After a few tense seconds, Finlay heard an unmistakable tinkling sound that was accompanied by tuneless whistling. This was followed by a long groan of satisfaction as a small cloud of steam rose into the night air. ‘Zut alors!’ he heard a disembodied, and quite literally relieved voice say, and had to bite his lip not to laugh out loud. This whole bizarre episode was going to make a fine tale for the lads in the mess. Provided he made it safely back, that was. He himself was therefore equally relieved to see the soldier remount his horse before the trio set off in the direction of the arms cache, where presumably they would set up camp.
‘We must move now, for they will almost certainly send out a patrol once they are settled.’ The woman spoke in English. Her accent had a slight lisping quality that was undeniably charming.
One look at the sky, where a full moon was making its presence felt from behind the scudding clouds, made his mind up for him. Finlay nodded his agreement. ‘My horse is hidden in a copse just over that ridge.’
‘I know it. Let me lead the way, I know this terrain like the back of my hand.’
It went against the grain for him, but his instincts told him to trust her. They made their way along the ditch, inch by painfully silent inch, for half an hour as the moon rose higher and higher and the stars above them hung like lanterns suspended in the sky. Finlay was struck, as he was on every single clear night like this in Spain, by how much brighter and closer to earth they seemed compared to the tiny twinkling lights in the Argyll sky, back home in Scotland.
Ahead of him, the woman stopped and looked cautiously out of the ditch before standing up. ‘We can follow this track here. It will take us over the ridge. Now that you have located the arms dump I presume the English army will destroy it?’
‘It’s a British army, with Scots and Irish and Welsh soldiers as well as English.’
‘And you, I think, with that skirt, are Scottish?’
‘Kilt. Plaid if you like, but not a skirt. Skirts are for women.’
He saw the glint of her teeth as she smiled at him. ‘And you, soldier, are decidedly not a woman.’
Finlay surveyed her for the first time, in the fluorescent glow of the moon, and wondered how he could ever have thought her anything else. She was young, no more than twenty-three or four, he reckoned. Her rough woollen breeches were tucked into sturdy brown boots. Over her heavy tunic, the leather belts worn cross-wise held gunpowder, a pistol and a knife. The uniform of a partisan, a rebel fighter. But the long legs inside the breeches were shapely. The belt cinched a waist that even underneath the bulk of the tunic was slim. The hair pulled back from the face had been silky soft against his unshaven chin. And her face... The large, almond-shaped eyes under finely arched brows, the strong nose, the full lips—there could be no mistaking that for anything other than a woman, and a very attractive one, at that. ‘We have established the reason for my presence. But what, may I ask, are you doing out here?’ he asked.
Her smile faded. ‘I told you, the same thing you are doing. Locating the French armaments.’
‘But alone. And you are...’
‘Female.’ She stood straight, tossing her head and glaring at him. ‘You think a woman is any less observant than a man?’
‘Quite the contrary, but I do think sending a woman on her own on such a mission was a bloody stupid thing to do. These French soldiers would not necessarily have killed you straight away, lass,’ Finlay said gently, ‘if they had captured you.’
‘I would not let them capture me. Under any circumstances,’ she added darkly.
‘You should not have been sent—assuming that whatever guerrilla group you belong to did actually authorise your foolhardy mission?’
She glowered at him again, opened her mouth to speak, then obviously thought better of it. ‘We should not be standing here debating in the open. It is not safe.’
She had a point. She also clearly did not trust him, despite his uniform. And why should she, Finlay thought wryly as he allowed her to lead the way along the narrow track he’d followed earlier. The problem was, he needed her to trust him enough to tell him what her fellow partisans’ plans were. If they meant to liberate the French weaponry and use it against them, it would save his men a job—and he could ill spare his men for such a mission, no matter how vital. Vitoria had knocked seven colours of shite out of them, and now Wellington was champing at the bit to attack the fortress towns of Pamplona and San Sebastian, despite the fact that desertion, sickness and sheer bloody exhaustion, to say nothing of the unseasonal and relentless rain, were having a serious impact on morale. If he could spare his men even one sortie...