Free Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh Page A

merely for the sake of survival—or a survival of sorts. Enlisting as a private soldier hardly brought an assurance of security with it. At all events, he could be no gentleman.
    And she smiled inwardly at his discomfort and wished she could add to it. She wished there were dancing so that she could lure him out onto the floor to reveal his awkwardness and his ignorance of the steps. And at the same time she marveled at the spitefulness of her own thoughts. What had the man done to her to make her want to humiliate him?
    Perhaps it was that he looked at her very directly with those blue eyes, which were not quite hostile but not quite friendly either. Or perhaps it was that she was ashamed of the fact that he stirred her senses as no man—certainly not Luis—had ever done before.
    She was ashamed of the fact that she found a man who had come up from the ranks—a nobody—sexually attractive.
    â€œDuncan.” She released the colonel’s arm and patted it. “I must leave you for a while. I have business to discuss with Captain Blake.”
    â€œBusiness, Joana?” The colonel looked from her to the rifleman in some surprise.
    â€œCaptain Blake has been assigned to escort me to Viseu,” she said. “We will be leaving tomorrow. Did I forget to tell you?”
    â€œTomorrow?” he said. “But you have been here less than a week, Joana.”
    â€œMy aunt is sick again,” she said with a sigh, “and has summoned me. It is tiresome, but she is my aunt, you know, and has been kind to me in the past.”
    The colonel looked as if he would cheerfully dump her aunt in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean if he could.
    â€œBut why Captain Blake?” he asked. “You know that you had but to say the word, Joana, and I would have arranged to take you myself.”
    â€œI know.” She patted his arm again. And she felt guilty at the knowledge that she was glad it would be the captain and not Duncan who would be escorting her to Viseu. Duncan was, after all, her ticket to heaven, her passport to a life in England. And she was fond of him. “But you have your duties here and Captain Blake is going to Viseu anyway. Besides, Arthur has arranged it all.”
    â€œWellington?” The colonel frowned.
    â€œAnd who is going to countermand his orders?” she said with a shrug. “It is all very tiresome, but I shall return as soon as I may—to Lisbon and to this room. Have some champagne waiting for me?”
    He bowed and looked with some hostility at Captain Blake, who had stood silently watching them the whole time.
    â€œCaptain? Shall we go somewhere quieter?” She might have swept past him, led the way to her private writing room. He would, of course, have followed, and would perhaps have been more comfortable to be treated almost like a servant. But she could not resist embarrassing him. She looked at him with slightly raised eyebrows, waited just long enough to see him stiffen with uncertainty, and then lifted her hand. “Your arm?”
    He raised it jerkily so that she might place her hand lightly along it. She was surprised by the rock hardness of his muscles, which she could feel even though she put little pressure on his sleeve. One might have expected them to be wasted by injury and longconvalescence and soft living. His sleeve, she noticed, was not quite frayed at the wrist.
    She led him to her writing room and closed the door behind her. She did not ring for a chaperone. Matilda would be angry with her but would know better than to scold too loudly or too long. The room opened into a small private courtyard, lit by an almost full moon. But the glass doors were closed, it being a chilly evening for late June.
    â€œI came to ask when you will be ready to leave in the morning, ma’am,” he said. Nothing about her convenience or doing himself the honor. No courtly bows or appreciative smiles. Only that look far back in his