Secrets of a Lady (11 page)

Oh, Christ. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick himself. He murmured the first words that came into his head. “‘Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’ I’ve always fancied myself a humanist, but I sometimes think this war will strain my faith in humanity to the breaking point.” He tightened his fingers over her own. “What about Blanca?”

“She’s all right. Oh, God, that sounds ridiculous. I mean, the French soldiers didn’t plant a babe in her belly. I don’t know about the
afrancesados
. They…used us, too.”

“I’d like to kill them for you.” The words came out with a violence he hadn’t intended. “Though I’d be a poor match for a pack of bandits, not to mention soldiers. And it would do nothing to solve your predicament.”

She gave a desperate sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “I’m afraid solutions to this predicament don’t exist.”

“On the contrary. It’s not unheard of, even in the best families in London.” He hesitated. She was sharp-witted and well-educated, but it was difficult to judge how much an unmarried girl of little more than twenty would have been told. “There are ways—” He sought for the right words, for once quite out of his depth.

“Of getting rid of it?” Her gaze was clear and candid.

“It can be dangerous.” He looked straight into her eyes. They couldn’t afford to waste time on embarrassment. “But there are doctors who know the business and can be counted on to be discreet. I could make inquiries when we reach Lisbon. Or you could retire somewhere secluded to have the child. Then a home could be found for it.”

Her lips twisted. “And everyone could pretend it didn’t exist, including me?”

He studied the fragile bones of her face, the delicate point of her chin, the pure line of her throat. The fog misted her skin and made damp tendrils of hair cling to her forehead. “No one could blame you if you couldn’t bear to look at this child after it’s born. Or if you couldn’t bear to carry it at all.”

Her fingers stilled beneath his own. She glanced down into the steaming liquid in the cup they held between them. She looked as though she was seeing places he could only begin to imagine. “Perhaps not.” She drew a breath that shuddered through her, stirring the folds of her cloak. “I’ve wondered, sometimes, if I’ll be able to forget how the child was made. The problem is, I’m quite sure I won’t be able to forget that the child is mine. The only relative I have left in the world.”

“You have time. It’s not a decision to make lightly.”

She put her free hand over her abdomen, the way she had three nights ago in the wine cave. “After the
afrancesados
left, I was terrified that what they’d done would make me lose the baby. I knew then.” She looked up at him, her eyes as bright and clear as a Highland loch on a summer day. “I’m not going to get rid of the child, Mr. Fraser. And I’m not going to give it away.”

He nodded and said the only thing left that he could say. “Then I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Her mouth curved in a genuine smile. “You’re a kind man, Mr. Fraser.”

That smile cut through to a place somewhere inside him that he had thought no longer existed. His breathing turned uneven. At the same moment his ears caught something he’d been a damned fool not to hear earlier. Not a specific sound so much as a shift in the creaks and rustlings of the forest. Noises that weren’t caused by birds or rodents or the wind.

He caught Miss Saint-Vallier’s arm in a hard grip and gave a warning shake of his head. She nodded. He slid his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat, feeling for his pistol. His gaze swept the area round them. Nothing save fog, trees, and the damnably telltale glow of the fire.

A crack sounded from beyond their camp some fifty feet away. A booted foot, landing on a dry branch. A stir of movement followed, then a startled curse and a sharp report. One of their own men had wakened, reached for his musket, and fired off a shot.

A hail of answering bullets ripped through the fog. Someone cried out. A flock of birds rose from the trees, squawking in fear. The horses whinnied. A woman screamed.

Blanca. Miss Saint-Vallier started forward, but Charles pulled her back. “No,” he mouthed against her hair. “Not that way. It won’t do any good.”

Jennings was shouting orders to his men. They fired off a volley of musket shots. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks. The smell of gunpowder choked the air.

Charles had his pistol out, and the leather bag that contained dry powder. He loaded the powder and rammed the ball into place, but he couldn’t see enough to make out how many stood or had fallen. He reached out to grip Miss Saint-Vallier’s hand again.

“Drop the gun.” A voice, disembodied in the fog, spoke in French-accented English. “Or I shoot the lady.”

Charles mentally called himself six kinds of fool and dropped the pistol. Miss Saint-Vallier was standing very still not two feet away. He twisted his head to the side. A man in the brass helmet and scarlet-faced green coat of a French dragoon had his own pistol pressed against her back.

“Kick the pistol over here,” the dragoon said, his voice raised above the blare of musket fire.

Heroics were an impossibility. Charles nudged the pistol with the toe of his boot. It scuttered through the pine needles. The dragoon bent and scooped it up, keeping his own pistol trained on Miss Saint-Vallier.

In the clearing beyond, shots still rang out. A voice called out. A Spanish voice. Oh, Christ. The bandits had arrived to collect their gold and hand over the ring.

“Right.” The dragoon tucked Charles’s pistol into his belt. “Now—”

Miss Saint-Vallier let out a soft moan and crumpled to the ground. She crashed into the dragoon as she fell. The cup she still carried spattered hot tea onto her captor. He stumbled, and the pistol that had been pressed against her back tilted toward the ground.

Charles lunged forward and delivered a swift blow to the dragoon’s chin. The dragoon staggered. His pistol slipped from his fingers. Charles hit him again. The dragoon blocked the blow with his arm, and his fist came up and caught Charles full in the face. Charles fell against the hard, rough bark of a tree. Pain sliced through his temples. He heard the click of a hammer and found himself staring down the muzzle of his own pistol.

He had a moment to think, with faint surprise, that he didn’t want to die. Then the dragoon gave a strangled cry and collapsed face-first on the ground, the pistol clutched in his hand, a knife hilt protruding from his back.

Mélanie de Saint-Vallier stood over him. “He was going to shoot you.” Her voice was flat. “Is he dead?”

Charles bent over and felt for the pulse in the dragoon’s neck. “Very.” He looked up at her. Her face was a still, pale blur in the fog. “My compliments, Mélanie.” It was the first time he’d called her by her name.

“I’ve kept a knife in my bodice ever since—since the other time. I didn’t have a chance to use it on the bandits. But my father taught me how to stab a man.”

Charles snatched up the pistol the dragoon had dropped earlier. “Did your father also teach you how to shoot?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He put the pistol into her hand and took his own pistol from the dragoon’s still-warm fingers. The Frenchman also carried a musket. Charles slung it over his shoulder.

Musket balls whistled through the air fifty feet away. A man screamed. Jennings shouted an order. His voice broke off in midsentence. Charles grabbed Mélanie’s hand and pulled her down the bank of the gully.

The bank was steep. He couldn’t see the stream, but he could judge the distance to its edge by the sound of the water rushing over the rocks. Mélanie’s cloak caught on a thornbush. She tugged it free. Then they both went still. The ever-present gunfire had stopped.

Someone moaned. A horse whinnied. Boots crunched over twigs and earth, careless now of the noise. A voice barked out a command. Charles couldn’t make out the words, but the accent was French.

He looked at Mélanie, weighing her safety against that of those in the camp. He knew enough of her now to know that she wasn’t one to run, any more than he was. He jerked his head down the bank. She nodded, her hand going to the pistol in the pocket of her cloak. They crept forward, over snow and rocks and brittle pine needles.

A French voice carried through the fog. “One move and we shoot.” The speaker was not addressing them but whoever remained in the camp. “Where are the others?”

“There aren’t any. Just us and the dead.”

That last was Addison, in impeccable French. At least his valet had survived the attack. A breath of relief whistled through Charles’s lungs.

“You’re lying.” This was another French speaker. “There’s bedding for at least two more. Where are they?”

Silence followed, and then the smack of a hand connecting with a cheek.

“I don’t know,” Addison said, his voice as cool and controlled as ever. “Away from here, if they have any sense.”

“Impudent bastard.” The words were accompanied by the sound of another slap.

“The lieutenant needs tending to,” Addison said. “He’s badly wounded.”

“No one gets cosseted until we find the others. Georges! Michel! Search the woods. We don’t want them sneaking up on us unawares.”

In the cold frozen earth of the gully, Charles’s hand had closed round a large rock. He hurled it as far as he could in the opposite direction, away from him and Mélanie, away from the dead dragoon.

An old trick, perfected in his boyhood to throw his tutor off the scent, but as the rock crashed through the underbrush, the French leader gave an excited cry. “That way! They may be armed.”

Boots tramped across the ground in the opposite direction. Two of the French soldiers were out of the clearing for the moment. Charles couldn’t tell how many were left. He motioned for Mélanie to stay where she was and crawled on his stomach to the edge of the gully.

The smell of blood washed over him, sweet and choking. He gagged, swallowed, then squinted through the tangle of thornbushes.

The rising sun pierced the fog. The light glared against the snow, but he could see enough to make out the two French dragoons left in the clearing. Both were armed with muskets. The stocks glinted in the light.

Addison was leaning against a large boulder, his arm round Blanca. Blanca appeared to be unhurt, but Addison’s right leg was stretched out at an awkward angle. Sergeant Baxter and fresh-faced Private Smithford sat across the clearing from them. Blood showed on the white facings of their coats, but it might not be their own. The other red-coated figures were sprawled over the ground. One of them, probably Jennings, gave another low moan. Charles couldn’t tell whether any of the others lived. The horses, miraculously, appeared to be unharmed.

One of the dragoons walked up to Blanca. “She’s a pretty thing, Corporal. She’ll liven up the journey back to camp.” He bent and stuck his hand down her bodice. Blanca spat full in his face. The soldier lifted his musket and swung it against the side of her head.

The blow fell half on Blanca, half on Addison, who had flung up his arm to protect her. Charles reached for his pistol, then stilled his hand. That wouldn’t solve anything, not with the French soldiers positioned as they now were, both armed.

Smithford jumped to his feet with a roar of outrage. He couldn’t be much more than eighteen and he’d been making eyes at Blanca ever since they’d found her.

The second dragoon, who had the insignia of a corporal, whirled round and fired a musket ball straight into Smithford’s chest. Smithford’s eyes opened in astonishment. He made a gurgling sound low in his throat. Then he collapsed face-first in the dirt.

“Asesino,”
Blanca cried.

“I said I’d shoot anyone who moved.” The corporal was ramming a fresh ball into his musket. “You, the pasty one who speaks French. You tell them.”

Addison murmured to Blanca and Baxter in English. The underbrush stirred beside Charles. Mélanie crawled up next to him. Charles turned to her. Even before she began to whisper in his ear, he knew what she was going to suggest. It was madness. And it was their only hope.

Charles held himself motionless behind the thornbushes and watched as Mélanie stumbled into the clearing, gasping, her cloak billowing round her, her hair whipping about her face.

“Blanca!
Dios gracias!
” Mélanie flung herself down beside the younger girl, seemingly heedless of the dragoons.

Blanca turned her head, the red mark clearly visible on her face. “Oh, Mélanie,
porque
—”

“So. Another
señorita.
” The dragoon who had hit Blanca stared down at Mélanie. Charles couldn’t read his expression, but he could hear the combination of anger and lust in the Frenchman’s voice.

“Sir?” One of the soldiers who had gone to search called out through the trees. “Have you found them?”

“Only one. Do you see anything?”

“There are a couple of dead Spaniards, but no sign of an Englishman.”

“Keep searching.” The corporal looked at Mélanie. “The other man,” he said in halting Spanish. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Mélanie shrank back against the boulder. Her hands were tucked into the folds of her cloak, as though for protection. Behind the thornbushes, Charles eased the musket onto his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.

“The man with you.” The corporal gestured toward the empty sleeping blankets.

“At least now we know why they slipped away from camp,” the other dragoon murmured in his own tongue. “Too fastidious to do it in front of his men. I expect he’s left her nice and warm and wet.”

Blanca looked up at him. She had understood the implication if not the words.
“Bastardo.”

The dragoon raised the butt of his musket again. Mélanie coughed once, loudly. Then all at once her left hand wasn’t tucked into her cloak but was pointing at the dragoon. She shot him before he had a chance to see the pistol she held. At the same moment, Charles fired off a musket shot that caught the corporal full in the chest.

Both Frenchmen fell. Mélanie sprang to her feet. Charles ran into the clearing.

Footsteps crashed through the underbrush. Charles pulled his unfired pistol from his belt. Baxter snatched a musket from one of the dead dragoons.