A Stranger at Castonbury. Amanda McCabe

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ