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

The muscle in his jaw clenched. ‘I did not.’

‘But you were there, with him, at Oporto?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

The smallest of pauses, before she asked gently, ‘Then how do you know the manner of his death?’

‘ Mademoiselle ,’ he said with the hard cynical breath of a laugh, ‘all of France knows what your father did to him!’

She bit back the retort that sprang to her lips. ‘Then, there were witnesses…to the crime?’

‘Yes, there was a witness,’ he said harshly. ‘An honourable man who is beyond reproach, if it is his word that you are seeking to discredit.’

His words stung at her. ‘What is there of honour in dishonesty?’ she replied.

A twig snapped close by, and Josie jumped. Both of them peered in the direction of the trees from whence it had come.

There was only silence and the dying light and stillness.

‘It is nothing,’ said Dammartin dismissively. ‘There is nothing to be gained in this, mademoiselle , we should return to the camp. The light begins to fade, and you said yourself that you are in a hurry to be back there.’ He made to move.

‘No, wait.’ She stepped forwards, blocking his path, needing to show him that he was wrong. ‘Before he died my father told me that you were an honourable man. He bade me trust you. If your accusation is true, I do not understand why he would say such a thing. When he saw you…when you came into that room in the monas-tery…when it was all but over, there was nothing of guilt or regret or fear in his eyes. He looked at you with respect. Given what you say, sir, how do you explain that?’

‘I cannot, but it does not mean that he was innocent.’

‘But will you not at least admit that his was not behaviour in keeping with a man that is guilty?’

‘It was not in keeping with what is expected of a man that is guilty,’ said Dammartin carefully.

‘He was dying, for goodness’ sake!’ she said, and the pain stabbed in her heart. ‘Do you really think that he would have bothered with pretence at such a time? What would have been the point?’

‘As you said, Lieutenant Colonel Mallington was dying, and leaving his beloved daughter alone with the son of the man he had murdered. I think he had every reason to behave as he did.’

‘You did not know him,’ she said quietly, and stared up into his now-shadowed face. ‘He was not such a man.’

‘You are his daughter. Of course you do not wish to believe the unpleasantness of the truth.’

‘No, you are wrong.’ But with the denial came the first whisper of doubt in Josie’s mind.

‘You were not there. You can never really know what happened in Oporto last year, can you, mademoiselle ?’

She bent her head, pressing the tips of her fingers to the tightness across her forehead. The thought came to her in a flash, and she wondered why she had not realised it before. Her father’s journals—a log of all that had happened to Lieutenant Colonel Mallington and his men over the years—recorded by her papa’s own hand in book after precious book. She raised her chin, staring at him with renewed confidence, feeling the excitement of her realisation flow through the entirety of her body.

‘Oh, but you see, I can, sir,’ she exclaimed. ‘Every detail of every day.’ She smiled her relief.

It seemed that Dammartin’s lungs did not breathe, that his heart did not beat. ‘And how might that be, mademoiselle ?’ he asked in a deathly quiet voice.

His very stillness alerted her to her mistake. ‘I…’ She swallowed, and glanced away, searching her mind frantically for a safe answer and finding none. She backed away. ‘You were right; we should be returning to camp. It will soon be dark and the trees—’

His hand snaked out and caught gently around her wrist, preventing her escape. ‘No, no, mademoiselle ,’ he said softly, ‘our discussion, it begins to grow most interesting.’ The angles of his face seemed to sharpen and his eyes darken, as he became the hunter once more.

‘Captain Dammartin—’

‘Every detail of every day,’ he said slowly, repeating her words. ‘Where might you learn that, I wonder?’

She tried to free her wrist, but Dammartin’s hold was unbreakable. The thudding of her heart was so loud that she could no longer hear the river. Her breath was shallow and fast.

Foolish, foolish tongue, she cursed, to almost reveal what had remained hidden for so long. Her words had been too few, she told herself; he could not know, he could not. The journals would be safe.

Dammartin slowly pulled her closer, so that they were standing toe to toe within the twilight. ‘From your British newspapers of the time?’ His face tilted so that he was staring down at her.

‘I meant nothing by my words. You are mistaken…’ She tried to step away, but Dammartin secured her other wrist, locking her in place.

His head lowered towards hers so close that she could feel his breath, warm and soft against her face, and see the passion and determination within the darkness of his eyes. ‘From your father’s friends?’ he asked.

She felt the jolt that jumped between them as his mouth brushed against her cheek, light and transient.

‘Or perhaps from your father’s journals?’ he whispered softly into her ear.

The breath froze in Josie’s throat. The blood in her veins turned to ice. She could not suppress the shiver. ‘This is madness,’ she breathed at last. ‘My father kept no journal. Take me back to the camp at once.’ She pulled her face back from his, staring up at him.

‘Where are they, mademoiselle ?’ Darkness had crept to cover the sky, but she could still see him through the dim silver moonlight.

‘You are quite, quite mistaken, sir.’

‘We can stay here all night and play this game. Or perhaps you prefer to tell me now where the journals are kept, so that we may eat something of our rice and beans.’

There was silence in which neither moved nor spoke.

‘At home, in England,’ she said at last, knowing that it was not the journals’ existence that was the secret to be protected, but their location. She thought of the irony of the journals’ true hiding place. ‘I will read them when I return to Winchester and then I will know exactly what happened between your father and mine in Oporto.’ She stared at him defiantly, knowing that she could not allow one shred of fear to show. ‘And I will warrant that it is not the lie that you French have told.’

He looked at her with his dark, penetrating stare, and it seemed to Josie that he could see into her very soul.

For too long their gazes held, as if locked in some kind of strange battle of wills, and if battle it was, then Dammartin was the loser, for it was he who looked away first.

‘Let us return to the camp, mademoiselle ,’ he said, and, taking her hand in his, he began to lead her back towards the woodland.

She let her fingers lie where they were, warm and comfortable within his own, despite knowing that she should be fighting his touch. But the night was dark and their route through the woodland steep and uneven, and her sense of relief and of triumph was greater than anything else.

Hand in hand, without a further word between them, Josie and Dammartin walked through the trees that would lead them back to the camp of the 8th Dragoons.

The campaign portmanteau which contained all of Josie’s worldly possessions sat opposite her makeshift bed within Dammartin’s tent. It was made of brown leather, battered and scratched from its many miles of travel following her father.

Josie unbuttoned the top of her dress and let the woollen material fall back to expose the chain that hung around her neck. Its golden links glinted within the soft light of the lantern. Her hand disappeared down her dress. From just above her breasts she retrieved what had been threaded to hang upon the chain: a small brass key. Kneeling down upon the groundsheet, she leaned forward towards the portmanteau, neatly turned the key in first one lock and then the other. The fastenings opened easily beneath her fingers. She opened the lid and rested it carefully back.