the way his fingers fumbled, he unbuttoned the heavy jacket and then the shirt, the fabric of the latter sticking to his skin. When he tugged harder the coppery smell of fresh blood filled the air around them and he thought for an instant he might be sick.
The cold was helping, though, the breath of the mountains soothing and smooth. When Alejandra walked behind and laid her fingers against his shoulder to draw the last piece of fabric away, he started.
‘It is off,’ she said after a moment, ‘and the bleeding has slowed.’ Drawing a picture with her forefinger on his skin, she gave him words, as well. ‘The cuts are deeper in the middle here than at each side and it is only those ones above your spine that have festered and still bleed.’
He’d been taken from the back. Lucien remembered the first pain as Guy had fallen.
Turning on his horse to fight, he’d drawn his sword quickly, but there had been too many and at too close a range. He had no true recollection of what had happened next save for a vague recall of place. The first true memory was on the field above A Coruña, waking to find Alejandra kneeling beside him and his steed’s heavy head across his abdomen.
She washed the injury with cool water and blotted the blood with something soft. The salve held the smell of garlic, lavender and camphor and was cooling. Then she gave him a cup with herbs infused in water taken from a glass container within her rucksack. Its lid was of red wax.
‘Stay still while I wrap your wound for protection.’ Careful hands went beneath his armpits and then met at the middle. Her breath at his nape was warm and soft and he clung to the touch of it as she pulled the bandage tight.
‘You are lucky this was not a few inches higher, Capitán. Nobody could survive a wound that severed the vein there and it was a near thing indeed.’
Close up the green in her eyes held other colours, brown, gold and yellow, and her lashes were long and dark. He had never had these sorts of conversations with a woman before, full of challenge and debate. He suddenly wished that they could sit here and simply talk for ever. The medicine, he supposed, the concoction of some drug that scattered his mind into foolishness and maudlin hope.
He stood unsteadily and put his clothes back on, watching as she arched up, her bag at her feet. A much more sizeable sack than the one he held, Lucien noted, angered by his weakness.
With her hat removed the long thick length of dark hair fell across one shoulder and down towards the curve of her waist. He glanced away. He would be gone in a matter of days and she would not be interested in his admiration. But the green eyes had held his with the sort of look that on any other woman might be deemed as flirtatious.
After a few moments she sat down opposite to him. When she gave him a strip of dried meat to chew he took it thankfully.
‘The rain has stopped, at least, but even in good weather it will take us two more days to reach the port town of Pontevedra. More if you become sicker.’ The impatience in her words told him she had little time for illness.
‘Will your father not wonder where you are?’
‘Papa has gone down to Betanzos for a week. I shall be home soon after, using the coastal route.’
‘A quicker option when I am not with you, holding you back?’
Frowning, she observed him more closely. ‘Are you very rich, Capitán Howard?’
Her question surprised him. Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo did not strike him as a woman who would be so much enchanted with the size of one’s purse.
‘Your query reminds me of the debutantes in the court of London who weigh up the fortune of each suitor before they choose the most wealthy.’
At that she smiled. ‘I was only wondering whether offering you up for a bounty would be more beneficial to our cause than the other option of sending you home. The rebel movement has a great deal of need for money.’
‘I have an ancient pile in Kent and a town house in London. Expensive in their own right, I suppose, but not ready cash, you understand, and all entailed. Other than that...’ He spread his hands out palm upwards.
‘You are penniless?’
He did not mean to, but he laughed and the sound echoed around the clearing. ‘Not quite, but certainly heading that way.’
‘In truth, you are blessed by such a state, then. My fortune was what led me into marriage in the first place.’ Her teeth pulled at the dry piece of meat. ‘Papa chose Juan for me as a husband because he was older and a man of means and power.’ Her words held a flat tone of indifference.
‘And what happened?’
‘I married him in the middle of winter and he was dead before the spring.’
‘Because he betrayed your father?’
‘And because he betrayed me.’
Her glance held his across the darkening space and Lucien saw all that was more usually hidden.
‘So El Vengador dealt with him and you made the marks in the limewash to record his death?’
She nodded. ‘I struck them off one by one by one. To remember what marriage was like.’
‘And never do it again?’
Tipping her chin, she faced him directly. ‘You may not believe this, but in my life men have liked me, Capitán. Many men. Even since Juan I have had offers of marriage and protection. And more.’
In the dusk he could so easily believe this, the deep dimples on her cheeks showing as shadow and her dark eyes flashing.
‘But they also know I am my father’s daughter and so they are wary.’
‘A lonely place to be, that? Caught in the middle.’
‘More so than you might imagine, Capitán.’
God. Such an admission would normally have sent his masculine urges into overdrive, but the sickness had weakened him and she knew it.
The moon had risen now, a quarter moon that held only a little light in the oncoming darkness. The noises of birdsong had dimmed, too, and it was as if they sat on top of a still and unmoving world, the tones of sepia and green and grey overwhelming. Far, far away north through the clouds and the mist would be the sea and England. Sitting here seemed like a very long way from home, though he felt better with the rest and the medicines, his strength returning in a surprising amount.
* * *
Lucien Howard was watching her closely and had been ever since leaving the hacienda, the roots of his hair in the rising night filled with the pale of moonlight.
If he had not been so sick, she might have simply moved forward and wrapped herself about him just to satisfy her curiosity about what he might truly feel like. Juan had been the sort of man who spoke first and thought about things later, but this army captain, this English earl, was different. Every single thing he said was measured by logic and observation and there was something in the careful cut-edged words he used that appealed.
‘Are you married?’ She had not meant to ask this
