are powerful in your own right, powerful enough to protect her, perhaps?’
‘You think Alejandra would accept my protection?’ He might have laughed out loud if the other man had not looked both so very serious and so very young.
‘Her husband was killed less than one year ago, a matter of months after their marriage.’
‘I see.’ And Lucien did. It was the personal losses that made a man or a woman fervent and Alejandra was certainly that.
‘Are there other relatives?’
‘An uncle down south somewhere, but they are not close.’
‘Friends, then, apart from you?’
‘This is a fighting unit, ranging across this northern part of Spain with the express purpose of causing chaos and mayhem. Most of the women are gone either to safety or to God. It is a dangerous place to inhabit.’
‘Here today and gone tomorrow?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Was it Alejandra who hurt your wrist?’
‘It was. I asked her to be my wife and she refused.’
Lucien smiled. ‘A comprehensive no, then.’
‘The bruise on her face was an accident. I dragged her down the stairs with me after losing my footing. She said she would never marry anyone again and even the asking of it was an insult. To her. She never listens, you see, never takes the time to understand her own and ever-present danger.’
‘She loved her husband, then?’
The other man laughed. ‘You will need to ask her that, señor.’
‘I will. So you think her father would harm her?’
‘El Vengador? Not intentionally. But your presence here is difficult for them both. Alejandra wants you well enough to travel, but Enrique only wants you gone. The title you hold has swung opinion in your favour a little, but with the slightest of pushes it could go the other way and split us all asunder. Better not to care too much about the health and welfare of others in this compound, I think. Better, too, to have you bundled up and heading for home.’
A safer topic, this one. But every word that Tomeu had spoken told Lucien something of his authority. A man like El Vengador would not be generous in his fact sharing, yet this young man had a good knowledge of the conversation he had just had with Alejandra’s father. Lucien had seen him glance at the signet ring back on his finger and in the slight flare of his eyes he had understood just what Tomeu did not say.
He was a lieutenant perhaps, or at least one who participated in the decision-making for the group. The young face full of smiles and politeness almost certainly masking danger, for the lifeblood of the guerrilla movement was brutality and menace.
Had Alejandra’s father sent Tomeu to sound him out? Had Alejandra herself? Or was this simply a visit born from expediency and warning?
Thirty-two years of living had made Lucien question everything and in doing so he was still alive.
‘What of her groom’s family? Could she go there to safety?’
‘My cousin, señor, and they want the blood of the Fernandez family more than anyone else in Spain. More than the French, even, and that is saying something.’
This was what war did.
It tore apart the fabric and bindings of society and replaced them with nothing. He thought of his own immediate family in England and then of his large extended one of aunts, uncles and cousins. Napoleon and the French had a lot to answer for the wreckage that was the new Europe. He suddenly wished he was home.
‘I am sorry...’ Lucien left the words dangling. Sorry for them all. It was no answer, he knew, but he could promise nothing else. As if the young man understood, he, too, turned for the door.
‘Do not trust anyone on your trip to the west.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And watch over Alejandra.’
With that he was gone, out into the fading night of a new-coming dawn, for already Lucien could hear the first chorus of birdsong in the misty air.
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