The Soldier's Rebel Lover

Isabella, her skin glowing from the shower she had taken under the waterfall after he had returned from his own ablutions, her hair restrained in a long wet braid, had a decidedly mulish look on her face. Trouble, Finlay thought, though he couldn’t help but smile at this further evidence of the return of the feisty partisan he admired so much. Desired so much. No, he wouldn’t think of that.

The sparkle had returned to her eyes. ‘We need to talk,’ she said.

‘We do.’ Finlay handed her a cup of coffee, pleased to note the pleasure with which she took it, the admiring glance she gave the small portable trivet he always carried with him to heat the pot on. ‘I always travel prepared for anything,’ he said by way of explanation, ‘although I can think of no item of field equipment that could have prepared me for you.’ He was rewarded with a smile. ‘Here, take this, you must be hungry.’

‘Thank you. I am ravenous.’ She took the toasted bread and cheese, sitting cross-legged on the hard-packed mud floor, looking quite at home.

‘You’ll have found bothies like these useful places during the war, no doubt,’ Finlay said.

‘Bothies?’

‘A hut. A bothy is what we’d call it in the Highlands,’ Finlay explained. ‘A place for the cattle drovers to rest overnight on their way to market.’

‘This land is too mountainous for cattle, but, yes, to answer your question, during the war, such places were often used for storing arms. And hiding partisans, just as this one is doing now.’ Isabella finished her breakfast, and set her cup down, obviously bracing herself. ‘You were right,’ she said.

‘In what way?’

‘I was never a soldier as you were. I carried a gun, I witnessed some fighting, but I did not fight in the way you did. Estebe was not the first dead man I have seen, but it was the first time I had ever witnessed the barbarity of what a gun can do used in that way.’

‘I regret that you did.’

‘It is something I will never forget. Never.’ She gazed into the fire, blinking rapidly. ‘I know I was not wholly responsible for Estebe’s death, but I must take some of the blame.’

‘Isabella, Estebe was a grown man and he was a hardened soldier. He knew the risks and accepted them.’

‘Yes, that is true, but I was his commanding officer, Finlay. He died for the cause, but it was under my watch.’

He could not argue with that, and it would be insulting to do so. At a loss, he poured her the last of the coffee.

She nodded her thanks and cupped her hands around the tin mug, staring into the fire. ‘How do you reconcile that, Finlay? You must have sacrificed many of your men for the cause, the greater good. How do you do it?’

Her question caught him unawares. ‘You do it by not thinking about it and simply obey the orders you are given. It is for others to weigh the moral balance,’ Finlay said. It was the stock answer. The army answer. It was a steaming mound of horse manure, and Isabella knew it.

She drained her coffee again, and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You told me that if you had not been so insubordinate you would have been promoted beyond major by now. There are some orders you do not obey. You choose, on occasion, your own path. You follow your own instincts.’

He smiled wryly. ‘I’ve always had a penchant for intelligent women, but until I met you, I never thought there could be such a thing as a lass who was too clever.’

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘Isabella, I wouldn’t dare, I was simply— You’ve a habit of asking difficult questions, do you know that?’

She raised her empty cup in salute. ‘I am not the only one.’

‘Aye, well, there you go.’ Finlay picked up his knife and began to cut the piece of uneaten bread before him into smaller and smaller cubes. ‘You’re right. Of course I make choices. While there’s always someone up the ranks to blame if things go awry, that’s not my way, any more than it’s my way to ask my men to do something I would not.’

‘Such as cross enemy lines to reconnoitre a French arms dump?’

‘Ach, that was more a case of my being bored and needing to see a wee bit of action. I’m wondering, though, if you were not in the habit of actually fighting, what you were doing there that night?’

‘Ach,’ Isabella replied in a fair attempt at his own accent, ‘that was a case of my being bored and needing to see a wee bit of action, too. I did not fight,’ she continued, reverting to her own voice, ‘but I did try to ensure that El Fantasma’s reputation for infallibility was preserved, since it was good for morale. It was my father, as usual, who heard the rumours of French activity. He thought that I had others investigate them, but towards the end of the war, more often than not I did that myself.’ Isabella gazed into the fire. ‘I think—I thought that Papa would be proud of me, of El Fantasma, but Consuela, all the things she said... I don’t know, Finlay. I am not so certain now. For Papa, his family came before everything, while I—I think, I think I have been putting myself first.’ She sniffed. ‘I am sorry. More self-pity. Excuse me.’