Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page B

fan.
    â€œAnother glass of champagne, if you please, Duncan,” she said. She turned to another of her admirers as the colonel hurried away to do her bidding. “You may dance the next set with me, Michael.”
    There was a chorus of protests from a half dozen male voices.
    â€œUnfair, Joana,” one young man said. “I made a point of being at the door in order to be the first to ask you.”
    â€œYou must wait your turn, William,” she said. “Michael had the forethought to call upon me this afternoon.”
    The protests receded to grumbles and reproachful glances at thewily lieutenant who had given himself an unfair advantage in a manner they all wished they had thought of.
    He would come, Joana thought. He had appeared unexpectedly reluctant, it was true, and she would wager on it that at that particular moment he was convinced that he would not come. But he would. She knew enough about men to have recognized that particular look in his eyes.
    He was not at all as she had expected, although she had been warned that he was a soldier rather than an officer—sometimes there was quite a distinction between the two terms, she knew. But even so she had expected a gentleman soldier, not a tough-looking man with a hard war- and weather-beaten face and very direct blue—startingly blue—eyes. He had seemed totally unconcerned by the near-shabbiness of his green jacket.
    And yet, she thought, tapping one foot in time to the music and allowing her mind to wander—as it frequently did—away from the shallow and somewhat foolish conversation flowing about her, gentlemen and soldiers aside, Captain Robert Blake had looked all man.
    She had not met many men in her life, she thought, although she was surrounded now, as she usually was when she was out in society, by males. Of course, there were Duarte and his band, but they were a different matter.
    She had had the feeling on her first close look at Captain Robert Blake that she had met him before. It would not have been surprising. She had met a large number of British officers before. But she would not have forgotten such a man, she thought. She would not have forgotten either the shabbiness of his appearance or the toughness of his face and figure. Or the battered attractiveness of his face. No, she had not met him before.
    She wafted a careless hand toward the colonel as he returned with her champagne. “You may hold it for me, if you please, Duncan,” she said, “while I dance with Michael.”
    â€œWhat?” he said. “Young Bristow has solicited your hand whenI was not here to argue, Joana? I shall call him out at dawn tomorrow.”
    â€œDuelists are forever banished from my presence,” she said carelessly, laying one gloved hand lightly along the lieutenant’s scarlet sleeve. “Have a care, do, Duncan.”
    â€œIt will be my pleasure and my privilege to hold your glass until you return,” Colonel Lord Wyman said, bowing elegantly without spilling a drop of the liquid.
    He had moved up from the ranks, she had learned since arriving in Lisbon. She had not been told that before. He must indeed be a brave man. Not many enlisted men ever became officers. It was fortunate that she had met him so easily without having to make any overt move to do so. She had been looking for green jackets for three days. There were not many in Lisbon, most of the riflemen being stationed with the rest of the Light Division on the Coa River close to the border between Spain and central Portugal, protecting the army from sudden attack and preventing the French from obtaining any information about what was happening in Portugal.
    It was fortunate that he had been at the ball. Her attention had been drawn first to the green jacket and then to the man inside it. He had looked an unlikely candidate at first. But perhaps not. A man with a facility with languages was not necessarily a thin, ascetic-looking