Marrying the Royal Marine Page 11

  ‘Then you can understand Sister Maria Madelena’s need of her. Polly has such a calming effect on those broken reeds she ministers to.’ Philemon kissed his son. ‘Polly is so self-effacing that she has no idea of her effect on people. Maybe on you, too?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Of course I know,’ Philemon replied, with all the complacency of a happily married man, damn his eyes. ‘I am married to her sister, who has that same effect. I know Laura Brittle better than any human alive, and I tell you these three daughters of a terrible man are rare and special.’

  ‘Do you want me gone, too?’ Hugh said bluntly.

  ‘I don’t think so. Don’t be discouraged.’ Philemon looked at Hugh, as though measuring him. ‘I don’t know what will happen with you and Polly; wartime is not so amenable to courtship. But things happen.’

  ‘Maybe not right now, though,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Philemon agreed, his voice as kind as one could wish. He nodded to his wife, who was approaching them, her arms held out for her son. ‘Laura, take this rascal and put him to bed. I’ll see the Colonel to the door.’

  He was being dismissed. It was not late, but the Brittles probably wanted Polly to sleep as much as she could, before the midnight hours came when the young women were restless in their dreams.

  Philemon was in no hurry to usher him out. They took their time getting to the massive door, with its Marine sentry. Hugh tried one more time.

  ‘I wish Miss Brandon would not go upriver.’ He stopped, not mistaking the wary look on the surgeon’s face. ‘I know, I know! You all think I am being overly proprietary. If the interior of Spain were not in such turmoil this past month, I would say nothing.’

  ‘She’s going again tomorrow,’ Philemon said.

  ‘No! Don’t allow it.’

  ‘We got word at dinner. There was one more girl who made it late to São Jobim. There was some sense of urgency in the communication from the priest.’

  ‘Then insist on more of an escort,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Perhaps I can. It’s going to be another day trip, that is all.’

  ‘Brandon—Miss Brandon—doesn’t have to go, does she?’

  ‘I doubt she sees it your way, Colonel.’ The surgeon looked him in the eyes. ‘By the way, all mail is delivered to my desk. If Laura had seen the letter you so brazenly sent to her sister, she would have chased you out of the convent with a capital knife.’

  ‘It was cheeky of me,’ Hugh admitted. ‘Did you deliver it?’

  ‘Guilty as charged, Colonel Junot. You’re not such a bad man,’ Philemon said generously.

  The surgeon’s teasing gave him heart. ‘Thank you! Now, if you could use your almighty powers of persuasion to convince your sister-in-law to stop those river trips, this Marine could embark for Ferrol Station and then Plymouth with an easier conscience.’

  He could tell the surgeon was wavering, but he looked at his timepiece.

  ‘I have to go, Colonel Junot,’ he said. ‘I’ll think about what you suggest.’

  Hugh sighed and walked slowly down the hill to the wharf, knowing he would toss and turn all night and probably get even less sleep than Polly Brandon.

  Polly had managed to snatch a few moments of sleep in the corridor that night. Before dawn, after a quick kiss on Laura’s cheek, she hurried to the wharf. The barco, still wreathed in shadows, was the only vessel showing signs of activity. She waited as the three Marines filed on board and sat down near the curved bow. Polly sat near the mast, wrapped her cloak tighter and closed her eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, Brandon. I hope you have a wonderful life, wherever it takes you.’

  Startled, she strained her eyes to see Colonel Junot standing on the dock, looking down at her. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said, wishing she didn’t sound so furry with sleep.

  He doffed his hat to her and she waved, then closed her eyes again, wishing he had not shown up last night, but determined not to be miserable. As the Portuguese sailor cast off the lines, she felt a sudden thump and a sway. To her utter amazement, she opened her eyes to see Colonel Junot pick his way carefully to the bow. He sat down with the sentries, who looked as startled as she did. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

  ‘I just changed my mind,’ he said. His expression suggested to her that he was as surprised as she was to find himself on the barco. ‘The sloop of war won’t get underway until night. You promise me we’ll be back here by late afternoon?’

  ‘Certainly. But why…?’

  ‘I have a sudden hankering to see São Jobim, Brandon.’

  Chapter Ten

  Polly could have told him São Jobim wasn’t much of a village. In a peaceful world, one where Englishmen with nothing better to do liked to take the Grand Tour, even the old church was not one of the Seven Wonders.

  She couldn’t overlook her growing discomfort that he had come along because he was worried about another trip upriver so soon after the last one. She knew he had better things to do, and she doubted he had ever done anything as lowly as escort duty in many years. Still, she had to admit there was some gratification in knowing someone was so concerned about her welfare.

  To her relief, she kept down breakfast, which gave her some hope that she could outgrow her tendency to seasickness. Anything is possible, Brandon, she told herself, as she leaned against one of the wine kegs lashed to the deck. Perhaps you can outgrow a certain fondness for the man who was so kind to you. Anything is possible, but it might be easier if he had not been so impulsive.

  She watched the Colonel as he sat with the sentries, impressed, as always, by his military bearing. She watched him gesture to the Private beside him, using what she knew were his considerable skills in getting the sentries to talk to him, man to man, and not as Private to Colonel. In his letter to her, he had told her what questions he asked, and how he was becoming more proficient in the art of interview. At least I think I am, he had written. Perhaps I will show you my list of questions and you can tell me if I have forgotten anything. Polly smiled to herself, wondering if she had memorised his entire letter.

  He couldn’t have picked a better assignment for himself, she decided, as she watched all three sentries unbend enough to talk and then laugh. The Colonel had a pad of paper resting on his thigh, and he wrote on it with a pencil, not even looking down, doing nothing to call attention to his actions. She knew it was more than mere command that compelled the sentries to relax enough to talk to Colonel Junot. ‘If he says he is interested in what you do, he most certainly means it,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I could tell you that.’

  Lulled by the monotony of motion, she closed her eyes again, relieved for no particular reason that Colonel Junot had decided so impulsively to come along. There was no reason she should feel any safer; unlike the sentries, he carried no weapon. In her brief acquaintance with so august a character, Polly knew he was steadfast. That was enough to send her peacefully back to sleep.

  When she woke, he was sitting beside her, gazing out at the shoreline. They had entered one of the gorges where the river narrowed and the current grew stronger. The barco had begun to pitch and yaw as the two-man crew accommodated themselves to the new forces at play on their flat-bottomed boat. She sat up, well aware that this was the one place in the river’s journey where she felt supremely entitled to her queasiness.

  ‘It looks like a rough go here, Brandon,’ was all Colonel Junot said.

  She nodded, gratified and not a little touched that he had recognised the fact and come back to sit with her through the canyon. ‘You’re certain you are never seasick?’ she asked.

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Brandon, I have been bobbing about in small boats since I was not a lot older than your nephew. Do you want me to tell you about it?’

  She did, even as she recognised what he was doing to keep her mind off the tumbling water as the barco pushed against the current. ‘Indeed, I do, Colonel. Talk away, and distract me from all the waves and toothy things probably swimming ar
ound right under the water’s surface.’

  ‘You are a silly nod,’ he told her, matter of fact. ‘I am from a stretch of choppy water near Kirkcudbright, in the western part of Scotland. No one in our current generation has much of a clue how our French ancestor managed to end up in such an obscure place, but we’re glad he did, cold knees and oatmeal notwithstanding.’

  Her mind partly on the rough passage, but increasingly more on him, she listened as he told her of a childhood she could scarcely imagine: the oldest of three children, and the one always inclined to more adventure than his bookish little brother—now a barrister in Edinburgh—and his sister, who had his same love for tumult but the misfortune of her sex. ‘Jeannie should be the Colonel Commandant of the Third Division,’ Colonel Junot told her. ‘As it is, she and her husband run the estate west of Kirkie, since our da decided to indulge in a life of leisure in his old age. The estate will be mine some day—hopefully, not too soon.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’ she asked, wanting to reach out for him because she knew the upcoming stretch of water was a personal trial.

  Maybe she made an involuntary gesture. Maybe he just knew almost as much about water as her brother-in-law Oliver. He took her arm and tucked it next to his side, forcing her to move closer to him, which bothered her not a bit.

  ‘Aye, I miss it,’ he told her, his lips close to her ear as the crew manoeuvred the barco expertly past the rocks and into a calmer place. ‘More lately than usual. Maybe I’d like to drop a line in a trout stream I know about, and sleep in my own bed.’

  It was too much. She ducked her head into his shoulder and he pulled her close with his other hand, speaking louder. ‘Ah, now, Brandon. Do I have to do the buzzy bee to distract you?’

  She tried to laugh, even as she swallowed the gorge rising from her sorely tried stomach. ‘No,’ she said, wishing she meant it. ‘Let go!’

  He did instantly, but put his hand inside the collar of her dress, gripping her, as she leaned over the gunwale. ‘Brandon, it’s a good thing you weren’t married to one of Noah’s sons. Imagine forty days and nights of this.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said as she sat back and he released her. ‘I don’t even like reading that stretch of Genesis.’

  He laughed and wiped her mouth with her own skirt. ‘I think…this is just my opinion, but perhaps Sister Maria Madelena will let you stay at Sacred Name in the future, and avoid this watery purgatory.’

  ‘Perhaps. I am inclined to agree.’

  After one more visit to the gunwale, Polly sat back for the smooth portion of the ride, where the Douro widened out slightly, and the canyon was breathtaking in its wild beauty. It pleased her that Colonel Junot seemed to enjoy the view, too. When she returned to his side, he took hold of her again. Although she knew they had traversed the last gorge before São Jobim and she did not need his protective hold on her, she remained where she was in the security of his arms.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Mostly I am noticing what an advantage anyone with a mind for mischief would have, sniping from canyon walls,’ he told her. ‘Then I notice the beauty of things next, Brandon. It’s what I do. How many times have you made this trip?’

  Polly decided he could change the subject faster than most people could think. ‘This is the fourth or fifth. Why?’

  ‘In that case, then I am impressed with your own toughness, considering how you feel about the water, and knowing these watery traps are here to ensnare you.’

  ‘I like to make myself useful,’ she said.

  ‘I understand,’ he replied, after some thought. ‘Still, this is a war zone—yes, even peaceful São Jobim—and I worry. There’s something about this place… Oh, well, I cannot put my finger on it. Brandon, doesn’t a quiet life at home sound appealing to you?’

  ‘I’ve never actually had a home,’ she told him, ‘but, yes, it sounds agreeable. It sounded agreeable after my first night in the English Channel.’

  She wished Colonel Junot would not look at her with such sympathy. Perhaps he was thinking of his own childhood. Since she had never enjoyed a childhood like his, it was hard to miss it, she reasoned. ‘I spent my earliest years in an orphanage, and then I went to Miss Pym’s Female Academy in Bath.’

  That should remind you of everything you need to know about my parentage, in case you have forgotten, she thought grimly. She looked for some disgust, but Colonel Junot seemed unperturbed by her words.

  ‘Take my word for it then, Brandon. Staying at home is a good thing, and I recommend it.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Of course not. I am a man and I know my duty, even if I do work for the English and my pay chit comes from London.’

  Trust you to joke and be serious in the same sentence, she thought. And to distract me. He had graciously handed back her serenity, which she accepted without comment. In another minute she disentangled herself from his grip, simply because it was time she remembered.

  Polly looked around as the barco approached São Jobim. Sister Maria Madelena sat by herself as she always did, her eyes on the rosary in her lap as she fingered it. Their heads together, the sentries were talking as usual, unmindful of the barco’s approach to the dock because the duty of snubbing the rope on the cleat belonged to the crew.

  What happened next happened fast, so fast she could never have put a sequence to events, even if a jury had demanded it. She looked at the wharf and then the cobbled street where people were usually passing by, especially at noonday. Bells began to sound in her brain, loud and all at once. There were no fishing boats, no vendors, no children at play in doorsteps, no one. São Jobim looked as deserted as villages Laura had described to her in earlier letters, when the French still rampaged in Portugal.

  Startled, she turned to Colonel Junot, then tugged his arm. ‘Something is…’

  ‘…wrong,’ he finished, rising and gesturing to the Marines at the same time, moving fast but not fast enough.

  He never got out another word before the shore erupted in flame and smoke. Sister Maria Madelena screamed as the helmsman, a bullet hole drilled through his brain, dropped to the deck. More popping sounds came immediately after each other and two Marines slumped sideways.

  Polly took a deep breath, willing herself not to move, even though she wanted to leap up and run somewhere, anywhere. At the same time, Colonel Junot threw her sideways against the gunwale and covered her with his body. She struggled, but he clamped a hand on her head and forced her down into the damp, where river water always puddles. Colonel Junot moulded his body to hers and pulled her in close to him, his hands on her head and belly.

  Completely beyond words and thrust into a land of terror she had never known, Polly felt herself start to shake. She stopped when she felt a slight concussion as a rifle ball thudded into Colonel Junot. He let his breath out with a quiet huff that ended in a sigh, but did not loosen his grip on her.

  ‘Colonel?’ she managed to ask. She struggled to turn around to look at him, but he was too heavy.

  ‘Hold still, Brandon. My God, don’t move.’

  Her cheek jammed against the deck, she had no choice but to do what he said. Terrified, she strained to hear his even breathing, knowing he must have been hit, and wondering at his own calmness in the face of calamity.

  She thought she heard the remaining Marine returning fire, but then there was silence on the deck. To her frightened reckoning, a century or two must have rolled around before she felt the boat sway as men clambered on to the barco, shouting in French. She opened her eyes, which she must have screwed shut, and saw with terror that the damp under her cheek had turned pink.

  The soldiers were dressed in green tunics, with reinforced trousers and copper helmets with fur lining that reminded her of pictures of Roman legionnaires. Their boots extended above their knees. ‘What? Who?’ she managed to gasp.

  ‘Dragoons,’ Hugh whispered in her ear. ‘How’s your French?’

  ‘Adequate,
’ she told him, amazed that she could even get out another word, much less one that made sense.

  ‘Don’t move until I tell you. Oh, God!’

  Please, please, don’t let them shoot him again, she thought. She listened then, hearing what must have torn the words from him, as Sister Maria began to scream and then plead. More men jumped on the barco and then the footsteps came closer. Colonel Junot groaned as someone kicked him, and his hands, so tight around her body, went slack.

  Turn and face them, she ordered herself as she struggled loose from the Colonel’s limp grasp.

  ‘Don’t shoot him,’ she said in French in as firm a voice as she could muster. She twisted around and slowly rose to her knees for her first look at the deck, which ran with blood now. So many green-coated soldiers had leaped on the barco that the deck canted away from the dock and towards the river, causing the blood from the dead Marines and crew members to pour in her direction as they came closer. How much of it was Colonel Junot’s blood, she didn’t dare speculate. He was unconscious, with the beginning of an ugly welt on his temple.

  Polly knew she would never forget the sight before her. Her wimple torn away, Sister Maria Madelena knelt before her captors, who jabbed at her with their muskets, lifting her black skirt.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Polly said, her voice louder.

  The soldiers wheeled around in surprise to look at Polly. Her own knees turned to jelly as their expressions went from surprise to speculation, much as a cat cornering a mouse. As two of the soldiers swaggered towards her, one already unbuckling his sword belt, she sat down, mainly because her knees had stopped holding her up. Her eyes on the soldiers, she yanked Colonel Junot into her lap and wrapped her arms around him.

  The effort must have roused him. He shook his head slightly, uttering another quiet sigh. ‘Brandon, we’re in a pickle,’ he whispered.

  She watched the soldiers out of the corner of her eye, too frightened to look at what was happening to Sister Maria Madelena, but unable to look away. One of the Dragoons jerked her to her feet while another slapped her hard, then slapped her again.