Viva Jacquelina! Read Free Page A

building in a place called Vimeiro, where I believe there is to be a battle. We are to catch up with him there.”
    â€œI hope you will be able to go with me, Richard?”
    â€œYes, I have been assigned to convey you to the great man and watch over your precious tail till we arrive. And, yes, I shall be allowed to introduce you to him, as it were. Lordship does have its privileges.”
    â€œAnd after that, my good and most protective lord?” I purr, lifting his arm to place it around my shoulders and snuggling a bit into his side.
    â€œAfter that, Cavalry Captain Allen, and the unruly pack of scoundrels he calls his men, will report to the Twentieth Light Dragoons, Seventh Brigade, to assist in bringing Napoleon’s minions to bay.”
    Looking out, I see Bailey, Captain Allen’s trusted top sergeant, trying to bring some order to the chaos on the dock below. He has his hand wrapped around the reins of a particularly recalcitrant beast.
    â€œAhoy, Sergeant!” I call out, giving him a merry wave. “And there’s Private MacDuff, too! Hello, Archie!”
    The two soldiers look up and knuckle their brows by way of salute. A bit ruefully, I suspect—my having peppered the whole of Richard’s troop of dragoons with rock salt shot from my cannons on the
Belle of the Golden West,
back there on the Mississippi, but I believe they have largely forgiven me for that.
    â€œI will hate to see you go, Richard,” I say, giving him the big eyes. “And I want you to be very careful. I have a feeling things are going to get very messy around here.”
    â€œThank you for your concern, Princess, but we must go where Fortune sends us, must we not, as it is the poor soldier’s lot. Ah, there’s your coach. Are you ready to go?”
    â€œAs soon as Higgins comes up with our stuff. Ah. Here he is now.”
    â€œThen let us be off, Princess,” says Lord Allen, offering his arm to lead me down the gangway. “And into the Peninsular War.”

Chapter 2
    How many of my poor teeth are still left firmly in my jaw after that bone-shaking journey from Lisbon to here, I do not know. Suffice to say, the Portuguese have a lot to learn in the way of road building. God, I so much wanted to be outside that cramped coach and on a good horse, riding and singing next to Richard Allen—or maybe just riding up behind him, double like, with my arms wrapped around his middle. But such was not to be, oh, no. Frail female had to be delivered in sturdy coach, military regulations and all, don’cha know; never mind her poor aching backbone.
    We rattle through miles and miles of dry, rocky, and scrubby land before we finally pull up before the big white stone building General Arthur Wellesley has taken for his headquarters here in Vimeiro, and we emerge from that wretched coach to stand in the sunlight and stretch. I put the knuckles of my right fist into the small of my back and grind it till things feel a little bit better back there. Give me a rolling, pitching, yawing ship thrashing about in gale-force winds and heavy seas any day of the week, I say.
    Anyway, we are here. Two red-coated soldiers stand guard outside the entrance of the building, together with a junior officer. They do not look at all welcoming.
    â€œI shall stand by, Miss, until given instructions as to where we will be quartered,” says Higgins, seeing to the removal of our baggage from the coach.
    â€œVery good, John. We shall soon find that out. Captain Allen?”
    Allen, having dismounted and given his horse off to Private MacDuff, strides to the door and announces, his hand on the hilt of his sword, “Captain Richard Allen to see General Wellesley.”
    The officer who stands by the door asks, “For what purpose, Sir?”
    â€œNone of your goddamn business, Sir. Announce us,” answers Lord Allen, frosting the man down to his boots with his patrician gaze, a gaze honed by