“Colonel St. Simon, isn't it?”
He was startled from his morose reverie as he ducked into the first tent. A surgeon brandishing a butcher's knife looked up from the trestle table where a man lay strapped and unconscious, his right leg bared to the knee where jagged bone stuck through the skin.
“Yes.” Julian paused politely. He didn't think he knew the surgeon.
“Forgive me… I came across a most unusual young woman last night, said she was a friend… a close friend of yours.” The surgeon wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve. “She was most insistent I give her wounded my immediate attention, very persuasive with it. Said the Peer would know who she was. “
“La Violette,” Julian said almost to himself. “What exactly was she doing?”
“Bringing men in from the field on a magnificent white charger… never seen a horse like it.” The surgeon bent again to his patient, who had stirred and groaned. “Forgive me, he's coming round. I need to get this leg off before he does.”
Julian nodded and walked away, closing his ears to the scrunch of knife through bone. So Tamsyn had spent the night bringing in the wounded on that fidgety Cesar. Offering such aid didn't quite match with her outspoken hatred for all soldiers, but it didn't surprise him that she'd had some part in last night's ghastly proceedings; he was beginning to wonder why she hadn't been with Picton's men scaling the walls of the castle.
He'd learned much in the hour he'd spent with her in his tent. She'd talked in a low voice through her teats, but with perfect coherence. She'd told him of the horror of Pueblo de St. Pedro, and he'd had no difficulty imagining it. He too had seen such things.
But now Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon was troubled. La Violette had taken on different contours. He was beginning to see complexities where before he'd seen only the opportunistic, gloriously sensual brigand… one whose seductive wiles he must resist with every fiber. Now he saw a young woman left alone in the world by the horrific murder of her beloved parents. A young woman, who had lost all the framework of the only existence she'd known, cast upon a world at war to make her future as she could.
It was a disturbing picture, not least because beneath it he still saw the other Tamsyn. He still believed she'd been playing on Wellington's known susceptibilities with her pathetic story, and yet he knew in his bones that she had been manipulating no heartstrings in his tent when she'd painted the unvarnished picture for him.
He didn't know what to make of any of it. He stopped by a stretcher where a private from his brigade lay breathing raggedly through his mouth, his face smothered in bloodstained bandages.
“The surgeon says you'll be on your way to Lisbon in the morning, Carter,” Julian said. “Out of it for good.”
“I'll not be sorry, sir,” the swathed face said. “But I've lost me nose, sir. What'll the missus say?”
“She'll be glad to have you back with two legs and two arms,” Julian said, touching his shoulder and moving on, aware of how inadequate such reassurance was, and yet it was all he had.
Tamsyn, lying in a hip bath of steaming water in her room in Elvas, was trying to decide whether her emotional collapse had done her any good with Julian St. Simon. She hadn't planned it, but it had happened, and it just might be turned to good purpose.
The colonel had clearly been moved by her story.
He'd been gentle and comforting, ordering his servant to make tea when her tale was told and her tears had finally dried. He'd sat with his arm around her on the narrow cot, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. She'd been more grateful for his silence than anything else. It took a sensitive man to resist the temptation to wade in with clumsy words of comfort that would only trivialize her pain.
Later he'd walked her back to Elvas and left her at her lodgings.
Thoughtfully, Tamsyn soaped her legs, grimacing at the filthy scum forming on the surface of the water. She'd need a jug of clean water to wash off the soap.
As if in answer to the thought, Senhora Braganza came puffing up the stairs with a copper jug of fresh water. Tamsyn thanked her and stood up in the tub. The Senhora poured the hot stream over her hair and body, and Tamsyn shuddered with pleasure as the dirt flowed from her body.
Her own shirt and underclothes had been laundered by the senhora, but they were beginning to show serious signs of wear, and her britches were almost beyond help. She needed new clothes, and the shops in Elves were plentifully stocked, but she had no money until Gabriel returned. Of course, once Gabriel turned, she wouldn't need to buy clothes, since he'd be bringing all her possessions as well as the treasure-her inheritance from her father that had been well hidden from his murderers.
Perhaps Colonel St. Simon could be induced to make her a small loan. It would give her an excuse to go and search of him again.
She dressed in her threadbare garments. The senhora hadn't been able to get the bloodstains out of her britches, but they blended with all the other stains accumulated in the two weeks that she'd been wearing them. At least her skin and hair were clean.
Tamsyn examined herself in the spotted glass that served as a mirror. Not too bad, considering. She felt purged in some way; as if by exposing herself to the horrors of Badajos, she'd lanced a festering boil. And somewhere inside her lurked a warm flicker of pleasure and relief that Julian St. Simon had survived the horrors of the assault.
She sniffed hungrily at the rich aromas coming from the kitchen and ran downstairs.
The senhora had prepared a hearty soup of cabbage, potatoes, and spicy sausage and watched with satisfied nods as her lodger consumed two large bowls and several thick hunks of crusty bread. Then, feeling ready for anything, Tamsyn went to fetch Cesar and rode out to the encampment in search of the colonel.
But as it happened, while Tamsyn was in the encampment, the colonel was in Wellington's headquarters, obeying an urgent summons that had taken him from his hospital visiting back into Elvas.
It was clear to Julian that the commander in chief was in a strange mood. His satisfaction in his victory was tainted by the loss of so many thousands of his best men, and his ruthless decision to give the survivors the run of Badajos did little to comfort him for that loss. Like St. Simon, he believed that if he'd made an example of the garrison at Ciudad Rodrigo in January, the garrison at Badajos would have yielded in a timely fashion and spared both sides indescribable agony. But public opinion would not have supported the uncivilized slaughter of a surrendered garrison, though it would turn a blind eye to the hideous sack and rape of the now-defenseless town.
“Julian, this business of La Violette.” He came straight to the point as the colonel entered. “Have you thought any more about it?”
“There's hardly been time,” Julian pointed out. “But my answer must be the same, sir. I can't possibly agree to such a thing.”
Wellington frowned and began to pace the room, hands clasped at his back. “We need her information, Julian. I'm going to drive the French out of Spain this summer and march into France by autumn. I need to know about those passes, and I need to have more freedom of movement where the partisans are concerned. Violette can make that possible.”
“I don't deny it.” Julian was beginning to feel he had a desperate rear-guard action on his hands. “But I also believe she'll sell the information for something other than my soul,” he added caustically.