A Stranger at Castonbury(36)

Catalina glanced from under her wide-brimmed hat at the house behind them. The windows gleamed back blankly, as if Castonbury itself watched her. He had not appeared for the picnic; Lady Phaedra merely said he had a great deal of work lately and had ‘become no fun at all.’ Catalina had felt a sharp pang of relief—or perhaps disappointment.

She wondered if he watched them now from behind one of those windows. Had he thought about her last night? She hadn’t been able to sleep at all for thinking about him. The past and the present had become so tangled up, and she didn’t know where to go next or what to do. What was the correct thing to do when one’s husband—one’s secret, dead husband—came up alive again?

Did he even remember what they had been to each other?

She had been able to read nothing in his eyes last night. He looked like her Jamie, though older and harder. His hands on her skin felt like Jamie’s hands. Yet she could not find a spark of him in those blank eyes.

It frightened her, and made her wonder again what he had done in Spain.

‘Mrs Moreno?’ Elena said. ‘Are you quite well?’

Startled, Catalina turned back to her. Elena looked concerned, and Catalina laughed reassuringly. ‘Oh, yes. I must have just been dazzled by the sun for a moment.’

Elena laughed too, and they continued on their stroll around the lake. ‘Enjoy it while you can. It seems as if it rains all the time here.’

‘Have you been at Castonbury long?’ Catalina asked.

‘Not long, and we shall soon be off to Harry’s next posting. I think he will miss his family, but we are ready for a new adventure.’

‘You met your husband in Spain, yes?’

A soft smile touched Elena’s face at the mention of her husband. She waved at him where he sat under a tree with his brother Giles, and he blew her a kiss. ‘Yes. That was certainly quite an adventure, and not one I should care to repeat. Though I did find my Harry through it.’

‘Why was Lord Harry in Spain? Was he in the army too?’ Catalina asked.

‘Yes, he was, but he was in Spain to find Jamie. Have you not heard the tale?’

So that was how Jamie had come to return home. His brother had searched him out. ‘No indeed. I have only been at Castonbury a day. It sounds most intriguing.’

Elena laughed. ‘It is a long tale.’

Catalina looked to see that Lydia was still on the lake with the curate and seemed to be having a very good time. None of the others appeared in any hurry to leave their sunny idyll. ‘I have time. I would love to hear your story.’

Elena nodded and led them to a bench set in the shade of a nearby tree. From there they could see the softly rolling green vista of the gardens and a gleaming white stone folly tucked amid a grove of trees, and Elena told Catalina the tale of how she had been caught in the siege at Badajoz and cast off by her family and betrothed. Like Catalina, she had been cut off from her old life and searching for a new purpose when she met Harry Montague, who was on a quest to find out the truth about his brother’s supposed death. Elena told her of the dangerous journey they had endured to find him, and what a shock it had been to find him alive at the end. She also relayed what she knew of Alicia Walters’s own little intrigue, the lies she told and how it had affected the family. It was a sad story of terrible pain, but also of great love.

Catalina was so shocked when it was finished that she couldn’t speak at all. It was a tale worthy of those novels Lydia loved so much—lost heirs, crumbling estates, spies, murders.

And a false wife exposed. Jamie’s imposter wife.

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Catalina murmured. She slowly shook her head. She did remember Alicia Walters from Spain, but she could hardly credit the woman would do such a thing. She had been so quiet, so proper. So...English. Exactly the kind of lady Jamie might actually be expected to marry.

‘I know,’ Elena said. ‘If I had not seen it all unfold myself I never would have believed it.’

‘And you are quite sure her tale was false?’ Catalina asked.

‘I was there when Harry told Jamie what had been happening here in his absence. No one could have been more shocked—more angry. But he has allowed no one to pursue her since she fled. He says he will fix it all himself.’

Catalina could well credit that. Jamie had always gone quietly and steadily about his tasks, and was all the more deadly for it. She knew that better than anyone. She could almost have felt sorry for Alicia, if she was not so angry with her.