Regency Surrender: Passionate Marriages: Marriage Made in Rebellion / Marriage Made in Hope

Chapter Six

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?’

She caught the quick nod as he rolled the meat above the embers. The smell of the cooking made her stomach rumble further and, hoping he would not hear it, she shifted in her hard seat of earth.

‘Did your dead husband ever hurt you?’

The question came without any preamble and the shock of it held her numb.

‘Physically, I mean,’ he continued when she did not answer.

‘No.’ Her anger was so intense she could barely grind the lie out.

‘Truly?’

He turned the rabbit again, fat making the fire flare and smoke rise.

‘Truly what?’

‘I am trained to know when people do not tell the truth and I don’t think that you are.’

In the firelight his eyes were fathomless. She had never seen a man more beautiful than him or more menacing.

Just her luck to be marooned in the mountains with a dangerous and clever spy-soldier. She should tell him it all, spit it out and see the pity mark his face. Even her father had failed to hide his reaction when he had found her there, hurt and bound in the locked back bedroom at Juan’s family house, a prisoner to his demands.

‘I think you should mind your own business, Capitán.’

After this the silence between them was absolute and it magnified every other sound present in a busy forest at night.

* * *

Finally, after a good half hour’s quiet, he spoke.

‘Perhaps conversation will be easier again if you eat.’

Taking a small offering from the flame, he split it with his knife, laying it out on another leaf to protect it from the dirt.

Despite herself she smiled. Not a man to give up, she surmised, and not a man to be ignored, either. The rabbit was succulent and well-cooked, but his gaze was upon her, waiting.

‘Do you ever think, Capitán, that if you had your life again you would do some things very differently?’

He took his time to answer, but she waited. Patience was a virtue she had long since perfected.

‘My father and youngest brother drowned in an accident on our estate. It was late winter, almost spring, you understand, and it was cold and the river was running fast.’ He looked at her over the flames and she could see anger etched upon his brow. ‘I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t run fast enough to reach them at the bridge.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Fifteen, so old enough, but I made a mistake with the distance. There was a bend a little further upstream. I could have reached them there if I had thought of it sooner.’

Precision and logic. Everything he ever said or did was underpinned by his mastery of both. He had failed his family according to his own high standards, something that was the core of her shame, as well.

‘If I could go back, I would have killed my husband the first time he ever hit me. I had my knife hidden in my boot.’ She hated the way her voice shook as fury made speech difficult, but still she went on. ‘“Thou shalt not kill” is repeated in the Bible many times. In Matthew and Exodus. In Deuteronomy and Romans. I tried to take heed of the words, but then...’ Her heart beat fierce with memory. ‘The second death of hell is not the worst thing that can happen after all, Capitán. It’s the day-to-day living that does it.’

He nodded and the empathy ingrained in the small gesture almost undid her. ‘You are not the first to think it and you most certainly won’t be the last. But you were made stronger? Afterwards?’

‘Yes.’ No need for thought or contemplation. She knew it to the very marrow of her bones.

‘Then that itself is a gift.’

It was strange but his explanation suddenly eased her terror and the truth of the realisation almost made her cry. She had failed to be a dutiful wife. She had failed in her strict observance of the Bible. She had failed in bearing the heavy stick and fists of a man who was brutal in teaching marital obedience and subservience, but she had survived. And God had made her stronger.

For the first time in a long while she breathed easier. It was a gift.

‘How long have you been here in Spain, Capitán?’

‘Since August of 1808. After a few skirmishes on the way north we ran for the mountains, but the snow beat us.’

‘It was thick this year in the Cordillera Cantabrica. It is a wonder anyone survived such a journey.’

‘Many didn’t. They lay there on the side of the steep passes and never moved again. Those behind stripped them of shoes and coats.’

She had heard the stories of the English dead. The tales of the march had long been fodder for conversations about the fires at the hacienda. ‘Papa said a gypsy had told him once that the French will triumph three times before they are repelled. This is the first, perhaps?’

He only laughed.

‘You do not believe in such prophesy, Capitán?’

‘Generals decide the movements of armies, Alejandra, not sages or soothsayers.’

‘Do you think they will return? The British, I mean. Will they come back to help again, in your opinion?’

‘Yes.’

She smiled. ‘You are always so very certain. It must be comforting that, to believe in yourself so forcibly, to trust in all you say.’

‘You don’t?’

She swallowed. Once she had, before all this had happened, before a war had cut down her family and left her in the heart of chaos.

Now she was not sure of exactly who or what she was. The fabric in her trousers was dirty and ripped and the jacket she wore had come off the dead body of a headless Hussar in the field above A Coruña. It still held the dark stains of blood within the hemline for she had neither the time nor the inclination to wash it. A life lost, nameless and vanished. It was as if she functioned in a place without past or future.

Shimmying across to sit beside him, she took his hand, opening the palm so that she might see the lines in the flame. If he was wary, he did not show it, not in one singular tiny way.

‘There are some here who might read your life by mapping out the junctures and the missing gaps. Juan, my husband, was told he would meet his Maker in remorse and before his time.’ She smiled. ‘At least that came true.

‘Pepe, the gypsy, said that I would travel and become a hidden woman.’ She frowned. ‘He said that I should be the purveyor of all secrets and help those who were oppressed. Juan was not well pleased by this reading. His life ending and mine opening out into another form. I do remember how much I wanted it to be true, though. A separation, the hope of something else, something better.’

His fingers were warm and hard calloused. She wished they might curl around her own and signal more, but they did not.

She couldn’t ever remember talking to another as she had to him, the hours of evening passing in confidences long held close. But it was getting colder and they needed to sleep. It would be tough in the morning with the rain on the mountains and still a thousand feet to climb.

As if sensing her tiredness he let go of her hand and stood.

‘The dugout might be the best place for slumber. At least it is out of the wind.’

But small, she thought, and cosy. There would be no room between them in the close confines of the tree roots. He had already taken his coat off and laid it down on the dirt after shifting clumps of pine needles in. His bag acted as a pillow and a length of wool she recognised from the hacienda completed the bed.

‘I...am not...sure.’

‘We can freeze alone tonight or survive together.’ His breath clouded white in the last light of the burning embers. ‘Tomorrow we will hew out a pathway to the west and take our chances in finding a direction to the coast. It is too dangerous to keep climbing.’