Marriage Made In Rebellion

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, but made in the hurried flurry of panic.

She ought to deliver these maps into the hands of her father, but something stopped her. Papa did not need information to make his killings easier, no matter what she thought of the French. These were English maps, any military advantage gained belonged to them. On the road west she would give them back to the captain to take home and say nothing of them to her father. Perhaps they might be some recompense for Lucien Howard coming into Spain with an army that had been far too small and an apology, too, for his substantial injuries.

She felt tired out from her worrying, shattered by her father’s reactions to the Englishman. She had hardly slept in weeks for the dread of finding him with his throat cut or simply not there when she hovered outside his chamber just to see that he still breathed.

She did not want to be this person, this worrier. But no matter how the day started and how many hours she could stretch it out between making sure he was neither dead nor gone, she also couldn’t truly relax until the continued health and welfare of Captain Lucien Howard had been established.

A knock on the door had her standing very still and she glanced at herself in the mirror opposite. She looked as if she had been crying, her eyes red and swollen. The knock came again.

‘Who is it?’ Her tone was strong.

‘Your father, Alejandra. Can I come in?’

Concealing the maps in a drawer, she wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket and rubbed her cheeks. If the skin there was a little redder, her eyes would not show up quite so much. Then she flicked the lock.

Enrique Fernandez y Castro strode in and shut the door behind him. Slowly. She knew the exact second he recognised she had been upset.

‘If your mother were here...’ he began, but she shook that train of thought away and he remained silent.

Rosalie Santo Domingo y Giminez stood between them in memory and sometimes this was the only thing they still had in common, their love for a woman who had been good and brave and was gone. Both of them had dealt with her death in different ways, her father with his anger and his wars and her with a sense of distance that sometimes threatened to overcome her completely. But they seldom spoke of Rosalie now. To lessen the anguish, she surmised, and to try to survive life with the centre of their world missing.

‘The English earl is gaining his strength back.’ This was not phrased as a question. ‘I have heard he is a man of intellect and intuition. What do you make of him?’

‘A good man, I think, Papa. A man who might do your bidding in London well if you let him.’

‘He could be dangerous. To you on the way west. Others could take him.’

Alejandra knew enough of her father to feign indifference, for if she insisted on accompanying Lucien Howard she also knew that he would surely change his plans, so she stayed silent.

‘Tomeu says he can read minds.’

At that she laughed. ‘And you believe him?’

‘I believe there might be more to him than we can imagine, Alejandra, and we need to take care that he knows only so much about us.’

‘The house, you mean. The security of this place and the manpower?’

‘Take him out blindfolded. I do not wish for him to see the gates or the bridges. Or the huts down by the river.’