Beyond the Sunrise (34 page)

Joana lost a step in the dance and looked about her, bewildered for the moment and unsure even what dance she was performing. But she recovered herself instantly. His eyes had found her. She knew it even though she was no longer looking at him. He had seen her and she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing that his presence had discomposed her. Never.

Captain Blake had just been thinking that he had never felt more uncomfortable in his life. All day he had been regretting his decision to come to Mafra to attend the ball. And when he had arrived, he had acted from instinct and taken himself off to the part of the room where he was least likely to be noticed. He had scowled about him at all the other splendidly clad guests, hoping by such an expression to hide his discomfort.

But it had been worse than he expected. A thousand times worse. For no sooner had Lord Wellington entered the ballroom, than he, along with his large following of the elite of the elite, sought him out to meet “the hero of Salamanca.”

Robert had bowed and answered questions and bowed and answered questions and felt his stomach tie itself into knots. He had longed for a battlefield and a sword in his hand and a rifle over his shoulder and the whole French army before him. He would have felt a great deal more comfortable.

Finally, blessedly, the music began, and his interrogators turned away to watch the dancing. He hoped that soon they would also wander away and he would be free to melt into oblivion for what remained of the evening. He had changed his mind about dancing. Besides, there were far more men than ladies present. There would be no one to dance with.

And then his eyes were drawn as by a magnet to one particular spot on the dance floor—to one splash of white amidst the myriad colors. And there she was. It was like a flash back in time. She looked as beautiful and as expensive and as remote as she had looked that
first time in Lisbon. She was the Marquesa das Minas again, not Joana at all. And he found himself hating her again even as his stomach somersaulted with the shock of seeing her when he had imagined that she was in England already.

He hated her because she was the marquesa and he was merely Captain Robert Blake, a soldier who had raised himself through the ranks to become an officer, though he would never be able to make himself into a gentleman. For as long as he lived he would be a bastard, the son of a marquess but not of a marchioness. He hated her because he wanted her as he had wanted her in Lisbon and because she was as unattainable as she had been there. And he hated her for having returned from Lisbon instead of staying where he could never see her again.

He hated her because she smiled and looked happy and because her partner was Colonel Lord Wyman. And because she had seen him but her eyes had been sweeping away again even as his own caught them.

He clasped his hands tightly at his back and clenched his teeth and knew that he did not have the willpower merely to turn and leave the ballroom and the building. He knew that he would stay and watch her and torture himself.

And he knew that his misery had passed into a new phase, that now he was gazing into the terror of despair. For she could not look so beautiful, so exquisite, and so happy, and love him. The idea was absurd. He had fallen prey to her charms after all and had forgotten that Joana lived to conquer male hearts. He had believed that she loved him—right up until a few moments before. But it could not be. How could she love him? Despair became a tightening and a pain in his chest.

*   *   *

Duncan
had asked her. He had taken her to stroll in the long hallway beyond the ballroom and he had made her a formal offer.

“It is what I have always longed for,” she told him. “Marriage to an English gentleman and a home in England. England is where I grew up, you know.”

He squeezed her hand as it lay on his arm. “The answer is yes, then?” he said. “You are going to make me the happiest of men, Joana?”

She looked up into his face and frowned. “Am I?” she said. “I would make myself happy if I married you, Duncan—at least I think I would. But would I make you happy? It is important in marriage, is it not—that we each make the other happy?”

“Joana,” he said, “just your consent will make me ecstatic.”

“Oh, no, Duncan,” she said. “There is a great deal more to marriage than that. Years and years of being together with all the glamour and novelty gone. I don't know that I can make you happy.” She drew a deep breath and said what she had not planned or expected to say. “There has been someone else, you know.”

“Your husband,” he said, patting her hand. “I understand, Joana.”

“Luis?” She frowned. “I hated Luis. No, someone else, Duncan. Someone more recent.”

He stiffened only a little. “You have many admirers, Joana,” he said. “I can understand that sometimes flirtation leads to something a little more serious. But I shall not worry about it. You have a good heart.”

“You mean you would not worry about it when we were married?” she asked. “You should, Duncan. I should certainly not tolerate even a little flirtation in you—toward another lady.” She licked her lips. “I loved him.”

“Did you?” She could tell that for some reason he did not want to discuss the matter.

“No,” she said. “I used the wrong tense, Duncan. I love him. But I cannot marry him. I thought to marry you and live in the sort of
contentment I have always wanted. But I find that I cannot marry you unless you know.”

“You will marry me, then,” he asked, “now that you have told me? The past will be the past, Joana. I am not interested in it.”

She sighed. “I wish I were not,” she said. “How long are you going to be here, Duncan?”

“A few days at the least,” he said. “And when I return to Lisbon, I hope you will do me the honor of allowing me to escort you there.”

“Ah,” she said. “Give me those few days, then, Duncan. I shall give you my answer before we leave.”

“I have waited so long,” he said with a smile. “A few days longer will not kill me, I suppose.”

“The answer may not be yes,” she surprised herself by saying.

“But it may be,” he said. “I shall live on hope.”

She did not know why she had delayed, why she felt suddenly so reluctant to accept him. But of course she knew. How foolish to pretend that she did not. There was a dream she could not let go of.

“Let us walk about the ballroom,” she said. “There are uniforms I have not yet admired and gowns I have not yet had a chance to envy. Take me on a promenade, Duncan.” She smiled gaily at him and chattered brightly as he complied with her wish. They would be three-quarters the way around the room before they passed him, she thought. He still stood in the same place, though not in obscurity. Several people had gone there to talk with him.

She deliberately made their promenade a slow one. She stopped to talk with everyone she knew even remotely and to flirt a little with every officer who tried to attract her attention. She would give him every opportunity to move out of her way if he wished. Part of her hoped that he would leave before she had a chance to talk with him. Part of her felt panic at the very thought. But she would leave it to him. She would not maneuver him into anything that he really did not wish for.

“Ah, Robert,” she said when they drew level with him. His very blue eyes looked directly back at her. He was not smiling—but then,
she knew him well enough not to expect that he would. “You are not dancing?” It was a foolish question, since the dancing was between sets.

“No,” he said after a slight pause.

“Do you remember Duncan?” she asked. “But yes, of course, he traveled with us out of Lisbon. Robert has become even more of a hero than he was, Duncan. Have you heard?”

“Rumors, yes,” the colonel said. “About a daring visit to Salamanca and an even more daring escape. Congratulations, Captain.”

“Thank you
,
sir,” Captain Blake said.

“Ah,” Joana said, turning and tapping her foot. “A waltz. Come, Robert, you may have the pleasure of dancing it with me.” She laughed lightly. “You were about to ask, were you not? I want you to tell me about all those daring deeds.”

She thought he was going to refuse, and wondered if she would laugh, blush with mortification, or beat him about the head. Fortunately, perhaps, he did not put her to the test.

“It would be my pleasure, ma'am,” he said, bowing awkwardly and taking the hand she stretched out to him.

Ah, a dearly familiar hand, she thought, and wished that he had not come. Or that she had not come. She should have gone to Lisbon and stayed there. She felt an ache in the back of her throat as she smiled first at Duncan and then at him.

“You do dance, I remember,” she said as he led her onto the dance floor. “Your mother taught you.”

“Yes,” he said, and one strong hand came about her to rest behind her waist and the other hand was held out for hers. She placed her own in it and set the other on his broad, muscled shoulder. And she breathed in the scent of some men's cologne. But she preferred the raw masculine smell of him, she thought.

Oh, Robert. The ache in her throat had become a lump.

“I have still not forgiven you, you know,” she said as they began to move to the music, tipping her head back and smiling up at him. “I never will, Robert. You will go to your grave unforgiven.”

“I should have taken you to Lisbon,” he said without smiling, “and taken you on board the first ship bound for England, and tied you to the mainmast. I should have done that, Joana. I should have known how mad it was to leave you in Torres Vedras with your friends and expect you to act like any normal sensible woman. Did you even go to Lisbon?”

“No,” she said. “I do not like to be told what to do, Robert. And I should have escaped from that mast, you know, even if I had had to pull it down and wreck the ship in the attempt. I would rather die trying to swim to land from the middle of the ocean than live under a man's well-meaning care.”

“Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes, I know that, Joana. It was foolish of me even to have thought of what I should have done, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” she said, and she smiled slowly at him. He looked so much grimmer and more formidable than he had when they parted, though that had happened very recently. Perhaps it was the haircut. He had been looking almost like her gentle, poetic Robert again with it longer. Oh, not quite, perhaps, but almost. At least she had been able to see that they were one and the same person. Now he looked every inch the tough, seasoned soldier that he was—someone with such a different life from her own that they might as well inhabit different planets. “This is a foolish dance, is it not, Robert? Take me walking in the hallway outside and I shall explain to you why I cannot forgive you and you will persuade me to do so anyway.”

“I think we should continue dancing, Joana,” he said.

“You are a coward,” she said. “You are afraid to be alone, or almost alone, with me again.”

“Yes,” he said. “Mortally afraid, Joana. It was why I arranged that particular parting. Don't force me to say good-bye to you.”

“I don't like stories without endings,” she said. “In fact, they make me furious. Ours must have its ending, Robert. It must. Oh, do you not see why I could not leave Torres Vedras and why I had to put Duncan off earlier when he asked me yet again to marry him? There must be an ending for us.”

“There must be pain?” he asked.

“Were you without pain before coming here tonight?” she asked. “Did it help, the way we parted?”

He danced on with her for several moments, looking into her eyes, his expression still grim. When they neared the door, he stopped and took her arm through his.

“Very well, then,” he said. “Let us have an ending to this story, Joana. You must always have your way, it seems, even to the end. So be it, then.”

She felt no triumph as she allowed him to lead her from the ballroom.

A
LL
he could feel was anger. He had thought it was all over. He had thought that the rawness of the pain would ease with time. And a little time had passed already. He had settled into his new quarters and into his new duties and he had waited patiently for the first, most painful phase of his loss to pass into the second—whatever that would be. All he knew was that it could not possibly be worse. It could only be slightly better, and so on and so on until he would be able to remember with nothing worse than sadness—until he would be able to get on with his life again.

He did not want this to be happening. He had not wanted to see her again. If he had known, or even suspected, that she might be at the ball, then he would have stayed away. He would not even have been tempted to go for one more glimpse of her. He had not wanted one more glimpse. He certainly did not want this—this talking with her and dancing with her and now being alone with her.

Yet he had to admit to himself that he had been selfish. He had not been able to bear the thought of a long, drawn-out good-bye and so had thought of a way of cutting it short. He had assumed that she too would be relieved once it was over. And yet it seemed that she needed a more definite end to their relationship.

And so he was angry partly at himself. He should have given her her ending when they were still together. He should have allowed her to go to Arruda with him and leave after a night of private good-byes. He should have put himself through that agony in order to satisfy her that their affair had reached its term. It would all have been over now, and he could hardly have suffered more than he had anyway.

But now it was all to go through again. And he was angry, partly with her, partly with himself.

“You look as grim as you looked on the morning of the Battle of Bussaco,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Do I?” He looked straight ahead. “Strange. I feel grimmer.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, “this does not bode well. We had better get out of this hallway, Robert. It is too public.”

“Is it?” he said. “The ballroom was too public, so we must move here. Now this is too public. What next, Joana? Do you have a cozy bedchamber handy? Is that the sort of good-bye you want?”

“Let us find a private room first,” she said, “and then I shall tell you what kind of good-bye I want.” She tried a door in the hallway, but it was locked.

The third door was not locked. It opened onto a darkened room that looked like a workroom. There was a large desk in the middle of it, and several upright chairs. He picked up a branch of candles from a table outside the door and set it on the mantelpiece while Joana closed the door. He turned to face her.

“Well?” he said.

She leaned back against the door and smiled. “It could not be like that, Robert,” she said. “There was so much I needed to tell you, so much I wanted to hear. I needed your arms about me so that I would have the courage to leave.”

And I wanted it over with,
he wanted to tell her.
I could not bear to prolong the agony.
But he did not say the words aloud. Really both of them would have been meaning the same thing. They just had different ways of coping with pain. And yet, though he understood and even sympathized, he could not get rid of his anger.

“Say it, then,” he said curtly. “And I shall tell you that I love you and that leaving you hurts like hell. And then I shall hug you and kiss you and it can be over with at last. Come on, Joana, speak your piece and then come here.”

She continued to lean back against the door as she looked at him. “I have been selfish, haven't I?” she
said. “You do not want this at all.
But I gave you time in the ballroom, Robert. I took forever promenading about the room with Duncan. I wanted you to have plenty of time to escape if you wished. But you stayed. You must have seen me coming.”

He watched her silently. And it was true. He could have left. He had wanted to leave, had been on the verge of doing so. But his legs had not been willing to obey his will.

“Yes,” he said, “I saw you coming.”

“And stayed,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Robert,” she said, and she paused for so long that he thought she had changed her mind about continuing. “I am a widow and you are unmarried.”

“No, Joana,” he said.

She smiled.

“I always knew there were certain things beyond my grasp,” he said. “At least I knew soon after my mother's death. There are certain things, certain people, a certain way of life that the bastard son of a marquess cannot aspire to. And I accepted that. I have built my adult life around the knowledge. And I have been happy.”

“But you are not happy now,” she said.

“Because for a while I forgot,” he said, “or at least ignored the knowledge. And you, Joana. There is a certain life that you have been born to and raised to, a certain life that you married into and have lived since being widowed.”

“Except when I escape into the hills as Duarte's sister,” she said.

“But those days are over,” he said. “You have no further reason to be Joana Ribeiro.”

She smiled at him again. “Except perhaps for a little fun,” she said.

“There is no bridge long enough to connect our lives, Joana,” he said. “Not permanently. Neither of us would be happy in the other's world once the first gloss had worn off our passion for each other.”

She was looking at the floor in front of her, apparently deep in thought.

“Am I not right?” he asked after a lengthy silence.

She looked up at him and there was an imp of a smile lurking at the back of her serious expression. “You must be,” she said. “You are a man. Men are always right.”

“Well, then,” he said.

“Well, then.” She took a few steps toward him and stopped again. “I suppose there is nothing left, Robert, except that hug and kiss. It is rather a shame that this is not a bedchamber, isn't it? But I don't think I would fancy making love on the top of that desk, and there has always seemed something a little sordid about making love on the floor, though why that should be, I don't know, when we have made love many times on the ground outdoors. We have had some good times.”

“Yes.” He had expected her to be in tears. But when she came toward him and set her hands flat against his chest and raised her face for his kiss, it was glowing. She had the look in her eyes that experience had taught him to be wary of, the look that spelled trouble—for him. But it was merely her way of protecting herself from an emotional scene.

“This is good-bye, then,” she said.

“Yes.” He framed her face with his hands and moved his thumbs gently over her cheeks and lips. His anger had evaporated, leaving in its place a tightness in his chest, an ache in his throat and up behind his nose. “This is good-bye. I love you.” And her face blurred before his vision.

“Oh, Robert.” She threw her arms up about his neck and drew his cheek down to rest against hers. “You idiot and imbecile and fool. Men are such foolish creatures. Don't cry. I am not worth tears, am
I? I have been nothing but trouble to you. You will live a far more peaceful existence without me.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, then.” Her fingers were ruffling his short hair. “You will be well rid of me.”

“Yes.”

“You don't have to agree with everything I say, you know,” she said. “Kiss me, Robert. Let us do this thing right.”

“Yes.” He did not realize how much he was trembling until he tried to find her mouth with his. His eyes were tightly closed, the hot tears finding their way past the lids anyway.

She held his head and kissed him and he groaned and wrapped her in his arms and folded her against him, tried to fold her into himself. It was a desperate kiss, one that brought no joy at all.

“Christ!” he said long moments later. “Let this be enough. Leave, Joana, or let me leave.” He swallowed convulsively. “Just tell me once more.”

“That I love you?” she said. “I love you, and will until I am eighty and you are eighty-two. No, amend that. I plan to live a long time and you seem to have a gift for dodging bullets. Make it ninety and ninety-two. A hundred and a hundred and two.”

“Go!” he said harshly. “Goddammit, woman, get out of here. I can't leave looking like this. Get out of here.”

She touched his face with soft fingertips. “Men are so foolish,” she said. “And I love this most foolish man of all more than I can find words to express. I love you, Robert.”

And she was gone.

He had always found the notion of a broken heart rather amusing. But he was not amused as he crossed the distance to the desk
and leaned both hands on it, bending forward with closed eyes. Not the slightest bit amused.

*   *   *

There
were several things to be done, an irksome fact for someone who liked to act on impulse. But this was not an impulsive move, though the realization and its consequences had come upon her like a flash of lightning. And because it was not impulsive, then everything had to be done just so.

There were letters to write, several of them, in particular one to Matilda with an amount of money enclosed equivalent to two years' salary. And there were clothes to obtain. Her Portuguese marquesa's garments were totally unsuitable, but she was not displeased, she thought, looking at them—a row of unrelieved white—in the wardrobe, to have to abandon them forever. And Joana Ribeiro's dress would no longer do. It was past looking even shabby. Indeed the housekeeper had looked dubious when offered it to use for cleaning rags. Besides, there was only one of it. A woman needed more than one dress.

The problem was not a particularly difficult one to solve. The friend at whose house she was living was only slightly larger than she was, and Sophia always wore pretty, serviceable clothes. Joana chose a number of them and began to take in seams and shorten hems. She had not been handy with a needle for a number of years, and soon enlisted the aid of a skilled servant. In the meanwhile, she wrote to Sophia and enclosed what seemed generous payment for the clothes.

And there was Duncan to talk with. She summoned him the day after the ball and told him of her decision almost before he had got himself quite through the door. She did not wish to raise any false hopes in him.

“I am sorry, Duncan,” she told him. “I cannot marry you. I would
not be able to make you happy because I would not be happy with the sort of life I would be living.”

“But, Joana,” he said, “I thought you said that you had always dreamed of an English husband and a home in England.”

“Yes,” she said, “I did, and I have had those dreams—for as long as I can remember. Sometimes we can be very blind, can't we? I would not be happy with such a life, or at least not with just that.”

And it was true. Of course it was true. She had known it in a flash at the ball when Robert had uttered his foolish words. Except that to him they were not foolish and to her they would not have seemed so if there had not been that flash of insight.

Neither of us would be happy in the other's world once the first gloss had worn off our passion for each other.

She could hear the words as clearly as when he had been speaking them. Words that at first she had taken for granted were true. Certainly he would never be happy in her world. He was uncomfortable to the point of misery when he merely had to attend some social function. And she would never be happy in his. She was the daughter of a French count and the widow of a Portuguese marquess. She had always lived a life of wealth and privilege. She was a lady.

And then had come the flash of insight. Was she happy? Had she ever been happy? She found her normal day-to-day life tedious in the extreme, and useless and meaningless. There was nothing to add challenge and excitement to her life beyond flirting. And she did not
really enjoy that. Life on a quiet English country estate? With Duncan's mother and sisters until he came home? She would go insane!

Had she never been happy, then? Oh, yes, she had. She had known happiness. It had come whenever she had put off the Marquesa das Minas and lived with Duarte and his band of Ordenanza for a while. And it had come and lasted during those weeks with Robert between Salamanca and Bussaco. Incredible, total happiness—not only because she had been with him but also because she had been free of the trappings of her own world, free to meet the dangers and the challenges and the wonders of life in another world.

And was she to give up that life in order to live the one she had been born into? Was she to give up Robert for Duncan? The idea was absurd. Totally mad.

She had realized it as soon as he had spoken. And she had almost told him her thoughts right there. She was almost always impulsive. It was not her way to think first before acting. But she had done it on that occasion nonetheless. It was too big a decision in her life to be made impulsively. What if she had found afterward, on more careful consideration, that it was just her reluctance to say good-bye to him that had prompted her thoughts? She had known that she had to give herself time to know beyond any doubt that only one kind of life could bring her happiness.