LITMIR.BIZ

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Grace set up an establishment with him! Quite extraordinary. But some well-bred women like to go fishing in the dirty end of the lake, and I fear she must have been one of them.’ He shook his head in disapproval. ‘It gets worse,’ he went on, ‘because she became pregnant and then died giving birth.’

      ‘Poor woman!’ Kate said and marvelled that her lover could tell this tale so calmly for it would surely remind him of his own first wife’s death. ‘And what happened to the baby?’ she asked.

      ‘I believe the child died too. But it was probably for the best. It ended the scandal, and what future could such an infant have faced? Whatever, the father of the child was this same wretched rifleman who was supposed to whisk you away across the river. I sent him packing, I can tell you!’ Christopher laughed at the recollection. ‘He scowled at me, he looked grim and claimed he had his orders, but I wouldn’t stand his nonsense and told him to make himself scarce. I hardly wanted such a disreputable rogue glowering at my wedding!’

      ‘Indeed not,’ Kate agreed.

      ‘Of course I didn’t tell him I knew his reputation. There was no call to embarrass the fellow.’

      ‘Quite right,’ Kate said and squeezed her lover’s arm. Luis appeared behind them, driving a small dusty gig that had been stored in the Quinta’s stables and to which he had harnessed his own horse. Christopher stopped halfway to the village and picked some of the small delicate wild narcissi that grew on the road’s verge and he insisted on threading the yellow blossoms into Kate’s black hair, and then he kissed her again and told her she was beautiful and Kate thought this had to be the happiest day of her life. The sun shone, a small wind stirred the flower-bright meadows and her man was beside her.

      Father Josefa was waiting at the church, having been summoned by Christopher on his way to the Quinta, but before any ceremony could be performed the priest took the Englishman aside. ‘I have been worrying,’ the priest said, ‘that what you propose is irregular.’

      ‘Irregular, Father?’

      ‘You are Protestants?’ the priest asked and, when Christopher nodded, he sighed. ‘The church says that only those who take our sacraments can be married.’

      ‘And your church is right,’ Christopher said emolliently. He looked at Kate, standing alone in the white-painted chancel, and he thought she looked like an angel with the yellow flowers in her hair. ‘Tell me, Father,’ he went on, ‘do you look after the poor in your parish?’

      ‘It is a Christian duty,’ Father Josefa said.

      Christopher took some golden English guineas from his pocket. They were not his, but from the funds supplied by the Foreign Office to smooth his way, and now he folded the priest’s hand around the coins. ‘Let me give you that as a contribution to your charitable work,’ he said, ‘and let me beg you to give us a blessing, that is all. A blessing in Latin, Father, that will enjoin God’s protection on us in these troubled times. And later, when the fighting is over, I shall do my best to persuade Kate to take instruction from you. As I will too, of course.’

      Father Josefa, son of a labourer, looked at the coins and thought he had never seen so much money at one time and he thought of all the difficulties the gold could allay. ‘I cannot say a mass for you,’ he insisted.

      ‘I do not want a mass,’ Christopher said, ‘and I do not deserve a mass. I just want a blessing in Latin.’ He wanted Kate to believe she was married and, so far as Christopher was concerned, the priest could gabble the words of the funeral rite if he wanted. ‘Just a blessing from you, Father, is all I want. A blessing from you, from God, and from the saints.’ He took another few coins from his pocket and gave them to the priest, who decided a prayer of blessing could not possibly hurt.

      ‘And you will take instruction?’ Father Josefa asked.

      ‘I have felt God pulling me towards your church for some time,’ Christopher said, ‘and I believe I must heed His call. And then, Father, you may marry us properly.’

      So Father Josefa kissed his scapular and then draped it about his shoulders and he went to the altar where he knelt, made the sign of the cross and then stood and turned to smile at Kate and the tall, handsome man at her side. The priest did not know Kate well, for the Savage family had never been familiar with the villagers and certainly did not attend the church, but the servants at the Quinta spoke approvingly of her and Father Josefa, though he was celibate, could appreciate that this girl was a rare beauty and so his voice was full of warmth as he enjoined God and the holy saints to look with kindness on these two souls. He felt guilty that they would behave as married people even though they were not married, but such things were common and in wartime a good priest knew when to close his eyes.

      Kate listened to the Latin that she did not understand and she looked past the priest at the altar where the gently shining silver cross was hung with a black diaphanous veil because Easter had not yet come, and she felt her heart beating and felt her lover’s hand strongly entwined in hers and she wanted to cry with happiness. Her future seemed golden, stretching sunlit and warm and flower-strewn ahead of her. It was not quite the wedding she had envisaged. She had thought to sail back to England, which she and her mother still considered home, there to walk up the aisle of a country church filled with her rubicund relatives and be showered with rose petals and wheat grains and afterwards go in a chaise and four to some beamed tavern for a dinner of beef, beer and good red wine, yet she could not have been happier, or maybe she could have been happier if only her mother had been in the church, but she consoled herself that they would be reconciled, she was sure of that, and suddenly Christopher squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt. ‘Say I do, my dearest,’ he ordered her.

      Kate blushed. ‘Oh, I do,’ she said, ‘I truly do.’

      Father Josefa smiled at her. The sun streamed through the church’s small high windows, there were flowers in her hair and Father Josefa raised his hand to bless James and Katherine with the sign of the cross and just then the church door creaked open to let in a wash of more sunlight and the stench of a manure heap just outside.

      Kate turned to see soldiers in the door. The men were outlined against the light so she could not see them properly, but she could see the guns on their shoulders and she supposed they were French and she gasped in fear, but Colonel Christopher seemed quite unworried as he tilted her face to his and kissed her on the lips. ‘We are married, my darling,’ he said softly.

      ‘James,’ she said.

      ‘My dear, dear Kate,’ the Colonel responded with a smile, ‘my dear, dear wife.’ Then he turned as harsh steps sounded in the small nave. They were slow steps, heavy steps, the nailed boots unfittingly loud on the ancient stones. An officer was walking towards the altar. He had left his men at the church door and came alone, his long sword clinking inside its metal scabbard as he walked closer. Then he stopped and stared into Kate’s pale face and Kate shuddered because the officer was a scarred, shabby, green-coated soldier with a tanned face harder than iron and a gaze that could only be described as impudent. ‘Are you Kate Savage?’ he asked, surprising her because he put the question in English and she had assumed the newcomer was French.

      Kate said nothing. Her husband was beside her and he would protect her from this horrid, frightening and insolent man.

      ‘Is that you, Sharpe?’ Colonel Christopher demanded. ‘By God, it is!’ He was oddly nervous and his voice was too high-pitched and he had a struggle to bring it under control. ‘What the devil are you doing here? I ordered you south of the river, damn you.’

      ‘Got cut off, sir,’ Sharpe said, not looking at Christopher, but still staring at Kate’s face which was framed by the narcissi in her hair. ‘I got cut off by Frogs, sir, a lot of Frogs, so I fought them off, sir, and came to look for Miss Savage.’

      ‘Who no longer exists,’ the Colonel said coldly, ‘but allow me to introduce you to my wife, Sharpe, Mrs James Christopher.’

      And Kate, hearing her new name, thought her heart would burst with happiness.

      Because she believed she was married.

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