Dark Angel (30 page)

Adam told him what he'd omitted from his earlier account of the journey: the attacks, Emily's kidnapping, the stableboy's account of the exchange between Colborne and the thin man, Caroline's recollection of Jared's dying words.

Stuart listened intently, a growing frown on his face. "Christ," he said, when Adam had finished. "As if we haven't got enough to worry about." He ran his hands through his hair. "You know this doesn't prove anything, don't you?"

"No. But it's suggestive."

"Oh, it's suggestive all right. It suggests we're in one hell of a mess. Have you told anyone else?"

Adam shook his head. "I suspected Wellington would take Colonel Rawley's word over mine."

"You were probably right." Stuart leaned back and studied Adam. "What made you so certain I wouldn't do the same?"

"I wasn't certain at all," Adam told him. "But I thought it was worth the risk. And I thought you'd at least give me a fair hearing."

"And the damnable thing is you were right. You usually are." Stuart relaxed into the chair and crossed his legs. "I've been meaning to speak to you about that, Durward. It can be an annoying quality in an aide."

For the first time since he had mentioned Talbot Rawley, Adam permitted himself to smile. Stuart might not be a wholehearted ally in the business, but at least he wouldn't be an enemy.

Stuart picked up a silver penknife and turned it over in his hands. "What do you want from me?"

"Leave to escort Mrs. Rawley to England. I don't think it's safe for her to travel alone. In England I can look for proof that will convict Talbot. Or exonerate him."

"Permission granted." Stuart tossed the knife onto the desk with a clatter. "But if this goes wrong, I may have to deny knowing anything about it."

Adam smiled again, this time with complete confidence. "Of course, sir. I wouldn't have expected anything else."

Stuart returned his gaze and gave a sudden laugh. "Bloody impudence. Have another cup of coffee, and tell me more about your pretty widow."

Hawkins stared at the ancient damask canopy overhead and felt a wave of contentment. Elena was lying within the curve of his arm, her head on his chest, her bright hair spilling across him. The heavy gold earrings he had bought for her on the journey through Portugal lay on her dressing table, glinting in the moonlight that flooded the room. Elena had placed them there carefully. The rest of their clothes littered the floor, hastily discarded. Though it was the second night since his return to Lisbon, their hunger for each other had not abated.

Hawkins found it hard to believe he had known Elena no more than a year. He and Adam had found her near the Biscay coast last spring, ill and abandoned by the French soldier who was the latest in the series of protectors she had acquired after her husband was killed at Bussaco.

Fortunately, Adam's business with the
guerrillero
leader, Don Julian Sanchez, had taken some time and Hawkins had been able to nurse Elena. But as she recovered it became clear that she had no money and no place to go. Her family were from nearby Galicia, but her parents were dead and her brother, a
guerrillero,
had quarreled violently with her husband, who was an
afrancesado.
So when Adam and Hawkins moved south, Elena went with them. And when they returned to Lisbon for the winter, she accompanied them and moved into their lodgings. She had begun sharing Hawkins's bed some time before.

The trip to Acquera was the first time Hawkins had been separated from her. He hadn't realized how much he would miss her. Not just in bed, though he could not deny he'd ached for her. The devil, but he wanted her again already, though he still felt the comforting warmth of their previous lovemaking. But he'd missed more than Elena's supple body. He'd missed her laughter and her sudden bursts of temper and the sight of her conversing decorously with Dona Isabel one moment and bawling at the butcher about the outrageous price of meat the next. He'd missed knowing she would be there every night, familiar but never dull. It was something he'd known little of in his unsettled life.

His arm was beginning to go numb beneath the weight of her body. He moved it slightly. Elena opened her eyes and raised her head to look at him. Her eyes were brilliant in the moonlight. Hawkins threaded his fingers through her hair and took her face between his hands. But instead of pulling her down for a kiss, he said two simple words. "Marry me."

Elena stiffened. "What?" she asked, not in joy but in disbelief.

"I know," Hawkins said, smoothing the hair back from her face. "It's not the most poetic of proposals. But it's perfectly sincere, upon my honor."

Elena pulled away from him and sat up, clutching the rumpled quilt about her. "You want me to marry you."

"That's the general idea," Hawkins said, pushing himself up against the pillows.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. "Why?" Elena asked in a harsh voice. "Did Adam tell you I'm not fit to associate with Señora Rawley otherwise?"

"Of course not." Hawkins was shocked that she could think such a thing.

Elena leaned against one of the carved walnut bedposts, the quilt still wrapped tightly round her. "Why then?" she persisted.

The scene was not going at all as Hawkins had expected. But then Elena was always unpredictable. It was one of the things he loved about her. "Because I'd like to buy you a gold wedding band that matches your hair," he said, grinning. "Because Dona Isabel would be in her element planning a weding." He paused for a moment, then added, "Because after spending four weeks with young Emily, I've begun to think it might not be so bad to have children around on a permanent basis."

Elena had been watching him warily, but at his last words something flashed in her eyes, like the cold fire of a diamond catching the light. "You want me to have a baby?" she demanded.

"Well, I rather thought I'd help. Last I heard, it still took two."

"I might have known it," Elena said. "You're just like other men."

She made it sound as though there was nothing more vile she could say. Hawkins realized that somewhere he had bungled very badly. It seemed wiser not to speak. Experience had taught him that when Elena was in a temper it was best to let her have her say. He tugged up the sheet, for the night air was cold on his naked skin, and settled himself to wait.

"I suppose you expect me to be grateful." Elena's face was in shadow, but he could hear the outrage in her voice. "Why wouldn't I want to marry a man who goes off for two months and no sooner walks back in the door than he announces he's off to England—"

"You never said you minded I was going to England," Hawkins protested.

Elena lifted her chin. "You never asked."

"Hell, woman, that's never stopped you from speaking your mind before."

"And now you want me to marry you." She threw her hands up in a gesture of disgust, then clutched the quilt before it could slither down to her waist. "Why? So I'll have to spend the rest of my life waiting for you to come home? So you can leave me like my first husband did?"

"Enrique didn't leave you, Elena. He died."

"And you won't?"

"I wasn't planning on it," Hawkins said cheerfully.

"You say you want to have a baby. What would I do alone in a foreign country with a baby if something happened to you?"

"Nothing's going to—"

"You can't know that, Hawkins." The fire had gone out of Elena's eyes. Her voice was low and bitter. "We can't any of us know."

The look in her eyes spoke of the horrors she had seen. "Elena—" Hawkins said, reaching out a hand to her.

"No." Elena drew back against the bedpost. The pain was gone, replaced by defiance. "I like you, Hawkins," she said, tossing back her long hair. "But I like my freedom more. Go to England. I expect I'll still be here when you get back. If not, I'm sure you'll recover soon enough."

Hawkins felt a stab of sheer panic at the thought of losing her. "Damn it, Elena, I have to go to England. Adam may need my help."

"You needn't make excuses." Elena lay down on the far side of the bed, out of his reach. "It's not as if I'm your wife."

Caroline laid down her pen and eased the cover of her journal closed. She glanced across the room to see if the sound had disturbed Emily, but Emily was lying peacefully in the vast four-poster bed. Adam's bed. Caroline was in Adam's room, at Adam's writing desk. She ran her fingers over its smooth, worn surface, bare save for a pewter ink pot. Like the rest of the room it was neat and impersonal and yielded few clues about its owner.

When Adam had insisted on giving the room up to her and Emily, Caroline had hesitated to accept. To occupy Adam's room, even without Adam, seemed an intimacy more frightening than taking him into her body. Now, she felt a perverse frustration that she could find so little of him here. A comb and shaving things laid out on the dresser, a few books on a shelf against the wall. She recognized the collection of Shakespeare that was one of the few things Adam had inherited from his father. She and Adam had often pored over it together, acting out the various parts. For a moment Caroline was tempted to pick up one of the books and lose herself in the familiar words, but she was afraid of the memories they might evoke.

The furniture in the room, old and solid and worn, must belong to Dona Isabel's family. The trunks and boxes which now filled the room were Caroline's own, collected that afternoon from her former landlady. Caroline pushed back her hair, still damp from the delicious luxury of being washed. It had been odd to go back to her lodgings, to see the steep narrow stairs she had so often climbed, usually with Emily in her arms. She had left Lisbon a little over four months ago, but she felt as if years had passed.

Her glance fell on a heavy brass-bound trunk which had belonged to Jared. Their landlady, Senhora Vasquez, had asked after him this afternoon. Caroline had had to tell her about his death and to listen to condolences, all the time feeling a stab of guilt because she was not more of a grieving widow.

Looking away from the trunk, Caroline saw a stack of her old journals, neatly tied together with rope, leaning against the wall. The handsome tooled leather volumes from her days in London and the paste-board covered books she had bought in Lisbon. She touched the journal lying on the writing desk in front of her. It was a great relief to have it back again, to be able to put a pen to the thoughts and feelings which had been bottled up inside her for so many months.

Caroline was staring at the journals, thinking of what they contained and of the things which she had not dared write down, when she heard the sharp clear notes of a harpsichord from the sitting room.

The sound, like the tinkling of shattered glass, sent a chill through her, breaking the shell she had kept round her memories. It was a pure, shimmering Bach pavanne that she had heard often before: on rainy afternoons curled up on the widow seat in Adam's aunt's parlor, a cup of chocolate warm in her hands, while Adam scowled at the music rack or grinned in triumph at having mastered a particularly difficult bit; and in later years, when she had sat scribbling in a notebook and had looked up to find Adam staring at her in an odd, burning way that was a prelude to everything that had followed.

Without knowing she had moved, Caroline found herself pushing back the folding doors to the sitting room. She knew from the way Adam's shoulders tensed that he had heard her come into the room, but he went on playing, just as he would have done when they were children. The light from the candles in the wall sconce above him shone against the polished wood of the harpsichord and the white of his shirt. Caroline pulled the doors to and stayed where she was, listening. Each note seemed to reverberate through her with a sharp, almost painful intensity.

When the music came to an end, Adam was still for a moment. Then he lifted his hands from the keys and turned to look at her. Caroline was aware of her heartbeat, as clear and distinct as the sound of the harpsichord. "I'd forgotten," she said.

"What Bach sounds like?" Adam's tone was light, but the look in his eyes made the breath catch in her throat.