Valiant Soldier, Beautiful Enemy (2 page)

Determined to make her as comfortable as possible, Gabe strode into the bedroom and pulled the remains of the mattress into the large room, clearing a space for it in the corner. He found a blanket, half-shredded, and carried it to the mattress.

The woman emerged from the kitchen and handed him water in a chipped cup. The boy gripped her skirt, like a younger, frightened child.

He smiled his thanks. As he took the cup, his fingertips grazed her hand and his senses flared at the contact. He gulped down the water and handed her back the cup. “The—the
Anglais,
did they hurt you?” What was the French word?
“Violate? Moleste?”

Her long graceful fingers gripped the cup.
“Non. Ils m’ont pas molester.”

He nodded, understanding her meaning. She had not been raped. Thank God.

“Can you keep watch?” he asked Ensign Vernon. “I’ll sleep for an hour or so and relieve you.” He’d not slept since the siege began, over twenty-four hours before.

“Yes, sir,” the ensign replied.

They blocked the door with a barricade of broken furniture. The ensign found the remnants of a wooden chair with the seat and legs intact. He placed it at the window to keep watch.

The mother and child curled up together on the mattress. Gabe slid to the floor, his back against the wall. He glanced over at her and her gaze met his for one long moment as intense as an embrace.

Gabe was shaken by her effect on him. It did him no credit to be so attracted to her, not with the terror she’d just been through.

Perhaps he was merely moved by her devotion to her child, how she held him, how she gazed upon him. Gabe had often watched his own mother tend as lovingly to his little sisters.

Or maybe her devotion to her son touched some deep yearning within him. The girls had come one after the other after Gabe was born, and he had often been left in the company of his older brothers, struggling to keep up.

What the devil was he musing about? He never needed to be the fussed over like his sisters. Much better to be toughened by the rough-housing of boys.

Gabe forced himself to close his eyes. He needed sleep. After sleeping an hour or two, he’d be thinking like a soldier again.

The sounds of looting and pillaging continued, but it was the woman’s voice, softly murmuring comfort to her son, that finally lulled Gabe to sleep.

The carnage lasted two more days. Gabe, Ensign Vernon and the mother and son remained in the relative safety of her ransacked home, even though the forced inactivity strained Gabe’s nerves. He’d have preferred fighting his way through the town to this idleness.

His needs were inconsequential, however. The woman and child must be safeguarded.

What little food they could salvage went to the boy, who was hungry all the time. Ensign Vernon occupied the time by drawing. Some sketches he kept private. Some fanciful pictures of animals and such he gave to the boy in an attempt to amuse him. The boy merely stared at them blankly, spending most of his time at his mother’s side, watching Gabe and Vernon with eyes both angry and wary.

None of them spoke much. Gabe could count on his fingers how many words he and the woman spoke to each other. Still, she remained at the centre of his existence. There was no sound she made, no gesture or expression he did not notice, and the empty hours of waiting did not diminish his resolve to make certain she and her son reached safety.

On the third day it was clear order had been restored. Gabe led them out, and the woman only looked back once at what had been her home. Outside, the air smelled of smoke and burnt wood, but the only sound of soldiers was the rhythm of a disciplined march.

They walked to the city’s centre where Gabe supposed the army’s headquarters would be found. There Gabe was told to what building other French civilians had been taken. They found the correct building, but Gabe hesitated before taking the mother and son inside. It was difficult to leave her fate to strangers. In an odd way he did not understand, she had become more important to him than anything else. Still, what choice did he have?

“We should go in,” he told her.

Ensign Vernon said, “I will remain here, sir, if that is agreeable to you.”

“As you wish,” Gabe replied.

“Goodbye,
madame.
” The ensign stepped away.

Looking frightened but resigned, she merely nodded.

Gabe escorted her and her son through the door to the end of a hallway where two soldiers stood guard. The room they guarded was bare of furniture except one table and a chair, on which a British officer sat. In the room were about twenty people, older men, once French officials perhaps, and other women and children whose families had been destroyed.

Gabe spoke to the British officer, explaining the woman’s circumstance to him.

“What happens to them?” he asked the man.

The officer’s answer was curt. “The women and children will be sent back to France, if they have money for the passage.”

Gabe stepped away and fished in an inside pocket of his uniform, pulling out a purse full of coin, nearly all he possessed. Glancing around to make certain no one noticed, he pressed the purse into the woman’s hands. “You will need this.”

Her eyes widened as her fingers closed around the small leather bag.
“Capitaine—”

He pressed her hand. “No argument. No—” he pronounced it the French way “—
argument.
”

She closed her other hand around his and the power of her gaze tugged at something deep inside him. It was inexplicable, but saying goodbye felt like losing a part of himself.

He did not even know her name.

He pulled his hand from hers and pointed to himself. “Gabriel Deane.” If she needed him, she would at least know his name.

“Gabriel,”
she whispered, speaking his name with the beauty of her French accent.
“Merci. Que Dieu vous bénisse.”

His brows knit in confusion. He’d forgotten most of the French he’d learned in school.

She struggled for words. “
Dieu
…God…” She crossed herself.
“Bénisse.”

“Bless?” he guessed.

She nodded.

He forced himself to take a step back.
“Au revoir, madame.”

Clenching his teeth, Gabe turned and started for the door before he did something foolish. Like kiss her. Or leave with her. She was a stranger, nothing more, important only in his fantasies. Not in reality.

“Gabriel!”

He halted.

She ran to him.

She placed both hands on his cheeks and pulled his head down to kiss him on the lips. With her face still inches from his, she whispered, “My name is Emmaline Mableau.”

He was afraid to speak for fear of betraying the swirling emotions inside him. An intense surge of longing enveloped him.

He desired her as a man desires a woman. It was foolish beyond everything. Dishonourable, as well, since she’d just lost her husband to hands not unlike his own.

He met her gaze and held it a moment before fleeing out the door.

But his thoughts repeated, over and over—
Emmaline Mableau.

Chapter One

Brussels, Belgium—May 1815

E
mmaline Mableau!

Gabe’s heart pounded when he caught a glimpse of the woman from whom he’d parted three years before. Carrying a package, she walked briskly through the narrow Brussels streets. It was Emmaline Mableau, he was convinced.

Or very nearly convinced.

He’d always imagined her back in France, living in some small village, with parents…or a new husband.

But here she was, in Belgium.

Brussels had many French people, so it was certainly possible for her to reside here. Twenty years of French rule had only ended the year before when Napoleon was defeated.

Defeated for the first time, Gabe meant.
L’Empereur
had escaped from his exile on Elba. He’d raised an army and was now on the march to regain his empire. Gabe’s regiment, the Royal Scots, was part of Wellington’s Allied Army and would soon cross swords with Napoleon’s forces again.

Many of the English aristocracy had poured into Brussels after the treaty, fleeing the high prices in England, looking for elegant living at little cost. Even so, Brussels remained primed for French rule, as if the inhabitants expected Napoleon to walk its streets any day. Nearly everyone in the city spoke French. Shop signs were in French. The hotel where Gabe was billeted had a French name.
Hôtel de Flandre.

Gabe had risen early to stretch his legs in the brisk morning air. He had few official duties at present, so spent his days exploring the city beyond the Parc de Brussels and the cathedral. Perhaps there was more of the cloth merchant’s son in him than he’d realised, because he liked best to walk the narrow streets lined with shops.

He’d spied Emmaline Mableau as he descended the hill to reach that part of Brussels. She’d been rushing past shopkeepers who were just raising their shutters and opening their doors. Gabe bolted down the hill to follow her, getting only quick glimpses of her as he tried to catch up to her.

He might be mistaken about her being Emmaline Mableau. It might have been a mere trick of the eye and the fact that he often thought of her that made him believe the Belgian woman was she.

But he was determined to know for certain.

She turned a corner and he picked up his pace, fearing he’d lose sight of her. Near the end of the row of shops he glimpsed a flutter of skirts, a woman entering a doorway. His heart beat faster. That had to have been her. No one left on the street looked like her.

He slowed his pace as he approached where she had disappeared, carefully determining which store she’d entered. The sign above the door read
Magasin de Lacet.
The shutters were open and pieces of lace draped over tables could be seen though the windows.

A lace shop.

He opened the door and crossed the threshold, removing his shako as he entered the shop.

He was surrounded by white. White lace ribbons of various widths and patterns draped over lines strung across the length of the shop. Tables stacked with white lace cloth, lace-edged handkerchiefs and lace caps. White lace curtains covering the walls. The distinct scent of lavender mixed with the scent of linen, a scent that took him back in time to hefting huge bolts of cloth in his father’s warehouse.

Through the gently fluttering lace ribbons, he spied the woman emerging from a room at the back of the shop, her face still obscured. With her back to him, she folded squares of intricate lace that must have taken some woman countless hours to tat.

Taking a deep breath, he walked slowly towards her. “Madame Mableau?”

Still holding the lace in her fingers and startled at the sound of a man’s voice, Emmaline turned. And gasped.

“Mon Dieu!”

She recognised him instantly, the
capitaine
whose presence in Badajoz had kept her sane when all seemed lost. She’d tried to forget those desolate days in the Spanish city, although she’d never entirely banished the memory of Gabriel Deane. His brown eyes, watchful then, were now reticent, but his jaw remained as strong, his lips expressive, his hair as dark and unruly.

“Madame.”
He bowed. “Do you remember me? I saw you from afar. I was not certain it was you.”

She could only stare. He seemed to fill the space, his scarlet coat a splash of vibrancy in the white lace-filled room. It seemed as if no mere shop could be large enough to contain his presence. He’d likewise commanded space in Badajoz, just as he commanded everything else. Tall and powerfully built, he had filled those terrible, despairing days, keeping them safe. Giving them hope.

“Pardon,”
he said. “I forgot. You speak only a little English.
Un peu Anglais.
”

She smiled. She’d spoken those words to him in Badajoz.

She held up a hand. “I do remember you,
naturellement.
” She had never dreamed she would see him again, however. “I—I speak a little more English now. It is necessary. So many English people in Brussels.” She snapped her mouth closed. She’d been babbling.

“You are well, I hope?” His thick, dark brows knit and his gaze swept over her.

“I am very well.” Except she could not breathe at the moment and her legs seemed too weak to hold her upright, but that was his effect on her, not malaise.

His features relaxed. “And your son?”

She lowered her eyes. “Claude was well last I saw him.”

He fell silent, as if he realised her answer hid something she did not wish to disclose. Finally he spoke again. “I thought you would be in France.”

She shrugged. “My aunt lives here. This is her shop. She needed help and we needed a home.
Vraiment,
Belgium is a better place to—how do you say?—to rear Claude.”

She’d believed living in Belgium would insulate Claude from the patriotic fervour Napoleon had generated, especially in her own family.

She’d been wrong.

Gabriel gazed into her eyes. “I see.” A concerned look came over his face. “I hope your journey from Spain was not too difficult.”