Free Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh

either, Joana thought. Perhaps all the men who worshiped her were more to blame. What challenge was there in worship? What pleasure was there to be derived from compliments that were always so constant and so lavish? What pride was there to be gained from accepting homage, always homage?
    Sometimes she longed for more. Her eyes glazed, and she gazed into the looking glass without seeing herself. What was it she longed for? Love? Love was for youth, for young persons who knew nothing of life. Love was for memory and bittersweet nostalgia. Love could not live on into adulthood, just as young lovers sometimes did not. And so she must make do with what remained—with homage that frequently bored her.
    She looked guiltily at her image. There must surely be thousands of women who would think heaven had come if they knew just one small fraction of the worship that the marquesa found tedious. But sometimes she longed for a man who would not treat her like a fragile doll, like an angel escaped from heaven.
    Perhaps Captain Robert Blake would prove to be such a man, she thought hopefully. Perhaps he would not succumb to her charms. Perhaps he would look on her with dislike and even contempt. Perhaps he would be totally indifferent to her despite that look that had been in his eyes at the count’s ball.
    Perhaps there would be some challenge in the days or perhaps weeks ahead while she was trapped in the disguise of the Marquesa das Minas.
    Joana turned away from the looking glass and descended the stairs to face her reception with a renewed spring in her step.

5

    H E came late. She had laughed and talked and drunk and eaten with her guests, outwardly as gay as she ever was in company. The level and quality of the noise about her assured her that her reception was a great success and would be talked about for days to come. And yet inside she seethed. How dare he be late! And perhaps after all he did not mean to come at all, but would merely arrive at some time the next morning expecting her to be standing in the gateway of her courtyard surrounded by her baggage, meekly awaiting his arrival and escort.
    How dare he! She was furious with him and tapped an artillery captain on the arm with her white fan and told him, smiling up at him from beneath lowered lashes, not to be impertinent. The man flushed and was pleased. It was so easy to please men.
    And then he was there, standing in the doorway of her salon, looking tall and uncomfortable and rather as if he were attending his own funeral. Even across the room she could see the shabby jacket, the hair even shorter than she remembered, the crooked nose, the scar slashing across it and one cheek. And she wondered why she had thought so much about him in the past two days. He was not a handsome man. Perhaps before war had taken its toll on his face he might have been, but no longer. But then, of course, he probably had not been such an overwhelmingly attractive man before his years as a soldier, either.
    The marquesa turned her head away before their eyes could meet and informed the amazed and delighted artillery captain that he might escort her to the tables and fill her plate for her. She smiledat him and set a white-gloved hand on his arm. Captain Robert Blake, she thought, might seek her out. She would not seek him.
    And yet when an hour had passed and he still stood close to the door, having spoken only briefly with a few of his brother officers, Joana was forced to find an excuse to be strolling past him on the arm of Colonel Lord Wyman and to notice him with a lifting of the eyebrows.
    â€œAh, Captain Blake,” she said, drawing the colonel to a halt. “You came. I am pleased.”
    He bowed his head to her curtly and she wondered if he knew anything at all about courtly manners. Probably not. He had risen from the ranks. Perhaps he had been a tradesman’s son in England or a vagabond or a prisoner. Perhaps he was from the slums of some city and had enlisted