Sophia James - Regency Surrender - Passionate Marriages

On her part all she wanted to do was sleep. His presence at the hacienda had left her fretting for his safety, mindful of her father’s propensity to do away with problems and so for many nights she had barely slumbered.

Here at least Manolo and Adan were a good way off and Lucien Howard’s knife was sharp. There was some ease in being next to him as well and she had made sure to place her blanket roll between the captain and the others. It was as much as she could do.

The birds above called and insects buzzed about them, zinging in the night. The music of a quiet forest unthreatened by advancing armies or groups of the enemy.

She felt the warmth of Lucien Howard’s shoulder as she turned away and slept.

* * *

Lucien woke as the first chorus of general birdsong sounded. Alejandra was still asleep, her arm across his as if the warmth had brought it there in a mind all of its own. One finger was badly scarred and another had lost a nail altogether. The hand of a girl who had seen hardship and pain. The lines he had noticed before on her right wrist showed up as multiple white slashes in the dullness.

He remembered all the other hands of the women of the ton with their painted nails and smoothness and he wanted to reach out and take her fingers in his own with a desperateness that surprised him. In sleep she looked younger, the tip tilt of her nose strangely innocent and freckles on the velvet of her cheeks.

A wood nymph and a warrior. When a spider crawled up the run of her arm he carefully brushed it away. Still, she came awake on the tiniest of touches, from slumber to complete wakefulness in less than a blink.

‘Good morning.’

She did not answer him as she sat, her hair falling in a long tousled curtain to her waist, the darkness in it threaded with deeper reds and black.

He saw her glance at the sky. Determining time, he supposed, and marking the hour of dawn. The steel in her knife’s hilt had left deepened ridges on the skin of her forearm, so close had she held it as she slept. When her glance took in the empty clearing she looked around.

‘Where are the others?’

‘They went to the stream we can hear running, about ten minutes ago. I should imagine they will be back soon.’

Standing she packed her things away and kicked at the pine needles with her feet.

‘It is better no one knows we were here. A good tracker could tell, of course, but someone merely passing by...’ She left the rest unsaid, but the green in her eyes was wary as she turned to him. ‘Spain is not a soft country, Capitán Howard. It is a land with its heart ripped out.’

‘Yet you stay here. You do not leave.’

‘It’s home,’ she said simply and handed him a hard cooked biscuit, the top of which was brushed in a sugar syrup. ‘For walking,’ she explained when he looked at it without much appetite. ‘If you do not eat, you will be slower.’

He felt better now that it was morning, the old sense of energy and purpose returning; perhaps it was the change of scenery or the hope of getting back to England soon that did it. His companion’s smile was also a part of the equation. Without the scowl or the anger Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo was beautiful. Breathtakingly so, he supposed, if she were to be seen in a gown that fitted and a face that was not always filthy.

Where the hell was this train of thought going? He pulled his mind back to their more immediate problems.

‘Do you have any idea on the movements of the French?’

‘Marshal Soult has taken Oporto and Marshal Victor and Joseph Bonaparte hold the centre and Madrid. They seldom travel in small groups in this part of the country anyway.’

‘Because they are afraid of being picked off by the guerrillas?’

‘Would you not be, too, Capitán?’

Their travelling companions were back now and Alejandra gestured to them to give her a moment as she disappeared into the bushes in the direction of the stream. Left alone with the two men, Lucien was suddenly tense. Something was wrong; he felt it in his bones and he was too much of a soldier not to take notice. He had his knife out instantly as he turned to find the threat.

‘Someone’s close,’ he said, ‘to the east.’ Manolo and Adan also drew their weapons and moved up beside him.

They came out of nowhere, a group of men dressed in a similar fashion as they were, the first discharging gun slamming straight into the gut of Adan. He fell like a stone, dead as he hit the ground, eyes wide to the heavens above in surprise. Lucien had his knife at the assailant’s throat before the man could powder up again, slicing the artery in a quick and simple task of death. Then he did the same to the next one. Alejandra was in the clearing now, her knife out and her breathing loud. He stepped in front of her, keeping her out of the line of fire. Two more men, he counted. Manolo disposed of one and then fell against flashing steel. As Lucien advanced the last man simply turned tail and ran. Stooping to pick up a stone, he threw it as hard as he could and was pleased to hear a yelp further away. He’d have liked to have sent his blade, too, but he did not want to lose it.

The quiet returned as quickly as it had left, the shock in Alejandra’s voice vibrating as she kneeled first beside Adan and then Manolo.

‘Dios mio. Dios mio. Dios mio.’

Manolo clutched her hand and tried to say something, but the words were shallow and indistinct. In return she simply held his fingers stained in blood and dirt and waited until the final breath was wrenched from him. Folding his arms across his stomach and closing his eyes, she swore roundly and stood to see to Adan. With him she arranged the cloth of his jacket across the oozing wound at his stomach before covering his eyes with her handkerchief. The small piece of fabric was embroidered with purple and blue flowers, Lucien saw, a delicate example of fine stitchery from her past.

‘It was the Betancourts. I recognised them from before, but we will revenge them. It is what my father is good at.’

With a deft movement she collected the discarded weapons and water bottles and covered the bodies of her fellow partisans with pine needles, reciting some sort of prayer over them with her rosary. Then she indicated a direction. He could see tears on her cheeks, though she brushed them away with the coarse fabric of her jacket as she noticed his observation.

‘We have no time to bury them properly. Those who did this will be back as soon as the others are informed and they will be baying for revenge. Adan and Manolo would not wish to die for nothing, so now we will have to use the mountain tracks to go west and see you safe.’

She struck out inland, away from the sea, the breeze behind them. As they traversed along a river, making sure to place their feet only in the rocky centre of it for a good quarter of a mile, they saw the first scree slopes of the mountains.

She listened, too, every three or four minutes stopping and turning her head into the wind so that sounds might pass down to her, in warning.

Lucien knew inside that no one followed them. Always when he had tracked for Moore across the front of a moving army he had held the knowledge of others. Here, the desolate cold and open quiet contained only safety.

The Betancourts might try to follow them, but he and Alejandra had been careful to leave no trace of themselves as they had walked and the rains had begun again, the water washing away footfalls.

* * *

‘You have done this before?’ he finally asked when Alejandra indicated a stop.

‘As many times as you have, Capitán. Who taught you to fight with a knife like that?’

‘A rum maker in Kingston Town. I was a young green officer with all the arrogance associated with it. A man by the name of Sheldon Williams took the shine off such cockiness by challenging me to a fight.’