A Stranger at Castonbury - By Amanda McCabe Page 0,15

fist around the ring as if that would bring her back to him. Even in that moment he could feel her slipping further and further away.

Cawley nodded. ‘The Spanish nurse. One of the lost, I fear.’

Lost. Catalina was lost, lost, lost. Those words echoed hollowly in his head, yet still he could not quite grasp them. She was the most vivid person he had ever known—how could she simply be gone, just like that?

A sharp pain shot through him, a jolt of purest, hottest grief. Then a cold numbness as if ice was slowly creeping around his heart.

‘Perhaps that is for the best,’ Cawley said. ‘Her brother was known to be a liberal, even though he has been long dead. She would only have stood in the way of what is best. And I would hate to see harm come to anyone in your family because you could not do your duty. I am sure you understand what I mean.’

Harm come to anyone in your family. Of course he knew what the man meant; it was a veiled threat pure and simple. Jamie tightened his hand on the ring until the edges of the stone cut into his flesh. He closed his eyes and let that ice cover him. It had to be better than the burn of grief, of knowing he would never see Catalina again and that he had not been there to save her when she needed him.

Yes—he had failed Catalina. And his family would be better off without him as well. Had he not run off and left them because he was unsure he could assume the responsibilities of a dukedom? Had he not already failed in his duty? At least he could protect them now by doing this task. And if he was lucky he would not return from it.

As if he sensed Jamie’s cold fury, Cawley rose from his chair and turned towards the door. ‘Everyone already believes you dead, Hatherton. It makes you the perfect one for this job. And when it’s over you can return to your family, knowing the service you did for your country. Send me word of your decision tomorrow.’

Then Jamie was alone. He closed his eyes and held on to the ring as if it was the last tether anchoring him to the real world. The last connection to his foolish dreams. Catalina was gone, and Cawley was right—it hardly mattered what happened to him now.

But first he had to do something for himself.

Chapter Four

It looked like the landscape of another world entirely, not a place where he had once lived and worked, fought and loved. It was a place he had never seen before except in nightmares.

Jamie felt strangely numb, remote from his surroundings as he climbed stiffly down from his horse and studied the scorched patch of earth where the camp once stood. The hot sun beat down from a clear, mercilessly blue sky onto the baked, cracked dust, but Jamie didn’t even feel it. He was vaguely aware of Xavier Sanchez, sitting on his own horse several feet away and watching the scene warily, but Jamie felt like the only living being left for miles around.

Maybe the only living being left on the planet.

There were no sounds, no birds singing or wind sweeping through the trees. Once this place had been filled with voices, laughter, the cries of the injured, the barked orders of a military operation. The ghosts of such sounds in his mind made the silence even heavier.

Jamie tilted back his head to stare up into the sky. He could smell the dusty scent of the air, the faint, acrid remains of fire. The echoes of the violence that had happened here.

And Catalina had been caught in it. His numbness was shattered by a spasm of pure, raw pain at the thought of what must have happened here. The fear and panic, the sense of being trapped amid fire and ruin with nowhere to run. No one to help her, because he had gone.

‘Catalina,’ he whispered, his heart shattered at the thought of her being afraid. Had she thought of him in that moment, just as he had pictured only her face when he was sure he was drowning? Had she called out his name?

Jamie walked slowly across the blasted, blackened patch of earth, not seeing it how it was now, abandoned and ruined, but how it was that day he first saw Catalina. Her smile, her face like a beautiful,