The Return of Lord Conistone (29 page)

Busaco.

Surely she’d come across that name recently? But she could not remember where. She turned to walk sadly towards the gangplank of the Portsmouth-bound ship, with Bentinck following behind. She had a small cabin to herself, but until the ship sailed she preferred to remain on deck, gazing at the hills while the sailors prepared for embarkation, thinking of Lucas making his way up there.

She pulled up with a start. Busaco. Her hand went to her pocket.
Her father’s last letters.

She scoured each scrawled missive until she found the one she wanted. The letter with the map. The close-set writing, the detailed drawings.

She whirled round and called for Bentinck, who was hovering close by. She said, ‘There is to be no getting rid of you, is there, Mr Bentinck?’

‘None at all, ma’am,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘For which I do offer hearty apologies, I’m sure!’

‘No need to apologise at all,’ she answered in a thoughtful tone. ‘It is I who should apologise to
you
, for not trusting you. Now. Tell me about this place called Busaco to which your master is heading.
Quickly’.

Three days later—Busaco, Portugal

T
he place known as Busaco was a nine-mile ridge of rocky hillside, rising to nearly two thousand feet in places, and falling away vertiginously to pine and cedar forests on one side and the coastal plain on the other.

This was where Lord Wellington had decided, months ago, to stop and face the French army during the inevitable race to Lisbon. And he had relied on his scouts and intelligencers to help him achieve victory.

‘This war in the Peninsula is going to be won by whoever has the best knowledge of this upland terrain,’ he’d once said to Lucas. ‘We’ve got to out-think and out-plan the French at every step. I need maps, Conistone. I need you and your men to gather intelligence about every inch of ground from Lisbon all the way to Madrid’.

So Lucas, in the October of 1808, had resigned his commission, and agreed to be Wellington’s spy; outwardly a civilian, outwardly unconnected with the war, but secretly
gleaning vital information not only in enemy terrain, but also in the lofty drawing rooms of Europe.

And the irony was that Lucas had been chosen because of Verena’s father.

When he was a boy, Lucas had listened avidly as Jack Sheldon talked to the Earl about his travels in Spain and Portugal. When Jack realised Lucas was interested, he taught him Portuguese, and some Spanish also; often Lucas had pored over Jack’s maps of wild and unexplored places, while Jack vividly described every detail.

Then the Earl and Jack had had their bitter falling-out and Jack had stormed off on his travels again, never to return. Deep in financial trouble, he’d started negotiating in secret with the French, who, anticipating a long struggle against the English forces in the Peninsula, were desperate to get hold of everything he’d written, every detail of his explorations.

And so, just a few days ago, Lucas, on board the
Goldfinch
, had been forced to tell Verena that her father was a traitor.

The trouble was that she still didn’t know everything. And Lucas’s problem now was, when to tell her? When the devil should he tell her it all?

Lucas rubbed his eyes wearily. Just now he had even more pressing matters on his mind.

The lost mines of Busaco were said, by the locals, to be part of an ancient network driven centuries ago into the hills; no one had found them, despite the rumours of South American gold hidden there by the returning
conquistadores
. When Lord Wellington, poring over his own maps months ago, had decided Busaco ridge would be the ideal vantage point to make a stand against the French army in the autumn, it was assumed that the stories of the mines were nothing but a myth.

But then Lucas, puzzling over Jack Sheldon’s boasts to both Verena and the Earl, began to wonder,
What if Sheldon really had found those long-lost mines?

Easy to consider the task impossible, for the steep escarpment below the ridge was covered with loose scree and thorny scrub, and lower down trees grew thickly, their roots tangled amongst the rocks. But Lucas found that the whispers of gold persisted—whispers that Jack Sheldon had found those tunnels and recorded their whereabouts for himself. Yet though Lucas spent long nights on the
Goldfinch
, poring over Wild Jack’s diary by the light of a guttering candle, he could find no reference to Busaco or its lost tunnels.

And here, at Busaco, the French were expected daily.

‘They’ll outnumber us massively,’ Alec Stewart, who was already here, had said to Lucas. ‘Fortunately their intelligence is much poorer than ours’. He grinned. ‘Especially as your enterprising Portuguese companion—what was his name, Miguel?—fobbed off the French scouts with some fake maps, which sent their generals all over the mountains on their way here’.

Lucas gave an answering smile. ‘I hope the French paid him well’. Inwardly he saluted his diminutive friend:
Obrigado, Miguel. My thanks.

‘No doubt they did’. Alec’s face became serious again. ‘But those lost tunnels—if only we’d found them, Lucas! We could have hidden men and cannon. And the French, as they marched up the valley, wouldn’t even have known where the attack was coming from!’

As if he didn’t know. As if he’d needed reminding.

Here Lucas still went by the name of Patterson, a scout of Wellington’s. While Alec wore his smart captain’s uniform, Lucas wore old civilian clothes and looked like a barbarian, or so Alec cheerfully told him. Here only Alec,
Lord Wellington and a few close friends among the senior officers knew who he really was.

‘We have to give the French a mighty big surprise if we’re to win enough of a victory to get ourselves to Lisbon in time,’ Wellington had confided to him last night. ‘Conistone, you’re my man for tactics, you know this territory like the back of your hand…’

All except for the mines
. Where the hell were Wild Jack’s maps of Busaco?

Lucas had risked all to find them. He’d risked, and nearly lost, the woman he loved. But those crucial maps seemed not to exist.

There was no rebuke from Wellington. The great general just said, in his curt way, ‘Perhaps those damned mines never existed. We’ll find another way to take the Frogs by surprise’.

Wellington had ranged his troops all along and behind the ridge, so that most of them would be hidden from view when the French marched up the valley tomorrow. And still Lucas hadn’t given up. With Alec’s steady help, he got all the soldiers who could be spared to clamber round the lower slopes, searching.

But it seemed that any mine entrances had long since been hidden by dense furze and thorn, ancient tree roots and areas of loose shale that were for ever sliding down the mountainside. If the tunnels had ever existed, they now looked lost for ever.

* * *

As the sun began to set, Lucas’s aide, who had prepared a camp fire, was trying to press food on him: some horse meat, boiled in a stew; days-old bread; rough Portuguese wine. Lucas had little appetite.

Then he heard voices.
Familiar
voices. He turned his head sharply, and got to his feet. No. Surely not.

There was the barked challenge of a sentry, and, in response, a belligerent male voice. An
unmistakeable
voice. In the name of God…

‘Now, there ain’t no use trying to stop me, however flash your pistols! We ain’t climbed up all this way from Oporto to be told Mr Patterson ain’t allowed no visitors, you hear? You step back, my man, or I’ll plant you such a facer as you won’t wake till old Boney’s been chased all the way back to Paris!’

Bentinck
. What the hell…? As long as he was alone. As long as…

Lucas thrust aside his dish and got to his feet, striding across to the scene of the altercation. ‘What in damnation are you doing here, Bentinck? I told you to see that Verena sailed home on that ship!’

Bentinck swung round to him, his face a picture. ‘I’ll be blowed if that wasn’t my intention, Mr Patterson! But what you
didn’t
say was wot I was to do if the lady upped sticks and decided she wasn’t goin’ home after all, but was travellin’ all the way up
here
! On this mule that I’ll swear is as stubborn as her!’ He jabbed his finger towards the wiry-looking mule whose reins he grasped; and to the woman in a cloak who was sliding quickly from the mule’s saddle to step forwards, her hood falling back from her glorious chestnut hair as she lifted her head to him, almost defiantly.

‘Please don’t be angry with Bentinck, Mr Patterson!’ said Verena quickly. ‘It’s not his fault I’m here; it’s mine, because you see I absolutely insisted that he bring me to see you!’

A crowd of soldiers had gathered round, their jaws dropping at the sight of her. At her—yes, devil take it, at her sheer
beauty
. Lucas’s heart thudded. She might have struggled on muleback up here—an arduous journey if ever
there was one—but, deuce take it, she was as cool, as fresh, as lovely as if she were appearing at a top-lofty London ball, and as tempting.

All the way up, from Oporto! Three days traversing steep tracks—even the goddamned mule must have had to be practically hauled up some of the most treacherous and narrow parts of the path.

He couldn’t believe it.

Yet—she was here. And seeing her revived all the love—and, be honest, all the
lust
—Lucas always felt in her presence. He wanted nothing more than to crush her in his arms and make love to her. But here they were, about to face a huge French army, and by this time tomorrow, half of them at least might well be dead, the rest embarked on a long, arduous retreat to Lisbon while fighting a desperate rearguard action.

He said, curtly because he was afraid for her, ‘Oh, Verena. Your reasons for coming here had better be good’.

She did not flinch. She lifted her lovely wide amber eyes to him and said honestly, ‘I think they are. You see—Mr Patterson—I think I can help your General Wellington win tomorrow’s battle’. She drew closer and dropped her voice. ‘I’ve found my father’s plans, of the ancient mountain-mines of Busaco’.

He guided her quickly over to his makeshift camp, where they would have some privacy. He offered her some of the rough army wine, and Verena told him swiftly what she’d remembered when he left her in Oporto. ‘When you mentioned the place,
Busaco
,’ she told him, ‘I knew that I had heard or seen the name somewhere before’. She was reaching into her pocket. ‘Here’. She held out some folded sheets of paper. ‘This map, and these sketches, were drawn on the back of a letter to me from my father. They refer to the old mine shafts at Busaco…’

At that point her lovely face clouded and Lucas knew she was thinking of her father, was still trying to reconcile herself to his treachery. But she pressed on steadily. ‘Because I knew
you
were making for the ridge of Busaco, to meet Lord Wellington, I had no alternative but to ride to you up here’.

‘Your sense of duty to the fore as ever, Miss Sheldon,’ he teased gently. ‘So you—
persuaded
Bentinck to escort you?’

She pulled a slight face. ‘I as good as forced poor Bentinck, yes. Unfair of me. I said, if he didn’t come with me, I’d find you by myself. He was not very pleased, and the climb was a little—difficult. But—Lucas, I hope I did right?’

‘Difficult!’ He chuckled at her understatement. ‘You have done very well indeed. You are brave and wonderful, and,
minha querida
, I love you more than I can say’.

He got his aide to bring her hot soup and a blanket. She chided him for fussing over her, but the temperature was dropping sharply as night approached and the moon, silvery and full, rose above them. He’d set her by the fire, building it up while she talked. The pages of Jack’s letter were spread out between them, but his eyes never left her face.

‘Verena,’ Lucas confirmed softly, ‘these plans could mean the difference between victory and defeat tomorrow’.

‘As important as that?’ she breathed.

‘As important as that’. But he saw the shadows that still clouded her lovely face, and said gently, ‘I’m sorry. This must be painful for you’.

She shook her head defiantly. ‘Bentinck has been more than kind. He warned me…’ she swallowed on the lump in her throat ‘.…not to use my father’s name, in case—in case anybody
knew’.

His heart missed a beat. Indeed.

‘But, Lucas, I keep telling myself,’ she said, steadfastly gazing up at him, ‘that whatever my father did, he did for his family. What he tried to do was wrong. Terrible.
But he still loved us’.

He put his arms round her and kissed her with great tenderness. ‘I understand everything. You must stop reproaching yourself. You have done your duty—
more
than your duty’.

Letting her go reluctantly, he picked up the letter that mapped the tunnels of Busaco. ‘And now I must go now to his lordship. There is still just time. If we can find these old mine entrances,
tonight
, we can get men with rifles, perhaps cannon even, into these hideouts. But your part in this is done. Now you must let Bentinck take you to the safety of the old convent, half a mile back on the Oporto road, which is Wellington’s staff headquarters. And then, tomorrow, you can head for home’.