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‘Or protect it.’
She laughed then because she could not help it. Once, she might have believed in the noble pursuits of soldiers. ‘Good or bad? There is a fine line between each, Capitán. People die here because of armies. Innocent people, and a land in winter has a limit on the succour it can manage to harvest before starvation settles in. In the north we have reached that limit. Another season of battle and there will be nothing left in Galicia save for the freedom to starve.’
She had not meant to say as much, to give a man as clever as the one before her the true slant of her opinion. But she had ceased many months ago to believe in the easy spoils of war or the glory in it.
‘Liberty and safety always come at a price, I’ll give you that.’ His eyes were threaded with weariness.
‘And today Adan and Manolo paid for it dearly. The French will come and then they will go because there is no way they can stay here and live and people like the Betancourts will be swallowed up by bitterness and hate until there is nothing left of them, either. That, Capitán, is the true cost of valour. No one ever wins. Not for ever. Not even for a little while.’
‘But is not simply accepting subjugation the true meaning of surrender?’ The planes on his cheeks held the light and his eyelashes were the darkest of blacks against the pale of his skin.
Once, she had thought the same, Alejandra conceded. Once, before her mother and her husband and friends had all been consigned to the afterlife she might have imagined resistance to be worth it, to be honourable, even, and right. But no more. Her heart had been lost to the other side of caring months and months ago, before Juan even, before he had betrayed her and her father for the heady lure of gold and power.
A mishmash of promises had left her grappling for even one honest hope for Spain. All she wished for was peace and a rest from the war and blood that surrounded them. The face of Adan surprised by his death came to mind and she turned it away, unable to bear the image. It could have so easily been her. Or Lucien Howard. It could have been them tonight lying stiff on the cold earth with the pine needles across their faces.
‘England is a soft country, Capitán, and far from battle. If I were a woman of Britain, I should never leave it.’
‘Come with me, then, when I go. You could be safe there.’
She was intrigued by his words. ‘A large promise, señor. Too large to believe in, I am afraid, and if it is a choice between battle here or homesickness there, then I think I should always choose the former.’
Unexpectedly he reached out and took her hand and she wished that her nails had been cleaner or her skin softer. Stupid foolish wishes here out in the mountains with the scent of Adan’s and Manolo’s blood between them and a hundred hard miles to go.
‘I appreciate that you are helping me to get home.’ His words were quiet and for the first time she could hear a hint of foreignness within them.
It had been so long since someone had touched her with gratitude and kindness that she was overcome with a kind of dizzying unbalance. For a second she wanted to wind her fingers into his strength and follow him to England. The absurdity of that thought made her pull away and place a good distance between them.
‘I would have done it for anyone.’ But she knew it was not true, that small dishonesty. Right from the first second of seeing Lucien Howard on the battlefield above A Coruña, his long pale hair pinked in blood, she had felt a...sameness, a connection. Unexplainable. Unsettling.
The edges of his lips turned up into humour as he pushed a length of hair away from his eyes.
He held his maps in the other hand with a careful deliberateness and scanned the trees behind. A noise had caught his attention, perhaps, or a bird frightened from its perch. They were too high up for any true danger and the nights without cover were cold. Already the snowdrifts could be seen and if it rained again the ice would form. His breath clouded with the condensation and she felt a momentary panic about exposure. If it darkened and they could not find shelter...
‘We have at least five hours before the night settles.’ She wondered how he did that, reading her mind without warning and taking the words she was about to say.
A guide, he had said, for General Moore. Penning maps and alone before the main body of the English army as it ran before the worst storm in decades across the Cantabrian Mountains. Even looking at him she could see he fitted into this landscape with an astounding ease and mastery; a chameleon, hurt and exhausted, but as dangerous as they came.
He had bent to lift a dried acorn now, peeling off the husks to let them blow in the breeze. ‘’Tis nor-nor-west. Another day and there will be heavier rain in it. Sleet, too, if the temperatures keep dropping. Do you know the way?’
Alejandra did not answer. If she got her bearings wrong, then they were both dead. There was very little civilisation between here and Pontevedra and already she was shaking.
Not all from cold, either, she thought to herself. Anger was a part of it, too, that she should allow her worry for this man to override sense.
She could easily slip into the forest around them and disappear, leaving him with his wits to follow and the pine needles and oak leaves to bed down in. But she saw the fever in his eyes even as he held her glance, daring her not to comment, and turned to stride out before her. The bloodstain across his shoulders had widened and every so often a drip of crimson lay on the earth and bracken as he walked.
Chapter Six (#ue0078acd-e382-54c6-bc04-14f077daa1e0)
An hour later Lucien knew he needed to stop, needed to lie down and reassemble his balance and his energy. His neck ached and the wound had reopened; the warmth of blood had held the cold at bay for a time until it could do so for no longer. Now he felt the shivers even across the soles of his feet.
‘We can camp here.’ Alejandra’s voice cut through his thoughts and he looked around. The clearing was undisturbed by civilisation, with a view wide down across the way they had just come. But most surprising of all was the tall tree tucked just before the overhang, the roots of it providing a shelter of sorts.
‘Like a house—’ she smiled ‘—with walls and a ceiling. I have used them before.’
‘An oak?’ The leaves and structure of the tree were not quite familiar.
She nodded. ‘Spanish sessile oak. Different from English oak, I think.’
Lucien put down his rucksack and sat against it. If he had been alone, he would have closed his eyes and tried to regroup, but he could see from the expression on her face that she was already worried by the tenuous nature of his health and he did not wish to add to her concerns. The hardness of the bark hurt and he leant forward a little. He needed to get his jacket off and some water on to the heat of the wound, but in the descending dusk and cold there would be little chance of such doctoring.
‘You are shivering.’
He simply looked up at her, unable to hide the reaction of his body further. It was finished, this pretence. He couldn’t have moved had his life depended on it, not even if a bunch of marauding partisans were to have charged at that moment through the trees.
‘Leave me and go home. You’d have a better chance of surviving if—’ She did not let him finish.
‘I didn’t take you for a quitter, Capitán.’
He smiled because that was what he might have said to her had the tables been turned.
‘Besides, you have been hurt before just as badly. I saw the scars on your body when we brought you from the battlefields of A Coruña and if you can survive once, you can do so twice, or a thousand times.’
Her words rattled him. Had it been her who had stripped off his ruined uniform after the battle? He’d been nude beneath the covers when he had awoken in the quiet room that first time, a bandage the only thing covering him.
‘Who undressed me?’
‘Oh, I forget that you English have such a large dollop of prudishness. War has changed things like that here.’ She was rummaging through her bag, so Lucien was unable to determine her expression, though he could hear the humour in her voice. ‘Take off both your shirt and jacket so I can see to you.’
He made no move whatsoever to do as she asked.
‘Salve,’ she explained as she found what she’d been searching for. ‘Constanza gave this to me before we left. She said if the wound bled again and you had a fever, I was to make certain to use it.’
For just one moment Lucien thought to simply ignore her and lie down, but the throb in his neck was making his temples ache badly and he knew slumber would be hard to come by in such a state.
Hating the way his fingers fumbled, he unbuttoned the heavy jacket and then the shirt, the fabric of the latter sticking to his skin. When he tugged harder the coppery smell of fresh blood filled the air around them and he thought for an instant he might be sick.
The cold was helping, though, the breath of the mountains soothing and smooth. When Alejandra walked behind and laid her fingers against his shoulder to draw the last piece of fabric away, he started.
‘It is off,’ she said after a moment, ‘and the bleeding has slowed.’ Drawing a picture with her forefinger on his skin, she gave him words, as well. ‘The cuts are deeper in the middle here than at each side and it is only those ones above your spine that have festered and still bleed.’
He’d been taken from the back. Lucien remembered the first pain as Guy had fallen.
Turning on his horse to fight, he’d drawn his sword quickly, but there had been too many and at too close a range. He had no true recollection of what had happened next save for a vague recall of place. The first true memory was on the field above A Coruña, waking to find Alejandra kneeling beside him and his steed’s heavy head across his abdomen.
She washed the injury with cool water and blotted the blood with something soft. The salve held the smell of garlic, lavender and camphor and was cooling. Then she gave him a cup with herbs infused in water taken from a glass container within her rucksack. Its lid was of red wax.
‘Stay still while I wrap your wound for protection.’ Careful hands went beneath his armpits and then met at the middle. Her breath at his nape was warm and soft and he clung to the touch of it as she pulled the bandage tight.
‘You are lucky this was not a few inches higher, Capitán. Nobody could survive a wound that severed the vein there and it was a near thing indeed.’
Close up the green in her eyes held other colours, brown, gold and yellow, and her lashes were long and dark. He had never had these sorts of conversations with a woman before, full of challenge and debate. He suddenly wished that they could sit here and simply talk for ever. The medicine, he supposed, the concoction of some drug that scattered his mind into foolishness and maudlin hope.
He stood unsteadily and put his clothes back on, watching as she arched up, her bag at her feet. A much more sizeable sack than the one he held, Lucien noted, angered by his weakness.
With her hat removed the long thick length of dark hair fell across one shoulder and down towards the curve of her waist. He glanced away. He would be gone in a matter of days and she would not be interested in his admiration. But the green eyes had held his with the sort of look that on any other woman might be deemed as flirtatious.
After a few moments she sat down opposite to him. When she gave him a strip of dried meat to chew he took it thankfully.
‘The rain has stopped, at least, but even in good weather it will take us two more days to reach the port town of Pontevedra. More if you become sicker.’ The impatience in her words told him she had little time for illness.
‘Will your father not wonder where you are?’
‘Papa has gone down to Betanzos for a week. I shall be home soon after, using the coastal route.’
‘A quicker option when I am not with you, holding you back?’
Frowning, she observed him more closely. ‘Are you very rich, Capitán Howard?’
Her question surprised him. Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo did not strike him as a woman who would be so much enchanted with the size of one’s purse.
‘Your query reminds me of the debutantes in the court of London who weigh up the fortune of each suitor before they choose the most wealthy.’
At that she smiled. ‘I was only wondering whether offering you up for a bounty would be more beneficial to our cause than the other option of sending you home. The rebel movement has a great deal of need for money.’
‘I have an ancient pile in Kent and a town house in London. Expensive in their own right, I suppose, but not ready cash, you understand, and all entailed. Other than that...’ He spread his hands out palm upwards.
‘You are penniless?’
He did not mean to, but he laughed and the sound echoed around the clearing. ‘Not quite, but certainly heading that way.’
‘In truth, you are blessed by such a state, then. My fortune was what led me into marriage in the first place.’ Her teeth pulled at the dry piece of meat. ‘Papa chose Juan for me as a husband because he was older and a man of means and power.’ Her words held a flat tone of indifference.
‘And what happened?’
‘I married him in the middle of winter and he was dead before the spring.’
‘Because he betrayed your father?’
‘And because he betrayed me.’
Her glance held his across the darkening space and Lucien saw all that was more usually hidden.
‘So El Vengador dealt with him and you made the marks in the limewash to record his death?’
She nodded. ‘I struck them off one by one by one. To remember what marriage was like.’
‘And never do it again?’
Tipping her chin, she faced him directly. ‘You may not believe this, but in my life men have liked me, Capitán. Many men. Even since Juan I have had offers of marriage and protection. And more.’
In the dusk he could so easily believe this, the deep dimples on her cheeks showing as shadow and her dark eyes flashing.
‘But they also know I am my father’s daughter and so they are wary.’
‘A lonely place to be, that? Caught in the middle.’
‘More so than you might imagine, Capitán.’
God. Such an admission would normally have sent his masculine urges into overdrive, but the sickness had weakened him and she knew it.
The moon had risen now, a quarter moon that held only a little light in the oncoming darkness. The noises of birdsong had dimmed, too, and it was as if they sat on top of a still and unmoving world, the tones of sepia and green and grey overwhelming. Far, far away north through the clouds and the mist would be the sea and England. Sitting here seemed like a very long way from home, though he felt better with the rest and the medicines, his strength returning in a surprising amount.
* * *
Lucien Howard was watching her closely and had been ever since leaving the hacienda, the roots of his hair in the rising night filled with the pale of moonlight.
If he had not been so sick, she might have simply moved forward and wrapped herself about him just to satisfy her curiosity about what he might truly feel like. Juan had been the sort of man who spoke first and thought about things later, but this army captain, this English earl, was different. Every single thing he said was measured by logic and observation and there was something in the careful cut-edged words he used that appealed.
‘Are you married?’ She had not meant to ask this so baldly and was glad when he smiled.
‘No?’ The small inflection he used lifted the word into question.
‘Have you ever been?’ She caught the quick shake of his head and breathed out.
‘You are wise, then. Marriage takes large pieces of one away.’ Alejandra was glad that he could not see her hands fisting at this confession. ‘With the wrong person it is both a trap and a horror.’
She’d never told anyone this. She wondered why she was speaking of it now out here in the silence of night. She frowned, thinking that she did know, of course. It was the residue of shame and wrath that still sat in her throat as a constant reminder of humiliation. And it was also because of Lucien Howard’s courage.
Her fingers found the cross she wore at her neck, the gold warming in her hands.
‘A few people seem to manage the state of holy matrimony quite well.’ He gave her this very quietly.
‘A fortuitous happenstance that in my experience is not often repeated.’
The deep rumble of his laughter was comforting. She wished she could build a fire to see him better but did not dare to risk the flame. Her stomach rumbled after eating the dried meat and she longed for heartier fare, especially now they would be traversing the high passes instead of the faster and easier coastal roads.
She saw him abruptly turn his head, tipping it to one side and listening as he pushed himself up. Then his knife was thrown, a single flash in the almost dark, the metal catching moonlight as it rifled across the space in the clearing to fall in a heavy thump.
He was back in a moment with a large rabbit skewered by steel, his eyes going to the dark empty space before them. ‘I will build a fire to cook it, but not here.’
Gathering dried sticks, he dug a hole in the ground a good ten yards away behind the trunk of the oak and bent to the task of finding flame.
Alejandra was astonished. She had never seen anyone kill prey with such ease. Even she, who was used to these woods and this clime, would not have aimed with such a precision through the dark. And now they would have a decent meal and warmth.
He was making her look like a woman without skill. Leaning forward, she took the rabbit and brought out her own blade, skinning it in a few deft swipes and laying it back down on a wide clean oak leaf that was browned but whole.
‘Thank you.’ His words as he threaded the carcass on a stick and balanced it across other branches he had fashioned into carriers. The flames danced around the fare, blackening the outer skin before dying down.
‘Will you be pleased to return home, Capitán?’
