He was twenty-three, a newly commissioned officer of the army. She was the daughter of Wellington’s assistant quartermaster general, and she had followed the drum all her life. The love that had flared between them was immediate, passionate and absolute. They became inseparable, rising at dawn to ride together through the city and the surrounding hills, before meeting again at noon to explore the many palaces, avenues and narrow backstreets of Portugal’s capital. They wandered the Bairro Alto, lingering together at the Chiado fruit market and marveling at the mosaics of Sao Roque. In the evenings, they ate at the Grotto down in the Largo Sao Paolo, before attending the opera at the Sao Carlos together. When the army moved on into the countryside, he had taught her to shoot both pistols and rifles. They danced a hundred dances together at the many impromptu balls the regiments gave in abandoned barns or peasant cottages. He had joined Tessa and her father for meals each evening, and brought them the game he and the other officers liked to hunt.
