Regency Surrender: Passionate Marriages. Sophia James
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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‘Papa has enemies here and the French have not withdrawn.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.
Sometimes the weather in Spain, even in winter, could be windless and dry.
But on this night, early in the first week of March, the gales howled from the north in a single blowing force, enough pressure in it to make Lucien lean forward to find balance. The rains came behind, drenching, icy and cold.
His clothes at least were keeping the wet out and the warmth in. He was surprised how comfortable his new boots were and pleased the hat he had been given had a wide and angled brim. He had long since lost the feeling in his bare fingers, though.
They had been walking for a good two hours and he’d managed to keep up. Just. Alejandra hovered behind him, Adan and the other man, Manolo, cutting through the bushes ahead.
‘We will stop soon.’ Her words were muffled by the rain.
‘And make camp?’
‘More like sleep,’ she returned. ‘It is too dangerous to risk a fire, but the trees there will allow us at least shelter.’
He looked up. A moon was caught behind the heavy cloud, but he could see the dark shape of a line of pines about a quarter of a mile away.
He was glad for it, for although he carried very little in the bag on his back, his body ached with the prolonged exercise after such a sickness. He had not eaten much, either, his stomach still recovering from the effects of the orujo.
He knew Alejandra had slowed to match his pace and was thankful for it, the blunt warning she had given him still present.
Adan suddenly tipped his head. Alarmed, Lucien did the same and the sound of far-off voices came on the wind. A group of men, he determined, and ones who thought they were alone in these passes. A hand gesture had him dropping down and Alejandra crawled up beside him.
‘They are about a quarter of a mile away, but heading north. Nine or ten of them, I think, with horses.’
She pulled the brown coat she wore across her head and dug into the cavity of dirt on the edge of their track.
Further ahead there was no sign at all of the others. He guessed they, too, had blended in with the undergrowth, staying put as the foreign party passed.
His eyes went to the leaves above them. Downwind. If there were dogs, they would stay safe.
Alejandra held her pistol out and her knife lay in her lap. He removed his own blade and fitted it into his fist, wishing he had been given a gun as well and rueing the loss of the fine weapons he had marched