He had picked up the leather bag that contained his shaving things, and was heading a few yards upstream now, towards the small cascade that fed the stream. The water would be ice-cold. Isabella looked on, mesmerised, as Finlay undid the buttons of his leather breeches. She should not be watching. She should look away. This was an invasion of privacy. Her mouth went dry as he slid the last item of clothing to the ground. His legs were long and well muscled. There was a tan line that stopped just above the knee. His buttocks were unexpectedly shapely. She really should not be looking. He stepped out of his breeches, kicking them to one side, and she had a brief glimpse of him from the front. Colour rushed to her cheeks as she saw the jutting length of his arousal. Her knowledge of male anatomy came only from art. In the flesh—Isabella put a hand to her fluttering heart as Finlay splashed into the stream and stood under the waterfall—in the flesh, this man at least was quite blood-heatingly delicious.

Not a feast, but a banquet. She recalled Finlay’s words in the printing-press room. He had his back to her now, stretching his arms high over his head, letting the freezing water fall in rivulets over his body. He seemed to be relishing the cold, embracing it. It occurred to her, with a shock, that the icy cascade was an antidote to his passion, and she looked with fresh eyes at the waterfall, thinking that she, too, could cool her throbbing body there. What would Finlay say if she joined him? She smiled, allowing herself to picture the scene, but she could not imagine having the nerve to carry it off, and even if she did, Finlay would most likely reject her.

He would be right to do so. Their perilous situation was clouding her judgement, making her foolish and rash, and she was neither. Her smile faded. As he began to lather himself, Isabella turned slowly and returned to the shack. The time had come to take back responsibility for her own life, for better or for worse. She had a lot to think about. Simple things, such as her entire future! Not to mention the small matter of getting out of Spain in one piece. No, Finlay was right. They needed to focus. She could not afford to be distracted by a pair of sea-blue eyes, a mane of auburn hair and a body that Michelangelo himself could have sculpted.

* * *

Isabella, her skin glowing from the shower she had taken under the waterfall after he had returned from his own ablutions, her hair restrained in a long wet braid, had a decidedly mulish look on her face. Trouble, Finlay thought, though he couldn’t help but smile at this further evidence of the return of the feisty partisan he admired so much. Desired so much. No, he wouldn’t think of that.

The sparkle had returned to her eyes. ‘We need to talk,’ she said.

‘We do.’ Finlay handed her a cup of coffee, pleased to note the pleasure with which she took it, the admiring glance she gave the small portable trivet he always carried with him to heat the pot on. ‘I always travel prepared for anything,’ he said by way of explanation, ‘although I can think of no item of field equipment that could have prepared me for you.’ He was rewarded with a smile. ‘Here, take this, you must be hungry.’

‘Thank you. I am ravenous.’ She took the toasted bread and cheese, sitting cross-legged on the hard-packed mud floor, looking quite at home.

‘You’ll have found bothies like these useful places during the war, no doubt,’ Finlay said.

‘Bothies?’

‘A hut. A bothy is what we’d call it in the Highlands,’ Finlay explained. ‘A place for the cattle drovers to rest overnight on their way to market.’

‘This land is too mountainous for cattle, but, yes, to answer your question, during the war, such places were often used for storing arms. And hiding partisans, just as this one is doing now.’ Isabella finished her breakfast, and set her cup down, obviously bracing herself. ‘You were right,’ she said.

‘In what way?’

‘I was never a soldier as you were. I carried a gun, I witnessed some fighting, but I did not fight in the way you did. Estebe was not the first dead man I have seen, but it was the first time I had ever witnessed the barbarity of what a gun can do used in that way.’

‘I regret that you did.’

‘It is something I will never forget. Never.’ She gazed into the fire, blinking rapidly. ‘I know I was not wholly responsible for Estebe’s death, but I must take some of the blame.’

‘Isabella, Estebe was a grown man and he was a hardened soldier. He knew the risks and accepted them.’

‘Yes, that is true, but I was his commanding officer, Finlay. He died for the cause, but it was under my watch.’

He could not argue with that, and it would be insulting to do so. At a loss, he poured her the last of the coffee.

She nodded her thanks and cupped her hands around the tin mug, staring into the fire. ‘How do you reconcile that, Finlay? You must have sacrificed many of your men for the cause, the greater good. How do you do it?’

Her question caught him unawares. ‘You do it by not thinking about it and simply obey the orders you are given. It is for others to weigh the moral balance,’ Finlay said. It was the stock answer. The army answer. It was a steaming mound of horse manure, and Isabella knew it.

She drained her coffee again, and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You told me that if you had not been so insubordinate you would have been promoted beyond major by now. There are some orders you do not obey. You choose, on occasion, your own path. You follow your own instincts.’

He smiled wryly. ‘I’ve always had a penchant for intelligent women, but until I met you, I never thought there could be such a thing as a lass who was too clever.’

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘Isabella, I wouldn’t dare, I was simply— You’ve a habit of asking difficult questions, do you know that?’

She raised her empty cup in salute. ‘I am not the only one.’

‘Aye, well, there you go.’ Finlay picked up his knife and began to cut the piece of uneaten bread before him into smaller and smaller cubes. ‘You’re right. Of course I make choices. While there’s always someone up the ranks to blame if things go awry, that’s not my way, any more than it’s my way to ask my men to do something I would not.’

‘Such as cross enemy lines to reconnoitre a French arms dump?’

‘Ach, that was more a case of my being bored and needing to see a wee bit of action. I’m wondering, though, if you were not in the habit of actually fighting, what you were doing there that night?’

‘Ach,’ Isabella replied in a fair attempt at his own accent, ‘that was a case of my being bored and needing to see a wee bit of action, too. I did not fight,’ she continued, reverting to her own voice, ‘but I did try to ensure that El Fantasma’s reputation for infallibility was preserved, since it was good for morale. It was my father, as usual, who heard the rumours of French activity. He thought that I had others investigate them, but towards the end of the war, more often than not I did that myself.’ Isabella gazed into the fire. ‘I think—I thought that Papa would be proud of me, of El Fantasma, but Consuela, all the things she said... I don’t know, Finlay. I am not so certain now. For Papa, his family came before everything, while I—I think, I think I have been putting myself first.’ She sniffed. ‘I am sorry. More self-pity. Excuse me.’

She got to her feet, but before she could move towards the door of the hut, Finlay caught her. ‘How can you be so daft?’ he said, pulling her into his arms, tilting her face up to force her to look at him. ‘You’ve not been wielding a gun, but you’ve been fighting for your country all the same. You’ve put everyone but yourself first, Isabella. Selfish—that’s the very last thing I’d call you.’

‘Daft, that is what you called me. You mean stupid.’

‘No. It can mean stupid right enough, but these auld Scots words, they’ve a wheen of other meanings.’

He was pleased to see that her tears had dried, her lips forming a shaky smile. ‘Such as?’

‘Such as brave, and bold. Such as beautiful and bright. Such as surprising.’

‘Because I admit I was wrong?’

‘Because you question yourself.’ Reluctantly, he let her go. She was too distracting, and what was more she deserved an honest answer to her original question—or as honest as he could muster. He sat down on the mud-packed floor once more. ‘You asked me how I choose between duty and human life, and I don’t really know how to answer that. I’ve fought on battlefields where people make their homes. I’ve staged sieges in towns where women and children and old men and old women are living. I’d like to think that it’s been worthwhile. Whenever my men have crossed the line in the aftermath of a battle—and there have been times—I’ve made sure they faced the consequences.’ The memories of some of those times made him wince. Finlay rubbed his eyes. ‘I’ve gone against some orders where my conscience has pricked me, but I’ve acted on others where I’ve been faced with the consequences only afterwards.’ More images, worse ones, flickered through his mind. He shook his head in an effort to disperse them. ‘I’m a soldier. I am trained to obey orders. I’m not supposed to question them. I’m supposed to trust that my superiors will act honourably, in the name of our country, but war...it isn’t like that, not all the time. Sometimes the lines are blurred and I—I have not always questioned as perhaps I ought.’

He had not noticed her sitting down beside him until she took his hand in hers. ‘But you did question the orders you were given when you came here,’ she said gently. ‘When I told you who I was, you could have acted then, but instead of taking me by force you waited, tried to persuade me to leave voluntarily.’