A Stranger at Castonbury. Amanda McCabe

there was a part of her, buried deep down inside, that whispered to her to turn back. That warned her.

      Jamie’s hand on hers, so warm and strong, held her where she was. No matter what waited beyond that threshold, she was no longer alone. She had someone beside her who was willing to leap forward into the chasm with her.

      Hand in hand, they climbed the stone steps and made their way into the church. Catalina sometimes went there at quiet moments, to pray for the souls of her family or just to think, away from the crowds and constant clamour of camp. Tonight it looked like a completely different place. Dozens of candles were lit along the carved white altar and beneath the windows, making the small space into a glowing, mysterious fairyland. Bunches of wildflowers splashed their colours into the dusty gloom. Before the altar waited the regiment’s chaplain and two of Jamie’s fellow officers as well as a Spanish laundress to be witnesses.

      Catalina feared she might start to cry yet again. She had gone for so many months being strong, living with what fate had dealt her, stepping carefully from one day to the next. And now she had cried so many times in one day! Her wedding day—the day that should have no tears at all.

      She turned to Jamie, and found him smiling down at her. ‘You did this?’ she whispered.

      His smile widened. ‘I did. I gathered every candle and every flower I could find. I scoured the countryside for them. Do you like it?’

      ‘Of course I like it! But … why? When did you have time?’

      ‘Because I can’t give you what you truly deserve, Catalina,’ he answered. ‘A fine wedding at the Castonbury church with all my family to see. A satin gown, a cake, a carriage covered with flowers. But I wanted to make this place beautiful for you. A place we can always remember.’

      Holding on to his hand, Catalina glanced around the transformed church again. She knew she would never, ever forget the way it looked, in this one still, perfect moment. She would never forget the man beside her and how he felt holding her hand.

      ‘I can’t imagine any place more beautiful,’ she said softly.

      ‘Then shall we get married?’ Jamie said with a teasing lilt to his voice. Catalina was glad to hear it—he was so very serious too often.

      She smiled up at him and nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Let’s do that. We can’t let this beautiful church go to waste.’

      And they walked together to the altar and held hands as they said the vows that would bind them together for ever. Or for as long as they lived in such dangerous days.

       Chapter Two

      Catalina felt it before she saw it, the slight tremble of the earth under their feet as they walked back from the church. Then a fork of sizzling, blue-white lightning split the dark sky above their heads. A rolling rumble of thunder followed, ending in a deafening drumbeat.

      ‘I think the days of drought might be over,’ she said. She tipped her head back to peer up at the sky from beneath the lace pattern of her mantilla. The stars and moon that had just begun to peek out as they walked to the church were now hidden beneath drifts of charcoal-grey clouds.

      ‘Just in time for us to move out,’ Jamie’s friend said wryly. ‘Nothing like moving camp in the middle of a rainstorm.’

      ‘Moving camp?’ Catalina glanced over at Jamie. She had heard nothing of any plans to move out. Where were they going now? Could she even follow him there, her new husband, or were they to be parted already?

      Jamie gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand. ‘We have no orders yet. We have to make the push to Toulouse soon, but there is nothing definite.’

      Catalina nodded, but inside she felt that cold touch of disquiet. Her life in the past few months had been nothing but moving, going wherever her nursing skills were needed, wherever she had to be in this strange new life. But she didn’t want to be away from Jamie yet.

      Not yet.

      When they made their way into camp amid the rumble of thunder, it looked to be the usual sort of evening. Men sitting around the fires and outside their tents, talking, laughing, playing cards, passing the long hours. Sometimes Colonel Chambers would host a dinner party or there would be dancing, but tonight everyone seemed to be in a quieter mood. Catalina could hear the strains of some sad ballad in the distance, and it added to the melancholy mood of the approaching storm.

      As they passed by the largest tent, the one used for dining and officers’ meetings, Chambers stepped outside and called to Jamie.

      ‘Hatherton,’ 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