“I want you to be happy, too. I don’t want to think of you alone. Find some gentleman who’s worthy of you and marry him—maybe a Highland laird, so you can stay near your castle.”
“Impossible. He’d want a woman who could give him children.”
“Not necessarily. Not if he doesn’t have a title to pass down, or if he already has children. You’re a widow—marry a widower.”
“Oh, dear.”
“What?”
“I just realized—with Robin a widower and now Sebastian gone, Aunt Lilias will try to match us again.”
“He’s your eldest cousin, right? Your aunt wants you for the next countess?”
“They always hoped I’d marry one of their boys.” Idly she traced the collar of his shirt with a fingertip. “They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t want to keep a hundred thousand pounds in the family.”
He blinked. “One hundred thousand?”
She shrugged against him. “You knew I was an heiress.”
“But…I’d thought that meant maybe twenty or thirty thousand.” He edged away as much as he could without falling from the bed.
Fierce hands clutched him, pulling him back to her. “Will. Does it matter how much money I have?”
“No.” Of course not. She would be just as far above him with the relatively modest fortune he had imagined. “But it’s a shocking number.”
“I suppose. But I don’t want to talk about money or who I might marry someday. Not when I have you with me now.” She kissed him and twined her body about his.
He kissed her back. “I must leave before daylight.”
“I know.”
“And I can’t be here every night. Sometimes I have sentry duty, and if I look like I never sleep, someone will suspect. Dan and Juana are much too observant.”
“So are Alec and Helen. Just come whenever you can. I’ll leave the shutters unlatched.”
“I will.” He kissed her again and rolled her onto her back, leaning over her.
“You’re not going yet?”
He grinned. “I’ve at least another hour.” He reached for the hem of her nightdress. “And I’ve been missing your skin against mine.”
She first arched her hips then sat up so he could ease the garment over her head and cast it to the floor. “So have I.” She helped him tug his shirt off.
They embraced, and he reveled in the feel of her. “I think I’ll show you what it’s like when it’s slow,” he said meditatively.
“Will you?” she asked, in a tone that meant Can you?
“Oh, yes,” he said, answering both questions. “I’m not fully recovered from last time yet.”
“Truly?” She smiled mischievously and parted her thighs, deepening their embrace. “I’m quite recovered.”
He tugged at a lock of her hair, not hard enough to hurt, and she responded with an equally mild shove. “Men are lesser creatures,” he said. “It takes us longer to regain our vigor.” He took her face between his hands and kissed her.
“I’d never accuse you of being lesser.”
“I’ll try to justify your confidence in me,” he replied and bent to his work.
When they lay breathless and sated in each other’s arms, he cocked an eyebrow at her. “So. Does my lady have a preference?”
She ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “No,” she said gravely. “With you, it’s all wonderful.”
“Oh, Anna.” He buried his face against her neck. “I should go, if I’m to be back in my bedroll before dawn.”
“Come whenever you can.”
“Believe me, I will.” He dressed in the darkness, kissed her once more and slipped out into the waning night.
***
Anna overslept. By the time she appeared yawning in the dining parlor, the Romero ladies had finished their breakfasts and left, and Alec and Helen’s plates were almost empty.
She paused in the doorway, inhaling deeply. “Coffee!” she said blissfully.
“Good morning to you, too, Anna.” Alec rose and pulled out the chair on his left. “Yes, we just got some new supplies, so we made it full strength for a change.”
“How heavenly,” she said. They smiled at her, and Helen poured her a cup while Alec filled her plate with one of Felipa’s light rolls and a fried egg.
“You look radiant this morning,” Helen said.
Anna sipped her coffee and hoped her kinsmen would attribute her flushed face to its heady scent and pleasingly bitter taste. But really, why should they suspect? “I slept well.”
Helen continued to stare at her in bemusement. “I’ve never seen you look quite so well before. Not that you haven’t always been pretty, but now you’re aglow.”
“Thank you,” she said uncertainly, taking a bite of her egg. Did what she and Will had shared in the night leave such a mark?
Alec considered her, too. “I see what you mean. She looks like the Anna I knew at home again.”
“I do?” Anna asked. “How so?”
“Why, lass, you look like someone who finds her life a vastly pleasurable endeavor. I’m glad to see it—you always had such high spirits as a girl. I’d feared your marriage had doused them for good.”
“Alec!” Helen exclaimed.
Anna blinked at her cousin.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t talk of it,” he said, “but Arrington was wrong for you from the first, and we could see how miserable you were, no matter how you tried to hide it. It’s no wonder you’re looking happier already, and I don’t doubt your sleep is more restful without him to spoil it.”
Helen coughed. “I know, my love. But we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Alec’s eyes flashed, a sure harbinger of the Gordon temper. Anna silently awaited the tempest.
“If I cannot speak ill of him now, when shall I have the chance?” Alec boomed out, loud enough for the parade ground. “First we were obliged to keep quiet, lest we make Anna’s troubles worse, and now I cannot say what I think of him because he’s dead?”
“Quietly,” Helen murmured with a significant glance toward the door.
“We’re the only ones in this house who speak English.”
“Beatriz and María understand more than you think, and there’s Nell to consider. There’s been gossip enough already, and it’s finally all but ceased. Let’s not revive it.”
Alec took a deep breath. “Very well. I won’t shout. But Arrington had no business marrying Anna—should’ve wed one of those prim young misses he always danced attendance upon before.”
“None of them had such large fortunes or good connections,” Helen said, echoing Anna’s thoughts.
“There was more to it than that.” Alec gave her a measuring look. “He did have a taste for—I won’t insult you by saying ‘women like you,’ cousin, but outspoken women with, er, lush figures who loved to dance, sing and laugh a little too frequently.”
“Why is that an insult? It seems an exact description of me,” Anna said, glancing down at her unfashionably full bosom.
Alec wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Because that wasn’t his taste in…ladies.”
Anna had never seen Alec look so embarrassed. “You mean mistresses?” she asked bluntly. “Prostitutes?”
He nodded. “Perhaps I shouldn’t speak so plainly, but…women like that fascinated him. He couldn’t stay away from them, and yet he always spoke of them with contempt. There was one who especially fascinated him the year before you married who even looked a bit like you—a little taller, brown hair instead of black, but green eyes and much the same figure. When you were so miserable together, I couldn’t help recalling that.”
She pondered her cousin’s words, staring into her coffee as if it could provide answers. Had Sebastian been unwilling to believe her innocence because she resembled his idea of a…whore? Someone irresistible, yet contemptible? The thought sickened her, but it had a ring of truth. “Thank you, Alec. That…that explains a great deal.”
“Most men aren’t like hi
m, lass.”
She shook her head. “I know. With cousins like you and a brother like James, how could I turn against the entire sex? But let’s not speak of this again. Only—do let me know if I seem happier than I ought.”
“Certainly, my dear,” Helen said. “But you needn’t worry overmuch. You’ve been solemn enough when we’ve paid calls. You might strive to temper your enthusiasm when your shots hit the target, but only soldiers see that.”
“I suppose you’ll be leaving us soon in any case,” Alec said. “That convoy goes out again in two days’ time, with an escort twice as large as before.”
Anna resumed her breakfast with studied casualness. “As to that,” she said with a blush she hoped they would interpret as embarrassment at her fear, “I am a trifle anxious about traveling again so soon. Perhaps I’ll wait for the next convoy.”
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you please,” Alec said. “But you do realize it could be some time before there’s another? I know you want to get to Dunmalcolm before winter.”
“I did, before. But I think it might be best if I spent the winter in Gloucestershire with James and Lucy. I owe them a long visit, and I may be of use to Lucy during her confinement.”
“As long as you’re certain.”
“I am.”
And with that, Anna was established as a member of Alec and Helen’s household for as long as she chose to stay. With Will within her reach, she had no intentions of going anywhere.
***
The next fortnight flew by in a happy blur. The army stayed in camp. Anna didn’t question why neither side offered combat or otherwise provoked the other, but accepted it as a gift from the fates. Will came to her every second or third night, and they loved each other well on her narrow bed.
She slept lightly, awakening to fly into Will’s arms the instant he climbed through her window. After their passion had been slaked for the moment, they would curl up together and whisper about anything except the future.
One night as they lay in each other’s arms, he peered at the book resting on the trunk beside her bed. “What are you reading?”
“The Scottish Chiefs,” she replied. “You’d enjoy it, even if your people are the villains of the piece.”
“My people?”
“The English, of course. The accursed Southrons.”
“Southrons, is it?” Anna got the sense that he was fighting to restrain laughter.
“Yes, though the author takes pains to show that not all Englishmen are perfidious. We meet the occasional courteous knight or honest soldier.”
“That’s a comfort. I do try to avoid perfidy, wretched Southron though I am.”
She laughed against his shoulder. “You’re just like Helen. She’s English, too, and she mocks Alec and me for taking such pleasure in the story.”
“Well, it explains why your accent has been growing stronger—you could almost be sister to the Highlanders in the regiment.”
“Och, aye?” she said, deliberately exaggerating.
“Aye, ye could, bonny lassie.” His Scottish accent was atrocious, and she shook from head to toe with the effort of suppressing a laugh that might waken the household. “I wondered about it,” he said in his normal voice, “but now I understand. I can only wonder that you still allow a Southron soldier into your bed, warrior woman of the Gordons that you are.”
She stretched luxuriantly against him to remind him how very welcome he was. “I’m no warrior,” she said. “Though at least I’m not so pathetic a creature as the heroine of the book. Every time she faces any peril, she swoons or at the least is overcome. If I had such an excess of sensibility, I’d be dead a dozen times over by now.”
“As many as that?”
“Yes—and been the death of you, too. You would’ve had to carry me bodily out of that French camp, for example. But I wouldn’t have lived to meet you in the first place. I’ve fallen in a river or two, between Dunmalcolm and campaign life—if I’d swooned instead of swum, I’d be dead.” She shook her head. “It may be very feminine and interesting, but I’m glad I’m not the fainting kind.”
“So am I,” he agreed. “Though I might take it as a personal challenge to see if I can make you swoon.” He rolled atop her and kissed her thoroughly.
She sank her hands into his hair. “Whatever shall I do? I’m powerless against the wiles of my mighty Southron captor.”
He responded with a laugh that was almost a growl, followed by the slowest and most thorough loving yet.
“You didn’t swoon,” he commented afterward.
“But I am quite overcome,” she replied languorously. “Is that sufficient?”
He buried his face in her hair. “Absolutely.”
“You wouldn’t want me to in any case. Admit it, sharing a bed with a woman in a swoon would be disconcerting.”
“Very,” he agreed. “She wouldn’t kiss me back or dig her nails into my shoulders or say my name again and again in that maddening way you have.”
Anna blushed. “You’ve no idea how hard it is not to scream it.”
He held her for a long time before slipping away into the night.
***
Her only regret was that she could not hold back time and linger in this paradisiacal place. Outside of winter quarters, she had rarely known the army to linger so long in one spot. Soon they must leave it behind, and she was unlikely to have such beautifully private quarters again. Also, while Helen and Alec showed no signs of tiring of her company, she knew she couldn’t stay with the army forever.
Anna accepted her dread of the future as a fair trade for the furtive bliss of the present. But she couldn’t help wishing she and Will could be together in the light. She felt more married to him than she ever had to Sebastian. As much as their nights delighted her, as much as she reveled in giving and receiving love in the caresses of hands and lips, in the slide of skin on skin, she wanted more. She wanted an ordinary, daylight life at his side.
By the end of the fortnight she was exhausted from her half-sleepless nights. She yawned over her sewing, fought to stay awake in the stifling afternoons and dozed off while Alec read after dinner. When Helen fussed over her, she assured her she was quite well, only tired—perhaps the early August heat was disturbing her sleep.
Helen accepted that, but Anna did wonder at herself. Surely she slept as much despite her stolen hours with Will as she had in the social whirl of her Seasons, and she had never felt like this then. But she was older now, and a Spanish summer was tiring in a way a London spring was not. And she had endured much over the past few years—perhaps the exhaustion had overtaken her at last. She was always alert when Will came to her. Nothing else mattered.
Chapter Eighteen
“Lieutenant Montmorency!”
George turned at the sound of Captain Matheson’s voice. “Yes, sir?”
“Please join me for coffee.”
He complied, though he would have preferred to remain alone. It was early one morning of the third week since the convoy had returned to the army. George’s wounds from the skirmish with the French battalion had healed. That, combined with his new rank as first lieutenant of the company, should have made him happy. But he was not, and he did not care to endure Captain Matheson’s courtesy. The captain did not like him, of that George was certain. He merely felt it his duty to be kind to a junior officer, and George did not relish being a duty. Yet to advance he must please his superiors, so he joined the captain outside his tent.
“I hope your wounds don’t trouble you,” Captain Matheson said as he handed him a steaming mug.
“Not at all, sir,” he said politely. “My head hasn’t ached in a week, and I’m sure I’m fit for duty now.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” The captain leaned back in his camp chair and studied George, tenting his fingers. “I’d feared you weren’t healing well—you look pale.”
George knew he did, but poor health was not the cause. “I own I shall be glad when the weather
cools.”
“So shall we all—until we’re shivering in winter quarters and longing for the summer.”
He murmured some response, and they sipped their coffee in silence for a few moments.
Captain Matheson cleared his throat. “Is something troubling you, Lieutenant? A quarrel, troubles at home? I’d be happy to offer any assistance in my power.”
“Nothing at all,” George lied, as he thought of his gaming debts and yesterday’s letter from Mama.
“I’m glad. But—do come to me if you’re in need.” The captain spoke with labored sincerity—no real warmth of friendship—and George vowed never to confide in him.
As soon as he could, he excused himself and resumed pacing about the camp. He ought to have stayed away from cards. Gambling had been his father’s downfall. But his fellow officers expected him to play, and when he’d won the money to purchase the step to captain as soon as the next opening appeared, he had felt lucky and played more. Now he had lost his initial winnings and was so deeply in debt he could not imagine a way out.
Mama’s letter had sealed his misery. She and his four sisters had been taken in by the same distant cousin who had got him his place in the Rifles, and they were living on Lord and Lady Hartshorn’s charity. They had all been living quietly together in a cottage on the Hartshorn estate, but now Mama had uncomplainingly told him that Lady Hartshorn had found suitable positions for his two eldest sisters. Augusta was companion to Lady Hartshorn’s great-aunt, while Henrietta was governess to the daughters of a Bristol merchant. Mama had written only of the baroness’s kindness and of her promise to do the same for Clarissa and Frederica when they were older.
But George seethed with humiliation. His sisters were ladies, and it demeaned them to toil for their bread. Henrietta’s position especially galled him. A Montmorency, a daughter of an ancient noble line, forced to tutor the spoiled infants of some low merchant!
He frowned as Atkins strolled by, stifling a yawn and laughing at something Reynolds said. The sergeants’ untroubled happiness seemed too much to bear.
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