Jane Feather - Violet

Julian was not, however, disposed to relax. He had the unshakable conviction that the giant's mood could change in the beat of a bird's wing.

Tamsyn scrambled into her clothes, casting half an eye along the bank where the English colonel was dressing, Gabriel leaning against the rocks, idly tracing patterns in the grass with the tip of his sword as they talked.

It had been many months since she'd succumbed to such an impulsive fit of passion. She knew, because she'd been told often enough, that she shared her mother's devil-may-care impulses, and the passion that ran deep in the veins of both her parents had flowed undiluted into their only child. She had been taught to regard such bodily hungers without prudery. They were perfectly normal among adults and should be satisfied without guilt. But she didn't think El Baron or Cecile would have regarded that wild encounter with approval. One didn't fraternize with the enemy.

And soldiers were the enemy… a personal enemy.

The images flooded in again, the screams, the steaming reek of blood. Her father standing in the midst of a yelling circle of men in the tattered uniforms of many nations, their faces twisted with the rapacious viciousness of greed, their senses drunk with blood. His great sword slashed from side to side but they kept on coming; shot after shot pierced his body, and it seemed to the two powerless watchers on the heights that he couldn't still stand there alive with the blood spurting from the holes in his body-and yet still he stayed on his feet and bodies fell beneath his sword.

Cecile lay in the shadows, dead by her husband's hand, a small black smudge on her forehead, where his merciful bullet had entered. El Baron's wife wouldn't fall victim to the rapine hungers of a vile mob of deserting soldiers. And his daughter too would have joined her mother in death if she'd been in the Puebla de St. Pedro that dreadful day, instead of hunting with Gabriel in the hills.

Slowly, she blinked away the images, put the anger and grief behind her. She'd led her own small band since that day. Those who'd escaped the massacre and others who'd joined them, all were prepared to follow El Baron's daughter as they aided the partisans, tormented the French, avoided direct contact with the English, and took what payment came their way.

Until that double-dyed bastard, Cornichet, had set his ambush. Tamsyn had no idea how many of La Violette's band had escaped the French in the pass, but she had been their target. The baron had long ago entrusted his daughter's safety in his own absence to his most trusted comrade, and Gabriel had fought beside her and for her. But one man, even a giant, was no match for fifty. They'd both been swept up like spiders, before the broom.

But what was done was done, and bewailing the past was pointless. It was now a question of making the most of their present situation. There must be some advantage to be gained from it. There was always an advantage if one looked for it.

She tucked her shirt into the waist of her britches and walked toward the two men, carrying her shoes and stockings, enjoying the feel of the cool, mossy turf beneath her feet.

The colonel's bright-blue eyes rested on her as she approached, and Tamsyn's scalp lifted, her heart quickening. What was done was done, she told herself firmly. That moment of madness was in the past. It had nothing to do with the present situation.

JULIAN FASTENED HIS SWORD BELT AT HIS WAIST. ARMED, HE felt immeasurably more secure, although the giant's sword was unsheathed, and the colonel was certain the man would be as fast and deadly with his weapon as any soldier he'd encountered.

The girl was walking toward them along the bank, carrying her shoes and stockings for all the world as if she were on a picnic by the river. He still couldn't get his mind around what had happened between them. His anger and injured pride at the ease with which she'd outsmarted him had turned into something else. Something darker and more powerful than simple lust, so that he'd lost all sense of reality, of duty, of purpose in a scrambling tangle of limbs and the heated furrow of her lithe body.

And it had lost him his prisoner and almost his skin.

His fury at himself was boundless.

He had quickly dismissed the possibility of calling to his men. They'd not hear him from the woods, and they certainly couldn't get to him quickly enough to support him in a fight with Gabriel and his broadsword. La Violette, however, was unarmed-Cornichet had seen to that--so he had only one serious opponent to contend with.

“Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon, he calls himself,” Gabriel declared as Tamsyn reached them. “Quite the aristocratic gentleman.” He picked his teeth with a fingernail, his mild eyes regarding the colonel with the same dispassionate curiosity. “It seems you owe him a favor, little girl, but I daresay you consider it paid.”

Tamsyn flushed at this barbed comment and said swiftly, “Not in the way you mean, Gabriel. We'll leave what happened back there out of any negotiations.”

“Negotiations?” Julian's eyebrows quirked. “Now, what could that mean, Violette? But, forgive me, I assume you have some other name. Since we're performing formal introduction…” He offered a mock bow and the tension in the air between them crackled. HIS body still retained the memory of hers as his brain fought to banish all such memories, and he knew it had to be the same for the girl, for they'd taken that mad flight together.

“I'm called Tamsyn,” she replied. “If it matters to you.” She shrugged, but both the gesture and the carelessness of her tone lacked conviction.

The name was as much of a puzzle as its owner. “Oh, it matters,” he assured her, adjusting his hastily tied stock, his fingers now moving in leisurely fashion through the linen folds. “Tamsyn. That's a Cornish name. “

“It was my mother's choice. How do you know it's Cornish?”

“I'm a Cornishman myself,” he responded. He was surprised at the sudden flash in her eyes, almost as if someone had lit a candle there.

“Are you?” she said casually. “I believe my mother's family were Cornish aristocrats too.”

The colonel's rather heavy eyelids drooped. His eyes were hooded, his voice a casual drawl. “Forgive me, but what was a Cornish aristocrat doing in a Spanish bandit’s bed?”

Gabriel moved the mighty sword lifting. “Watch your tongue, Englishman,” he said softly. “You insult my lady at your peril.”

Julian raised a hand in placation. He didn't know whether the man was referring to La Violette, who was certainly no lady by any of the standards he understood, or to her mother, but in the face of the broadsword and the fierceness in the giant's eyes, instant retreat struck him as the only option. “Forgive me. I meant no insult to a lady.” He laid a slight inflection on the last word. “But surely it's an understandable question.”

“Perhaps, but it's hardly your business, sir,” Tamsyn said coldly. “It's no business of any soldier.” The bleakness of her expression startled him. The dark-violet eyes were looking through him, and there were ghosts in their depths.

But of course, La Violette had taken over her father's band at his death. Julian had heard some story of a raid on El Baron's mountain village by one of the rogue groups of deserters, composed of disaffected soldiers from the English and French armies, who rampaged through the Peninsula, looting, raping, murdering without qualm.

Gabriel had moved ominously closer, and he judged it politic to change the subject. “You mentioned negotiation, Violette.” It seemed a more appropriate name in present circumstances. His eyebrow lifted again in question.

“There'll be no negotiating with a damned soldier,” Gabriel said harshly. “Come, little girl. Since you owe the man your life, we'll grant him his. But let's be out of here, now.”