Secrets of a Lady

still, pale blur in the fog. “My compliments, Melanie.” 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 Melanie’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. Melanie’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 Melanie, 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 Melanie, 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 Melanie 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. Melanie 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 Melanie stumbled into the clearing, gasping, her cloak billowing round her, her hair whipping about her face.

“Blanca! Dios gracias!” Melanie 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, Melanie, porque—”

“So. Another senorita.” The dragoon who had hit Blanca stared down at Melanie. 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 Melanie. “The other man,” he said in halting Spanish. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Melanie 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. Melanie 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. Melanie 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.”

Melanie 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?”