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?’
‘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.’
A Stranger at Castonbury Page 3
