A Stranger at Castonbury - By Amanda McCabe Page 0,5

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