‘I think this might well clear by morning.’ He paused. ‘Will you be strong enough to resume the journey by then?’
Elena smiled. ‘I shall be quite able to do so.’
‘Are you sure? It won’t matter if you want to leave it a little longer.’
‘What matters is to reach Cádiz and find Sanchez.’
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘you’ve had a nasty experience.’
‘Thanks to you it wasn’t much worse.’
‘I once failed two people who trusted me. I’ll not let that happen again.’
Elena looked up quickly. ‘What happened to Belén was not your fault, Harry.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Nor was Captain Radcliffe’s death.’
It stopped him in his tracks and, drawing her aside, he fixed her with a piercing stare. ‘What do you know of Radcliffe?’
Her heart began to thump. Had she ruined everything with yet another inappropriate remark? It was too late to retract it now. The only way was forwards. With a calm she was far from feeling, she met his eye.
‘Jack told me what happened.’
‘Did he indeed?’
‘You must not be angry with him—it was I who solicited for answers.’ She paused. ‘After you told me about Badajoz I guessed there were still things that had been left unsaid.’
‘With good reason.’
‘I wanted to understand and Jack was the key.’
‘Jack only knows part of the truth.’
Her gaze met and held his. ‘He told me that you risked your own life to try and save your friend. There’s nothing shameful in that.’
‘It was not enough.’
‘The odds were overwhelming and those men were crazy with drink and bloodlust.’ She shuddered. ‘Nothing would have stopped them. I was there, Harry, and I know this for truth. It was the stuff of nightmares.’
He paused. ‘Do you still dream about it?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I did not understand the meaning of nightmare until Badajoz.’
‘It was a miracle that those men did not kill you too.’
‘But for Jack they would have done. For a long time I wished they had.’ He let out a ragged breath. ‘John Radcliffe was a fine officer and one of the most decent men I ever met. I was privileged to know him and to be numbered among his friends.’
‘If he was all you say, he would not wish you to carry a burden of blame for what happened.’
‘Even so...’
‘What if things had been the other way round? Would you have blamed him?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, then, why do you continue to blame yourself?’
‘Radcliffe’s death is the least of my guilt,’ he replied.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know you don’t.’
His expression sent a chill through her, but having come so far she was not prepared to duck the issue any more. Too much depended on it. ‘I want to, Harry.’
‘I warn you now, it isn’t pretty.’
Her gaze burned into his. ‘The past isn’t pretty? No one knows that better than I, but if you want us to have the future you spoke of, we have to face the truth no matter how ugly it is.’
For a long moment he was silent. Then he nodded slowly. ‘All right.’
Elena waited, her eyes never wavering from his.
‘The shock of Radcliffe’s murder was profound, yet by the end of that night what I felt was not grief. It was bitter resentment. He was the reason I could not save Belén. If I had gone straight to the house I might have got her out, but as those brutes attacked him, he called out my name, you see.’ He swallowed hard. ‘So I stopped to help him.’
‘You could not have done anything else. You could not leave your friend to die.’
‘And yet afterwards I wished I had.’ He paused. ‘I would have sacrificed my best friend to save Belén.’
Elena paled, trying and failing to find the right words, as her mind wrestled with the implications of what she had just heard. Harry, seeing her expression, thought he understood it.
‘Now you know what kind of man you have married.’
‘You did the honourable thing and still lost two people whom you loved. It is hardly surprising that you should feel conflicting emotions about it.’
‘Conflicting emotions? Say rather, perfidy.’
‘You judge yourself too harshly.’
‘And how do you judge me, Elena?’
‘As a man trying to come to terms with a nightmare.’
The grey gaze locked with hers. ‘Do you still want a future with him?’
For a moment she was dumbfounded. Then, with an effort, she recovered her wits. ‘Yes, I still want that.’