Jane Feather - [V Series] (11 page)

The sound of heavy footsteps laboring up the wooden stairs outside broke his enchantment. The mist of passion left his bright-blue eyes, and he pulled his hands loose from her skin as if she were a burning brand.

And then he was gone from the room, brushing past Senhora Braganza as she toiled up the stairs with a steaming copper jug, and out into the lowering afternoon filled with the incessant sound of the bombardment.

He walked fast to the stables to reclaim his horse, and the groom quailed at the blue blazing light in the colonel’s eyes beneath the thick red-gold eyebrows, and the close-gripped mouth in the grim set of his jaw. He rode out of Elvas and into the encampment to his own tent and the reassuring sanity of his own men. He must be losing his mind. She was a grubby, manipulative, unfeminine, mercenary hellion, and she stirred him to the root of his being.

Tamsyn watched him from the window as he strode down the street as if all the devils in hell were on his heels. “How very ungallant of you, milord colonel,” she
murmured to herself. “Whatever can you be afraid of? Not of me, surely?”

A tiny smile quirked her lips as she turned from the window to discuss with the widow Braganza the sorry condition of her clothes.

“W
HERE’S OUR GUEST
, J
ULIAN?” THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
asked as the colonel entered his apartments before dinner that evening.

“I’ve sent Sanderson to escort her here,” Julian said, nodding a greeting to the five men, all members of the commander in chief’s staff, gathered to join Wellington for dinner.

“So what d’you think of her, Julian?” Major Carson handed him a glass of sherry. “We’re all agog.”

“I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I can throw her,” St. Simon stated flatly.

“Considering what a tiny little thing she is, that would be quite a distance.” Wellington laughed at his own witticism, the sound remarkably like the neighing of a horse.

Julian’s smile was dour. “You fell for that little act she put on this afternoon.”

“Act?” Wellington raised an eyebrow.

“Trembling and swaying and tottering all over the place. She was exhausted, I grant you that. I don’t suppose she’s had more than a few hours’ sleep in the last five days, and that mostly in the saddle, but swooning … 
La Violette … pull the other one.” He took a disgusted gulp of his sherry.

“You don’t like the lady, Julian?” Brigadier Cornwallis said with a grin.

“No, I dislike her intensely. And I have to tell you, Cornwallis, that ‘lady’ is a vast misnomer. She’s a duplicitous, mercenary, untrustworthy vagabond.”

There was an instant of silence at this brief but comprehensive denunciation; then Colonel Webster said, “Ah, well, Julian, you never did take kindly to being outsmarted.”

You don’t know the half of it
. But Julian contented himself with another dour smile and said, “Not to mention being dragooned into charging across the countryside to remove Cornichet’s epaulets.”

“What?” There was a chorus of exclamations, and the colonel obliged with a brief narrative that had everyone but himself chuckling.

“Uh … excuse me, sir.” Lieutenant Sanderson appeared in the doorway.

“Well?” Wellington regarded him with a touch of irritability. It was clear the brigade-major was alone.

“La Violette, sir, she—”

“She’s not run off?” Julian interrupted, snapping his glass down on the table.

“Oh, no, Colonel. But she’s asleep, sir, and Senhora Braganza couldn’t awaken her.”

“Perhaps we should let her sleep, then,” Wellington suggested.

“Oh, she’s not asleep,” Julian stated. “It’s one of her tricks. I’ll have her here in fifteen minutes.” With that he strode from the room.

“Well, well,” murmured Colonel Webster. “I can’t
wait to meet our guest. She seems to exercise a most powerful effect on St. Simon.”

“Yes,” agreed the commander in chief, frowning thoughtfully. “She does, doesn’t she?”

Senhora Braganza greeted the irate colonel’s arrival with a voluble flood of Portuguese and much hand waving. Julian, who had a smattering of her language and relatively fluent Spanish, divined that the “poor child” was sleeping like a baby and it would be a crime to awaken her. The partisans could do no wrong among the local populations of Portugal and Spain, and it rather seemed as if the widow was prepared to do battle to protect the sleeping one upstairs.

Julian was obliged to move her bodily aside as she defended the bottom of the stairs. He went up them two at a time with the senhora berating him on his heels. He flung open the door to the small chamber under the eaves and then stopped, something holding him back.

Moonlight from the single round window fell on the narrow cot where Violette lay. She slept on her back, her hands resting on the pillow on either side of her head, palms curled like a sleeping child’s.

Julian closed the door in the face of the still-bewailing widow and crossed soft-footed to the cot, where he stood looking down at her. Her face in repose had a youthful innocence that startled him. The dark, thick-lashed crescent of her eyelashes lay against the high cheekbones, the smooth, suntanned skin stretched taut across the bones. But sleep softened neither the firm line of her mouth nor the determined set of her jaw.

“Tamsyn?” He spoke her given name softly, unaware that it was the first time he’d used it.

She stirred, her eyelashes fluttered, a soft murmur of
protestation came from her lips. But there was something about the response, about the speed of it, that convinced him absolutely that she had not been asleep … that she’d been aware of his scrutiny.

His lips tightened. “Get up, Tamsyn. You’re not fooling me with this playacting.”

Her eyelashes swept up, and the deep-purple eyes gazed up at him with such a blend of sensual mischief that he caught his breath. Without taking her eyes off his face, she drew up her feet in a sudden swift movement, caught the covers, and kicked them off, baring her body, creamy in the moonlight. She smiled up at him, quirking an eyebrow, passing her hands over her body in unmistakable invitation.

Julian gasped at the sheer effrontery, the naked sexuality of the invitation. An invitation that he fought with clenched muscles to withstand. When he finally spoke, his voice grated in the lushly expectant silence.

“I will give you ten minutes to be ready to accompany me to the dinner table. If you’re not dressed by then, so help me, I’ll carry you through the streets just as you are.” Then he turned and left the room, aware that he was almost running as if the devils of enchantment would still reach out and haul him back.

Tamsyn swung off the cot and stretched. It was strange, but the English colonel was behaving unpredictably. In her experience men didn’t refuse such invitations. Especially when as far as the colonel knew, there were no strings. He couldn’t possibly guess what she was planning for his—or rather, their—immediate future.

Her protective landlady had provided her with clean undergarments, stockings, and a shirt. They were of rough homespun rather than the fine lawn, linen, or silk
Tamsyn was accustomed to wearing next to her skin. El Baron’s daughter had known only the best. But they were clean, as clean as her bathed skin and freshly washed hair. The widow had also brushed the butter-soft leather britches and polished the cordovan boots until the well-worn leather gleamed with a dull sheen. So Tamsyn was feeling more respectable than she’d been in many days when she jumped energetically down the stairs to greet the fuming and impatient Colonel, Lord St. Simon in the street outside the cottage.

“There, milord colonel, I’m ready to go with you.” She smiled nonchalantly as if the charged moments in the bedroom had never taken place. “And I’m hungry as a hunter, so I trust your commander in chief keeps a good table.”

Julian didn’t deign to reply, merely walked rapidly through the cobbled streets, lit by oil lamps at strategic intervals and still as busy as in broad daylight. The army didn’t sleep, and the siegeworkings continued in the moonlight as busily as they did in the sunshine.

The roomful of men turned as one to the door when St. Simon and his companion entered. “Ah, Violette.” Wellington stepped toward her. “I trust you’re rested.”

“Yes, thank you, I slept wonderfully.” Tamsyn took the hand he offered.

“Gentlemen, may I introduce La Violette.” The commander in chief slipped his other hand around her waist as he presented her to his staff.

Tamsyn didn’t attempt to move away from the half embrace as she responded to the introductions with smiling nods. She’d heard of the duke’s reputation as a flirt, and she was perfectly happy to encourage his attentions since they could only assist her purpose.

Julian stood to one side, morosely sipping sherry,
watching as the men in the room clustered around the small figure. La Violette certainly knew how to be the center of attention. Despite her masculine attire and the short, shining cap of hair, she was exuding feminine charm … female wiles, he amended. What the hell was she after? She’d come there to sell something, not reduce the entire high command of the English army to a state resembling Circe’s fools.

A servant came in bearing a baron of beef on a wooden board. He placed it on the table set for dinner before the fire. “Sir, dinner is served.”

“Good.” Wellington rubbed his hands together in hearty anticipation. “Come and sit beside me, my dear.” He swept Tamsyn into a chair on his right and took his place at the head. He raised his eyeglass and examined the offering on the table as servants unloaded steaming platters from their trays.

“Now, what have we here? A dish of mutton chops, I do believe. Do let me help you.… Tell me, must I call you Violette, or do you have another name?” He placed a chop on her plate together with several thick slices of beef.

“My given name is Tamsyn,” she said, hungrily helping herself to a dish of roast potatoes. “Violette … Violeta—they’re the names by which I’m known among the partisans.”

“Do the partisans all have code names?” the brigadier asked, filling her wineglass.

Tamsyn flashed him a smile as she picked up a mutton chop with her fingers. “Maybe.”

Julian watched as she tore at the flesh with her sharp white teeth, holding the chop between finger and thumb. When every last morsel of meat was off the
bone, she licked her fingers, picked up her fork, and speared a potato. She ate with the natural efficiency of a hungry animal, using her fingers if they were more suitable to the task, or deftly filleting a brook trout with a couple of strokes of her knife. There was nothing distasteful about her table manners, but neither was there any formality. Food was to be enjoyed, an appetite both sensual and necessary.

He noticed that while she drank several glasses of water, she merely took occasional sips of the wine in her glass.

Casually, he turned his chair sideways to the table, resting his forearm on the white starched cloth, his fingers caressing the stem of his wineglass. “You don’t care for the wine, Violette?”

She looked up swiftly, and her eyes were sharp as they met his across the table. “On the contrary, milord colonel, in the right place and time I enjoy a good rioja as much as anyone. But I have to be careful, it tends to go to my head.” She smiled. “Cecile had the same difficulty.”

“Cecile?” Major Carson queried, carrying a forkful of mushroom compote to his lips.

“My mother, sir. I inherited her small stature. The baron maintained we had too little height and weight to absorb much wine.” She bit into an almond pastry. “It seemed as good an explanation as any.”

“St. Simon tells us that your mother was English,” the brigadier said, taking his nose out of his wineglass.

“Yes,” Tamsyn agreed. She brushed crumbs off her fingers and played with the locket at her throat. “This belonged to my mother. It belonged to her mother, I believe.”

“But how did she find herself in Spain?” Major Carson asked.

“She was paying a visit to some family friends … an ambassador or some such in Madrid. She disappeared into the arms of my father at some point in the journey.” Tamsyn smiled as she helped herself to another sweetmeat from the basket in front of her. “And had no desire to leave them … until she died.”

The shadow that passed across her face was gone before anyone but Julian caught it. But a hardness lingered in her face and eyes, although she continued to smile and nibble her pastry. It was as if she’d thrown up shutters to her innermost feelings, he thought. As if something too deep and too precious had come dangerously close to the surface.

The conversation became general until the covers were removed and the port decanter appeared. Chairs were pushed back from the table, cigars were lit, the decanter circulated, and it clearly didn’t occur to anyone that La Violette was in the least out of place. Least of all did it occur to the bandit, Julian reflected caustically, regarding her from beneath his heavy eyelids as she joked and flirted quite openly with Wellington.

When she accepted a peeled grape from between the duke’s fingers, Julian decided he’d had as much as he could take of this charade. His men were in the trenches and he had work to do. Pushing back his chair, he stood up.

“You’ll excuse me, gentlemen, but I’ve pickets to post. I must return to my brigade.”

“The men are in a filthy temper,” Colonel Webster observed, suddenly somber. “They’re swearing at the Spaniards in Badajos for yielding the city to the French without a fight, and they’re swearing blue bloody murder
at the French for holding out when they know they haven’t got a chance.”

“There’ll be bloody work once we get into the city, you mark my words,” Brigadier Cornwallis agreed in curiously detached accents as he refilled his port glass.

“Yes, we’ll have the devil’s own task to keep a rein on them,” Julian said. “Well, I bid you good night, gentlemen.” He glanced at Tamsyn and was shocked at her white set face, wiped clean of all playfulness. Again she seemed to be looking on some grim internal landscape. “Farewell, Violette,” he said deliberately. “I trust your business here prospers.”