Margaret McPhee - A Regency Captain's Prize - The Captain's Forbidden Miss / His Mask of Retribution

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he sat up, guiding her back towards him, turning her in the blackness and tracing his hands lightly around her, like a blindman, until he found her hands. Even through the wool of her dress he could feel that she was chilled. Her fingers were cold beneath his before she pulled away from his touch.

‘Go back to your bed, mademoiselle ,’ he said curtly.

‘But my cloak…’

‘Forget your cloak, you shall not find it in this darkness.’

‘But—’

‘ Mademoiselle ,’ he said more harshly.

He heard the breath catch in her throat as if she would have given him some retort, but she said nothing, only climbed beneath the blankets that he had given her earlier that night.

Dammartin swept his greatcoat from where it lay over his bed, and covered the girl with it.

‘Captain Dammartin…’ He could hear her surprise.

‘Go to sleep,’ he said gruffly.

‘Thank you,’ came the soft reply.

He turned over and pulled the blanket higher, knowing himself for a fool and slipping all the more easily into the comfort of sleep because of it.

Josie awoke to the seep of thin grey daylight through the canvas overhead. Sleep still fuddled her mind and she smiled, burrowing deeper beneath the cosiness of the covers, thinking that her father would tease her for her tardiness. Voices sounded outside, French male, and reality came rushing back in, exploding all of her warm contentment: Telemos, her father’s death, Dammartin. Clutching the blankets to her chest she sat up, glancing round apprehensively.

The bed in which Dammartin had slept lay empty; she was alone in the tent. The breath that Josie had been holding released, relief flowed through her. She got to her feet, her head woolly and thick from her lack of sleep.

How may hours had she lain awake listening to the French Captain’s breathing, hearing it slow and become more rhythmic as he found sleep? For how many hours had the thoughts raced through her head? Memories of her father and of Telemos. She had spoken the truth; the night was black and most of the fires would be dead; she had no torch, and she did not doubt that there would be sentries guarding the camp. Her chance of escape had been lost. He would watch her more carefully now.

A shudder ran through her as she remembered how he had held her last night, his face so close to hers that the air she breathed had been warmed by his lungs. His dark penetrating gaze locked on to hers so that she could not look away. For a moment, just one tiny moment, she had thought that he meant to kiss her, before she saw the pain and bitterness in his eyes. And she blushed that she could have thought such a ridiculous notion. Of course he did not want to kiss her, he hated her, just as she hated him. There was no mistaking that. He hated her, yet he would not let her go.

I do not lose prisoners , he had said. And she had the awful realisation that he meant to take her all the way to Ciudad Rodrigo—far away from Torres Vedras, and Lisbon and the British—and in the miles between lay the prospect of interrogation.

Her eye caught the thick grey greatcoat, still lying where he had placed it last night, on top of her blankets. When she looked at the bed again, she saw its single woollen cover. The chill in the air nipped at her, and she knew that the night had been colder. She stared at the bed, not understanding why a man so very menacing, so very dangerous, who loathed her very existence, had given her his covers.

More voices, men walking by outside.

She glanced down at the muddy smears marking her crumpled dress, and her dirty hands and ragged nails—souvenirs of the rock face and her failed escape.

She was British, she reminded herself, and she would not allow the enemy to bring her down in such a way. So she smoothed the worst of her bed-mussed hair, and peeped out of the tent flap. Molyneux lingered not so very far away. He was kind; he spoke English…and he came when she beckoned him. It seemed that the Lieutenant was only too happy to fetch her a basin of water.

‘I apologise, mademoiselle, for the coldness of the water, but there is no time to warm it.’ He smiled at her, his skin creasing round his eyes, and the wind ruffling the pale brown of his hair.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it.

Taking the basin from the Lieutenant’s hands, she glanced out at the campsite beyond. All around dragoons were busy putting out fires, packing up, dismantling. She recognised Dammartin’s sergeant, Lamont, speaking to a group of troopers, but Dammartin himself was nowhere that she could see.

‘Thank you,’ she said again, and disappeared within the tent flaps.

Dammartin glanced over towards his tent, but there was still no sign of Mademoiselle Mallington. Coffee had been drunk, bread eaten, portmanteaux packed, and the girl slept through it all. At least he had had the foresight to set Molyneux to guarding his tent, lest the girl took the notion into her head to try to slip away again. And truth be told, this would be the best time to do it, when the camp was in chaos, the men’s attentions distracted, and a full day of light ahead.

Lamont appeared. ‘The men will be ready to leave in twenty minutes. Only the officers’ tents remain. Mademoiselle Mallington…’ He looked enquiringly at Dammartin.

‘Shall be ready to leave with the rest of us,’ Dammartin replied.

‘You look a little tired this morning, Captain,’ said Lamont, his gaze fixed on Dammartin’s tent. ‘Perhaps something disturbed your sleep?’

Dammartin gave a wry smile and shook his head at his sergeant’s teasing, before walking off towards his tent.

‘She is in there still?’ he said to Molyneux as he passed, indicating his tent.

‘Yes, Captain.’

Dammartin closed the last of the distance to his tent.

‘But, sir, she…’

Molyneux’s words sounded behind him, but it was too late. Dammartin had unfastened the ties and was already through the tent flap…and the sight that met his eyes stilled him where he stood. A basin of water sat upon his table; Mademoiselle Mallington stood by its side, washing, bare to her waist.

Chapter Five

Josie gave a small shriek and, trying to cover herself with one arm, reached for her towel with the other. In her panic she succeeded only in dropping the soap into the basin and knocking the towel off the back of the table. She clutched her arms around herself, acutely aware of her nakedness and the man that stood not four feet away, staring. She saw his gaze move over her, saw the darkening of his eyes as they met hers, yet she stood there gaping like a fool, staring at him in utter shock.

‘Captain Dammartin!’ she managed to gasp at last, those two words conveying all of her indignation.

He held her gaze for a moment longer, that second seeming to stretch to an eternity. ‘Pardon, mademoiselle ,’ and, with a small bow of his head, he was gone as suddenly as he had arrived.

It was over in less than a minute, yet Josie stood there still, staring at the tent flap, before hurrying round to the other side of the table to snatch up the towel. She barely dried herself before pulling up her shift and petticoats from her waist with hands that were shaking. Humiliation set a scald to her cheeks, and a roughness to her fingers as she pulled down the hair pinned up high and loose upon her head to coil it into a tight little pile stabbed into place at the nape of her neck.

She was angry beyond belief, angry and embarrassed. ‘How dare he!’ she muttered to herself again and again as she stuffed her belongings back into her portmanteau. ‘The audacity of the man!’

Her indignation still burned so that when she left the tent, standing outside with her cloak fastened around her, and her hair neat and tidy beneath her best hat and her fresh blue dress, she was intent on snubbing the French Captain, but Dammartin was only a figure at the other end of the camp and it was Lieutenant Molyneux who waited some little distance away.