She stepped inside the grand stable and stopped, inhaling deeply of horse, sweat, hay, and earth. For all the raucous festivity outside, this place was its opposite. Dim and cool and quiet, except for the odd rustle and whicker of a horse. The stable lads must have been enjoying the day with everyone else. But Percy was here, she knew it.
She ventured down the wide center aisle, on the alert for any sign of him. At last, she heard it: from the gable end of the stable came a murmurous susurration of shoosh, sloosh . . . shoosh, sloosh . . . Isabel lifted her gaze and found the hay loft.
Up the ladder, she followed the sound. Her head poked above the loft floor, and all the breath whooshed from her lungs at the sight greeting her eyes. Some twenty feet away, Percy was sorting through horse provender with a pitchfork. But it wasn’t his task that held her transfixed, rather the lean, muscled length of his body in motion.
Her eyes roved across his form from knee-high boots, to thighs bunched beneath well-fitted trousers, to shirt undone and open nearly to navel, revealing chest muscles that flexed and released with his labor. Sweat sheened every inch of visible skin. Dios mío, the man was a damned devastating sight.
He rested his pitchfork against the wall and swiped his hand across his brow. Isabel cleared her throat. His gaze swung to meet hers and held. Time did that funny thing it always did when she looked into his eyes. It fell away.
Nothing relevant existed outside what existed between them.
His mouth twisted with irony, and he spoke the one word that could bring her back to reality. “Wife.”
She blinked. She swallowed. She wished it was true.
She gave herself a mental shake.
It was too late for wishes.
“Husband.” She finished her climb and stood facing him, her stance a mirror of his. “Your presence is requested in the conservatory.”
The man, whose eyes burned and continued to hold hers, shrugged.
“By the Duchess.” Isabel spoke the title like it was a trump card.
He shrugged again, the gesture telling her in no uncertain terms that she would have to do better.
She glanced about the loft flooded by afternoon light from windows at either end and populated by all the usual animal provisions and implements. Except in the corner stood a narrow, tidily made bed, a lantern atop a short, three-legged stool beside it. “Is this where you’re sleeping?”
He shrugged. Again. “I’m accustomed to it.”
Pique that Isabel had no right to, rose. “Back to that, are you?”
~ ~ ~
Isabel’s tart question hit Percy like a sharp blow to the sternum.
She wasn’t speaking of the bed, or even of his new sleeping quarters. With a few well-aimed words, she’d summoned into the room his self-denial, the place he returned within himself when the world presented him with uncertainty and chaos. Within privation lay control.
His jaw clenched and released. He wouldn’t be baited into a conversation about it, not with this woman who had arrived here, cheeks delicately flushed, eyes bright, looking like the freshest pastry on the rack. So unspoiled and sweet, he could hardly look at her and keep to his side of the loft.
He’d been waiting for Montfort to reveal his hand, and Isabel, here, now, could be it.
So, yes, keeping an unrelenting hold on himself in the face of his strongest addiction was his only hope. Just look what happened when he let up? He went and fell head-over-heels in—
He stopped himself there.
“You’re not even dressed for the fête,” she continued.
“I’m dressed about the same as many of the local men, who are dressed in their best.”
She flinched. His barb had stung.
Percy gathered his wits and began thinking like the spy he once was. “Of course, you spent your childhood in close proximity to the Spanish royal court, you would have a keen appreciation for how to dress appropriately for one’s station.”
Isabel’s eyes narrowed, and her head canted to the side in question, but she gave no other response.
Percy considered his options. He could tell her to leave. He could cut her completely from his life. But neither of those actions would give him what he really wanted from her, what he needed. “Why?” he found himself asking.
“Why?” she repeated. She was trying to buy time, and he had none to sell.
“Why are you doing Montfort’s bidding?”
She shifted on her feet, and indecision flickered across her features. Another fraught moment passed, during which she seemed to arrive at a decision. She settled a hip onto the window frame at her back, her form limned in golden light, like a medieval Madonna.
“One day a powerful Englishman—” she began.
“Montfort?” Percy cut in. He would have her speak the man’s name and have it entirely out in the open.
She nodded. He detected nerves in the way her hands clutched together tightly in her lap. “Montfort approached Papa about passing along any court information or intrigue that might catch his ear. Oftentimes, the presence of servants are forgotten. My father refused. Then”—a hesitation—“he was convinced.”
“How?”
“Montfort had worked out the origin of our surname.”
“How is that significant?”
“Galante is a name that fell out of use by our people a few hundred years ago. My grandfather thought it would be safe for our family to start using it again.”
Our people. Safe. She was referring to her Jewish ancestry. “Judaism is no longer banned in Spain,” Percy observed.
“But you must know it is difficult to live openly as a Jew there, and impossible for a Jew to be tailor to the king.” Her hands tightened into fists, and a tremble reached her voice. “We are seen as untrustworthy devils, even as child snatchers.”
Percy nodded. It was the harsh truth.
“Montfort impressed this fact upon Papa most persuasively. It was understood exposure would follow, if Papa didn’t agree to Montfort’s demands.” Her eyes lifted to meet Percy’s. Gone was her light. In its place, darkness. “You’ll have noticed that Eva and I have Spanish given names. We attended Catholic Mass, but . . .” she trailed.
“But?”