A Stranger at Castonbury. Amanda McCabe

resist. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve found in writing to help build such a world.

      I got the job of wrapping up the series with the last book: the tale of Jamie, Marquess of Hatherton, whose reappearance in his home after a mysterious absence of years throws Castonbury into chaos once again. I was worried about doing justice to the other characters, but I loved working with everyone else to bring their characters into my story and making them a part of Jamie’s tale. And I have to admit I adored Jamie! I have always had a weakness for dark, tormented, complicated heroes who carry secrets in their hearts and when I found out that one of his secrets was a lost love—well, I just felt for him all the more. I loved seeing him find his way back to his family and his home and discovering how his experiences in wartime had changed him.

      I was very inspired by diaries and letters from the time of the Peninsula campaign, where many British soldiers found romance with Spanish ladies. It was a turbulent, passionate time and Catalina was very much a part of all that. She was also more than a match for Jamie! It was the hardest thing I’ve ever written to tear them apart—but that just made it more fun to bring them back together again at Castonbury …

       A Stranger at Castonbury

      Amanda McCabe

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Chapter One

       Spain, 1814

      It was her wedding day. And it was utterly unlike she had ever imagined it.

      Catalina Perez Moreno studied her reflection in the small, cracked looking glass as she tried to pin her long, thick dark hair into an elegant twist. The canvas tent was cramped and warm with the dusty evening air outside, filled with a small cot and a trunk, a table littered with nursing supplies. Beyond the dingy white fabric walls she could hear the sounds of a military camp, the shouts and laughter of the men, the rattle of sabres and horses’ tack, boots on the hard, dusty earth, the women singing as they cooked supper over the campfires.

      No, this was nothing like her first wedding day, when her mother and aunts had dressed her in lace and silk before her father had walked her down the aisle of the grand cathedral in Seville to meet her bridegroom. A groom twenty years older than herself who she had met only twice before that day. That wedding day had been grand, momentous—and terrifying, disappointing.

      This day was different in every way. Her first husband was dead now, as were her parents and brother, and the home she had once known in Seville was long gone thanks to the French invasion of her homeland. She had been alone for many months, using her nursing skills to help the armies trying to drive out those hated French. Alone—until she had looked across the camp one day and seen James Montague, Lord Hatherton.

      ‘Jamie,’ Catalina whispered, and then laughed at herself for the warm glow just saying his name created. She had met so many men in her work, moving from camp to camp, hospital to hospital. Men who were handsome and flirtatious, who made her smile, who danced with her, who told her tales of faraway England. But no one had ever made her feel like Jamie did, from that first moment.

      He was tall and lean and so very handsome, like a knight from some medieval poem who fought dragons and won the fair hands of beautiful infantas. He had seemed not quite real. His dark, glossy hair, carelessly brushed back from his face, had gleamed in the bright sunlight, and beneath the light growth of beard on his jaw he had a chiselled, aristocratically elegant face. His uniform tunic had been unfastened to reveal the thin linen of his shirt, clinging to his muscled chest. He had been so beautiful.

      But more than that, he had seemed so full of a burning, vibrant life. He’d thrown back his head to laugh at something another man had said to him, and his whole face had seemed lit from within by some vital, sun-bright force. Catalina had been mesmerised, the pile of laundry she’d been carrying falling to the dust. The whole crowded camp had seemed to vanish in that moment, and all she’d been able to see was him. All she’d wanted to do was fall into his laughter, his life.

      Then suddenly he had looked right at her, his piercing, pale grey eyes so vivid. His laughter had faded, and she’d felt like such a fool to be caught staring like that. She was a widow, a nurse who had seen so much of the ugly side of life, not a virginal schoolgirl to gape and blush at a handsome man. She had grabbed up the laundry and spun around to run away.

      She hadn’t got far when she’d felt a hand on her arm, warm and hard through her thin sleeve, and even without turning around she had known it was him. And when he had spoken to her in Spanish, smiled at her, she had been utterly lost.

      That was a month ago now. And tonight she would marry him.

      Catalina pushed another pin into the heavy strands of her hair, as if that could drive away the imagined sound of her mother’s disapproving voice. Catalina Maria Isabella, what are you thinking to marry a man you know so little of! An Englishman too. It is a disgrace. His family will never accept you, just as we could never accept him….

      And Catalina knew all too well how right her mother would be. Jamie was the Marquis of Hatherton, heir to the Duke of Rothermere, and she was a Spanish lady of an old family name but no money since the arrival of the French. No home at all either, since her brother had died defending his liberal politics against the king. They were marrying in secret now so he would be able to prepare his family properly once they returned to England after the war. She knew little of Jamie beyond stolen kisses on walks along the river, whispered conversations beside campfires in the darkness.

      But she knew things now her mother had never had to face. She had seen blood and death and destruction. She knew how quickly life, precious time, could flee. And she knew how Jamie made her feel. As if he had every beautiful thing of life in his strong hands. And that was why she had so eagerly said yes when he’d asked her to marry him on one of those sun-dappled walks. Because to her, Jamie Montague was life. He was … everything.

      ‘You are doing the right thing,’ she told herself. Her reflection stared back at her, her wide, uncertain brown eyes, the sun freckles splashed over her nose. As she pushed in the last pin, the sapphire ring on her finger caught the dying sunlight. Jamie’s mother’s ring, which he had slid onto her finger when he had asked her to marry him, sparkled. It was an oval sapphire, inscribed inside the gold band with the motto of the Montagues—Validus Superstes.

      This was the right thing. She was seizing her happiness while she could.

      Catalina stepped back and smoothed the skirt of her simple white muslin gown. She picked up the white lace mantilla from her trunk and swept it over her hair. She was marrying far from home, with none of her family, but she would go to Jamie looking as much like a proper Spanish bride as she could.

      This was their time, and she would seize it with both hands. She would hold on to it for as long as she could.

      She heard the sound of booted footsteps on the hard-packed dirt outside. ‘Catalina,’ Jamie called quietly. ‘Are you ready?’

      Catalina’s heart leapt, and she felt that warm rush of excitement through her that always came when he was near. She caught up her prayer book and answered, ‘Sí, mi amor—I am ready.’

      Jamie pushed back the flap of the tent and stepped inside. The sunset outside limned him in a fiery red-orange glow. For an instant, Catalina’s eyes were dazzled and she could barely see him. He seemed very far away, as if he stood poised on the edge of another world, one where she could not follow. As if he would fall back into some dark chasm and be lost to her even as she desperately reached out for him.

      Don’t be so dramatic, she told herself sternly. She had once had a nursemaid who was full of old superstitions and would warn Catalina of all the things that could bring bad fortune at weddings—not crying before the nuptial kiss, forgetting to wear a lump