Read Online Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page A

know very well, Captain, that when the commander in chief expresses a wish to speak with a person as soon as possible, he means yesterday or preferably the day before.”
    â€œI shall leave at first light tomorrow.” The captain grinned.
    â€œProbably not quite so early.” The staff officer frowned. “You are to escort the Marquesa das Minas. Do you know her? It is bound to slow you down to have a lady to escort, and his lordship wants you at Viseu without delay. But both orders come from him, so make your own interpretation.”
    Captain Blake stared blankly at the other man. “I am to escort the marquesa to Viseu?” he said.
“Into
danger and not out? But why me? Why would the Beau order such a thing? Have the Portuguese put some pressure on him to act nursemaid to all their grandest and most helpless ladies?”
    The staff officer shrugged. “It is not for me to ask why,” he said.“Just make sure you show your face within the week, Captain, and that the lady is safely delivered to Viseu. I have other errands to run.”
    Captain Blake stood alone in the room frowning after he had been left alone. What the devil? He was wanted at headquarters? Not at the front, where the Light Division was keeping watch along the line of the Coa? Was there some special job for him to do? His mood quickened at the possibility. He had been used for occasional reconnaissance or special-mission work over the years, both in India and in Portugal. His talent with languages was largely responsible. He had always been able to pick up a language easily, even as a boy when his mother had taught him French and Italian. He hated to be in a country and not know the language. And so after ten years of travel with the British armies, he was multilingual.
    More than once he had been offered a permanent position with Wellesley’s—now Lord Wellington’s—reconnaissance team, with those men who penetrated enemy territory and brought or sent back information about troop placements and movements. He had been tempted. The sheer excitement and danger involved had attracted him. But he belonged with his regiment. He was never so much at home as when he was leading his own rifle company in the skirmish line ahead of the infantry.
    But occasionally he enjoyed a special mission. He would especially welcome one now after months of pain and weakness and sheer boredom in a Lisbon hospital, far from the men whom he had come to think of almost as his own family. Perhaps his return to active duty was to be more exciting even than he had anticipated.
    But his frown deepened as he remembered his other order. At the request of Viscount Wellington he was to escort the Marquesa das Minas to Viseu. Just at a time when he had convinced himself that he would resist the temptation to attend her reception that evening. Just when he had hoped that he could leave and never have to see or think of her again.
    Jeanne Morisette. He could no longer feel any of the hurt andpain of the boy he had been almost eleven years before. It would be foolish to hate her because of cruel and heartless words she had spoken as a girl of fifteen. He did not hate her. But he had glimpsed again during his brief encounter with her at the ball the beauty and the charm and the something else he would not put a name to that drew men to her like bees to flowers. And he had sensed the tease in her that enabled her to keep all those men dangling and panting for just one smile or one mark of favor.
    And he had known that he could easily become one of those men if he did not watch himself. What more demeaning fate could there be in life than to become the lapdog of a beautiful and heartless tease?
    He would not do it. He would not see her again, he had decided.
    And of course there was the fact that she was French. He wondered if anyone knew. Lord Ravenhill had been able to tell him only that she had been married to the Marques das Minas, a courtier