Violet

Chapter two

TAMSYN AWOKE AFTER TWO HOURS. AS ALWAYS, SHE MOVED from sleep to waking without any transition. Her mind was clear, her body refreshed, her recollection of the events that had brought her to this place perfectly lucid. Except… except that she couldn't understand what had happened to cause that first kiss. It made no sense. She loathed and despised all men wearing a soldier's uniform, and yet she'd kissed this one, a man who with no justification held her captive in this muddy squalor. She d kissed him and she'd enjoyed it. Her enjoyment had so shocked her that she'd lashed out at him with violent injustice that she knew had earned his rough retribution.

She opened her eyes and looked across at the English colonel. He was sitting beside the fire, a horse blanket around his shoulders, his head drooping on his chest. The fire was still alight, though, so presumably he hadn’t been asleep for long.

Her hands were clasped in her lap under the boat cloak. Keeping her eyes on the hunched, slumbering figure, she slid her hands down her leg, feeling for the knotted rope at her ankle. If she didn't move her feet, the tension and play of the rope would remain the same, and her captor would feel no change in his end.

“Don't even think about it.” His voice was cool and crisp, and he raised his head, his eyes sharp and right in the dawn light. If he'd been asleep, he slept like a cat, Tamsyn reflected glumly.

She pretended that she didn't understand what he meant. “I need to go outside,” she said with a casual yawn and a stretch, adding acidly, “I assume I may do so.”

“I have no objection,” he returned blandly, getting to his feet. When she was standing up, he gave the rope a little jerk of encouragement. “Come. We don't have all day.”

Tamsyn cursed him under her breath as she gingerly stepped after him with her hobbled feet, out into a balmy dawn.

The sky was cloudless; the sun a glowing red ball on the horizon, and the air smelled fresh and clean. The copse was filled with birdsong, and the men of the Sixth were waking, putting pannikins of water over the fires, seeing to the tethered horses. They cast curious glances at their colonel and his prisoner as the two walked away from the bivouac toward the river.

“You should find sufficient privacy behind those rocks,” the colonel observed, gesturing toward an outcrop on the riverbank. “The rope is long enough for you to be one side and me to be the other.”

“You are so considerate, Coronel.”

“Yes, I believe I am,” he agreed with a careless smile, ignoring her caustic tone.

“What is it you want of me?” she demanded. She'd asked the question last night, but matters had become somewhat confused, and there'd been no clear answer.

“ Wellington wishes to speak with you,” he returned.

“Therefore, I am taking you to headquarters in Elvas.”

“As a prisoner?” She gestured to the tethering rope.

“Why should this be necessary for a simple conversation?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

“Would La Violette accept an invitation from the commander in chief of His Majesty's Army of the Peninsula?” he retorted in the same tone.

“No,” she said flatly. “I have no time for armies, whatever side they fight on. And the sooner this country is rid of you, the better.” She glared into the red ball of the rising sun. “You have no more business interfering with the affairs of Spain than Napoleon. And you're no better than he is.”

“But, unfortunately, you need us to drive him out,” he said, hanging on to his temper. “And Wellington needs some information from you, which, my dear girl, you are going to give to him. Now, pray make haste.” He gestured impatiently to the rocks.

Tamsyn didn't immediately move. This English colonel was all too complacent, like the rest of the breed. She gazed at the river for a moment, then said, “I would like to bathe. I seem to have been sitting in mud for days.”

“Bathe?” Julian stared at her, taken aback at this abrupt switch of subject. “Don't be absurd. The water will be like ice.”

“But the sun's warm,” she pointed out. “And I've been bathing in these rivers all my life. I only wish to dip myself once in the water, just to wash off the worst of the mud.” She turned pleading eyes on him. “What harm can it do, Colonel?”

He hesitated, words of denial on his lips, but before he could speak them, she plucked at her shirt and ran a hand through her short hair. “I'm filthy. Look at my hands.” She held them out for his inspection. “And my hair's disgusting. I can't bear to be in my own skin! If I must converse with your commander in chief, at least allow me some dignity.”

Her wrinkled nose and disgusted grimace amused him despite his anger at the sweeping contempt of her earlier remarks. She was undeniably filthy. He knew the miseries of it himself; after days of marching through every kind of weather, sleeping on muddy ground and under hedgerows, a man couldn't get the smell of his own body out of his nostrils. His task was to bring her to headquarters at Elvas. But he could grant reasonable requests without jeopardizing that task.

“You'll freeze to death,” he said. “But if you wish to, then you may-for two minutes.”

“My thanks.” She kicked off her shoes and then regarded him expectantly. “May I untie the rope? It'll tighten unbearably if it gets wet.”

“You may,” he agreed. “But if you attempt to run from me, my friend, I'll catch you, and you’ll walk to Elvas tethered to my stirrup.”

Anger flashed across her eyes, turning the deep purple almost black, and then it was quickly banished. She shrugged as if accepting his statement and bent to unfasten the rope. She tugged off her stockings, unfastened her britches, and pushed them off, kicking them to one side. Clad in thin linen drawers and her shirt, she turned to walk down to the river.

Suddenly Julian sensed the current of energy surging through her, just as he had done when he'd held her on his horse yesterday. Purpose and determination were in every taut line of her body. He caught her arm. Just a minute.”

He looked at the river. At the far bank. The water was fairly smooth, but there was a telltale ripple of an undercurrent a few feet from the near shore. It was unlikely she could swim to the other side… unlikely, but not impossible. This was La Violette, after all.

“Take off the rest of your clothes.”

“What! All of them? In front of you?” She looked outraged, and yet somehow he wasn't convinced by this display of maidenly modesty.

“Yes, all of them,” he affirmed evenly. “I doubt even you will take off from the far bank stark naked.”

“What makes you think I could swim that far?” Her eyes widened in innocent inquiry. “It must be a good half mile with a strong undertow. I'm not that good a swimmer.”

“You'll have to forgive me if I choose not to believe that,” he responded as evenly as before. “If you wish to bathe, then you must do so in your skin. Otherwise, perhaps you would do what you have to behind the rocks and we can return to the camp.”

Chagrin darted over her face. A mere fleeting expression, but he saw it and knew he'd been right. La Violette had had some thoughts of escape.

Tamsyn turned away from him and unfastened her shirt. Damn the man for being such a perspicacious bastard. It would have been simplicity itself to swim to the opposite shore, and she wouldn't have had far to go before she found help from some peasant farmer. But tramping the countryside in a soaked shirt and drawers was one thing. In her bare skin was a different matter altogether.

Her mind raced over alternatives, her eyes skimming across the riverbank, looking for anything helpful. The terrain was relatively flat and mossy, and she could run like the wind if she had a decent start. A hundred yards away the ground rose toward a small hill crowned with a tangle of bushes and undergrowth. If she could reach there, she could go to ground like a fox before the hounds. No English soldier would be able to find La Violette on her own territory.

She dropped the shirt to the ground, loosened the string at the waist of her drawers, and kicked them off. St. Simon had been correct in assuming his prisoner was a stranger to modesty unless it suited her purposes to feign it. She was no convent-reared hidalgo maiden and had grown up in the rough-and-tumble of a bandit encampment, where she'd made an early acquaintance with the facts of life. Besides, at this moment she was far too occupied with the glimmer of a plan to give a moment’s thought to the colonel's eyes on her body.

Gathering up her discarded garments, she folded them with care and placed them on the ground close to the rock. It was a tidy little gesture that struck St. Simon as a trifle incongruous. But before he could work out why it should trouble him, she turned to face him, her feet slightly apart, arms akimbo, naked except for an intricately worked silver locket on a slender chain.

“Satisfied, Colonel?”

For a moment he ignored the double-edged question that threw a contemptuous challenge. His eyes ran down the lean, taut body that seemed to thrum with energy. He realized that the illusion of fragility came from her diminutive stature; unclothed, she had the compact, smooth-muscled body of an athlete, limber and arrow straight. His gaze lingered on the small, pointed breasts, the slight flare of her hips, the tangle of pale hair at the base of her belly.

It was the most desirable little body. His breath quickened, and his nostrils flared as he fought down the torrent of arousal. He must be losing his mind, to have put himself in this situation. Why the hell had he even considered allowing her to bathe in the river? But he had and it was too late now.

Emotions under control again, he raised his eyes to her face and saw with a certain grim satisfaction that his scrutiny had discomfited her. There was less certainty in her challenging stance, and her eyes slid away from his. It was some recompense for his own unbidden response.

“Perfectly,” he drawled. “I find myself perfectly satisfied.”

Anger chased discomfiture from her expression, and she took a step forward so that for a second he thought she was going to strike him again. If she did, she would regret it.

Tamsyn read the message in his eyes and in the almost imperceptible readying of his body. The impulse to lash out at him died as rapidly as it had risen as she reminded herself that she was wasting time. Her plan was now fully formed, and engaging in this disturbing battle of wits was both futile and distracting. She turned without a word and walked to the edge of the high bank.

Julian watched as she stood poised above the water.

The back view was every bit as arousing as the front, he reflected dreamily. Then she rose on her toes, raised her arms, and dived cleanly into the swift-running river.

He walked to the edge of the bank, waiting for the bright fair head to surface. The water flowed strongly, and the rippling undertow was a wide band about five feet from the bank. A kingfisher flashed deepest blue as it dived into the swift surface and emerged with a fish sparking silver in the rays of the rising sun. But there was no sign of La Violette. It was as if she'd dived and disappeared.

His throat tightened in alarm. Could she have become entangled in the treacherous weeds he could see waving in thick dark-green fronds just below the surface?

Could she be swimming underwater to the far bank?

His eyes darted to the neat pile of clothes. They were still there on the ground by the rock. He'd taken care of that escape route. His eyes raked the surface of the water. There was nothing. Not a sign. How long since she'd dived? Minutes.

He was pulling off his boots, tearing at the buttons of his tunic without conscious decision. He flung his sword belt to the grass, yanked off his britches and his shirt, and dived into the river as close as possible to where he believed his prisoner had gone in.

He surfaced, teeth chattering in the icy waters that poured down from the snow-covered Sierra. No one could survive in this temperature for more than a couple of minutes. He stared at the smooth, unbroken surface of the river, shaking the water from his hair. Nothing. She'd disappeared as completely as if she'd never existed.

Again he dived, pushing through the forest of reeds, his eyes open, looking for a pale limb, a flutter of hair that would show where she was trapped.

Tamsyn surfaced on the far side of the rocks as soon as she heard the splash as he entered the water. She too was shivering with cold, her hair a dark, wet cap plastered to her head. But there was a triumphant gleam in her eyes, and a grin curved her blue lips. It had been a gamble that he'd go in after her without a moment's consideration, but her mother had told her many laughing tales of the so-called and frequently misplaced chivalry of English gentlemen. This English colonel was clearly no exception to the rule.

She leaped onto the bank, hidden by the rocks from the swimmer on the other side, and shook the water from her body with the vigor of a small dog. The sun struck warmly on her icy flesh as she darted sideways to grab up the neat pile of clothes.

Julian came up for air, numbed with cold, knowing that he shouldn't stay in the water another minute, yet forcing himself to go down for one more look. As he prepared to dive, he glanced toward the bank and saw a pale shadow against the rock, and then it was gone. It was no more than a formless flicker, but he knew what it was without even thinking.

His bellow of fury roared through the peaceful early morning on the banks of the Guadiana. A curlew screamed in imitation, and a flock of wild ducks rose from their nesting place in the reeds, wings beating in alarm as he waded through the water to the bank.

Tamsyn swore to herself and picked up her heels, racing across the flat mossy ground toward the small brush-covered hill. She didn't attempt to put on her clothes, simply clutched them to her wet bosom. It was sheer bad luck that he'd seen her, but she calculated she had enough of a start. He still had to scramble onto the bank, and she had to be fleeter of foot than a lumbering large-framed soldier.

Julian, however, had been a sprinter in his school days, and his long legs ate up the distance between them. He was running in blind fury, at himself for being so gullible, and at his quarry for making such a fool of him. He never failed at anything he set out to accomplish, and he wasn't going to be defeated in this instance by some flowerlike, diminutive, tricky, plundering, pillaging, mercenary bandit.

He was gaining on her, the icy river water turned to sweat on his bare skin, but she had almost reached the hill, and he knew that if she could attain the undergrowth, his chances of finding her were small. He and his men could beat the brush for hours, but he knew from experience how the guerrillas could disappear into this land without trace.

Tamsyn's breath was coming in gasping sobs now as she neared the rising ground. She could sense rather than hear her pursuer, his footfalls, like her own, were lost in the soft wet moss of the riverbank. But she knew he was closing on her. With a last effort she hurled herself up the slope, and then her foot caught in a sinewy tangle of thin roots creeping over the surface of the earth.

She fell to her knees with a cry of annoyance that changed to a shriek of alarmed fury as Julian hurled himself forward and his fingers closed over her ankle. She hadn't realized he was that close. Desperately, she kicked back with her free foot, but he hung on grimly, even when her foot bashed his chin. Her hands scrabbled at the sinewy roots, trying to get sufficient purchase to pull herself free, but he'd caught her other foot now and was hauling her backward, down to the flat ground. Her fingers slipped on the roots and she lost her hold, tumbling down as he pulled her, the bare skin of her belly and breasts rasping over the ground, pricked by twigs and tiny stones.

“Espadachin!” she raged, twisting onto her back, her fingers curled into claws, reaching for his face. “You're hurting me!”

“You'd make a fool of me, would you?” Lord St. Simon said furiously. “Diablillo! Crafty, tricky goddamned little monkey!” He grabbed her hands as they lunged for his face, wrenching her arms above her head, grabbing her chin with' his other hand, holding her head steady on the moss. “You'd serve me such a trick, would you? Let me tell you, mi muchacha, that it'll take more than a devious bandit to get the better of me.”

Tamsyn twisted her body sideways, trying to bring her legs up to lever against him, but he swung himself over her, straddling her, sitting on her thighs with his full weight so she felt hammered into the ground, arms and head pinioned, her body flattened.

“Espadachin!” she threw at him again. “I may be a bandit, but you're a brute and a bully, Colonel. Let me up.”

“No.”

The simple negative stunned her. She stared up into his face that was now as calm and equable as if they were sitting in some drawing room. He looked positively comfortable. She could feel the wet wool of his drawers prickling the skin of her thighs. He hadn't gone into the water stark naked.

Her astonished silence lasted barely a second; then she launched a verbal assault of such richness and variety that the colonel's jaw dropped. She moved seamlessly within three languages, and the insults and oaths would have done an infantryman proud.

“Cease your ranting, girl!” He recovered from his surprise and did the only thing he could think of, bringing his mouth to hers to silence the stream of invective. His grip on her wrists tightened with his fingers on her chin, and his body was heavy on hers as he leaned over her supine figure.

Tamsyn choked on her words beneath the pressure of his mouth. She heaved and jerked beneath him like a landed fish waiting for the gaff. Her skin was hot, her blood was boiling, there was a crimson mist behind her closed eyes, and his tongue was in her mouth, a living presence within her, probing and darting, and her own tongue wouldn't keep still but began to play in its turn.

Everything became confused. There was rage-wild rage-but it was mixed with a different passion, every bit as savage. There was fear and there was a sudden spiralling need. Her body was liquid fire, her mind a molten muddle. Her arms were still held above her head, his mouth still held hers captive, but the hand left her chin, moved down between their bodies, caressed her breast, reached down over the damp, hot skin of her belly. Her loins of their own accord lifted, her thighs parting for the heated probe, sliding within her so that she cried out against his mouth.

His fingers played upon her and his flesh moved within her, deep, smooth thrusts that carried her upward onto some plane where the air crackled, and fire and flame swirled around them. And then she was consumed in a roaring conflagration in which her body no longer had form or limits, when she flowed into the body that possessed hers with such unfaltering, unerring completeness that the boundaries of her self no longer existed, and amid the blazing glory of this extinction was the terror of annihilation.

Julian came to his senses slowly, aware first of the warmth of the sun on his back, then the breathing, living softness beneath him. He gazed down into her face. Her eyes were closed, her skin flushed, lips slightly parted. He still held her wrists above her head; his other hand was braced beside her body. He gazed at her as if he could make sense of what had just happened… and then the warmth of the sun on his back became cold steel.

He couldn't see it, but he knew the feel of a sword against his skin, the press of the rapier tip along his backbone. He couldn't see the man behind him without turning his head, but he could feel the warmth of a stranger's flesh, the rustle of breath that brought the fine hairs upright on the nape of his neck.

“Say your prayers, man. You have thirty seconds to make your peace with your Maker.” The voice had the soft lilt of the Scottish Highlands, but it carried the chill of the grave. The rapier tip moved against his ribs, pressing into the taut skin, ready for the home thrust that would pierce his back and then his heart.

Julian experienced pure terror for the first time in his life. Facing death on a battlefield was nothing like this. That was a hot and hasty matter of luck and fate. This was execution, cold and slow. And for some reason he knew there was nothing he could say or do to alter the fact of this approaching death. Although he had no idea why it should have come out at him from the warm early morning on the heels of a glorious passion.

“No!” The girl beneath him spoke with sudden urgency, coming out of her trance, her eyes shooting open, awareness flooding back into their dark-purple depths.

“Gabriel. Gabriel, no!” She tugged at her still captive hands, and Julian released them. She pushed against him, struggling to sit up, but he couldn't make another move without the deadly tip of the rapier sliding into his body, so he stayed between her thighs, thinking amid his terror of how ludicrous he must look, of how it was the stuff of farce to face death in such a position.

“Gabriel, it's all right.” Tamsyn was speaking with desperate intensity, knowing the speed and the deadly fury of the giant standing over the colonel. He believed she'd been hurt, and it was his life's work to protect her and avenge her hurts. She owed the English colonel some grief for the way he'd treated her since he'd rescued her, but not for what had just happened between them. It was an act of insanity for which they were both responsible, and he didn't deserve the death Gabriel was waiting to hand out with the detachment of a man who'd lived all his adult life by the sword.

“Gabriel, nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”

She spoke now slowly and carefully, but the urgency of her message was still clearly to be heard.

Julian's blood ran cold, hearing it. She knew his executioner, and she was as afraid as he was of what the man would do. He remembered how she'd flung herself from his horse when he'd rescued her from Cornichet, saying she had to find Gabriel. It seemed that Gabriel, whoever he was, had found her.

“You were running mighty fast for someone who wanted to be caught, little girl,” the voice at the end of the sword said slowly and full of doubt. The cold steel tip remained pressed against Julian's bare back.

Tamsyn thought rapidly. How to explain something she didn't understand herself “It's very confusing, Gabriel.” She fixed the man's gaze with her own. “I can't explain it, but truly nothing happened that I didn't wish for.”

A silence that seemed to Julian to last an eternity was abruptly broken by a roar of laughter. The cold tip of steel left his back.

“Och, little girl! And what would El Baron say to see you rolling in the grass like a wanton milkmaid?”

“'Things happen, hija,'“ Tamsyn said, her voice slightly shaky as she tried to sound humorous. She thought the danger was over, but you could never be absolutely certain with Gabriel.

The colonel inched away from her, easing himself from between her thighs and away from the sword, whose tip now rested lightly on the ground beside his hip.

Tamsyn sat up. “You know that's what he would have said, Gabriel. He would have given one of his shrugs and smiled at Cecile as he said it.”

The laugh boomed again. “Och, aye, lassie. I reckon y'are right, at that.” He stared at Colonel, Lord St. Simon with a curiosity that was not exactly friendly, but neither was it threatening. “So who's your gallant, little girl?”

“Good question.” Tamsyn regarded the colonel quizzically. His immediate danger was over, but with Gabriel's arrival she herself now had the upper hand, and the thought of a little revenge was very tempting. “We haven't been formally introduced as yet. But he's a colonel in Wellington 's army.”

Julian said nothing until he'd managed to pull on his sodden undergarments, discarded somehow in that crazy conflagration. He felt a little less vulnerable with them on, but not much. The new arrival was a giant oak of a man with massive limbs, bulging muscles beneath his jerkin, graying hair caught in a queue at the nape of his neck. His complexion bore the blossoming veins of a man fond of his drink; his washed-out gray eyes were sharp, however. Crooked teeth gleamed in a wide, full lipped mouth, and he handled a two-bladed broadsword as easily as if it were a kitchen knife.

“If you wish a formal introduction, Violette, I'd prefer to make it in my clothes,” St. Simon said dryly.

“Make yourself decent, little girl,” the giant instructed, keeping his eyes on Julian. “The colonel and I will discuss a few matters while he dresses.” He gestured with his sword along the bank to where Julian's clothes lay.

Julian shrugged acceptingly. The ball was no longer in his court, but he had twenty men a quarter of a mile away, and the situation would change as soon as he was in a position to do something about it. With the appearance of nonchalance he strolled back to his clothes, La Violette's defender walking beside him, his great sword still unsheathed but his expression bland, his pale eyes mild.

Julian was not, however, disposed to relax. He had the unshakable conviction that the giant's mood could change in the beat of a bird's wing.

Tamsyn scrambled into her clothes, casting half an eye along the bank where the English colonel was dressing, Gabriel leaning against the rocks, idly tracing patterns in the grass with the tip of his sword as they talked.

It had been many months since she'd succumbed to such an impulsive fit of passion. She knew, because she'd been told often enough, that she shared her mother's devil-may-care impulses, and the passion that ran deep in the veins of both her parents had flowed undiluted into their only child. She had been taught to regard such bodily hungers without prudery. They were perfectly normal among adults and should be satisfied without guilt. But she didn't think El Baron or Cecile would have regarded that wild encounter with approval. One didn't fraternize with the enemy.

And soldiers were the enemy… a personal enemy.

The images flooded in again, the screams, the steaming reek of blood. Her father standing in the midst of a yelling circle of men in the tattered uniforms of many nations, their faces twisted with the rapacious viciousness of greed, their senses drunk with blood. His great sword slashed from side to side but they kept on coming; shot after shot pierced his body, and it seemed to the two powerless watchers on the heights that he couldn't still stand there alive with the blood spurting from the holes in his body-and yet still he stayed on his feet and bodies fell beneath his sword.

Cecile lay in the shadows, dead by her husband's hand, a small black smudge on her forehead, where his merciful bullet had entered. El Baron's wife wouldn't fall victim to the rapine hungers of a vile mob of deserting soldiers. And his daughter too would have joined her mother in death if she'd been in the Puebla de St. Pedro that dreadful day, instead of hunting with Gabriel in the hills.

Slowly, she blinked away the images, put the anger and grief behind her. She'd led her own small band since that day. Those who'd escaped the massacre and others who'd joined them, all were prepared to follow El Baron's daughter as they aided the partisans, tormented the French, avoided direct contact with the English, and took what payment came their way.

Until that double-dyed bastard, Cornichet, had set his ambush. Tamsyn had no idea how many of La Violette's band had escaped the French in the pass, but she had been their target. The baron had long ago entrusted his daughter's safety in his own absence to his most trusted comrade, and Gabriel had fought beside her and for her. But one man, even a giant, was no match for fifty. They'd both been swept up like spiders, before the broom.

But what was done was done, and bewailing the past was pointless. It was now a question of making the most of their present situation. There must be some advantage to be gained from it. There was always an advantage if one looked for it.

She tucked her shirt into the waist of her britches and walked toward the two men, carrying her shoes and stockings, enjoying the feel of the cool, mossy turf beneath her feet.

The colonel's bright-blue eyes rested on her as she approached, and Tamsyn's scalp lifted, her heart quickening. What was done was done, she told herself firmly. That moment of madness was in the past. It had nothing to do with the present situation.