A Stranger at Castonbury (13 page)

‘How could you not? Do you not remember Spain?’

‘Of course I remember.’ Catalina closed her eyes. She remembered it all, every moment with him. But that was so long ago, when they were different people. ‘But it’s all changed since then. I see that so clearly since I came to Castonbury. You need a wife who can be a part of that, as I’m sure Lydia could. There must be a way we could make it so.’

Jamie was quiet for a long moment. ‘You think I should marry Miss Westman?’

‘I think you must do what your family thinks is right,’ Catalina said, even as her heart ached to say the words. She wanted to cry out that
no
,
she did not want him to marry Lydia! But she had been brought up the strict Spanish way, and that included doing the dutiful thing even when it was difficult. ‘I am sure our marriage cannot be legal here in England. It was such a rushed affair, and the chaplain is dead now. There is no one to remember it at all.’

‘No one but us,’ Jamie said quietly.

‘Yes. No one but us.’ Catalina turned to look at him. Her beautiful, brave, dashing Jamie. How she had missed him. How she missed him still, despite everything that was between them now. Family, duty. Alicia Walters. Everything that had happened in Spain.

‘Perhaps there is someone you prefer to Lydia,’ she said.

‘Oh? And who would that be? Which of the oh-so-many candidates for my hand would you recommend?’ he said wryly.

Catalina thought of Alicia’s hand on his arm, his smile as he looked down at her and stepped into the house. ‘Perhaps Miss Walters, now that she seems to have reappeared. I hear she did fit in very well at Castonbury.’

Jamie’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Alicia?’

‘I saw you with her in town.’

He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Surely you know the tale of her tenure there at Castonbury?’

‘Yes, I have heard something of it.’

‘Then you know she could never go back there.’

‘You don’t seem angry with her,’ Catalina said.

Jamie shrugged, staring back into the fire. ‘I know that sometimes people do terrible things for what they suppose are the best of reasons.’

As he had done? Catalina longed to pull him around to face her, to break down that brittle facade that always seemed to enclose him now and demand he tell her exactly what he meant. That he tell her
everything
. But she feared he would turn away from her, close himself off for ever, as he had in Spain when he had told her only part of his work there.

‘I won’t marry Alicia,’ he said. He said nothing about Lydia. ‘She is assisting me with something, and then she will go away from here.’

‘And what will you do?’

‘I have no idea, Catalina,’ he said with another of those hollow laughs. ‘Right now I just want to sit here with you and listen to the rain, and forget.’

Catalina wanted that too. Just to be with Jamie, here in this strange little place. This small moment out of real time, just the two of them as it had once been.

She tucked a folded blanket behind her head as a pillow and slid down into the warm nest. Jamie laid his hand on her bare foot as it peeked from the hem of the blanket, and for a long time there was no sound between them, just the rain and the snap of the fire. The moments spread out like a wide river, slowly flowing between them with no beginning or end.

As the fire burned down, Jamie leaned forward to stir it to life again. The blanket wrapped around his torso slipped off one muscled shoulder and revealed to the light a delicate, terrible tracery of pale pink scars that echoed the one on his cheek.

Catalina felt like she couldn’t breathe at the sight of them. She wanted so much to lean closer to him, to press her lips to those scars. She ached to think how he must have suffered, and she wished that her kiss could erase those marks and make her life whole again.

Make both their lives whole again.

But she knew that wasn’t possible. She leaned back against the blankets and stared again into the fire. She listened to the lash of the rain and let the warmth of the smoke, the clean scent of Jamie’s cologne, wrap around her as he lay down beside her.

‘Tell me a story,’ she said, remembering how he had once told her tales of English knights and chivalry on the long, hot nights in Spain, and how she would tell him Spanish tales in return.

Jamie laughed. ‘I don’t know any good tales I have not already told you. Not like you and the adventures of Don Quixote.’

‘I remember your stories of King Arthur. But I also liked your stories of Castonbury and your family,’ Catalina said. ‘It didn’t sound like a real place at all but a fairyland.’

Jamie was quiet for a long moment. ‘It seemed like a fairyland to me too, when I was in Spain for so long. But I told you everything then. I have nothing new.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes indeed. You know of the pranks my siblings and I pulled, about my mother and what it was like when she was gone. I think I would rather hear about the don again.’

Catalina thought about the stories she had been re-reading lately with Lydia. Don Quixote and his endless quest for a perfect world that always eluded him. For a life that could never be. ‘I cannot think of a story for right now.’

‘Then will you sing that song for me again, Catalina? The one you once taught me when we walked together in Spain,’ Jamie said softly. She felt the soft brush of his breath against her shoulder and realised he had moved even closer to her as they talked. She nodded, but she feared her voice would strangle in her throat at his nearness. She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips and slowly began to sing, wobbly and off-key.

‘Conde Niño, por amores es niño y pasó a la mar; va a dar aqua a su...’

But she couldn’t finish. Jamie’s lips came down on hers, swallowing the song, her breath, her everything. She was surrounded only by him, by the heat and scent of him, the force of his passion that drew out her own desire all over again.

With a low moan, her arms came around him tightly as she rolled to her back, drawing him down with her, onto her. She had tried so hard to force away her feelings for him, to shatter them into oblivion, but they wouldn’t leave. They burst free at his touch, like brilliant flashes of fireworks in a dark sky. She needed him now; her desire was a force as free and elemental as the storm outside.

Jamie couldn’t be hers for ever, but he was hers right now. Just as she was, and always would be, his.

Catalina impatiently pushed the blanket away from his body. It draped to his hips, leaving his chest bare for her seeking caress. He was everything she had remembered in her dreams, his skin like hot, smooth satin over lean muscle and bone, shifting and bunching under her touch. She ran her fingernails lightly along the long line of his back, to the swell of his buttocks and then up again to twine in his hair and hold him with her.

He groaned as his tongue slid into her mouth, all a heated rush of breath and need. It wasn’t a careful, seductive kiss, but one rough with long-denied passion. Catalina’s hand threaded deeper into his hair, drawing him even closer, while her other hand slid over his shoulder to feel the pattern of those scars on her palm.

The blanket still wrapped around her seemed to abrade her sensitised skin with its texture and she shoved it away. Jamie reached down to help her, stripping the coverings away until she lay bare beneath him. She raised her leg and used her foot to push his own blanket all the way off before she wrapped her thigh around his waist. At last they were skin to skin, their bodies together. His chest slid over her breasts, raising her nipples to hard, sensitive points. She moaned and wrapped her other leg around him so he could not escape her.

Wrapped in the unreality of the storm, they were free.

Her head fell back as his lips trailed a ribbon of hot kisses down her throat and over her bare shoulder. She arched up into him and felt the heavy heat of his erection against her hip. He wanted her too, as much as she wanted him.

‘Jamie,’ she whispered.
‘Amado.’

‘Catalina,’ he groaned. ‘Catalina, how I have missed you.’ His tongue traced lightly on the soft curve of her breast. His fingertips circled one of her nipples just before he rose up above her and closed his lips around it hard, drawing it deep into his mouth.

She sobbed out incoherent Spanish love words, until slowly his mouth drew away and he breathed a light caress over her pebbled flesh.

‘Open to me again, Catalina,’ he whispered. She felt his hand against her thigh, moving softly closer and closer to where she longed for him to touch her damp core. ‘Open to me.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, and her thighs parted at his coaxing caress. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move with the ache of her desire for him. His fingers delved ever so lightly along the opening of her womanhood, teasing her.

‘Please!’ she gasped, arching her back.

‘Do you want more, Catalina?’ he said roughly. ‘Just as I do?’ He knelt between her legs and slid one long finger deeply inside of her. His touch curled, seeking that one small spot that had always made her cry out. It still did, and she called his name as the fiery sensations shot through her.

‘You’re so wet,’ Jamie muttered. ‘And tight. Has it been a while?’

She nodded. ‘Since—since the last time we were together.’

He went very still above her, as if her words surprised him. She feared he might draw away from her, ask her about the years they had been apart—but this was no time for words.

She reached out and ran her fingers lightly along the hot, taut satin of his erection. She felt the tracery of veins there and pressed her touch harder to the pulsing head, just as she remembered he liked. His breath drew in sharply and he seemed to grow even harder in her hand.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘Oh, Catalina,’ he groaned. ‘I could never leave you.’ He kissed her again, deeply with the force of unstoppable need. It had been much too long.

Catalina welcomed his kiss joyfully and wrapped her legs around his waist as she felt the tip of his manhood slide against her. He thrust inside her, one exquisite movement at a time. She held on to his shoulders, his skin damp against her hands, and closed her eyes as she felt him joined with her again at last.

She opened her eyes and stared up into the grey heat of his gaze as he slowly moved within her. The pleasure of being with him again spread through her like the lightning outside, quick flashes of heat, delight that built and built until it was too great to contain. It thundered in her mind, and everything vanished but the feel of his skin against hers, the movement of his body inside hers. She heard his low moan and cried out in answer.

‘Catalina!’ he shouted as his body arched above hers. ‘Catalina.’

‘Jamie,
amado
.’ She fell back into their nest of blankets, weak and still filled with the bright glow of pleasure. It was all even better than her memories and dreams.

Jamie collapsed beside her, his head on her shoulder, and she gently reached up to caress his damp hair. This moment was perfect, and Catalina knew that no matter what came after she would always have this.

Jamie slowly sank down into the blankets by her side. His arm came around her waist, holding her close as their breathing slowed and the air grew chilly around them again. Catalina could feel dark, exhausted oblivion encroaching on her, but she didn’t want to slip away into sleep. Not yet. She wanted to hold on to this moment with Jamie as long as she could.

She rolled onto her side and studied him in the light from the fading embers of the fire. He looked relaxed and sleepy, and so very young. The austere lines of his face were softened, burnished by the firelight. His hair was tousled, tumbling over his brow.

His hand rose lazily and caressed gently over her shoulder.

‘We should go back to the house,’ she whispered.

Jamie shook his head without opening his eyes. ‘Not until the rain stops. We have time yet.’

Time before the real world closed in on them again—but not much. Already Catalina could feel its sands running out around her. She rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes to listen to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

‘What happened in Spain, Jamie?’ she asked quietly. ‘After—after you thought I died.’

The hand that caressed her shoulder paused for a tiny second before its rhythm resumed, just as soft and careful as before.

After a long moment, he said, ‘That is a tale that is quite dull, I fear. It should wait for another day.’ He sat up, and Catalina watched as he knelt by the fire to stir up its dying embers. The long, lean line of his naked back gleamed in the light. Catalina drew the blankets up around her, and she knew he would tell her nothing today.

‘But what happened then is why I cannot condemn Miss Walters, as my family would do,’ he said quietly. ‘She made a terrible mistake out of desperation, and she is paying for it now. She will pay for it in her soul for the rest of her life, knowing that she did such a thing.’

Catalina couldn’t bear seeing the stark pain in his eyes. ‘Jamie, whatever you did in Spain, whatever happened, it is past.’

‘Is it?’ Jamie shook his head. ‘We carry our past with us wherever we go, Catalina. Surely you and I know that better than anyone. It’s why I cannot condemn Alicia Walters.’

‘But what she did to your family...’

‘Was not entirely her own doing,’ he said. ‘Do you remember a man called Hugh Webster?’

Catalina shuddered at the mention of that name. It was a name she had not heard in so long, but she remembered him. The horrible panic she had felt when he grabbed her. ‘Of course I remember him, the vile man.’

‘It was he who concocted the scheme of setting up Alicia as my widow at Castonbury,’ Jamie said. ‘He who had taken my lost signet ring. She began because she was desperate to protect her child, but he forced her to continue. And now he has disappeared.’

‘Webster?’ Catalina cried, appalled. ‘But what has happened to him? How could he have done such a thing and just vanished?’

‘That is what I am trying to discover. And Alicia has agreed to help me. Once Webster has paid for his crimes, I will help her start over somewhere away from here.’