A Stranger at Castonbury

Jamie’s hand on hers, so warm and strong, held her where she was. No matter what waited beyond that threshold, she was no longer alone. She had someone beside her who was willing to leap forward into the chasm with her.

Hand in hand, they climbed the stone steps and made their way into the church. Catalina sometimes went there at quiet moments, to pray for the souls of her family or just to think, away from the crowds and constant clamour of camp. Tonight it looked like a completely different place. Dozens of candles were lit along the carved white altar and beneath the windows, making the small space into a glowing, mysterious fairyland. Bunches of wildflowers splashed their colours into the dusty gloom. Before the altar waited the regiment’s chaplain and two of Jamie’s fellow officers as well as a Spanish laundress to be witnesses.

Catalina feared she might start to cry yet again. She had gone for so many months being strong, living with what fate had dealt her, stepping carefully from one day to the next. And now she had cried so many times in one day! Her wedding day—the day that should have no tears at all.

She turned to Jamie, and found him smiling down at her. ‘You did this?’ she whispered.

His smile widened. ‘I did. I gathered every candle and every flower I could find. I scoured the countryside for them. Do you like it?’

‘Of course I like it! But … why? When did you have time?’

‘Because I can’t give you what you truly deserve, Catalina,’ he answered. ‘A fine wedding at the Castonbury church with all my family to see. A satin gown, a cake, a carriage covered with flowers. But I wanted to make this place beautiful for you. A place we can always remember.’

Holding on to his hand, Catalina glanced around the transformed church again. She knew she would never, ever forget the way it looked, in this one still, perfect moment. She would never forget the man beside her and how he felt holding her hand.

‘I can’t imagine any place more beautiful,’ she said softly.

‘Then shall we get married?’ Jamie said with a teasing lilt to his voice. Catalina was glad to hear it—he was so very serious too often.

She smiled up at him and nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Let’s do that. We can’t let this beautiful church go to waste.’

And they walked together to the altar and held hands as they said the vows that would bind them together for ever. Or for as long as they lived in such dangerous days.

Chapter Two

Catalina felt it before she saw it, the slight tremble of the earth under their feet as they walked back from the church. Then a fork of sizzling, blue-white lightning split the dark sky above their heads. A rolling rumble of thunder followed, ending in a deafening drumbeat.

‘I think the days of drought might be over,’ she said. She tipped her head back to peer up at the sky from beneath the lace pattern of her mantilla. The stars and moon that had just begun to peek out as they walked to the church were now hidden beneath drifts of charcoal-grey clouds.

‘Just in time for us to move out,’ Jamie’s friend said wryly. ‘Nothing like moving camp in the middle of a rainstorm.’

‘Moving camp?’ Catalina glanced over at Jamie. She had heard nothing of any plans to move out. Where were they going now? Could she even follow him there, her new husband, or were they to be parted already?

Jamie gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand. ‘We have no orders yet. We have to make the push to Toulouse soon, but there is nothing definite.’

Catalina nodded, but inside she felt that cold touch of disquiet. Her life in the past few months had been nothing but moving, going wherever her nursing skills were needed, wherever she had to be in this strange new life. But she didn’t want to be away from Jamie yet.

Not yet.

When they made their way into camp amid the rumble of thunder, it looked to be the usual sort of evening. Men sitting around the fires and outside their tents, talking, laughing, playing cards, passing the long hours. Sometimes Colonel Chambers would host a dinner party or there would be dancing, but tonight everyone seemed to be in a quieter mood. Catalina could hear the strains of some sad ballad in the distance, and it added to the melancholy mood of the approaching storm.

As they passed by the largest tent, the one used for dining and officers’ meetings, Chambers stepped outside and called to Jamie.

‘Hatherton,’ he said. ‘May I speak with you for a moment?’

The man was usually all blustery good humour, not as vivacious as his wife but friendly and cheerful, handsome in his pale English way. But tonight he seemed unusually sombre, and that touch of disquiet inside Catalina grew like an icicle, freezing her heart.

‘Certainly, Colonel Chambers,’ Jamie answered. He kissed Catalina’s hand and said quietly, ‘I will meet you at my tent as soon as I can—Lady Hatherton.’

Lady Hatherton—how strange it sounded. How foreign. Could it ever truly belong to her? Would it ever feel like it was hers? Yet Jamie’s grey eyes warmed her, reassured her, and she smiled at him. No matter how strange his English title sounded, he was just Jamie, and that was the important thing. The only thing.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You must attend to your business. I will wait for you there.’

As Catalina left Jamie, she caught a glimpse of a flutter of pale fabric beside the tent. She looked up and saw that it was Alicia Walters. The woman hovered beside the canvas wall, and Catalina was shocked to see the streak of tears on her cheeks before she spun around and hurried away.

Catalina glanced back at the closed flap of the tent. It opened a crack, just enough for her to see most of the regiment’s officers gathered around a table scattered with maps. For an instant she considered running after Alicia and making the woman tell what she knew, but Alicia had vanished into the night.

Catalina quickly made her way to Jamie’s tent, which was set almost to the edge of the camp. It was quiet there, darker, almost as if they had a space all to themselves. It was also larger than hers, she saw as she stepped inside. The bed was more spacious, and there was a table piled with locked document cases and ringed with folding camp stools. He had decorated it much like the church, with candles and bouquets of flowers that made the dusty, warm air smell sweet and disguised the harsh, masculine military lines of the room.

The sheets on the bed were crisp and clean, turned back to reveal flower petals scattered across it in a bright pattern. It made Catalina smile and shiver at the same time to see it, to imagine lying with Jamie there as the flowers clung to their bare skin.

She turned away from the bed and went to the shaving stand. Jamie’s combs and brushes were neatly arrayed there, along with a small pastel portrait of two girls she knew were his sisters, Kate and Phaedra. Their blue-grey eyes, so like Jamie’s, gleamed with laughter and mischief as they looked out from the frame. She knew Jamie had other siblings and a father, the duke, still living in England, but this was the only personal memento in the tent.

Catalina unpinned her mantilla and carefully folded it before she pulled the combs from her hair and let the heavy, dark mass fall over her shoulders. The thunder was louder now, a steady roar too much like cannon fire, and she could hear the first beats of raindrops against the canvas.

She folded back the flap and peered out into the night. In the distance she could see the lights from the large tent where Jamie was, but then a flash of sparkling lightning split the darkness and for a second she was blinded. She closed her eyes against the light and shivered.

It was a strange night, almost unreal. She could scarcely believe what she had just done. She had married Jamie, and now she was waiting for him, her husband. The darkness, the storm, the shivering anticipation of what was coming, seemed to enclose her in a dream. The whole world had gone mad around her—why should she not be mad too?

Catalina let her head fall back as she listened to the rain batter against the tent and the earth outside, as she inhaled the sweet musky scent of the storm. The rain fell in earnest now, a true storm, and inside her chest her heart seemed to pound louder than the thunder. She turned away from the rain and let the flap fall closed. The sound was muffled now, and she felt almost as if she was enclosed in a cave alone, away from the real world. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and the scent of clean, sun-warmed sheets and flowers rose around her.

She smiled, and then laughed aloud. Mad indeed. She fell back into the soft pillows and let the rain and the night surround her. She had a flashing memory of her first wedding night, which had been in a grand, carved bed hung with velvet curtains and spread with silk sheets. A bed that had been in her husband’s family since the 1500s, laden with tradition and expectations.

She had been a scared girl then, shy and obedient, and her husband had done nothing to soothe her fears. When he died, she had thought she would never marry again, never be bound to someone like that. And when her brother died, she ran away from Seville to be a nurse, and the feeling of freedom was wondrous despite the dangers. She had never wanted to give that up.

Until Jamie. He had changed everything.

Catalina rolled onto her side and hugged Jamie’s pillow to her. She had never met anyone like him before, so intriguing, so full of life. He made her behave in ways she could never have imagined, ways that were wild and impulsive. He made her feel alive, and she would revel in that for every moment she could.

She held on to the pillow and fancied its linen folds still smelled of Jamie. The patter of the rain lulled her into a half waking, half asleep dream state.

Suddenly she heard a soft rustling sound, as if a cloth was being shifted. The bed moved as someone sat down beside her and a hand gently touched her hip through the thin linen of her chemise.

She started to turn over, but Jamie whispered, ‘Shh. I didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘I was waiting for you,’ she said.

He eased her hair away from the side of her neck and she felt his kiss on the soft skin just below her ear. She shivered at the delicious sensation of it, and his lips slid down her neck to caress her shoulder. His hand moved along her body, and she could feel the hunger in his touch. A hunger that echoed her own.

She rolled over to wrap her arms around him and pull him up against her. Their mouths met in a kiss full of desperate desire. She needed him so much, and she wanted him to need her too. Wanted only the two of them in their own small world for just a little while longer.

She felt his hands close hard around her waist and he turned in one quick movement so that she lay on top of him. His tongue traced the curve of her lower lip, lightly, teasingly, before he slid deep inside.

Desire gathered around her like a blurry, heated cloud, and she felt his hand on her backside, dragging her tight against him. She arched her hips into his hard erection and spread her legs wider over him.

He groaned hoarsely, and their kiss slid into wild, frantic need. He had already removed his coat, and she tore at the lacings of his shirt until she could touch his bare skin. She pressed her palms to his chest, revelling in the hot, smooth feeling of his skin over those lean muscles. His breath, his heartbeat, his strength—how she loved all of it.

‘Catalina,’ he whispered. ‘Please, I need you. I need to see you.’

Catalina sat up, her knees braced to either side of his hips. He watched her with burning bright grey eyes as she untied the ribbon at the neck of her chemise. She drew it up over her head and let it fall away.

‘I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you,’ he said.

‘No,’ she argued. ‘Nothing is as beautiful as you.’ She traced her fingertips over the bare skin of his chest. Lightly, she touched the sharp curve of his hip, the line of his lean thigh—the hard heat of his manhood through his breeches.

‘Catalina,’ he growled. In one swift movement, he knelt before her. His hands at her waist dragged her tight against him until not a single breath could come between them.

He kissed her fiercely, and she felt his touch on her naked breast. His roughened palm slid beneath it to cradle its weight, and his long fingers teased at her hardened nipple, a soft, fleeting caress. He teased her until she moaned and arched her back to press herself against him. He finally gave her what she longed for, rolling the sensitive nipple hard between his fingers.

Her desire burned even higher at his touch. She held tightly to his shoulders, digging her fingers deep into his skin to hold him with her. He slid down her body until his mouth closed over her nipple, sucking deeply.

Catalina’s head fell back weakly as she cried out incoherent Spanish words, begging for yet more of him. He seemed hungry for her too. His open mouth trailed along her skin to her stomach, his tongue circling her navel as his hand curled hard around the back of her thigh and tugged her closer to him. He pressed a kiss softly to the inside of her leg and one finger eased along the seam of her womanhood and slid inside of her.

‘Jamie,’ she panted. Her eyes closed tightly as she concentrated on every touch. Suddenly she felt his tongue touch her there. ‘Jamie, no!’

‘Shh, let me,’ he whispered, and she gave herself over to what he did to her, what he made her feel. He tasted her so deeply she could have no secrets from him. Waves of burning pleasure washed over her and she fell down into them. She drove her fingers into his hair and held him to her—she wanted more and more, she wanted all of him.

Her climax took hold of her, low at her very core, a building, burning pressure. She let it expand over her whole body until every coherent thought vanished and there was only feeling. Only him. As he thrust his tongue deep within her one more time she exploded.

‘Jamie,’ she breathed as she sank down to the bed, her legs spread as he knelt between them. He stared down at her, his grey eyes so dark they seemed almost black, his chest heaving with the force of his breath.

Catalina reached out to unfasten his breeches and push them away from his hips. He was hard with his own unfulfilled desire, velvet over hot iron, beckoning for her touch and she gave in to the temptation. She ran her hand slowly up his length and down again and he trembled at her caress. His erection strained against her hand, yet he held very, very still.

‘Catalina,’ he whispered harshly.

She sat up and pushed him down in her place so she could strip away his breeches and see the beauty of his naked body at last. The light from the fires through the canvas walls of the tent turned his skin to gold, and she touched every inch of him, wondering that he could be her husband.

‘Catalina, I can’t bear this much longer,’ he said as he reached up to caress her hair. She bent her head to kiss his shoulder, to bite lightly at his flat brown nipple. Suddenly he seized her by the hips and rolled her down to the bed as he rose up above her. He buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, kissing her skin as she wrapped her arms around him and laughed out of sheer happiness.

‘Do you want me, Catalina?’ he whispered. ‘Do you want me inside you?’

‘Yes,’ she cried. She opened herself to him and he slid deeply into her, home at last. She wrapped her legs around him and closed her eyes as she felt him with her.

He drew back only to drive forward again and again, a delicious friction rough and hot inside of her. She listened to the harsh, uneven rhythm of his breath as they moved together, seeking their pleasure. He was part of her now, but she wanted everything he could give—and she wanted to give him everything in return.

Faster and faster they moved, their cries mingling. She rose up and caught his lips with hers as she felt her climax build again. She cried out at the sudden release, a shower of white and glowing blue sparks that seemed to fall over her. His back tightened under her touch, and he arched back as he shouted out her name.

He fell heavily to the bed beside her, facedown as he trembled. Catalina was shaking too, exhausted and exalted by the pleasure of their lovemaking.

By the sheer joy of being with Jamie. She opened her eyes to stare up at the canvas ceiling above them, breathing slowly and deeply until she could float back down to earth again. She smiled, feeling so wonderfully free. So perfectly where she should be.

Jamie wrapped his arm around her waist and hugged her close as she turned on her side with her back pressed to his chest. She ran her fingertips over his arm as she listened to the sound of his breath mingle with the night breeze outside.

‘Tell me a tale,’ she said softly.

Jamie chuckled sleepily. ‘What sort of tale?’

‘One of your home.’

‘I have told you about Castonbury already!’

Catalina laughed. ‘I want to hear it again. I want to know everything about you.’ Just as he knew her stories of her own life—her parents and their cold, correct home; her brother, lost fighting against a tyrannical king; her first marriage, so brief and so disappointing. She much preferred to hear about England and his family there.

Jamie laughed. ‘I don’t think you would want to know everything. You might not like me so much then.’

‘Never!’ Catalina protested. ‘Your home cannot be so awful. From what you have told me it sounds beautiful.’

‘Castonbury is beautiful, in its own terrible way.’ Jamie kissed her hair, but she could hear from the faraway note in his voice that he was somewhere else in his mind for the moment. ‘When I was a child I thought it was its own world, a playground for me and my siblings. We ran over the fields, fished and rowed on the lakes, played hide-and-seek behind the marble columns. Chased one another in front of gilded mirrors and under Waterford glass chandeliers and frescoed rotundas. We never realised how grand it all was.’

‘It sounds like a palace,’ Catalina murmured, trying to picture it all in her mind. Her own family’s home in Seville was ancient and filled with heirlooms from her relatives, but it was all crumbling and faded, past its grand days.

‘It was built to make everyone think that, to awe every visitor with how spectacular the Montague family has been. To make them think they have been transported to the villa of a Roman emperor.’

Jamie pressed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder. ‘It’s beautiful, but it is also deeply lonely.’

‘Is that why you left it? Why you came here?’

‘A person can so easily get lost at Castonbury and never find themselves at all. Perhaps that is why I came to Spain.’

‘To find yourself?’

‘To find you.’ Jamie turned her in his arms until she lay on her back, gazing up at him in the shadows. ‘Did you come here to find yourself?’

Catalina laughed. ‘I think I came here to escape. Bandaging wounds seemed much preferable to living as a proper Spanish widow, all swathed in black. My house never felt like a home either, not after my brother died.’

Her brother—he had been a brave man, willing to risk all for his belief in a constitution for Spain, a country free of tyranny and a better version of itself. Until he’d fallen foul of a king who wanted the exact opposite, and was willing to deal with the French to gain his ends. No, Seville had never been a home once he was gone.

‘So we have found a home in each other,’ Jamie said.

‘Yes,’ Catalina said, even as she shivered with a sudden jolt of fear. For however long this happiness lasted, it was perfect.

And then he kissed her, and everything else disappeared.

Jamie gently smoothed a lock of Catalina’s dark hair back from her face and watched her as she slept. A small smile curved her lips, as if she was in a good dream, and her cheeks were flushed a pretty pale pink.

She was so beautiful. A gift he had never looked for when he came to Spain. A gift he had never expected in his life. He feared to hold it too tightly, as if it would shatter like a fine-spun glass ornament, but he never wanted to lose it. All his life he had felt alone, even in the midst of a house crowded with family and servants. But now, as he held Catalina, that feeling vanished. He had spoken the truth to her—in moments like this he had an inkling of what home could mean.

So how could he tell her what he had been asked to do for the English government? How they had assigned him to help bring the Spanish king back to his throne. How could he tell her this after what had happened to her brother, and given what she herself believed?

Catalina murmured in her sleep, and Jamie held her close until she grew quiet again. He wished he could just hold her like this until every ugly thing vanished for her, until he could make her life perfect. But he knew he could not.

He would have to keep her safe the only way he knew how. Through his work.

Smoke billowed around her, acrid and choking, so thick she could see nothing. She could hear the crackle of flames, the crash of burning wood around her, but she was lost in that terrible cloud.

And she was alone. Catalina held out her hands, grasping for something, anything. ‘Jamie!’ she cried out. There was no answer, and as she stumbled forward she suddenly fell into a bottomless, endlessly dark pit. She was falling and falling….

Catalina sat straight up, her heart pounding. For an instant she wasn’t sure what was real and what she had dreamed, if those hazy, half-seen terrors were real. She drew in a deep breath of air scented with rain and Jamie’s cologne and then she remembered the wedding, the storm. Being held safe in Jamie’s arms.

She glanced to the other side of the bed. It was empty, but the sheets were still rumpled. As she ran her fingertips over the cool softness of the linen, she heard a soft rustle from across the tent. She looked over her shoulder to see Jamie sitting at the table with papers scattered in front of him, his back to her. His dark head was bent over the documents, and he wore his breeches but no shirt. The candlelight flickered and glowed over his smooth skin, carving the lean, muscled lines into hard marble.

For a moment Catalina just looked at him, drinking in every part of him as she remembered how his hands felt on her, how his body felt as it moved over hers. She suddenly had the terrible feeling that she wanted to seize on to this moment and never let it go, that she had to remember it always.

Suddenly Jamie seemed to sense that she watched him. His shoulders grew tense, and he turned to look at her. His pale grey eyes, those eyes that seemed to see everything, pierced into hers and she shivered at the intensity she saw in their depths.

But then he smiled, and it was almost as if a new light broke through the storm. ‘You should sleep a little longer,’ he said. ‘It’s a few hours yet until dawn.’

‘You should sleep too,’ Catalina said. ‘You have been working too hard lately, planning this push to Toulouse.’

Jamie shook his head and a lock of dark hair fell over his brow. He shook it back impatiently and looked back down at the papers before him. ‘The planning may be done now,’ he muttered.

A tiny sliver of ice seemed to touch Catalina’s heart at those quiet words. She reached for his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed and pulled it over her head. ‘What do you mean? Are we really moving out soon?’

‘Very soon,’ he said. He rubbed his hand over his jaw. ‘Within the next couple of days.’

‘But … the rain,’ Catalina said softly. She could still hear the storm outside, the water that flowed over the canvas of the tent. She knew what such sudden storms were like when they came to break the dry weather, how violent and swift they were. ‘We’ll have to cross the Bidasoa.’

‘I may not be with you by then,’ Jamie said, and his voice was so distant, so eerily, coolly calm. He hardly seemed like the passionate, maddened lover who had rolled with her across this very bed only an hour ago.