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

Inside were piles of neatly folded clothes. They were, in the main, garments that had been purchased with the practicalities of life on campaign in winter in mind. There were two woollen travelling dresses, a sensible pelisse, scarves, a shawl, gloves, a pair of sensible shoes that could be worn instead of her boots, and of course, a large pile of plain white warm underwear, the warmest that she had had. There were stockings and two nightdresses and ribbons and hairpins. Near the top there was a tiny silver and ivory set that included a comb and brush and hand-held looking glass. But Josie was interested in none of these things.

She moved with deliberate care, removing the items one by one, laying them in tidy bundles across the groundsheet, until at last the portmanteau was empty, or so it seemed. Then she pressed at the rear left-hand corner of the portmanteau and smoothly lifted away the false floor. Beneath it, spread in neat piles over the entirety of the base of the portmanteau, as if a single uniform layer, were notebooks.

Each book was backed in a soft paper cover of a deep pinky-red coloration; some were faded, others stained. Josie picked one from the closest corner and opened it. The white of the pages was scarcely visible beneath the pale grey pencil script that covered it. She checked the date at the top right-hand side of the page—21st June 1807—closed the book, set it back in its place in the pile, moved on to the next, until she found the book that contained the date for which she was searching.

The false floor was slotted back into position. The bundles of clothes were returned in neat order to the portmanteau, as was every other item that had been removed. The lid was carefully closed, the key turned within the locks and the straps rebuckled. Only then did Josie make herself comfortable upon the wooden chair and sit down at Captain Dammartin’s little table to lay the notebook upon its surface. She adjusted the direction of the light within the lantern and, taking a deep breath, began to read her father’s journal for the Battle of Oporto.

Josie could barely concentrate on Molyneux’s chatter the next day, for thinking of the words that her father had written. Dammartin had been correct in saying that his father had been captured by hers. It was true, too, that the French major had been paroled, but that is where any similarity between the two stories ended. Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s telling of the two men’s meeting could not have contrasted more sharply with Dammartin’s.

Her papa had written of respect and admiration between two men who happened to be fighting on opposite sides of a war. Those faded grey words conveyed an underlying sense of something bordering on friendship.

Why should there be such a discrepancy between the two accounts? It made no sense. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that there was something very strange about such a blatant contradiction. And she longed to question Dammartin more on his story.

Who was the man who claimed to have witnessed the murder? Someone honourable, who was beyond reproach, Dammartin had said.

She glanced ahead to where the French Captain rode, her eyes skimming his broad shoulders, and the sway of the long, black mane of horsehair that hung from his helmet. She wanted to show him the journal entry, to prove to him that he was wrong, to show him that her father was indeed an innocent man, but she could not.

Trust was a fickle thing, and Dammartin was still the enemy. Even had she torn that single page from its binding so that he might have read only that and nothing else, then he would have known that the journals were in her possession and she knew that Dammartin would not stop until he had them from her.

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