The Sentimental Soldier Page 2

  “I am not of the Roman church!” she snapped.

  Harry shrugged the very Gallic shrug that Bertrand had made him practice. “No. But it may help, nonetheless.”

  She pressed her lips together. “I have nothing to confess,” she said.

  “Perhaps we should simply begin with names,” Harry suggested. “I am Father Alain.”

  “I am Miss Prudence Marland,” she answered, after only a moment’s hesitation.

  “Prudence?” Harry echoed. “Prudence?” He started laughing. “You masqueraded as a man, you washed up on French shores and you are called Prudence? You seem singularly misnamed!”

  Miss Marland was not amused. She turned to look at him and anger flashed in her dark brown eyes. “Perhaps I was named Prudence with the hope that it would influence my character.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed, “but that hope seems to have been severely misplaced.”

  She lost her temper then. Miss Prudence Marland rose to her feet and strode over to her mule. She mounted without waiting for Harry’s help, using a handy rock. He made haste to mount his own mule before she could leave him behind.

  As they got back onto the road she said, angrily, “I do not care what you think of my name. I dislike you intensely and shan’t confide a thing.”

  Harry could not resist. He lowered his eyes. He sighed. He said in a fatherly voice, “Do you not know, ma petite, that such a display of temper is a sin?”

  “And dressing me as a nun is not?”

  “There were no other clothes to be obtained,” Harry snapped in reply. “We told you that. And besides, it is for your protection. God will understand, I assure you.”

  A sudden thought occurred to Harry. “Do you not wish to live? Were you perhaps a suicide? Is that how you came to be in the water?”

  “No!”

  Her horrified cry was enough to assure Harry that she meant what she said. And then, almost unwillingly it seemed, she went on.

  “The storm was fierce and I stood too close to the rail. The ship tilted to one side and someone, muttering about foreigners and bad luck and storms, seized the chance to push me over. I grabbed for a handhold and instead pulled the man over with me. We were both swept away from the ship in moments.”

  She paused then added sharply, “And do not tell me I should not have been on deck, for I very well know it. Now. But then I could not resist looking at the sea when it was in such a state.”

  Harry frowned. Aloud he muttered, “Yes, yes, but what am I to do with you now?”

  “Perhaps,” she said with a diffidence he would have thought foreign to her nature, “you could point me in the direction of Spain?”

  “Spain?” Harry echoed, taken aback.

  She shifted uncomfortably in her saddle under his gaze. “Yes, well, if I could reach the English there they could see me safely home.”

  “As well ask that I get you to the moon!” Harry countered.

  “I must get to Spain,” she said seriously.

  Harry shook his head. “No. But a smuggler might do. I must find a smuggler willing to take you across the channel and back home.”

  “I. Must. Get. To. Spain.”

  This was absurd! Harry thought. Aloud he asked, in his most sardonic voice, “Why? Have you ambitions to become a camp follower to the soldiers there?”

  “What if I have?” she asked, a speculative gleam in her eyes.

  The devil rose in Harry’s breast and he raked her from head to toe before he replied, “You are too spindly. They would not have you.”

  She gasped in outraged disbelief. She was also patently at a loss for words.

  “Good,” Harry said. “A smuggler it will be.”

  She pulled her mule to a halt. “Spain,” she said.

  “A smuggler.”

  “Spain.”

  They glared at one another and Colonel Harry Langford felt a strong urge to strangle the wench. He could just imagine what Wellington would say if he saddled him with the creature by taking her along to Spain! But then his ears caught the sound of horses coming the other way. Instantly Harry was on full alert.

  “Quiet, my child,” he said softly, in warning. “Do not speak or they will know you are not French.”

  She glared at him one last time, but not only was she silent, the young woman bowed her head, as though in prayer, so that her face was partially concealed.

  Two men, indeed two French soldiers, came around the bend and rode into sight. They pulled their horses to a halt at the sight of the priest and nun on their slowly moving mules. Both men crossed themselves.

  “Father, have you seen anyone on this road?” one of the soldiers asked.

  Harry shrugged. “A few farmers.”

  “No sailors?”

  “Sailors!” Harry did not have to feign his surprise. “What would a sailor be doing here?”

  The soldier hesitated then he, too, gave a Gallic shrug. “A man, he is dead now you comprehend, he washed ashore in the storm. We are looking to see if there are any others.”

  “But why?”

  It was the second soldier who answered. “Because he was English.”

  Harry nodded, his face impassive. He dared not look at the young woman to see if her face betrayed them. Instead he sought to divert their attention to him.

  “We have seen no one,” Harry said. “But I wish you good hunting.”

  And then he blessed them, grateful that he had learned his role so carefully.

  Once the two soldiers were out of sight, the young woman turned to him accusingly.

  “You lied!”

  “We,” Harry said, careful to stress the word, “have seen no one. He did not ask about me alone.”

  “Do all priests have such convenient consciences?” she demanded.

  Her words stung. Harry would not have expected that. He had, after all, saved her life. And what he did, he did for king and country. Such masquerades had never bothered him before, but still her words stung. So he did what one must in such a circumstance. He went on the attack.

  “Do you regret that I rescued you, ma fille? And perhaps saved your life again just now?”

  “N-no,” she conceded. A pause and then she said with exasperation in her voice, “But I do not understand you and it bothers me!”

  That startled Harry into an involuntary laugh. He didn’t want to laugh with her. He wanted her off his hands as quickly as possible. What they had just heard from the soldiers would make that far more difficult.

  “They will be watching all the ports and even the small beaches where smugglers might put in to shore,” she said, almost as though she could read his mind.

  “I know.”

  The irritation in his voice was so marked that it was several moments before she ventured to ask, in a very small voice, “What will you do with me?”

  The trouble was, Harry didn’t know. “I ought,” he muttered, “to put you in a convent until it is safe to find a smuggler to take you back to England. But with your French so bad as it is, I cannot think that would be wise.”

  “My French will improve,” she said meekly.

  “Perhaps, but not fast enough. No,” he said with a sigh, “you will just have to come with me.”

  “Where,” she asked with a militant gleam in her eye and suspicion in her voice, “are you going?”

  Harry gritted his teeth. “Do you know how outrageous you are?” he demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you care?”

  “No. I want to know where you mean to take me,” she said without the least trace of embarrassment.

  Harry was momentarily speechless. He could scarcely say that he did not know where he was going. Not without explaining who he was and what his mission might be. And that would never do. Finally he fell back on the one excuse that had worked so well so far.

  “I go where the Holy Father sends me. I go where the Holy Spirit wills.”

  She looked at him warily, as if she thought he was wanting in w
its. She even began to shake her head and back her mule away from him.

  “I, er, that’s all very well for you and I wish you well, Père Alain, but I must get to Spain.”

  Harry moved with a rapidity belied by his appearance as a priest. He grabbed the bridle on her mule. “Very well,” he said, “I see I shall have to take you to Spain.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my conscience will not allow me to let you travel alone. You would be captured and no doubt ravished if I let you go off on your own. No, I will take you to Spain and pray that it is not a disaster for the both of us!”

  And if the way was rather roundabout, there was no need for her to know this in advance. But still the confounded young woman was suspicious. Or was that concern he heard in her voice?

  “Will it not be dangerous for you?” she asked.

  “A priest goes where he must. Even soldiers do not usually interfere.”

  “Usually?”

  Harry shrugged.

  * * * *

  Prudence looked at Père Alain riding on the mule beside her and saw a man. A very strong, very handsome man. There were glints of humor in his brown eyes that appealed to her very much. A hood covered his head but she remembered how his thick brown hair had shined earlier, in the sunlight.

  And now he meant to take her to Spain. Or so he said.

  Prudence shook her head, as if to clear it. “How does a man like you come to be a priest?” she asked.

  Père Alain looked startled. He stammered a trifle over his words. But finally they flowed as smoothly as anything else he said.

  “A man, any man, becomes a priest in the same way as any other. He is called to it by the Holy Father.”

  Prudence nodded. But she found herself still wondering if she could trust him. “Will you truly take me to Spain?” she asked.

  “I have said so, have I not?” the priest demanded, not troubling to hide the irritation in his voice. “And you have no other choice but to trust me.”

  He was right of course. For all her brave words, Prudence knew it would not be safe for her to travel alone. No, he was right. For now she had no choice but to trust this man who was both less and more than just a man. And hope that he did not guess how much she was drawn to him.

  Chapter 3

  It was late when they stopped to eat. Harry was careful to choose a clearing that was shielded from anyone traveling on the road. He waited until his companion seemed at ease and then he pressed her for the answers he needed.

  “Who, precisely, are you? And why were you dressed as an Arab when we found you?” Harry asked as he handed his companion a chunk of the bread and cheese he had bought from a farmer’s wife.

  She leaned back against a tree and took a bite before she answered, as though trying to decide how much to tell him. “I was headed to Spain,” she said at last. “And it seemed safer, since I was traveling alone, to masquerade as a man. And with the robes of an Arab I felt safer from discovery.”

  His eyes raked her from head to toe in a way that was most disconcerting. “Even dressed as you are, covered by these shapeless robes, I can tell you are a woman! Whatever possessed you to believe that you could fool anyone into believing you were a lad?”

  She flushed. “I am slightly built and I cropped my hair,” she said defensively. “I had done it before—quite successfully. Long ago I learned that people see what they expect to see. As an apparent foreign prince, any oddities in how I moved or spoke would be chalked up to that. Or so I hoped.”

  He eyed her sardonically and waited, knowing it was a most effective technique of eliciting information. And it did so now. After a moment, she sighed and said, “It is very different masquerading as a man, an Arabic man, in England than it was in Morocco.”

  “Particularly aboard a ship,” Harry said with some significance. “At least one sailor concluded you were bad luck and responsible for the storm.”

  “And pushed me overboard,” she murmured.

  Harry looked at her closely but did not press her further. He thought she must be close to overwhelmed by her plight. There were shadows in her eyes and he had no wish to find himself with an hysterical creature on his hands.

  So instead, in a soft voice that invited confidences, Harry asked, “Why were you going to Spain?”

  She hesitated and he wondered what lies she meant to tell him this time. “You might try the truth,” Harry suggested with a wry smile.

  Startled she looked at him and snapped. “The truth? Why not? I doubt you will believe me anyway. My uncle is a diplomat working for peace.”

  Harry sat abruptly upright. “A diplomat? What the devil would he be doing in Spain? The peace talks are being held far away from here.”

  “Do you know,” she said, regarding him with a thoughtful gaze, “you swear a great deal for a priest.”

  Harry flushed and pretended not to hear. To himself he muttered, “Perhaps your uncle was sent to see the king of Spain? But why would he bring his niece with him? Or rather, how could he allow you to travel out to him alone? It makes no sense to me.”

  She heard him. “I am of age,” she said stiffly. “I may travel where I wish.”

  Harry snorted. “Without a companion or your maid? Dressed as a boy? I have not been gone so long that I will believe this has become the custom for English ladies. Of any age.”

  “Not gone so long?”

  Now it was she who sat up very straight as she repeated his words.

  “So you have been in England,” she said looking at Harry with narrowed eyes. “I wonder when. Were you a spy? Collecting information for Napoleon, perhaps?”

  It took every ounce of control Harry possessed not to flinch at the word “spy.” But he almost laughed aloud at the rest of her conclusions.

  Apparently she saw his reaction for she said slowly, “Not a spy for Napoleon. Which I should have known for if you had been, you would have turned me over to the soldiers already, would you not?”

  “Perhaps I am merely luring you to a special place of interrogation,” Harry suggested. “Or perhaps I hope to lure you into a false sense of safety so that you will confide everything you know into my hearing.”

  She considered the notion. She studied his face for several long moments and then she shook her head decisively. “No. It is neither of those things.”

  Harry was startled and amused and touched by her faith in him. He thought her a credulous, heedless, foolish chit of a girl. But nevertheless he was touched. A thought occurred to him.

  “You said you were of age. How old are you?”

  “Four and twenty,” she answered without hesitation or, he would swear, evasion.

  Still he was skeptical. “You don’t look nearly so old as that,” he said.

  She grinned. “I know. It is of the greatest advantage to me.”

  “How so? Never mind, I am not certain I wish to know,” Harry said hastily. “But why are you not married? Or are you? Are you trying to reach your husband in Spain?”

  The answer should not have mattered to Harry. But unaccountably he found that it did.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Liar!” he snapped in reply.

  Now it was her turn to gape at him. “How can you say so?” she demanded. “You do not know me. How can you possibly think you know the truth of my circumstances?”

  “I don’t,” he agreed curtly. “But I have come to know when you are lying.”

  Harry stopped and forced himself to fall back into character. He shook his head and let a grave look settle on his face. His voice held a trace of sadness as he said, “Did you truly think, ma petite, that I would not know? That my experience as a priest would have taught me nothing about such things?”

  She clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. “I forget, sometimes, that you are a priest,” she muttered. Then she lifted her eyes to his. “Why did you become a priest?” she demanded.

  “You have asked me that before,” he reminded her gently.

&n
bsp; She tilted up her chin. “I am asking you again. Why did you become a priest?”

  This time it was Harry who looked away. He began to gather up the remains of their very simple meal. “One does,” he muttered.

  She placed a hand over his. “Why?” she asked one more time.

  Harry looked at her. There was an earnestness about her that touched some forgotten chord in him and stopped the sharp setdown he had been about to give her.

  A wry smile tilted up the corners of his mouth as he replied, finally, “One does as one must. One does one’s duty. And when one is called before the Holy Father...”

  Harry paused and shrugged. He could feel her gaze still searching his face. What was she looking for? he wondered. Without being arrogant he knew that women found him attractive. Was that it? Did she? And if so, what was he to do about it. He dared not risk so much as kissing her. Not in his present disguise. Their journey was perilous enough without any such complications. He cast about for a way to distract her. And himself.

  “Here,” he said, pulling a knife out of his boot. “I meant to give this to you before.”

  But instead of taking it, she went very pale and shook her head, almost frantically. “No. I can’t. I won’t carry a knife.”

  He stared at her. With more than a trace of impatience in his voice he said, “This is not friendly territory for you and I want you able to defend yourself.”

  She shook her head again. “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why the devil not?”

  She stared at him. “You are a priest, you ought to understand. In my family we do not believe in fighting. Everyone is a diplomat or otherwise dedicated to achieving peace. I will not, I cannot turn my back on all I have been raised to believe. I have never needed to carry a knife before and I will not begin now.”

  Harry gaped at her. “But your life may be at stake!” he exclaimed.

  She stiffened and would not look at him. Instead she stared at her hands and by the way she held herself he could see this was not some foolish whim but a deeply held belief. With a sigh he reached out and took her hand. She did not pull away, though she looked at him warily.

  Despite himself, Harry smiled and turned over her hand. Into it he placed the knife and closed her fingers over the handle.