than not by death in battle.
He had the position and the wealth perhaps to . . .
No! He had decided years ago that life was to be lived alone if it was to bring him any sense of fulfillment and contentment. There was no room in his life for a woman. No room for the chains of love.
He determinedly did not grieve for his father. It would be hypocritical to do so. But he did grieve for the long-ago loss of childhood and innocence and unclouded happiness. He grieved for the child he had been and the man he might have been.
He had been a sweet and gentle boy, she had said, describing that other Robert she had known. A boy with eyes that smiled and dreamed. Yes, even then, when innocence had already been fast fading. He grieved for the boy he had been, the boy she seemed to believe had died.
And he remembered how she had once called that sweet and gentle boy a bastard and how she had mocked him. And he tried again and constantly to put her from his mind and his heart.
* * *
Duarte Ribeiro had left his lands and his home in the south, laid waste by Junot’s army on its advance to Lisbon three years before. Tenants and peasant friends had restored the land, he had heard, and even seen during occasional fleeting visits. But he would not go home to stay until the hated French had been driven finally and forever from his native soil.
He could not count the number of Frenchmen he had killed with his own hands during the past three years. He could not even estimate the numbers killed by his band of almost forty men and a few women. But it was never enough. Never enough to satisfy him that the deaths of his brother and his brother’s family and the brutal rape and death of his sister had been avenged. Never enough to make him forgive himself for having been from home that day. And never enough to satisfy the people of his band for similar grievances.
Duarte Ribeiro lived now, when he was in one place for any length of time, in the village of Mortagoa in the rugged hills east of Bussaco. He had been there for most of the spring, the British army having done an effective job of keeping even French stragglers out of Portugal. His men were inclined to grumble about the inactivity.
And yet excitement and anticipation were growing. The French would be coming soon, they all felt, if they could get past the forts of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, if Viscount Wellington did not successfully support the forts’ garrisons. And even if he did, the French would be on Portuguese soil when they attacked Almeida. And once on Portuguese soil, they would be fair game to the Ordenanza.
Duarte stood in the doorway of the white stone cottage that he currently called home, idly watching Carlota Mendes, his woman, seated on a bench outside in the late-afternoon sunshine suckling their new son at one shapely and ample breast. Her black hair hung unconfined and appealingly unkempt over her shoulders.
“Will he come today, do you think?” she asked, looking up at him briefly.
“Today, tomorrow,” he said. “Sometime he will come. It will be good to have something to do. I am growing restless.”
“I know.” She grimaced. “And so I will be left here with most of the other women and children. This little one should have waited until the wars were over.” She looked fondly down at their son.
“Well,” he said, “babies come from what we spent last summer doing with great enthusiasm when we were not harassing our uninvited guests, Carlota. Know that for the future.”
She flashed him a wide smile before disengaging the baby from her breast and lifting his sleepy form up against her shoulder. She patted his back gently. “We,” she said. “We two. But it is I who must now stay at home fighting boredom instead of my mother and father’s killers.”
Carlota’s father had been a respected doctor, killed with his wife after a wounded French officer he had been ordered to tend had died anyway. Carlota had been away from home, staying with her brother and sister-in-law at the time.
“I’ll not be gone long,” he said. “I merely have to guide this British soldier to the border and put him into the safe keeping of Becquer and his men. It seems that the Englishman has some secret mission in Spain, lucky dog.”
“You see?” Carlota said, guiding the nipple of her other breast to her son’s seeking mouth. “You would be gone from me for the rest of the summer if you had your way.”
He reached out a hand to run the back of one finger along her hair. “Not so,” he said softly. “I would not be separated from you for a single day if it were not necessary, Carlota. But little Miguel must be given a warm and secure home. And I would not have you in the thick of danger now that you are the mother of my son.”
“Oh,” she said, bristling with indignation, “but it is all right for the father of my son to be there?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Our son must be given a country of his own in which to live and grow peacefully, Carlota.”
She raised a hand to touch his against her hair, and she looked up and smiled at him.
He nodded his head along the narrow street and pushed his shoulder away from the door frame. “I do believe Francisco and Teófilo have found our man and are bringing him this way,” he said. A tall, blond, green-coated British soldier was striding along the street between his two friends, the curved sword at his side and the red sash proclaiming him an officer, the rifle slung over his shoulder suggesting that he was also a fighting man.
“Here he is,” Teófilo Costa called, his smile very white in his sun-bronzed face. “And did not get lost among the hills even once. Perhaps his crooked nose would account for his success. Most of the English get themselves lost if they cannot walk a straight line.” He was talking in loud and cheerful Portuguese. He turned to Captain Blake as they came up to Duarte’s cottage and switched to heavily accented English. “Duarte Ribeiro, sir. The leader of our group.”
“Thank you,” Captain Blake said in Portuguese. “I believe it had more to do with carefully given directions and a concentration on following them.”
Francisco Braga, Duarte, and Carlota burst into loud laughter at the expense of their discomfited friend.
“But it is a very handsome nose nonetheless,” Teófilo said, joining in the laughter.
“You have met these two,” Duarte said. “This is Carlota Mendes and our son, Miguel.” He watched the Englishman’s eyes flicker to Carlota’s exposed breast and slide away again. The English were prudes, he recalled. And he remembered his mother, always and ever the l
ady even with that brute of a second husband of hers. “Come inside, Captain Blake. You will be ready for some refreshments. Tomorrow we will start for the border and you may relax. You will be able to rely on native guides rather than the shape of your nose to get you safely there.”
Teófilo slapped the side of his head with the palm of his hand. “I will never be allowed to forget that, will I?” he said.
“You have a block of wood for a brain, Teófilo,” Carlota said, getting to her feet and tucking her breast away inside her dress again. “Would an Englishman be sent into Spain on a special mission if he did not know both Portuguese and Spanish? I would bet the length of my hair that he also speaks French.”
“You are right, ma’am,” Captain Blake said with a laugh, setting down his rifle carefully when he stepped inside the house, and reaching into a pocket inside his coat. “Before I forget, Ribeiro. You have been sent your instructions already, I believe, but I do also have a sealed letter for you.”
Duarte took it and glanced curiously at it. He did not recognize the handwriting. He opened it while Carlota set down the baby and busied herself cutting cheese and slicing bread and filling cups with wine. He remained standing while the others sat down, and read the letter quickly. It was from his half-sister. She must have had someone else write on the outside.
He was to give Captain Blake every assistance, he read. But he must not reveal their relationship to the captain. She would be coming to Mortagoa herself within a week of his receipt of this letter. Would he be back from the border by then? He must not worry about sending to meet her. She would come in the usual manner. She needed his assistance in some delicate business.
“Some delicate business” was Joana’s usual way of referring to her journeys into Spain, going right in among the French in search of Maria and Miguel’s killer. He hated her putting herself in such danger, but there was nothing he could do about it. She was not even his full sister to be taking orders from him, and even if she were, he suspected that Joana would be beyond his control unless he were willing to tie her hand and foot.
And now she was going again, it seemed. And coming here first “in the usual manner.” That meant that she could be alone and dressed like a peasant and willing and eager to join in all the activities of his band for however long she felt she could stay. And the damnable thing was that she was good at it. The delicate Marquesa das Minas became virtually unrecognizable in the reckless and fearless Joana Ribeiro.
Duarte clamped his teeth together. The devilish woman! She was all he had left in the world. No. He folded the letter back into its original folds. Life was not that uncomplicated any longer. Harassing and killing the French was no longer a simple game of revenge. It was a serious business of survival, a matter of a man doing all that was necessary, even killing, in order to protect his woman and his child and the homeland in which they lived. There were Carlota and Miguel now, closer to him even than Joana, and the sooner the three of them could take themselves off to find a priest, the better he would like it.
“Duarte? Bad news?” Carlota touched his arm while the other three men looked up at him from the table.
“No. Not at all,” he said, thrusting the letter into a pocket. “So, Captain Blake, when are the English going to let the French past so that we can have our share of them too?” He sat down at the table and reached for his cup of wine.
* * *
It was all almost frighteningly easy. Even the most carefully made plans had a habit of going awry. But not this one. This one happened just as it was meant to happen.
Duarte Ribeiro, Francisco Braga, and Teófilo Costa were cheerful companions and took him to the border and directly to the temporary camp of the Spanish guerrillero leader with a sureness that suggested a long familiarity with the rugged hills and the deep clefts of ravines that tended to all look alike to Captain Blake.
All three of his guides shook hands with him after he had been greeted by the Spaniards and wished him luck in his mission. They did not know what it was and they had not questioned him. They understood the rules of war better than the Marquesa das Minas had, he reflected, finding it impossible not to think of her frequently.
“Good luck,” Duarte said to him. “I hope it is our good fortune and yours that we meet again. I have been sent no instructions about conducting you back again.” It was the closest he had come to showing the curiosity that he must feel.
“No.” Captain Blake smiled rather ruefully. “I shall find my own way. Perhaps my nose will help.”
“If someone does not break it in the opposite direction,” Teófilo said, and they all laughed.
Captain Blake watched them go with regret. He felt very alone with strangers on the border of another country, enemy territory.
Like the Portuguese, the Spaniards knew only as much of his mission as they needed to know. Theirs was a dangerous task. They were to take him down from the rugged hills of the border into the more rolling hills below and close to Salamanca. There they were to make their presence known so that the French would come in pursuit of them. All but one of them—Captain Blake—were to elude capture.
If they failed, theirs would be a terrible fate. They would not be granted the honorable captivity afforded to enemy soldiers, but would be executed after a suitable interval of torture.
“But, señor,” Antonio Becquer, a great mountain of a man with arms and legs like tree trunks, said to him with a smile and a shrug when Captain Blake expressed his concern, “we do the same to our French captives, you see. And we have far more of them to bring us enjoyment than they ever have of us. War is war in Spain. It is not the game you soldiers play.”
Captain Blake found himself wishing for the first time in his career that his uniform was scarlet and quite unmistakably British. Not that he would shun a good fight. Indeed he would welcome one to blow away the cobwebs of a winter of inactivity. It was the idea of not fighting that was filling him with the jitters.
“We are close to the city instead of being up in the hills because some of your number need to be called out of the city to hear my news,” Captain Blake said long before they drew close to Salamanca, when they were reviewing their plans. “That will explain why I am mad enough to venture so close to French pickets. Is it plausible? Is it likely that some of your men would be in Salamanca when it is occupied by the French?”
“Señor.” Antonio looked around at his men, who had all chuckled at the question. “We are Spaniards. This is our country. We are everywhere.”
“An uncomfortable thought for the French,” Captain Blake said.
“We intend it to be.” The Spaniard grinned. “We would consider it a personal shame to allow a single Frenchman a good night’s sleep on Spanish soil. Not that we are inhospitable, of course.”
“So it is plausible,” Captain Blake said. “And they will know it?”
“They will all have a friend or a friend of a friend who has had his throat cut mysteriously in the night,” Antonio said.
Captain Blake shuddered inwardly and was thankful that the British were the friends of the Spaniards.
And so it happened as planned. It had to happen at night—dangerous, everyone agreed, when the French might not immediately be able to see the uniform of their captive, but not unduly so. They would not be anxious to kill a guerrillero too easily.
“Though what your general means by sending you here simply to be captured, I do not know,” Antonio said with an expressive shrug. “You are an assassin, señor? But even your uniform will not save you from death once you have killed. Is it Massena himself you are to kill? If it is in his bed, be sure that it is he you kill and not his mistress. She goes everywhere with him, did you know, and is officially listed as his aide de camp? Ah, these French. Such aids they need.”
His men all laughed heartily.
“They say he is still in Salamanca, even though the year is already adva
nced,” one of the men said, “because he is too busy in his bed to think of being busy out of it.”
Another burst of laughter.
They were on foot on the night in question, making clumsy noises close to a picket line that disgusted Antonio with its lack of subtlety.
“It will be a blow to my pride, señor,” he had said the day before, “to have the French believe that I would betray my presence to them in such a stupid manner.”
Captain Blake knew how he felt. His ankle turned beneath him as he fled with the rest, and then he tripped over his sword and fell heavily, cursing roundly—in English—lest the pickets pass him by and not even notice him lying among the trees on the south bank of the Douro River, within a hundred yards of the old Roman bridge crossing it to the city.
And so he had to stagger to his feet, hands held high above his head, while a frightened French boy held a bayonet to his chest and another relieved him of his rifle, bumping him roughly and painfully against the side of the head with it, and kicking him hard on the shin of his injured leg.
“He is a soldier,” the boy said, his eyes widening as someone else came running with a lantern. “British. An officer.”
The soldier who had done the bumping and kicking became considerably more respectful.
“We should take his sword?” he asked the boy in French. “Be careful that he does not grab your bayonet and turn it on you. Were those others British too? Are they invading?”
If he had just said, “Boo!” Captain Blake thought, the boy would have turned and run.
“I will surrender my sword to an officer of your army,” he said haughtily, “not to a private soldier. Take me to one.”
But the commotion of the pursuit of the fleeing Spaniards and of his capture had drawn an officer—a fellow captain—out of the darkness. He directed the lantern holder to shine its light more fully onto their captive.
“Captain?” he said. His eyes strayed up and down the uniform. “A rifleman? Always our greatest enemies and our primary targets in battle. I will accept your sword, sir, and escort you across the bridge. It will be an honor to have a rifleman as our prisoner.”