A Regency Captain's Prize. Margaret McPhee
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Where are the others?’
Beneath the glow of the lantern her face paled. There was a pause. ‘We shot the others for food.’
‘Really,’ he said, ‘you shot the horses and left the donkeys?’
‘Yes.’ One hand slid to encase the other and she stood there facing him, with her head held high, as demure as any lady, and lying through her teeth.
‘I see.’ He watched her grip tighten until the knuckles shone white. He looked directly into her eyes and stepped closer until only the lantern separated them.
She tried to back away, but her legs caught against the wooden crate positioned behind her and she would have fallen had he not steadied her. Quite deliberately, he left his hand where it was, curled around her upper arm.
‘You would do better to tell me the truth, Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said quietly. He saw the pulse jump in her neck, could almost hear the skittering thud of her heart within the silence of the cellar. Her eyes were wide and her skin so pale as to appear that it had been carved from alabaster. She was smaller than he remembered from the shoot-out in the room in the monastery, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulder. Perhaps it was the rifle that had lent her the illusion of height. They were standing so close that he could see the long lashes that fanned her eyes and hear the shallowness of her breath.
‘Do you want to start again?’ The softness of his words did not hide the steel beneath them.
She shook her head, and he noticed the fair tendrils of hair that had escaped her pins curl around her neck. ‘No, sir.’ Her words were as quiet as his, and Dammartin could only admire her courage.
‘Very well.’ He knew what he must do. The task was not pleasant, but it would give him the answers that the girl would not. Yet still he stood there, staring at her, as much as she stared at him, until he stepped abruptly away. ‘We shall continue our conversation at a later time.’ And he was gone, leaving her once more in the dark solitude of the cellar.
Josie still glared at the door long after it had closed behind him. Her heart was racing so fast that she thought she might faint, but still she did not move to sit down. Her eyes strained through the darkness, seeing nothing, her ears hearing the steady climb of his feet back up the stairs. Her arm throbbed where his hand had been even though his grip had been so light as to barely be a restraint.
She pressed her fingers hard to her lips as if to catch back all of the words she had spoken.
What had she revealed? Nothing that he would not already have known, yet Josie knew that was not true. The Frenchman’s face had told her it was so. He knew about the horses, and if he knew about that, then it would not be so very long before he knew the rest.
Her lies had been feeble, obvious and pathetic. Dammartin did not believe her, that much was evident. And he would be back. Her stomach turned over at the thought.
It had taken an hour for twenty-seven men and women to die so that General Lord Wellington might be warned of Massena’s scheme. In the space of a matter of minutes Josie had almost negated their sacrifice if Captain Hartmann and Lieutenant Meyer had not yet reached Wellington. How much time would it take the two men to weave their way back to Lisbon? The future of the British army at the lines of Torres Vedras rested on that and Josie’s ability to prevent, or at least delay, Dammartin’s discovery that the messengers had been sent. And that was not something in which she had the slightest degree of confidence.
Not for the first time Josie wondered if her father would have done better to let her die with him in the monastery. For all Papa’s assurance of Pierre Dammartin’s honour, she had a feeling that the French Captain was going to prove a most determined enemy.
* * *
It took almost half an hour for Dammartin, his lieutenant, Molyneux, and his sergeant, Lamont, to finish the gruesome activity that the girl’s reticence to talk had forced them to. The night was dark, the moon a thin, defined crescent. They worked by the light of flambeaux, moving from corpse to corpse, examining the uniforms that garbed the stiffened, cold bodies that had once been a formidable fighting force for Britain, noting down what they found. And with each one Dammartin felt the futility of the loss. As prisoners of war they would have lost no honour. They had fought bravely, and the French had acknowledged that. Yet they had laid down their lives seemingly in a pointless gesture of defiance.
Three times Dammartin had given them the opportunity to surrender, and three times Mallington had rejected it. Time had been running out. Dammartin knew he had already delayed too long, that General Foy and Major La Roque would arrive to take over if Dammartin did not bring the matter to a close, and Dammartin’s chance would have been lost. In the end he had been forced to storm the monastery, just as La Roque had ordered.
He pushed such thoughts from his mind and forced himself to concentrate on the task before him. It seemed a long time before they had finally been able to rinse the blood from their hands and make for the stables.
With the flambeaux held low, they scrutinised the marks and patterns of feet and hooves impressed upon the ground.
‘What do you think?’ Dammartin asked of his lieutenant. Molyneux had been trained in tracking, and when it came to his expertise in this field, there was no one’s opinion that Dammartin trusted more.
‘Two men and two horses heading off in the direction of the track over there. Prints are still fairly fresh. They probably left some time this afternoon.’
‘It is as I thought,’ said Dammartin. ‘We have found what we were looking for.’ It all made sense. Now he understood why Mallington had fought so hard for so long. Not for Telemos. The village was of little importance to the British regiment. But time was, and time was what they had bought for their messengers, and paid for with their lives. He gave a sigh and moved to instruct a pursuit team.
Josie was in the midst of a dream in which the battle of Telemos was being fought again. She shouted the warning to her father, snatching up the dead man’s weapon, running up the staircase, loading and firing at the pursuing French. Her bullet travelled down the gun’s rifled barrel, cutting with a deadly accuracy through the air to land within the Frenchman’s chest. Smoke from the gunpowder drifted across her face, filling her nose with its stench, catching in her throat, drawing a curtain before her eyes so that she could not see. She heard the stagger of his footsteps, and then he was there, falling to his knees before her, his blood so rich and red spilling on to the hem of her dress. She looked down as the enemy soldier turned his face up to hers and the horror caught in her throat, for the face was that of Captain Pierre Dammartin.
She opened her eyes and the nightmare was gone, leaving behind only its sickening dread. Her heart was thumping in her chest, and, despite the icy temperature of the cellar, the sheen of sweat was slick upon her forehead and upper lip. She caught her breath, sat up from her awkward slump against the stack of wooden boxes, and rubbed at the ache in her back. As she did so, she heard the step of boots upon the stairs and knew that he was coming back, and her heart raced all the faster.
She struggled up to her feet, ignoring the sudden dizziness that it brought, felt herself sway in the darkness and sat rapidly back down. The last thing she wanted Dammartin to see was her faint.
And then he was there, through the door before she was even aware that the key had turned within the lock.
He looked tired and there was fresh dust upon his coat and a smear of dirt upon his cheek. The expression on his face was impassive, and she wondered what he had been doing. How much time had passed since he had questioned her? Minutes, hours? Josie did not know.
He set the lantern down upon a box at the side of the room and moved to stand before her. Josie knew that this time there was a difference in his attitude. His eyes were filled with such darkness and determination that she remembered the stories of interrogation and torture and felt the fear squirm deep in the pit of her stomach. Tales of bravery and singular distinction, men who had defied all to withhold the information that their enemy sought. And something in Josie quailed because she knew that she had not a fraction of that bravery and that