Somehow, he’d maneuvered into the very position he’d been avoiding since the stables: physical proximity to this woman. Her scent enveloped him in honeysuckle and summer. A scent he liked too much.
And there it was, again, the tension of desire pulling taut inside him.
He clenched his jaw and tugged. The sound of rending fabric tore through the air.
She flashed him an annoyed glare and heaved a sigh. “You’ve ripped it.”
“A small tear,” he replied, gruff. He dropped the garment and hied off at a brisk pace. “We must hurry if we’re going to catch them,” he called over his shoulder.
Within a few steps, she was at his heels. They arrived at a fork in the path. Blast. He’d forgotten this.
“Which is the way to Mercy Island?” Isabel asked at his back.
“The path makes a large loop, so either direction will take us there.” He glanced up at the sky. “On such a bright night, there isn’t much risk of smugglers. They like to do their work beneath a new moon.”
“Shall we go right?” Isabel asked.
It was as good a route as the other, and, either way, they would eventually meet up with Lucy, Hugh, and Miss Radclyffe. As Isabel walked ahead, she kept worrying at the cloak. “The tear is no more than half an inch,” he called out, intuiting her concern.
She twisted around, slowing her pace. “I may be able to fix it.”
He caught up to her. “I take it you’re skilled with needle and thread.”
“What was your first clue? My dressmaking shop?”
“I suppose I deserved that.”
“To answer you, yes, I am,” she said without a hint of braggadocio, “but not like Eva or Papa.”
Percy could let it lie, or pursue it. In truth, he had but the one choice. “How did your father come to be a hidalgo de privilegio?” He pitched his voice low and, he hoped, nonthreatening.
“With his needle,” she replied, wistful. “He is . . . was tailor to King Ferdinand.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “And your father came to England, too?”
Isabel bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “He remains in Madrid.”
The admission emerged tight and unhappy. This was part of her, the real her, a her she didn’t want him to know.
Well, too bad. “What brought you to England?”
“Great good luck, of course.” She gave a hollow laugh that implied the opposite. “Who doesn’t want to be English? Especially when one’s country is torn up by war.” Her words emerged bitter in both content and tone, but her face shone with the helpless anger he’d come to know all too well through years of war and its aftermath. “You were in Spain, Lord Percival.”
“Percy,” he reminded her.
“What of your time there, Percy? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Enjoy? It was war.” He parceled out each word, syllable by slow syllable. What the blast was she on about?
“But you’re the son of a duke,” she pressed, her eyes bright. She had a statement to make. He would let her. “You were a young, handsome, moneyed aristocrat, your country’s golden son. I can’t imagine you were conscripted.”
“I wasn’t.”
“How very noble of you.” She flashed him a fiery glance. “And did you have the showiest horse?”
“Yes.”
“And the shiniest sword?”
“Brighter than the sun.”
“And the tallest feather in your cap?”
“Bushiest, too.”
Ever more acid swirled into her words with each question asked. So, too, did her Spanish accent grow thicker. He knew what she was not-so-subtly hinting at, but he had no desire to defend himself or disabuse her of her implications. For she wasn’t wrong.
The Lord Percival Bretagne who had sped off to war had been concerned about each and every point on her list of trifling matters.
“I know your kind.”
“My kind?”
Why was he encouraging her? A part of him craved the tongue lashing she was offering, that was why. He wanted to be punished, deserved it, in fact.
“Sí, you’re definitely of a kind.”
“The vainglorious popinjay? Could you be referring to him?”
While he craved a verbal beating, another side of him had a different need. It longed to look directly into her clear green gaze and offer an addendum to the narrative she was spinning. Yes, he’d gone to war the swaggering boy she described, but he hadn’t stayed that way for long. It wasn’t that the man who had returned to England was a better man, but he was a different one.
And how would dredging up the past serve him? Once this matter with Montfort was concluded, he would never see this woman again.
His questions hung in the air, the answer too obvious and insulting to speak aloud, the sheepish expression on her face said as much. So, they walked in silence, side by side, not touching, until the path suddenly cleared and they found themselves at the cliff’s edge.
Isabel gasped at the sight before them. “Oh.”
High above, the full moon lit upon the outstretched sea all the way to the horizon, illuminating placid waves as they rippled toward the shore, inviting the eye to return to the land. One hundred feet below lay a small island connected to the mainland by a short, stone bridge.
“Is that Mercy Island?” she asked.
“Aye.”
“Oh, look.” Isabel pointed toward three distant figures crossing the bridge. “Shall we join them?”
She took a few steps toward the smaller path that branched off the main one and switched back and forth to the bridge below. Percy’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop. “No.”
Wide, surprised eyes met his over her shoulder, then fell pointedly to his fingers still wrapped around her arm. His hand dropped that instant. “We can watch them from here. My presence would only spoil Lucy’s adventure.”
Why had he felt compelled to add that last bit?
“Your daughter, she—” Isabel trailed, clearly uncertain how to speak the horrible, obvious truth aloud.