Coming Home (2 page)

J
ULIANA COLEBROOK TURNED away from the narrow window where she had been gulping draughts of fresh air before plunging back into the oppressive room that housed more than fifty men. The hospital was perched halfway up a hill outside Porto. The citizens had wisely isolated their sick and injured away from the thickly populated town centre. An advantage of this was that the hospital was blessed with an occasional breeze fresh off the sea.

She gazed down the rows of beds, keeping an eye out for incipient problems and prayed that Dr Barreiro's bell would not ring again today. Now that she was the most experienced worker here, he often asked her to assist him with complicated operations such as amputations and head wounds. Three years of such work had not inured her to its horrors.

In the distance a bell tinkled imperatively.
Deus
! She was summoned. Her prayers had not been answered. Her stomach began its familiar churning.

Patting a patient's hand here and there, breathing lightly so as not to choke on the malodorous air, she hurried down the room.

But when she reached the doorway, she stopped. Striding towards her was … it was
him
. The one for whom she had broken all her personal rules. ‘
Thank you
,' she heard herself whispering. ‘
Obrigada
.'

During his hospital stay she had gone each evening to his bedside, unable to go home without assuring herself that he was safe. He had been only one brave man amongst many, yet something about the expression in Brigade-Major Hetherington's hazel eyes told her he liked her – he liked her very much – and he had no intention of doing anything about it.

Fine. She liked him too, and could do nothing about it. He must fight a war in Portugal and Spain, and she must find a way to escape from Portugal to the security of her English relatives. Besides, there was that thing in her past that meant she could never, never give herself to any man.

She had visited him at Dr Barreiro's request. ‘I wish you to talk to a certain brigade-major,' he had told her. ‘The one who blacked your eye when—'

‘I remember,' she'd said quickly. How could she not? Even in her pain she'd seen the appalled look on the officer's face when he realized he'd struck her. He had been threshing around, struggling to fight off the hospital attendants. For some reason he was desperate to return to the battlefield.

Her eye had not hurt for long. She'd had worse.

‘I am unhappy about that man,' Dr Barreiro had explained. ‘He is world-weary. Physically' – and here the good doctor had spread his hands in explanation – ‘he's a fine specimen, but in his heart and mind …' And Dr Barreiro had shaken his head.

It had taken her only a few minutes with Brigade-Major Hetherington to understand what Dr Barreiro meant. Well, she'd helped soldiers like this before. Sometimes a woman could achieve what all the doctors in the world could not. Although she'd visited him at Dr Barreiro's behest, from the very first evening she had enjoyed Colywn Hetherington's self-deprecating humour and quiet assurance. It was a relief to find humour in the angst-ridden atmosphere of the hospital. And oh,
how
she had missed him and worried about him when he'd gone back to the front.

Now here he was, hale and hearty. Her gabbled prayers, sandwiched between her difficult work and sleepless nights had been answered. Mr Hetherington might not know it, but he had shared many a sleepless night with Juliana.

‘Miss Colebrook.'

His voice sounded just the same. Mellow and smooth and subdued, a tone that hinted at a well of sorrow beneath the easy-going façade.

‘Brigade-Major Hetherington! What a pleasure to see you again.'
Inferno
! The words had bubbled out before she could claim them back. She sounded too eager, as if she had been sitting around waiting for his return.

He bowed, then smiled. His even white teeth, unlike many she saw, spoke of a strong, healthy body. But he was thinner. His face was drawn and he looked older. Much older.

He stepped forward. ‘Dr Barreiro has given me permission to take you for a walk, should you wish it of course,' he added hastily. ‘If you cannot bring yourself to excuse my appalling manners on our first unfortunate meeting, I shall understand.'

She smiled. He had still not forgiven himself for that incident. ‘Well …' She glanced down at her feet.

He clicked his tongue. ‘I'm sorry. I should have remembered those aching feet,' he said softly. Their eyes met in a shared memory of her sitting at his bedside, surreptitiously toeing off her shoes to wriggle her tired feet.

‘But a cup of tea at the English tea house would be very acceptable,' she blurted out. What if he thought she didn't want to accompany him?

He laughed, and she enjoyed it.

‘A tea house? Wherever will we find a tea house?' he asked, puzzled.

‘I will show you.' She tugged off her apron. Oh,
how
she wished she'd known he was coming. She would have worn her best dress. ‘When the English troops routed the French from Porto, an enterprising Englishwoman converted a coffee house to a tea house. There are even tea roses growing outside the door. So lovely!' She was conscious of a lightness in the air that had not been there a short while ago. Even her feet no longer hurt. She collected her parasol from behind the door and indicated with the handle. ‘In this direction.' She scurried out before he could change his mind.

H
E STOLE A surreptitious glance. What had happened to her? She was thin, much too thin. The girlishness had gone from her face and been replaced with a patient stoicism. Her deep brown-black hair was just as thick, and the magnolia skin was as smooth as ever, but the dewiness and gloss were gone. Lord, it was good to see her, still with the same accented lilt to her voice, and the natural, graceful sway of her hips that owed nothing to the careful tuition of a young ladies' academy in Bath.

‘That is the trouble with the English,' he heard himself say. ‘They are great travellers. But wherever they go, they wish to be back in England.'

She grimaced. ‘Not my father. He liked to keep going and going.' Then she bowed her head and fiddled with the handle of her parasol.

‘Why did your father want to keep going?' he asked, as they turned into the street.

There was a short pause.

‘Well, antiquarians have enquiring minds. Too enquiring sometimes,' she said with acerbity. ‘There was always something else to see a few miles further on.'

‘The grass is always greener…?'

‘Precisely.'

He wondered at the bitterness in her voice.

‘I'm sorry,' she said after an uncomfortable silence. ‘But because of Papa I am marooned here, desperate to return to England and unable to do so.'

‘I thought your childhood was spent in Portugal,' he said.

As they entered the tea shop she said, ‘And in England and Egypt as well.'

He stopped. ‘What? He dragged you to all his working sites?'

‘My mother also, of course,' she said, as they sat down at a delicate little gate-legged table. He could not cram his long legs under the table because his left leg was still painful to bend for any length of time. In
the end he compromised by pushing the spindly chair back from the table and spreading his legs out straight.

He nodded to her to carry on with her story and she continued, gazing at the whitewashed wall, seeing the long ago. ‘
Mãe
was of a delicate constitution, poor darling. She begged him to let the two of us go back to Portugal to live with her parents so he could explore to his heart's content. But Papa liked to have
Mãe
at his side, to prepare his meals just the way he liked them. She was very good at making a comfortable home out of whichever hut or cave we lived in at the time. And it was not all bad. Sometimes we stayed at the homes of fellow enthusiasts and they spoiled me abominably. Of course, it then became twice as hard once we were on our own.'

Colly nodded. He knew what she meant. Sometimes after one had bivouacked in a luxurious place such as a disused
pousada
or
castelo
, it was depressing to spend the next couple of weeks on the march sleeping under hedgerows and in pig byres.

He cleared his throat, trying for a casual tone. ‘You never told me – where are your parents now?'

Absorbed in pouring tea, she did not look up.

‘
Mãe
died when I was ten and my maternal grandparents sent me to the convent of the Good Sisters of Hope in Coimbra. When my grandparents died of the fever, Papa took me back to Egypt with him to be his assistant.'

Colly bit into the dainty scone in front of him. Scones and jam and clotted cream here, in Porto. It was like a dream.

Or a nightmare if one took Miss Colebrook's background into account. He employed his mouth and teeth in chewing his way through three dainty scones. It was better that she thought him a greedy hog than that he opened his mouth and told her what he thought of her father.

‘So why are you here?' she asked, her head tilted to one side like a robin.

Did she want a potted history of his life, or did she mean, ‘Why are you here
now
?'

‘I am on my way home to England,' he said baldly. She would not get a potted biography from him. He had no intention of telling her the story of his life – why he had joined the army; why he was in Portugal. She would cringe away from him if he told her the truth.

‘Are you on leave?' she asked, sounding interested.

He settled back in his chair, smiling. ‘I have sold out. I received an offer of employment from a friend.'

She bounced in her chair. ‘How wonderful!'

‘You don't know
how
wonderful, Miss Colebrook. His letter came right after the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro.'

She smothered a smile, presumably because of his appalling accent, and for a moment he was drawn out of his tale to admire the way the creamy skin pinched at the corners of her mouth.

‘I think I've become battle weary,' he said. ‘But I was never so relieved and excited in my life than when I received his letter.'

‘It
is
what you really want, isn't it? Not just an excuse to escape? Uh …'

‘At first I asked myself that question, Miss Colebrook. But I think I'm doing the right thing. It is work I am familiar with and can assimilate quickly. And I like the family very much. Most of all, they know me and trust me.' He shut his mouth. Why on earth was he warbling on and on? He had better keep silent before he admitted just how familiar he was with estate work and why. Those fruitless years when he had worked so hard as his father's stud manager only to have his every decision questioned and countermanded still rankled.

She stared at him for a moment. Her cup was raised in the air. ‘Could you take me back to England with you?'

He choked on his tea and rattled the miniscule cup back onto its saucer.

‘I-I …'

Blushing, she continued, ‘I do not mean anything more than that, Brigade-Major. I am determined to go to England. I have relatives there. We corresponded when my father died, and they suggested then that I should go to stay with them, but at the time I had only just begun work at Sao Nazaire. Dr Barreiro expected me to stay at least one year. I have been stuck here ever since. I understand my cousins are in straitened circumstances, so of course I will seek employment of some sort.'

Colly opened his mouth and shut it again. He stared at the beautiful young woman in front of him. He had no idea what to say.

His appalled silence said it for him.

‘I see,' she said at last. ‘It is quite all right. I understand.' She traced patterns on her reticule with a gloved finger, her head lowered. ‘I'm sorry to be so … so … unladylike. I've startled you. But I am not acquainted with any English families with whom I could travel, and I've no relatives left in Portugal.'

Without realizing what he was doing, he covered her hand with his. ‘I will be sailing on a troop ship, Miss Colebrook. It is most unsuitable for a woman on her own.' He felt the gloved hand beneath his quiver.

‘Most of the Englishwomen here came out on troop ships,' she argued.

Colly felt a nervous sweat break out on his neck. What did she think she was doing, putting temptation in front of him like this? ‘But, Miss Colebrook, what if your relatives are unsympathetic and you find yourself in England with no one to turn to?'

‘I found myself in Portugal with no one to turn to in a time of war, yet I survived. Please.'

If she hadn't tacked on that ‘please' he would have been all right. He would have told her that – that what? God, he was only fooling himself. He'd given in the moment she'd said, ‘Could you take me back to England with you?'

Since she wanted this so very much he would help her, but he would certainly not accompany her. He swallowed hard. ‘Very well. Since you are determined upon your course, I will find an acquaintance to take you under their wing. We might be able to employ a respectable companion at the receiving office. But I am the
last
person you should look to as your protector. I am totally unsuited for the role.'

There. He'd said it. She could make of it what she wanted.

Her answer was unexpected. ‘Rubbish. If you do not care for the responsibility, then say so. Do not make feeble excuses.' She lurched to her feet, snapping the handle of her parasol against the table in the process. ‘
Inferno
! Now see what you've made me do.'

‘Sit down, Miss Colebrook. Sit!' he snapped, when she would have flounced off.

‘I am not your dog, sir,' she grated.

‘No, indeed. The dogs I used to own did not snarl,' he bit back. ‘Very well. I shall tell you the truth. And then you will see.'

‘See what?'

‘Why I am not a suitable escort for you.'

She stared at him and blinked, an expression of utter confusion on her face. ‘I do not understand.'

He gazed straight ahead, refusing to look at her. ‘I purchased a commission in the army five years ago because I had no other choice. My father threw me out.' He drew a deep breath. ‘The family disowned me because a young woman accused me of … of raping her.'

Miss Colebrook stiffened.

Colly persevered. ‘When I refused to marry her, my father—' He shrugged. There was no need to go any further. The horrified expression on her face said it all.

‘Oh!' She shrank away from him, a look in her eyes part fear, part something else he could not fathom.

‘
Now
do you see?' He bit the words out as if he were chewing nails.

It was exactly as he had expected. Now she feared him and knew him for the worthless animal that he was. Well, she had forced it out of him. He hoped she was happy with what she'd found.

For a minute she sat quite still, her dark eyes clouded, her hands clenched around her reticule. Then she rallied. ‘I see. That puts a different complexion on things.'

He had to admire her quick recovery. ‘Precisely. I'm sorry, Miss Colebrook. You must be wishing me at Jericho,' he said, scrambling to his feet.

And since this was the last time he would see her, he could damned well tell her how he really felt. ‘It has been an honour to know you, Miss Colebrook. I will always remember you with … with …' Ah, to hell with it. He gave up, bowed stiffly and stalked away.

 

Getting on the ship's manifest was difficult but his seniority obtained him the last cabin.

‘The
Maximus
and the
Resolution
are off the coast, sir. They're due tomorrow morning,' the clerk commented.

Colly nodded curtly. He didn't give a tinker's curse what he sailed back to England in. He just wanted to get out of here.

He returned to the inn where he'd left his horse and baggage earlier in the day and enquired where he might sell his horse. The ostler directed him to a larger inn further down the road, explaining in halting English that the larger inns always had need of horses with stamina to rent out.

‘Poor Marcus,' Colly whispered to his horse as he haggled for a good price. Although the 60th was a foot regiment, most of the officers owned their own horses and Colly and Marcus had been together now for eighteen months. Marcus was exceptional. ‘I'd give anything to take you back to England,' Colly told the horse, as he stroked the soft black nose for the last time. ‘But I can't afford to wait for another ship. These two are packed to the gills and they refuse to take any horses. I'm sorry, old chap. So sorry.'

And he walked away without looking back. After all, it was what he was best at, wasn't it? Disappointing people and walking away without looking back.