Sophia James: Regency Surrender: Passionate Marriages: Marriage Made in Rebellion / Marriage Made in Hope

If he had not been so sick, she might have simply moved forward and wrapped herself about him just to satisfy her curiosity about what he might truly feel like. Juan had been the sort of man who spoke first and thought about things later, but this army captain, this English earl, was different. Every single thing he said was measured by logic and observation and there was something in the careful cut-edged words he used that appealed.

‘Are you married?’ She had not meant to ask this so baldly and was glad when he smiled.

‘No?’ The small inflection he used lifted the word into question.

‘Have you ever been?’ She caught the quick shake of his head and breathed out.

‘You are wise, then. Marriage takes large pieces of one away.’ Alejandra was glad that he could not see her hands fisting at this confession. ‘With the wrong person it is both a trap and a horror.’

She’d never told anyone this. She wondered why she was speaking of it now out here in the silence of night. She frowned, thinking that she did know, of course. It was the residue of shame and wrath that still sat in her throat as a constant reminder of humiliation. And it was also because of Lucien Howard’s courage.

Her fingers found the cross she wore at her neck, the gold warming in her hands.

‘A few people seem to manage the state of holy matrimony quite well.’ He gave her this very quietly.

‘A fortuitous happenstance that in my experience is not often repeated.’

The deep rumble of his laughter was comforting. She wished she could build a fire to see him better but did not dare to risk the flame. Her stomach rumbled after eating the dried meat and she longed for heartier fare, especially now they would be traversing the high passes instead of the faster and easier coastal roads.

She saw him abruptly turn his head, tipping it to one side and listening as he pushed himself up. Then his knife was thrown, a single flash in the almost dark, the metal catching moonlight as it rifled across the space in the clearing to fall in a heavy thump.

He was back in a moment with a large rabbit skewered by steel, his eyes going to the dark empty space before them. ‘I will build a fire to cook it, but not here.’

Gathering dried sticks, he dug a hole in the ground a good ten yards away behind the trunk of the oak and bent to the task of finding flame.

Alejandra was astonished. She had never seen anyone kill prey with such ease. Even she, who was used to these woods and this clime, would not have aimed with such a precision through the dark. And now they would have a decent meal and warmth.

He was making her look like a woman without skill. Leaning forward, she took the rabbit and brought out her own blade, skinning it in a few deft swipes and laying it back down on a wide clean oak leaf that was browned but whole.

‘Thank you.’ His words as he threaded the carcass on a stick and balanced it across other branches he had fashioned into carriers. The flames danced around the fare, blackening the outer skin before dying down.

‘Will you be pleased to return home, Capitán?’

She caught the quick nod as he rolled the meat above the embers. The smell of the cooking made her stomach rumble further and, hoping he would not hear it, she shifted in her hard seat of earth.

‘Did your dead husband ever hurt you?’

The question came without any preamble and the shock of it held her numb.

‘Physically, I mean,’ he continued when she did not answer.

‘No.’ Her anger was so intense she could barely grind the lie out.

‘Truly?’

He turned the rabbit again, fat making the fire flare and smoke rise.

‘Truly what?’

‘I am trained to know when people do not tell the truth and I don’t think that you are.’

In the firelight his eyes were fathomless. She had never seen a man more beautiful than him or more menacing.

Just her luck to be marooned in the mountains with a dangerous and clever spy-soldier. She should tell him it all, spit it out and see the pity mark his face. Even her father had failed to hide his reaction when he had found her there, hurt and bound in the locked back bedroom at Juan’s family house, a prisoner to his demands.

‘I think you should mind your own business, Capitán.’

After this the silence between them was absolute and it magnified every other sound present in a busy forest at night.

* * *

Finally, after a good half hour’s quiet, he spoke.

‘Perhaps conversation will be easier again if you eat.’

Taking a small offering from the flame, he split it with his knife, laying it out on another leaf to protect it from the dirt.

Despite herself she smiled. Not a man to give up, she surmised, and not a man to be ignored, either. The rabbit was succulent and well-cooked, but his gaze was upon her, waiting.

‘Do you ever think, Capitán, that if you had your life again you would do some things very differently?’

He took his time to answer, but she waited. Patience was a virtue she had long since perfected.

‘My father and youngest brother drowned in an accident on our estate. It was late winter, almost spring, you understand, and it was cold and the river was running fast.’ He looked at her over the flames and she could see anger etched upon his brow. ‘I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t run fast enough to reach them at the bridge.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Fifteen, so old enough, but I made a mistake with the distance. There was a bend a little further upstream. I could have reached them there if I had thought of it sooner.’

Precision and logic. Everything he ever said or did was underpinned by his mastery of both. He had failed his family according to his own high standards, something that was the core of her shame, as well.

‘If I could go back, I would have killed my husband the first time he ever hit me. I had my knife hidden in my boot.’ She hated the way her voice shook as fury made speech difficult, but still she went on. ‘“Thou shalt not kill” is repeated in the Bible many times. In Matthew and Exodus. In Deuteronomy and Romans. I tried to take heed of the words, but then...’ Her heart beat fierce with memory. ‘The second death of hell is not the worst thing that can happen after all, Capitán. It’s the day-to-day living that does it.’

He nodded and the empathy ingrained in the small gesture almost undid her. ‘You are not the first to think it and you most certainly won’t be the last. But you were made stronger? Afterwards?’

‘Yes.’ No need for thought or contemplation. She knew it to the very marrow of her bones.

‘Then that itself is a gift.’

It was strange but his explanation suddenly eased her terror and the truth of the realisation almost made her cry. She had failed to be a dutiful wife. She had failed in her strict observance of the Bible. She had failed in bearing the heavy stick and fists of a man who was brutal in teaching marital obedience and subservience, but she had survived. And God had made her stronger.

For the first time in a long while she breathed easier. It was a gift.

‘How long have you been here in Spain, Capitán?’

‘Since August of 1808. After a few skirmishes on the way north we ran for the mountains, but the snow beat us.’

‘It was thick this year in the Cordillera Cantabrica. It is a wonder anyone survived such a journey.’

‘Many didn’t. They lay there on the side of the steep passes and never moved again. Those behind stripped them of shoes and coats.’

She had heard the stories of the English dead. The tales of the march had long been fodder for conversations about the fires at the hacienda. ‘Papa said a gypsy had told him once that the French will triumph three times before they are repelled. This is the first, perhaps?’