Beyond the Sunrise (14 page)

“Ah,” she said, smiling, “then you are sure to be right. I always like handsome men.”

“I shall have refreshments sent to you while you wait,” the general said, getting to his feet. “I shall have everyone here as quickly as possible.”

“There is no need to hurry,” she said, laughing. “The pleasure of this confrontation is to be anticipated and savored, General.”

Her smile held until he had left the room. And then she found that her hands were shaking in her lap and her legs were shaking against the chair on which she sat. And her breath came in uneven gasps.

He was safe, then. Oh, God, he was safe. She had scarcely dared hope that he was still alive. The whole scheme had seemed madder as she had drawn closer to Salamanca. And even now it seemed insane. But at least he was safe thus far. As was she.

She dreaded meeting his eyes. That was going to be the worst part. Once their eyes had met for the first time and he knew, or thought he knew, then it would be easier. But there had to be that first meeting of their eyes.

And she dreaded it more than she had dreaded anything else in her life.

*   *   *

Captain
Blake buckled up his sword belt slowly, glanced at his rifle, which was propped carefully in one corner of the comfortable room he had been allotted—unguarded—in the confiscated manor where several French officers had their billets, and decided to leave it where it was. They wanted to talk to him again.

He had had a nightmare of a couple of days and nights, though he had had invitations galore and was being treated far more like an honored guest than like a captive. In all the tortured hours he had not been able to fathom how it had happened. How had the papers
come to be switched? Carelessness on someone's part—a quite incredible and criminal carelessness? Or had someone done it deliberately? Did the commander in chief have a traitor on his staff?

Incredibly, he had quite deliberately put himself and his paper into French hands, only to find that he had put there the destruction of the British and Portuguese armies and the whole of the European cause. If the British were expelled from Portugal, then the whole of Europe would be under Napoleon Bonaparte's control again.

And he had unwittingly made that possible almost single-handedly.

He fussed over straightening his uniform, though all the fussing in the world could not make it look anything better than shabby and even though a French lieutenant waited politely outside his open door to conduct him to General Valéry's rooms.

After two days in which to think, Captain Blake still did not know quite how to handle the situation. If he tried to persuade them that the plans were fake, that the French were meant to be misled by them, then they would realize that he lied. If they were fake, then it would be in his own interests to pretend that they were real. And yet if he kept his mouth shut and let them draw their own conclusions, then surely they would conclude that the plans were authentic.

With no time to prepare himself two days before, he had done both—scoffed at their belief at first, until he realized how his scorn would be interpreted, and then closed his mouth and opened it only to utter various obscenities when they pressed questions on him. He had even thought at one point in some horror that he was going to faint.

Damn Wellington, he thought as he strode to the door and nodded curtly to the lieutenant. And damn this spying business. And damn him for ever letting it be known that he had a gift for learning languages quickly. He longed to be with his riflemen again, taking charge of his company, which was what he was trained to do and had some skill at doing. An actor he was not. And even an experienced actor might balk at having to walk onstage without having learned
his lines and with no script from which to learn them—and his director a few hundred miles away.

Well, he was about to step onstage—again.

*   *   *

“Do
you know Captain Dupuis and Captain Dionne, Jeanne?” General Valéry asked, returning to the room with those two officers fifteen minutes after leaving it. “Jeanne da Fonte, Marquesa das Minas, gentlemen. Daughter of the Comte de Levisse, with the emperor's embassy at Vienna.”

“Henri,” Joana said, smiling warmly at Captain Dionne. “How lovely to see you again. Have you recovered from the wound to your elbow?” She extended a hand for him to bow over. “Captain Dupuis? I have not had the pleasure.”

“It is all mine, my lady,” he said, clicking his heels together and bowing smartly.

“Blake has been sent for,” the general said. “Colonel Leroux is engaged in urgent business, but will be with us in a few minutes' time.”

“Well, then.” Joana used her most charming smile on the three officers while her heart palpitated with the suspense. Part of her willed the door to open to admit him so that they might get this initial encounter over with. The other part willed someone else to come through the door to announce that he was nowhere to be found. “Henri will have time to tell me how he recovered from his injury. And Captain Dupuis . . .” She looked at him inquiringly.

“Antoine Dupuis, my lady,” he said, flushing and bowing again.

“And Antoine may tell me all about himself.” She watched the captain falling for her charms. “But first let me say how wonderful it is
to be among my own people again and speaking French.”

The door opened again, and Joana, who had chosen to stand and position herself close to a window opposite the door, looked fixedly
at the general, her smile held firmly in place, afraid to turn her head. Oh, God, the moment had come. And why she should so wish to avoid it, she did not know. She was, after all, merely doing a job, as was he. It did not matter what he thought of her, provided the job was done successfully.

But it did matter. For some reason that she was afraid to fathom, it did matter.

She turned her head to look with cool amusement at the man who had entered the room and stopped inside the door.

And forgot Captain Robert Blake. And forgot General Valéry and the other French officers. Forgot where she was and why she was there. Forgot everything except one afternoon three years before when she had hidden in an attic, more terrified than anyone ever deserved to be in this life, watching a French officer wrestle her struggling half-sister to the floor and rape her, making animal noises of appreciation as he did so, while three other soldiers stood and watched and awaited their turn, cheering and laughing and making bawdy comments. And then the same French officer, impatient, the sport over, jerking a thumb at one of the soldiers, who raised his bayonet . . .

“But my important business would have waited if you had but told me what beauty waited in your room, General,” the man who had entered said, smiling. “You said only that there was a lady here who might help throw light on our dilemma.”

A tall and handsome man with dark hair and mustache and experienced charm. A man who was used to getting what he wanted, especially the women he wanted. A man who expected women to fall in love with him and was not often disappointed. A man who raped for sport and ordered the execution of innocents with a jerk of the thumb.

Joana's lashes swept down over her cheeks and lifted again slowly. Her smile reached her eyes and made them sparkle.

“Colonel Marcel Leroux, Jeanne,” General Valéry said. “Recently returned from Paris, though he was in Portugal with Junot in
'07. Jeanne da Fonte, Marquesa das Minas, Colonel. Levisse's daughter. She has just come from Portugal.”

Colonel Leroux hurried across the room. “You are the marquesa, by Jove?” he said. “The general has spoken of you. I am charmed, my lady.” He reached out a hand for hers.

“Oh, what has he been saying?” she said, setting her hand in the colonel's and feeling the terrible, almost irresistible urge to shudder and snatch the hand away. “Dreadful things, no doubt, and not a one of them true. I shall have to have a good long talk with you myself—Marcel? May I call you that?—and set straight a few misunderstandings.” Her lips parted as he raised her hand to his lips.

“I find myself all impatience for the clearing up of those misunderstandings, my lady,” he said. “All impatience.”

“Jeanne,” she said softly, and her eyes fluttered to his mouth before rising to his eyes again.

And then the door opened once more and she remembered in a flash and very nearly panicked in earnest. For she had had no time to prepare herself. She felt naked and exposed. Colonel Leroux moved to one side so that he could face the door. Foolishly she turned her head and watched him, and then it became next to impossible to turn her head back again.

But no one had spoken. She wondered if minutes or merely seconds had passed. She looked toward the door. And her lips pursed slowly and her eyes lit up with amusement.

“Why, Robert,” she said, “it
is
you. How very amusing. But why did you not tell me that this is where you were being sent? I might have had the pleasure of looking forward to meeting you again. Perhaps you might even have escorted me here, as you escorted me to Viseu. But do tell me.” She took two steps forward and smiled dazzlingly at him. “Did you really come here as a spy, as General Valéry says? How very naughty of you. You swore to me that you were returning to your regiment.”

He stood inside the door, his feet slightly apart, one hand frozen a few inches above the hilt of his sword, his face pale and
expressionless, looking at her. There was a yellow-and-purple bruise along his right temple and spreading along his eyelid. His eye was bloodshot.

“Hello, Joana,” he said finally, when it seemed that the silence must have extended for five full minutes. His voice sounded quite relaxed. “I suppose I might have expected to find you here among your own people. Foolish of me to have been surprised momentarily.”

She had guessed a thousand things he might say first. None of them was even close to what he actually had said.

She laughed with light amusement.

H
E
had never seen her dressed in anything but white. Now she was wearing a dress of vivid emerald green and looking more beautiful than any woman had a right to look. Her hair was curled about her face so that her eyes looked shadowed and even more alluring than usual.

Those were the first foolish thoughts that rushed into his mind as he stepped into General Valéry's room and saw her standing at a window directly in his line of vision.

The next thought, which came almost simultaneously, was that she was a prisoner too, that they were going to use her to get the truth out of him, threaten to harm her if he did not speak. His hand moved without conscious volition to his sword.

The third thought stilled his hand. She was French. Of course. She was French.

And then she turned to look at him and she spoke to him with her customary mockery and he knew that the game was up, that he had lost, and that England had lost, and Portugal too. And he felt a curious relaxation now that it was all over, and a reluctant admiration for France's most unlikely—and therefore, of course, it's most likely—spy.

He did not hate her—yet. They were, after all, in the same business. They just happened to be on opposite sides.

“Hello, Joana,” he said “I suppose I might have expected to find you here among your own people. Foolish of me to have been surprised momentarily.”

She laughed. “My own people?” she said.

“You were Jeanne Morisette before you acquired your present title,” he said. “Daughter of the Comte de Levisse, former royalist.”

She laughed again. “I underestimated you, Robert,” she said. “I could find out nothing about you, much as I tried. I did not even realize that you were trying to find out about me. Not many people in Portugal know what you know.” She turned to smile at General Valéry. “Do you see what I mean about this man being one of Lord Wellington's most able spies?” she said.

Captain Blake kept his eyes on her. What a strange thing to say, he thought, but he kept his face expressionless.

“Shall we all take a seat?” the general suggested. “There are several things to be said, I believe.”

“I would prefer to stand,” Captain Blake said, not removing his eyes from Joana. She looked back, not one whit abashed by her duplicity, which had just been revealed to him.

“So would I.” She smiled slowly at him.

And so all the gentlemen were forced to remain on their feet.

“Captain Blake,” General Valéry said, “according to the paper that was hidden in your boot, the main British defenses are centered in three lines north of Lisbon, stretching as far north as Torres Vedras.”

No question had been asked, but the general paused.

“Yes,” Captain Blake said, “that is what the paper shows.”

“And yet you claimed two days ago that the paper was a fake, designed to mislead us.”

“Yes,” the captain said. “I did say that.”

“And what do you say now?” General Valéry asked. “Now that we have our own source of information, what do you say?”

“I say that the paper is genuine,” Captain Blake said, “as was a previous, less-detailed one that fell into your hands. I say that it is genuine but that you are meant to believe that it must be false. Or is it the other way around? I forget my part in the presence of such dazzling beauty. Yes. I believe I am supposed to say that it is fake so that you will believe that it must be authentic. Devil take it, I really
do not know. Perhaps you should ask me again, General, when the lady is not present.”

She smiled at him.

“What do you know of this, Jeanne?” Colonel Leroux asked. “Do you know the truth? As matters stand now, the paper is worse than useless to us.”

Her smile turned into laughter. “Robert,” she said, “do you not remember escorting me from Lisbon to Viseu less than two weeks ago?”

He said nothing. But it was all over, he knew. She must remember as clearly as he the Pass of Montachique.

“Do you not remember the long tedious days of travel?” she said. “Do you not remember our laughing at the few pathetic attempts the peasants were making to protect themselves against attack? Do you not remember the long evening at Torres Vedras, when you made sure that my chaperone was not present and we talked and talked and then you tried to make love to me? Are you blushing, Captain? You need not. Everyone tries to make love to me.” She shrugged. “Only the favored few succeed.”

She looked sideways beneath her lashes at the colonel.

Captain Blake stood quite still and chose to say nothing. Her version of what had happened was somewhat distorted, he thought, and she seemed completely to have forgotten that it was at Obidos, not at Torres Vedras, that something similar had taken place. But those details were unimportant. It was the rest of what she was saying or not saying that mattered. Was it possible that she was not now putting two and two together even if she had not done so at the time? He began to see a glimmering of hope.

“I remember our commenting on the peacefulness of the scene at sunset,” she said. “And we were at that moment right in the center of the most northerly of these formidable defenses? We had already passed through the other two lines?”

Captain Blake shrugged.

“Oh, come now.” She laughed merrily again and took several
steps toward him. “It was a very poor try, Robert. There is nothing there at all, is there? Once Marshal Massena takes the border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, only the English forces of Viscount Wellington and the sorry forces of Portugal will stand between him and Lisbon. Why else would the English forces be concentrated in northern Portugal? Why would Arthur himself be there? Would they not all hide safely behind these impregnable defenses or else be in the south to defend the weak route to Lisbon?”

Hope was hammering with the blood through his temples. He had a part to play. He still had a part. But everything depended upon his not overacting.

His nostrils flared.

“What do you say, Captain?” the colonel asked.

“I say nothing,” he said curtly. “The lady is undoubtedly right. Ladies always are, I believe.”

Joana finally sat down on the nearest chair. She crossed one leg over the other and swung one foot, slippered in green to match her dress. She looked faintly bored.

“But your tone would imply that you know her to be wrong,” the colonel said.

Captain Blake shrugged.

“It is a pity,” Joana said, “that I decided to journey to Lisbon and back when I did. A pity for the English, that is. I feel almost sorry for you, Robert. Have you ever failed before? This will damage your reputation, will it, and Arthur will think twice about sending you on another such mission? Poor Robert. You may be doomed yet to having to fight with your regiment. But perhaps all will be well. Neither you nor Arthur could have known that I would be following you here, I suppose.”

“You devil!” Captain Blake said with quiet menace. “Lord Wellington respected you sufficiently to provide you with an escort from Lisbon.”

The general coughed. “I would ask you to remember that you are addressing a lady, Captain,” he said.

“A lady!” The captain's tone was scathing. “A woman who would betray her adopted country must be called a lady? I could think of other words that would better describe her.”

“You have failed,” Colonel Leroux said crisply. “This is war, Captain. We all fail sometimes. Real men learn to take their losses with their gains.”

“If I could just get my hands on you for one minute,” Captain Blake told Joana, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Really, Robert.” She looked up into his eyes and laughed at him, her foot swinging nonchalantly. “Do you think I would ever have allowed your hands to touch me if there had not been the possibility of information to be had from you?”

“If I could just have that minute,” he said, “I would make sure that no other man would ever wish to touch you. Without you I would have succeeded. Do you realize how much destruction you are wreaking? A whole country to fall to the French again, and my own army destroyed? Do you realize? Your husband was Portuguese.”

“Luis?” she said. “Luis was a bore and a coward.”

“And perhaps you will not win after all,” he said. “Perhaps these men will begin to doubt your testimony. What would a woman be expected to see, after all, during a journey? And perhaps they will conclude that what I am doing now is all an act.”

“Are there any defenses of Lisbon, Jeanne?” the colonel asked.

“Of course.” She shrugged. “My friend Colonel Lord Wyman of the dragoons took me to see the defenses south of the city. Until recently it seemed to the English the only sensible way for you to come. Only recently has it struck them that you would be mad enough to come through the hills to the north. They are desperate to divert you again. Or this is what Duncan said, anyway.”

“And you told me earlier that nothing of importance had happened during your visit to Lisbon,” the general said, looking fondly at Joana and shaking his head.

“Yes,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I suppose what Duncan said and showed me does have some importance in retrospect, does it
not? And my very tedious journey back to Viseu. Must I stay longer, General? I am to go shopping with my aunt, but all morning there were visitors—so many kind gentlemen, you know—and now this visit has lasted longer than I expected.”

“No, no, Jeanne,” the general said. “You have been very helpful, my dear. Very helpful indeed. It may even be no exaggeration to say that you have saved the empire by your observations and by your courage in being willing to confront Captain Blake face-to-face.”

Joana flushed with pleasure at the praise and got to her feet. Colonel Leroux rushed forward to offer her his arm.

“I shall escort you to your carriage, Jeanne,” he said. “I shall return within a few minutes, General.”

General Valéry inclined his head.

Captain Blake had to move finally so that Joana could pass him to reach the door. He stepped to one side, his eyes narrowed on her.

“I am so sorry, Robert,” she said, pausing for a moment as she passed. “But war is war and I have an emperor to serve in any way I can.”

He said nothing. But he felt a violent dislike for her, for a woman without a conscience, for one who could flirt with all and sundry merely to serve her own ends. And he disliked her for the fool she had made of him. She had always mocked him. He had known it, and yet he had allowed an unwilling attraction for her to grow into almost an obsession. He had allowed himself to touch her, to be aroused by her. He had even allowed himself to believe on that last night in Viseu that perhaps she felt some affection for him. And all the time her sole purpose had been to try to worm information—any useful information—out of him.

He hated her. Even though it seemed that unwittingly she had helped his cause that morning, he hated her. In fact, she could hardly have done better if she were his accomplice. He felt that his interrogators would now believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the Lines of Torres Vedras were imaginary, that in reality there were no
defenses between Almeida and Lisbon except the armies of Lord Wellington.

She had helped him. She had unwittingly done what he had hoped to do himself but had not known how to accomplish. How chagrined she would be when she discovered the truth eventually. And how popular she would be with the French!

But she did not yet know she had helped him. She had wanted to betray both her adopted country of Portugal and her mother's country. And intentions were more important than actual performance.

He hated her.

She left the room on the arm of the colonel, and he was dismissed immediately afterward.

“I shall summon you again if you can be of further help to us, Captain,” General Valéry said. “In the meantime, I trust that your quarters are comfortable and that your needs are being adequately attended to?”

Captain Blake inclined his head curtly.

“And I trust that you will still be my guest this evening?” the general asked. “You must allow me to show you hospitality. Such scenes as this are merely the distasteful but necessary business of war, Captain.”

“I shall be there, sir,” Captain Blake said before turning on his heel and leaving the room, not sure if his elation over the apparent success of his mission despite the switching of the papers and the unexpected appearance of the marquesa was quite sufficient to outweigh his depression over an indefinite captivity, and over the discovery he had just made about Joana.

The Marquesa das Minas. Jeanne Morisette. He did not want to think of her as Joana.

*   *   *

Joana
was an occasional spy for the French. She did not believe she was considered of particular importance by them and did not expect to be taken into anyone's confidence in a major way. But Colonel Leroux, clearly pleased by what had happened in General Valéry's room, did confide one thing.