LITMIR.BIZ

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he was gone. Alejandra stood against the wall to the left of the window, one foot bent so that it rested against the peeling ochre. Ready to flee.

      ‘You knew about this?’ He gestured to the paper and the ring. ‘You knew what your father might ask?’

      ‘Or of what he might not,’ she returned and crossed the room to stand beside him, lifting The Times in her hands.

      ‘You look younger when you smile.’

      ‘It’s an old likeness.’

      This time she laughed and the sound filled the room like warm honey, low and smooth.

      ‘I think, Lord Lucien Howard, sixth Earl of Ross, that even my father could not kill you if he wanted to.’

      ‘I hope, Alejandra, only daughter of El Vengador, that you are right.’

      She placed the paper down with as much care as she had used to pick it up. No extra movements. No uncertain qualms. Death could have been in the room when she entered as easily as life and yet there was not one expression on her face that told him of either relief or disappointment.

      But she had come and her knife was sheathed now, back in the soft leather at her left ankle. Would she have fought her father for him? The thought knocked the breath from his lungs.

      ‘Thank you.’ He offered the words, no sentiment in them but truth, and by the look on her face he knew she understood exactly what such gratitude was for.

      She was gone as quietly as her father had left, one moment there and the next just the breeze of her going. He heard the door close with a scrape of the latch.

      * * *

      He dreamt of Linden Park, the Howard seat at Tunbridge Wells, with the sun on its windows and the banks of the River Teise lined with weeping willows, soft green in the coat of early spring. His father was there and his brother. The bridge had not collapsed yet and he had not had to try to save them as they turned over and over in the cold current, dragged down by heavy clothing, late rains and panic.

      His mind found other happier moments—his sister, Christine, and he as they had ridden across the surrounding valleys, as fast as the wind, the sound of starlings and wrens and the first gambolling lambs in the fields.

      He thought of Daniel Wylde, too, and of Francis St Cartmail, and them all as young boys constructing huts in the woods and hunting rabbits with his father’s guns. Gabriel Hughes had come sometime later, on horseback, less talkative than the others, but interesting. Gabe had taught Lucien the trick of holding one’s own counsel and understanding the hidden meaning of words that were not quite being said.

      And then Alejandra was there in his thoughts, her long hair down her back and her skin lustrous in candlelight, full lips red and eyes dark. In his dream she wore a thin and flowing nightgown, the shape of her lithe body seen easily through it. He felt himself harden as the breath in him tightened. She came against him like molten fire, acquiescent and searching, her mouth across his own as her head tipped up, taking all that he offered; sweet heat and an unhidden desire before she plunged a knife deep through the naked and exposed gap in his ribs.

      ‘Hell.’ He came awake in a second, panting, shocked, his member rock solid and ready, the stupidity in him reeling. For the first time in all the weeks of pain and terror and exhaustion he felt like crying; for him and for her and for a war that held death as nothing more than a debt of sacrifice on its laboured way to victory.

      Alejandra was her father’s daughter. She had told him that again and again in every way that counted. In her distance and her disdain. In her sharpened blade held at the ready and the rosary she often played with, bead by bead of entreaty and Catholic confession.

      Yet still the taste of her lingered in his mouth, and the feel of her flesh on his skin had him pushing back the sheets, a heat all-encompassing even in the cold of winter.

      What would happen on the road west, he wondered, the thought of long nights in her company when the moon was high and shadow clothed the landscape? How many days was the journey? How many miles? If he was not to be taken out of Spain by way of the Rias Altas, was it the more southern Rias Baixas they meant to use? Or even the busy seaport of Vigo?

      The dream had changed him somehow, made him both less certain and more foolish, the unreality of it sharpened by a hope he hated.

      He wished there was brandy left at his bedside or some Spanish equivalent of a strong and alcoholic brew, but there was only the water infused with oranges, honey and mint. He took up the carafe and drank deeply, the quickened beat of his heart finally slowing.

      Reaching over to the table, he slipped the signet ring on his finger where it had been for all of the years of his adult life and was glad to have it back. Then he lifted up the paper to see the date.

      February the first. His mother’s birthday. He could only guess how she had celebrated such a milestone with this news crammed on to the front page of the broadsheet.

      He had always known it might come to this, lost behind the enemy lines and struggling to survive, but he had not imagined a thin and distant girl offering him protection even as she swore she did not. Taking his blade from beneath his pillow, he tucked it into the leather he had found in one of the drawers in this room before placing it back on the bedside table and glancing at the pendulum clock on the far wall.

      Almost four, the heavy tick and tock of it filling silence. He would not sleep again.

      He tried recalling the maps of Spain he had held in his saddlebag on the long road north to the sea. He and his group of guides had drawn many images, measuring the distances and topography, the ravines and the crossable passes, the rivers and the bridges and the levels of water. Much of what they transcribed he had determined himself as they had traversed across into the mountains, the margins of each impression filled with comments and personal observations.

      When he had encountered the French soldiers the folder had been lost, for he had not seen it since lying wounded on the field above the town. He could probably redraw much of it from memory, but the loss of such intelligence was immense. Without knowledge of the local landscape the British army was caught in the out-of-date information that allowed only poor and dangerous passage.

      A noise brought him around to the door once again and this time it was the one named Tomeu who stood watching him.

      ‘May I speak with you, Ingles?’

      Up close the man who had helped him from the battleground was younger than he remembered him to be. His right wrist was encased in a dirty bandage.

      He closed the door carefully behind himself and stood there for a moment as if listening. ‘I am sorry to come so late, Capitán, but I leave in an hour for the south and I wanted to catch you before I went. I saw your candle still burnt in the gap beneath the door and took the chance to see if you were awake.’

      Lucien nodded and the small upwards pull of the newcomer’s lips changed a sullen lad into a more handsome one.

      ‘My name is Bartolomeu Diego y Betancourt, señor, and I am a friend of Alejandra’s.’ He waited after delivering this piece of news, eyes alert.

      ‘I recognise you. You are the one who got me on the canvas stretcher behind the horse the morning after I was hurt.’

      ‘I did not wish to. I thought you would have been better off dead. It was Alejandra who insisted we bring you here. If it had been left to me, I would have plunged my blade straight through your heart and finished it.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘Do you, señor? Do you really understand how unsafe it is for Alejandra at the hacienda now that you are here and what your rescue might have cost her? El Vengador has his own demons and he is ruthless if anyone at all gets in his way.’

      ‘Even his daughter?’

      That brought forth a torrent of swearing in Spanish, a bawdy long-winded curse. ‘Enrique Fernandez will end his life here in bitterness and hate. And if Alejandra

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