Читать книгу Regency Surrender: Passionate Marriages - Sophia James - Страница 12

Chapter Four

The anger in Alejandra was a red stream of wrath, filling her body from head to foot, making her hot and cold and sick.

Tomeu had left, travelling south into more danger, and the Englishman was in his usual place on the pathway between the olive trees, struggling to walk.

Up and down. Slowly. He was not content with a small time of it, either, but had been there for most of the morning, sweat everywhere despite the cold of the day.

He was getting better, that much she could tell. He did not limp any more or lean over his injuries like a snail in a shell, cradling his hurt. No, straight as any soldier, he picked his way from this tree to that one and then back again, using the seat on every third foray now to stop and find breath.

Stubborn.

Like her.

She smiled at that thought and the tension released a little. She knew he must have his knife upon him for she had been into his room whilst he was out there and checked; a poor choice that, an act of thieves and sneaks. It was who she had become here, in this war of Spain. Her mother would have castigated her severely for such a lapse of decorum, but now no one cared. She had become part of the campaign to please her father, dressing as a boy and assembling intelligence because he was all she had left of family.

Lucien Howard suddenly saw her for he raised his hand in greeting. So very English. Someone like him, no doubt, would keep his manners intact even upon his deathbed. It was why his country did so well in the world, she reasoned, this conduct of decency and rectitude even in the face of extreme provocation.

‘I had a visit from your friend Tomeu last night.’

Shocked, she could only stare at him.

‘Well, that answers my first question,’ he returned and sat down. ‘I thought you might have known.’

‘What did he say?’ A thousand things ran around in her head, things that she sincerely hoped he had not told this Englishman.

‘That you were married to his cousin. For a month.’

‘A short relationship,’ she gave back, hating the way her voice shook with the saying of it.

‘Tomeu also confided that he himself had asked you to be his wife, but you had refused.’

All of the secrets that were better hidden. ‘He was talkative, then.’

‘Unlike you. He implied you were in danger here.’

At that she laughed. ‘Implied? It surrounds us, Capitán. Three hundred thousand enemy troops with their bloodthirsty generals and an emperor who easily rules Europe.’

‘I think he might have meant danger on a more personal level.’

‘To me?’

When he nodded she knew exactly what Tomeu had said, for he had used the same arguments on her when she had broken his wrist.

‘He talks too much and I did not ask for your help. It was you who needed mine.’

He ignored that sarcasm. ‘He said the trip west might be difficult. The power your father holds has aggravated those who would take it from him, it seems. Including Tomeu.’

At that she smiled. ‘When my father asks you again to aid the effort for Spanish independence, say yes, even if you have no intention of doing so.’

‘Because he will kill me if I don’t?’

‘He is a man with little time to accomplish all he feels he must. To him you are either the means to an end or the end. Your life depends on how much honour you accord to your word, Capitán. My advice would be to allot it none.’

‘A promise here means nothing?’

‘Less than nothing. Integrity is one of the first casualties of war.’ Alejandra held her mouth in the grim edge of a scowl she had become so good at affecting and did not waver. She was pleased when he nodded.

‘When your mother was alive...’

She did not let him finish.

‘We will leave here in a few days and head west. There will be two others who travel with us and my father will provide you with a warm coat and sturdy boots.’

His own were cracking at the soles, she thought, the poorly made footwear of the English army was a disgrace. What manufacturer would cut corners for profit when the lives of its fighting men were at stake?

Honour. The word slid into the space between them like a serpent, pulled this way and then that, unravelled by pragmatism and greed.

‘We will travel into the mountains first, so you will need to have the strength to climb.’ Despite meaning not to, her eyes glanced around at the flat small space that lay between the olives. Hardly the foothills of the mountains. The questionable wisdom of her plan made her take in a breath.

She did not want Captain Lucien Howard to die in the wastes of the alpine scrub, made stiff by ice and cold by rain. She could help him a little, but with Adan and Manolo tagging along she understood they would not countenance anything that endangered safety.

He would have to manage or he would die.

She knew he saw that thought in her eyes because he suddenly smiled.

Beautiful. Like the picture in his English newspaper, the sides of his mouth and eyes creasing into humour. She wished he had been ugly or old or scarred. But he was not. He was all sapped strength, wasted brawn and outrageous beauty. And cleverness. That was the worst of it, she suddenly thought, a man who might work out the thoughts and motivations of others and set it to work for his advantage.

‘I will be fit for the journey. Already I feel stronger.’

When he leant forward Alejandra saw the bandage at his neck had slipped and the red-raw skin was exposed. It would scar badly, a permanent reminder of this place and this time.

* * *

Lucien knew Alejandra worried about the wound on his neck, though she smoothed her face in that particular habit she had so that all thoughts were masked.

He imagined getting home to the safe and unscathed world of the ton, with war written on him beneath superfine wool. The hidden history on his back in skin and sinew would need to be concealed from all those about him, for who would be able to understand the cost of it and how many would pity him?

A further distance. Another layer. Sometimes he felt he was building them up like children’s blocks, the balance of who he was left in danger of tipping completely.

Except here with Alejandra in the light of a Spanish winter morning, the grey-green of olive branches sending dappled shadows across them.

Here he did not have to pretend who he was or wasn’t and he was glad.

Without her watching from a distance he might not have found the mental strength to try again and again and again to get up and move when everything ached and stung and hurt. She challenged him and egged him on. No sorrow in it or compassion. Both would have broken him.

Breathing out, he rose from the seat and stood. He was always surprised just how much taller he was than her.

‘Tomorrow I will walk to the house.’

‘It is more than two hundred yards away, señor,’ she said back, the flat tone desultory.

‘And back,’ he continued and smiled.

Unexpectedly she did, too, green eyes dancing with humour and the dimples in both cheeks deep.

He imagined her in a ballroom in London, hair dressed and well-clothed. Red, he thought. The colour of her gown would need to be bold. She would be unmatched.

‘If you walk that far, Ingles, I will bring you a bottle of the best aguardiente de orujo.’

‘Firewater?’ he returned. ‘I have heard of this but have not tried it.’

‘Drink too much and the next day you will be in bed till the sundown, especially if you are not used to the strength of it. But drink just enough and the power fills you.’

‘Would you join me in the celebration?’

She tipped her head up and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Perhaps.’

* * *

Lucien spent the evening on the floor of his room exercising and trying to get some strength into his upper body. He could feel the muscles remembering what they had once been like, but he was a couple of stone lighter with his sickness and the shaking that overtook him after heavy exertion was more than frustrating.

So he lay there on the polished tiled floor and watched the ceiling whilst his heart rate slowed and the anger cooled. Just two months ago he could have so easily managed all that he now could not.

He cleared his mind and imagined the walk from the trees to the outhouse and back. He’d walk past the first olive tree and then on to the sheltered path with lavender on each edge. The hedges were clipped there and could not be used for balance and after that there were three steps that came up to the covered porch. Two hundred yards there and another two hundred back and flat save for the stairs.

Of course he could manage such a distance. He only had to believe it.

The marks drawn into the plaster beneath the windows caught his attention again. Closer up he could see they formed a pattern different from the one he had first thought.

There were many more indents than he had originally imagined, smaller scrawlings caught in between the larger strokes. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Fifteen. Days of the months, perhaps? His mind quickly ran across the year. February and March was a sequence that worked and 1808 had been a leap year. But why would anybody keep such a track of time?

A noise through the inside wall then also caught his attention, quiet and muffled. Plainly it was the sound of someone crying and he knew without a doubt that it was Alejandra. Her room was next to his, the thickness of a stone block away.

Rising, he stood and tipped his head to the stone. One moment turned into two and then there was silence. It was as if on the other side of the wall she knew he was there, too, listening and knowing. He barely allowed himself breath.

* * *

She could feel him there, a foot away through the plaster and stone, knew that he stood where she had stood for all of the months at the end of Juan’s life; he a prisoner of her father’s, a man who had betrayed the cause.

She could not save Captain Lucien Howard should Papa decide that he was expendable, so she needed to take him out of here to the west. The evening light drew in on itself, watchful, the last bird calls and then the quiet. Juan had lost his speech and his left arm, but he had lingered for two of the months of winter and into the first weeks of spring. She had prayed each day that it would be the end and marked the wall when it was not.

Her marks were still there, the indents of time drawn into the plaster, one next to the other near the base of the wall, and left there when he passed away as a message and a warning.

Betray El Vengador and no one is safe, not even the one married to his only daughter. Juan had died with a rosary in his hands. Her father had, at least, allowed him that.

A year ago now, before the worst of the war. She wondered how many more men would be gone by the same time next year and, crossing her room, took out the maps of the northern mountains that Lucien Howard had upon him when he was captured. Precise and detailed. With such drawings the passage through the Cantabrians for a marauding army would be an easy thing to follow. She wondered why the French had not thought to search his saddlebags and take the treasure after leaving him for dead on the field.

Probably the rush of war had allowed the mistake. Not torture, but battle. Certainly the swords drawn against the Englishman had not been carefully administered, but made in the hurried flurry of panic.

She ought to deliver these maps into the hands of her father, but something stopped her. Papa did not need information to make his killings easier, no matter what she thought of the French. These were English maps, any military advantage gained belonged to them. On the road west she would give them back to the captain to take home and say nothing of them to her father. Perhaps they might be some recompense for Lucien Howard coming into Spain with an army that had been far too small and an apology, too, for his substantial injuries.

She felt tired out from her worrying, shattered by her father’s reactions to the Englishman. She had hardly slept in weeks for the dread of finding him with his throat cut or simply not there when she hovered outside his chamber just to see that he still breathed.

She did not want to be this person, this worrier. But no matter how the day started and how many hours she could stretch it out between making sure he was neither dead nor gone, she also couldn’t truly relax until the continued health and welfare of Captain Lucien Howard had been established.

A knock on the door had her standing very still and she glanced at herself in the mirror opposite. She looked as if she had been crying, her eyes red and swollen. The knock came again.

‘Who is it?’ Her tone was strong.

‘Your father, Alejandra. Can I come in?’

Concealing the maps in a drawer, she wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket and rubbed her cheeks. If the skin there was a little redder, her eyes would not show up quite so much. Then she flicked the lock.

Enrique Fernandez y Castro strode in and shut the door behind him. Slowly. She knew the exact second he recognised she had been upset.

‘If your mother were here...’ he began, but she shook that train of thought away and he remained silent.

Rosalie Santo Domingo y Giminez stood between them in memory and sometimes this was the only thing they still had in common, their love for a woman who had been good and brave and was gone. Both of them had dealt with her death in different ways, her father with his anger and his wars and her with a sense of distance that sometimes threatened to overcome her completely. But they seldom spoke of Rosalie now. To lessen the anguish, she surmised, and to try to survive life with the centre of their world missing.

‘The English earl is gaining his strength back.’ This was not phrased as a question. ‘I have heard he is a man of intellect and intuition. What do you make of him?’

‘A good man, I think, Papa. A man who might do your bidding in London well if you let him.’

‘He could be dangerous. To you on the way west. Others could take him.’

Alejandra knew enough of her father to feign indifference, for if she insisted on accompanying Lucien Howard she also knew that he would surely change his plans, so she stayed silent.

‘Tomeu says he can read minds.’

At that she laughed. ‘And you believe him?’

‘I believe there might be more to him than we can imagine, Alejandra, and we need to take care that he knows only so much about us.’

‘The house, you mean. The security of this place and the manpower?’

‘Take him out blindfolded. I do not wish for him to see the gates or the bridges. Or the huts down by the river.’

‘Very well.’

‘And leave him in Corcubion, no further. You should be able to find him a boat to England from there and it is a lot closer.’

‘Adan has family in Pontevedra.’

‘Almost a week away by the mountain paths. I want you back sooner.’

‘Very well.’ Her mind reeled with the implications of sending him from a town that did not have the protections of the others.

‘Here is a purse.’ The leather bag was tied with plaited rope and it was heavy. ‘He costs me much, this British spy. If you feel at any time he is not worth the danger, then kill him. I have instructed Adan and Manolo to do the same. Anything at all that might bring trouble. You will leave here three days from now.’

‘But he is not well enough, Papa.’

‘If he can’t walk out of here by then, he will never do anything else. Do you understand me, daughter? No more.’

‘Indeed.’ Her father wanted the English captive gone and if it could not be done with any sense of decorum, then he would simply get rid of the problem altogether. ‘But we will leave when it is dark for it will be safer that way.’ She needed to give Captain Howard time to acclimatise and the night-time would help. If they went late, it would mean only a few hours of walking.

‘Good. I shall not see him before he goes for I am off to Betanzos before dawn on the morrow and will be there for a week. Give him my promise that someone will be contacting him. Soon.’

‘I shall.’

He smiled at that, a quiet movement that made him look more like the handsome and kind father of old. It seemed so long since she had felt such kinship.

‘Go with God, Alejandra.’ He tipped his head and left the room, the sound of his steps on the tiles outside fading.

She had three days to prepare the English captain for the gruelling walk, though now they would not go into the mountains, it seemed, but along the coast. That might be easier for him, but harder for them with the lack of cover. Juan’s family, the Diego y Betancourts, inhabited this part of the land and they would need to take care to avoid notice.

Swearing softly, she thought of the difficult steps the captain had managed today. No more than a few hundred hard-fought yards till he needed to rest.

In three days he would not have that luxury. Extracting her rosary from her top pocket, she prayed to the Lord for strength, courage and perseverance. For both of them.

* * *

Lucien took in breath.

The new day was cloudless but cold and Alejandra stood beside him watching. Further afield he saw a group of others turn and stare.

‘Don’t come with me,’ he instructed as she took the first step when he did. ‘Wait here and I will be back.’

‘The orujo will warm you, señor.’ No ‘good luck’ or whispered encouragement. He was glad for it.

He was neither dizzy today nor light-headed and he had eaten a substantial breakfast for the first time in weeks. He was also aware of the heavy shadows beneath Alejandra’s eyes.

Taking the first step, he kept on going. The hedges of lavender were at each side of him now, he could smell the scent of the leaves, heady and pungent. Then the small space of chipped stones and the three rising steps.

He stopped before them and redrew in breath. He was sweating and the bravado that he had started with had waned a little, the stairway requiring a lot more in effort than the flatness of the path.

There was no handrail, nothing to hold on to as he raised one foot and transferred his weight. One. Two. Three. The deck welcomed him and shaded him, another flower he had no notion of sending a pungent odour into the air all around.

When he turned he saw her, standing still against the olives in the distance, her hands knotted before her as if she had been certain he might fall.

He smiled and she smiled back, the journey now easier in its return.

He could do it, the steps, the pathway, the lavender hedges and then back to the trees where he had left her. He did not even need to sit down when he reached the olives, but stood there, snatching the hat from his head and taking the ornate glass cup that she had filled from her hand.

‘Salud.’

‘Good health,’ Lucien gave back in English and their beakers touched, the cold of the tipple drawing trails across glass. He was elated with his progress and far less exhausted than he imagined he might have been. Tomorrow he would try for a longer distance and the next day more again.

‘We leave in two nights for the west.’

That soon? The liquor burnt down his throat and touched the nausea that roiled in his stomach, but he would not let her see that as he took another sip.

Despite his success this morning he could not even imagine climbing into the foothills of the Cantabrians or the Galicians and pretending energy and health for hours and hours on end.

‘If you lag behind, you will be shot. My father’s orders.’

Finishing his drink, he held out his glass for more. ‘Then I hope the firewater is all that you say it is.’

‘Papa has enemies here and the French have not withdrawn. But we know this place like the back of our hands, the secret trails, the hidden paths, and we will be armed.’

‘We?’

‘Adan, Manolo and I.’ She looked around as if to check no one else was close. ‘You have your knife, Capitán. Make certain it is within easy reach and keep it hidden. If anyone threatens you, use it.’

‘Anyone?’ His eyes scanned her dark ones.

‘Anyone at all,’ she returned and finished the last of her orujo.

‘Clothes will be brought to your room for the journey. And hair dye. The pale of your hair would give you away completely. Constanza will come and do it.’

‘A disguise, then?’

He saw how she hesitated, the stories of men captured without their uniform and hanged perfunctorily so much a part of folklore. With a cloak over blue and white he might be safer, but those travelling with him would not.

‘You speak Spanish like a native of this part. It will have to be enough.’

‘Do you expect trouble?’

She only laughed.

The pleasure of completing the walk had receded a little, but Lucien did not want her to see it. Even the orujo was warring against his stomach, a strong dram that scoured his digestive system after six weeks of bland gruel.

‘Can I ask you a question, Alejandra?’ She nodded. ‘What happened to your husband?’

The deep green of her eyes sharpened, bruising in memory. ‘He betrayed us, so he died.’

The shock of her answer left him reeling. ‘How?’

‘The betrayal or the death?’

‘Both.’

‘It was almost a year ago now and it was winter and cold. There was a fight and my husband lost. He died slowly, though.’

‘Three months’ worth of slowly? It is his room I am in.’

‘How could you possibly know that?’ She had stepped back now and her voice shook.

‘The marks on my wall. February had twenty-nine days in the last year only and March has thirty-one. I am presuming he died on April the fifteenth. I think you placed the marks there. To remember.’

‘I did.’ This time she held nothing back in the quiet fury. ‘I drew them into the plaster every night I stood in his room and wished him dead. It was for money he betrayed us. Did you figure that out, too? For the princely sum of pesos and guns, enough to start his own army and replace my father. And me.’

‘He confessed?’

‘No. A shot through the head was not conducive to any sort of explanation. Papa only let him live so that he might understand his reasoning and to see who else was implicated in the plot.’

‘Did El Vengador find others?’

‘He died without speaking again.’ Her answer came back with fierceness and Lucien could see in her eyes the truth of hurt. ‘Though it seems he could still write. I had not known that.’

A minute later she was gone.

The words in the Bible had been her late husband’s handiwork, then? Lucien wondered what he had done to Alejandra to make her hate him so very much.