Fortune's Bride (Heiress, Book Four) Page 25

  Robert frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “Damn it. Once they set eyes on you, they’ll know it was my fault, but I’m not very good at writing letters anyway, and this is so complicated…”He looked at her appealingly.

  “Oh, Robert, no!” she exclaimed. “I may be much better at writing letters and explaining, but your parents would know at once that you had only copied out what someone else had written, and think of the impression that would give.”

  “Oh, Lord,” he sighed, “they’d start to imagine that I’d fallen prey to a particularly clever harpy. They should know better, of course, but m’ father thinks I’m an idiot anyway, and m’ mother’s convinced I’m still ten years old.”

  Esmeralda was not really as worried as she sounded. She was cynically certain that whatever Robert’s parents thought originally, they would be happy to welcome her as a daughter as soon as they discovered the extent of the deposits at her bank. However, it seemed to her that the longer his affectionate parents had to think and worry about what Robert had done, the worse their opinion of her would become. If she and Robert returned to England together and Lord and Lady Moreton saw that Robert was happy, that she was socially acceptable, and simultaneously heard about her fortune, they might still be shocked but not, she hoped, antagonistic. She could take the blame upon herself, too, saying she had been so frightened, she had begged Robert not to tell them. Fear was not nearly so reprehensible as seduction.

  “Do you think the extent of time will be significant?” Esmeralda asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, do you think your parents would be more deeply hurt or worried if you wrote a week or a month from now instead of immediately?”

  “Probably not,” Robert said, his expression lightening. He was not at all reluctant to put off an unpleasant duty, but then his face clouded again. “But I don’t see that it can help, either.”

  “It may not,” Esmeralda agreed, smiling, “but I think this is not the best time to consider so important a subject. You are hungry and tired, and, I suspect, still a little disordered from your potations. If it cannot do serious harm, I would suggest that you put the question of the announcement aside for a day or two, at least. Perhaps something will occur to us.” She pushed the chickens invitingly nearer to him and extended a carving knife. “If you will carve, I will serve out the rice and greens and sauce. I’m sorry it’s so very simple a meal, but we didn’t arrive until five o’clock, and Molly didn’t think there would be time to cook anything besides chicken. If you hadn’t come when you did, I would have sent Carlos to discover whether there was a cook shop, but I didn’t even have time for that.”

  As she spoke Robert had swiftly carved both small birds and distributed pieces on the plates Esmeralda readied. He took a bite and smiled. “Simple but tasty. I swear Sir Arthur must hire a cobbler and tell him to cook old shoes.” He chewed for a while in silence, then reached for a second helping.

  As she added the garnishings to his plate she asked, “Robert, where are we and why? Can you tell me? I mean, I know the name of the town, but M’Guire couldn’t tell us anything else.”

  His eyes lit, and he began to describe the battle of Roliça. Esmeralda shook her head. “First tell me why your coat was all torn and your breeches all stained.”

  Robert looked surprised. “That had nothing to do with the fight at Roliça,” he said, quite truthfully but giving Esmeralda a totally false impression. “That was at Brilos when I had to leave my horse and go climbing around on a stupid hill to tell those idiots in the Sixtieth and the Ninety-fifth that help was on its way.”

  “Then you weren’t in the fighting?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Robert said regretfully. “Fa won’t hear of my taking a line command. I’m going to have to talk to him about it again. I really think I need some field experience before I command a regiment of my own. But what I did isn’t in the least important.”

  As far as Robert was concerned, he had told the truth. He did not consider riding through shot and shell or even the hand-to-hand combat in which he had engaged as taking part in the fighting. To his mind, to take part in the fighting meant leading men into action and being responsible for what they did. But, of course, Esmeralda did not know this. She was therefore left with the notion that he had probably torn and stained his coat and breeches scrambling through brush and over rough ground.

  Comforted and content, she turned her full attention to Robert’s detailed explanation of the overall significance of the battle of Roliça. The actual advantage gained militarily was far less important than the significance in terms of morale. “If we could have pursued them, cut them off from Loison’s force and from Lisbon, and wiped them out, it would have hurt Junot. As it is, I’m afraid we haven’t done the main French force much harm, but we’ve done ourselves a lot of good.”

  “Did Sir Arthur think it too dangerous to follow?” Esmeralda asked eagerly. “Would we have been caught between the two armies?”

  “Sir Arthur never says too much about what he thinks,” Robert admitted. “It’s one of the things I don’t like about serving with him, but I can usually figure it out afterward or if I ask after the action, he’ll explain. And he’s so good a general that it’s worth waiting for. But anyway, coming to Vimeiro hasn’t much to do at all with French movements. Sir Arthur received word that Acland and Anstruther are off the coast with four thousand men. We have to protect the landing site. And it’s important to have the extra men because those idiots in Whitehall—or maybe the old fools at the Horse Guards—got the wrong information about what Junot has to put up against us.”

  “Is the difference serious?” Esmeralda frowned with concern but her voice was steady and her expression was not in the least fearful.

  Robert smiled at her “It might have been if these two brigades had not arrived. Once they are ashore, I believe we will be strong enough to throw off any attack by Junot.”

  “Did not the Spanish troops desert as expected?” Esmeralda asked.

  “Yes and no.” Robert grinned. “There are still about six thousand Spanish troops in Lisbon, but they’re doing more for us than for Junot. In fact, he only managed to prevent them from deserting by arresting them in small batches, and now he’s got a whole battalion tied up guarding them.”

  “From what you have said about the abilities of the Spanish army, keeping the troops prisoner may cost the French more men than allowing them to return to Spain and fight,” Esmeralda remarked.

  Robert laughed aloud. “You are becoming a better general than Junot,” he teased. “But there is another funny part to this. There is a Russian fleet in Lisbon harbor with about six thousand seamen under Admiral Siniavin. They haven’t done a thing since they arrived but eat. When the Portuguese started to rebel, Siniavin refused to help the French. He said that the tsar had never declared war on the Portuguese nor recognized the French annexation of Portugal. He wouldn’t even let his men guard the Spanish prisoners.”

  “But why?” Esmeralda was puzzled. It seemed very odd behavior for an ally.

  “Because there is a strong party in Russia violently opposed to the peace Alexander made with the French, and Siniavin is in sympathy with this party. It also seems that Siniavin is Royal Navy trained and served with our fleet for a few years. He has no intention of helping the French against us if he can avoid it. Naturally, he can’t disobey orders, but he can draw the line pretty tight and do only what his instructions specifically command. And that, I gather, is nothing. He’s been at sea since before Russia declared war on England, and I don’t think he’s got any orders.”

  “How convenient,” Esmeralda remarked.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Robert responded, grinning.

  “Then what does Junot have?” Esmeralda asked, returning to the point of the discussion that affected them most directly.

  “A lot more than the fourteen or fifteen thousand men Sir Arthur was led to expect—at least twenty thousand, we
think.”

  Esmeralda thought for a moment and then said, “So all in all, the numbers are about even, aren’t they? The French may have a little edge, but—”

  “But they don’t have Sir Arthur,” Robert replied with grim enthusiasm. “He’s really the best general I’ve ever seen in action. And he’s used to being the underdog and winning anyway. That’s important. And because of Roliça, for the first time our men and officers believe they can beat the French.”

  Esmeralda looked so astonished that Robert laughed again. He realized that she had accepted as gospel his conviction that under Sir Arthur’s direction, a British victory was inevitable. It was a very pleasant feeling that she trusted him so completely.

  “I guess you never paid much attention to what Boney was doing in Europe, did you, Merry?” Robert asked.

  “No…”

  “Well, Boney beat everyone to flinders,” Robert told her.

  “I knew that, I mean, I knew he rolled up the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians.”

  Robert nodded. “Yes, well, you see that’s been part of the trouble. Everyone is so afraid of Boney’s French troops that they’re half-beaten before they start. I’m pretty sure, although no one said it outright, that our own men and officers felt the same way. But we’ve had phenomenally good luck. That little action at Brilos—I’ll swear it was half bravado and half hysteria that made those four companies chase the French pickets too far. But they held out like heroes after they’d run into the whole rear guard, and then we beat them at Roliça.”

  “You said you would,” Esmeralda put in, smiling.

  But Robert did not return the smile, and he shook his head. “I swear God’s on our side, Merry. Everything went wrong at Roliça. Colonel Lake got a rush of heroism to the head—or maybe he didn’t understand the orders. We’ll never know because he’s dead now, but he started the attack long before he should have—before the artillery had a chance to soften up the troops and before there was any hope of support on the flanks from Ferguson or Trant.”

  “But Robert, if everything went wrong—” Esmeralda hesitated, unsure of how she wanted to finish the sentence.

  “We beat them anyway,” Robert pointed out with blazing eyes. “We drove the French out of a very strong position by sheer courage and fighting skill.” He drew a deep breath then and smiled wryly. “At least, that’s how the men and officers see it. And it’s put them on top of the world. They may even believe they’re better soldiers—that’s not true, but it doesn’t matter—”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Esmeralda remembered the tears and stains on Robert’s clothing and was suddenly frightened. “Overconfidence can lead to rash actions. You said Lake had behaved rashly and upset Sir Arthur’s plan.”

  “You don’t have to worry about overconfidence. Sir Arthur will let all the officers have the rough side of his tongue for not obeying orders. They’ll be more careful—”

  “Moreton!”

  A roar from the stairwell cut off whatever more Robert had been about to say. Esmeralda saw his lips tighten and his nostrils flare with temper, and a thrill went through her. It was the first time Robert had ever shown the smallest sign that he preferred her company to his duty. Nonetheless, as Robert went and flung open the door, a definite feeling of relief was mingled with her joy. She could have kept him talking for a while longer, but eventually he would have resumed the amorous activities he had begun earlier.

  Not that Esmeralda objected to that. Despite the pain she had suffered, she was eager to renew the experience, partly out of curiosity, partly out of a recollection of the pleasure and excitement that mingled with the pain, and partly because she understood it was a way to bind Robert to her. Her problem was that she felt she could not be very appetizing at the moment. She wanted to wash and comb her hair and put on a pretty new dress so that she would not fall too far below the standards to which Robert was accustomed.

  Thus, although she lowered her eyes, she was not really disappointed when Robert came back from the door still tight-lipped with displeasure to say, “I’m wanted. I hope it won’t be for long, but I don’t know.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, putting out her hand to him. “I have to clear up anyway. Whenever you come, I’ll be waiting.”

  Chapter Twenty

  As soon as Robert’s footsteps died away down the stairs, Esmeralda tumbled all the plates together onto the tray and carried them to the kitchen. She did not bother to wash them. Molly would do that in the morning. Getting herself sweet and clean was more important than anything else, particularly as it would not be easy to do. First, water had to be heated. Esmeralda emptied what Robert had left in the bucket into the kettle and set it on the stove. Then she lugged the bucket out to the pump and filled it, brought it back to the kitchen, topped up the kettle, and emptied the remainder of the water into several other pots—as many as could be set on the stove.

  While those heated, she searched the house, the pantry, and finally the outhouses, but she could not find a bath. In the end she found a pan, possibly used for baking, that would be wide enough for her to kneel in. It was far too flat to bathe in, but it would catch the excess water while she sponged herself clean.

  Esmeralda first took the large pan upstairs, then filled the bucket with cold water and carried that up. At that point she realized that she needed a second bucket for the hot water. She recalled seeing one while she was looking for the bath, but she was getting flustered because everything was taking so long and she could not remember where she had seen it. She ran about looking in all the least likely places only to discover the bucket in the most logical spot, under the sink. When she saw that it was dirty, she almost wept with anxiety and scrubbed it clean with frantic haste.

  She had a vision of herself elegantly dressed, with her hair neatly combed, sitting quietly by the lamp sewing. She felt that was how Robert would expect to see his wife. He would not like to see her carrying buckets of water. He had been surprised when he saw her working in the kitchen, and it would be most unromantic for Robert to see her sweating, or struggling to get clean.

  By the time she had the old bucket suitably scrubbed, the water in the smaller pots was boiling and that in the kettle too hot to touch. With trembling haste, she emptied all the hot water into the bucket and started for the stairs. Voices outside made her freeze for a moment, but they passed and Esmeralda hurried up the stairs, gasping for breath and shifting the bucket from one hand to the other as she felt her arm might be wrenched from its socket by the weight.

  Having assembled her paraphernalia and found the soap and sponge, Esmeralda finally removed her clothing and began to add cold water to the hot until the temperature was reasonable. Then she knelt down in the baking pan, dipped her sponge, soaped it, and began to wash. The removal of dust and old sweat soothed her immediately. Her breathing slowed and so did her movements. When her face and neck were clean, it occurred to her that until she was ready to wash her legs, she could sit in the pan with her knees raised. That would be more comfortable.

  Esmeralda got up, emptied the water that had accumulated in the pan into the slop bucket, and sat down. It worked quite well, the sides being low enough not to cut into her thighs, but when she tried to rise to empty the water again, she found it very awkward. By now, however, she was feeling much better and she giggled happily as she tried to find a way to lever herself upright without tipping the pan. At which point the door flew open, and Robert said, “Merry—”

  Shock deprived Esmeralda of voice and movement for the one second it took Robert to look around and see her His eyes opened wide, his lips parted—and then he stepped in and shut the door behind him. Blushes dyed her face and throat scarlet and even reddened the upper portion of her chest. In contrast, her breasts were very white. She and Robert stared at each other for another moment in a silence that was less shocked than appreciative on Robert’s part, and more calculating than embarrassed on Esmeralda’s. Slowly she moved her hands, which had been
braced against the floor, up toward her breasts as if to shield them.

  Robert grinned. “It’s too late now,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve seen all there is to see, and very nice it is. Merry, you need a keeper. You didn’t lock the door. Anyone could have walked in on you.”

  As he spoke, he reached out and turned the key, but his eyes were on his wife. Her color had started to fade and then intensified when he teased her, but after another short silence, she lifted her head defiantly, dropped one hand, and held the other out to him.

  “I can’t get up without spilling the water,” she said with only the smallest tremor in her voice. “Will you help me?”

  “With the greatest pleasure in the world,” Robert replied, coming forward, but he did not take her hand. He bent and lifted her.

  “Oh, you idiot!” Esmeralda exclaimed. “Now you’ve got your one clean coat all wet with soapy water.”

  “It is not in the proper mode to call your husband an idiot,” Robert said gravely, and kissed her.

  “It is not in the proper mode to intrude on a lady naked in her bath,” Esmeralda retorted as soon as her lips were free. “You should have apologized and stepped out.” She had, however, spoiled whatever effect the reprimand might have had before she delivered it by putting her arms around Robert’s neck and responding enthusiastically to his kiss.

  “But then the door would still be unlocked, leaving you at the mercy of less well accredited trespassers,” he pointed out.

  He bent his head to kiss Esmeralda again, but she recollected what she had just complained about and said, “Put me down, Robert, do, and let me sponge off your coat.”

  “Just as you are?”

  He began to laugh so hard that he almost dropped her, and she slid to her feet.

  “You said yourself that it was too late for modesty.” She started to bend down to retrieve and rinse the sponge, but saw Robert move, and came upright. “Don’t you dare pat my…my…me there,” she warned,