hands were at her skirts, bunching them up, ripping at them, clawing to reach beneath so that she could already feel his ragged fingernails raking the soft skin of her thighs. The others gathered closer to watch, smiling with lust, and cruelty and anticipation.
Josie’s hope weakened and began to wither, and just as it had almost died, she heard the French war cry, and knew that Dammartin had come.
Dammartin saw the ruffians gathered round, and he knew without seeing what they were watching. He signalled to his men, sending Molyneux and a trooper silently through the undergrowth to cover one side, and Lamont with a second trooper to the other. And even while they moved into place, he was priming his musket ready to fire.
He roared the war cry, the sound of it echoing throughout the hills and down across the ravine.
The bandits reacted with a start, some reaching for their weapons, the others trying to run.
He saw the flash of exploding gunpowder and the shots rang out, deafening in their volume. Three of the bandits were downed, but Dammartin was not focusing on them. He looked beyond to where the man was scrabbling up from a woman’s prostrate body, saw him snarl at her as he turned towards Dammartin, his hands raised in the air in submission.
‘Surrender! Surrender!’ the bandit shouted in garbled French.
Dammartin did not even pause in consideration. His finger squeezed against the trigger, and the man dropped to his knees, a neat, round, red hole in the middle of his forehead, his eyes wide and staring, before he crashed facedown to the ground.
When Dammartin looked again, Josephine Mallington was on her feet, clutching what was left of her bodice against her breasts, and standing over the bandit’s body. She was staring down at the gore the dripped from his head, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing with barely suppressed emotion.
‘Villain!’ she shouted, ‘Damnable blackguard!’ and delivered a kick to the dead man. ‘Rotten evil guttersnipe!’ Dropping to her knees, she lashed out, hitting again and again at the body. ‘Wretched, wretched brute!’
‘Mademoiselle,’ Dammartin said, and tried to guide her from the corpse, but she just pushed him away.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Leave me be!’ She struck out all the harder.
‘Josephine.’ Dammartin stayed her flailing arms, pulling her up, turning her in his encircling arms so that her face looked up to his.
And all of her anger seemed to just drop away, and in its place was devastation. Her eyes met his then, wide and haunted. Beneath the smears of dirt, her face was so pale as to be devoid of any colour, save for beginnings of bruises where a fist had struck, and the thin trickle of red blood that bled from the corner of her mouth.
‘He was going to…’
‘I know.’ Dammartin felt his outrage flare at the thought.
‘Like a rutting animal…’ And her voice was hoarse with distress and disgust. ‘Like a great, filthy beast.’
‘Josephine—’ he tried to calm her ‘—he is dead.’
‘And I am glad of it!’ she cried in her poor, broken voice, ‘So very glad! Me, a Christian woman, my father’s daughter.’ Her eyes squeezed shut and he thought that she would weep, but she did not. Her head bowed so that she stood, resting her forehead lightly against his chest. And he could not imagine the strength with which she held back her tears. Within his arms, he felt the rapidity of her breathing and the tremble that ran through her.
‘I prayed that you would come,’ she said so quietly that he had to strain to catch her words. ‘I prayed and prayed.’
Dammartin stroked a gentle hand against her hair, and held her to him. ‘You are safe now, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘safe, I promise.’
He stood for a few moments and the wind blew, and the sky grew darker, and he was overwhelmed with the need to protect her, to make all of her terrible hurt disappear. And then Molyneux moved, Lamont cleared his throat, and Dammartin forced himself to think straight.
‘Mademoiselle Mallington,’ he said softly, and stripping off his jacket, wrapped it around her. ‘We must return to the camp.’
She focused down at the ground. ‘Of course.’ There was nothing left of resistance, nothing of the fight she had so often given in the past.
He kept his arm around her waist, supporting her, as she walked by his side.
In silence and with grim expressions upon each of their faces, Dammartin and his men made their way back to their camp.
Dammartin sat her down on the chair at the table within his tent, speaking fast words of command over his shoulder, to Molyneux or Lamont, she supposed, but she did not look to see. She could not, for all that her eyes were open and staring. She was frozen, unable to move from beneath the terrible, heavy emptiness that weighed her down.
There was the trickle of water, a cloth being wrung out over a basin. The water was warm, his touch gentle, as he cleansed away the blood and the dirt, carefully wiping and dabbing and drying her face and hands, while his jacket hung warm and protective around her shoulders.
She looked at him then and there was nothing of bitterness in his eyes, only compassion.
‘I told him I was British,’ she said, and the words crawled like glass through the rawness of her throat. ‘And it made no difference, just as you said.’
‘Josephine,’ he said softly. ‘I should have guarded you better.’
She shook her head. ‘I was not escaping.’ It seemed important to make him understand and she did not know why. ‘I just wanted some time alone, some place where I might sit and think of all you had said…of my father.’
They sat in silence and the flicker of the lantern danced shadows upon the canvas walls. Outside all was quiet.
She felt the touch of his fingers, as light as a feather, against the bruising at her throat and the tenderness of her mouth.
‘He hurt you very badly, mademoiselle—for that I am sorry.’
And his gentleness and compassion almost overwhelmed her.
‘But you are safe now, I swear it.’
She looked deep into the darkness of his eyes, and saw a man who was resolute and strong and invincible, and she believed what he said.
The smallest of nods. And she sat there, dazed and battered and not knowing anything any more.
And when he unlaced her boots to ease them from her feet, and laid her down upon the bed beneath the blankets, she let him.
‘Do not leave me alone,’ she heard her lips murmur.
He gave a nod and returned to sit upon the chair. ‘I will be here all the night through. You can sleep safe.’
She could hear his breathing, the creak of the chair at his small movements, and every so often she opened her eyes just by the slightest to check that he was still there. Checking and checking until finally the blackness of sleep stole over her.
But
