WHERE PAST AND PRESENT MEET
Bella sat in the Lady Margaret Parlor with its surfeit of pink decor, staring absently out the terrace door and windows that looked out on the terrace. In front of her was the stone bench she’d sat on the night before, and where she’d found the gun. No blood stains remained on the flagstone surface of the terrace. The servants had cleansed the area of blood and blood stains early in the morning.
The tears she’d cried while running from Lord Candelstone’s room and down the stairs had dried on her cheeks. Her heart rate had resumed its steady beat. She sighed, her mind and memory back in Brussels in the days of Quatre Bras and Waterloo.
News of the tides of war changed hourly, as differing reports from the battlefields streamed in. She was with a group of diplomats of varying nationalities when the most cogent and believable report after Quatre Bras implied the French were winning. This belief lasted four hours or more. During this time, it became clear where true loyalties lay. Brussels women made French tri-color cockades and hung French flags from their homes. Some of the English who’d come to Brussels in Wellington’s tail rushed to sell, for as little as a tenth of their original cost, belongings they’d purchased a month prior for hundreds of pounds.
The injured of all nationalities streamed into the city. Homes, churches, shops opened to tend to the injured who, when questioned, could not give them a true idea of the war. Regardless, the Brussels residents cared for all. Bella had joined the women of Brussels in tending to the injured. It was from them she learned about tourniquets and wound compression as they worked to save as many soldiers as they could.
It was while working with these women that Vizconde Miguel Carrasco-Torres, the Spanish envoy, found her.
In society, in the days leading up to the battle, he’d proclaimed himself a British ally. Now he crowed with delight at what he foresaw as the impending French victory. But he was a superstitious man, always making the sign of the cross on himself when he spoke of a French victory.
As he considered it bad luck to be near the injured, Bella let him pull her away from her nursing so as not to upset the others working around her, or the injured soldiers with their own worries. He took her to his hotel and told her if she became his mistress, he promised to protect her. If not, he would proclaim, to the victorious French, she was a British intelligence agent.
Bella refused. She taunted him with the seesaw nature of the reports from the battlefront. He assured her Napoleon would persevere, as he was a brilliant man, probably the most brilliant man in the world that day. He would ultimately be the ruler of Europe, and England, too, he told her.
Bella saw the wild light in his eyes. They glistened with vitality and fanatic belief.
“Two years ago, I knew one day you would be mine!” he said, as he tied her hands behind her back around a bedpost.
Bella stopped struggling to stare at him. “What do you mean?”
He laughed, then shook his head pityingly. “You have no clue how Sir Harry died, do you?”
“They ambushed him. You were there, you brought his body back.”
“I killed him and our escort, then claimed an ambush. Gave myself a flesh wound to validate my participation. I was so bereft at the loss of my friend Sir Harry.” He shook his head soulfully.
“Now, see how kind a man I am to beautiful ladies?” he’d said. “I have not made your bindings tight. The rope is long enough you can lie on the end of the bed to await my return,” he told her, grinning.
Then he’d left her.
She’d tested her bindings. The knots were tight, but the length of rope between her hands was generous. She stood on the bed, then balanced on the footboard. She pulled her hands up behind her as far as she could. Her shoulders had screamed with pain. With her back pressed against the bedpost, she’d pushed herself up on her toes, but it wasn’t enough. She sobbed in frustration. She tried again, this time bringing her hands together closer to the bedpost.
She worked on throwing the loose length of rope over the post. She didn’t remember how many times she’d tried before she’d been successful. She lost her balance and fell forward on the floor. After that, it was easy to get her arms in front of her and worry the knots loose with her teeth. It was well dark before she was free.
What amazed her was the Vizconde hadn’t searched her for weapons. From an inner petticoat pocket, she pulled out a gun and the small box of powder, ball, and tinder. She loaded her gun, her hands shaking, her shoulders aching.
There were steps outside the room. She ducked to the other side of the room, from where a moment’s opportunity might let her run to escape.
When the door opened, Bella pointed her gun and fired, just as Harry had taught her.
She leaped over the man lying in the doorway and ran out the door and down the hall. She ran outside. People were everywhere. Wellington won, they were proclaiming!
She stumbled twice but kept running toward the canals and their docks. She begged for passage to Antwerp, for she knew from there she could get back to England.
And she had.
Could the assailant’s bullet that struck Lord Candelstone have been meant for her? And if actual harm was intended, why that small of a gun? Granted, a heart shot with a small caliber gun would have had the result of a larger caliber gun, but small guns with their short bores were notoriously finicky to aim.
How did Candelstone know she’d killed Carrasco-Torres? She laughed to herself. How could she ask that? Candelstone seemed to know everything. She wondered how long he’d known that the Vizconde had killed Harry? Interesting to consider, and in line with his crazy way of thinking, that he should ask her to get close to him.
She walked over to the door that led to the terrace. She reached for the door handle, but stopped. This door led directly to where Candelstone had been shot. She did not think she wanted to risk those memories flooding back to her, as her Brussels memories just had. She turned her back to the door and looked about the pink lady’s room. The pink should have felt overwhelming, but somehow it didn’t. She smiled.
Now that Aidan knew she had killed a man, she wondered what he thought of her? Would he hate her again? This time for a proper reason, not some artful lie?
She had missed him in the past three years. Once the hurt and anger and betrayal had slipped away, she found her old yearnings returning.
