The Sergeant's Lady (20 page)

Ears still ringing, Anna knelt beside Lieutenant Montmorency, set the pistol down and checked his throat for a pulse.

Dead. She had killed him. Only then did she notice her hands and forearms were spattered with tiny droplets of blood. Shouldn’t there be more? The warm wetness and coppery smell coupled with the lingering scent of gunpowder made her stomach lurch. She just managed to turn aside in time for her vomit to land neither on the body nor on herself.

Running footsteps approach her room, and someone pounded on the door. “Anna!”

Before she could find her voice, the door burst open and Alec and Helen tumbled inside, barefoot and clad only in their nightrails. Alec brandished a saber, and Helen a pistol and a lit candle. Behind them stood Señora Romero and her granddaughter, and Anna heard the servants’ alarmed voices and the children wailing from the staircase.

“Good God, Anna!” Helen exclaimed. “What happened?”

She wanted to speak but couldn’t find words. She rose to her knees and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her breath came faster, mingled with sobs.

Helen and Alec exchanged a look, set their weapons down and crossed to her.

Helen took her hands. “Anna, darling. Slowly. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.”

Soothed by the familiar voice, she tried to comply.

“Yes. Much better.”

Through blurred eyes she watched Alec check the body and shake his head. Then in Spanish he asked Señora Romero to bring more light and a glass of wine, and told Beatriz and María to assure Nell that Cousin Anna was well, and that they had not heard a shot, merely thunder.

When they were gone, Alec joined his wife. “Anna. We want to help you—and whatever this is, I’m sure you were in the right—but you must tell us what happened.”

She swallowed on a fresh wave of nausea. “I’m not a murderer.”

“Of course you aren’t, darling,” Helen soothed.

“I’m
not
. I never meant to shoot him, only he wouldn’t leave, and he tried to take the gun.”

Señora Romero returned, a lit three-branched candelabra in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other.

“Stay with us, please, señora,” Alec said in Spanish. “This concerns you, too.”

“Gracias.”
She set the candelabra on the table, drew its chair several feet away from Montmorency’s body and sat.

Helen drew Anna to her feet, made her sit on the bed and put the glass of wine into her unresisting hands. “Drink.”

Anna obeyed, though the fruity smell of the wine seemed unnaturally strong, and blended horribly with the stench of blood and vomit to make her gorge rise again. But she swallowed hard, sipped the wine and was glad of it. It washed the sour taste from her mouth and steadied her nerves.

“I’ll translate for Señora Romero,” Helen murmured to her husband. “Anna shouldn’t have to think in Spanish on top of everything else.”

He nodded curtly and faced Anna like an interrogator while Helen stepped back to stand by Señora Romero.

“Anna, we
will
find a way out of this,” Alec said. “But you must tell me what happened. Who is he? He looks familiar.”

She took another sip of the wine. “George Montmorency. A lieutenant in the Rifles.”

“Now I remember. He dined with us on our way back with the convoy. He struck me as a nonentity. What was he doing here? I can’t imagine this was a lovers’ quarrel.”

She shuddered. “Absolutely not. But he wanted my fortune and meant to force me to marry him.”

“How? By rape? Some threat against you?”

“The latter. But I think he had the former in mind, too, until I fought him.”

“What hold could he possibly have over you?”

She had been planning her lie since she had calmed enough to think, judging it best to stay as close to the truth as possible. “One of his own invention,” she said. “He imagined an affair between Sergeant Atkins and me because we were alone together for days. He said if I didn’t marry him, he’d order Sergeant Atkins into peril or kill him himself in the confusion of battle.”

Alec’s face twisted. “Good God. I’m glad you shot him. The army is well rid of anyone who’d even consider doing such a thing to his own soldiers. I just wish I knew what to do with his body.”

“I’m sorry, Alec.”

“Don’t apologize. What’s done is done, and we’ll find a way to hide it.”

“Couldn’t we tell the truth?” Anna asked tentatively.

“Are you mad, lass?”

“If I explain that it was accidental and in self-defense…”

Alec shook his head. “No. I’m not saying you’d hang for it…”

Anna raised a hand to her throat.

“But there would be a trial,” Alec continued, “and a scandal. Another scandal. You’d be ruined—not even your fortune would be enough to save you.”

“I don’t care if all the world cuts me dead as long as I’m welcome at Dunmalcolm. I only want to go home and stay there.”

“After all that’s happened, I don’t blame you,” Helen said, “but you’re two-and-twenty. Do you truly want to spend the next fifty years as an outcast?”

“What Anna wants is immaterial,” Alec said. “I won’t have such a scandal in our family, and I’m sure Father and my cousin Selsley would say the same. Wouldn’t you agree, Anna?”

Slowly she nodded, bowing to the weight of familial authority.

“But where can we hide the body?” Helen asked.

Alec shrugged helplessly. “There’s the rub. We could leave it in an alley near a tavern, but I cannot think how to do so without being seen.”

“The old dry well west of the barn,” Señora Romero said in Spanish. “No one will think to search there.”

“We’ve already involved you too much in our troubles,” Anna said in the same language.

Their hostess shook her head. “No. Your cousin is right. You should not have your life ruined for that man’s evil.”

“Gracias, señora.”
Alec acknowledged her with a small bow.

“
De nada
. When the rain stops, José will show you the way. I can vouch for him and Felipa. They will say nothing.”

“Good,” Alec said, switching back to English. “This storm is a blessing, really—if the night had been still, that shot would’ve roused the village. As it is, there will be questions when he turns up missing—so, Anna, you won’t be here. You ride for Lisbon in the morning.”

“I…what? How?”

“I’ll find some kind of post or dispatches important enough to send straightaway, with a dozen troopers as escort. I’ll lend you Dulcinea so you can keep pace.”

“But why?” Anna asked.

“Because I know you, lass. You’ve a soft heart, and you’re a terrible liar. If this fellow’s colonel turns up to ask about him, you’ll confess—unless you feel so guilty you do it of your own volition by nightfall. Do you really want to stay, with this hanging over you?”

She thought of Will. If she saw him again, she would be unable to stop herself from telling him. That in turn would place a terrible burden on his shoulders, to choose whether to protect her or tell the truth to his regiment. “No. I’ll go.”

“She cannot go alone,” Helen said. “I’ll ride with her.”

“But the children—” Alec began.

“Will do very well with Beatriz and María for a few weeks. I’ll say we received word from Lisbon that my mother is ill—I’ll send a note to Papa so he’ll know not to worry—and that she has sent for me to nurse her. Then it will look as if the journey is for my sake, with Anna along to bear me company and to find passage home.”

Alec agreed to Helen’s plan, and Anna’s fate was removed from her hands. Helen led her upstairs to the room she shared with Alec, gave her a clean shift in place of her blood-spattered nightdress—“We’ll burn it in the morning”—and insisted she attempt to sleep. “We’ll pack what we need in saddlebags as soon as it’s light,” Helen assured her. “And Alec will sleep in the parlor, once the business with the well is done.”

Much to her amazement, Anna did sleep, albeit fitfully and disturbed by vivid dreams of Lieutenant Montmorency’s body sliding down the wall. Before dawn she awoke and crept downstairs. There remained one thing she must do.

By the time she reached her room, which was now blessedly clean, there was light enough to open her trunk, find paper and writing materials, and pen a brief note. She took out her old miniature, folded the note around it and sealed it.

“There you are,” Helen said from the doorway. Anna started guiltily. “I’d worried…Well, shall I send Beatriz to help you dress? Alec wants us to leave within the hour.”

“Yes, thank you.” Anna had one final task for Beatriz.

In a few minutes, the young maid arrived and helped Anna into the sturdiest of her dresses. She winced as Beatriz fastened the buttons. Oddly, the dress was tight through the bodice. It had fit perfectly when she’d made it just a fortnight ago. But she hadn’t time to worry over it.

“Beatriz, may I ask you a great favor?”

“Of course, señora.”

She picked up the note. “Can you take this to Juana Martínez and ask that she give it to Sergeant Atkins?” Going through Juana seemed less conspicuous. No one would notice a local maid speaking to a local laundress.

“I will go this morning before we march, señora.”

“Thank you, Beatriz.” She reached through the slit in her skirt for her pocket and took out a guinea and a few smaller coins. “And—please don’t speak of this to anyone.”

Beatriz tucked the letter into her bodice and tied the coins into a corner of her apron. “I will not, señora. I promise. If it were not for you—I do not know where I would be, but I would not have this good work with the dear little children.”

Their eyes met. Anna knew that by asking Beatriz to deliver the letter she had essentially confessed her affair with Will. She saw no sign of shock in the girl’s steady dark eyes. Beatriz was in many ways still a child, but Anna supposed in her peasant upbringing and her time with the army she must have seen enough to make her difficult to surprise.

“Thank you, Beatriz,” she said. “And good luck to you.”

“And to you, señora. I will go now. If I hurry, I can be back before María or Señora Gordon misses me.”

They exchanged a last look of understanding, and Beatriz slipped out the door. Anna packed the basic necessities into a saddlebag and tried not to dwell on the horror of the night before. It was much worse than when she had shot the French boy or the bandits. As dreadful as that had been, at least it had been part of the war. But this! She told herself again and again that it had been an accident, that she was no murderer. But it had been her finger on the trigger.

Helen entered bearing a tray with a steaming cup of coffee and a one of Felipa’s fried pastries. “Breakfast,” she trilled with careful cheer, waving her offering beneath Anna’s nose.

She had never smelled coffee more bitter nor a pastry so cloyingly sweet. She turned her head aside and sank dizzily down into the chair, resting her head in her hands.

Helen set the tray on the table and crouched before her. “What is it, darling? Are you ill?”

She swallowed. “I—I don’t have much of an appetite after last night, I suppose.”

“I understand but try to eat. You’ll need your strength.”

Anna took up the coffee, but as she raised it to her lips the nausea returned, and she hastily set it down again. “I can’t. The smell—it’s too strong.”

Helen narrowed her eyes. “Tell me, when did you last have your courses?”

“My
courses?
Everything has been so unsettled that I haven’t thought of them.”

“Think now.”

“It must have been—” She almost said
the day after Sebastian died
, but caught herself just in time. That was over a month ago. Never had her courses been so tardy since they had begun when she was fourteen. They came every four weeks, perhaps a day early, occasionally a day or two late. But never like this—it had been five weeks now, going on six. How could she not have noticed? “But…that’s impossible. I’m barren.”

Helen took her hands. “Breathe, Anna. I know this is a shock, but the evidence suggests you are not.”

“But…it can’t be. It must be all the upheaval. You’ve talked of being late when you’re worried or ill.”

“But you haven’t. And when I’m not increasing, I don’t fall asleep every time I sit still nor nearly cast up my accounts at the smell of coffee.”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t understand. Two years, and nothing until now.” How could the problem have been Sebastian’s, with that bastard son he’d boasted of? Had his mistress had another man, and either lied to Sebastian or not known who the father was? Anna had never even considered the possibility—but if Helen was right, then it was abundantly clear that
she
hadn’t been the problem.

Helen watched her with furrowed brow. “I’m no expert,” she said at last, “but anyone can observe that some women have smaller families than others. Perhaps they conceive less readily, without being quite barren.”

Anna’s hand stole down to rest on her belly. Will’s child. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She’d been so sure they had no cause to fear this particular consequence.

“Anna, darling,” Helen said softly, “do you want it? No one could blame you if you did not, under the circumstances.”

Did she want it? She wasn’t even certain she believed it yet. Stunned though she was, she knew the choice she faced: pretend the child was Sebastian’s or bear it in secret and foster it out. The first seemed wrong, and as for the second—how could she endure giving her baby, Will’s son or daughter, to strangers?

Already this child, whose existence she hadn’t even suspected ten minutes before, was the most important thing in her world. She met Helen’s eyes. “Of course I want it.”

Helen nodded curtly. “Good. There are concoctions one can swallow if one doesn’t, or so I’ve been told, but they don’t always work, they aren’t always safe, and we need to get you to Lisbon.”

Anna had momentarily forgotten her other predicament. “But is it safe to take such a journey, with the baby?”
The baby.
How strange that sounded.

“You’ll be safer on a mannerly, smooth-gaited horse like Dulcinea than you would be bouncing around in a baggage wagon or on a donkey.”