Beyond the Sunrise (7 page)

Joana smiled in self-mockery at her disappointment. But then, she would see him again at dawn, she reminded herself. And would be as safe with him in the coming days, she suspected, as she would be if a whole squadron of heavy cavalry surrounded her carriage. As if she needed his protection or anyone else's. Dear Arthur. Sometimes he could be quite amusing. But of course the purpose of her
journey in company with Captain Blake was not just for her protection, she reminded herself.

The Marquesa das Minas turned toward the door into the salon and prepared to be sociable.

*   *   *

He
arrived at the marquesa's
palacio
when dawn was little more than a suggestion in the eastern sky. He was in a sullen mood purely because he knew that only one small fact held him from an exultant mood. He had been freed from the hospital and the surgeon's care and he was feeling fit after months of convalescence and weeks of private exercising and swordplay. He was leaving Lisbon and heading into the wild hills farther north and toward the bulk of the British and Portuguese armies. Soon he would either join his regiment on the Coa with the certain knowledge that soon the French summer campaign would begin and he would be in the very front lines, or be sent on some challenging mission by Wellington and know all the exhilaration of being in danger with only his strength and his wits to keep him alive.

He could have been in an exultant mood. But there was that one small fact—that one small lady with whom he was to spend the next week. It would surely take them all of a week to reach Viseu, though he could have got there far sooner had he been alone. And Wellington had wanted to talk with him as soon as possible, his staff officer had said the day before. But Wellington had also directed that he escort the Marquesa das Minas. Lord Wellington, of course, had to be careful always to defer to the sentiments of his Portuguese hosts even though he was there risking his life and the lives of thousands of Englishmen in order to save their hides.

She was probably still in bed, Captain Blake thought, hoping that she was, hoping that he would have a definite grievance to excuse his mood. Her reception had not lasted all night. The house was
quiet. He would doubtless have to wait while the lady got herself out of bed and dressed and ready to face the world and breakfasted. And by that time it would probably be as well to have luncheon before they set out on their way. They would be fortunate to be well clear of Lisbon before dark. They would be fortunate to reach Viseu within two weeks.

Captain Blake had succeeded in whipping up a mood of sullenness into one of active resentment against the fate that had made him into a nursemaid. He hammered none too gently on the outer door of the
palacio
courtyard. Probably her servants would have to be roused before they in turn could rouse her.

But the door opened almost immediately and all was bustle and activity in the courtyard beyond it. A white-paneled coach, looking more like a coronation coach than a carriage fit for travel along the roads and among the hills of Portugal, stood with its doors open to reveal luxurious golden upholstery. The four horses, which stood obediently in their traces and yet snorted and pawed the ground in their impatience to be moving, were all pure white with golden plumes and golden ribbons plaited into their manes.

Captain Blake scowled as he rode his horse into the courtyard. Jesus, he thought, he was to be ringmaster to a bloody circus. He nodded to the servants and the plump woman dressed all in black who was directing the loading of one small valise on top of several trunks tied to the back of the carriage.

“Good morning,” he said curtly in their own language.

And then he saw that he had done not only her servants an injustice in his mind but the marquesa too. She was standing in the doorway, he saw as soon as he had ridden to a place where the carriage no longer obstructed his view of it, looking as bright and fresh as if it were the middle of the morning and there had been nothing to do all night but sleep. She turned her head and smiled at him.

He felt that growingly familiar churning somewhere in the region of his stomach. And the equally familiar hostility. She was dressed—as always, it seemed—in white, from the hat worn at a
jaunty angle, its large soft feather curling about her ear and touching her chin, to the supple and dainty white leather boots peeping from beneath her carriage dress. The only part of her apparel that was not white was the gold embroidery on her frogged jacket and the gold fringes on its epaulets.

She looked as fragile as a single swan's feather and as beautiful as . . . Well, he had been of a poetic turn of mind once upon a time. But no longer. She could not be more unsuitably dressed for a rugged journey if she had deliberately studied to be. Christ, it would take them a month.

She was everything that was exquisite and expensive—and trivial. And he had once held her and kissed her and believed her protestations of love. Poor foolish young lad—he looked back on his former self with a tender sort of pity, as if he had been someone else entirely. It was hard to believe that that boy had been he and that that life had been his. That life of privilege and degradation.

He swung down from his saddle and found that his loins were aching for Jeanne Morisette as she had become in almost eleven years. He clamped his teeth together in self-contempt.

“Good morning, Captain.” Even her voice was seductive—low-pitched yet clear. He could not remember Jeanne's voice being so. “I thought perhaps you had overslept.”

And mocking. She had mocked him the night before and he had felt like a gauche and awkward boy, terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing. Feeling rather like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

“Good morning, ma'am,” he said even more curtly than he had spoken to her servants a few moments before. “You are ready to leave?”

“As you see.” She held out her gloved hands to the sides and smiled at him. “I have my carriage and my horses and my baggage. And now I have you to protect me from all the dangers of the road.” She slanted a smile up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “And Matilda to protect me from you.” She indicated the plump female in black.

“You are quite safe from me, ma'am,” he said, “I do assure you.”

For a moment he was not quite sure what he was intended to do with the slim hand she extended to him. But before he could make an utter idiot of himself by taking it and kissing it—he turned hot with discomfort at the realization that he had been about to do that—he understood the lady wished to be handed into her carriage.

He took her hand and looked down at it as he led her to the open door of the carriage. It was almost lost in his own—small and slender. And warm. It burned him through the white glove so that he wanted to snatch his own away. But she was talking.

“I would guess, Captain,” she said, “that your escorting me to Viseu is only a small part of your assignment?”

“Ma'am?” he said.

“I do not imagine that Arthur has directed you to escort me merely for the sake of your health,” she said. “You are too valuable to the army to be wasted on such a trivial duty, surely?”

Hell and damnation, he thought, why had Wellington not assigned this task to a man born and bred to gallantry? He was aware that she had given him his cue to bow and simper and lavish her with pretty speeches. She was begging to be flattered and adored and worshiped.

“I am rejoining my regiment, ma'am,” he said. “I am pleased if I can be of some service to you.”

“Pleased.” Her eyes laughed at him as she paused at the foot of the carriage steps. “But your regiment is not at Viseu, Captain. Are not most of the riflemen watching the border?”

“I believe so, ma'am,” he said.

“Perhaps you go to Viseu because Arthur is there, then,” she said. “Viscount Wellington, that is. Perhaps he has some . . . special mission for you?” It was a question.

He was suddenly reminded forcefully that she was French, and dredged his mind for some pretty words. He was not about to be
interrogated by a lovely and wily woman, especially one who was half-French.

“Perhaps he does, ma'am,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And perhaps that special mission will be accomplished when I deliver you safe and sound to your friends in Viseu.”

“Ah.” She laughed outright. “I understand, Captain. But it was nicely said. How far do we go today?”

“I thought perhaps Montachique,” he said.

“Montachique?” She raised her eyebrows. “We could go there for an afternoon stroll, Captain. I was merely hoping you would not try to push farther than Torres Vedras. I have friends there.”

He felt somewhat cheered as he handed her into the carriage and watched her seat herself beside her plump chaperone. A dove beside a hawk. An angel beside the devil. And he was growing feathers for brains. Unless her words were mere bravado, perhaps after all she was willing to travel and would not forever be calling for stops along the way.

“Very well, ma'am,” he said. “Torres Vedras it will be for tonight. You will inform me if you tire before then and I will make other arrangements.”

She looked at him and laughed, the sound one of pure amusement.

And he was relieved about one other thing too, he thought as he closed the door of the carriage, stepped forward to confer for a moment with her coachman, and mounted his horse again. She had friends with whom she could stay at Torres Vedras. He would not, then, at least for the first night, have to procure her rooms at a public inn.

His scowl returned as he followed the white fairy-tale coach on
its slow progress out through the archway from the courtyard and onto the streets of Lisbon.

“A
H
,”
Joana said, leaning forward in her seat and peering out through the carriage window, “a royal send-off, Matilda. Do you suppose Captain Blake will be annoyed? I had the distinct impression that he was less than pleased at the sight of my white carriage and horses. He expects nothing but troubles and delays from them, merely because they are white. Do you think he disapproves of me?”

But her companion was given no chance to reply. The marquesa was lowering the window and smiling and extending a hand.

“Duncan,” she said. “You have come to see me on my way. And Jack.” She removed her hand from Colonel Lord Wyman's and placed it in Major Hanbridge's. “How wonderful.”

Captain Blake, she saw with some satisfaction, was scowling at the necessity of drawing his horse to a halt even before they had left Lisbon.

“I have time to ride only a short distance with you, Joana,” the colonel said. “As far as the pass, maybe. Hanbridge, the lucky dog, will be able to accompany you all the way to Torres Vedras.”

“Will he?” she said. “What is at Torres Vedras, Jack?”

He shrugged. “Unimportant business, Joana,” he said. “A mere nuisance, except that it gives me the opportunity to ride beside your carriage.”

“Ah,” she said, “military matters. I understand. Duncan, do give my coachman the signal to move on. Captain Blake is looking stern and unamused.” She turned her most charming smile on her official escort. He did not smile back.

“And so,” she said to Matilda, sitting back in her seat again, “the tedium of the journey is to be relieved at least for a while.”

And normally it
was
a tedious journey, along a winding road and up hills and down hills. But she had no intention of letting this one be as dull as the journey from Viseu had been no more than a week before. She had planned that already. Now her plan was certain of success.

And so when they stopped for luncheon, she sighed and looked wistful. “Men are so fortunate,” she said, “not to be obliged to travel everywhere in stuffy carriages. How I would love to be on horseback, feeling the fresh air against my face, smelling the orange groves and the vineyards. How lovely it would be to ride over the Montachique Pass.” She rested her elbow on the table and set her chin in her hand and stared off into the middle distance.

“If I had had the forethought to bring a lady's saddle with me,” Jack Hanbridge said gallantly, “you might have ridden my horse, Joana, while I rode in your carriage.”

She smiled dazzlingly at him.

“I shall take you up before me, Joana,” Lord Wyman said, “so that you may ride over the pass.”

“How sweet of you, Duncan,” she said, touching her fingers briefly to the back of his hand. “But you do not have the time to ride over the pass. You have to get back to Lisbon.”

“I wish I did not,” he said. And then he turned to the silent member of their party, as she had known he would. “You must take her up, Blake.”

He was not pleased. She could see that. He was not going to be easy to flirt with—a thought that she found stimulating. She looked at him and her eyes laughed at him. The wistfulness was gone.

“You would be more comfortable in your carriage, ma'am,” he said.

“But comfort can be tedious,” she said.

“Then it is settled,” Lord Wyman said briskly. “I must be on my way, Joana, though I hate to leave you.”

And so a mere ten minutes later Joana had had her way—as she always did—though no one seemed particularly pleased about it except her, she thought. Duncan had been dejected over having to take his leave of her, Matilda was sitting in disapproving silence in the carriage, Jack was berating himself as a slowtop for not thinking of suggesting that he take her up before him, and Captain Blake was merely looking displeased.

“You wish me to the devil,” she said to him, “so that you could ride without delay to rejoin your precious regiment, Captain. Though I do not believe that is to be your destination, is it?”

But he was not to be drawn on that point, she discovered approvingly. No man who was an experienced spy should fall into the type of trap she was trying to set for him.

She liked the sensation of riding up before his saddle, his powerfully muscled thighs on either side of her, his arms circling her loosely as he held to the reins. But her attention was not all on the man with whom she rode. She looked all about her, and she carried on a bright conversation with Jack Hanbridge, since Captain Blake was nothing of a conversationalist.

“Oh,” she said when they were high among the crags of the Montachique Pass and she could see downward, “the orange groves are all black.” She had come to Lisbon by the Mafra road the week before.

“A fire, I believe,” Major Hanbridge said.

“But in more than one orchard, Jack?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said. “An arsonist, I gather.”

“How strange,” she said, and she began to look about her with renewed interest. The stony crags of the pass were wild and peaked. And yet a few of them had the appearance of an almost manmade smoothness, particularly those that descended to the road. And some looked almost as if they had been leveled off on top.

“One might stand at the top and throw stones down on poor travelers,” she said with a laugh, “without any fear of being caught. The rocks next to the road are sheer.”

“And so they are,” Major Hanbridge said. “Nature's peculiarity, Joana. But you need not fear. I have not heard of brigands in this area. We should increase our pace, perhaps, Bob. Storms have a habit of hitting the pass unexpectedly.”

Joana laughed. “There is not a cloud in the sky, Jack.”

But Captain Blake obediently nudged his horse to a slightly faster pace. He too had been having a good look about him. And she looked up into his face to find him regarding Jack Hanbridge from narrowed and shrewd eyes.

“We will stop at the next convenient spot, sir,” he said, “so that the marquesa can resume her place in her carriage.”

Joana said nothing. She had a little skill of her own at observing carefully. She could recognize peculiarities at a glance. More important, she could detect atmosphere with some ease. Jack wanted them through the pass without further delay, and Captain Blake had picked up the message just as she had, and was immediately obedient to a superior officer. She glanced down once more at the blackened orange groves and over her shoulder at the smooth, sheer sides of rock. And she felt an inward shiver. Of fear? Of excitement? She was not certain which.

Joana traveled the rest of the way to Torres Vedras in her carriage. And there Major Hanbridge took his leave of her, and Captain Blake took himself off to an inn after seeing her safely to the house of her friends.

She spent a pleasant evening there, though they had mainly only worries to talk about. The old Moorish castle and the chapel of Saint Vincent, standing on the twin towers of hills that had given the town its name, were being fortified by gangs of peasants, as were other towns round about. But how could fortifying an old castle and a monastery hold back the might of the French armies from Lisbon if the British and Portuguese forces could not do it? It would be all over before the summer was out. The French would be back in Lisbon and the English would be drowning at sea. And pity help the
Portuguese who lay in the path of the French armies coming from Salamanca to Lisbon.

It was all very depressing. Joana was in the habit of trusting Viscount Wellington, as she told her friends. But there was, of course, only so much one man could do.

But she thought privately of the arsonist and his blackened groves and of the strangely sheer sides of the normally craggy rocks beside the road through the Montachique Pass. And she thought of Major Hanbridge being fearful of a storm on a perfectly clear day, and of the strange fact that he—an engineering officer—had business in Torres Vedras. And she thought of the penetrating look Captain Blake had leveled on him.

Perhaps there was something, she thought. Perhaps the situation was not after all as hopeless as it seemed. But she kept her counsel. Like Captain Blake, she too could refuse to be drawn when it seemed perhaps wiser to remain silent.

*   *   *

They
reached Obidos the following day. They could possibly have traveled farther, but the marquesa had a villa there. Besides, Captain Blake thought, she was probably tired after two days of travel, though to give her her due, she had not complained and had always succeeded in looking fresh—and lovely, of course— whenever he had handed her out of the carriage, and even after that rather dusty ride over the pass. And she had always had a smile for him. And the white of her clothes had remained unsullied by dirt or the incidental smudges of travel.

The medieval town of Obidos rose majestically above the surrounding vineyards, its rust-colored walls topped by the many-colored roofs of its white houses and by the square castle. Captain Blake had not seen the town before. It was sad to think what fate would befall it if the French indeed succeeded in pressing this far into
Portugal. And yet the signs that the people—and perhaps more than just the people, too, if he had interpreted correctly the appearance of the Montachique Pass and Hanbridge's agitation as they rode through it—were preparing to defend it, which had been so evident between Lisbon and Torres Vedras the day before, were absent here. The town basked sleepily in the late-afternoon sun, as if its inhabitants had never heard of war, as if its castle had been built only to look picturesque.

The streets of the town were narrow and steep and winding. The marquesa's carriage moved slowly until it turned sharply to pass through the arched doorway into the courtyard of a cheerful white villa that fronted on the street. Captain Blake followed it through, ducking his head beneath the arch, which was not, after all, as low as it looked. He dismounted and waited to help the lady from her carriage.

“Captain,” she said, setting a white-gloved hand in his as he helped her to descend. She looked as fresh and cheerful as she had when they had left Torres Vedras that morning. “Welcome to Obidos. You must stay here tonight.”

He cringed from the thought. He would never be comfortable in what was obviously an opulently appointed villa. And never comfortable under the same roof as the marquesa.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he said, moving to one side as the coachman handed her companion from the carriage and she bustled inside the house, “but it would not be fitting. I shall find an inn.”

“And spend half the night fighting off fleas and other vermin?” she said with a shrug. “But the choice is yours. Come to dinner at least. You really must. I have only Matilda to dine with otherwise, and we said all that was to be said to each other long years ago. You must come and entertain us with your conversation, Captain.” Her eyes mocked him in an expression he was becoming familiar with.

And she had him at a disadvantage again, he realized. Almost any gentleman of his acquaintance doubtless had a whole arsenal of excuses that might be dipped into on such an occasion. He had no
wish to dine with the marquesa and her silent, disapproving companion. And of course he had no conversation to share with them. She knew that very well. And he did not doubt that that was the very reason why she had invited him. She seemed to delight in setting him up to look like a big dumb ox. But he could think of not a single excuse.

“Thank you, ma'am.” He nodded curtly and turned away to his horse. But a thought struck him, and he turned back again. “May I escort you to the house?”

She smiled slowly. She loved to observe his not knowing what was quite good etiquette. “I believe I can walk alone between here and the house without being set upon by brigands or worse, Captain,” she said. “Until later, then. Come early. Come in one hour's time. Not a moment later. I hate to be kept waiting.”

He bowed awkwardly and turned away. And felt her eyes on him as he mounted and guided his horse across the courtyard and through the doorway out onto the steep, narrow street.

Joana watched him go and smiled to herself. Any other man she knew would have taken advantage of every possible opportunity that had presented itself during the past two days. He would have ridden in the carriage and tied his horse behind, or at least ridden alongside the carriage and encouraged her to drive with the window down. He would have taken her up before him on his horse more times than the one that had been forced upon him. He would have tried to wangle an invitation from her friends at Torres Vedras. He would have leapt at the chance to stay here at her villa tonight. He would not have looked as if he were drowning in quicksand when she had invited him to dinner.

But Captain Blake was not any other man, unfortunately. Oh, and fortunately too, she thought, her smile growing more amused. She might have saved herself the trouble of coming all the way from Viseu and of returning with his escort, for all she had accomplished so far. Was there a more silent or a more morose man—or a more attractive one—in existence? She was going to have to do something
very positive and very fast if the worth of this tedious trip was to be salvaged. She walked purposefully toward the house.