‘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,