Dark Angel (24 page)

Lescaut turned to the porter and said two words. "The administrator." It was not a question. The porter eyed him for moment, then drew in his breath and strode off down the hall.

The entrance hall was narrow and furnished only with a small table and a high-backed wooden bench. Adam steered Caroline toward the bench, but she would not sit down. In a few moments she might be reunited with Emily. Or have to face the fact that their last hope had proved futile. Adam's eyes met her own, offering understanding, not false reassurance. Caroline took his hand and gripped it tightly for support and in apology for the words she had hurled at him earlier in the day.

The wait seemed interminable. Hawkins began to pace near the door. Lescaut smiled at Caroline, his eyes kind. "I have always found that it is the waiting which is the most terrifying part of battle, madame."

Caroline managed to smile in return, though her mouth felt stiff and dry. At last they heard footsteps, the porter's heavy tread and a slower, more measured gait. A tall, white-haired man wrapped in a faded wool dressing gown walked into the hall, followed by the porter who remained in the shadows and regarded them with suspicious eyes as if ready to use force to defend his employer.

The white-haired man surveyed them and addressed Lescaut. "I am Señor Arevalo," he said in careful French. "Administrator of the hospital. You are Colonel Lescaut?"

"I am." Lescaut spoke in flawless Spanish, which caused Arevalo's eyes to widen with surprise and respect. "But it is this lady," Lescaut continued, gesturing toward Caroline, "who wishes to speak with you. She believes her daughter may be here."

"I see." Arevalo turned to look at Caroline. His gaze was appraising but not unkind. "How long ago did you leave her here, Señora?"

"I didn't leave her." Caroline felt a flash of anger. She subdued it with an effort. He could not know of Emily's kidnapping. "She was taken from me. She would have been brought here some time today."

Arevalo's brows drew together. He gave a quick nod, as if acknowledging that the situation was more complicated than he had assumed. "Wake Inez," he told the porter. "Send her to the sitting room. Inez was the nurse on duty today," he explained to Caroline. "She will know what children were received. If you will follow me, Señora, gentlemen."

He led them down a series of dimly lit corridors to a small, sparsely furnished sitting room. This time Adam pressed Caroline into a chair and took one himself, close by her. "The child's not quite four years old," Adam said. "And English." Caroline would have been deceived by the control in his voice had she not been able to see his hands trembling. "You have English children here?"

Arevalo gave a rueful shrug. "English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Turkish. We take whatever children are given to us. We do not usually receive children as old as four, but if they are left here we do not refuse them."

"She would have been brought by two Spanish men," Caroline said. "One is heavyset, with a beard—"

Arevalo cut her off. "I fear a description will be of little use, Señora. You saw the baskets in the windows at the front of the building?"

Caroline nodded, though she had been in little state to notice anything.

"The baskets are circular," Arevalo explained. "Those placing a child with us put the child in the basket and pull the bell beside it. The nurse turns the basket around and receives the child. The man or woman who left the child remains anonymous."

"That would explain how it was done," Lescaut said.

The seconds ticked by. Caroline's nails dug into her palms. Adam took her hand again and squeezed her fingers. He was still holding it a few minutes later when a young woman entered the room. She carried a candle and wore a voluminous white nightdress with a shawl wrapped hastily about her. A long dark braid hung over her shoulder and there was a look of concern in her eyes.

"Ah, Inez." Arevalo quickly explained why he had summoned her. Adam's hand tightened round Caroline's. Even in her present state, Caroline could see the tension in the way Hawkins sat and the way Lescaut carefully clasped his hands. Inez listened with drawn brows, but in the middle of Arevalo's recital she turned to Caroline, eyes wide with relief. "Rawley," she exclaimed, forming the unfamiliar word with care. "You are Señora Rawley? Your daughter is Emily?"

Caroline's throat closed. For a moment she could not speak. She felt a tremor in Adam's hand. Someone, Hawkins or Lescaut, let out a deep sigh. Then Caroline was on her feet. "Where is she?"

"Asleep." Inez was smiling. "I will fetch her."

"I'm coming with you." Only lack of direction prevented Caroline from running ahead to claim her child. "Emily told you her name?" she asked, her heart hammering with impatience as she followed Inez down the corridor.

Inez nodded. "She said her mother would come for her, but I fear I placed little credence in it. So few parents come to claim their children. Though when they do, it is always the mothers, never the fathers. A man seems to feel little responsibility for a child who does not bear his name."

Caroline thought of Emily and Adam, but the thought was quickly banished, for Inez had stopped before a plain wooden door. She held her finger to her lips and opened the door onto a long, shadowy room with rows of beds running down either side. Shielding the candle flame with her hand, Inez led the way down the central aisle. Their soft footsteps sounded preternaturally loud in the still room. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Caroline saw that there were three or four children crowded into each bed. It was difficult to tell their ages, but judging by the small shapes curled beneath the blankets, some were older than Emily while many were mere infants.

A child cried out. Inez stopped and murmured soothingly, then continued on to a bed near the end of the room. The candlelight spilled over the blankets onto the three small heads pressed against the pillows. Caroline would have known that pale blond hair anywhere. Relief swept through her. Until this moment she had not fully believed she would find her daughter.

Inez stood back while Caroline slipped between the beds and crouched down on the side where Emily was lying. Emily's eyes were closed. Caroline touched her hair lightly, wondering how frightened she had been, how frightened she would still be. Emily opened her eyes at once. For a moment she stared at her mother. Then she hurled herself forward and flung her arms round Caroline's neck. "You came for me, Mama. I knew you would."

The familiar, comforting smell of child enveloped her. Emily's soft hair tickled her nose. Caroline stood, holding Emily in her arms. Some of the other children had woken. Inez was speaking softly to them. Caroline felt a rush of sympathy for the abandoned children and thankfulness that, whatever other mistakes she had made, at least she had managed to care for Emily.

When the children had been quieted, Inez led the way back to the sitting room. Emily wriggled happily at the sight of Adam and Hawkins. "I told them you'd all come for me," she said. "No one believed me."

A wide grin split Hawkins's face. Adam let out a sigh, as if like Caroline he hadn't fully believed they had her back until he saw her. "We came as quickly as we could," he told Emily. "It took us a bit of time to find you."

Caroline carried Emily over to Lescaut, who had risen with the others at their entrance and was standing a little apart. "This is Adam's friend Colonel Lescaut, Emily," she said. "If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have been able to find you at all."

Emily studied Lescaut gravely. "Thank you for helping find me."

Lescaut sketched a bow. "You're very welcome, mademoiselle."

Emily giggled. Then she squirmed in her mother's arms again. Caroline set her down and she ran over to Adam and flung her arms round his knees. Caroline continued to look at Lescaut. "Thank you, m'sieur," she said, trying to put into those few words an expression of how much she owed to him.

Lescaut smiled. "The pleasure is mine, madame." He took her hand and bowed over it formally. His gaze flickered to Emily, who was now hugging Hawkins, then back to Caroline. "It isn't often a soldier gets to do such an unabashedly good deed."

Ah, quel plaisir d'etre un soldat.
A fragment of the French song, sung with drunken, badly accented exuberance, was carried by the breeze. Shouts and laughter and bawling voices filled the air, some Portuguese, but mostly the unfamiliar, discordant sound of English. Adam eased Baron to a slow walk as they entered the main street of Freneda, a village too small to be on most maps, a village which Wellington had chosen as winter headquarters of the British army. The air was fetid with the stench of refuse and of too many people crowded into too close quarters. The afternoon sun beat down on the loose, broken cobblestones and cast a merciless glare on the grimy, peeling whitewash that covered the buildings.

"Still as dirty as ever," Hawkins said, glancing about. "You'd think they'd have managed to add some new songs to the repertoire in the past month."

Emily, who was riding with Hawkins, leaned forward in the saddle and stared at a knot of jostling men crowded about a nearby doorway. "What are they doing?"

"Buying tea or bread or something of the sort," Hawkins told her. "And being monstrously overcharged. Oh, the delights of army life."

"You don't miss it?" Caroline asked with a smile.

Hawkins grinned. "That would be a polite way of putting it, Mrs. Rawley."

Caroline laughed, then reined in her horse to avoid an officer's batman who darted across the street in front of her with a bundle of English newspapers tucked under his arm.

"Didn't we stop here before?" Emily asked her mother. "On the way to Spain?"

"No, that was Fuentes d’Oñoro." Caroline's voice was steady, but she studiously avoid Adam's gaze. Adam knew the reasons for this stop on her earlier journey. Jared had been with the 2nd Brigade, which had its headquarters in Fuentes d’Oñoro. Before she set out for Spain, Caroline would have wanted to speak to his commanding officer and the men who were with him when he was wounded. Adam felt an intense relief that they did not have to stop at Fuentes d’Oñoro on the return journey. He wasn't sure he could bear the sight of Caroline receiving the commiseration of her husband's former comrades. And then he felt a stab of guilt, because Jared was dead and he was alive, and bedding Jared's wife.

Though he hadn't done so since Bunedo. After they recovered Emily at the Foundling Hospital, Caroline refused to let her daughter out of her sight, day or night. Adam understood. He would have been shocked if she had been any less attentive. But understanding did not prevent him from spending sleepless nights aching with memories.

It was the more difficult because their time together was drawing to an end. Thanks to the fair weather and the safe conduct Lescaut had given them, the journey from Salamanca had passed quickly and without mishap. While Adam was relieved to have put danger behind them, he felt a painful twisting in his gut with each sign of home and safety. He had felt it when they encountered two English soldiers at an inn in Ciudad Rodrigo and when they crossed the border into Portugal, and he felt it more strongly than ever now, surrounded by the elite of the British army.

A faded inn sign bearing a painting of a cauliflower put an end to his thoughts. He had to report to headquarters, but first he wanted to see Caroline and Emily settled and with any luck procure accommodations for the night. The latter might not be easy. There were only two principal inns in Freneda and both were generally as overcrowded as the rest of the town.

Adam dismounted in front of the Cauliflower and helped Caroline from her horse, holding her rather longer than necessary, an irresistible impulse and a form of self-inflicted torture. While Hawkins took the animals to the stable, Adam steered Caroline and Emily through a knot of staff officers, who were clustered in the doorway arguing over a copy of the
Times,
and into a drafty, dimly lit entrance hall which was as crowded and noisy as the street outside. More soldiers— chiefly officers—passed in and out of the common room and clattered up and down the stairs. Servants hurried by with bottles of wine and jugs of hot water. Adam was making his way through the throng in search of the innkeeper when he heard his name shouted above the babble of voices around them. He turned and saw a tall, fair-haired man in the blue frock coat of a staff officer walking toward him.

"Durward, by all that's wonderful. The Staff have been laying bets on whether or not you'd make it back in one piece."

"Have they?" Adam grinned and extended his hand. "I trust I haven't lost you a great deal of money, Somerset."

Lord Fitzroy Somerset, military secretary to Lord Wellington, returned the grin and clasped Adam's hand. Good-humored, even-tempered, and the son of a duke, he could not be more different from Adam. In England, they would probably never even have met. In the midst of war, with shared objectives and crisis on all sides, they had become friends.

When Adam introduced him to Caroline and Emily, Somerset's cheerful demeanor gave way to gravity. He said Mrs. Rawley's bravery in following her husband had been much talked of among the officers and offered his condolences when Caroline told him of Jared's death. Caroline thanked Somerset in a quiet, well-modulated voice. Despite her travel-stained gown and windblown hair, she seemed perfectly at ease talking to Lord Fitzroy. In the last few minutes, Adam had watched her undergo a subtle transformation. The Caro he had found again on the journey from Acquera had become Mrs. Rawley, widow of Lieutenant Rawley, daughter of a squire, daughter-in-law of a baron, niece-in-law of an earl.