‘Since we are in the business of confessions,’ she said, ‘I will admit that I, too, have very much enjoyed our conversations. Being alone with you, I have not had to pretend to be the dutiful, and frankly boring, Lady Isabella.’
Did she know how bewitching her smile was? Did she realise what it did to him, that smile? And the way she looked at him with those big eyes of hers... Did she know she was playing with fire? Almost without meaning to—almost—he pulled her closer. ‘Above all, you do know that I did not pretend to enjoy kissing you, don’t you?’
‘No? Why, then, did you kiss me, Major Urquhart?’
He tried to remind himself that she was an innocent, but the demure Spanish lady she purported to be was nowhere to be seen in this feisty, bold, brave, beautiful woman smiling seductively up at him. ‘I kissed you,’ Finlay said roughly, ‘for the very simple reason that you are irresistible.’
‘I think that is what is known as serendipity,’ Isabella replied, ‘for it’s the very same reason I kissed you back.’
‘Serendipity,’ Finlay said, sliding his arm around her waist. ‘I’ve always wondered what it tasted like.’
‘Strawberries, and lavender, and vintage wine, I believe is how you described it.’
‘No,’ he said decidedly. ‘It tastes of nothing other than essence of you. The most intoxicating and delicious taste imaginable.’
* * *
There was a different quality to Finlay’s smile that excited Isabella. There was something different in the way he looked at her, too, a gleam in his sea-blue eyes, as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing. There was a very different quality to their kiss, too. This time it was he who was tentative, she who was daring. He kissed her as if he was not sure who he was kissing. She kissed him back with the boldness, the wild elation she felt at finally being able to reveal her true self.
Her response ensured he was not tentative for long. The pressure of his lips increased as she opened her mouth. The touch of his tongue on hers set her aflame. His hands slid down to cup her bottom, pulling her hard up against him. She slid her hands under his coat, flattening her palms against the smooth silk of his waistcoat, feeling the rippling of his muscles as she touched him, up the length of his spine, back down, to the waistband of his breeches.
His mouth was hot on hers. She closed her eyes, the sunlight dappling crimson inside her lids, and slid her hands over the smooth leather of his breeches to the taut muscles of his buttocks. He moaned, plunging his tongue into her mouth. She could feel the unmistakable ridge of his arousal pressing between her thighs. Heat trickled through her. She felt potent, wild, that intense, fierce focus from the old days. The pinpoint of danger, though this time the threat was not of capture but surrender.
Still they kissed. His jacket fell to the ground. They were on the bench now, and she was splayed on top of him, her skirts rucked high, his erection pressing against her. She flattened her palms over his shoulders. His breath was ragged. His kisses grew wilder and more passionate. Her own lips pressed against his, as if they would meld. His hand on her breast made her gasp. Her nipple hardened sweetly, painfully beneath her corset. She wanted to moan with frustration for the layers that lay between them, his skin, her nipple. She dug her fingers into his hair, clutching the soft silkiness, tilting her hips to rub herself against him, panting as his mouth devoured hers, as his hand tightened on her breast, as something inside her tightened like a knot, too.
She tensed her thighs against his. More kisses. Behind her closed lids, crimson, blood red. Her blood hot. Danger. She remembered then, seeing him that first night at the ball. Dangerous. He was dangerous. He was so delightfully dangerous. And she was so unafraid.
Finlay muttered something soft in what she assumed must be Gaelic, and dragged his mouth from hers. Gently, he began to disentangle himself from her. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what I— I didn’t mean to— And here, of all places. What the devil was I thinking!’
His eyes were dark, his pupils dilated. His hair was in wild disarray. The pins had come out of hers. Isabella knew she ought to be shocked at her own behaviour, but all she could think about was the tension inside her, the urgent need for release, the feeling of hanging on a precipice, desperate to let go, the slow realisation that she would instead have to clamber back down to reality. ‘I don’t believe either of us was thinking,’ she said, trying to herd her errant thoughts into some sort of coherency.
‘No, I don’t suppose we were.’ Finlay stooped to gather some of her hairpins from the ground, handing them to her with a rueful smile. ‘You are the most distracting lass I’ve ever come across. I look at you, and my head says one thing and my body something else entirely.’
‘My body is not in the least bit interested in what my head is saying at this moment.’
Finlay’s eyes darkened. ‘Dear heavens, nor is mine.’ He reached for her, then pulled his hand away as if he had been burned. ‘We need to talk. We need to decide—you are El Fantasma. I still can’t get my head around that one.’ He gave himself a little shake. ‘Aye. Right. El Fantasma. We need to think about what we do next. I had already taken the precaution of making some prior arrangements on the assumption I would track him—you—down, but...’
His words brought Isabella tumbling firmly back to earth. ‘I am not interested in your arrangements. There’s nothing to think about, nothing to discuss,’ she said sharply. ‘Now you know the truth, you can return to England forthwith and tell the Duke of Wellington that El Fantasma thanks him for his concern but has no desire for, or need of rescue.’
He stared at her for a long moment. She could not read his thoughts. In truth, she did not really wish to contemplate his leaving here, not just yet. It would be a huge relief to be able to be herself for a little while longer, in this beguiling man’s company.
‘Isabella, can you not see...’
‘Finlay, can you not see!’ She grabbed his arm. ‘I know what I am doing. You have no right to interfere.’
‘I’m trying to save your life.’
‘And I am trying to save many, many other lives,’ she declared hotly. ‘I wish I had not told you.’
He paused in the act of putting his coat on. ‘Why did you?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone else. I suppose I hoped you would understand.’ She began to stick pins randomly into her hair. ‘I thought that you would see we were similar. You were wrong when you told me I don’t know what it is to be a soldier, don’t you see? I am a soldier, just like you. You cannot expect me to do anything other than stay and fight this battle, when it is exactly what you would do if the roles were reversed.’
He was silent for a long time, his brow furrowed. When he spoke again, it was with a deliberate detachment. ‘There’s little to be gained by us arguing from implacably opposed viewpoints. We both have a lot to digest and reflect on. I’m going for a wee walk. I’ll see you at dinner.’
He turned and began to make his way up the track, leaving Isabella to stare at his retreating back, fighting the urge to call him back to convince him of the validity of her case and the equally strong urge to call him back and demand that he finish what he had started.
* * *
Finlay strode off up the hill towards the tree line. Is fheàrr teicheadh math na droch fhuireach. Better a good retreat than a bad stand. He was not running away, but though it went against the grain with him to leave Isabella alone after all that had happened, he knew if he stayed it would be a strategic miscalculation.
‘You need to start thinking with your head, and stop letting yourself be driven by your other body parts, my lad,’ he muttered under his breath. He could feel Isabella’s eyes on him as he climbed the steep path. He quickened his pace, forcing himself to ignore the urge to look back. Upward, onward, away he marched, just short of a run, enjoying the way the exercise made his heart beat fast
er, the way the fresh air stabbed at his lungs. And finally, as he cleared the tree line and emerged on the next ridge and his calf muscles began to protest, finally, his head began to clear itself of the fog of confusion triggered by this latest bewildering turn of events.
He stopped, taking deep, recuperative breaths, and looked at the landscape spread out below him. Ochre soil, the warm yellow stone of Hermoso Romero, the regimented row of pruned vines, the soft green foliage of cypress trees, the pale winter blue of the sky and the silvery lemon of the winter sun. It was a beautiful place, no doubt about it. If he lived here, he’d be loath to leave. But it wasn’t all this beauty that made Isabella determined to remain here—it was all the things you couldn’t see. The poverty. The injustice. The constraints of the old ways. The same feudal culture that made her brother the region’s biggest landowner and one of its most influential men. It was ironic that Xavier Romero represented all the things Isabella wanted to change.
‘And I can’t blame her for fighting for change, since by and large I share her views,’ Finlay said, smiling to himself as he recalled the fire in Isabella’s eyes as she had spoken of El Fantasma’s cause. He squatted down on his heels, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The death of the old ways, a new beginning, a new world. Hadn’t he been fighting for the same things himself?
His face hardened. Waterloo, the battle that had finally defeated Napoleon, the battle that had brought peace to Europe, had taken place five months ago. He sat back heavily, causing a limestone rock to clatter down the path. Peace was a fine thing and to be welcomed. No more death. No more bloodshed. He had not lied when he’d told Isabella he didn’t miss that. Peace would bring prosperity, the press said.
‘To the likes of Wellington, to those who had always been prosperous, aye, that it would, but what about the rest of us?’ Finlay muttered. London was already full of ex-soldiers, cast out of the military once their usefulness had expired, reduced to begging on the streets. Back home, in the Highlands, things were just the same as ever, the crofters just as poor as ever. And it was as Jack had said—no one wanted to know. Nothing had really changed, despite all the sacrifice. Was this what he’d fought for?
Here in Spain, it was worse. Here in Spain, they’d taken a few more steps backwards. But Isabella had not given up. Isabella was still fighting, though it was, in Finlay’s opinion, a very lost cause, indeed. Did that make her wrong? Was her deluded optimism better or worse than his pragmatism?
An unanswerable question. But one thing he did know, Isabella’s deluded optimism was clouding her judgement. She thought herself a hardened soldier, she thought her cause more important than her life, but she had no idea. It was all very well to wave away a theoretical threat, but the reality was something else entirely. Finlay, all too easily able to imagine what would happen if she was caught, shuddered at the horrors Isabella would be forced to endure. Indeed, not only Isabella, but her brother and his wife, too, like as not. Yet she seemed quite unable to grasp this fact. Or mayhap she simply didn’t want to acknowledge it? Aye, that was more likely.
He picked up a rock and threw it so forcefully down the mountainside that the limestone split into a cloud of powder. Reluctant as he was to spell it out to her, that was what he had to do. Better to fill her head with horrors than to have to face the reality of them, surely? He picked up another small rock, rolling it over in his palm. The idea was extremely unpalatable. Isabella’s idealism was her Achilles’ heel but it was also her shield. What right had he to tell her to stop fighting her battles? What right had he to destroy her illusions? None, and what was more, he did not want to.
Yet what he wanted was quite beside the point. The case was simple. Isabella’s life was in mortal danger. Finlay had been sent here to get El Fantasma out of Spain. He was here under Wellington’s, albeit indirect, orders. More important, he was here to keep a solemn promise made to Jack. More important still, if he could not get Isabella to see sense, she might very easily be taken, tortured or executed before he spirited her away.
Still, the thought of acting against her very decided wishes and taking matters into his own hands gave him pause. Finlay got to his feet and hurled the rock down the mountainside. One more chance. He’d give her one more chance to see sense. There was time yet for that.
Chapter Six
Isabella pushed her papers aside with a sigh of frustration. El Fantasma’s next pamphlet was due to be printed this week, but Estebe was still confined to bed, and though she could set the type and do all the preparation, she could not work the printing press alone. She scanned the piece she was working on, making a few changes before casting it aside once more. There was nothing wrong with it, but nor did it contain anything fresh. The demand for the pamphlets was increasing, but when would talk turn to action?
Would it ever take that definitive step? Pulling back the long voile curtains, Isabella threw a soft cashmere shawl over her nightdress, opened the window and stepped out onto her balcony. The night air was invigorating. It had a sharpness to it that told her winter was not too far away. There would be snow on the mountains soon, perhaps within a few weeks. And before that, perhaps within as little as a few days, Finlay would be gone.
It was for the best, she told herself, gazing up at the stars with the usual pang of regret that she could no longer look at them through the telescope with Papa. Another thing Xavier had appropriated. Star gazing, it seemed, was not a pastime fit for females, though neither was it a pastime her brother had shown any inclination to take up. She wished that she could love Xavier as she ought. She wished that she could trust him with her secret. She wished that he could see her for who she truly was. She sighed, irked with herself. There were more important things to wish for.
Her brother was no fool, and Finlay knew as much about wine as she did about Paris fashions. The moment Xavier stopped boasting and pontificating about his precious Rioja and started asking searching questions, Finlay’s cover would be blown. How did he plan to extricate himself? He would not go to the lengths of placing an order, she was fairly certain. ‘No, of that I am absolutely certain,’ Isabella said aloud. ‘Lies, they do not sit well with Finlay Urquhart.’
Leaning on the balustrade, she looked out along the side of the house. She could see the adjacent balcony that served as Finlay’s bedchamber. The room was dark, the window to his balcony closed. Was he sleeping? She pictured him sprawled on his back, one arm above his head. His nightshirt would be open at the neck. Though perhaps he did not wear one? Would his chest be smooth? No, a smattering of hair. Dark auburn, it would be. She closed her eyes, recalling his contours under her hand. He was solid, not slim like Gabriel. Yes, that was it. Solid.
Today, on the hillside, he had given her a taste of what Consuela had hinted at. Remembering the way he had touched her, kissed her, the feel of his lips on hers, his tongue, his hands—she wanted more. The urgent tension he had left her with, that tightly furled feeling inside her had given her just a flavour of what could exist between a man and a woman. How much more was there to experience?
She shivered. What had Consuela meant when she said that she would like to be devoured? Isabella didn’t like to think of Finlay devouring any other woman, though he had doubtless savoured many. She tried to imagine kissing Gabriel as she had kissed Finlay, but it was no use. Gabriel would be shocked to the core. A good Spanish woman went to her wedding bed innocent of such things. Isabella turned away from the stars and headed back inside. How she very much did not want to be a good Spanish woman!
It was late. The warming pan was cold on her feet. She pulled it out from under the blankets and set it on the hearth before getting back into bed. The very few who had known her in the past as El Fantasma treated her as an honorary man. They had respected her. Some had feared her. All had obeyed her orders unquestioningly. Finlay had been excited by her revelation. He had not seen her as a threat, but a challenge. To him, she was no
honorary man. Not an equal precisely, but— Was there such a thing as equal and different? He made her feel less masculine and wholly feminine. It was very strange. And really, not the point at all.
She plumped her pillow and turned onto her other side. There was a point, but she couldn’t remember— Ah, yes, now she did. Lies. Finlay did not like to tell lies. His deceit made him extremely uncomfortable, which meant there must be a very, very important reason for him to resort to it.
Isabella sat up in bed and began to unravel her long plait. What if the net truly was closing in on El Fantasma? Certainly, the more vociferous liberals were now being persecuted. El Fantasma stood for all that the government wished to repress. He was subversive, but was he really dangerous enough for the state to pursue him?
The idea was much more thrilling than frightening. If it was true, it meant they really were starting to make a difference. Isabella ran her fingers through her hair and began to divide it up and plait it again. There were times when it felt as if the country she had fought for had gone backwards since the end of the war. It was not just the withdrawal of the constitution or the persecution of its supporters, it was the return of the Inquisition, the loss of freedom of the press. All that bloodshed, all that sacrifice, to go back to how things were before. She had put her life on the line for her country, for change. No politician in Madrid was going to stop her speaking out! None! She would not allow it. Absolutely, she would not!
And as to danger? For a moment, recalling just how vociferous Finlay had been, Isabella felt a little bit sick. She hadn’t ever considered the risk to Xavier of the printing press being found in his cellars. ‘But who would find it!’ She tied her plait tightly. The sickness faded. ‘This to danger,’ she said, snapping her fingers. ‘We cannot stop now. The fight must go on.’
The problem, she mused, was that Finlay did not understand. If she could make him see how important their cause was then he would leave, explain to the great Duke of Wellington that El Fantasma was in no need of rescue. Tomorrow, she would show him, quite literally. Smiling, Isabella snuggled back down under her sheets. Tomorrow, Finlay would start to see things her way.
The Soldier's Rebel Lover Page 10
