A Regency Captain's Prize. Margaret McPhee

      Dammartin stroked a gentle hand against her hair, and held her to him. ‘You are safe now, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘safe, I promise.’

      He stood for a few moments and the wind blew, and the sky grew darker, and he was overwhelmed with the need to protect her, to make all of her terrible hurt disappear. And then Molyneux moved, Lamont cleared his throat, and Dammartin forced himself to think straight.

      ‘Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said softly, and stripping off his jacket, wrapped it around her. ‘We must return to the camp.’

      She focused down at the ground. ‘Of course.’ There was nothing left of resistance, nothing of the fight she had so often given in the past.

      He kept his arm around her waist, supporting her, as she walked by his side.

      In silence and with grim expressions upon each of their faces, Dammartin and his men made their way back to their camp.

      Dammartin sat her down on the chair at the table within his tent, speaking fast words of command over his shoulder, to Molyneux or Lamont, she supposed, but she did not look to see. She could not, for all that her eyes were open and staring. She was frozen, unable to move from beneath the terrible, heavy emptiness that weighed her down.

      There was the trickle of water, a cloth being wrung out over a basin. The water was warm, his touch gentle, as he cleansed away the blood and the dirt, carefully wiping and dabbing and drying her face and hands, while his jacket hung warm and protective around her shoulders.

      She looked at him then and there was nothing of bitterness in his eyes, only compassion.

      ‘I told him I was British,’ she said, and the words crawled like glass through the rawness of her throat. ‘And it made no difference, just as you said.’

      ‘Josephine,’ he said softly. ‘I should have guarded you better.’

      She shook her head. ‘I was not escaping.’ It seemed important to make him understand and she did not know why. ‘I just wanted some time alone, some place where I might sit and think of all you had said…of my father.’

      They sat in silence and the flicker of the lantern danced shadows upon the canvas walls. Outside all was quiet.

      She felt the touch of his fingers, as light as a feather, against the bruising at her throat and the tenderness of her mouth.

      ‘He hurt you very badly, mademoiselle—for that I am sorry.’

      And his gentleness and compassion almost overwhelmed her.

      ‘But you are safe now, I swear it.’

      She looked deep into the darkness of his eyes, and saw a man who was resolute and strong and invincible, and she believed what he said.

      The smallest of nods. And she sat there, dazed and battered and not knowing anything any more.

      And when he unlaced her boots to ease them from her feet, and laid her down upon the bed beneath the blankets, she let him.

      ‘Do not leave me alone,’ she heard her lips murmur.

      He gave a nod and returned to sit upon the chair. ‘I will be here all the night through. You can sleep safe.’

      She could hear his breathing, the creak of the chair at his small movements, and every so often she opened her eyes just by the slightest to check that he was still there. Checking and checking until finally the blackness of sleep stole over her.

      But sleep brought no refuge, only more horror, so that she could smell the stench of the villain and feel the claw of his hands upon her, and hear again the thunder of Dammartin’s musket shot. The wound in the bandit’s skull gaped, leaking the dark, rich liquid to drip into an expanding pool. So much blood. Just like in Telemos.

      Blood and more blood. Upon the bandit, upon the men of the 60th and her father, upon herself as she hit out at the bandit’s dead body. One blow and then another, and as she reached to strike him a third time the bandit sat up with an evil grin. She felt her heart flip over, for in his hand was the musket that had shot her father, all sticky and dark with blood. The barrel raised, the bandit took aim directly at Josie’s heart. Death was certain. She cried out, pleading for him to stop.

      ‘Mademoiselle Mallington. Josephine.’ Dammartin’s voice was close and quiet, his hands on her arms, dragging her from the nightmare. She stared through the darkness, reaching out to find him.

      ‘Captain Dammartin,’ she whispered, and on her tongue was the saltiness of tears and in her nose was the congestion of weeping.

      ‘It is a bad dream, nothing more. I am here. All is well.’ He stroked a hand against her hair. ‘Go back to sleep.’

      But when he would have left, she caught at his fingers, unable to bear being alone. ‘Stay,’ she said.

      He stilled in the darkness.

      ‘Please.’

      In answer he lay down beside her, and covered them both with the weight of his greatcoat. He was warm even through the blankets that separated them and she could feel the linen of his shirt soft against her cheek and smell the clean, masculine smell of him. With his strong arm draped protectively over her, holding her close, the nightmare receded and Josie knew, at last, that she was safe.

      As Dammartin rode the next day his thoughts were all with Josephine Mallington. She had been seconds from being raped. In his mind’s eye he could still see the bandit lying over her, and the memory made his blood run cold so that he wanted to smash the butt of his musket into the man’s face again and again. Death had come too quickly for the bastard.

      He remembered her anger, and her devastation, and the way she had clung to him in the night. I prayed that you would come, she had said. Him. Her enemy.

      And he thought of Lieutenant Colonel Mallington firing the shot into his father’s body, just as he had thought of it every day for over the last eighteen months. She was the murderer’s daughter, his flesh and blood. He had every right to hate her, but it was no longer that simple. She had not known of her father’s crime, and she did not deserve what had happened to her, not in that room in Telemos, not his contempt, nor the assault by the bandits. Lamont had been right. She was a woman, a woman who had watched her father die, who was alone and afraid and the captive of an enemy army.

      But there was still the matter of what Mallington had done, and Dammartin could not forgive or forget. The wound ran too deep for that. If he could have understood the reasons underlying Mallington’s crime, perhaps then there might have been some sort of end to it all, a semblance of peace. But Mallington had died taking his answers to the grave, leaving Dammartin with his anger and his bitterness… and his desire for Josephine Mallington.

      As Lamont had said, it would be a long way to Ciudad Rodrigo, a long way indeed.

      Josie rode silently by Molyneux’s side that day. The Lieutenant had been kind and understanding, trying to make the journey as comfortable as he could for her, but she could see that he did not know what to say to her. Even Sergeant Lamont had brought her a cup of hot coffee when they stopped to rest and eat, his gruff expression belying the small kindness. She could see the way they looked at her, with pity in their eyes, and Josie hated it. Their contempt would have been more welcome. She did not want to be vulnerable and afraid, an object of sympathy, and she resented the bandit even more that he could have made her so. And she knew what the bandit would have done had not Dammartin arrived.

      Saved by the one man she had hated. It was under his command that her father and his men had been killed. He could be nothing other than her enemy. But Josie thought of the hole that his bullet had made within the bandit’s head, she thought of how he had taken her in his arms and held her. He had washed away the dirt and the stench and the blood, and stayed with her the whole night through, and lain his length beside her when she had begged him to stay. She had begged him. And that thought made Josie cringe with shame, yet last night, in the darkness the fear had been so very great that there had been no such embarrassment.