Читать онлайн книгу «A Stranger at Castonbury» автора Amanda McCabe

A Stranger at Castonbury
Amanda McCabe
‘It’s hard to admit, but you’re not the son I once knew…’The obliterated battlefields of Spain are a world away from the privileged life of James Montague. Only nurse Catalina Moreno eases the deafening roar of mortar fire—and in a crumbling chapel by candlelight they make their vows. But before the sheets cool from their scorching wedding night Jamie has to leave on a brutally dangerous mission…Two years later, believing her husband dead, Catalina is shocked to see a man who looks and sounds like her Jamie at Castonbury—but where once there was warmth and charm, now unflinching torment lies in the gaze of the man she barely recognises…





Survival of the fittest is fine, so long as you’re the one on top … but the family that has everything is about to lose it all …
The Montagues have found themselves at the centre of the ton’s rumour mill, with lords and ladies alike claiming the family is not what it used to be.
The mysterious death of the heir to the Dukedom, and the arrival of an unknown woman claiming he fathered her son, is only the tip of the iceberg in a family where scandal upstairs and downstairs threatens the very foundations of their once powerful and revered dynasty …
August 2012
THE WICKED LORD MONTAGUE – Carole Mortimer
September 2012
THE HOUSEMAID’S SCANDALOUS SECRET – Helen Dickson
October 2012
THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES – Marguerite Kaye
November 2012
LADY OF SHAME – Ann Lethbridge
December 2012
THE ILLEGITIMATE MONTAGUE – Sarah Mallory
January 2013
UNBEFITTING A LADY – Bronwyn Scott
February 2013
REDEMPTION OF A FALLEN WOMAN – Joanna Fulford
March 2013
A STRANGER AT CASTONBURY – Amanda McCabe



Duke of Rothermere
Castonbury Park
Jamie,
After months of heartache and uncertainty, seeing you again still leaves a hole in my heart. It’s hard for me to admit, but you’re not the son I once knew and, whilst you bear a physical resemblance to Jamie Montague, I cannot be certain that you are really him. The pain and the darkness in your eyes is consuming you. I thought that learning what had happened would bring this family closure, but my biggest fear now is that your return to Castonbury Park will turn a contained scandal into one that’s rapidly getting out of control.
Father

About the Author
AMANDA McCABE wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA
, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook.Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com
Previous novels by the same author:
TO CATCH A ROGUE* (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) TO DECEIVE A DUKE* (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) TO KISS A COUNT* (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) A NOTORIOUS WOMAN + (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) A SINFUL ALLIANCE + (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY + (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) THE SHY DUCHESS THE TAMING OF THE ROGUE
And in Mills & Boon
HistoricalUndone!eBooks:
SHIPWRECKED AND SEDUCED + (#ulink_f777f595-d717-5677-b60e-65dc7736c5db) TO BED A LIBERTINE THE MAID’S LOVER TO COURT, CAPTURE AND CONQUER GIRL IN THE BEADED MASK UNLACING THE LADY IN WAITING ONE WICKED CHRISTMAS
* (#ulink_1507893f-ab81-51b5-9591-942d8a1adf48)The Chase Muses trilogy + (#ulink_1507893f-ab81-51b5-9591-942d8a1adf48) linked by character

AUTHOR Q&A
Apart from your own, which other heroine did you empathise with the most?
That is such a hard question! I was really fascinated by everyone else’s characters and the way they developed—both in their own stories and as characters in the series as a whole. I did really admire Phaedra in Unbefitting a Lady—she seemed like such a free spirit, determined to follow her own heart and passions wherever they would lead her. Plus, she was my hero’s favourite baby sister!
Which Montague do you think Mrs Stratton the housekeeper let get away with the most?
I loved Mrs Stratton! She almost seemed like a second mother to the Montague children, watching them grow up and showing them affection when their own parents could not. I think maybe she had a soft spot for my hero, Jamie—he was the oldest and the most solemn (even when he was a child!), and she might have felt just a bit sorry for him …
Which stately home inspired Castonbury Park and why?
We decided to take Kedleston Hall as our model for Castonbury. It’s a large, grand, built-to-impress house, unusual in many of its architectural features, and has extensive and beautiful grounds (with lots of places for secret romantic meetings!). There is a great deal of information and many images available and also several of the authors had visited, so it seemed like a good spot for our characters. (And in spirit it’s a lot like Downton Abbey, a place that has its own character.)
Where did you get the inspiration for Jamie and Catalina?
I love the idea of wartime romance—a whirlwind, passionate affair surrounded by danger and uncertainty—and when Jamie first came into my mind I could see him as a man who would be surprised to find love at such a time and would be even more passionate for that. I also love the country of Spain, its landscape and turbulent history, so I loved it when a Spanish heroine appeared who was perfect for him.
What are you researching for your forthcoming novel?
I am starting another Regency series, centred around a family at the centre of a small, almost Cranford-esque village! I can’t give away too much about it yet, but I am loving the characters and the trouble they can get into in such an unexpected place …
What would you most like to have been doing in Regency times?
I think I would have loved to be doing just what I do now—writing stories! I have always loved the image of Jane Austen devising her stories in the midst of a busy Regency house, finding inspiration in the people and environment around her. But probably I would be scrubbing pots in the scullery …

AUTHOR NOTE
When I was first asked to take part in this project I was so excited! I loved the one collaborative project I’d done before (The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor with Diane Gaston and Deb Marlowe) and this one was even more extensive and involved. I would get to try a new writing method, as well as work with authors I’ve admired for a long time. Also, I am a huge Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs fan! The challenge and fun of creating a similar world in the Regency—a family and a house caught up in the tides of enormous change and scandal—was too much to resist. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve found in writing to help build such a world.
I got the job of wrapping up the series with the last book: the tale of Jamie, Marquess of Hatherton, whose reappearance in his home after a mysterious absence of years throws Castonbury into chaos once again. I was worried about doing justice to the other characters, but I loved working with everyone else to bring their characters into my story and making them a part of Jamie’s tale. And I have to admit I adored Jamie! I have always had a weakness for dark, tormented, complicated heroes who carry secrets in their hearts and when I found out that one of his secrets was a lost love—well, I just felt for him all the more. I loved seeing him find his way back to his family and his home and discovering how his experiences in wartime had changed him.
I was very inspired by diaries and letters from the time of the Peninsula campaign, where many British soldiers found romance with Spanish ladies. It was a turbulent, passionate time and Catalina was very much a part of all that. She was also more than a match for Jamie! It was the hardest thing I’ve ever written to tear them apart—but that just made it more fun to bring them back together again at Castonbury …

A Stranger at Castonbury
Amanda McCabe



www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One
Spain, 1814
It was her wedding day. And it was utterly unlike she had ever imagined it.
Catalina Perez Moreno studied her reflection in the small, cracked looking glass as she tried to pin her long, thick dark hair into an elegant twist. The canvas tent was cramped and warm with the dusty evening air outside, filled with a small cot and a trunk, a table littered with nursing supplies. Beyond the dingy white fabric walls she could hear the sounds of a military camp, the shouts and laughter of the men, the rattle of sabres and horses’ tack, boots on the hard, dusty earth, the women singing as they cooked supper over the campfires.
No, this was nothing like her first wedding day, when her mother and aunts had dressed her in lace and silk before her father had walked her down the aisle of the grand cathedral in Seville to meet her bridegroom. A groom twenty years older than herself who she had met only twice before that day. That wedding day had been grand, momentous—and terrifying, disappointing.
This day was different in every way. Her first husband was dead now, as were her parents and brother, and the home she had once known in Seville was long gone thanks to the French invasion of her homeland. She had been alone for many months, using her nursing skills to help the armies trying to drive out those hated French. Alone—until she had looked across the camp one day and seen James Montague, Lord Hatherton.
‘Jamie,’ Catalina whispered, and then laughed at herself for the warm glow just saying his name created. She had met so many men in her work, moving from camp to camp, hospital to hospital. Men who were handsome and flirtatious, who made her smile, who danced with her, who told her tales of faraway England. But no one had ever made her feel like Jamie did, from that first moment.
He was tall and lean and so very handsome, like a knight from some medieval poem who fought dragons and won the fair hands of beautiful infantas. He had seemed not quite real. His dark, glossy hair, carelessly brushed back from his face, had gleamed in the bright sunlight, and beneath the light growth of beard on his jaw he had a chiselled, aristocratically elegant face. His uniform tunic had been unfastened to reveal the thin linen of his shirt, clinging to his muscled chest. He had been so beautiful.
But more than that, he had seemed so full of a burning, vibrant life. He’d thrown back his head to laugh at something another man had said to him, and his whole face had seemed lit from within by some vital, sun-bright force. Catalina had been mesmerised, the pile of laundry she’d been carrying falling to the dust. The whole crowded camp had seemed to vanish in that moment, and all she’d been able to see was him. All she’d wanted to do was fall into his laughter, his life.
Then suddenly he had looked right at her, his piercing, pale grey eyes so vivid. His laughter had faded, and she’d felt like such a fool to be caught staring like that. She was a widow, a nurse who had seen so much of the ugly side of life, not a virginal schoolgirl to gape and blush at a handsome man. She had grabbed up the laundry and spun around to run away.
She hadn’t got far when she’d felt a hand on her arm, warm and hard through her thin sleeve, and even without turning around she had known it was him. And when he had spoken to her in Spanish, smiled at her, she had been utterly lost.
That was a month ago now. And tonight she would marry him.
Catalina pushed another pin into the heavy strands of her hair, as if that could drive away the imagined sound of her mother’s disapproving voice. Catalina Maria Isabella, what are you thinking to marry a man you know so little of! An Englishman too. It is a disgrace. His family will never accept you, just as we could never accept him….
And Catalina knew all too well how right her mother would be. Jamie was the Marquis of Hatherton, heir to the Duke of Rothermere, and she was a Spanish lady of an old family name but no money since the arrival of the French. No home at all either, since her brother had died defending his liberal politics against the king. They were marrying in secret now so he would be able to prepare his family properly once they returned to England after the war. She knew little of Jamie beyond stolen kisses on walks along the river, whispered conversations beside campfires in the darkness.
But she knew things now her mother had never had to face. She had seen blood and death and destruction. She knew how quickly life, precious time, could flee. And she knew how Jamie made her feel. As if he had every beautiful thing of life in his strong hands. And that was why she had so eagerly said yes when he’d asked her to marry him on one of those sun-dappled walks. Because to her, Jamie Montague was life. He was … everything.
‘You are doing the right thing,’ she told herself. Her reflection stared back at her, her wide, uncertain brown eyes, the sun freckles splashed over her nose. As she pushed in the last pin, the sapphire ring on her finger caught the dying sunlight. Jamie’s mother’s ring, which he had slid onto her finger when he had asked her to marry him, sparkled. It was an oval sapphire, inscribed inside the gold band with the motto of the Montagues—Validus Superstes.
This was the right thing. She was seizing her happiness while she could.
Catalina stepped back and smoothed the skirt of her simple white muslin gown. She picked up the white lace mantilla from her trunk and swept it over her hair. She was marrying far from home, with none of her family, but she would go to Jamie looking as much like a proper Spanish bride as she could.
This was their time, and she would seize it with both hands. She would hold on to it for as long as she could.
She heard the sound of booted footsteps on the hard-packed dirt outside. ‘Catalina,’ Jamie called quietly. ‘Are you ready?’
Catalina’s heart leapt, and she felt that warm rush of excitement through her that always came when he was near. She caught up her prayer book and answered, ‘Sí, mi amor—I am ready.’
Jamie pushed back the flap of the tent and stepped inside. The sunset outside limned him in a fiery red-orange glow. For an instant, Catalina’s eyes were dazzled and she could barely see him. He seemed very far away, as if he stood poised on the edge of another world, one where she could not follow. As if he would fall back into some dark chasm and be lost to her even as she desperately reached out for him.
Don’t be so dramatic, she told herself sternly. She had once had a nursemaid who was full of old superstitions and would warn Catalina of all the things that could bring bad fortune at weddings—not crying before the nuptial kiss, forgetting to wear a lump of sugar in the bridal glove, all of which would cause a lifetime of misery. She had terrified Catalina so much that she had feared to make any move at all, until her mother had dismissed the nurse and scoffed at such warnings.
Catalina hadn’t thought of such things in years, but today felt so very strange with that blood-red sunset and her heart about to burst. She couldn’t help but fear that her feelings for Jamie were too much.
Jamie let the tent flap drop behind him. Without that fiery light surrounding him, Catalina saw that he was only a man, of real flesh and blood.
Not a god or a spirit who would vanish when she touched him. But still she couldn’t quite breathe when she looked at him. She couldn’t even move. She could only gaze at him and marvel that he was here with her.
He wore his dress uniform, the buttons bright and shimmering against the fine red cloth, his boots polished to a high gloss. His hair, still damp from a washing, waved back from his face, revealing the sculpted angles of his features. She had seldom seen him looking so grand, not amid the rough and tumble of a camp constantly on the move. He looked every inch the fine English nobleman.
Except for his eyes. They were such a light, piercing blue-grey in the shadows and seemed to devour her as he looked at her.
‘Catalina,’ he said, and his usually velvet-smooth, deep voice was rough. ‘How beautiful you are.’
Catalina made herself laugh, even as those simple words made her want to cry. She knew she was not beautiful. She was tall and thin, her skin tanned by the sun, her hands roughened by her nursing work. But when Jamie said it, when he looked at her that way—she could almost believe it. She could almost believe she was worthy of him. Just for tonight.
‘No, Catalina,’ Jamie said. Suddenly he was beside her, taking her hands in his. His touch was warm and strong on her, turning her to face him. ‘I can see what you’re thinking. You are beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I knew that from the first moment I saw you.’
‘Oh, Jamie.’ Catalina raised their joined hands and pressed a soft kiss to the back of his sun-browned fingers. Like hers, his hands were scraped and scarred from their lives in camp. There was a thin line of white encircling his smallest finger, the mark of his family’s gold signet ring, which he had lost. But his hands were long and elegant, as aristocratic as the rest of him.
‘I felt I knew you from that first moment as well,’ she said. ‘As if I had always known you. How can that be?’
‘Because we were meant to find each other,’ he answered. He twined his fingers with hers and held her hands against his chest. Beneath the fine red wool, she could feel the rhythm of his heart, steady and reassuring. Precious.
‘My family didn’t want me to come here,’ he said. ‘And they were quite right to say I have duties at home, that I shouldn’t go off searching for adventure. But something told me I had to go, that I couldn’t stay still. Not yet.’
Catalina laughed, for it was that very spirit, that energy and life, that drew her to him. ‘It is true, Jamie. You are a restless spirit. I never see you still for a moment.’
‘Only when I’m with you,’ he said. Catalina looked up into his eyes and saw how very serious he was in that instant. ‘When I’m with you, I feel peace like I’ve never known before. This is a terrible place we’re in, Catalina, full of death and treachery. But with you … I see none of it any more. I only see your goodness. I don’t want to wander or seek when I’m with you. I wish …’ His voice broke off and he shook his head, as if words vanished.
‘I know,’ Catalina said. Her throat ached as if she would cry, sob with all the happiness and fear that was trapped inside of her. ‘Oh, Jamie, I know. If we could only stay like this, have it always be like this moment …’
Jamie pressed a soft kiss to her wrist, just where her pulse beat. ‘But the chaplain waits for us.’
‘We don’t have to go, you know,’ Catalina said as she thought of his words about his family—they had not wanted him to come here, and quite rightly so. What would they say if he returned to them with her? ‘We don’t have to marry to be together as we are now.’
‘Don’t have to marry?’ Jamie’s eyes narrowed and his hands tightened on hers, as if he thought she might fly away from him. ‘Catalina, don’t you see? I’ve finally found you. I don’t want you just for a day or an hour. I want you always. I can’t let you go.’
‘Oh, Jamie.’ She felt the hot tears well up in her eyes and she couldn’t hold them back any longer. They fell onto her cheeks and she shook her head. ‘I want you for always too. I never thought such a thing was possible. But it … frightens me.’
His hands held her even closer. ‘I frighten you?’
‘No, never you. But the way I feel, it will surely explode inside me. I feel like I’ll burst with it when I look at you. Such things can’t last.’
‘Then we need to hold on to it when we find it.’ Jamie’s arms came around her and he pulled her against him. ‘This is life, Catalina, and it’s ours right now. Please don’t send me away. Please be my wife. Once this war is over and we can return to England, I vow I will spend the rest of my life making you happy.’
To be his wife—it was all she could want. But still she wanted to cry and she didn’t even know why. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tightly. She breathed deeply of his citrus-sharp cologne, of that smell that was only Jamie, and she knew she would always remember it. That it would always remind her of this one night when he was hers.
‘If you are sure,’ she whispered, ‘then I will marry you.’
He pressed a kiss to her brow, and she felt the curve of his lips against her as he smiled. ‘Then let’s go to the church.’
Catalina nodded, and Jamie took her hand to lead her from the tent. The sun had sunk low to the horizon and was just a thin line of glowing red-orange along the edge of the dusky purple sky. The camp was settling down for the night. Only a few people still moved about between the rows of tents, women stirring pots over the fires, men cleaning their weapons and talking together quietly.
Later, when the ale and wine had been flowing, more people would come out to laugh and play music, dance, tell ribald jokes or grow melancholy about faraway homes. But for now everything was calm, and there was no one to pay attention to Catalina and Jamie as they made their way along the roadway.
Catalina caught a glimpse of two people walking in the opposite direction, laughing and chattering. She recognised Mrs Chambers, wife of Colonel Chambers. As usual the lady was rather elaborately dressed for camp life, in a blue silk gown trimmed with blond lace and silk roses, her hair piled in curls atop her head. She was laughing with the red-haired man who walked beside her, Hugh Webster, a man Catalina did not much care for. His eyes were always too cold, too speculative, when he looked at her, and she avoided him whenever she could.
Behind them scurried Mrs Chambers’s companion, Alicia Walters. Unlike her employer, Alicia was simply dressed, her pale golden hair pinned up in a tight knot. She always seemed so quiet, so intent on fading into the shadows, but Catalina rather liked her on the rare occasions they’d met. Alicia was polite and refined, kind.
Alicia glanced at Catalina now and gave a quick nod before she looked away. Catalina noticed that Alicia’s gaze slid over Jamie and she blushed.
But Catalina had no time to think about anyone else. Jamie’s hand closed tight on hers and he led her beyond the edge of the camp, where the horses and carts were kept for the night. The dying sunlight and the flicker of the torches from the middle of camp lit their way along the narrow, rutted path that led to a small, half-abandoned village.
The biggest structure in the darkened town was the chapel, set apart by itself at the end of the lane. Its white stone walls glowed in the shadows like a welcoming beacon, and tonight candlelight shone through the narrow stained-glass windows. Shards of bright red, yellow, green and the vivid blue of the Virgin’s robes were cast down onto the ground. The doors stood open as if in welcome for this strange wedding.
Catalina suddenly hesitated. Part of her longed to run forward into that church and throw herself into the future, whatever it held. But there was a part of her, buried deep down inside, that whispered to her to turn back. That warned her.
Jamie’s hand on hers, so warm and strong, held her where she was. No matter what waited beyond that threshold, she was no longer alone. She had someone beside her who was willing to leap forward into the chasm with her.
Hand in hand, they climbed the stone steps and made their way into the church. Catalina sometimes went there at quiet moments, to pray for the souls of her family or just to think, away from the crowds and constant clamour of camp. Tonight it looked like a completely different place. Dozens of candles were lit along the carved white altar and beneath the windows, making the small space into a glowing, mysterious fairyland. Bunches of wildflowers splashed their colours into the dusty gloom. Before the altar waited the regiment’s chaplain and two of Jamie’s fellow officers as well as a Spanish laundress to be witnesses.
Catalina feared she might start to cry yet again. She had gone for so many months being strong, living with what fate had dealt her, stepping carefully from one day to the next. And now she had cried so many times in one day! Her wedding day—the day that should have no tears at all.
She turned to Jamie, and found him smiling down at her. ‘You did this?’ she whispered.
His smile widened. ‘I did. I gathered every candle and every flower I could find. I scoured the countryside for them. Do you like it?’
‘Of course I like it! But … why? When did you have time?’
‘Because I can’t give you what you truly deserve, Catalina,’ he answered. ‘A fine wedding at the Castonbury church with all my family to see. A satin gown, a cake, a carriage covered with flowers. But I wanted to make this place beautiful for you. A place we can always remember.’
Holding on to his hand, Catalina glanced around the transformed church again. She knew she would never, ever forget the way it looked, in this one still, perfect moment. She would never forget the man beside her and how he felt holding her hand.
‘I can’t imagine any place more beautiful,’ she said softly.
‘Then shall we get married?’ Jamie said with a teasing lilt to his voice. Catalina was glad to hear it—he was so very serious too often.
She smiled up at him and nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Let’s do that. We can’t let this beautiful church go to waste.’
And they walked together to the altar and held hands as they said the vows that would bind them together for ever. Or for as long as they lived in such dangerous days.

Chapter Two
Catalina felt it before she saw it, the slight tremble of the earth under their feet as they walked back from the church. Then a fork of sizzling, blue-white lightning split the dark sky above their heads. A rolling rumble of thunder followed, ending in a deafening drumbeat.
‘I think the days of drought might be over,’ she said. She tipped her head back to peer up at the sky from beneath the lace pattern of her mantilla. The stars and moon that had just begun to peek out as they walked to the church were now hidden beneath drifts of charcoal-grey clouds.
‘Just in time for us to move out,’ Jamie’s friend said wryly. ‘Nothing like moving camp in the middle of a rainstorm.’
‘Moving camp?’ Catalina glanced over at Jamie. She had heard nothing of any plans to move out. Where were they going now? Could she even follow him there, her new husband, or were they to be parted already?
Jamie gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand. ‘We have no orders yet. We have to make the push to Toulouse soon, but there is nothing definite.’
Catalina nodded, but inside she felt that cold touch of disquiet. Her life in the past few months had been nothing but moving, going wherever her nursing skills were needed, wherever she had to be in this strange new life. But she didn’t want to be away from Jamie yet.
Not yet.
When they made their way into camp amid the rumble of thunder, it looked to be the usual sort of evening. Men sitting around the fires and outside their tents, talking, laughing, playing cards, passing the long hours. Sometimes Colonel Chambers would host a dinner party or there would be dancing, but tonight everyone seemed to be in a quieter mood. Catalina could hear the strains of some sad ballad in the distance, and it added to the melancholy mood of the approaching storm.
As they passed by the largest tent, the one used for dining and officers’ meetings, Chambers stepped outside and called to Jamie.
‘Hatherton,’ he said. ‘May I speak with you for a moment?’
The man was usually all blustery good humour, not as vivacious as his wife but friendly and cheerful, handsome in his pale English way. But tonight he seemed unusually sombre, and that touch of disquiet inside Catalina grew like an icicle, freezing her heart.
‘Certainly, Colonel Chambers,’ Jamie answered. He kissed Catalina’s hand and said quietly, ‘I will meet you at my tent as soon as I can—Lady Hatherton.’
Lady Hatherton—how strange it sounded. How foreign. Could it ever truly belong to her? Would it ever feel like it was hers? Yet Jamie’s grey eyes warmed her, reassured her, and she smiled at him. No matter how strange his English title sounded, he was just Jamie, and that was the important thing. The only thing.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You must attend to your business. I will wait for you there.’
As Catalina left Jamie, she caught a glimpse of a flutter of pale fabric beside the tent. She looked up and saw that it was Alicia Walters. The woman hovered beside the canvas wall, and Catalina was shocked to see the streak of tears on her cheeks before she spun around and hurried away.
Catalina glanced back at the closed flap of the tent. It opened a crack, just enough for her to see most of the regiment’s officers gathered around a table scattered with maps. For an instant she considered running after Alicia and making the woman tell what she knew, but Alicia had vanished into the night.
Catalina quickly made her way to Jamie’s tent, which was set almost to the edge of the camp. It was quiet there, darker, almost as if they had a space all to themselves. It was also larger than hers, she saw as she stepped inside. The bed was more spacious, and there was a table piled with locked document cases and ringed with folding camp stools. He had decorated it much like the church, with candles and bouquets of flowers that made the dusty, warm air smell sweet and disguised the harsh, masculine military lines of the room.
The sheets on the bed were crisp and clean, turned back to reveal flower petals scattered across it in a bright pattern. It made Catalina smile and shiver at the same time to see it, to imagine lying with Jamie there as the flowers clung to their bare skin.
She turned away from the bed and went to the shaving stand. Jamie’s combs and brushes were neatly arrayed there, along with a small pastel portrait of two girls she knew were his sisters, Kate and Phaedra. Their blue-grey eyes, so like Jamie’s, gleamed with laughter and mischief as they looked out from the frame. She knew Jamie had other siblings and a father, the duke, still living in England, but this was the only personal memento in the tent.
Catalina unpinned her mantilla and carefully folded it before she pulled the combs from her hair and let the heavy, dark mass fall over her shoulders. The thunder was louder now, a steady roar too much like cannon fire, and she could hear the first beats of raindrops against the canvas.
She folded back the flap and peered out into the night. In the distance she could see the lights from the large tent where Jamie was, but then a flash of sparkling lightning split the darkness and for a second she was blinded. She closed her eyes against the light and shivered.
It was a strange night, almost unreal. She could scarcely believe what she had just done. She had married Jamie, and now she was waiting for him, her husband. The darkness, the storm, the shivering anticipation of what was coming, seemed to enclose her in a dream. The whole world had gone mad around her—why should she not be mad too?
Catalina let her head fall back as she listened to the rain batter against the tent and the earth outside, as she inhaled the sweet musky scent of the storm. The rain fell in earnest now, a true storm, and inside her chest her heart seemed to pound louder than the thunder. She turned away from the rain and let the flap fall closed. The sound was muffled now, and she felt almost as if she was enclosed in a cave alone, away from the real world. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and the scent of clean, sun-warmed sheets and flowers rose around her.
She smiled, and then laughed aloud. Mad indeed. She fell back into the soft pillows and let the rain and the night surround her. She had a flashing memory of her first wedding night, which had been in a grand, carved bed hung with velvet curtains and spread with silk sheets. A bed that had been in her husband’s family since the 1500s, laden with tradition and expectations.
She had been a scared girl then, shy and obedient, and her husband had done nothing to soothe her fears. When he died, she had thought she would never marry again, never be bound to someone like that. And when her brother died, she ran away from Seville to be a nurse, and the feeling of freedom was wondrous despite the dangers. She had never wanted to give that up.
Until Jamie. He had changed everything.
Catalina rolled onto her side and hugged Jamie’s pillow to her. She had never met anyone like him before, so intriguing, so full of life. He made her behave in ways she could never have imagined, ways that were wild and impulsive. He made her feel alive, and she would revel in that for every moment she could.
She held on to the pillow and fancied its linen folds still smelled of Jamie. The patter of the rain lulled her into a half waking, half asleep dream state.
Suddenly she heard a soft rustling sound, as if a cloth was being shifted. The bed moved as someone sat down beside her and a hand gently touched her hip through the thin linen of her chemise.
She started to turn over, but Jamie whispered, ‘Shh. I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘I was waiting for you,’ she said.
He eased her hair away from the side of her neck and she felt his kiss on the soft skin just below her ear. She shivered at the delicious sensation of it, and his lips slid down her neck to caress her shoulder. His hand moved along her body, and she could feel the hunger in his touch. A hunger that echoed her own.
She rolled over to wrap her arms around him and pull him up against her. Their mouths met in a kiss full of desperate desire. She needed him so much, and she wanted him to need her too. Wanted only the two of them in their own small world for just a little while longer.
She felt his hands close hard around her waist and he turned in one quick movement so that she lay on top of him. His tongue traced the curve of her lower lip, lightly, teasingly, before he slid deep inside.
Desire gathered around her like a blurry, heated cloud, and she felt his hand on her backside, dragging her tight against him. She arched her hips into his hard erection and spread her legs wider over him.
He groaned hoarsely, and their kiss slid into wild, frantic need. He had already removed his coat, and she tore at the lacings of his shirt until she could touch his bare skin. She pressed her palms to his chest, revelling in the hot, smooth feeling of his skin over those lean muscles. His breath, his heartbeat, his strength—how she loved all of it.
‘Catalina,’ he whispered. ‘Please, I need you. I need to see you.’
Catalina sat up, her knees braced to either side of his hips. He watched her with burning bright grey eyes as she untied the ribbon at the neck of her chemise. She drew it up over her head and let it fall away.
‘I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you,’ he said.
‘No,’ she argued. ‘Nothing is as beautiful as you.’ She traced her fingertips over the bare skin of his chest. Lightly, she touched the sharp curve of his hip, the line of his lean thigh—the hard heat of his manhood through his breeches.
‘Catalina,’ he growled. In one swift movement, he knelt before her. His hands at her waist dragged her tight against him until not a single breath could come between them.
He kissed her fiercely, and she felt his touch on her naked breast. His roughened palm slid beneath it to cradle its weight, and his long fingers teased at her hardened nipple, a soft, fleeting caress. He teased her until she moaned and arched her back to press herself against him. He finally gave her what she longed for, rolling the sensitive nipple hard between his fingers.
Her desire burned even higher at his touch. She held tightly to his shoulders, digging her fingers deep into his skin to hold him with her. He slid down her body until his mouth closed over her nipple, sucking deeply.
Catalina’s head fell back weakly as she cried out incoherent Spanish words, begging for yet more of him. He seemed hungry for her too. His open mouth trailed along her skin to her stomach, his tongue circling her navel as his hand curled hard around the back of her thigh and tugged her closer to him. He pressed a kiss softly to the inside of her leg and one finger eased along the seam of her womanhood and slid inside of her.
‘Jamie,’ she panted. Her eyes closed tightly as she concentrated on every touch. Suddenly she felt his tongue touch her there. ‘Jamie, no!’
‘Shh, let me,’ he whispered, and she gave herself over to what he did to her, what he made her feel. He tasted her so deeply she could have no secrets from him. Waves of burning pleasure washed over her and she fell down into them. She drove her fingers into his hair and held him to her—she wanted more and more, she wanted all of him.
Her climax took hold of her, low at her very core, a building, burning pressure. She let it expand over her whole body until every coherent thought vanished and there was only feeling. Only him. As he thrust his tongue deep within her one more time she exploded.
‘Jamie,’ she breathed as she sank down to the bed, her legs spread as he knelt between them. He stared down at her, his grey eyes so dark they seemed almost black, his chest heaving with the force of his breath.
Catalina reached out to unfasten his breeches and push them away from his hips. He was hard with his own unfulfilled desire, velvet over hot iron, beckoning for her touch and she gave in to the temptation. She ran her hand slowly up his length and down again and he trembled at her caress. His erection strained against her hand, yet he held very, very still.
‘Catalina,’ he whispered harshly.
She sat up and pushed him down in her place so she could strip away his breeches and see the beauty of his naked body at last. The light from the fires through the canvas walls of the tent turned his skin to gold, and she touched every inch of him, wondering that he could be her husband.
‘Catalina, I can’t bear this much longer,’ he said as he reached up to caress her hair. She bent her head to kiss his shoulder, to bite lightly at his flat brown nipple. Suddenly he seized her by the hips and rolled her down to the bed as he rose up above her. He buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, kissing her skin as she wrapped her arms around him and laughed out of sheer happiness.
‘Do you want me, Catalina?’ he whispered. ‘Do you want me inside you?’
‘Yes,’ she cried. She opened herself to him and he slid deeply into her, home at last. She wrapped her legs around him and closed her eyes as she felt him with her.
He drew back only to drive forward again and again, a delicious friction rough and hot inside of her. She listened to the harsh, uneven rhythm of his breath as they moved together, seeking their pleasure. He was part of her now, but she wanted everything he could give—and she wanted to give him everything in return.
Faster and faster they moved, their cries mingling. She rose up and caught his lips with hers as she felt her climax build again. She cried out at the sudden release, a shower of white and glowing blue sparks that seemed to fall over her. His back tightened under her touch, and he arched back as he shouted out her name.
He fell heavily to the bed beside her, facedown as he trembled. Catalina was shaking too, exhausted and exalted by the pleasure of their lovemaking.
By the sheer joy of being with Jamie. She opened her eyes to stare up at the canvas ceiling above them, breathing slowly and deeply until she could float back down to earth again. She smiled, feeling so wonderfully free. So perfectly where she should be.
Jamie wrapped his arm around her waist and hugged her close as she turned on her side with her back pressed to his chest. She ran her fingertips over his arm as she listened to the sound of his breath mingle with the night breeze outside.
‘Tell me a tale,’ she said softly.
Jamie chuckled sleepily. ‘What sort of tale?’
‘One of your home.’
‘I have told you about Castonbury already!’
Catalina laughed. ‘I want to hear it again. I want to know everything about you.’ Just as he knew her stories of her own life—her parents and their cold, correct home; her brother, lost fighting against a tyrannical king; her first marriage, so brief and so disappointing. She much preferred to hear about England and his family there.
Jamie laughed. ‘I don’t think you would want to know everything. You might not like me so much then.’
‘Never!’ Catalina protested. ‘Your home cannot be so awful. From what you have told me it sounds beautiful.’
‘Castonbury is beautiful, in its own terrible way.’ Jamie kissed her hair, but she could hear from the faraway note in his voice that he was somewhere else in his mind for the moment. ‘When I was a child I thought it was its own world, a playground for me and my siblings. We ran over the fields, fished and rowed on the lakes, played hide-and-seek behind the marble columns. Chased one another in front of gilded mirrors and under Waterford glass chandeliers and frescoed rotundas. We never realised how grand it all was.’
‘It sounds like a palace,’ Catalina murmured, trying to picture it all in her mind. Her own family’s home in Seville was ancient and filled with heirlooms from her relatives, but it was all crumbling and faded, past its grand days.
‘It was built to make everyone think that, to awe every visitor with how spectacular the Montague family has been. To make them think they have been transported to the villa of a Roman emperor.’
Jamie pressed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder. ‘It’s beautiful, but it is also deeply lonely.’
‘Is that why you left it? Why you came here?’
‘A person can so easily get lost at Castonbury and never find themselves at all. Perhaps that is why I came to Spain.’
‘To find yourself?’
‘To find you.’ Jamie turned her in his arms until she lay on her back, gazing up at him in the shadows. ‘Did you come here to find yourself?’
Catalina laughed. ‘I think I came here to escape. Bandaging wounds seemed much preferable to living as a proper Spanish widow, all swathed in black. My house never felt like a home either, not after my brother died.’
Her brother—he had been a brave man, willing to risk all for his belief in a constitution for Spain, a country free of tyranny and a better version of itself. Until he’d fallen foul of a king who wanted the exact opposite, and was willing to deal with the French to gain his ends. No, Seville had never been a home once he was gone.
‘So we have found a home in each other,’ Jamie said.
‘Yes,’ Catalina said, even as she shivered with a sudden jolt of fear. For however long this happiness lasted, it was perfect.
And then he kissed her, and everything else disappeared.
Jamie gently smoothed a lock of Catalina’s dark hair back from her face and watched her as she slept. A small smile curved her lips, as if she was in a good dream, and her cheeks were flushed a pretty pale pink.
She was so beautiful. A gift he had never looked for when he came to Spain. A gift he had never expected in his life. He feared to hold it too tightly, as if it would shatter like a fine-spun glass ornament, but he never wanted to lose it. All his life he had felt alone, even in the midst of a house crowded with family and servants. But now, as he held Catalina, that feeling vanished. He had spoken the truth to her—in moments like this he had an inkling of what home could mean.
So how could he tell her what he had been asked to do for the English government? How they had assigned him to help bring the Spanish king back to his throne. How could he tell her this after what had happened to her brother, and given what she herself believed?
Catalina murmured in her sleep, and Jamie held her close until she grew quiet again. He wished he could just hold her like this until every ugly thing vanished for her, until he could make her life perfect. But he knew he could not.
He would have to keep her safe the only way he knew how. Through his work.
Smoke billowed around her, acrid and choking, so thick she could see nothing. She could hear the crackle of flames, the crash of burning wood around her, but she was lost in that terrible cloud.
And she was alone. Catalina held out her hands, grasping for something, anything. ‘Jamie!’ she cried out. There was no answer, and as she stumbled forward she suddenly fell into a bottomless, endlessly dark pit. She was falling and falling….
Catalina sat straight up, her heart pounding. For an instant she wasn’t sure what was real and what she had dreamed, if those hazy, half-seen terrors were real. She drew in a deep breath of air scented with rain and Jamie’s cologne and then she remembered the wedding, the storm. Being held safe in Jamie’s arms.
She glanced to the other side of the bed. It was empty, but the sheets were still rumpled. As she ran her fingertips over the cool softness of the linen, she heard a soft rustle from across the tent. She looked over her shoulder to see Jamie sitting at the table with papers scattered in front of him, his back to her. His dark head was bent over the documents, and he wore his breeches but no shirt. The candlelight flickered and glowed over his smooth skin, carving the lean, muscled lines into hard marble.
For a moment Catalina just looked at him, drinking in every part of him as she remembered how his hands felt on her, how his body felt as it moved over hers. She suddenly had the terrible feeling that she wanted to seize on to this moment and never let it go, that she had to remember it always.
Suddenly Jamie seemed to sense that she watched him. His shoulders grew tense, and he turned to look at her. His pale grey eyes, those eyes that seemed to see everything, pierced into hers and she shivered at the intensity she saw in their depths.
But then he smiled, and it was almost as if a new light broke through the storm. ‘You should sleep a little longer,’ he said. ‘It’s a few hours yet until dawn.’
‘You should sleep too,’ Catalina said. ‘You have been working too hard lately, planning this push to Toulouse.’
Jamie shook his head and a lock of dark hair fell over his brow. He shook it back impatiently and looked back down at the papers before him. ‘The planning may be done now,’ he muttered.
A tiny sliver of ice seemed to touch Catalina’s heart at those quiet words. She reached for his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed and pulled it over her head. ‘What do you mean? Are we really moving out soon?’
‘Very soon,’ he said. He rubbed his hand over his jaw. ‘Within the next couple of days.’
‘But … the rain,’ Catalina said softly. She could still hear the storm outside, the water that flowed over the canvas of the tent. She knew what such sudden storms were like when they came to break the dry weather, how violent and swift they were. ‘We’ll have to cross the Bidasoa.’
‘I may not be with you by then,’ Jamie said, and his voice was so distant, so eerily, coolly calm. He hardly seemed like the passionate, maddened lover who had rolled with her across this very bed only an hour ago.
Still feeling cold, Catalina pushed back the sheets and slid out of bed. The faded old carpet felt prickly under her bare feet and the air was cold and clammy from the rain, but she hardly noticed as she slowly walked across the tent. All she could see was Jamie.
He pushed the papers he was looking at back into their case as she stopped beside the table.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘Somewhere dangerous?’ She felt foolish even as she said the words. Of course he was going someplace dangerous—that was their lives in Spain now, and a man like Jamie, an English officer, was always at the very heart of it.
Yet she had a strange feeling there was more to this than the usual marching and shooting, more than the danger they faced every day. Her glance flickered to the hidden papers. ‘You are leaving the regiment?’
‘For a time.’ Jamie ran his hands over his face again, and Catalina had the sense that he wrestled with something deep inside, something he couldn’t or wouldn’t share with her. Somewhere she couldn’t yet follow.
She knelt beside him and took his hands tightly in hers. She could feel the scrapes and calluses of his hands, the warmth of his skin against hers. ‘I am your wife now,’ she said quietly. ‘You can share anything with me, Jamie, and it will be safe. I will follow you anywhere.’
‘Oh, Catalina.’ He smiled down at her, but she could still see that shadow in his eyes. He turned his hand in hers and raised her fingers to his lips for a lingering, tender kiss. ‘There are places where I would never let you follow me.’
Catalina curled her fingertips lightly around his cheek. His evening growth of dark beard tickled her palm and she smiled. ‘How would you stop me?’
Jamie smiled wryly against her hand. ‘I couldn’t, of course. No one is braver or more stubborn than you.’
‘Except for you?’
‘I can be stubborn indeed when it comes to keeping you safe.’ He held out her hand balanced on his and studied the way her fingers twined with his. ‘Would you not consider going to my family in England?’
Catalina fell back on her heels, so surprised by his words that she didn’t know what to say. ‘England? But … I have never been there. Your family wouldn’t know me.’ She would be a foreigner in an English home centuries old. Yes, she had found it within herself to leave her home and come here to be a nurse—but at least she knew Spain, knew the people. In England would she not be alone?
‘They would come to know you—and you would be safe there until I could join you.’
If he could join her there. The unspoken words hung heavy between them, and Catalina felt a bolt of pure fear. She had known Jamie would have to go at some time, that everything that was happening around them would part them. But not yet. Please God, not yet.
She pulled herself to her feet and sat down heavily on the other stool. Her hands fell from Jamie’s, and he leaned closer to her, his forearms braced on his knees. ‘What is happening, Jamie?’ she said. ‘What is in those papers?’
‘I’ve been requested to take on a secret assignment,’ Jamie said quietly.
‘Secret?’ Catalina said, confused. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I have done such tasks before, when a certain degree of … discretion is required. It turns out I am unfortunately rather good at subterfuge.’
‘What have they asked you to do this time?’
Jamie silently reached for the papers. ‘You must understand, I have told no one else about this. Utter secrecy is necessary. But you should know.’
Catalina nodded. He handed her the documents and she quickly scanned them. As she read, a growing sense of disbelief and dismay crept over her. ‘It—it looks as if you are to work for King Ferdinand.’
‘Not for him. For the English forces who see it as being in their best interests for him to return to the throne.’
‘And you are merely their pawn? You, a marquis?’
‘It is not quite like that.’ He took the papers gently from her numb hands and locked them back in the box. ‘I have done such things before when the need arose. But it is different now.’
‘Different how?’ Catalina demanded, still so confused and angry. Jamie was her husband now, but did she really know him so little? Was her husband only a figure of her imagining, and was a cold English nobleman the truth?
No—she could not believe that of Jamie. Never. But why would he undertake such a task?
‘Different because of you. Because of all you have told me, about your family and your brother.’ He reached for her hand and she let him take it. ‘Because I know I must be more careful now.’
Catalina shook her head, biting back a sob. ‘Yes, you do have to be more careful, for so many reasons. I know how terrible war is, how so much can change so quickly—but I do not want to lose you.’ Not now, when she felt as if she was first coming to know him. Not now, when she had to make him see things from her point of view.
But how would they make it all work after the war was over, and they had to find a normal way of life together?
‘I never want to lose you either.’ He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. ‘I couldn’t bear it, not now that I have just found you.’
‘So you will not take this task?’
He didn’t answer. Instead he stood and drew her up into his arms. He pulled her closer and his lips came down on hers in a hungry, hot kiss. A kiss that said he would never let her go, and Catalina wanted to believe it. She never wanted to let him go either. Despite everything that seemed to stand between them now, she had never felt for anyone what she did for Jamie. Surely she never could again.
They fell together to the rumpled blankets of the bed, their bodies entwined. And for that moment it was all that mattered—even as she knew one moment could not last for ever.
When Catalina woke again, the rain was gone and watery sunlight pierced through the canvas walls of the tent. The air was growing warm, and she could hear the tumult of shouts and running footsteps from outside. It was day, and something was happening out there.
And Jamie was not with her. She was alone in the tent.
Catalina quickly pushed herself out of bed and grabbed her work clothes out of her trunk. The lace mantilla fluttered from the edge of the table like a ghost, a memory that seemed far away even though she had worn it only last night. She tucked it carefully into the depths of the trunk and hastily twisted her hair up into a tight knot.
As she dressed, she remembered last night, her wedding night, and all that had happened, good and bad. She worried that she didn’t know her new husband—and that perhaps she would not have time to come to know him either. Had she made a mistake? Had she moved too hastily?
But she had come to find that unless one moved hastily in wartime the opportunity could be lost for ever.
When she ducked out of the tent she found herself in the midst of chaos. Soldiers were rushing around amid wagons being loaded and horses being saddled.
Another nurse ran past, and Catalina grabbed her arm. ‘What is happening?’ she cried.
‘It is the push to Toulouse at last! The regiment’s orders have come.’
‘Already?’ Catalina had known this day was coming; it was why they had made camp here in the first place. But so very soon?
‘The regiment is moving out today, that is all I know,’ the nurse said. ‘But we are to stay a few more days to make sure the wounded are seen to.’
She ran off again, and Catalina knew she had to find Jamie. She made her way through the maze of tents, many of which were being taken down, and passed by the tangle of people and horses. At last she glimpsed him, talking to Colonel Chambers. She started towards him, only to feel a hand on her arm, holding her back hard.
She glanced back to find Hugh Webster smiling at her. ‘Mrs Moreno, I must talk to you….’
The strange, prickling feeling he always inspired in her shivered down her spine. She was not entirely sure why she disliked the man so much, but she did. She shook her head and said, ‘Not now, Captain Webster. I must go.’
And she looked back to Jamie to see that he had glimpsed her too. He made his way to her side through the crowd, and his handsome face looked so very solemn.
‘You are moving out today?’ she said.
‘I must ride out within the hour,’ he answered.
He took her arm and led her around to the line of trees behind the camp, where they had so often walked together before. Grey clouds were gathering on the horizon to block out the sunlight, as if to echo her sudden feeling of dread.
‘But where are you going?’ she asked, holding on to his hand.
‘I am not sure yet. But I will write to you soon, and tell you where to meet me.’ Jamie’s arms suddenly came around her, pulling her close, and she shut her eyes to memorise the way he felt, his scent, everything about him. About this moment. She felt everything rushing in on them, faster than she had expected. Jamie was leaving. And even if—when—he did come back, there would be so much for them to work on, to try and understand.
‘Will you be careful?’ she whispered.
‘Of course. If you will as well.’
Catalina gave a choked laugh. ‘I am not the one hurtling into battle.’
‘We will be together again soon, I promise. You must not worry, no matter what you hear of what is happening.’ Jamie sounded confident, as confident as the smile he gave her, but still Catalina was so unsure.
She nodded and tried to give him a smile in return. ‘Yes, we must. You have promised to show me Castonbury.’
He kissed her hard, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go even as she clung to him.
‘Until we meet again, my Catalina,’ he said with one more kiss. And then he let her go and he was gone.
And Catalina sank to her knees, unable to hold back her tears.

Chapter Three
Jamie stood on the muddy banks of the Bidasoa river and examined its rough currents as the rain that had been threatening to come down all morning now beat at his head. He wiped the drops from his eyes and tried to look across to the other side, but the storm was too thick and grey.
‘What do you think, Señor Hatherton?’ he heard Xavier Sanchez say.
He turned to face the Spaniard, who stood several safer feet back with the horses. Xavier was one of the Spanish agents working for the British government and had been Jamie’s contact on many previous errands. He was usually a brave man, but today his dark eyes were cautious as he peered out at the river from under his sodden hat.
Jamie turned back to the water. His instructions had been clear; he had to get to Toulouse before the regiment and rendezvous with their Spanish contacts. He had to cross the river to do that, just as the rest of the army would soon have to do, and time was of the essence.
And the sooner he finished this job, the sooner he would be able to return to Catalina … and the sooner they could start a real life together.
‘We need to move closer to Toulouse as soon as possible,’ Jamie said. ‘And you must carry word back to camp of an “accident” so we can separate.’
‘But the river, señor …’
‘We are travelling light,’ Jamie said. And he was a strong swimmer from long days on the lake at Castonbury with his siblings. ‘I need to move today. You can follow on later, as we planned.’
Sanchez looked doubtful, but he nodded. ‘I will follow with the horses soon, Señor Hatherton.’
Jamie stripped off his coat and boots and tucked them then into the saddlebags. He carefully waded into the water that rushed up over the banks. It was freezing cold, swollen by the rain, and his legs went numb as the currents swirled around them. When the water reached his waist, he took a breath and dived deep.
The cold closed over him like a thousand knives, but he pushed away the pain and kept swimming. He couldn’t see anything around him, just swirls of grey and brown. He could only push towards where he knew the opposite bank lay. The deception of his accident had suddenly become all too real.
He was moving strongly, the only thought in his mind his goal. Suddenly a strong current jolted him like a blow to the midsection. It caught him and tossed him around, pushing him even as he fought against it. He felt himself being swept inexorably downstream, twisted and turned.
He struggled fiercely against the water, writhing in its powerful grip. Everything was turning grey and hazy as he couldn’t surface for a breath.
Catalina’s face was suddenly clear in his mind, her smile, her dark eyes. He had to fight this, to get back to her.
Something suddenly brushed past his hand, and he reached out to grab on to it. It was the root of a tree on the bank, sticking out into the river. He held on to its rough, delicate-seeming strength even as the water worked to claim him. He pulled himself up and sucked in a deep breath of precious air.
But the respite was not to last. Something hard and heavy, borne on the current, slammed into his body. He fell back down into the deep water and his head landed on something sharp. As if from a distance, he heard a sickening crack. There was a piercing pain—and everything went dark as the river closed over him.
‘Catalina! Quick, over here. I need your help.’
Catalina spun around from the bandage she was tying off on a wounded arm to see one of the other nurses and the English doctor labouring over another patient. She gave her own soldier one more smile and hurried to help them.
The hospital tent had been chaos all day. The push to Toulouse was beginning in earnest, with different regiments pouring through and leaving their wounded to be seen to. Most of them moved on after, in a hurry to join with the main forces, but the people who were left had to tend to the sick and arrange for their transportation onwards as the French were in quick pursuit. The rain that had been pouring down steadily only added to the clamour, miring everyone in mud and damp. Gunfire was constantly heard in the distance.
Catalina had hardly slept or eaten since Jamie left. She had no time to think of such things as she ran from task to task, always hearing those explosions in the distance, rivalling the thunder. The world had shrunk to only that noise, and emergency after emergency.
But she couldn’t cease worrying about Jamie. Was he well? Was he safe? What dangerous task was he embroiled in? Reports of flooding at the Bidasoa made her even more concerned. She had received no message from him yet.
All she could do was keep working, keep helping everyone she could.
‘Soon,’ she whispered as she rinsed her hands in a basin. Jamie would be back soon.
As she dried her hands, she glimpsed the sapphire ring glinting on her finger. It was always with her, reminding her of hopes and dreams that felt so very fragile now.
She pushed away her worries and went to help with the new patient. Once he was seen to, there was another and then another. The day had grown very late by the time she was able to duck out of the hot, stuffy tent for a breath of fresh air.
The rain had ceased for the moment, though the sound of gunfire seemed even closer. Catalina found a quiet spot by a tree just outside camp where she could be alone just for an instant. She tilted her head back to stare at the dark grey sky and let the cool breeze wash over her.
She thought about what Jamie had said about his home, about the beauty and peace of it. She feared she would get lost in its grandeur, but she did long for something pretty, something quiet. Someplace where she could walk with Jamie, hand in hand, the two of them in the fresh English spring.
‘Mrs Moreno, what a surprise,’ someone said suddenly, shattering her reverie. ‘I so seldom see you alone.’
Catalina whirled around to see Hugh Webster smiling at her. The man seemed friendly, but somehow she always felt so uncomfortable when he was around her. He was friends with Colonel Chambers and had thus been assigned to help pack up the regiment and follow them on later while most of the men pushed ahead in greater danger. She had been working so hard she had hardly seen him, but here he was, right in front of her, as if he had been watching for her to be alone.
And he was standing much too close to her.
‘We all have many tasks these days, Captain Webster,’ she answered.
‘True. Yet you have always seemed to have the time to speak to Hatherton.’
Catalina was puzzled by the bitter note in the man’s voice. He smiled at her, but his eyes were hard. ‘Lord Hatherton and I are friends.’
‘Indeed? I wish you would be my friend, Mrs Moreno—Catalina. I am sure we could benefit each other a great deal.’
He took a step closer, until his arm brushed hers and she could smell the scent of his body. Catalina stumbled back until she felt the rough bark of the tree.
‘Benefit each other?’ she stammered.
‘Of course, my dear. You must have seen how I admire you. It can be very lonely here, can it not? Especially for a woman in your … situation.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Catalina managed to say, shocked and starting to be frightened.
She spun around to hurry away, but suddenly his hand closed hard on her arm and dragged her back.
‘Oh, I think you do know what I mean,’ he said roughly. His arms came around her like a vice and his mouth swooped down on hers, open and hungry.
Catalina was engulfed in a cold panic. It felt as if prison walls were squeezing in on her, and nausea choked her. Webster’s kiss was nothing like Jamie’s; it didn’t even deserve the same name. She fought against him, but he was too strong and held her fast. One of his hands closed on her breast through her muslin gown and he pinched painfully at her nipple.
Catalina screamed against his mouth and felt him laugh. That sound infuriated her. She managed to wriggle enough room between them to bring her knee up and slam it between his legs. When he shouted, she bit down on his lip and tasted coppery blood.
As he fell to the ground, she wrenched away and ran. She heard him scream out behind her. ‘Whore!’ he called. ‘Hatherton’s whore. You’ll be sorry for this.’
‘I am his wife!’ Catalina screamed. ‘Not his whore, you dirty cochino.’
She kept running, still half blind with fear. At first she didn’t know what a sudden booming noise was, she was so disoriented. But as she stumbled and half fell to her knees, she saw a flaring flash of flame arc over the sky and heard cries.
The camp was being directly shelled.
As she watched, horrorstruck, more explosions went off around the camp amid shouts and screams. Fires were flaring up. She pushed herself up and ran towards the nearest tent. A shell exploded not far away, making her ears ring, but she kept going. She had to help if she could.
She glimpsed a figure lying on the ground, horribly still. It was the nurse she had worked with over the patient earlier. Catalina knelt down next to her, but she quickly saw it was too late to help her at all.
Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet.
‘Run, Catalina!’ the man shouted. ‘We must find shelter now.’
Catalina turned her head and saw it was the English doctor, leading a couple of the more mobile wounded soldiers from the burning camp.
‘But the others …’ she gasped.
‘Those who could flee have already gone,’ the doctor answered. ‘I fear the chaplain has been killed. The French are close in their pursuit. We must go, now.’
Catalina ran with him back towards the trees, where they found a hiding place in the shadows, their heads down as the shells flew overhead and they prayed the French armies wouldn’t find them. Once darkness gave them cover, they fled towards the village with the few other survivors.
Only the next morning, as they stumbled out onto the road to Seville, did she see to her horror that she had lost her precious sapphire ring….
‘So you are alive.’
Jamie opened his eyes to find a man standing over him, his features a blur from the light that streamed from the windows behind him. It was the first time he had heard anyone speak in that crisp English accent in days, ever since Sanchez had pulled him out of the river and slung him over the horse to find a hospital. They had ended in this house in a small village.
At first Jamie had been in such a strange dream state he was able to remember nothing at all. Only snatches of hazy memories, like a summer’s day in the Castonbury gardens and Catalina’s hand in his as they walked down the aisle. Gradually things became clearer, the pain sharper, and he cursed his damnable weakness. He had to finish what he had set out to do and get back to Catalina.
The man stepped back, and Jamie saw it was Lord Cawley, who had been his contact for secret work in Spain, the man who had sent him the letter requesting his assistance in the matter with the royal family.
There was surely only one thing he would be doing there.
Jamie gave a humourless laugh and pushed himself up against the pillows. ‘I hadn’t thought to see you so soon, Cawley.’
‘No? Why not? I came at once when Sanchez sent word you were injured. We feared you might have died.’
‘And thus you would get no more work out of me?’
‘You have been one of our best operatives, Hatherton,’ Cawley said. He pulled up a straight-backed wooden chair and sat down. His thin, lined face looked even harsher than usual. ‘These are perilous days. After the French are gone, we have to be sure Spain is once again a friendly ally for England. It is of vital importance.’
‘And you think King Ferdinand is the answer to that,’ Jamie said drily.
‘It is. He is not the finest choice, we admit, but he is the best option for now. Europe must have stability once Napoleon is gone. You are the best choice for such a vital and delicate operation.’
‘I fear I can no longer be of help to you,’ Jamie said.
‘No?’ Cawley tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair, watching Jamie steadily. ‘That is unfortunate. The timing could not be better for our scheme.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that it is already rumoured you died in the river, tragically swept away. You could go undercover with no one the wiser.’ Cawley gestured around the quiet little white room. ‘No one knows where you are. And sadly your camp was destroyed by the French in the chaos after you departed.’
Jamie sat up straight, his muscles tense with alarm, his mind buzzing. Surely he had not just heard the man’s words right. ‘The camp was destroyed?’
‘Yes. You have not been told? Such a tragedy. So many lives lost, including the wounded and even women.’ Cawley reached inside his coat and withdrew a small scrap of blue-grey muslin. He unwrapped it to reveal a sapphire ring.
The gold was scratched and dirt was caught in the setting, but Jamie could see it was his mother’s ring. The one he had slipped onto Catalina’s finger. Wrapped in a torn shred of one of her work dresses.
‘This was found in the camp ruins,’ Cawley said. ‘Yours, I think. It has your family motto engraved inside.’
He tossed it across the room and Jamie caught it. Validus Superstes was indeed engraved on the inside. Catalina had vowed she would never take it off after their wedding. If it was here, in Cawley’s possession …
‘You gave it to someone?’ Cawley said quietly.
‘I can’t imagine you would have dropped it yourself.’
‘A lady named Catalina Moreno,’ Jamie answered, closing his fist around the ring as if that would bring her back to him. Even in that moment he could feel her slipping further and further away.
Cawley nodded. ‘The Spanish nurse. One of the lost, I fear.’
Lost. Catalina was lost, lost, lost. Those words echoed hollowly in his head, yet still he could not quite grasp them. She was the most vivid person he had ever known—how could she simply be gone, just like that?
A sharp pain shot through him, a jolt of purest, hottest grief. Then a cold numbness as if ice was slowly creeping around his heart.
‘Perhaps that is for the best,’ Cawley said. ‘Her brother was known to be a liberal, even though he has been long dead. She would only have stood in the way of what is best. And I would hate to see harm come to anyone in your family because you could not do your duty. I am sure you understand what I mean.’
Harm come to anyone in your family. Of course he knew what the man meant; it was a veiled threat pure and simple. Jamie tightened his hand on the ring until the edges of the stone cut into his flesh. He closed his eyes and let that ice cover him. It had to be better than the burn of grief, of knowing he would never see Catalina again and that he had not been there to save her when she needed him.
Yes—he had failed Catalina. And his family would be better off without him as well. Had he not run off and left them because he was unsure he could assume the responsibilities of a dukedom? Had he not already failed in his duty? At least he could protect them now by doing this task. And if he was lucky he would not return from it.
As if he sensed Jamie’s cold fury, Cawley rose from his chair and turned towards the door. ‘Everyone already believes you dead, Hatherton. It makes you the perfect one for this job. And when it’s over you can return to your family, knowing the service you did for your country. Send me word of your decision tomorrow.’
Then Jamie was alone. He closed his eyes and held on to the ring as if it was the last tether anchoring him to the real world. The last connection to his foolish dreams. Catalina was gone, and Cawley was right—it hardly mattered what happened to him now.
But first he had to do something for himself.

Chapter Four
It looked like the landscape of another world entirely, not a place where he had once lived and worked, fought and loved. It was a place he had never seen before except in nightmares.
Jamie felt strangely numb, remote from his surroundings as he climbed stiffly down from his horse and studied the scorched patch of earth where the camp once stood. The hot sun beat down from a clear, mercilessly blue sky onto the baked, cracked dust, but Jamie didn’t even feel it. He was vaguely aware of Xavier Sanchez, sitting on his own horse several feet away and watching the scene warily, but Jamie felt like the only living being left for miles around.
Maybe the only living being left on the planet.
There were no sounds, no birds singing or wind sweeping through the trees. Once this place had been filled with voices, laughter, the cries of the injured, the barked orders of a military operation. The ghosts of such sounds in his mind made the silence even heavier.
Jamie tilted back his head to stare up into the sky. He could smell the dusty scent of the air, the faint, acrid remains of fire. The echoes of the violence that had happened here.
And Catalina had been caught in it. His numbness was shattered by a spasm of pure, raw pain at the thought of what must have happened here. The fear and panic, the sense of being trapped amid fire and ruin with nowhere to run. No one to help her, because he had gone.
‘Catalina,’ he whispered, his heart shattered at the thought of her being afraid. Had she thought of him in that moment, just as he had pictured only her face when he was sure he was drowning? Had she called out his name?
Jamie walked slowly across the blasted, blackened patch of earth, not seeing it how it was now, abandoned and ruined, but how it was that day he first saw Catalina. Her smile, her face like a beautiful, exotic flower, a haven of peace and loveliness in a mad world. She had given him something he had never known before—stillness, a place to belong. She had made him think of things he had never dared to before, like a future, a home. With her, he had imagined even the grand halls of Castonbury could be that home, if she was there.
And then in only a moment that was all gone.
He remembered her hurt, pale face when she found out about the nature of his secret work. The doubts that lingered in her eyes when they parted. He had foolishly imagined he would have time to make all that right later, to make everything up to her.
Jamie reached up and pressed his hand over the ring he wore on a chain around his neck under his shirt, against his heart. Cawley had said this ring, Catalina’s ring, had been found here among the dead. Yet some stubborn hope had clung to Jamie—what if she had somehow miraculously got away?
Cawley had said a farmer found the ring, and that was what had brought Jamie here. He had discovered the name of the farmer and come back to the camp in the wild, far-fetched notion that he could find this man and make him tell more details of the day when the camp was destroyed. If he knew more, maybe he could find Catalina’s body and put her properly to rest.
Or he might find her. At night, in his fever dreams when he was ill, he saw just such a thing. Catalina, alive again, smiling at him, holding out her arms to him. Telling him it had all been a terrible mistake.
But as he looked at the darkened earth, he saw just how wild a hope that was. Surely no one had survived such an onslaught.
He climbed to the top of a steep slope into which the backside of the camp had been built. It led down to the river on the other side, and to fields beyond. They, too, were deserted, everyone having fled before the advancing armies. But Jamie glimpsed one tiny spot of life, an old woman walking by the river, swathed in shawls even in the hot day. She was checking fishing nets laid out in the river.
Jamie made his way slowly down the other side of the hill, careful to make sure the woman saw him approach so he would not frighten her. She didn’t run away, but went very still, her eyes dark and wary in her sunken, wrinkled face.
‘Señora, I only came to ask a few questions here,’ Jamie said in Spanish.
The woman slowly nodded, and he asked her about the destruction of the camp. She didn’t know much; she had been staying with her daughter in another village, and had only returned to her home here with her son after the armies had gone.
‘What do you seek here, young man?’ she asked. ‘There is nothing left, not for anyone.’
‘I want to find out what happened to my wife,’ Jamie answered honestly. ‘She was a nurse at the English camp here. I was told a farmer saw what happened, and found her wedding ring.’
The woman nodded, her face softening at his stark words. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps my son can help. He was here that day, I am sure he’s the one you’re looking for.’
She led him over a low, crumbling stone wall and through a blasted field. A man was working there, bent and careworn as he tried to eke out some kind of meal from the ruined ground. Even though the woman said he was her son, he looked as old as she did. But his eyes also turned kind when the woman explained why Jamie was there.
‘I did see the camp after the French left,’ he said, leaning on his rake with a haunted look in his eyes. ‘I wanted to see if I could help, but there was nothing left to do but bury the dead.’
Jamie took out Catalina’s ring and showed it to him. ‘Were you the one who found this?’
The man nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘I found it in the dust, near a woman’s body. It had been trampled down, half buried.’
Jamie swallowed hard at the stark words. Catalina’s ring trampled, destroyed. ‘This woman—did she have dark hair? Not very tall?’
‘Sí, she looked Spanish, but her skin was pale with freckles on the nose. And she wore a nurse’s apron.’
Jamie closed his fist around the ring. ‘And you gave this back to the English? That was very generous of you, considering you could have sold it.’
The man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t want to bring curses onto my family. What if the woman’s spirit attached to the ring?’
Jamie stared down at the sapphire, almost wishing that he, too, could believe in curses. That Catalina could stay with him through her ring. ‘What happened to the woman’s body?’
The man turned away silently, and led Jamie over the field to an empty meadow that lay just beyond. There the dirt was piled in a long, heaped-up mound, with a line of roughly hewn crosses.
‘They were all buried here,’ the man said. ‘She is down there at that end. I laid her there myself.’
Jamie moved slowly towards the grave. The world slowed to a blur around him, and he felt so numb again, old, remote from everything. All he could see was that patch of earth.
He knelt down and for a moment grief pressed in all around him and he was utterly alone. Catalina was buried here; he could feel it. His family was far away, and in this, the most profound moment of his life, he was alone.
‘I am so sorry, Catalina,’ he said. Sorry he had not been there for her; sorry he could not have been what she needed him to be. Sorry he had ever hurt her at all.
He tilted back his head and stared up into the sky, feeling so very empty. He had to finish his task here in Spain, no matter how distasteful it was. He had to do it for his family.
But he feared he himself would never feel anything again.
Catalina leaned against the railing of the ship and peered through the thick, wet grey mist at the slowly approaching shoreline.
England. She was in England at last. And she didn’t notice the sharp, cold wind that tore at her hat or the noise and activity on the deck behind her. She could only think about how close her destination was, after weeks of weary travel—and of how different this arrival was from how she had once so briefly pictured it. How she had once dreamed it might be, with Jamie by her side, taking her home with him.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/amanda-mccabe/a-stranger-at-castonbury/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.