Fortune's Bride (43 page)

“Kivin, ‘tis his father’s name.” Molly turned from the fire
and smiled as the infant, who had been making little whimpering sounds despite
Esmeralda’s rocking him in her arms, began to squall loudly again. She held out
one arm for him while she bared a breast, then sat down and offered it to the
blindly seeking mouth. The babe suckled eagerly, strongly, and Molly smiled
again. “He’s strong,” she said. Then the smile faded and her eyes shadowed.
“Whoile ye were wit th’ colonel, we had ‘im baptized—jist…jist in case.”

“Nothing will happen to Kevin,” Esmeralda said firmly.
“Colonel Wheatley told me that we will be here for several days. We have plenty
of food now, and blankets, and Luisa and Boa will be rested. We will—”

Her voice cut off, and her breath drew in sharply as a fist
pounded on the door and a voice called, “Are these Mrs. Moreton’s quarters?”

“Robert!” Esmeralda shrieked, leaping up and rushing to the
door, “Robert, is that you?”

The door flung open, and they fell into each other’s arms,
Robert saying thickly, “Oh, Merry, Merry, I never meant you to suffer so. I
never meant you to see—”

While Esmeralda, not paying the slightest attention, cried,
“Oh, you’re safe, you’re safe. You must be so tired—”

The disjointed ejaculations went on for a little while until
Robert said, “Merry, I love you. I love you so. I’ve tried to find a sensible
way of telling you, but there’s no time.”

Both statements shocked Esmeralda into silence. She stood
staring up into Robert’s face, her big eyes wide, incapable of any reply
because joy and despair were struggling so violently inside her. She had been
given the crowning perfection of her life in one phrase and what amounted, in
her opinion, to a death sentence in the next. Robert loved her. It was more
than she had ever dreamed, but if there was no time and they must continue the
march that night, she really did not expect that any of them would survive.

“It’s all right, my dear,” Robert said, pulling her tight
against him. “I know I’ve probably shocked you. I always seem to burst out with
things that should be introduced slowly and carefully. I don’t expect you to be
in love with me this moment—”

Molly had done the best she could by moving into a dark
corner and turning her back. She knew she should not be present, witnessing
this nakedly emotional moment, but there was nowhere for her to go except out
into the stable shed at the back. Had she been alone, she would have slipped out
gladly, but she would not take her infant into the cold unless she were
actually ordered to do so.

She had also tried not to hear, but it was impossible. Thus,
though she did her best to concentrate on suckling her baby, Robert’s ringing
declaration of love forced itself on her. She missed the end of the sentence,
spoken more softly, but she also heard his last statement, which was so silly
that a hiccup of laughter escaped her before she could stifle it.

The sound checked Robert’s speech, and he turned affronted
eyes in its direction. “It must be the baby,” Esmeralda said quickly. “Molly
had a baby, a little son, early this morning.”

Robert stared at her, forgetting in his amazement even the
delicate matter of his passion and Esmeralda’s reaction to it. “How? Where? A
baby
!
You mean she…er…produced a
baby
! On the
road
!”

Desperately Esmeralda bit her lips. This was no time to
laugh. “Come upstairs, Robert,” she gabbled. “Molly must watch the supper. I am
sure you must be starved as well as soaking wet. I have your clothes. Do come
up.”

He followed docilely, still too stunned to protest, and as
soon as they were in the loft room, Esmeralda ensured further silence by
throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him, murmuring when their lips
finally parted, “Oh, Robert, I do love you. I have always loved you.”

“Have you?” he asked delightedly. “That’s what Colborne
said, but I thought you would have too much sense to love a fool like me.”

Rendered speechless again by another violent urge to laugh
simultaneous with a desire to weep over Robert’s modesty, Esmeralda bent her
head and pressed her face against his chest.

He kissed the top of her head, and then said, “I don’t think
you ought to stand with your nose buried in my coat. I can’t imagine how I
smell, I’m too used to it, but it must be awful.”

That remark released Esmeralda’s pent-up mirth, and she
kissed him again. “I cannot believe I smell any better. We can only heat water
in very small quantities because I discarded all the large pots to lighten
Luisa’s…” Her voice faded, as reference to the deadly trek they had just
finished reminded her that Robert had said there was no time.

Robert’s arms went around her protectively. “I’m sorry,” he
murmured, “I’m sorry, my love. I could kill myself for being so stupidly
selfish, for keeping you with me at such a cost. You must hate me for exposing
you to—”

“I will never hate you for anything, Robert, never, but…”
Tears rose in her eyes. “Must we go on tonight? Must we really? Is there no
way—?”

“Tonight! Of course not. Whatever put that into your head?”

“You said there was no time.”

He touched her face, running an index finger along the
hollow that had not been in her cheek when they left Salamanca. “I meant there
was no time for me to court you, to show what I feel instead of just saying it.
But I do love you, Merry. You’ve become the center of my whole life. I hope you
don’t mind if the flowers and pretty things come after the declaration rather
than before. I swear you won’t be cheated of them.”

Esmeralda laughed again. “I never cared for that and never
will. I can—”

She stopped. She had been about to say she could buy all the
pretty things she wanted, but realized that this was still not the right time
to mention that she was very, very rich. Robert had had enough shocks for one
day. He must be even more physically exhausted than she was—he certainly looked
it. And to confess about the money right after he said he loved her would make
it sound as if she had been deliberately concealing the information all this
time out of lack of trust.

“But that’s all nonsense,” she went on hurriedly. “How long
can you stay? Can you eat with me? Will you have time to sleep for a while?”

Robert had been looking slightly puzzled. He felt there was
something more to that aborted “I can—” that Merry’s quick change of subject
was a cover over something she was hiding. He was about to revert to the words,
more interested in those than in inessentials like eating, but her last
question diverted him. A slow smile curved his lips.

“I am a bit short on sleep,” he admitted, “but that isn’t
what I want time in bed for.”

“There isn’t any bed,” Esmeralda murmured, burying her face
in his coat again.

She felt ridiculously shy, far more like a virgin bride on
her wedding night than an experienced married woman. Robert’s confession of
love had somehow made a tremendous difference. He held her against him, feeling
her tremble, and then lifted her face and kissed her very gently.

“No, and it’s cold, and we’re both filthy and tired,” he
said. “I want you very much, but not this way, my darling, not in a dirty
huddle where we can’t even take off our clothes.”

“Oh, Robert—” she began to protest.

He put his fingers gently over her lips. “No. I’m sending
you on ahead of the army tomorrow, Merry. I don’t often pull rank and
influence, but I’ve done it. It’s less than sixty miles to Corunna, and I’ve
got a carriage and horses—”

“No,” she interrupted him, pushing herself out of his arms,
“I don’t want to go. I can’t leave you. I can’t.”

“Don’t fight me, Merry,” Robert said tiredly. “Whatever you
fear in England can’t happen. The worst—”

“I was never afraid to go to England,” she cried. “I only
wanted to stay with you. It was all an excuse, only an excuse so you wouldn’t
send me away.”

His face lighted. “Oh, my darling, my sweet, sweet Merry.
How glad I am. But it doesn’t change anything. You must go.” He saw her
expression and shook his head, then, made perceptive by his own feeling for
her, said the only thing that could have silenced her. “You are a danger to me,
my love. I can’t concentrate on what is going on around me because all I can
think about is you and whether you are falling by the wayside, about to become
one of those pitiful bodies…”

She stared at him, realizing that it was useless to tell him
that she would be protected, that the Guards would have carried her if
necessary. He knew it as well as she. Fear for a loved one cannot be cured by
reason.

“But what about Molly and the baby?” she whispered. “And
Carlos.”

“They can go with you. And don’t tell me that Carlos will
not go without Luisa—I know it. Luisa and Boa Viagem can follow the carriage.
The only one who must remain is M’Guire, and, frankly, I can use him.”

Tears welled into her eyes and then ran over, streaking her
hollow cheeks. “Let me wait at Corunna for you,” she pleaded brokenly. “Oh,
please. I will be in no danger there. I will be warm and safe. Let me wait at
Corunna.”

Robert could not resist this plea, and he agreed without
argument that she should wait. On thinking it over after he had seen the
carriage off, he did not regret it. Merry would be safe, and there was another,
more practical reason for allowing her to wait until he arrived. He intended to
pull rank and influence once more to be sure that she went on the best and
safest ship and that the captain of the vessel was properly impressed with his
father’s connections in the Royal Navy.

Robert realized that he, personally, might not make it to
Corunna, but that would make no difference to the pressure exerted on Merry’s
behalf. Colborne would see to it, or any of Sir John’s other ADCs, or even Sir
John himself. Robert’s mouth hardened. He was not quite so fond of Sir John as
he had been. There were aspects of this retreat that he was unable to
understand or even excuse. There had been no need for such haste. The French
could have been held for days at Astorga while the army left, one detachment at
a time, properly supplied with the stores that had been burnt. But it was
useless to think about that now.

Robert knew that he would be exposed to a second dose of
resistance when he arranged Merry’s passage at Corunna, but he was armored
against that now. The French were closing in.

Sir John allowed the army to wait at Lugo for three days,
drawn up to resist an attack, and during that time the men, although still
sullen, were better behaved. But Soult did not move. Sir John’s general
officers urged him to initiate the action, saying that a good drubbing of the
French would ensure that the remainder of the retreat would be carried out in
better order. It would make Soult less eager to pursue closely and put heart
into the Spanish, who felt they were being abandoned. Most important of all, it
would restore the pride of the men.

But Moore would neither attack nor, as a suggested
alternative, await Soult’s attack, which everyone agreed must come very soon,
as the French were worse supplied than the English and would soon starve if
they were not doing so already. Instead, at midnight on January 8–9, leaving
the bivouac fires burning to fool the enemy, the army resumed its retreat.

This notion might have been a good one on a clear night in
an open area. Near a town in a mountainous countryside where there were walls
and fences and many small byroads to farms and in a pouring rain, it was a
disaster. The troops, even more surly and mutinous, feeling their commanding
officers were fools and cowards, became little more than a disorderly mob.
Coming along with the rear guard, Robert was disgusted by the scenes of
pillage, worse now than ever before.

On January 11 the army, such as it was, reached Corunna.
M’Guire came in the next day, leading Mars, who had lost a shoe and was already
limping. Had they not been so close to their destination, he would have had to
be destroyed, like Apollo, whom Robert had been forced to shoot outside Villa
Franca. Quite innocently, M’Guire gave Esmeralda a terrible shock when he came
to her room in the hotel to deliver a note from Robert. The note said
little—that he was well but held by duty at El Burgo and did not wish to stress
his one remaining horse by riding back and forth for short visits. Esmeralda
smiled, thinking how those words would have hurt her before Robert’s confession
of love and how easily she could accept them now.

Happy herself, she asked M’Guire how he liked his son, and
he beamed proudly and told her that if they all lived long enough, the captain
had promised to be Kevin’s sponsor.

“He couldn’t have a better,” M’Guire said. “A divil th’
capt’in is in action.”

“Action? What action?” Esmeralda gasped.

“Ach, the Frenchies needed a lissin t’ keep thim frum
gettin’ too boold.”

But then, equally unwitting, M’Guire withdrew the sting of
fear, for when Esmeralda asked fearfully if there was now fighting, he laughed.

“No, nor wull be. They’ve blowed the bridges.”

On January 13, Robert himself came. The French had
discovered a passage of the river, and Sir John had ordered his rear guard back
into the heights in front of Corunna. When Robert rode in to report, he was
recalled to ordinary staff duty, the rear guard now being close enough for
Moore to oversee it himself. Sir John was busy writing a long report of the
present situation to Castlereagh, and Robert asked Colborne who was going to
carry it.

“Sir Charles Stewart. And Moreton—”

“Castlereagh’s brother,” Robert interrupted. “Good. Where is
he?”

“I don’t know,” Colborne said and then, shocked at the
expression on Robert’s usually good-humored face, added hastily, “but he’ll be
here soon. Take it easy, Robert. What the devil is the matter with you?”

“If you don’t already know, you won’t want to hear,” Robert
snapped. “I’m sending Merry home, out of this mess. I want Stewart to escort
her, and I’ve got to speak to him. My family won’t be in London at this time of
the year. Stewart will have to—”

“Robert, calm down. I’m sure Sir Charles will do everything
necessary to assist Mrs. Moreton, but not much may be necessary. There are
letters for you. I’ve sent them out three times, and they’ve missed you. What
have you been doing?”

“Trying to herd together the disaster that once was an
army,” Robert snarled.

Colborne made no reply to that, and Robert took the
letters—an enormously fat one in his mother’s delicate hand, a relatively plump
one from his father and a single, thin sheet from Perce. He opened the third
one. It contained three sentences: