The Captain's Forbidden Miss

‘What do you think?’ Dammartin asked of his lieutenant. Molyneux had been trained in tracking, and when it came to his expertise in this field, there was no one’s opinion that Dammartin trusted more.

‘Two men and two horses heading off in the direction of the track over there. Prints are still fairly fresh. They probably left some time this afternoon.’

‘It is as I thought,’ said Dammartin. ‘We have found what we were looking for.’ It all made sense. Now he understood why Mallington had fought so hard for so long. Not for Telemos. The village was of little importance to the British regiment. But time was, and time was what they had bought for their messengers, and paid for with their lives. He gave a sigh and moved to instruct a pursuit team.

Josie was in the midst of a dream in which the battle of Telemos was being fought again. She shouted the warning to her father, snatching up the dead man’s weapon, running up the staircase, loading and firing at the pursuing French. Her bullet travelled down the gun’s rifled barrel, cutting with a deadly accuracy through the air to land within the Frenchman’s chest. Smoke from the gunpowder drifted across her face, filling her nose with its stench, catching in her throat, drawing a curtain before her eyes so that she could not see. She heard the stagger of his footsteps, and then he was there, falling to his knees before her, his blood so rich and red spilling on to the hem of her dress. She looked down as the enemy soldier turned his face up to hers and the horror caught in her throat, for the face was that of Captain Pierre Dammartin.

She opened her eyes and the nightmare was gone, leaving behind only its sickening dread. Her heart was thumping in her chest, and, despite the icy temperature of the cellar, the sheen of sweat was slick upon her forehead and upper lip. She caught her breath, sat up from her awkward slump against the stack of wooden boxes, and rubbed at the ache in her back. As she did so, she heard the step of boots upon the stairs and knew that he was coming back, and her heart raced all the faster.

She struggled up to her feet, ignoring the sudden dizziness that it brought, felt herself sway in the darkness and sat rapidly back down. The last thing she wanted Dammartin to see was her faint.

And then he was there, through the door before she was even aware that the key had turned within the lock.

He looked tired and there was fresh dust upon his coat and a smear of dirt upon his cheek. The expression on his face was impassive, and she wondered what he had been doing. How much time had passed since he had questioned her? Minutes, hours? Josie did not know.

He set the lantern down upon a box at the side of the room and moved to stand before her. Josie knew that this time there was a difference in his attitude. His eyes were filled with such darkness and determination that she remembered the stories of interrogation and torture and felt the fear squirm deep in the pit of her stomach. Tales of bravery and singular distinction, men who had defied all to withhold the information that their enemy sought. And something in Josie quailed because she knew that she had not a fraction of that bravery and that just the prospect of what Dammartin could do to her made her feel nauseous. She swallowed and wetted the dryness of her lips.

If Dammartin noticed that she had forsaken her defiance of refusing to remain seated, he made no mention of it. Instead he drew up a crate and sat down before her, adjusting the long sabre that hung by his side as he did so.

She waited for what he would do.

‘Do you wish to tell me of the horses, Mademoiselle Mallington?’

‘I have told you what I know,’ she said, feigning a calmness, and looked down to the darkness of the soil below her feet.

‘No, mademoiselle, you have told me very little of that.’

In the silence that followed, the scrabble of rodents could be heard from the corner of the cellar.

‘Your father sent two men to warn your General Wellington of our march.’

She felt the shock widen her eyes, freeze her into position upon the discomfort of the hard wooden crate. He could not know. It was not possible. Not unless… She stayed as she was, head bent, so that he would not see the fear in her eyes.

‘Have you nothing to say, mademoiselle? Nothing to ask me?’

The breath was lodged, unmoving in her throat at the thought that Hartmann and Meyer might be captured. She forced its release and slowly raised her head until she could look into his eyes. There she saw ruthlessness and such certainty as to make her shiver.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There is nothing.’ Her voice was gritty with the strain of emotion.

His eyes were black in the lantern light as her gaze met his. They stared at each other with only the sound of their breath in the dampness of the cellar, and the tightness of tension winding around them.

‘Denial is pointless. I know already the truth. Make this easier for us both, mademoiselle.’

She could hear the chilling determination in those few words so quietly uttered. The worst of imaginings were already crowding in her mind.

He was still looking at her and the distance between them seemed to shrink, so that the implacable resolution of the man was almost overwhelming.

It was as if there was something heavy crushing against her chest, making it hard to pull the breath into her lungs and she could feel a slight tremble throughout her body. She curled her fingers tight and pressed her knees together so that the Frenchman would not see it. She swallowed down the lump in her throat, praying that her voice would not shake as much as the rest of her.

Part of her argued that there was no point in lying anymore. Dammartin knew about the messengers already. And the other part of her, the small part that had kept her going throughout that nightmare year in England, refused to yield.

‘I will not.’ Her words seemed to echo in the silence and she felt her teeth begin to chatter.

‘What would you say if I told you that we have captured your messengers?’

She got to her feet, ignoring the way that the cellar seemed to spin around her and the sudden lightness in her head that made her feel that she would faint. ‘You are lying!’

Dammartin stood too. He smiled, and his smile was wicked and cold. ‘Am I?’

They faced each other across the small space, the tension stretched between them.

‘If you wish to know of the messengers, mademoiselle, you will tell me what your father and his men were doing in these hills.’

From somewhere she found the strength to keep standing, to keep looking him in the eye. All of the fear was crowding in around her, pressing down on her, choking her. If the French had captured Hartmann and Meyer, all hope was gone. Her father’s message would never reach Wellington. It had all been in vain. All of today. All of the sacrifice.

‘I am not privy to my father’s orders.’ Her gaze held his, refusing to look away, angry disbelief vying with grief and misery and wretchedness.

A terrible desolation swept through her. The tremble had progressed so that her legs were shaking in earnest now, and the cold sweat of fear prickled beneath her arms. She thought again of what it would mean if the French truly had captured her father’s messengers. A fresh wave of hopelessness swept over her at the thought, and as the moisture welled in her eyes she squeezed them shut to prevent the tears that threatened to fall. Yet, all of her effort was not enough. To her mortification, a single tear escaped to roll down her cheek. She snatched it away, praying that Dammartin had not noticed, and opened her eyes to stare her defiance.

‘Are you crying, mademoiselle?’ And she thought she could hear the undertone of mockery in his words. He looked at her with his dark eyes and harsh, inscrutable expression.

She glared at him. ‘I will tell you nothing, nothing,’ she cried. ‘You may do what you will.’

‘Mademoiselle, you have not yet begun to realise the possibilities of what I may do to you.’ He leaned his face down close to hers. ‘And when you do realise, then you will tell me everything that I want to know.’

Her heart ceased to beat, her lungs did not breathe as she looked up into the dark promise in his eyes.

His hand was around her arm, and he pulled her forwards and began to guide her towards the door.

‘No!’ She struggled against him, panicked at where he might be taking her and felt him grab her other arm, forcing her round to look at him once more.

‘Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said harshly. ‘The hour grows late and the ice forms in the air. If I leave you here, without warmth, without food or water, it is likely that you will be dead by morning.’

‘Why would you care?’ she demanded.

He paused and then spoke with slow deliberation, ‘Because you have not yet answered my questions.’

Josie shivered. She did not know if he was lying about Hartmann and Meyer, but she did know that despite all of her fear and despair she had no wish to die. She ceased her struggle and let him lead her out of the cellar and up the creaking staircase into the heart of the little cottage.

The room into which he took her was small and spartan, its floor clean but littered with makeshift blanket beds and army baggage. A fire was roaring in the fireplace at which a small, grizzled man in a French sergeant’s uniform was toasting bread and brewing coffee. His small, black eyes registered no surprise at her appearance.

‘Capitaine,’ the man uttered, and gave a nod in Dammartin’s direction.

She sat down warily on the edge of the blanket that Dammartin indicated, trying to clear the fog of exhaustion from her brain, trying to remain alert for the first hint of a trap. There was nothing.

The small sergeant placed some toasted bread and raisins and a cup of coffee on the floor by her side before he and Dammartin busied themselves with their own bread. Josie looked at the food set before her. The smell of the toasted bread coaxed a hunger in her stomach that had not been there before. Slowly, without casting a single glance in the Frenchmen’s direction, she ate the bread and drank the coffee. And all the while she was aware of every move that the enemy made and the quiet words that they spoke to one another, thinking that she could not understand.

The logs on the fire cracked and gradually the room grew warm and no matter how hard she fought against it, Josie felt the exhaustion of all that had happened that day begin to claim her. She struggled, forcing her eyes open, forcing herself to stay upright, to stay aware of Captain Dammartin until, at last, she could fight it no more, and the French Captain faded as she succumbed to the black nothingness of sleep.

It was late and yet Pierre Dammartin sat by the fire, despite the fatigue that pulled upon his muscles and stung at his eyes. His gaze wandered from the flicker of the dying flames to the silhouette of the girl lying close by. The blanket rose and fell with the small, rhythmic movement of her breath. Mallington’s daughter. Just the thought of who she was brought back all of the bitterness and anger that her father’s death ought to have destroyed.

Sergeant Lamont sucked at his long clay pipe and nodded in the girl’s direction. ‘Did you get what you wanted from her?’

What had he wanted? To know why Mallington had been up here, the details of his men, of his messengers; her realisation that her defiance was useless, that she could not hide the truth from him. ‘Unfortunately, my friend, Mademoiselle Mallington proved most unhelpful.’

Lamont’s gaze darted in Dammartin’s direction, his brow rising in surprise. ‘You were gentle with her, then?’

The firelight flickered, casting shadows across Dammartin’s face, highlighting his scar and emphasising the strong, harsh line of his jaw. ‘Not particularly.’

‘Pierre.’ Lamont gave a sigh and shook his head.

‘Did you really think that she would be in such a hurry to spill the answers we seek? The woman faced us alone with a rifle to defend her father.’

‘She is just a girl, Pierre. She must have been afraid.’

‘She was frightened, for all she tried to hide it.’

‘Yet still she told you nothing?’

‘The girl has courage, I will give her that.’

Lamont sucked harder on his pipe and nodded.

Dammartin thought of the girl’s single teardrop and the tremble of her lips. Tears and emotion were ever a woman’s weapons, he thought dismissively, but even as he thought it, he knew that was not the case with Mademoiselle Mallington. Given half a chance she would have taken a rifle and shot him through the heart, and that knowledge wrung from him a grudging respect.

‘Do you mean to question her again tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I suspect that she knows more than she is telling.’

Lamont frowned. ‘Interrogating women goes against the grain.’

‘We must make an exception for Mademoiselle Mallington.’

‘Pierre…’ admonished the Sergeant.

Dammartin passed Lamont his hip flask of brandy. ‘What the hell am I going to do with her, Claude?’

‘I do not know,’ Lamont shrugged. ‘That Mallington entrusted her to you makes me wonder as to the old man’s mind. Why else would he give his daughter over to the son of the man that he murdered?’

‘To appease his own conscience, leaving her to face the revenge from which he himself fled?’ Dammartin’s eyes glittered darkly as he received the flask back from Lamont and took a swig. He sat there for a while longer, mulling over all that happened that day, and when finally he slept, the sleep was troubled and dark.

Dammartin slept late, not wakening until the light of morning had dawned, and with a mood that had not improved. Disgruntlement sat upon him as a mantle even though he had reached a decision on what to do with the girl. He rolled over, feeling the chill of the morning air, and cast an eye over at Mademoiselle Mallington. Her blanket lay empty upon the floor. Josephine Mallington was gone.

‘Merde!’ he swore, and threw aside the thickness of his great coat that had covered him the whole night through. Then he was up and over there, touching his fingers to the blanket, feeling its coldness. Mademoiselle Mallington had not just vacated it, then.

He opened the door from the room, stepped over the two sentries who were dozing.

They blinked and scrabbled to their feet, saluting their captain.

‘Where is the girl?’

The men looked sheepish. ‘She needed to use the latrine, sir.’

Dammartin could not keep the incredulity from his voice. ‘And you let her go unaccompanied?’

‘It did not seem right to accompany your woman in such things,’ one of the men offered.

‘Mademoiselle Mallington is not my woman,’ snapped Dammartin. ‘She is my prisoner.’

‘We thought—’

Dammartin’s look said it all.

The sentries fell silent as Dammartin strode off to find Mallington’s daughter.

Chapter Three

Josie hitched up her skirts and ran up the worn stone stairs within the monastery. She could not help but remember the last time she had made this journey. Only yesterday afternoon, and already it seemed a lifetime ago. This time she was alone with only the echo of her own footsteps for company. She reached the top of the stairs, and, hesitating there, braced herself to see once more the horror of what lay not so very far beyond. Her hand clutched upon the banister, tracing the bullet-gouged wood. Then she walked slowly and steadily towards the room in which the 60th had made its last stand.

The doorway was open; the wood remnants that had formed the once sturdy door had been tidied to a pile at the side. Blood splatters marked the walls and had dried in pools upon the floor. The smell of it still lingered in the room, despite the great portal of a window within the room and the lack of a door. Of her father and those of his men that had fought so bravely there was no sign. Josie stared, and stared some more. Their bodies were gone. Their weapons were gone. Their pouches of bullets and powder were gone. Only the stain of their blood remained.

She backed out of the room, retraced her steps down the stairs and peeped into the great hall. The rabbit stew still hung in the corner above the blackened ashes of the fire. The stone floor flags were stained with blood. Yet here, as in the room upstairs, there were no bodies. She turned, moving silently, making her way through to the back and the stables. The two horses were no longer there; nor were the donkeys. Of the supplies there was no trace.

Josie’s heart began to race. Her feet led her further out on to the land that had once been the monastery’s garden. And there they were.

She stopped, her eyes moving over the mounds of freshly dug earth. At the front, one grave stood on its own, distinct from the others by virtue of its position. She moved forwards without knowing that she did so, coming to stand by that single grave. Only the wind sounded in the silent, sombre greyness of the morning light. For a long time Josie just stood there, unaware of the chill of the air or the first stirrings that had begun to sound from the Frenchmen’s camp. And for the first time she wondered if perhaps her father had been right, and that Captain Dammartin was not, after all, a man completely without honour.

It was not difficult to trace Josie’s path. Several of his men had seen the girl go into the monastery. No one challenged her. No one accosted her. Some knew that she was the English Lieutenant Colonel’s daughter. Others thought, as had the sentries, that she was now their captain’s woman. The misconception irked Dammartin, almost as much as the thought of her escape had done. Yet he knew that it was not the prospect of escape that had led her back to the monastery.

He found her kneeling by her father’s grave.

Dammartin stood quietly by the stables, watching her. Her fair hair was plaited roughly in a pigtail that hung down over her back and her skin was pale. Her head was bowed as if in prayer so that he could not see her face. She wore no shawl, and Dammartin could see that her figure was both neat and slender. He supposed she must be cold.

Her dress was dark brown and of good quality, but covered in dirt and dust and the stains of ot hers’ blood. The boots on her feet were worn and scuffed, hardly fitting for a Lieutenant Colonel’s daughter, but then holding the 8th at bay with a single rifle was hardly fitting for such a woman, either. He watched her, unwilling to interrupt her grieving, knowing what it was to lose a father. So he stood and he waited, and never once did he take his eyes from Josephine Mallington.

Josie felt Captain Dammartin’s presence almost as soon as he arrived, but she did not move from her kneeling. She knew that she would not pass this way again and she had come to bid her father and his men goodbye in the only way she knew how, and she was not going to let the French Captain stop her. Only when she was finished did she get to her feet. One last look at the mass expanse of graves, and then she turned and walked towards Captain Dammartin.

She stopped just short of him, looking up to see his face in the dawning daylight. His hair was a deep, dark brown that ruffled beneath the breeze. Despite the winter months, his skin still carried the faint colour of the sun. The ferocity of the weather had not left him unmarked. Dammartin’s features were regular, his mouth hard and slim, his nose strong and straight. The daylight showed the scar that ran the length of his left cheek in stark clarity. It lent him a brooding, sinister look and she was glad that she was much more in control of herself this morning.

‘Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said, and she could see that his eyes were not black as she had thought last night, but the colour of clear, rich honey.

‘Captain Dammartin.’ She glanced away towards the graves, and then back again at him. ‘Thank you.’ She spoke coolly but politely enough.

A small tilt of his head served as acknowledgement.

‘After what you said…I did not think…’ Her words trailed off.

‘I was always going to have the men buried. They fought like heroes. They deserved an honourable burial. We French respect bravery.’ There was an almost mocking tone to his voice, implying that the British had no such respect. ‘And as for your father…’ He left what he would have said unfinished.

Beyond the monastery she could hear the sound of men moving. French voices murmured and there was the smell of fires being rekindled.

They looked at one another.

‘What do you intend to do with me?’

‘You are Lieutenant Colonel Mallington’s daughter.’ His expression did not change and yet it seemed that his eyes grew darker and harder. ‘You will be sent to General Massena’s camp at Santarém until you can be exchanged for a French prisoner of war.’

She gave a nod of her head.

‘You may be assured that, unlike some, we do not ride roughshod over the rules of warfare or the protection that honour should provide.’ His face was hard and lean, all angles that smacked of hunger and of bitterness.

It seemed to Josie that Captain Dammartin disliked her very much. ‘I am glad to hear it, sir.’

He made some kind of noise of reply that said nothing. ‘If you wish to eat, do so quickly. We ride within the hour and you will leave before that, travelling with the escort of Lieutenant Molyneux.’

Side by side, without so much as another word between them, Josephine Mallington and Pierre Dammartin made their way back down into the village and the French soldiers’ camp.

‘What were you playing at, Pierre?’ Major La Roque demanded.

Dammartin faced the Major squarely. ‘I wanted his surrender, sir.’

‘Foy is asking questions. What am I supposed to tell him? That it took one of my captains almost two hours to overcome twenty-five men, without artillery, holed up in a ramshackle village. Given our fifty dragoons, seventy chasseurs and four hundred infantrymen, it does not look good for you, Pierre. Why did you not just storm the bloody monastery straight away like I told you?’

‘I wanted to interrogate him. I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand that.’

‘Of course I do, but this mission is vital to the success of the Army of Portugal and we have lost a day’s march because of your actions. Not only that, but your men failed to catch the British messengers that were deployed! Only the fact that you are my godson, and Jean Dammartin’s son, has saved you from the worst of Foy’s temper. Whether it will prevent him from mentioning the débâcle to Bonaparte remains to be seen.’

Dammartin gritted his teeth and said nothing.

‘I know what you are going through, Pierre. Do you think I am not glad that Mallington is dead? Do you think that I, too, do not wish to know what was going on in that madman’s mind? Jean was like a brother to me.’

‘I am sorry, sir.’

La Roque clapped his hand against Dammartin’s back. ‘I know. I know, son. Mallington is now dead. For that at least we should be glad.’

Dammartin nodded.

‘What is this I hear about an English girl?’

‘She is Mallington’s daughter. Lieutenant Molyneux will take her back to General Massena’s camp this morning.’

‘I will not have any of our men put at risk because of Mallington’s brat. These hills are filled with deserters and guerrillas. We cannot afford to lose any of the men. The child will just have to come with us to Ciudad Rodrigo. Once we are there, we can decide what to do with her.’

‘Mademoiselle Mallington is not a child, she is—’

But La Roque cut him off, with a wave of the hand. ‘It does not matter what she is, Pierre. If you jeopardise this mission any further, Foy will have your head and there will not be a damn thing I can do to save you. See to your men. Emmern will lead through the pass first. Fall in after him. Be ready to leave immediately.’ The Major looked at Dammartin. ‘Now that Mallington is dead, things will grow easier for you, Pierre, I promise you that.’