Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

The sound of retching told Charles where to look. He’d heard it every one of the three mornings since they’d found Mélanie de Saint-Vallier and Blanca Mendoza. The first time he hadn’t been sure. The second he’d lain awake, debating what to do, until she slipped back into the camp. This morning he’d been ready. He moved quietly over the rocky ground, past Jennings and the other soldiers, past Blanca and Addison, all still wrapped in their sleeping blankets. The fire he’d kindled flickered red amid the rocks. Fog hung thick in the air, clinging to tree trunks, shrouding the predawn glow in the sky. The brush of damp air on his skin brought a memory of home.

He’d slept little the night before. The meeting with the bandits who claimed to have the Carevalo Ring was to take place later this morning, at a rendezvous point just beyond the clearing where they’d camped for the night. He was ready for anything, including an attempt to take the gold at gunpoint without producing anything that remotely resembled the ring.

But at the moment, the ring seemed of far less consequence than Mélanie de Saint-Vallier. Patches of dirty snow crunched beneath his feet as he picked his way out of the clearing. One of the horses whickered, and he stopped to stroke its muzzle.

She was kneeling by a line of pine trees that bordered a streambed. The fog blurred his view, but he could see that she had one hand wrapped round a moss-covered tree trunk. Her head was bent, her dark hair spilling loose over the green wool of her cloak.

“Miss Saint-Vallier.” He pitched his voice to be heard over the rushing of the stream, but he kept his tone gentle. He knew what cause she had to start when approached unawares.

She went still for a moment, then pulled herself to her feet and turned, gripping the tree trunk. “Mr. Fraser.” Through the curtain of fog, it sounded as though she was farther away than she was. “I didn’t realize anyone else was awake.”

“I thought perhaps you could do with some tea.” He held out the tin cup he carried.

She wiped her hand across her mouth. “Thank you.” She walked forward, her steps firm and deliberate. “The stew last night must not have agreed with me.”

He put the cup into her hand. “Very likely not.”

Her hands curved round the warmth of the cup. A gust of wind riffled through the pine trees, tugging at her cloak. “For once I think Shakespeare got it wrong,” she said, her voice bright with determination. “I don’t think man’s ingratitude could possibly be more unkind than this wind.”

“Shakespeare was a genius, but I doubt he had experience of the Spanish mountains.” He looked into her eyes, seeking a bridge to the painfully personal topic that needed discussing. “Not many Franco-Spaniards quote As You Like It in adversity.”

“My father got me to learn English by promising I couldn’t really appreciate Shakespeare in translation.” She took a swallow of tea, gripping the cup in both hands. “You’re fond of him yourself? Shakespeare, I mean.”

“Next to my brother, he was the closest companion of my youth. My brother would tell you I have an unfortunate tendency to prefer the company of books to people.”

She regarded him through the steam that rose from the cup. “You find you’re less likely to be bored or disappointed that way?”

“And then there’s the fact that I don’t have to worry that I’ll disappoint the books.”

“I find it hard to imagine you disappointing anyone, Mr. Fraser. I’ve met few people so adept at coping in a crisis.”

The smile that tugged at his mouth was more bitter than he intended. “That depends on the crisis. Some are more easily resolved than others.” He paused. “The first step is always to face the problem. Talking to a friend can help.”

She drew in her breath. For a moment, they looked at each other without speaking. He wasn’t going to force a confession, but he was very much hoping for one. It would make things a great deal easier.

The wind cut the fog so that it swirled and re-formed round them. She released her breath, a sound as harsh as the crack of dry needles. “You’re an observant man, Mr. Fraser. Or is it obvious to everyone?”

“I shouldn’t think so. To own the truth, I was concerned from the moment I heard your story.”

She let out a mirthless laugh. He cupped his hand round her own so she wouldn’t spill the precious tea. “My old nurse said a cup of tea soothed any trouble.” He smiled into her bleak eyes. “I’m not sure she was right, but it can’t make it worse.”

Miss Saint-Vallier gave a weak attempt at a smile. Even that brightened her face. He steadied her hand as she lifted the cup to her lips and took a careful sip. Warm metal, cold fingers, soft skin.

“How sure are you?” he asked.

She looked straight into his eyes. “I’m never ill like this, Mr. Fraser. I’m sure.” Her mouth went taut. “‘She is a woman, therefore may be woo’d; She is a woman, therefore may be won.’ But there was precious little wooing about it, and I refuse to say that I was won.”

He kept his hand cupped round her own. “It’s too soon for it to have been the afrancesados. The French patrol who attacked your parents’ house—”

“Yes. I’m carrying a French soldier’s bastard. I couldn’t tell you his rank. I doubt I’d recognize him if he passed me on the street. There was more than one, and I didn’t get a very good look at their faces.”

Oh, Christ. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick himself. He murmured the first words that came into his head. “‘Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’ I’ve always fancied myself a humanist, but I sometimes think this war will strain my faith in humanity to the breaking point.” He tightened his fingers over her own. “What about Blanca?”

“She’s all right. Oh, God, that sounds ridiculous. I mean, the French soldiers didn’t plant a babe in her belly. I don’t know about the afrancesados. They…used us, too.”

“I’d like to kill them for you.” The words came out with a violence he hadn’t intended. “Though I’d be a poor match for a pack of bandits, not to mention soldiers. And it would do nothing to solve your predicament.”

She gave a desperate sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “I’m afraid solutions to this predicament don’t exist.”

“On the contrary. It’s not unheard of, even in the best families in London.” He hesitated. She was sharp-witted and well-educated, but it was difficult to judge how much an unmarried girl of little more than twenty would have been told. “There are ways—” He sought for the right words, for once quite out of his depth.

“Of getting rid of it?” Her gaze was clear and candid.

“It can be dangerous.” He looked straight into her eyes. They couldn’t afford to waste time on embarrassment. “But there are doctors who know the business and can be counted on to be discreet. I could make inquiries when we reach Lisbon. Or you could retire somewhere secluded to have the child. Then a home could be found for it.”

Her lips twisted. “And everyone could pretend it didn’t exist, including me?”

He studied the fragile bones of her face, the delicate point of her chin, the pure line of her throat. The fog misted her skin and made damp tendrils of hair cling to her forehead. “No one could blame you if you couldn’t bear to look at this child after it’s born. Or if you couldn’t bear to carry it at all.”

Her fingers stilled beneath his own. She glanced down into the steaming liquid in the cup they held between them. She looked as though she was seeing places he could only begin to imagine. “Perhaps not.” She drew a breath that shuddered through her, stirring the folds of her cloak. “I’ve wondered, sometimes, if I’ll be able to forget how the child was made. The problem is, I’m quite sure I won’t be able to forget that the child is mine. The only relative I have left in the world.”

“You have time. It’s not a decision to make lightly.”

She put her free hand over her abdomen, the way she had three nights ago in the wine cave. “After the afrancesados left, I was terrified that what they’d done would make me lose the baby. I knew then.” She looked up at him, her eyes as bright and clear as a Highland loch on a summer day. “I’m not going to get rid of the child, Mr. Fraser. And I’m not going to give it away.”

He nodded and said the only thing left that he could say. “Then I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Her mouth curved in a genuine smile. “You’re a kind man, Mr. Fraser.”

That smile cut through to a place somewhere inside him that he had thought no longer existed. His breathing turned uneven. At the same moment his ears caught something he’d been a damned fool not to hear earlier. Not a specific sound so much as a shift in the creaks and rustlings of the forest. Noises that weren’t caused by birds or rodents or the wind.

He caught Miss Saint-Vallier’s arm in a hard grip and gave a warning shake of his head. She nodded. He slid his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat, feeling for his pistol. His gaze swept the area round them. Nothing save fog, trees, and the damnably telltale glow of the fire.

A crack sounded from beyond their camp some fifty feet away. A booted foot, landing on a dry branch. A stir of movement followed, then a startled curse and a sharp report. One of their own men had wakened, reached for his musket, and fired off a shot.

A hail of answering bullets ripped through the fog. Someone cried out. A flock of birds rose from the trees, squawking in fear. The horses whinnied. A woman screamed.

Blanca. Miss Saint-Vallier started forward, but Charles pulled her back. “No,” he mouthed against her hair. “Not that way. It won’t do any good.”

Jennings was shouting orders to his men. They fired off a volley of musket shots. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks. The smell of gunpowder choked the air.

Charles had his pistol out, and the leather bag that contained dry powder. He loaded the powder and rammed the ball into place, but he couldn’t see enough to make out how many stood or had fallen. He reached out to grip Miss Saint-Vallier’s hand again.

“Drop the gun.” A voice, disembodied in the fog, spoke in French-accented English. “Or I shoot the lady.”

Charles mentally called himself six kinds of fool and dropped the pistol. Miss Saint-Vallier was standing very still not two feet away. He twisted his head to the side. A man in the brass helmet and scarlet-faced green coat of a French dragoon had his own pistol pressed against her back.

“Kick the pistol over here,” the dragoon said, his voice raised above the blare of musket fire.

Heroics were an impossibility. Charles nudged the pistol with the toe of his boot. It scuttered through the pine needles. The dragoon bent and scooped it up, keeping his own pistol trained on Miss Saint-Vallier.

In the clearing beyond, shots still rang out. A voice called out. A Spanish voice. Oh, Christ. The bandits had arrived to collect their gold and hand over the ring.

“Right.” The dragoon tucked Charles’s pistol into his belt. “Now—”

Miss Saint-Vallier let out a soft moan and crumpled to the ground. She crashed into the dragoon as she fell. The cup she still carried spattered hot tea onto her captor. He stumbled, and the pistol that had been pressed against her back tilted toward the ground.

Charles lunged forward and delivered a swift blow to the dragoon’s chin. The dragoon staggered. His pistol slipped from his fingers. Charles hit him again. The dragoon blocked the blow with his arm, and his fist came up and caught Charles full in the face. Charles fell against the hard, rough bark of a tree. Pain sliced through his temples. He heard the click of a hammer and found himself staring down the muzzle of his own pistol.

He had a moment to think, with faint surprise, that he didn’t want to die. Then the dragoon gave a strangled cry and collapsed face-first on the ground, the pistol clutched in his hand, a knife hilt protruding from his back.

Mélanie de Saint-Vallier stood over him. “He was going to shoot you.” Her voice was flat. “Is he dead?”

Charles bent over and felt for the pulse in the dragoon’s neck. “Very.” He looked up at her. Her face was a still, pale blur in the fog. “My compliments, Mélanie.” It was the first time he’d called her by her name.

“I’ve kept a knife in my bodice ever since—since the other time. I didn’t have a chance to use it on the bandits. But my father taught me how to stab a man.”

Charles snatched up the pistol the dragoon had dropped earlier. “Did your father also teach you how to shoot?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He put the pistol into her hand and took his own pistol from the dragoon’s still-warm fingers. The Frenchman also carried a musket. Charles slung it over his shoulder.

Musket balls whistled through the air fifty feet away. A man screamed. Jennings shouted an order. His voice broke off in midsentence. Charles grabbed Mélanie’s hand and pulled her down the bank of the gully.

The bank was steep. He couldn’t see the stream, but he could judge the distance to its edge by the sound of the water rushing over the rocks. Mélanie’s cloak caught on a thornbush. She tugged it free. Then they both went still. The ever-present gunfire had stopped.

Someone moaned. A horse whinnied. Boots crunched over twigs and earth, careless now of the noise. A voice barked out a command. Charles couldn’t make out the words, but the accent was French.

He looked at Mélanie, weighing her safety against that of those in the camp. He knew enough of her now to know that she wasn’t one to run, any more than he was. He jerked his head down the bank. She nodded, her hand going to the pistol in the pocket of her cloak. They crept forward, over snow and rocks and brittle pine needles.

A French voice carried through the fog. “One move and we shoot.” The speaker was not addressing them but whoever remained in the camp. “Where are the others?”

“There aren’t any. Just us and the dead.”

That last was Addison, in impeccable French. At least his valet had survived the attack. A breath of relief whistled through Charles’s lungs.

“You’re lying.” This was another French speaker. “There’s bedding for at least two more. Where are they?”

Silence followed, and then the smack of a hand connecting with a cheek.

“I don’t know,” Addison said, his voice as cool and controlled as ever. “Away from here, if they have any sense.”

“Impudent bastard.” The words were accompanied by the sound of another slap.

“The lieutenant needs tending to,” Addison said. “He’s badly wounded.”

“No one gets cosseted until we find the others. Georges! Michel! Search the woods. We don’t want them sneaking up on us unawares.”

In the cold frozen earth of the gully, Charles’s hand had closed round a large rock. He hurled it as far as he could in the opposite direction, away from him and Mélanie, away from the dead dragoon.

An old trick, perfected in his boyhood to throw his tutor off the scent, but as the rock crashed through the underbrush, the French leader gave an excited cry. “That way! They may be armed.”

Boots tramped across the ground in the opposite direction. Two of the French soldiers were out of the clearing for the moment. Charles couldn’t tell how many were left. He motioned for Mélanie to stay where she was and crawled on his stomach to the edge of the gully.

The smell of blood washed over him, sweet and choking. He gagged, swallowed, then squinted through the tangle of thornbushes.

The rising sun pierced the fog. The light glared against the snow, but he could see enough to make out the two French dragoons left in the clearing. Both were armed with muskets. The stocks glinted in the light.

Addison was leaning against a large boulder, his arm round Blanca. Blanca appeared to be unhurt, but Addison’s right leg was stretched out at an awkward angle. Sergeant Baxter and fresh-faced Private Smithford sat across the clearing from them. Blood showed on the white facings of their coats, but it might not be their own. The other red-coated figures were sprawled over the ground. One of them, probably Jennings, gave another low moan. Charles couldn’t tell whether any of the others lived. The horses, miraculously, appeared to be unharmed.

One of the dragoons walked up to Blanca. “She’s a pretty thing, Corporal. She’ll liven up the journey back to camp.” He bent and stuck his hand down her bodice. Blanca spat full in his face. The soldier lifted his musket and swung it against the side of her head.

The blow fell half on Blanca, half on Addison, who had flung up his arm to protect her. Charles reached for his pistol, then stilled his hand. That wouldn’t solve anything, not with the French soldiers positioned as they now were, both armed.

Smithford jumped to his feet with a roar of outrage. He couldn’t be much more than eighteen and he’d been making eyes at Blanca ever since they’d found her.

The second dragoon, who had the insignia of a corporal, whirled round and fired a musket ball straight into Smithford’s chest. Smithford’s eyes opened in astonishment. He made a gurgling sound low in his throat. Then he collapsed face-first in the dirt.

“Asesino,” Blanca cried.

“I said I’d shoot anyone who moved.” The corporal was ramming a fresh ball into his musket. “You, the pasty one who speaks French. You tell them.”

Addison murmured to Blanca and Baxter in English. The underbrush stirred beside Charles. Mélanie crawled up next to him. Charles turned to her. Even before she began to whisper in his ear, he knew what she was going to suggest. It was madness. And it was their only hope.

Charles held himself motionless behind the thornbushes and watched as Mélanie stumbled into the clearing, gasping, her cloak billowing round her, her hair whipping about her face.

“Blanca! Dios gracias!” Mélanie flung herself down beside the younger girl, seemingly heedless of the dragoons.

Blanca turned her head, the red mark clearly visible on her face. “Oh, Mélanie, porque—”

“So. Another señorita.” The dragoon who had hit Blanca stared down at Mélanie. Charles couldn’t read his expression, but he could hear the combination of anger and lust in the Frenchman’s voice.

“Sir?” One of the soldiers who had gone to search called out through the trees. “Have you found them?”

“Only one. Do you see anything?”

“There are a couple of dead Spaniards, but no sign of an Englishman.”

“Keep searching.” The corporal looked at Mélanie. “The other man,” he said in halting Spanish. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Mélanie shrank back against the boulder. Her hands were tucked into the folds of her cloak, as though for protection. Behind the thornbushes, Charles eased the musket onto his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.

“The man with you.” The corporal gestured toward the empty sleeping blankets.

“At least now we know why they slipped away from camp,” the other dragoon murmured in his own tongue. “Too fastidious to do it in front of his men. I expect he’s left her nice and warm and wet.”

Blanca looked up at him. She had understood the implication if not the words. “Bastardo.”

The dragoon raised the butt of his musket again. Mélanie coughed once, loudly. Then all at once her left hand wasn’t tucked into her cloak but was pointing at the dragoon. She shot him before he had a chance to see the pistol she held. At the same moment, Charles fired off a musket shot that caught the corporal full in the chest.

Both Frenchmen fell. Mélanie sprang to her feet. Charles ran into the clearing.

Footsteps crashed through the underbrush. Charles pulled his unfired pistol from his belt. Baxter snatched a musket from one of the dead dragoons.

The footsteps raced past. “Running away,” Baxter said. “They’ve got horses in the trees yonder. I don’t think they’ll stop to bury their own dead. They must know they’re outnumbered now.”

Mélanie dropped down beside Jennings, who was making incoherent noises. His chest was soaked bright red, and blood dribbled out the corner of his mouth. She took off her cloak and spread it over him. “Lie still, Lieutenant. It’s all right now. Blanca, we need fresh water from the stream. Are both the dragoons dead, Mr. Fraser?”

“Without question.” Charles straightened up from checking the pulse of the second dragoon. The other four British soldiers were flung about the rocks, their bodies twisted and bloodied and shattered by bullets.

“Smithford’s gone, too, poor devil,” Baxter said.

“Are you hurt, Baxter?”

“Me? Nay, untouched, sir.” Baxter brushed his hand over the blood on his coat as though surprised it was there.

Charles dropped down opposite Mélanie. She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. Her face was smeared with blood that must have sprayed from the dragoon she’d shot. Her eyes held a look that was part shock, part horror, part sheer guts.

Charles brushed his fingers against her cheek. He stripped off his greatcoat and laid it over Jennings, then turned to his valet, who was still slumped against the rock. “How bad’s your leg, Addison?”

“Broken, I think. I’m afraid you may have to give me the use of your horse, sir.”

“Gladly. But you had only to ask, you know. You needn’t have gone to the trouble of getting your leg broken.” Charles got to his feet and jerked his head in the direction the French had run. “I’ll reconnoiter. Make sure they’re gone.”

They were gone, as best he could tell. They’d left three of their own dead sprawled among the trees. Not twenty paces off, he found the bodies of the two Spanish bandits. Poor bastards. They’d come to the rendezvous early. It was their bad luck to have arrived in the middle of the fight.

Charles returned to the clearing to find that Baxter had kindled a fresh fire beside Jennings, and the women had contrived a splint for Addison’s leg.

Jennings died just after eleven, with barely a sound. It took them nearly the whole of the morning to tend to the dead—English, French, and Spanish.

They found nothing resembling the Carevalo Ring, but one of the Spanish bandits had a leather pouch on a cord round his neck. Someone had ripped his shirt open and loosened the drawstring on the pouch. It seemed the Carevalo Ring had existed after all. And it was now in the hands of the French.