Fortune's Bride (30 page)

“Oh, poor Jupiter,” she cried, knowing that Robert felt much
worse about the horse than his single statement betrayed.

Before she could say more, however, an orderly came up
behind Robert, sidestepped him without looking, although he glanced at the blue
coat Robert had dropped on the floor, and said, “Mrs. Moreton, there’s a man
who’d like you to write to his wife for him.”

“But—” Esmeralda began to protest.

Still without a glance at Robert, the orderly continued, “I
don’t think the man has much time, and I wouldn’t bother with a Frenchie—not if
he’s walking. He can wait.”

Robert had to laugh at Esmeralda’s affronted expression. He
had now recovered from the shock of finding her employed in an activity that he
could not imagine his mother or sisters undertaking and which he knew must
frighten and disgust her. On second thought, he felt proud rather than
horrified that she should be willing to subdue her own feelings in order to
help the men who were fighting.

“This is not a Frenchman but my husband, Captain Moreton,”
Esmeralda had exclaimed.

The orderly turned sharply, looking rather frightened, but
Robert laughed again. It was obvious to him, if not to Esmeralda, how the
mistake had come about. The rags of his blue coat and stained white breeches
could easily be mistaken for the ruins of a French uniform.

“That’s all right,” he said to the orderly, who was
stammering apologies. “Just go and ask one of the surgeons if he’ll stitch me
up at once. I have to get back to duty.”

The fright those words caused Esmeralda paralyzed her
momentarily and prevented her from crying out in protest as the orderly hurried
away. She felt dizzy again and stiffened to resist the sensation. Robert would
not annul their marriage, but he could still insist that she be sent to England
if he felt her to be an encumbrance. She swallowed hard and moistened her dry
lips.

“You seem to have lost a lot of blood, Robert,” she said,
her voice flat and cold with the effort she was making to keep it from
quavering into tearfulness. “Is it wise to go back to Sir Arthur?”

“Oh, most of the blood isn’t mine,” Robert said easily, but
he was aware of the rigidity of Esmeralda’s stance and the coldness of her
tone. It was an odd contrast, both to the words of concern she had spoken and
to the soft sympathy her voice had held when she had been talking to the
wounded soldier. Robert wondered whether she was angry or simply indifferent,
and then dismissed both notions as ridiculous. There was nothing for her to be
angry about, and she could not be indifferent to his welfare. He was her
passport to the social connections she needed in England.

That idea, clearly and suddenly stated in his mind, was so
unpleasant, although it had been implicit in their relationship from the
beginning, that Robert hastily urged Esmeralda to find the dying man who wanted
a letter written at once.

“But I would rather wait until—” Esmeralda began.

“There’s no need to wait,” Robert said. “There isn’t much
wrong with me, and the orderly will be back. See, there he is now. Go along, Merry,
a dying man’s last wish is more important than a scratch on the arm.”

It was not, of course, more important to Esmeralda, not if
the scratch was on Robert, but she was still too insecure about their
relationship to oppose him in anything. She did not realize that Robert would
have welcomed her insistence on remaining with him or any other sign of
affection. It had not entered Esmeralda’s head that Robert could have fallen in
love with her. That had not even been a part of her impossible dream. The most
she had hoped for was that he would grow accustomed to her company and find it
pleasant. And of course, Esmeralda knew that men could enjoy sexual intercourse
with women for whom they had not the slightest regard.

In fact, Esmeralda associated Robert’s urging her to go to
the dying soldier with his own stated intention of returning to his duty. She
believed Robert felt that, having taken on the task of assisting the wounded,
she must perform it. Thus, she turned away in the direction from which the orderly
had originally come without saying anything more. In a sense, it was a relief
to go, because her struggle with tears was growing momentarily more difficult.
Esmeralda had already become somewhat hardened to the dreadful sights around
her, but the wounded men were not Robert. She was not at all sure she would
have been able to maintain her composure had she actually seen her husband’s
torn flesh.

Once Robert could not see her face, Esmeralda allowed the
tears she had been withholding to flood her eyes. The rigidity went out of her
body, and sobs of fear rose in her throat. Blindly she hurried forward, afraid
that by some mischance Robert would hear or notice that she was crying.
Unfortunately, although his eyes followed her, all he perceived was the relaxation
of her tension and a seeming eagerness to get away, which puzzled him very much
and hurt him, too.

Like Esmeralda, Robert did not associate mere sexual
pleasure with love and thus did not reason that, because she obviously enjoyed
their physical relationship, Merry loved him. Actually, he had not yet even
associated his own eagerness to be with her or his anxiety about her safety
with the fact that he loved her. If he had been asked at that moment by someone
he trusted implicitly whether he loved his wife, Robert would probably have
answered no. He still thought of his marriage as an act of compassionate duty,
although he would have admitted freely that it had turned out far better than
he could have expected, and he felt no regret.

The orderly’s voice drew Robert’s attention from Esmeralda’s
hasty retreat. “What?” Robert said dully.

“Mr. Neale will attend to you right away if you will come
with me, sir,” the man repeated.

“Oh, yes,” Robert replied, finally taking in what had been
said to him, and feeling a sense of relief.

What a fool he was, he thought. Here he was blaming Merry
for the unpleasant sinking feeling he was experiencing and thinking she was
behaving in an unnatural way, when probably he was just trying to avoid
contemplating his visit to the surgeon. This conclusion was so satisfactory
that Robert’s spirits rose at once. Strangely, he did not notice the
contradiction, and by the time Adam Neale had finished sewing him up, Robert
had convinced himself that there had not been anything at all unusual in
Merry’s manner. Nothing could be more reasonable than that she should hurry to
write a letter for a dying man, particularly when he had twice told her to go.

Although the surgeon insisted Robert rest for a little while
after he had sewn the wound, no time was lost as Mr. Neale permitted his
patient to send one of the lightly wounded men to find him a horse. And he
smiled when he advised Robert to keep his arm in the sling he had fixed for
him, raising his brows at the ruins of coat and shirt the orderly had brought
in from the outer room. It appeared the sling would cover almost as much of him
as what was left of his clothes.

Of course Robert could have asked for Esmeralda so that she
could bring him fresh clothing, but for some reason he refused to define or
even think about, he did not mention that his wife was in the building. Instead
he simply abandoned the shirt, thinking it too far gone to bother about, and
inserted his good arm into the coat, which he had the orderly button at the
waist.

By the time he returned, Sir Harry Burrard, who had finally
come ashore at Porto Novo late in the morning, had arrived at Sir Arthur’s
command post and was inquiring of Lord Burghersh where General Wellesley was.
Burghersh was unable to answer his question, since he himself had only just
ridden up. Under the circumstances, Robert’s appearance was fortunate, as it
diverted Sir Harry’s attention. That gentleman was at first considerably
shocked by Robert’s dishabille and then seriously concerned that Captain the Honorable
Robert Moreton, son of the Earl of Moreton, should have so little regard for
his health and safety as to return to the battlefield after having been
wounded.

Sir Harry was too much of a gentleman to give orders to
another officer’s ADC, but he was gently suggesting that Robert report himself
unfit and retire, when Sir Arthur rode up. General Wellesley did not at first
notice Sir Harry because his eye had been caught by Robert’s golden hair and
bedraggled condition, and he cried out sharply, “Where the devil have you been,
Moreton?”

Burrard’s eyes widened slightly at this seemingly unfeeling
remark and Sir Arthur’s expression of cold disapproval, but Robert grinned. He
knew Sir Arthur well enough to recognize the question as a mark of great
anxiety. “Doing something stupid, sir,” Robert replied, “but General Acland had
already gone into action, so it didn’t matter. And General Burrard has arrived,
sir.”

As he spoke, Robert backed his horse so that Sir Arthur’s
view would be unobscured. Although he was as sorry as all the other ADCs about
the fact that General Wellesley had been superseded, he was grateful that
Burrard had arrived at this precise moment. He knew that he had been saved a
scathing, but deserved, reprimand by Burrard’s presence. In the next instant,
however, he was punished for the brief, selfish emotion. Instead of turning
immediately to his superior, Wellesley took the time to look searchingly at
Robert and then to ask, “Are you fit?”

“Yes, sir,” Robert replied. “It was only a crease, and Mr.
Neale has sewed me up.” Now he felt horribly guilty and wished that Burrard
were back in England, even if it cost him a hundred of Sir Arthur’s painful
scolds.

“Good day to you, Sir Harry,” Wellesley said courteously, if
with no marked enthusiasm. “The situation—”

“No need for any details, Wellesley,” Sir Harry said. “You
seem to have everything well in hand, and you must finish what you have so ably
started.”

“Thank you.”

A note of warmth appeared in Sir Arthur’s voice, a
recognition of Burrard’s generosity. It was not every general who would allow a
subordinate officer to reap the reward of a victory. Usually the superior
officer grabbed the credit, even if he arrived after the fighting was over.
Although Sir Arthur was not often forthcoming with military information, he
understood generosity and responded to it.

“But,” he continued, “I should like to tell you, as exactly
as I know it myself, just what is happening.”

“Very well.”

Robert exchanged glances with Sir Arthur’s other ADCs. The
lack of enthusiasm in Burrard’s reply was noticeable. Although each young man
had a different interpretation of the cause, all were equally appalled. As Sir
Arthur’s voice had cooled noticeably again, it was obvious that the general
also felt Burrard’s lack of interest was not a good sign.

Having summed up the disastrous results of Junot’s attempts
to dislodge the British from Vimeiro hill, Sir Arthur concluded, “The attack
along the valley has also been checked with heavy losses for the French. I have
just ordered that the Forty-third be brought in from the east, and that action
should begin at any moment. If you would like to ride down with me, sir, we
will be able to see the results more clearly.”

Sir Arthur told Colin Campbell to remain where he was and
direct any messengers down to the small knob of high land above the station of
the Twentieth Light Dragoons, whereupon he began to ride downhill toward the
battle scene. Indeed, he had come up principally to make certain no extremely
urgent messages had come from the left flank. Robert had guessed that and
guessed also that the quick turns of Sir Arthur’s head and the frequent use of
his glass implied some uneasiness with regard to the silence from that area.

Robert’s mind was divided between those thoughts and a new
wash of anger and disgust. It was clear that Burrard was surprised by Sir
Arthur’s intention of surveying the battle at close range. Not that Sir Harry
was the least afraid. He was merely astonished at Wellesley’s notion that a
commanding general should go and see for himself. However, Robert was soon
distracted by the action itself. The French were still resisting stubbornly,
and by this time both sides were in near chaos because the outlying houses and
walls had broken the formation of the regiments. The charge of the Forty-third
only added to the confusion. Volleys were exchanged at almost point-blank
range, and there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting with very free use of the
bayonet.

It was soon apparent that the courageous French grenadiers
could not turn the tide. Sullenly the drums rolled the order to retreat. It
would have been virtually impossible for the disordered masses to pull out and
protect themselves, and Junot sent out a regiment of dragoons to cover the
retreat.

Sir Arthur, of course, did not want an orderly French
withdrawal. He decided at once to use his handful of cavalry, the two hundred
and forty light dragoons, supported by two hundred and sixty Portuguese in two
squadrons, which were drawn up below the rise. Lifting his already well-known
cocked hat, Wellesley waved it and cried, “Now, Twentieth, now is the time!”

Colonel Taylor, who had been watching anxiously for some
signal from Wellesley, wheeled his regiment from behind the sheltering hill and
charged at the retreating French. At first the Portuguese rode even with the
British, but when the French paused and began to fire, the Portuguese broke and
fled back to the safety of the re-forming lines of Anstruther’s brigade, who
greeted them with hoots and catcalls.

Sir Harry uttered a shocked exclamation, and smothered
groans came from the ADCs of both generals. Sir Arthur alone watched with
unmoved expression. Taylor’s men rode on, crashed through the lines of French
dragoons, and plunged in among the fleeing infantry, sabering right and left
and taking prisoner those who threw down their arms. Now Sir Harry was smiling
and if he had not been, so to speak, a guest of Sir Arthur’s, he would no doubt
have waved and cheered them on. However, as the Twentieth continued onward
right through the terrified infantry, Wellesley’s mouth tightened in furious
disapproval.