The Soldier's Rebel Lover

She had to make sure he did not talk. She had to! This thought plummeted her back to earth. When next the dance brought them together she rushed into speech. ‘I must ask you to keep our previous acquaintance a secret.’ There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice, but this was not a time for subtlety. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It is very important.’

‘Why is that?’

The music was coming to an end. Isabella’s heart was pounding. ‘I will explain, I promise you, but not here.’

She made her curtsy, and the Scotsman made his bow. ‘Where?’

‘Promise me you will say nothing,’ Isabella hissed, ‘until we talk.’

He frowned, seemingly quite unaware of the urgency. She wanted to scream. She wanted to grab at his coat sleeve and shake him. Instead, she forced herself to wait what seemed like an eternity for him to consider, though it must have been mere seconds before he finally asked her where, and when.

Consuela was beckoning. Gabriel was by her side. Isabella began to panic. ‘Tomorrow morning. Meet me in the courtyard behind the chapel at eight. Promise me...’

He nodded, his expression still quite unreadable. ‘Until tomorrow.’

He had not promised, and now it was too late. ‘Isabella.’ Consuela arrived with Gabriel in tow. ‘I have assured Señor Torres that you will give him your hand for this next dance.’

Gabriel’s smile would have most other ladies swooning. Isabella, who had become adept at mimicking other ladies’ responses, was tonight incapable of producing more than a forced smile.

‘Indeed, I hope that you will,’ Gabriel said, ‘else I will think you prefer the company of an Englishman to a true Spaniard, and that will break my heart.’

Isabella stared at him blankly. ‘Mr Urquhart is Scottish, not English.’

‘A minor distinction.’

‘Indeed, it is not.’

The Scotsman spoke the same words as she did at the same time. A small, embarrassed silence ensued. ‘Mr Urquhart was just explaining the difference to me while we danced. To call a Scottish man English is like calling a Basque man Spanish.’

Another silence met this well-intentioned remark. Isabella resorted to her fan. Gabriel stared off into the distance. The visitor made a flourishing bow. ‘Señora Romero, would it offend your husband if I asked for the hand of his beautiful wife for the next dance?’

Consuela coloured and gave the faintest of nods. ‘If you will excuse us.’ Gabriel made a very small bow as the orchestra struck up the introductory chords.

The Scotsman made no effort to return Gabriel’s bow, Isabella noticed, and felt, in the way his hand tightened on her arm, that Gabriel had noticed, too. He swept her onto the dance floor. Looking over her shoulder, Isabella saw Consuela smile and blush coquettishly in response to some remark made by Mr Urquhart.

‘You are looking very lovely tonight. There is no other woman in the room who can hold a candle to you.’

Gabriel’s compliments, like his smile, were practised and meaningless. He was rich, he was well born and he was handsome. He had no cause to doubt that he was an excellent catch, and enjoyed enthusiastic encouragement of his suit from Xavier. Isabella was nearly twenty-six. Too old, in the eyes of most of her acquaintance, to hope for such an excellent match. To be wooed by Gabriel Torres was flattering indeed. Looking at him now, as he executed one of the more complex dance steps with precision, Isabella could nonetheless summon nothing stronger than indifference.

Chapter Three

Finlay threw open the doors that led out from his bedchamber onto the balcony and sucked in the cold night air. It had been a very long evening. He was fair knackered, to use one of his Glaswegian sergeant’s phrases, but his mind was alert, his thoughts racing, just like in the old days. He stared up at the stars that hung like huge silver disks, struck anew by how much brighter they seemed to shine in the sky than at home.

Home. It had not felt at all like home when he’d gone back. Ach, his ma and da had been the same. And his sisters, and his brother, too. None of them had changed. Their lives, the landscape had not altered, but he had, and there was no point pretending otherwise. He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t help but see the croft and the village and his family and their friends as his fellow officers would view them. No, he didn’t share their contempt for them, and yes, he still loved his family, but if he had to spend the rest of his life there he’d go stark staring mad. He would rail against the provincial predictability and cosy safety of it, the very things that he had thought he’d crave after the bedlam of war.

‘I’m just a big ungrateful tumshie,’ he muttered, ‘with ideas well above my station.’ But no matter how guilty he felt, he knew that if he left the army and returned to Oban, he’d make his family every bit as miserable as he.