Lucy Lane and the Lieutenant (14 page)

* * *

Lucy had taken the late watch. When the sun began to rise and everything was still and quiet, the gently misted lake looking as polished as steel, and not relishing the thought of another long day of riding ahead of her, Lucy looked with longing at the water. Nathan had told her the night before to remain near him, but, not having bathed since she had left Lisbon, the temptation was too great for her to resist.

Taking a bar of soap from the saddlebags, she slipped away, past a screen of low bushes, and down a short bank. Removing her boots and stockings and rolling up her breeches as high as they would go, she paddled into the water, gasping as the icy water lapped at her ankles. Removing her jacket, she unfastened the top buttons of her shirt. Dipping a handkerchief into the water, she bathed her neck and face. The water felt luxuriously cool and refreshing and she would have loved to remove all her clothes and immerse herself completely but dared not. However, she did take the opportunity to wash her hair. Her ablutions had taken no more than five minutes, but, much as she would have liked to sit on a rock a while, she must not remain out in the open any longer.

A horse whinnied somewhere in the distance. She glanced to the sound and froze. A man sat astride a horse, looking with icy focus in her direction, his coarse manly features impassive. Immediately she grabbed her discarded clothes and scrambled back up the bank and hurried to where Nathan stood with his hands on his hips, obviously concerned with her disappearance.

‘Where were you?’ he demanded, rolling his blanket. ‘I thought you understood the dangers.’

‘Down by the lake,’ she answered shortly.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, seeing the fear in her eyes.’

‘I saw a man on a horse farther along the bank. He was watching me.’

All of a sudden, Nathan stopped what he was doing and stared into the distance, as still as a wolf in a forest hearing some distant sound.

Suddenly Lucy was frightened. ‘Nathan, what—what is it?’ Her voice, thick with worry, faltered as she spoke.

He didn’t reply immediately. He peered into the distance, his keen ears searching for sounds. He sniffed the air, but the breeze was giving nothing away. Still, the alertness of a man well trained in trailing a foe entailed more than just the rudimentary senses. An instinctive warning told him that something was wrong there.

‘I heard something,’ he breathed.

‘So did I. Maybe someone’s hunting,’ Lucy whispered optimistically. Feeling the hairs stir on the back of her neck, she glanced nervously about her, her eyes wide with apprehension. ‘Although I don’t think so.’

Nathan drew her to him protectively, placing her behind him. He stood erect, listening intently, his rifle drawn and ready for action. Everything was still and what had been peaceful now became pregnant with menace, the very silence an enemy. The horses moved uneasily as Lucy’s eyes searched their surroundings.

Suddenly a horse and rider materialised from the trees. Lucy blinked her eyes and tried to focus on the shadowed figure blocking out the morning sun.

The man looked surly and dangerous. His face, his very appearance, was unsettling. Nathan watched him approach. Lucy observed the contemptuous look on Nathan’s face and sensed the alertness in his body. The man halted his horse a few feet away from them—the tension between the two men was almost palpable, even to Lucy’s eyes. The man’s eyes moved to Lucy and lingered with an unblinking gaze. She shuddered beneath his stare and unconsciously moved closer to Nathan.

‘Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Rochefort,’ the man said. His English was excellent, though his accent was thick enough to carve. ‘I have been expecting someone—so they sent you.’

Cocking an eyebrow in haughty question as the offensive bulk of humanity known as Le Chien Noir, the Black Dog, stared back at him, Nathan said coldly, ‘Claude Gameau. It’s been a long time.’

‘I was wondering if you would remember me.’

‘How could I not? I saved your life—an act which I have since had cause to regret.’

‘I expect you do. For myself I was happy that you did. I remember saying to you that if it was ever in my power I would repay that debt.’

‘And I remember telling you that I hoped it would never be in your power.’

Nathan knew without a doubt that had anyone else delivered the gold, they would not have been left alive. Gameau owed him, and despite Gameau’s ruthless determination to survive against the odds, that corrupt deserter still retained some semblance of honour somewhere in him, which was why Nathan had been chosen.

‘Then you must be disappointed in the way it has turned out.’

‘It is one thing for a man to spout such promises, Gameau. It is quite another to consider how he might act when put to the test.’

Gameau’s face flushed with indignation at what he considered to be an insult. ‘I gave you my word. But be under no illusion. I am tempted to ignore what I said just to see you brought to your knees. I would enjoy breaking that proud neck of yours, Rochefort.’

‘I do not doubt that, but you owe me your life, Gameau. Think back to that day. You’d been shot in the leg and you couldn’t run. I could have finished you off—and that Portuguese soldier saw you hiding in the long grass and turned back, do you remember? I stopped him before he could cut off your head with his sword. There’d been enough blood and pain and killing that day. Now that same man whose life I saved is holding the wife and child of a friend of mine and you talk of killing me. To hell with you, Gameau! When I saved your life I thought it meant something.’

Shame filled Gameau’s eyes. It was fleeting, but Nathan had seen it and knew he was right. Gameau had either contemplated or intended killing him once he had the gold.

‘You are safe. I will not kill you this time. But if we meet again I will.’

Nathan eyed him coldly, his expression giving nothing away. ‘Don’t be too sure of that, Gameau.’ As it happened, the partisans and a troop of redcoats were gathering, but Gameau didn’t have that vital piece of information. ‘And now you are a deserter. So, you no longer owe any allegiance to Bonaparte?’

A sneer distorted Claude’s lips. ‘When I escaped the British and made it back to my regiment, I was stripped of my rank and tried for the murder of one of my fellow soldiers who tried to double-cross me over a woman. Had I not escaped I would have been shot. By your gauge of judgement, what loyalty should I give Bonaparte?’

‘That is for you and your conscience to wrestle with, Gameau. I am not here to judge you. But be assured that eventually you and your band of outlaws will be caught and your long-delayed execution will happen.’

Claude shrugged. ‘Perhaps it will, perhaps I’ll be lucky, but now I am a man seeking to make a profit where I can.’

‘By abducting and imprisoning women and children?’

Again he shrugged. ‘It happens. It is necessary for me and my men to survive.’

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I’ve been watching you for some time.’

Nathan said nothing for a moment. He moved a step closer and when he spoke he did so slowly and clearly. ‘I know.’

Lucy stared at him in amazement. Why had he not told her?

‘So what’s Claude Gameau doing travelling alone? French soldiers, be they deserters or otherwise, don’t travel alone. They’re too frightened of the partisans. The brutal treatment they mete out to the French, be they soldiers or deserters, is well known.’ He had come to stand in front of the ex-captain, now self-proclaimed general, and the Frenchman’s dark eyes watched him closely.

‘I did not come alone, but I’m afraid of no one, Rochefort. You, of all people, should know that. You have changed little since last we met—though the scar is new and not as disfiguring as my own.’ His gaze shifted to Lucy and he laughed, the sound an unnerving rumble deep in his chest. ‘Your lady is not happy to see me. Perhaps she fears I might hurt her. You are indeed beautiful, as hungry men will have told you.’ His face formed a cruel semblance of a smile.

Lucy looked defiantly at him and did not move, did not speak lest her loathing and fear show. He was a lean hard wolf of a man, a cruelly featured stranger with an ugly scar, a vivid trail against sunburned skin, marring his high cheekbone. He was not as old as she’d imagined him to be, but all the marks of precocious vice were already written there on his face.

Lucy was unable to take her eyes off him. She felt her heart quicken with heavy pulsing beats. He had the look of one who was a predator amongst men and there was an aura of power, of danger, about him, a look she had seen in only one other man—Nathan Rochefort. This man was dressed in French blue. His face remained singularly calm when he looked back at her. His eyes lowered and Lucy blushed, knowing that he was staring at her legs in their tight breeches. His laughter was brutally mocking when he lifted his eyes to her face, her beauty apparent even with her damp hair curling about her head.

‘You tremble,
mademoiselle
. I think, perhaps, you are a little bit afraid of me.’

Nathan’s features were non-committal as he looked at Claude Gameau, but he was registering all the subtle indications that an unpleasant confrontation could occur if he let what he was feeling get the better of him. For one thing, there was a smirk of satisfaction on the Frenchman’s face. For another, positioned some yards behind Gameau were four of his desperados dressed in a variety of stained and threadbare uniforms from different regiments of different countries, put together at random. They were bristling with arms, their body language confident, their faces mocking. Nathan was under no illusion. He had met men of their kind before. They would kill them without a second thought and rob their corpses afterwards if Gameau ordered them to.

‘Now that we have exchanged civilities, Rochefort, let us get down to business.’

‘The hostages—assuming you haven’t already butchered your prisoners in your usual barbarous fashion.’

‘You have come for the woman.’

‘And the child. That was the agreement. Are they alive?’

The dark eyes opened wide, feigning innocence. ‘Alive? Of course they are alive. You give me the gold and they will stay alive.’

Lucy did not know whether to rejoice or despair. Gameau’s behaviour ran to such extremes, Katherine might have been better off had she met a quick, merciful death rather than endure whatever diabolical scheme her captor might concoct. Yet amidst her sinking spirits there was a secret joy that her old friend and her child were alive and hopefully unharmed.

‘I intend to deal honestly with you,’ Nathan said. ‘I hope you don’t repay me with treachery. How do I know you will release them on payment of the ransom?’

Gameau studied him through narrowed eyes. This was Nathan Rochefort, who had shot three men at Talavera before they’d had time to draw their swords. It was a brave man who challenged Rochefort. He shrugged. ‘You don’t. You will have to trust me.’

‘Trust? That is a fine word coming from you, Gameau. Do you remember Harry? Harry Connors? I have not forgotten.’

‘You should. He’s dead.’

‘You callous bastard. By your hand.’

‘The lad got in my way. It was war.’

‘It was murder. When I let you live you were taken prisoner by English forces and granted parole. On your honour you undertook not to escape from captivity without permission. Negotiations were underway for an exchange, but you ran. Honour was trampled when you broke your parole and murdered Harry Connors who was guarding you.’ Nathan thought of the pleasure it would give him to kill this man. The rage he felt at this moment was impotent. Ever since Harry’s death his head had been busy with the need to avenge his death, but now was not the time. ‘I asked you a question, Gameau.’

Claude Gameau thought for a moment then he scowled. ‘The woman is not well—she is sickly. She is worth nothing to me if she’s dead.’

Nathan looked at him, but his face was a mask showing no reaction to the distress he knew Katherine would be suffering. ‘And the child?’

‘He is taken care of. You have the money?’

Nathan nodded. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the mountains. Follow me.’

When they were mounted Nathan looked at Lucy. ‘Follow me close. Ride steady. Watch your footing and for God’s sake don’t slip.’

She was pale as a sheet, but she nodded and didn’t ask questions.

* * *

The mountains were ragged crests of moving shadows, sharp edged against the northern sky. They climbed ever upwards, amongst rushing streams and rock cliffs. Then the forest with the thick foliage of the trees almost shut out the day. They continued to ascend and after some difficulty scaled the top, which was very rugged. Here the air was sharp and the wind blew colder. Gameau showed no sign of halting and pressed on swiftly, leading them forwards and upwards and across long slopes of scree where they had to dismount and lead the horses, whose hooves slipped and slithered among the loose stone.

After what seemed to be an eternity, they came to a turning in the rocks where a view opened, transcendently beautiful. A large promontory was strewn with what had once been a large castle, built on and into the sheer side of the mountain. It was crumbling and dilapidated, but still formidable, with rusty chains hanging from the walls which had once housed the portcullis. It extended over a large space and some of the walls were still standing. Several towers remained, offering some defence. As far as Claude Gameau was concerned, that was the essential thing.

Riding into a rubble-strewn courtyard, Nathan halted and looked about him, careful to keep Lucy close by him while he took in the layout, memorising what he saw and storing it in his mind for further use. Men loitered about, their expressions insolent and mocking, their eyes suspicious as they watched the newcomers intently. Like their escorts, they wore uniforms mainly of France, but there were a few Portuguese, Spanish and British, their muskets tipped with bayonets.

There were about a hundred all told, but Nathan had the sense of having eyes on him he could not see. Armed, lounging sentinels stood high amongst the ruins. He kept his expression neutral, for he was very aware of the attention focused on them. He knew all the weeks of planning would come to nothing if he gave any hint of what was afoot.