The Soldier's Rebel Lover

by Marguerite Kaye

  She sat at the table and managed to force down her breakfast without choking. Her smile was manic, she knew that even without the look Finlay gave her, but he said nothing, eating his own breakfast steadily, taking a second cup of coffee, a faint frown furrowing his brow. She had no idea what he was thinking. He had that locked-away look, already putting a distance between them as he shaved. She knew he cared for her—how could she not, after the intensity and raw emotion of their coupling? She suspected he cared more than he would ever allow her to know. But she knew, too, with absolute certainty, that he would not allow himself to care enough, and she knew with equal certainty that she would never wish him to. She was not worth the sacrifice, and he would be sacrificing everything. His family. His career—even if he no longer wanted it. More important, his honour, and Finlay was a man who must always be honourable. A man who would always do his duty. As he was doing now.

  As she must do hers. Last night was their goodbye. She had vowed she would make it as easy, as painless, as guilt-free as possible for him. He was not detached; he was not indifferent. He was trying to make it easy for her. Isabella pushed her coffee cup aside and got to her feet. ‘Time to go,’ she said, straightening her shoulders, head back, like the trooper he expected. ‘Time to face the future.’

  * * *

  Finlay stuck to the bargain he’d made with himself for the three days and two nights it took them to reach San Sebastian. He played the soldier, as he had always played the soldier, thinking only of executing his orders as best he could, of protecting and defending Isabella’s liberty, wary at every second of potential ambush, dragging his mind back again and again to the task in hand whenever it strayed into dangerous territory. He would not think of their impending parting. He would not allow his heart to ache. He would not wish for anything other than Isabella’s safe delivery to the waiting fishing boat, and then his own execution of the final elements of Jack’s plan, which would ensure her future safety.

  They stood on the final crest above the fortress town of San Sebastian, the scene of the last battle he’d fought in Spain before heading for the Pyrenees in pursuit of the retreating French army. Below, the bay was fringed by a perfect, beautiful crescent of golden sand. A small islet was set like a jewel in the middle of the bay, breaking up the softly rolling waves. It reminded him of Oban bay, in some respects. The distinctively shaped Basque fishing boats, their hulls, to his Highland eyes, so vertiginous and bulky that he found it difficult to believe, looking at them bobbing in the protective embrace of the harbour wall, that they wouldn’t simply topple over in the lightest of swells. Isabella was bound for one of those boats. Isabella was bound for that sea, in the directly opposite direction he would take.

  Isabella, his lovely Isabella, who had been so brave and so stoic, these past few days. Not a tear had she shed, nor a word of complaint had she uttered. Not a mention of that perfect night they’d shared had she made. No regrets. No looking back. Only onward, forward, to the new life she would forge. A new life in a new world. A world he would not inhabit.

  His gut clenched. He thought he might be sick. The breeze ruffled her hair. She dipped her head to make some adjustment to her reins, and he thought he caught a glimpse of tears. Though it might be the wind. His heart contracted. His stomach roiled. It took him a moment to recognise it for what it was. Fear. He was desperately afraid of losing her. He knew at that moment, knew despite all, that he could not let her go.

  ‘Isabella.’

  She turned to face him. Tears. They were tears, but she forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. I will be fine. It is just— I will be fine,’ she said.

  She was trying to reassure him. Hope did not spring, it burst forth like the first snowdrop of the year. A fragile shoot, but determinedly pushing itself towards the sun. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider how deeply her feelings for him ran; he had been too concerned with damping down his own, but if she cared even a fraction as much as he did...

  ‘Isabella...’

  ‘Finlay, don’t worry. I won’t let you down. I am—I am ready.’

  She straightened in the saddle, determined to play the soldier she thought he expected, and it was his undoing. ‘Isabella, I love you so much. My own heart, I love you. I can’t let you go without me.’

  * * *

  She thought she had misheard him. She must have misheard him. She opened her mouth, but no words came. She could only stare stupidly.

  ‘Isabella.’

  Finlay jumped down from his horse and pulled her from the saddle. These past few days, in their wild race across the mountains, his face had been set, his expression steadfastly distant. He had played the commanding officer, she had played the foot soldier, just as they had agreed. Now the light was back in his eyes. They were the colour of the sea below. Her heart, her poor about-to-be-broken heart, began to beat faster. She couldn’t possibly hope. There was no hope. None.

  ‘Isabella.’ He took her hands in his. The horses were untethered, she noticed, and then immediately lost interest. ‘Isabella.’ He shook his head, grinned, shook his head, frowned. ‘I’ve never said the word before.’

  Say it again, she prayed, but said nothing, in case her prayers were misguided.

  ‘Never. I don’t know if I should... It’s—it’s likely all wrong, only— Ach, what a blithering eejit I am. I love you. I love you with all my heart, and no amount of telling myself all these other things matter more makes a whit of difference. I love you, lass, and I don’t want to have to live without you. I don’t know what that means. I can’t make any promises, I can’t even...’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Isabella threw her arms around him. ‘I don’t care what or how or if. All I care about is that I love you, and if you love me, too— Do you? Do you truly love me?’

  Finlay laughed. ‘Could you ever have doubted it?’

  ‘Yes! You never once...’

  ‘I could not. And you...’

  ‘I could not. Oh, Finlay, how could I tell you that I loved you, how could I ask you to come with me, when it would mean you giving up everything that is important to you?’

  ‘You are everything. You are the only thing that is, or ever will be, important to me.’

  ‘But your family. The army. You will be court-martialled.’ Cold reality hit her. She dragged herself free of his embrace. ‘Finlay, I love you so much. Too much. I could not do this to you, put your life in danger, ask you to...’

  ‘You haven’t asked me,’ Finlay said gently, pulling her back into his arms. ‘I’m offering. I don’t have much, or I won’t, not if—when—I leave with you, but without you, I have nothing. I don’t know what kind of life we’ll make, lass, but I’m asking you for the chance to build it together. Will you give me that chance?’

  She wanted to. Her heart cried out yes, but her head...her head needed some convincing yet, it seemed. ‘You said it yourself, Finlay, you’re not a man to run away. You have a duty to go back, even if it is only to resign. You cannot blight your honour with the shame of desertion, and you cannot take the risk of them catching you, for you will be hanged.’

  ‘I will not lie to you, I would wish it otherwise. I would wish that we could both go to England together, that I could put a clean and honourable end to my career, but I can’t. There are some sacrifices worth making. I love you. My duty is to my heart now, and not my country.’

  She swallowed the lump in her throat that his words, his beautiful, heartfelt words caused. ‘But your family?’

  Now he did flinch. She sensed true pain there, but still he shook his head. ‘I will be sacrificing no more than you, my love. We will make a new family together. If you’ll have me. It won’t be easy. It won’t be painless. We’ll miss what we’ve lost, but we won’t have lost the most important thing of all.’

  ‘Each other?’

  ‘Each other.’

  She cou
ld resist no longer. The future, which had seemed like a huge, black abyss, now spread golden before her, not perfect, not rosy or easy, but one redolent with promise. ‘I love you, Finlay Urquhart, with all my heart.’

  ‘And I love you, Isabella Romero, with every fragment of mine.’

  Epilogue

  Oban, Argyll—six months later

  The fishing village of Oban reminded Jack Trestain a little of San Sebastian. Funny how things sometimes came full circle. The same horseshoe bay, the island a short distance offshore, the sheltering haven of the harbour, the cluster of white houses lining the front. Admittedly the gently bobbing fishing boats were shallower, longer, the sky was a paler blue and it was significantly colder, but all the same...

  Had the similarity struck Finlay when he had sailed for Lisbon with his Isabella all those months ago? He had not mentioned it in his letter, but then he’d had rather more important matters to occupy him. Such as how to arrange his death, along with the death of El Fantasma.

  Jack smiled wryly to himself. Who would have thought that the partisan Finlay had encountered all those years ago would turn out to be a blue-blooded Spanish lady? And who would have imagined that the blue-blooded Spanish lady would turn out to be one of Spain’s most wanted rebel partisans? ‘No one, and it’s just as well,’ he said to himself as he stepped out of the fishing boat that had carried him here, after agreeing a time for his return journey with the captain, for his visit was a fleeting one with a sole but crucial purpose.

  Jack sat on the edge of the harbour wall to garner his thoughts. It had been Celeste’s idea that he come here in person. ‘For you cannot write such things in a letter, mon amour,’ she had said. It was true. What he had to say was far too politically sensitive to commit to paper, but that wasn’t what his lovely wife-to-be had meant. Finlay’s family had already received one tragic letter out of the blue, posing more questions than answers, something Celeste was only too familiar with. On this occasion, he would be there in person to answer all their questions, ease their concerns. This time, they would get the truth. Or as much of it as was prudent to furnish them with.

  Finlay’s missive had come to him via heaven knew what circuitous route, but by some miracle it had not, to Jack’s very experienced eyes, been tampered with. Short and pithy, it had been shocking, but it had also made Jack smile. Clearly, Finlay was head over ears in love with his partisan, though he had naturally said no such thing. Love, as Jack had recently learned, was capable of making a man do all sorts of rash and mad things. Such as ask his best friend to fake his death. You’re a master strategist, Finlay had written. I rely on you to give me a suitably fitting end.

  Well, he’d managed that, all right. The fate that had met the brave Major Urquhart in the remote, rocky mountains of Spain, was deemed heroic when reported in the British press. There had been no overt mention of El Fantasma, of course, but there had been sufficient hints to entice the Spanish chaps to ask the English chaps for more background, and the top-secret information they’d received had convinced them. El Fantasma was dead, and Major Urquhart had died, presumably at the hands of the cut-throat partisan’s accomplices, but not before successfully completing his mission. The Romero family were safe from prosecution, just as Finlay had insisted. More important, Wellington had fallen for the story, relieved that a potentially awkward political scandal had been avoided, and had even been persuaded to grant Finlay a posthumous honour.

  Jack looked at the medal now, sitting in its leather case. Finlay wouldn’t be interested in it, but his father would, and Jack was pretty sure that Mr and Mrs Urquhart would be able to put their son’s military pension to good use. It had taken a good deal of strong-arming to secure that pension. Jack had to make an effort to unfurl his fist, thinking about that. It shouldn’t have proved so difficult.

  He patted his coat pocket, though there was no need. The paper with Finlay’s new name and whereabouts in America was safely tucked away there, along with the letter from the bank with the arrangement for payment of the monies due each quarter. It was a risk, telling these strangers that their son was alive, but one Jack was certain to be worth taking. Secrets and lies, he had learned from his lovely Celeste, could tear a family asunder. Finlay’s family might never see him again, but their love for him would reach across the oceans that separated them in the letters they could write, and one day, perhaps, Finlay and Isabella’s children would be able to visit their father’s Highland homeland. That was a thought to warm the heart.

  Jack smiled. Mawkish idiot! Love had made him a sentimental fool. His smile widened. No, love had brought him happiness. He hoped Finlay and his Isabella were as happy as he and his Celeste. Reading between the lines of that letter, he’d wager that they were.

  * * * * *

  Historical Note

  The inspiration for Finlay Urquhart, the Jock Upstart, arose when I was reading Richard Holmes’s excellent book Redcoat while researching my previous book in this series, The Soldier’s Dark Secret. It was, I discovered, extremely unusual for a man of humble origins to work his way up through the ranks in Wellington’s army. He’d have to have been exceptional in every way—brave, bold and bright—but he’d always have remained an outsider to the establishment elite. I do love an underdog, and so Finlay was born.

  The main part of my research for the partisan war in Spain came from Ronald Fraser’s book Napoleon’s Cursed War. There were indeed female partisans fighting what was referred to, for the first time, as a guerrilla war—including Catalina Martin, who was promoted to second lieutenant, and Dominica Ruiz, said to have killed three imperial soldiers with her own hands.

  Isabella’s alter ego, El Fantasma, was a spy rather than a guerrillero, her values influenced by what I was hearing in the news—which at the time I was writing, focused on the conflict between matters of state security and freedom of speech and information: the so-called ‘enemy within’.

  I already knew that Finlay would be disillusioned by the lack of any meaningful change for the better wrought by peace, just as his comrade Jack was. I began to wonder about Isabella, too. My reading implied that in many ways Spain regressed, in terms of social justice, after the end of what they called the War of Independence. I wondered how my heroine would feel, forced to take a back seat in the country she’d fought so hard to liberate.

  As always, I’ve strived to set this story in as accurate a historical background as possible. In July 1813, when the story opens, the French had been driven into the north-eastern corner of Spain after the bloody Battle of Vitoria. Wellington was forced to withdraw from his attempt to storm the fortress town of San Sebastian, and it was not until September that the town finally surrendered, and was immediately sacked by the British—forcing the French to retreat across the Pyrenees. Any mistakes or inaccuracies are entirely my own fault.

  Finally, a note on Finlay’s accent. He is a Highlander. His family come from Oban, in Argyll, not far from my own home, and he would, of course, have been a native Gaelic speaker. His English would have become fluent in the army, giving him, more than likely, an English rather than a Scots accent. But I wanted my hero to be unmistakably Scots—gritty and a bit rough round the edges—so I’ll put my hands up right now and confess that the slang he uses has large elements of straight, modern-day Glaswegian.

  Anachronistic, completely historically incorrect, I know, but I hope it works. I leave it up to you to decide.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE FORGOTTEN DAUGHTER by Lauri Robinson.

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  The Forgotten Daughter

  by Lauri Robinson

  Chapter One

  White Bear Lake, Minnesota, 1925

  If only this was something she enjoyed...

  The outdoor dance floor covering the ground between the resort building and the water fountain overflowed with men and women set on having a good time. More people crowded the tables covered with alternating red, white and blue tablecloths that gave everything a patriotic feel, and the colorfully decorated Chinese lanterns hanging on the wires stretched from the tall corner posts added to the overall festive appearance.

  Even the hill, as it gently sloped toward the lake on the other side of the fountain, was a flurry of activity, with people lined up outside the little red-and-white tents set up for them to change in and out of their swimming attire.

  Her sisters had been right. As usual. People had come from miles around. Dressed in everything from fringed dresses and suit coats to beachwear. Age made no difference today. Betty Sandstrom, who’d turned ninety-one last month, sat in a chair with her cane hooked on one arm and on the other side of the table, Hannah Willis bounced her six-week-old baby boy, Henry. He was a cutie, with his tuft of blond hair and big blue eyes.