twitched with reluctant amusement. His manservant’s cooking had, he perceived ruefully, seriously undermined his authority and his resolution. The men in his brigade would have boggled at his acceptance of this little chit’s effrontery, but they had neither drunk her coffee nor looked into those speaking grey-green eyes. Nor had they carried her up a flight of stairs and felt the fragile bones and known she had been starving. He couldn’t dismiss her—he could as soon rescue a half-drowned kitten then kick it.
She sat down opposite him at the kitchen table. He stiffened awkwardly as her gaze fixed on his face.
“So,” she said, “it was you in my bedchamber last night.”
His mouth tightened abruptly, his face dark with bitter cynicism. What was she going to accuse him of?
“When I woke up this morning I couldn’t quite remember how I got to bed. I thought I remembered seeing Jemmy, but now that I see you, of course, that explains it.”
Kate didn’t notice the stiffening of his body and the way his eyes turned to flint.
“Jemmy caught a bayonet wound, too, in just the same place, only his became terribly infected. Yours has healed beautifully, hasn’t it?”
She stood up, stretched luxuriously and smiled. “Isn’t coffee wonderful? I feel like a new woman, so I’ll forgive your barefaced breakfast piracy and cook some more for both of us.”
He stared at her in stunned silence. Who the devil was this impertinent, shabby, amazingly self-possessed girl with the wide, lovely eyes? And how could she recognise a bayonet wound and, what was more, refer to his shattered cheek so calmly when every other blasted female who had laid eyes on it had shuddered in horror, or wept, or ostentatiously avoided looking at him? He had the evidence of his own mirror that it was not a pretty sight.
And, he thought, watching her slight body move competently around the kitchen, who the devil was this Jemmy she kept mentioning? Jemmy with the scars, who was not, apparently, out of place in her bedchamber!
They were just finishing the last bacon and eggs and coffee, when the outside door opened and in walked a dark, stockily built man. He took one comprehensive look at Kate and smiled, a dazzling white smile which lit his swarthy face.
“Señorita.”
Kate smiled slightly and inclined her head.
He sniffed the air and let out a long, soulful sigh. “Ah, coffee.”
Kate chuckled. “Would you care for a cup, sir?”
“The señorita is very kind.” The white smile widened in the dark face and he bowed again.
Kate dimpled. “Then please be seated, sir, and I will fetch you a cup directly.” She went to fetch the coffee pot.
The two men began to converse in Spanish. Kate slowly stiffened. Three years in Spain and Portugal had resulted in a certain amount of fluency in both languages. She could understand every word the men said. And she was not impressed.
“So, Major Jack, who is the little brown mouse with the pretty eyes, the terrible clothes and the dirty face?”
Kate peered at her reflection in a spoon, then scrubbed at her face with a clean dishcloth.
“Damned if I know, Carlos. Some servant of my grandmother’s.” His tone was indifferent, bored.
A chair scraped on the floor and footsteps came towards her. Kate bent over the pots, then jumped nervously as a warm hand touched her lightly on the shoulder. She turned quickly and found a pair of dark blue eyes regarding her from a great height, a glimmer of amusement in their depths. Did he find it amusing to give her a fright? Or had he noticed the clean face? She blushed.
“If you would be so good…” He waved her aside, bent, took a burning twig from the fire, lit a cheroot and returned to the table, limping heavily.
“Jumpy, isn’t she, the little mouse?” said Carlos in Spanish.
Kate could almost feel the shrug of the broad shoulders.
“Skinny too.”
“Probably hasn’t had a square meal in a good few weeks,” the deep voice agreed. “I don’t know what my grandmother could want with such a little waif.”
Kate flushed in mortification. Was it that obvious?
Carlos continued, “Pretty, though. Those eyes are beautiful. Needs some meat on her bones yet. Me, I like a woman to feel like a woman.”
Jack Carstairs grunted. “You think too much about women.”
“Ah, Major Jack, do not say so, you, with your fine handsome face and wicked blue eyes that all the ladies sigh over.”
Jack’s hand went unconsciously to the shattered cheek.
“Ah, Major Jack, that little scratch will never make you safe from the ladies’ attentions. It will only—”
“Hold your tongue, Carlos,” Jack snapped brusquely.
There was a short silence. Kate pushed some more sticks into the fire, her face rosy.
“Yes,” Carlos continued, “that little bird is as flat as a board at the moment, but with some of your good solid English beef in her the curves will grow—oh, yes, they will grow most deliciously.”
His soft laughter washed over Kate’s rigid body. How dared they discuss her like that? She was no innocent, not any longer, but they did not know it.
No one who had travelled with an army could retain the total innocence of men that was so necessary for an unmarried English lady. Still, for most of that time she’d had the protection of her father and brothers and the broader protection of the soldiers who knew them. Kate had walked freely among the troops, tending wounds, writing letters to loved ones and doling out soup and cheerful greetings, secure in the knowledge that not one of them would offer her the sort of insult that she was now having to endure in the home of a so-called English gentleman! Even if it was in a foreign tongue.
Of course, given how she had left the Peninsula, she should be inured to this sort of insult by now—but these men knew nothing of that. And she was not inured to insult and never would be!
Carlos’s voice penetrated her consciousness again. “And when those curves do grow, Major Jack, I will be there to worship them. I, Carlos Miguel Riviera.”
“That’s enough!” Jack’s voice was suddenly harsh. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Ah, Major Jack…” the other smiled with dawning comprehension “…you fancy the little mouse yourself, do you?”
“Not at all,” snapped Jack furiously. “I have no interest in tumbling scrawny kitchen maids. But I won’t have you sniffing around her. She’s…she’s my grandmother’s servant and you’re not to go near her, understand?”
The men of the Coldstream Guards all knew that particular tone and not one of them would have dreamed of answering back or disobeying. Carlos’s hands rose in a placatory fashion. “No, no, of course not, Major Jack. I will have nothing to do with the girl, nothing, I promise you.” His voice was soothing, conciliatory, then his evil genius prompted him to add, “She is all yours, Major Jack, all yours.”
Jack sat up and glared at Carlos, but a clatter from the other end of the kitchen distracted him. Both men turned to look at Kate.
The small body was rigid with fury, the grey-green eyes blazing tempestuously. “Your coffee, gentlemen.” She emphasised the last word sarcastically, then, to both men’s utter amazement, she lifted the coffee pot and hurled it straight at them.
Chapter Three
Reactions honed by years of fighting sent both men instantly diving out of the way, but nothing could save them from being splattered with hot coffee as the earthenware pot shattered