Instead, he would make the most of what little time he had in her company. He would make the most of tonight for this bonny, clever, brave lass, who deserved so much more than the hand that fate had dealt her, and who was facing the dangers and the fears of the great unknown with such fortitude it made him want to weep like a bairn.
Fresh from her bath, Isabella wore a pretty olive-green gown trimmed with bronze that made her skin seem golden. A woollen scarf in the same shades was draped around her shoulders. She had braided her hair around her head in a way that reminded Finlay of images of Greek goddesses, though there was nothing at all ethereal in her smile, nor in his reaction to it. ‘You look ravishing,’ he said.
She blushed endearingly. Such a bonny thing, and yet she had not a trace of vanity in her. Finlay took her hand, pressing a kiss to her fingertips. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You look very...’
‘Do not dare try to tell me I’m beautiful,’ he teased.
She laughed. ‘It’s an insult, I remember. May I be permitted to say that you look very dashing instead?’
He grinned, holding out his arm. ‘I’ll settle for that. Shall we go for a stroll before dinner?’
‘I would like that very much,’ Isabella said.
Braziers and lanterns were already being lit in the Plaza Mayor. It was time for the traditional evening paseo or promenade. They did not join in, Finlay being all too aware that his distinctive auburn hair might draw unwanted attention, so they watched from the shadows. Couples and families strolled, exchanging greetings, passing comment on the unseasonably mild weather, speculating on the possibility of rain. Women compared toilettes, children ran laughing round and round the square in excited clusters, while the smaller ones gurgled from their carriages or their mother’s arms. Young and old, well-heeled and down-at-heel alike, everyone congregated in the square in the early evening.
‘It’s a right social mix, isn’t it?’ Finlay marvelled. ‘In London, Hyde Park is where they promenade, but it’s more of a fashion parade for the toffs than anything, and you certainly wouldnae get the— I don’t know what it is here. There’s no sense of people sticking to their own kind.’
Isabella chuckled. ‘You have met my brother. There is plenty of that behaviour to be found in Spain, but not for the paseo. Do they have such a custom in Scotland?’
‘No, we have not the weather for it,’ Finlay replied. ‘I think I told you we have more than our fair share of rain. Mind you, when there’s a wedding, then you’ll get everyone out parading in their finery. That’s a sight to behold.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well, now, I’m talking about a kirk wedding mind. The last one I attended was for my youngest sister Sheena—I missed all the others, but I was home on leave for that one. My mother was baking for days before it. My mother makes the best scones in Scotland. They are a sort of cake, though not sweet, like a soft biscuit, and you eat them hot from the griddle with butter or crowdie, which is cheese.’
‘What other foods do they eat at wedding feasts? What does the bride wear? And the groom, does he wear the plaid? Me, I like the plaid very much,’ Isabella said, her eyes dancing, ‘though not, I think, on a man with thin legs. Or fat legs.’
‘A lady should not comment on a gentleman’s legs,’ Finlay said with mock outrage.
‘Ah but since you have told me that I am dead, then I am no longer a lady and therefore free to state that I think that you have a fine pair of legs and look most becoming in your kilt,’ Isabella retorted with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
He smiled down at her. ‘Then, since I’m not and never have been a gentleman, I’ll take the liberty of reminding you that you have a very delightful derrière.’
Colour tinged her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled. Her mouth was curved into the most tantalising, teasing smile. He spoke without thinking. ‘If we were not in the midst of half the population of Tafalla, I would kiss you.’
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but half the population of Tafalla have just spent the past hour kissing each other.’
‘I didn’t mean that sort of kiss.’
Isabella held his gaze. ‘I know you didn’t,’ she whispered.
His breath caught in his chest. He had the oddest sensation, as if he were falling head first from a cliff. She was teasing him. Flirting. But as he gazed down at her, his chest tightened, and he knew, clear as day, what it was he felt for her, and it bore no relation at all to what he’d felt for his other flirts.
He would not name it. If he did not give it a name, there was a chance, a tiny wee chance, that it would pass, because what point was there in him feeling...that, when he was about to pack the object of his—that thing, off to America?
‘I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous. We should eat. What do you think of that place over there?’ Finlay said, steering a slightly bewildered Isabella towards a brightly lit tavern on the corner of the square.
* * *
By the time they had gone through the ceremony of being formally seated at a table in the commodore, the back room reserved for diners in the tavern, and consumed a complimentary glass of the local aperitif, the awkward moment had passed. The dining room was basic, the food simple but excellent. They ate hungrily, enjoying a range of dishes. Morcilla, a variety of spicy blood sausage that reminded Finlay very much of the black pudding to be found back home in Scotland, menestra de verduras, a mixture of local vegetables and salty ham, a braised quail with tiny pale-green beans cooked in tomato, simply grilled lamb chops served with potatoes and cabbage, and the famous pimientos de piquillo—red peppers preserved in oil and stuffed with salted cod. The wine, Isabella informed him, was not as good as her brother’s. Finlay, who had always been a moderate drinker, partook sparingly, but Isabella, like many Spanish women he had met, seemed to be able to consume quite a few glasses without it having any noticeable effect.
They chatted about the food, relishing the first proper meal in over a week. They speculated about their fellow diners. Then, when they had been served an extremely good roncal cheese, Isabella raised the subject of his sister’s wedding again. Accustomed as he was to having his origins mocked, Finlay automatically embarked on one of his usual, heavily embroidered tales.
‘I think you are making this up,’ Isabella interrupted halfway through the yarn.
‘Not at all. Well, maybe a bit, but not all of it.’
She frowned. ‘Why would you do that? I am not a child, to be told stories. I do not want to hear family secrets or—or confidences. I was not prying. I simply wanted to understand you more. You have seen my home, you know so much about me, yet you tell me almost nothing about yourself.’
He had offended her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to talking about myself.’
Isabella propped her hand on her chin and studied him across the table. ‘The Jock Upstart,’ she said. ‘Was that one of the stories you tell in your officers’ mess?’
‘They would not be interested in the truth,’ Finlay said awkwardly, though he wasn’t sure, now he came to think about it, that he ever told anyone the truth, save Jack.
‘I am interested,’ Isabella said. ‘What is it like, to have three sisters? Consuela is very fond of hers. She is always writing letters to them. Do your sisters write to you?’
‘Aye, once every few months, with news of all my nephews and nieces. I’ve twelve of them,’ Finlay said with a grin.
Isabella’s eyes widened. ‘Twelve!’
‘And counting. Mhairi was expecting another the last I heard.’
‘I wonder sometimes what it would have been like, to have a sister.’
‘Someone to confide in?’ Finlay laid his hands over hers. ‘Your mother died when you were a bairn, didn’t she? It must have been hard, growing up without any female company.’
‘You said that to me that fi
rst night we met. I did not think—but now, I don’t know. Do you miss them, your family?’
He opened his mouth to assure her that he did, of course he did, then closed it again, frowning. ‘Honestly?’ He quirked his brow, and Isabella nodded. ‘I’ve been away for so long, that in a way they are strangers to me. They are my blood, I love them, but I’m no more part of their lives than they are mine. Aside from kinship, we have little in common.’
‘Though it must be a comfort to know that there are people who care for you, who would be there if you needed them.’
‘Aye,’ Finlay agreed with surprise, ‘that is true. The letters they write, they don’t make me want to go home, but it is a comfort indeed, seeing a picture drawn by my nephew, or reading one of my niece’s stories. Or reading about the fishing, and the peats and the tattie howking, whatever is the latest gossip my mother thinks fit for my ears,’ he said, smiling nostalgically. ‘It is good to hear that life can go on in that way, that people can be happy, when you are sitting in a foreign field in the aftermath of battle.’
‘What will you do now, Finlay? Now that Europe is at peace, and there are no more battles to fight?’
A damned good question. One of the many lessons this mission had taught him was that he was no peacetime soldier. ‘There are always other wars,’ he said, thinking, with little enthusiasm, of the rumours he’d heard about India. ‘When Wellington hears of my success in silencing El Fantasma, perhaps there will be other such missions, too.’
‘You think he will believe you? You have not told me what it is, exactly, that you will tell him.’
‘That’s Jack’s territory.’ The light had faded a wee bit from her big golden eyes. She was tired. And he’d been prattling on about his family, and his damned career, when all the while the poor lass had no family now, and much less of a clue than he about her future. ‘Let’s get you back to the inn,’ Finlay said, pressing her hand. ‘I’ll just go through and pay the shot.’
They were standing at the bar when he opened the connecting door. Two men, dressed in the uniform of the Spanish army, drinking a glass of wine. Not officers, but guards, Finlay reckoned. Their boots were dusty. He heard only one word. ‘English.’ But it was enough.
Retreating quietly back into the commodore, Finlay returned to the table. ‘We have to leave. Quietly. Don’t panic,’ he whispered into Isabella’s ear, putting her shawl around her shoulders and throwing some coins onto the table. Fortunately the room had emptied, the few diners left talking intimately over their wine and cheese. Even more fortunately, Isabella asked no questions, doing exactly as he asked, getting to her feet, following the pressure of his hand on her back, to the door that led to the kitchens.
‘Soldiers,’ he said, as the door closed behind them. ‘Spanish army. Two, looking for us. I don’t know if there are any more. I’m sorry, but it looks as though you won’t be able to enjoy the luxury of a feather bed tonight after all.’
* * *
She had not quite believed they were after her. Despite what Finlay had said, despite the urgency with which they travelled, despite the unequivocal evidence of their existence that fateful day at Estebe’s house, Isabella had been unable to wholly credit the tenacity of the Spanish government in tracking down El Fantasma, unable to believe that the pamphlets she had written, printed in the cellars of Hermoso Romero, could result in this merciless vendetta. As she scurried along at Finlay’s side through the back streets of Tafalla, her heart in her mouth, she no longer doubted. Finlay’s concerns were very real. America seemed, of a sudden, a very attractive prospect, if only because it was so very far away. She did not want to be caught. She desperately, desperately did not want them to catch Finlay.
‘Should we separate?’ she panted. ‘Finlay, I don’t want them to...’
‘Isabella, I’m not going anywhere without you.’
‘But they are looking for two of us.’
‘An Englishman and a Spanish woman, that’s what they said. If anything, it’s me who’s putting you in danger.’
Isabella’s hands tightened on his arm. ‘You won’t leave me,’ she said, before she could stop herself.
He smiled down at her. Even as they fled for their lives, that smile did things to her insides. ‘I won’t leave you.’ His smile faded. ‘Not until you’re safe on that boat. And the sooner we get you there the better. We’ll start to head for the north coast tonight.’
‘You said that is where they would concentrate the search for us. But now here they are in Tafalla in the west.’
‘They’ve clearly enough men spare to cover all the options. Ours is not the only army kicking its heels in peacetime. King Ferdinand’s men haven’t enough to do, either, by the looks of it.’
She was going to be sick. Fear, such as she had never felt during the war, made her break out in a cold sweat. She stumbled, and would have fallen if Finlay had not had her anchored firmly to his side. ‘Courage, lass,’ he said.
Isabella managed a weak smile, swallowed the nausea and picked up the pace again. ‘I won’t let you down.’
‘You couldn’t.’
His faith, whether misplaced or not, kept her going through the next fraught hours as they hurriedly reclaimed baggage and horses from the inn. They were heading home, east, Finlay told the landlady, a family crisis. He did not pretend that the false trail was likely to do anything other than give their pursuers a choice of three alternative directions. ‘And if there’s only the two soldiers, we might just get lucky, though we can’t count on it,’ he’d said.
* * *
They rode through the darkness, across the flat land that spread out to Logrono, for the route directly north was too mountainous. Towards dawn, as the horses were flagging and the terrain was becoming more difficult, they quit the main road and stopped to rest in the shelter of a valley where the mountains rose steeply around them. Shaking, exhausted and oddly exhilarated, Isabella sat huddled in a blanket coaxing a tiny fire into life while Finlay tended to the sweating horses.
‘We are likely safe enough here for a few hours,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘You should try to sleep.’
‘I don’t think I could.’
He put his arm around her. ‘Try.’
She did because he wanted her to, without any expectation of success.
* * *
When she opened her eyes it was daylight, and the smell of coffee brewing on the trivet greeted her. Finlay, astonishingly clean-shaven, his hair damp, handed her a tin mug. ‘I have some good news,’ he said.
‘Let me guess, there has been an uprising in Pamplona and all the soldiers in the area have been recalled to suppress it.’
‘Now, that would be remarkably good news,’ he said, sitting down beside her and stretching his long legs out in front of him. ‘Mine isn’t quite in that category. How are you feeling?’
‘You let me sleep for the whole night.’
‘What little was left of it.’
Noticing that there was only one cup of coffee, Isabella handed Finlay the mug. ‘We can share,’ she said, when he looked as if he would refuse.
‘Thank you.’
He took a sip and handed it back. She took a sip, putting her mouth where his had been. He was watching her. She took another sip. His hand lingered on hers when she handed the mug back. His eyes lingered on her mouth. Her breath caught. Finlay sipped, placing his lips exactly where hers had been. Her heart bumped. She leaned towards him. He leaned towards her. He handed her the mug. His lips brushed hers. He tasted of coffee. She felt the sharp intake of his breath. He kissed her, slowly, his tongue licking along the inside of her lower lip. Then he handed her the mug. ‘You finish it.’
At least he did not walk away, or head off to tend to the horses. Isabella finished the coffee. ‘You haven’t told me the good news.’
‘I rec
ognise this place. I’ve been here before, during the campaign. There’s a mountain pass we can follow, well away from the main routes, that will take us towards Vitoria, and from there we can head to San Sebastian.’
‘Vitoria. It was a very bloody battle for the English—British, I think.’
Finlay grimaced. ‘I confess, it’s not a place I’ve any yearning to see again.’
‘You have seen such terrible things. That day, when you opened my eyes to reality, when you told me what they would do to me if they caught me...’
‘I’m sorry I had to do that.’
‘I know you are,’ Isabella said, setting down the mug and touching his hand. ‘I know what it cost you to speak as you did, and I am very grateful. If you had been less blunt, I would have been less convinced. How do you do it, Finlay? How is it that you seem so—so divorced from what you have seen, what you have had to do? You are not a savage. You have a conscience, stronger than most, I think.’
‘If you’re talking about guilt, I have plenty of it.’ He frowned down at the dying fire. ‘You don’t think of it, not when you’re on active service. You think only of the next manoeuvre, the next battle. You can’t afford to look back. That way can lie madness—and I mean that.’ He glanced up at her, his eyes dark. ‘You must have heard something of what our men did after Burgos. Some of the atrocities. I was there in the aftermath, Isabella. There was no stopping them. The lust for blood, it wasn’t just revenge, it went deeper than that. It was as if some of them—it was as if they were possessed by an evil spirit. I sound like your Inquisition, but it’s the only way of describing it.’
‘Though, you never took part in such things,’ Isabella said. It was not a question. She was absolutely certain of it.
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