Sophia James - Regency Surrender - Passionate Marriages

She could easily slip into the forest around them and disappear, leaving him with his wits to follow and the pine needles and oak leaves to bed down in. But she saw the fever in his eyes even as he held her glance, daring her not to comment, and turned to stride out before her. The bloodstain across his shoulders had widened and every so often a drip of crimson lay on the earth and bracken as he walked.

Chapter Six

An hour later Lucien knew he needed to stop, needed to lie down and reassemble his balance and his energy. His neck ached and the wound had reopened; the warmth of blood had held the cold at bay for a time until it could do so for no longer. Now he felt the shivers even across the soles of his feet.

‘We can camp here.’ Alejandra’s voice cut through his thoughts and he looked around. The clearing was undisturbed by civilisation, with a view wide down across the way they had just come. But most surprising of all was the tall tree tucked just before the overhang, the roots of it providing a shelter of sorts.

‘Like a house—’ she smiled ‘—with walls and a ceiling. I have used them before.’

‘An oak?’ The leaves and structure of the tree were not quite familiar.

She nodded. ‘Spanish sessile oak. Different from English oak, I think.’

Lucien put down his rucksack and sat against it. If he had been alone, he would have closed his eyes and tried to regroup, but he could see from the expression on her face that she was already worried by the tenuous nature of his health and he did not wish to add to her concerns. The hardness of the bark hurt and he leant forward a little. He needed to get his jacket off and some water on to the heat of the wound, but in the descending dusk and cold there would be little chance of such doctoring.

‘You are shivering.’

He simply looked up at her, unable to hide the reaction of his body further. It was finished, this pretence. He couldn’t have moved had his life depended on it, not even if a bunch of marauding partisans were to have charged at that moment through the trees.

‘Leave me and go home. You’d have a better chance of surviving if—’ She did not let him finish.

‘I didn’t take you for a quitter, Capitán.’

He smiled because that was what he might have said to her had the tables been turned.

‘Besides, you have been hurt before just as badly. I saw the scars on your body when we brought you from the battlefields of A Coruña and if you can survive once, you can do so twice, or a thousand times.’

Her words rattled him. Had it been her who had stripped off his ruined uniform after the battle? He’d been nude beneath the covers when he had awoken in the quiet room that first time, a bandage the only thing covering him.

‘Who undressed me?’

‘Oh, I forget that you English have such a large dollop of prudishness. War has changed things like that here.’ She was rummaging through her bag, so Lucien was unable to determine her expression, though he could hear the humour in her voice. ‘Take off both your shirt and jacket so I can see to you.’

He made no move whatsoever to do as she asked.

‘Salve,’ she explained as she found what she’d been searching for. ‘Constanza gave this to me before we left. She said if the wound bled again and you had a fever, I was to make certain to use it.’

For just one moment Lucien thought to simply ignore her and lie down, but the throb in his neck was making his temples ache badly and he knew slumber would be hard to come by in such a state.

Hating the way his fingers fumbled, he unbuttoned the heavy jacket and then the shirt, the fabric of the latter sticking to his skin. When he tugged harder the coppery smell of fresh blood filled the air around them and he thought for an instant he might be sick.

The cold was helping, though, the breath of the mountains soothing and smooth. When Alejandra walked behind and laid her fingers against his shoulder to draw the last piece of fabric away, he started.

‘It is off,’ she said after a moment, ‘and the bleeding has slowed.’ Drawing a picture with her forefinger on his skin, she gave him words, as well. ‘The cuts are deeper in the middle here than at each side and it is only those ones above your spine that have festered and still bleed.’

He’d been taken from the back. Lucien remembered the first pain as Guy had fallen.

Turning on his horse to fight, he’d drawn his sword quickly, but there had been too many and at too close a range. He had no true recollection of what had happened next save for a vague recall of place. The first true memory was on the field above A Coruña, waking to find Alejandra kneeling beside him and his steed’s heavy head across his abdomen.

She washed the injury with cool water and blotted the blood with something soft. The salve held the smell of garlic, lavender and camphor and was cooling. Then she gave him a cup with herbs infused in water taken from a glass container within her rucksack. Its lid was of red wax.

‘Stay still while I wrap your wound for protection.’ Careful hands went beneath his armpits and then met at the middle. Her breath at his nape was warm and soft and he clung to the touch of it as she pulled the bandage tight.

‘You are lucky this was not a few inches higher, Capitán. Nobody could survive a wound that severed the vein there and it was a near thing indeed.’

Close up the green in her eyes held other colours, brown, gold and yellow, and her lashes were long and dark. He had never had these sorts of conversations with a woman before, full of challenge and debate. He suddenly wished that they could sit here and simply talk for ever. The medicine, he supposed, the concoction of some drug that scattered his mind into foolishness and maudlin hope.

He stood unsteadily and put his clothes back on, watching as she arched up, her bag at her feet. A much more sizeable sack than the one he held, Lucien noted, angered by his weakness.

With her hat removed the long thick length of dark hair fell across one shoulder and down towards the curve of her waist. He glanced away. He would be gone in a matter of days and she would not be interested in his admiration. But the green eyes had held his with the sort of look that on any other woman might be deemed as flirtatious.

After a few moments she sat down opposite to him. When she gave him a strip of dried meat to chew he took it thankfully.

‘The rain has stopped, at least, but even in good weather it will take us two more days to reach the port town of Pontevedra. More if you become sicker.’ The impatience in her words told him she had little time for illness.

‘Will your father not wonder where you are?’

‘Papa has gone down to Betanzos for a week. I shall be home soon after, using the coastal route.’

‘A quicker option when I am not with you, holding you back?’

Frowning, she observed him more closely. ‘Are you very rich, Capitán Howard?’

Her question surprised him. Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo did not strike him as a woman who would be so much enchanted with the size of one’s purse.

‘Your query reminds me of the debutantes in the court of London who weigh up the fortune of each suitor before they choose the most wealthy.’

At that she smiled. ‘I was only wondering whether offering you up for a bounty would be more beneficial to our cause than the other option of sending you home. The rebel movement has a great deal of need for money.’

‘I have an ancient pile in Kent and a town house in London. Expensive in their own right, I suppose, but not ready cash, you understand, and all entailed. Other than that...’ He spread his hands out palm upwards.

‘You are penniless?’

He did not mean to, but he laughed and the sound echoed around the clearing. ‘Not quite, but certainly heading that way.’