Once Tempted (29 page)

A prickle of unease ran down Olivia’s spine. Why did Robert want her to wait for him so far from the horses and their traveling companions? She reached inside her valise and fished out her pistol.

The mist started to clear on a freshening breeze, and not far down the road, she saw a man coming toward her. Though she could barely discern him, she could tell from his height and the breadth of his shoulders it was Robert.

As she was about to call out to him, she heard a stick snap behind her and she jumped around, dropping her valise and taking aim into the swirling mist.

To her surprise, Rafe fumbled to a stop before her, his hands going up in the air in mock horror. “Come now, I don’t think I look like Robert.”

“Rafe!” Olivia said, lowering the weapon and letting the hammer slowly back down. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, picking up a piece of firewood.

“Robert sent that girl to bring me here.” She nodded up the road, which was now deserted. Where the devil had he gone? She looked again and then back at Rafe.

“The maid came for you?” He shook his head. “I just saw Robert entering the inn. He said he was going to get you.”

“But I just saw . . .” Olivia started to say, peering back into the dusky shadows of the early morning landscape and finding nothing but trees and an empty road.

“Come along, then,” Rafe said, picking up her valise and taking a second hard glance down the road as well. “It is a good thing I found you. We are about to mount up.”

“What were you doing out here?” she asked.

He grabbed several logs. “One of the loads is unbalanced, and this particular mule becomes very cranky when everything isn’t to his liking.”

“Is this mule another Danvers relation?” she asked.

Rafe laughed. “Robert is quite right about you.”

“How is that?” she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“You are a regular termagant.”

Olivia followed Rafe to where the others were already waiting, most of them mounted on horses and holding ropes to strings of heavily laden mules. The men were a rough-looking lot, but they all to a man raised their hats in respect to her as she approached.

“La Reina que ha vuelto,”
they said to one another in quiet tones of awe.

“Why are they calling me that?” she asked Rafe.

“What?”

“The returning Queen,” she said.

He laughed. “They all know the legend, and they know who you are. They are more than honored to be taking you to our homeland, and there isn’t a man here who wouldn’t protect you with his life.”

“One of these days you’ll have to tell me this legend,” she said.

“When the time is right,” he promised, “I will.”

Rafe helped Olivia up onto the mount he’d found for her, a donkey who’d greeted her with a disgusted snicker and a great blowing snort and toss of her head.

“Sorry, this was the best I could do on such short notice,” Rafe told Olivia as she backed away from the cantankerous animal.

“Can’t she be used to haul your goods?” Olivia asked.

“She’s too unpredictable,” Rafe told her, grinning. “Robert assured me the two of you would get on well.”

Olivia took a deep breath and climbed aboard the animal. As she gathered up the reins, she noticed a uniformed man coming out of the inn.

Out of instinct, she ducked her head into her cloak as the tall, imposing figure walked toward them. She could only wonder if news of her latest crime had reached the British officials in Portugal.

“There you are,” Robert’s voice called out. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

At first she stared at him, for while she knew he was a member of Wellington’s personal staff, she had never considered what Robert would look like in his uniform.

He was utterly and completely changed before her eyes. In Bradstone’s fashionable clothes he’d been the rakish man about town. Aboard the
Sybaris
he’d moved just as easily into the plain white shirt and breeches that most of the men wore.

But standing before her, his scarlet coat smartly tailored and pressed, his buttons and epaulets in perfect order and his glossy Hessians encasing his legs with elegant precision, Major Robert Danvers stole her breath away.

“I didn’t recognize you,” she managed to say. “I mean, I’ve never seen you in your uniform.”

“Have I changed that much?” he asked.

She nodded, unable to put the words together. All his bearing, his commanding nature, his impossible honor, it all made sense now encased in this uniform. The scarlet coat and numerous decorations didn’t make him what he was, but now that she saw him in it, it was hard to imagine him any other way.

“Now that I’m back on official duty,” he said, “I’m required to wear it. Besides, it will afford us some measure of protection if we run—” He stopped in midsentence.

She knew what he meant. If they ran into any trouble. Glancing over her shoulder at Rafe’s motley and fierce collection of men, she smiled. “I doubt anyone would dare.”

“They do make an excellent guard, but if something does happen, get to my side immediately. I won’t have you—” He stopped again, this time as if he didn’t want to say anything more, much as he had stopped himself the night before. Then he bowed with all the precision that marked his uniform and strode over to where Aquiles was standing, holding the reins of a horse.

She smiled and watched him mount up onto a black beast of a thing that pranced and tossed its head with a noble disdain that put her poor donkey’s antics to shame.

But Robert gave the stallion a sharp whistle and a nudge with his thigh, and the animal quieted immediately. Olivia had the sense that he could tame anything with his commanding manners.

Even her rebellious heart.

For a moment all eyes were on Robert. He nodded to his brother, and they set off in a solemn procession.

Rafe took the lead, his ragged lot of men following, with Olivia, Robert and Aquiles in the middle and a rather nefarious group of men bringing up the rear. These fellows, his handpicked guard, Rafe had called them, looked capable of taking on Napoleon’s most battle-hardened regiments. All the men rode armed with a collection of rifles on either side of their saddles, and they had an ancient and wicked-looking array of
pistolas
stuck into their coats, belts, and crisscrossed holsters.

And as they went past the spot in the road where Olivia had thought she’d seen Robert earlier, a chill ran down her spine, as if she had just walked over her own grave. She had the feeling of being watched—but then told herself it was just her nerves over Rafe’s ominous warnings.

For really, as far as she was concerned, her only enemy was the man in the scarlet coat riding ahead of her. He had lied to her, kidnapped her, brought her to this dangerous country.

And worst of all, he’d captured her heart.

Chapter 13

O
livia didn’t give the laden mules much consideration until late in the first day. She had thought it quite a lot of provisions for what Rafe had told her would take a fortnight of travel. Then again, Robert and his brother knew better what their trip would require than she did, considering her only real outings had been hasty flights from crime scenes.

When they stopped by a stream to water the animals, before pushing on for a place Robert thought would be safe to camp for the night, Olivia learned the true nature of their journey.

The donkey Rafe had procured for her seemed to delight in braying at all the other animals around it, taking deliberate nips if they came too close and generally bedeviling everything in range with a well-aimed kick or a whip of her tail.

In short, the animal reminded Olivia of Lady Finch, and so in deference to her former employer she called the opinionated little beast Evaline.

Evaline edged close to a nearby mule and gave the overladen beast a nip on its flank. The startled animal tugged and kicked at its restraints, all the while letting out a long string of loud, obnoxious brays, while Evaline looked on with wide, innocent brown eyes.

“Quiet, sssh,” Olivia tried to tell the agitated animal. “Be still, you’ll only encourage Evaline to misbehave more.”

Her soothing words did nothing but irritate the mule further. She tried to catch its halter, but it jumped and tossed its head, sending the animal next to it into a frenzy of complaints as well.

Looking up for help, she realized all the men were staring at her in wideeyed horror. Alamar, Rafe’s second in command, was making the sign of the cross as he scrambled back from the mayhem erupting around her.

Evaline renewed her braying and kicking as if she were single-handedly attempting to perpetuate the mayhem.

Robert bolted out of nowhere to Olivia’s side. “Get that animal quieted,” he shouted at her, pointing at her donkey. “These packs are loaded with powder.”

Olivia looked at the heavily laden animal he was struggling to control as it still bucked at its halter and lead, and felt her stomach drop to her toes.

Powder?

Then she remembered—the shipment on the
Sybaris.
So Rafe was Colin’s business associate. Remembering how much explosive powder had been aboard, and considering that it was now surrounding her atop a group of agitated mules, Olivia froze.

In the meantime, Robert had waded into the frenzy, grabbing first one harness, then the other, barking at the animals as if they were disorderly soldiers in a drill. And the animals responded to his sharply issued commands by quieting into a docile line.

Olivia, however, was not so easily quelled. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning of what?” he asked, his voice tinged with irritation, as he walked through the line of animals, checking the straps to the packs.

“This!” she said, waving her hands at the powder-laden bags. “We could be killed.”

“You didn’t mind when it was aboard the
Sybaris,”
he said.

“I had little choice in that, I might remind you.”

“And you have little choice in this as well.” He tightened a buckle and gave the mule a scratch behind its ears.

Olivia’s hands rolled up into balls. “And if I am killed and the information lost, then what?”

He leaned forward and grinned at her. “Then you can spend all eternity reminding me of how all this is my fault.”

“See anyone?” Robert asked Rafe, as his brother rejoined their group after a little reconnaissance behind them. It had been nearly a week since they’d left the inn, and both Robert and Rafe were of the same suspicion.

Someone was following them.

Rafe shook his head. “I’ll bet this store of powder that we’re being followed, but I can’t find anyone. We’ll just have to keep a rear guard posted and keep a sharp eye out.”

They rode for a time in silence.

“Why don’t you just apologize to her?” Rafe blurted out.

“Apologize for what?” Robert asked back.

“For not telling her about the powder, about my men, about our real mission.”

He turned and looked at his brother. “And why would I want to do that?”

Rafe laughed. “Because you want to. Oh, don’t give me that black look. You’ve spent the last week staring at her. You never let her out of your sight. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that miserable expression when she goes to her tent . . .  alone. So why not just talk to her?”

Robert ignored him. Ahead of them, Olivia rode with one of Rate’s men, the two of them chatting away in Spanish, the infatuated guerrilla pointing out the sights and landmarks around them to his avid audience. All the men had been taking turns riding beside Olivia, including Aquiles and Rafe—all of them except Robert.

He couldn’t bring himself to bridge the gaping chasm that had opened between them since the night at the inn. His pride stood in the way. And that was a higher mountain than the ones looming in the distance, the ones that would lead them into Spain.

“I find it hard to believe that you of all people can so easily forget her involvement with Lando’s death,” Robert finally said.

Rafe shook his head. “She had nothing to do with it.”

“How do you know?” Robert looked again up the line of mules and horses to where she rode. “She hasn’t been honest about a number of things. Who’s to say she’s been honest about that?”

“Because she has Lando’s ring.”

When Robert said nothing, Rafe made art exasperated sound in the back of his throat. “And Wellington considers you one of his better officers? Bah, no wonder the British have spent so much time on their arses instead of fighting.”

Robert’s head swung around at this insult. “What the devil do you mean?”

“Think, man. If she had been in partnership with Bradstone and they had just discovered the whereabouts of a priceless treasure, do you think she would take the time to steal a worthless ring from a dead man’s hand? You know the value of these rings—you gave them to us.” Rafe spat to one side. “The only way she could have come by that ring is if Lando lived long enough to give it to her. She also knew that she was to take it to Hobbe. Just as you told us to do when you gave them to us, don’t you remember?”

He did remember. He had been leaving for the army, and his young half brothers had been devastated that their beloved elder brother was going away, especially Lando, who had trailed after Robert since the day he’d learned to walk. So as tokens to remember him by, Robert had given them both rings and told them that if they ever needed him, they could send him one as a sign.

And Lando had. Dispatching his final cry for help via his own chosen messenger, Olivia Sutton. What he wouldn’t tell Rafe was that he’d come to that very conclusion that night at the inn. And an even more staggering one—one he was unwilling to admit to anyone, not even himself.

Rafe pushed his point further. “Lando is the only witness we have from that night. Can’t you see that he wouldn’t have given the ring to her unless she had done something to instill his trust and faith. Obviously he didn’t hold her responsible—much to the contrary. So neither should you.”