Love's Reward (25 page)

“For God’s sake!” Quentin shouted, rushing forward.

“It’s all right, brother,” Fitzroy replied, giving him a wink. “Richard would no more sink his blade into a wounded man than you would.” He winced once. “Sometimes it seems like a damned shame, because sadly the wound doesn’t seem to be fatal.”

Yet Joanna was there first. She reached into the pocket of her smock, searching for a handkerchief. Her fingers touched the shabby leather of a book.

“Here, hold this!” she said, thrusting the volume at Richard.

Her brother threw aside his sword and took it.

Fitzroy lay against the base of a post, half supported by the black wood. Joanna tore open his shirt and pressed her handkerchief to the wound.

Lady Carhill marched along the far wall, frantically throwing open shutter after shutter, while Quentin knelt by Joanna and tried to help her.

“It’s all right, Richard,” Joanna said. “If Fitzroy doesn’t bleed to death in the next few minutes, your restraint may have given him a chance yet.”

For a moment, it seemed that they had all forgotten their hostess. She stood up, the flood of sunlight blazing on her red skirts.

“
Quién sabe?
It is a useful thing this English chivalry. So you will live a little longer, Fitzroy Mountfitchet, to know what your foolishness will cost you and your country yet!”

Fitzroy closed his eyes as his head fell back against the post.

Joanna used Quentin’s knife to cut strips from his shirt. She had never seen a real sword fight before, nor such quantities of blood. Biting down her fear she did her best to bandage the wound. Yet she heard the rustle of approaching skirts and from the corner of her eye saw the dramatic contrast of red silk and black lace.

Fitzroy looked up. Joanna followed his gaze.

“Quién sabe?”
he said, mocking. “Who knows?”

Their hostess gazed down at him, her red skirts brushing his boots, the black lace still hiding her face. She said nothing.

“There is only one thing that I’d really like to know, madam.” Fitzroy’s voice was edged with an amusement that he couldn’t quite hide.

“Which is,
querido?
”

“Who the devil are you?”

* * *

It took Joanna a moment to comprehend.

Fitzroy didn’t think that their hostess was Juanita.

He had never thought so.

It was the only explanation that made sense.

Whether Richard agreed, or had even noticed her, she didn’t know, but her brother had glanced calmly enough at the lady in the red dress. He did not seem to believe himself in the presence of a ghost.

So their hostess had been relying on darkness and the effect of shock, a trauma that Fitzroy had circumvented by somehow getting unseen into the house.

But what if he had not? What if, broken and blinded, he had believed her masquerade?

Joanna shuddered and closed her eyes. Her hands were sticky.

She heard the soft Spanish voice speaking, as if it were a very long way off.

“
Verdad es verde
. My name is Carmen Dolores Gorrión. Juanita was my sister. She still died because of your cowardice and treachery. Who I really am changes nothing. And my revenge has only just begun.”

For the first time in her life, Joanna really fainted.

* * *

She heard the low hum of voices, like insects buzzing lazily outside an open window in summer.

Then Richard’s voice.

“It’s a diary. Your groom kept a diary, for God’s sake. Listen! ‘Whenever Lord Tarrant is away, my lady is entertaining. Several of the other officers are her lovers. It’s a shameful thing, when he is nothing but kindness to her.’ I’m sorry to have to read this. Did you know?”

Fitzroy replied softly, as if with a great regret. “Eventually, when she told me.
Tomava la por rosa mas devenia cardo
. I took her for a rose, but she proved to be a thistle. She took lovers from the day of our wedding. Does that change anything?”

“But she wrote to me that
you
were unfaithful!” Carmen’s voice, harsh now, all softness gone.

“We were at war, Señorita. I was rather lacking in opportunities,” Fitzroy replied dryly. “There were many more unattached men in the camp than women, and I spent a great deal of time with Richard and the other intelligence officers on one mission or another, a hideously masculine pursuit. Of course, you couldn’t have known that in South America.”

“So! Yet my sister had cause enough to hate you and took solace where she could. Was that why you let her die?”

“No.” Fitzroy sighed, as if his breathing pained him. “I forgave the lovers.”

“Then it was this.” Richard began to read aloud again. “‘It will only be a day, or sometimes it’s later the same night, after she lies with one of our officers. But always she takes a horse and rides secretly out of camp. Last night I followed her. How am I to tell Lord Tarrant? She goes to meet—’”

Joanna opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She almost bumped her head on her husband’s arm. She was lying on a high-backed bench, with her head pillowed in his lap and his arm supporting her.

“Fitzroy! You’re all right?” she asked.

He touched her hair, fleeting, tender, before he moved his arm aside. He was sitting at the end of the bench, his chest swathed in a makeshift bandage, his torn shirt lying open. His eyes burned like black pitch beneath his dark brows.

“I’ll live,” he said with wry affection. “And you?”

“The book that Mrs. Morris gave me— Mr. Flanders kept a diary?”

“Here,” Lady Carhill said, holding out a glass of wine. “Drink this.”

Joanna sat up and took the glass.

They were all seated at the big oak table: Carmen in the chair at the head; Richard holding the book that Mrs. Morris had brought wrapped in brown paper; Quentin at the other end with his head in his hands; Lady Carhill next to him.

Avoiding Joanna’s eyes, Richard set down the diary. “You knew all this, Tarrant?”

“I knew that she took lovers. She told me.” Fitzroy’s voice was quiet, controlled. “I discovered why much later. How the devil do you think it makes me feel to admit it publicly now? Yet what Flanders found out, and Green and Herring and some of the others knew eventually, was what she cajoled her lovers into telling her: our army’s secret plans, our strengths and weaknesses. Isn’t it obvious? Juanita rode out of camp to meet the enemy and sold the information to the French.”

“So she lied to me, to all of us,” Richard said. “You did not report it to Wellington?”

Fitzroy gave him a glance of pure incredulity. “She was my wife. Should I have seen her shot for a spy?”

Richard tossed the diary aside. He looked haggard.

“I don’t know. So that’s why you kept her so close, those last months. You were trying to prevent her having another opportunity. But she still tried to betray us once more, and she died. I think you’re going to have to tell us exactly what happened that night. For Señorita Gorrión’s sake, at the very least.”

Joanna felt her husband’s hand move. She opened her fingers and let his slide around them.

She glanced up. Fitzroy seemed calm, almost resigned. Yet tension still etched every plane of his face. He was very pale.

“What the hell makes you think you have the right to demand it? Yet it’s for your sake, Lenwood, not hers, that I will tell you.”

“You argued. I remember that.”

“I came into our tent to find her studying our plans for the show at Orthez—maps, memos—God knows how she obtained them. She screamed at me and threw things, before she ran out and almost knocked you down.”

“Then we followed her together.”

“Only to find that the partisans had already intercepted her. Call it native intelligence or dumb luck, but they were suspicious of her. You know the rest.”

Carmen stood up, her black eyes filled with tears.

“Yes! We know the rest. I came from South America when her letters stopped and found it all out. You let her be shot to save yourself. Because she carried secrets? What if she did? It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.”

“It was still a betrayal,” Richard said.

“Betrayal? Why shouldn’t she hate you, all you English? You killed our father and our mother and burned our house. Why shouldn’t she have used an English officer to fight back and take revenge? She married this Lord Tarrant in hatred. She even sent me the ring he gave her.”

She held up her hand. Sapphire and diamonds blazed in the sunshine.

“My grandmother’s ring,” Fitzroy said.

“Yes, you, Fitzroy Monteith Mountfitchet, son of an earl, such a perfect example of the English gentleman! You let her be shot down like a dog, rather than risk your own hide. So I have tracked you down and found you, and I have done my best to make your existence a living hell. What do you think my sister’s life was like, married to an English lord she despised, taking all those loathsome English officers to her bed?”

“Yes,” Fitzroy said, his control slipping, his face as white as his torn shirt. “I know.”

Joanna clung to his hand, trying to let him draw strength from her if he could.

“And that’s what remains, after all the accusations against my sister and your claim of loving her.” Carmen’s voice dropped to a hiss. “She was shot dead, because you were too cowardly to save her.”

The blood drained entirely from his face. Joanna felt him shudder.

“I could not save her. I tried for two years, but it was never enough. Juanita was damaged too deeply. She couldn’t recover. I discovered on our wedding night what our soldiers had done to her, before I found her in the stable. It was too much to forgive. I didn’t blame her, but I could not save her.”

“So you let her die?” Richard dropped his head into his hands. “Dear God.”

“Yes,” Fitzroy said. “It’s unforgivable, isn’t it?”

Joanna watched his face. His expression was closed, remote.

In the person of one English officer, himself, he had tried to make up for the actions of a drunken, looting gang of men, a task impossible. It was war. He was often gone on missions. So for two years, he and Juanita had been trapped together in a hell of their own making.

Yet how could he claim he had loved her, when he had taken the easy way out?

Perhaps once peace had come, with time and love she could have been healed? Surely it hadn’t been necessary to sacrifice her life? Was that all the value Fitzroy put on love?

Never doubt, whatever happens later, that everything you feel tonight is real; that I love you.

He had claimed her body and soul. Joanna couldn’t bear it if the love he had expressed to her were only a cipher, shallow, easily forgotten.

The pain seemed unbearable.

But then it came to her, as if a voice spoke in her ear:
And you tell yourself that you love him, Joanna. Then shame on you for your lack of faith!

“You haven’t told us everything, have you?” she asked gently. “Why didn’t you shoot at her assassin and save her?”

“It’s quite simple.” Fitzroy closed his eyes, as if against the humiliation of their gathering moisture. “I couldn’t lift my arm. She had just sunk a knife into my back.”

Silence, as if the grave yawned.

“But you saved my life,” Richard said quietly at last.

Fitzroy’s eyes flew open and he grinned at his old colleague.

“Whatever made you think that? No, the partisans saved us both. I’ve certainly never claimed otherwise. As soon as they realized Juanita was dead, the French galloped off. They had come to meet her, after all.”

“The partisans?”

“Of course. They bound me up and propped me on my horse. You were slung unconscious across yours. And so we limped back to camp. I’m sorry about everything I said to you later. I hadn’t wanted it to turn out as it did. Once she was gone, I saw no reason for anyone else to know what Juanita had been doing. The partisans took her body with them. They promised to bury her in hallowed ground.”

Carmen spun to face him, her black eyes blazing.

“Juanita was seven years younger than I, the baby of our family. When I went to South America, she was still a child. She wrote me only parts of this, but I see now how it was. As for those men, Herring and the others, she told me how they spied on her, scorned her—English scum!”

“No,” Fitzroy said. “Honest men, only doing their duty.”

“Damn you! All of you! Men just like them ruined her in Badajoz, left her bleeding and broken, her heart slaughtered. They deserved to die. And you, Fitzroy Mountfitchet, are a romantic fool. I have lost interest in you.”

She crossed to the doorway and tugged at the bellpull. The door opened to reveal a servant.

“My carriage,” Carmen said. “We return to Spain. Quentin, you will come?”

Quentin gave her a crooked smile. “I don’t believe so,
mi corazón
. It was sweet while it lasted, but you have mistaken my feelings for Fitzroy. I don’t hate him anywhere near as much as you think.”

Carmen shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He is nothing, a mere pawn. It was amusing to play with him for a while.”

“You have ordered the murder of innocent men.” The ironic edge was gone. Fitzroy’s voice blazed with anger. “Do you think we should let you walk away?”

“Of course. For now I will tell you that the game has only just begun. My family shall still be revenged on England. And you Englishmen are helpless to stop it.”

“What now?” Fitzroy asked. “Is there further retribution?”

“Of course. You are such a master spy and you have not guessed? Your batman, Herring, told you the truth. Did you think it was just a feint? No, Wellington is the real prize. Only remember this, when you get the news of his death, that the sparrow has finally won.”

Joanna turned to Fitzroy. “The sparrow?”

He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them.

“Obvious enough, given her surname:
Gorrión
, the sparrow.”

‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ ‘I,’ said the Sparrow, ‘with my bow and arrow . . .’

Carmen opened her reticule and tossed a package of papers onto the table.

“Your precious Iron Duke will die tomorrow in Cambrai. The plans are all there. May it bring you pleasure to read them.”