Marrying the Royal Marine (13 page)

He could have sobbed with relief when the Sergeant untied their hands, handed him a dusty blanket, and gestured towards a beehive-shaped stone cairn. ‘You two will stay in the granary tonight,’ Cadotte said.

He had to go on his knees to get into the granary and Polly bent double. The Sergeant put in a bucket. ‘For your needs,’ he said gruffly, and to Hugh’s ears, almost with an undertone of compassion. ‘I have no candle or lantern. And do not worry about mice, Madame Junot. It’s been picked clean. See you in the morning.’ He closed the door behind him and threw the bolt. They were in total darkness.

Hugh stood up, gratified that the ceiling was just tall enough to accommodate him. He put his arm on Polly’s shoulder again, and walked with her around the granary, touching the wall, feeling for any weakness. There was none. From what little he knew of Portuguese history, the villagers’ ancestors had built the granary to resist Huns and Visigoths and Moors.
They have come and gone and now we are here
, he thought, as the weight of the whole débâcle clamped down on his shoulders like mortar.

With a groan, he sat down and tugged Polly down beside him. Without a word, he sat cross-legged, when he could force his legs to move, and pulled her on to his lap.

It was all the invitation she needed to do what she had been holding back all day. She put her arms around his neck and sobbed into his tunic, as he knew she would. And somehow, he knew she wouldn’t be startled if he joined in. They cried together, and soon, to his own sorely tried heart, she was crooning and rubbing her hand on his back.

‘I’m sorry you had to be Sister Maria’s witness, Hugh.’

Her soft words, whispered through her own tears, comforted him as nothing else could have. He almost believed her.

‘I have dealt out my share of death and destruction, thanks to Boney, but I have never been jolted like that before,’ he confessed, hardly able to get out the words.

She sat up in his lap and found his face in the dark, pressing her hands against his temples. ‘He shouldn’t have made you a party to that!’

Her voice was fierce, and he was glad he could not see her face in the darkness. He was a professional Marine engaged in a long war, and that was his life. Either she was the world’s greatest actress, surpassed only by Siddons herself, or this young woman sitting on him in the dark didn’t want him to suffer for the shocking death he had been forced to deal out. She seemed to care less for her own safety, than that he not suffer. It touched him.

When her tears stopped, she sniffed a few times, then managed a watery chuckle. ‘I’m about to commit such a social solecism,’ she said. She leaned sideways and he could feel her tugging at her skirt. In another moment she was blowing her nose on the fabric.

‘Uh, I do have a handkerchief in my tunic,’ he said. ‘You should have asked.’

She leaned back against him again, warming his heart. ‘Save it. We might really need it later,’ she told him. Her voice faltered. ‘At least, I hope there is a “later”.’

‘So do I, Brandon, so do I,’ he said.

‘That’s “Polly, dear”,’ she reminded him, and he smiled.

‘There is something I should do,’ she told him. He heard a rip of fabric. ‘Hugh, take off your tunic and shirt and let me bandage your arm.’

He had to think a moment like a village idiot, because his wound seemed to have happened years ago. ‘It’s not bleeding now,’ he said.

‘Look you here,’ she demanded. ‘I ripped off this strip and I intend to use it. Do what I said.’

‘You’re a taskmaster,’ he teased, as he unbuttoned his tunic and removed it after she got off his lap. He unbuttoned his shirt and winced when he pulled his arm out of the sleeve. ‘Learn that from Laura Brittle?’

‘No. From my dear Nana, when she scolds her three-year-old,’ Polly retorted.

She felt along his arm, which made him smile in the dark, then rested her finger lightly on the track of the ball that had slammed into him on the
barco rabelo
. ‘We will pretend I am spreading on some of the salve that Philemon formulates,’ she told him. ‘At least it appears to have merely grazed your arm. Are you bulletproof?’

‘Nearly so. Ah, that should do it, wife. You’re a handy little wench.’

She laughed softly. ‘You are a rascal! There is no one you need to impress in this wretched granary. There now. Put on your coat again.’

Polly made no objection when he pulled her on to his lap again. She was silent for a long time, but he knew she wasn’t asleep. When she spoke, her voice was timid. ‘I should be braver in the dark, but I am not, Colonel.’

‘That’s Hugh,’ he pointed out prosaically. ‘“Hugh, darling”, to be exact. You keep forgetting.’

Her voice turned apologetic. ‘I should beg your pardon for saying we were married, but I couldn’t think of anything else on short notice that might help us both.’

‘It was the only thing I could think of, too, on short notice.’

‘And now you have got me with child, Hugh…’

‘…darling,’ he finished.

He felt her laugh more than heard it. ‘“Hugh, darling”, then! We will be in trouble if the French keep us for too many months. Even
they
can count!’

He joined in her laughter, but sobered quickly. ‘Setting aside our fictitious fertility, we’re in murky water, Brandon.’

She nodded and sighed, and he kissed the top of her head before he realised there wasn’t any need in the pitch-black granary to fool any Frenchman. ‘I fear these French, but we have reason to be wary of how desperate is their own plight.’

‘Desperate?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I learned a great deal in Lisbon about insurgents. They call themselves
guerrilleros
, and they do not play fair. I am reminded of my Commandant’s disgust of Americans in that late unpleasantness in the United States. The rebels shot from behind trees, and dropped logs across roads, robbed supply trains, and engaged in vastly ungentlemanlike behaviour.’

‘I thought that was the point of war.’

‘Well put, Brandon, you practical chit. You don’t think armies should just line up carefully and shoot at each other?’

‘Seems a little stupid,’ she replied, and he was glad to hear her voice getting drowsy. He didn’t plan to ever sleep again, but it would be good if she could.

‘Apparently those shadowy armies of Spain and Portugal would agree with you. It could very well be that this squad of Dragoons is in considerable danger from guerrillas. Besides that, I think they are a forlorn hope.’

‘You did mention that. I don’t understand.’

‘This may have been almost a suicide mission,’ he explained. ‘From what I learned in Lisbon, Admiral Popham’s landing north of us at Santander is finally threatening French power in León. I think Sergeant Cadotte’s commanding officer is desperate to shut off any trafficking in information, because his position is none too secure. Just a suspicion, mind.’

She digested that thought, then stated calmly, ‘It’s a good thing you have on a red coat, isn’t it?’

‘And I intend to keep it on, and you close by me at all times.’ He kissed her head again and tightened his arms around her. ‘It’s this way, Brandon—we truly have to think of ourselves as married. We must trust each other completely and look out for each other. I meant what I said about never letting you out of my sight. I intend to watch over you, as I did on the ship.’

‘You are the kindest man I have ever met, but you are probably regretting you jumped into the
barco
so impulsively. Was that only this morning?’

He pulled her back against him and rested his chin on her head. ‘
Au contraire
, wife. That is the one thing about this day that I do
not
regret,’ he declared, his voice firm. ‘If I had not been along, there is no telling what would have happened to you at São Jobim.’

‘Yes, there is,’ she replied quietly. ‘We know what would have happened to me.’

‘Then it was for the best.’

He didn’t think his heart could have felt any fuller just then, except that it did when she found his hand, and kissed the back of it like a supplicant. ‘I am for ever in your debt,’ she told him, then pulled his hand across her body to her shoulder until she was completely entwined in his arms.

There was no reason for him to feel even the slightest optimism, but something about holding Brandon in his arms lightened his mood. ‘You know, Sergeant Cadotte was entirely wrong,’ he told her.

‘Not about Sister Maria Madelena, he wasn’t,’ Polly said.

‘No, he wasn’t.’ He compromised, found her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. ‘I certainly didn’t marry you for your money.’

She was silent for a minute, and then started to laugh. There was nothing of hysteria in her laugh, so he found himself smiling in the dark, and then laughing, too.

‘You are more of a rogue than I suspected,’ she declared, when she could speak.

‘But not a mercenary one,’ he added, which sent her into another peal of laughter.

It was easier to settle down then, his arms still tight around her. She sighed, laughed low once more, and then slept. He stared ahead into the darkness, knowing that it would be ages before he would not see Sister Maria Madelena pointing the pistol at her own throat.

‘God forgive her,’ he whispered into the gloom. ‘God protect us.’

Chapter Thirteen

P
olly panicked when she woke and could not feel her spectacles on her face. Terrified, she patted the ground beside her, trying not to wake up the Colonel as she searched. She stopped only when he gently took her hand and touched it to his uniform front, where she felt the outline of the glass.

‘I took them off you at some point last night. What I cannot understand, Polly, dear, is why these pesky things didn’t break yesterday. Do you want ’um now?’

She shook her head. ‘No. There’s nothing to see. Do you think it’s morning?’

‘It must be,’ he told her. He cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to excuse my vast indelicacy, but I need to get you off my lap and edge gracefully around this granary for private purposes. You might hum loudly to drown out the symphony, or marvel at the simplicity of male anatomy.’

‘That
is
indelicate,’ she agreed, then laughed. ‘Just do your business! We’re not standing much on ceremony, are we?’

‘No, indeed. We cannot.’

She helped the Colonel to his feet when he found he could not stand, after all those hours of holding her on his lap. It took him a moment to stand up straight.

‘Good God, Brandon. I will announce to you right now that I am feeling every single year this morning! I am also never going to joke again about men on horseback. How do they do it? I am still in pain from gripping that damned beast. My kingdom for an ocean.’

He stood another moment in silence. She was too shy to ask him if he needed assistance in walking across the granary. After copious cursing under his breath that she chose to ignore, he got himself in motion. In another moment, she heard the homely sound of water against the wall.

When he returned to her side, it was her turn, moving slowly in the other direction until she found the bucket. When she finished, she groped along the wall, following the sound of the Colonel’s voice until she ran into him again. When she sat by his side this time, his arm seemed to go around her automatically.

He yawned. ‘I think I could eat a whole pig, but something tells me we’re not going to be well fed on this journey.’

‘I must be philosophical,’ she told him. ‘I told myself when I came to Portugal that this would be a good time to get rid of what Miss Pym called my baby fat.’

‘Miss Pym be damned,’ he replied mildly, ‘and spare me skinny females. I might remind you that you’re supposed to be eating for two.’

‘Wretch!’ she said with feeling. ‘Perhaps to while away the hours, we should play a game of “It Could Be Worse”.’ The words weren’t out of her mouth before she saw Sister Maria Madelena, kneeling in the church. ‘No. No. Not that.’

‘No,’ the Colonel agreed. ‘We know it could be worse.’ He touched her head with his. ‘Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know already, Brandon.’

She thought a moment, remembering what he already knew about her that she had divulged on the trip across the Channel. ‘You already know I am the illegitimate daughter of a scoundrel whom you have resurrected and made into a wealthy man, for Sergeant Cadotte’s benefit, if I am taken care of. That was a nice touch, husband.’

‘Why, thank you,’ he said modestly. ‘If raising the dead to provide money in desperate situations doesn’t paint me as a Scot, I don’t know what would, considering my own French ancestry.’

She laughed. ‘Hugh, darling, I would say your ancestors were quick studies.’

‘They were, indeed, Polly, dear,’ he teased, unruffled. ‘There’s nothing like political intrigue, plus menace from Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council, to sharpen the mind, apparently. The original Philippe d’Anvers Junot obviously knew when to fold his tent and steal away. Evidently he also discovered he preferred oats and Calvinism to truffles and popes. What a resourceful man.’

Her laughter bounced back at her from the opposite wall. ‘Your French is so good. Does the ghost of Philippe Junot the First linger in your family’s schoolroom?’

The Colonel pulled her on to his lap again, and she couldn’t think of a single reason to object. ‘Our estate is too new to be haunted, Brandon! Your brain is overactive. We “Junnits” have always learned to speak French. It’s a family tradition. I was luckier than most—I have no particular ear for language, but in 1803 before that laughable Peace of Amiens, I spent six months cooling my heels in a French prison. What a tutorial.’

Polly squinted into the darkness, trying to see some evidence of dawn. ‘I hope you had more light than in here.’

‘Light and then some, Polly, dear. That southern coast of France is devilish hot.’

He didn’t say anything else, but she suddenly found herself longing for him to keep talking, to distract her from the granary, her hunger and the itch between her shoulder blades, and the fear that seemed to overlay every rational part of her brain.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said finally, speaking low, maybe not even wanting him to hear her. ‘Please keep talking.’

He did, to her relief, telling her about his childhood in Kirkcudbrightshire, where it rained six days out of seven; the gardens of madly blooming roses in everyone’s front garden; the hours he spent in small boats in the Firth of Solway; the year he chafed away at the University of Edinburgh until he convinced his father to see him into the Royal Marines; and his years in deepwater service, doing exactly what he loved.

As she listened to his musical accent and soothing voice, she realised how little her life was, in relation to his, how modest and unexceptionable. She knew that most women lived quiet lives at home. Her beloved sister Nana waited, agonised, and bore up magnificently under the strain of loving a man too often gone. Her equally well-loved sister Laura had chosen a different path, but it still revolved around her husband and her son, even as she used her own medical skills quietly in the shadow.

‘Women don’t amount to much,’ she said, when the Colonel finished.

‘What brought that on?’ he asking, laughing.

‘I was just thinking about how little I do, compared to you. We women wait, mostly.’ She smiled in the dark, casting away whatever of her reserve that remained of the intimate situation in which she now found herself. ‘We have husbands and babies, real
or
imagined, and that is all.’

‘“That is all”, eh? I doubt even Nana Worthy realizes how much her Captain yearns for her. I suspect she is his centre of calm in a world gone mad. He probably even calls her his True North. I would, and I don’t even know your sister.’

Leaning back against the Colonel, Polly digested what he had said. Her first reaction was embarrassment, because this man she admired had no compunction about speaking his mind in such a frank way. She was struck also by her own words. ‘We women’ had seldom entered her mind before, let alone her vocabulary. Maybe her years as a student, and then the cushion, three years ago, of discovering her own protective sisters, had helped to keep her young. Maybe it was the casual way she now sat on the Colonel’s lap and how suddenly she was so aware of his arms around her. Something stirred inside her, and it wasn’t hunger or fear.

Maybe it had even stirred yesterday on the
barco
, when she dragged the partially conscious Colonel Junot on to her lap to protect him. Protect him from
what
, when women were so easily thrown aside and trampled on?
I thought I could save him
, she told herself in the gloom of the granary.
I felt stronger than lions, just then.

‘Maybe you’ll understand better when you fall in love some day, Polly, dear,’ the Colonel said in her ear.

She had to think of something to lighten her mood, which was troubling her almost more than the total darkness and the potential brevity of her life. ‘You sound like someone who knows,’ she told him.

‘Aye, Polly, dear, I know what it is to love someone,’ he said after a lengthy pause.

I am put in my place
, Polly thought, embarrassed. Of course Colonel Junot had a lover somewhere. Why would he not? Who could there possibly be in the universe who did not think him attractive and worth more than gold?

She couldn’t think of another thing to say, but it didn’t matter, because the bolt was thrown on the granary’s small door, and it swung open to reveal bright morning outside. She squinted in the light, then glanced at the Colonel, who was doing the same thing. She also knew she should get off his lap, but his arms tightened around her.

‘I wish I knew what was coming, Polly, dear,’ he murmured. He loosened his grip. ‘Up you get, but I’m going out first.’

She willingly let him, not eager to have a soldier on the outside grab her hand. With a groan that made the soldiers outside laugh, the Colonel crawled through the entrance. Captured by the irrational terror that someone would slam the door now and leave her there in eternal darkness, Polly wanted to race after him. In another moment, Colonel Junot’s hand reached for her. She grasped it for a second, then crouched her way out of the granary.

Polly took his hand again and they stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the enemy, looking this morning like most men campaigning in any army: dirty, smelly, and barely awake. She thought of her brother-in-law Philemon glowering at the breakfast table until Laura brought him tea.

It was obvious there wouldn’t be any tea, and not even anything beyond yesterday’s hardtack, doled out in a smaller amount. When Hugh asked Cadotte if he could fetch water for all of them from the well in the square, the NCO only shrugged.

‘You would not wish it, Junnit,’ he replied. ‘The well is full of either Portuguese corpses or French ones. I didn’t look too closely.’

Polly shuddered and moved closer to the Colonel. Cadotte unbent enough to nod to her. ‘Madame Junnit, I do wish we had something more to offer you than hardtack. I truly do.’

It stung her to think the Sergeant was worried about her non-existent unborn child. All she could do was blush and avert her gaze from his, which—all things considered—was probably the correct attitude. Coupled with her lie, the knowledge of her hypocrisy only stung her more.

‘You are too kind, Sergeant,’ she murmured.

It was Cadotte’s turn to appear uneasy. He frowned and looked away, growling at some fictitious misdemeanor perpetrated by one or another of his hardened Dragoons to alleviate his embarrassment. Or so she thought, as she watched. ‘I must keep reminding myself that he is some woman’s husband,’ she whispered to the Colonel.

‘That will render the Sergeant less odious?’ Hugh asked, amused.

‘Certainly,’ she replied crisply. ‘Hugh, darling,’ she added, which made him chuckle.

Because there was no food, there was little preparation before the Sergeant gave the order for his men to mount. Lips twitching, he watched Colonel Junot heave himself into the saddle with a sigh and a grimace. Without a word, Cadotte tied his hands together again, then tied Polly’s together before lifting her gently into the saddle in front of the Colonel.

‘I wish you would trust me enough to leave my hands untied,’ Hugh grumbled as he lifted his arms and encircled Polly again.

‘Trust you enough? I don’t trust you at all,’ the Sergeant said frankly, as he mounted his own horse. ‘We are riding north and east now, covering rough terrain and staying off the roads. If we see partisans, we will hide, because we are a small squad that probably never should have survived our mission to São Jobim, so close to the British lines.’

‘I thought as much,’ Hugh murmured. ‘You were some Lieutenant’s forlorn hope, weren’t you?’

Cadotte looked down his long nose at them until Hugh was silent. ‘That is hardly your business, Colonel. If we encounter partisans and you do anything to attract them, I will shoot you and turn Madame Junnit over to my troopers. Am I perfectly clear?’

‘As crystal,’ Hugh snapped.

The two men glared at each other. Cadotte handed the reins of Hugh’s horse to his Corporal and spurred his horse to the head of the line. The squad began to move at a moderate gait, leaving the deserted village behind and turning away from the Douro.

Polly looked ahead at the mountains and shook her head. ‘We’re to cross
those
?’ she asked.

‘It would seem so,’ Hugh replied. ‘Our Sergeant knows he is in dangerous territory. I’m a little surprised he didn’t make me take off my red tunic.’ He sighed. ‘Of course, any remaining mountain people—
montagnards
—are probably no more fond of the British than they are the French. Portugal is a carcass picked clean.’

‘Do you wonder why he didn’t just shoot us back there?’ Polly asked.

‘Polly, dear, I’m actually surprised he let us out of the granary,’ the Colonel replied, and tightened his arms around her at her sudden intake of breath. Glancing at the Sergeant, who was watching them, he nuzzled her cheek. ‘I don’t think he believes I will give him any money for his farm. Men at war tend to be cynical, and who can blame them?’

‘Then why are we alive?’

‘Polly, dear, I wish I knew his game.’

It was no game, she decided, after three days of weary riding through narrow mountain passes that made her close her eyes and turn her face into Hugh’s tunic. Her jaws ached from gritting her teeth as the horses—the big-boned animals that French cavalry used—sidled along nearly imaginary trails far above boiling mountain streams.

She knew the heights bothered Hugh, although he did not admit as much. Once when their horse stumbled, sending rocks plunging down into the gorge, he came close to admitting his own fear. ‘Polly, dear, I would trade about five and a half years off my life this moment if we were suddenly transported to the deck of a frigate.’

You must be sorely tried, to admit as much
, Polly thought, as she screwed her eyes shut against that awful moment when they would plunge off the mountain face. ‘Hugh, darling, you must have mice in your pockets,’ she managed to squeak out, when she could talk. ‘You know how
I
feel about life on the rolling wave.’

He was silent for a long moment, then all he said was, ‘Bless your heart, Brandon, you’re a rare one.’