by Mary Balogh
As it was, late spring passed into the sweltering heat of summer, and the summer’s campaign began in earnest. He had the satisfaction—at least he had that—of seeing the French almost immediately respond to the lie of which he had somehow managed to convince them. Marshal Ney, who had been investing Ciudad Rodrigo with its Spanish force led by Governor Herrasti since May in a halfhearted way, now attacked in earnest, and the fort surrendered on July 10 after the walls had been breached.
The French officers with whom Captain Blake consorted liked to tell him of such things and to tease him good-naturedly about his attempts to deflect the attack southward and away from the easy route to Lisbon. And they liked to scorn Wellington and the English forces in his hearing for not coming to the defense of the fort.
The news about Ciudad Rodrigo he could accept quite cheerfully, since he knew that Lord Wellington was acting wisely and well and since no British forces had been involved in the engagement. The news that followed it, as the French advanced against the Portuguese fort of Almeida, was less easy to take. The Light Division, under General Crauford, was harassing the French advance, the skirmishers worrying Marshal Ney and his soldiers by popping up always where they were least expected.
And among the skirmishers were the Rifles, the men of the Ninety-fifth. His men.
And then toward the end of July the fighting grew fierce as the Light Division became trapped on the Spanish side of the River Coa, with only one bridge at their backs, and the Rifles were again the heroes, along with the light infantrymen of the Forty-third and the Fifty-second. They held back the massive forces of the French while the guns and the cavalry retreated over the bridge and took up a position of strength beyond it.
“You are fortunate,” one French lieutenant told Captain Blake with a laugh. “Many of your men were killed in the action, monsieur. Perhaps you would have been too if you had been there. Instead, you are here living a life of ease.”
Yes. A life of ease. The captain’s right hand opened and closed in his lap. He had been in captivity for a month and it seemed more like a year. Ten years. The French would attack Almeida and probably subdue it within a few weeks—it was doubtful that Wellington would advance to its defense. And then they would advance into Portugal, west to Coimbra, south to Lisbon. Probably somewhere along the way, for very pride’s sake, Wellington would make a stand, choosing his spot with care, as he always did.
And if that did not hold them, there would be the retreat behind the Lines of Torres Vedras and the hope that the French army would stand and be caught and decimated by the winter and by hunger while the British passed a winter of relative comfort and prayed for reinforcements from a stingy British government, and with them the hope of waging a more aggressive war the following year—one that would take them through Portugal and through Spain, the French driven before them. One that would begin to eat away at the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte.
And all the while, Captain Blake thought, he would be a captive of the French, he would be away from his own men, away from the excitement. The soonest he could hope for an exchange, in his own estimation, was the following spring.
There were times when the need to be with his regiment, the need to be free, seemed more powerful than the need to retain his honor. There were times when he thought about escape. And it would be so easy. He was not watched at all. There were no restraints upon him, except those imposed by his own honor. He was still in possession of both his sword and his rifle.
But of course he never did make the attempt to escape. For when all was said and done, honor was everything. Honor was what made him into the person he could live with. Honor gave him his self-respect. And so he stayed and chafed at the bit.
It would not have been quite so bad, he often thought, if it had not been for Joana—the Marquesa das Minas.
They were constantly meeting. He had frequent invitations to dinners and assemblies, and found most of them difficult to refuse, much as he would have preferred to live the life of a hermit. And always, wherever he went, she was there too. It was understandable, of course. Like the British, the French army was far from home and their own women. Unlike the British, the local women were, on the whole, hostile to them. It was understandable that all the Frenchwomen who were available should be invited everywhere.
Especially when one of those women was as beautiful and fascinating as Joana.
Captain Blake watched dozens of her countrymen fall under her spell and follow her about with as much abject devotion as had her courts in Lisbon and Viseu. And sometimes his jaw clamped into a hard line as he realized how easy it would be to follow suit. Even though he knew her now to be his enemy—his country’s enemy and his personal enemy—he found that his eyes followed her about a room and roamed over her slender but shapely figure and reveled in the rich colors she chose to wear in Salamanca.
And sometimes he caught himself hating Colonel Marcel Leroux and wanting to tear the man limb from limb, not so much because he had been the head of the interrogation against himself as because Joana openly favored him above all her other suitors. And it was easy to see why. The colonel was a handsome devil, and a charming one as well.
And yet she flirted with him too, Captain Blake found. Her strange and impudent claim on that first evening that she could and would make him fall in love with her had not been forgotten, it seemed. She singled him out for attention wherever he went.
“Jeanne,” Colonel Guy Radisson said during one assembly, when everyone but her appeared to be wilting from the heat of the indoors. She had stopped to talk to the Englishman while promenading about the room on the colonel’s arm. His tone was good-natured. “If you persist in showing such marks of friendship for Captain Blake, there are going to be rumors that you have a divided loyalty.”
She laughed gaily. “Ah, but I feel so sorry for him, Guy,” she said. “He is a soldier, you see, as well as a spy. And he longs to be with his own regiment now that the fighting is beginning. Do you not, Robert?”
“How could I wish to be anywhere but where I am at this precise moment?” he said in tones so courtly that only she would know how false they were.
She laughed again. “And he so wishes that our army was advancing along a different route, Guy,” she said. “And it is all my fault that they are not. I feel guilty. I feel the need to prove to Captain Blake every time I see him that I am no monster.”
“Monster!” the colonel said fondly. “No one could look at you and seriously think that, Jeanne.”
She looked up at him with large smiling eyes. “Is it hot in here?” she asked. “Or is it my imagination? Be an angel, Guy, do, and fetch me a drink. Something long and cool.”
Colonel Radisson clicked his heels and was off into the crowd without further ado.
It was the way she had of getting him alone. She did it frequently.
“On second thoughts,” she said, “there would be instant coolness if we stepped outside, would there not? Take me there, Robert.”
She never asked for favors. She always demanded them. She slipped her white-gloved hand through his arm—her gown was of a deep wine color.
“The poor colonel will be left holding a long cool drink,” he said.
She shrugged. “Then he may drink it himself,” she said. “It is very hot in here.”
“Joana,” he said, “why do you do this?” He led her out into a tree-shaded courtyard, where several people were strolling. He did not elaborate on his words.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Because it is such a challenge,” she said. “Because any other man I can have at the snap of two fingers. You have seen that. I need more of a challenge in life.”
“And some of it has gone now that you are safely back with your own people again?” he asked. “Did you enjoy the danger in Portugal? Did you enjoy knowing that at any time your French background might be discovered and exposed?”
; “Ah, but I have English and Portuguese connections too,” she said, “as you know, Robert. And how could a woman like me be of any danger to anyone? My life is devoted to pleasure. And what have I done that was so dangerous? I merely used my eyes on the road between Lisbon and Viseu and reported truthfully what I saw. Does that make me dangerous?”
“You did it quite deliberately,” he said. “You have been actively spying for the French, Joana. Except that this time it is the end. I can expose your game if you return to Portugal.”
She sighed. “You make it sound as if I have been a highly skilled secret agent,” she said. “I almost wish that I had. Perhaps there would have been some excitement in it. Is there, Robert? Is it wonderfully exciting?”
“There are jobs to be done,” he said, “and one does them because they must be done.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Oh, no,” she said, “that is ridiculous. That is not why you do what you do, Robert. I know just by looking into your face that you demand more of life than that. I know it. I know that in many ways you are like me. It is not enough to let the days pass by in safety and comfort. Not nearly enough. There has to be much more than that.”
His jaw set hard.
“This month has been dreadful for you, has it not?” she said. “I know it, you see. I know that it is like a living death to you. And so I do what I can for you, Robert.” She laughed lightly. “I offer you a different type of challenge. Can you resist the charms of a lady whom no one else can resist, even knowing that she is your enemy—your bitter enemy, as you once put it? Can you?”
Somehow—he did not know how it had happened—they had found a secluded part of the courtyard beyond some vine trees and she was seating herself on a low wall. The air was cool, though only just, and only in contrast with the heat of the day and the heat of the indoors.
He laughed without humor. “How pathetic you are, Joana,” he said. “You know very well that if I once fell for your charms and crowded up to you just like everyone else, panting for the privilege of holding your fan or fetching you a drink, you would lose interest in me in a moment.”
“Yes.” She smiled up at him. “How right you are. Is that why you do it, Robert? Is this your way of gaining my attention? Are you far more clever than any other man of my acquaintance?”
Her gown looked almost black in the darkness. Her skin in contrast looked translucent. His fingers itched to touch her, to rest against her cheek, to caress her shoulder. Her eyes were dark and mysterious.
“I think I must be the most foolish of all,” he said.
She continued to smile. “Because you have not thought until now of how you might turn off my interest by feigning yours?” she said. “Perhaps it would work. Perhaps it would not. Shall we put it to the test?”
He clasped his hands behind his back and knew that he had stepped deep into flirtation and could very easily lose his way. He had never learned how to play that game with women. He had always been able to get what he wanted when he wanted it, with money and with his person and his uniform. But then, he had only ever wanted whores. Only ever the physical satisfaction to be gained from a good bedding.
It had been a long time, he thought suddenly. Almost two months since Beatriz. But then, soldiers were accustomed to going without for long stretches of time. Especially private soldiers, and he had been one for long enough. He had learned to live with celibacy.
“Are you afraid?” she asked him almost in a whisper.
He kept his hands behind his back. “Only uninterested, Joana,” he said.
“Oh, no.” She got to her feet and took the one step that separated them. She spread her hands on his chest and looked up at him. “Not that, Robert. Never that. Anything but. Perhaps you hate me or despise me. Perhaps you desire me. But you are not indifferent to me. Do you think I do not know enough about men to know that? You are not uninterested.”
Her perfume teased his nostrils. And her hands, resting lightly against his coat, burned through to his chest. Something snapped in him.
“Very well, then,” he said, and he spread his hands at her waist and drew her against him. He knew that he was holding her too roughly, and tightened his grasp further. Something sparked in her eyes—it might have been fear—as she continued to look steadily up at him. “Let me show you what my interest in you is, Joana.”
He was instantly hard. The blood pulsed through his body, through his temples. He wanted to hurt her, humiliate her, frighten her. He wanted to mount her, pound himself into her, have her gasping and crying for mercy.
He lifted her against him, as he had done once before, but higher, so that her feet left the ground. And he backed her against the wall and rubbed himself against her, against her womb, between her thighs, which opened beneath the pressure of his weight. He pushed against her, pumped against her through the barrier of their clothing.
He spoke through his teeth. “Is this what you want of me?” he asked. She was still looking into his eyes, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “And is it excitement and danger you want, Joana? Shall we risk someone’s coming around these trees? Would that be a thrill to you? Shall we have you back up on the wall and your skirts up and my trousers open? It will all be the work of a mere minute. I am very hard and ready, as you can feel. Do you want it?”
She continued to stare at him for a few moments. And then she released her lower lip and surprised him by smiling slowly.
“By God, you do,” he hissed at her, lowering her at last to the ground. “You are no better than the cheapest whore I have ever had, Joana. Worse. They are willing but not necessarily eager.”
“But, Robert,” she said, and there was laughter in her voice as she slid her arms up about his neck and her fingers played with his hair, “you are such a gentleman, no matter what you were before you enlisted in the army. Would you have me afraid of you, afraid that you are going to ravish me? And yet you ask me? You cannot make me afraid of you, even though this is, I think, the expression you must wear when you have your rifle to your shoulder and are about to fire it.”
His anger had not abated. But it had turned against himself. Was he merely playing her game after all, then? Joana’s game. The woman who had betrayed him, no matter what the outcome of her betrayal?
He splayed one hand behind her head and swooped his own head down to kiss her, opening his mouth wide over hers, thrusting past her lips and teeth, heedless of what she had done to him on a previous occasion, tasting her, drinking her in, withdrawing his tongue and thrusting again, simulating what he had threatened to do to her but knew he would not.
She was sucking inward, he found, one hand pressed to the back of his head as his was to hers, so that withdrawing from her was done under pressure and thrusting inward was swift, almost painful. The sounds he heard came from her throat. No, from his. From both.
And so they fought each other even as they embraced, exchanging desire and pain and the struggle for mastery. His free hand slid across one of her shoulders and forward and down, across warm soft flesh, down inside the silk of her gown, to curl around her breast. His thumb found her nipple and rubbed, swift and hard, against it, until she lifted her shoulders and squirmed. And then he felt shock as her free hand slid down between them and rubbed over the hard swelling of his desire for her.
They were both panting when he lifted his head.
“That is my interest in you, Joana,” he said. “No light flirtation. No pretty words of love and adoration. Just a lusting for your body. As I have lusted after countless whores.”
“Yes.” There was something almost feline about her smile. “But it is not lack of interest, Robert. Never tell me that again. Tell me you hate me and I will believe you. I think you do. Tell me you desire me as you would desire a whore and I will believe you. I can feel that you do. But do not tell me you have no interest in me. I shall pursue you without mercy if you persist
in that lie.”
His anger was ebbing, to be replaced by contempt, though whether it was directed more against her or himself, he did not know.
“So you want a man who hates you and wants to lay you as he would a whore?” he said to her. “You cannot like yourself very well.”
She smiled, her old charming smile. She had taken a step back from him. “Ah, but who said that I want you, Robert?” she asked. “All I have admitted to, if you will recall, is wanting to have you want me, wanting to have you fall in love with me. And you are not far off. Do you hate me? Good. Hatred is very akin to love.”
She laughed as he clamped his teeth together, unwilling—or unable perhaps—to continue the conversation, which was moving back again into her area of expertise.
“Take me back inside,” she said, reaching out a hand for his arm. “Guy will come running, or else Pierre or Henri, and I shall send one of them for a drink if Guy has already disposed of the first. Now I really need one. I shall not send you, you see, Robert, though I do not believe you would be so ungallant as to refuse. Would you?”
“Probably not,” he said. “But I should probably dash it into your face when I had brought it. That would be the fastest way to cool you off.”
She laughed merrily. “You would not,” she said. “You are in enemy territory and would be clapped into the darkest dungeon before you could enjoy my discomfort.”
“At least then,” he said, “I could honorably escape.”
She turned her head to look up at him, and smiled slowly. “Poor Robert,” she said softly.
* * *
Things were moving much more slowly than she had either planned or expected. She had thought they would be gone within a week, or at most two, of their arrival. But a month had passed and still she could not put her final plans into effect. And of course she realized now that it could not all have happened that fast anyway.