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Hebe ignored the jibe about the fig leaf and held out her hand for the mug. ‘Have you left any? Thank you. Yes, it is awful, but something hot is wonderful. I am going to put some water on the embers; it will at least get it warm. Then I am going to dress that knife cut and you can have a wash.’
‘Only if I can have my trousers back and you leave the room.’
‘I cannot dress that cut if you have your trousers on.’ She balanced the water bucket in the embers and stood regarding him, hands on hips. ‘Oh, wrap yourself in the blanket and take off your shirt, Alex—or are you afraid I will hurt you?’
He glared back. ‘You sound—and look—like my old nurse. Very well, turn your back.’
Patiently waiting while muttered oaths marked Alex’s unsteady progress towards a decent covering, Hebe wondered if his fever-clouded memory of what had happened last night was colouring the way he was reacting to her now. She supposed it must be, even if he did believe it was a dream. Whatever he had felt for her before Clarissa’s letter arrived he had suppressed, and in their mutual struggle to survive he had treated her simply as a companion. Now all his consciousness of her as a woman had returned. Her problem was how she was going to hide her own new knowledge of him as a man.
She carried the bucket over and found another piece of old sheet to tear up, then gently freed the old bandage. It was impossible to do it without touching him, encircling him with her arms, resting her cheek against the flat planes of his chest as she unwrapped the bandage. She felt him sitting unnaturally still, and thought he was holding his breath.
The slash was, by some miracle, starting to heal without any sign of infection. Hebe rebandaged it, found Alex his trousers, a clean shirt and the soap and went outside, expecting him to call when he had finished.
To her horror she heard his voice just behind her at the door of the hut. ‘Is this all the bread that’s left?’
‘Get back to bed!’
He was holding on to the door jamb with a visible effort, the lines of strain visible even through the stubble which was now heavy on his face.
‘No, we leave just as soon as we’ve eaten. I’ll make breakfast, if you can fetch the mule.’
‘I’ll not go a step until you promise me you’ll ride and I’ll walk,’ she said.
He grinned at her belligerent tone. ‘I can promise you that, Hebe, but I’m sorry to do this to you—it is a steep climb now.’
The mule was patiently standing where she had tethered it, and seemed more than willing to follow her down and be saddled up. Hebe brought out extra blankets, a canteen of water and all the remaining food, and went back to board up the secret cupboard again. When she came out Alex was in the saddle, white about the mouth and with his eyes closed. Hebe took the rope and began to lead the mule up the path again. After a few hundred yards she came to a point where the track split. One path went up, the other, wider and heavily marked by the boots of yesterday’s French troops, turned along the flank of the mountain.
‘Up?’ she asked, turning to look at Alex.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her. ‘Up,’ he agreed ruefully.
Chapter Thirteen
Hebe found she enjoyed the climb up the steep track as it zigzagged through the scrubby, rock-strewn pasture. The wide trousers were a revelation to someone who had always had her desire to stride out and enjoy a walk hampered by clinging skirts. After two days of being tied to the confines of the hut the freedom and fresh air were wonderful and the physical exercise and the need to concentrate on her footing stopped her brooding.
The mule followed sturdily behind, nimble on its neat hooves. At first Hebe stopped herself from looking back every few yards as she was tempted to do. She had no wish for Alex to feel she was clucking over him like a mother hen. Considering how frustrating it must be for him to feel so weak when his instincts and his pride were all driving him to protect her, he was being extraordinarily good tempered. In Hebe’s experience, wounded male pride normally showed itself in thorough-going irritation.
Finally they reached a sharp hairpin in the path where Hebe thought she could legitimately stop to rest. She turned, taking in the breathtaking panorama spread before them with a gasp of pleasure. ‘How wonderful! I have never been so high up before—look, Alex, you can see the sea.’ Round their feet the short turf was studded with spring flowers, flowering later in the cooler mountain air than those down on the plains.
After a few minutes Hebe felt that she had demonstrated an admirable disinclination to fuss and looked at Alex. He was sitting, the musket lying across the saddle in front of him, the reins looped casually in one hand and his head tipped back to watch the vultures circling lazily overhead in the cloudless sky. He appeared to feel her eyes on him and looked at her, smiling. ‘Are you out of breath yet?’
‘A bit,’ she confessed. ‘But I love this: it is so good to be able to walk freely, scramble about. Do you think I could start a fashion for divided skirts when I get back to England? I had no idea trousers would be so…liberating.’
He considered her strange costume seriously. ‘I think you would set all the old Society tabbies by the ears. But if you marry a man with a large country estate, why, then you can wear what you choose and stride about to your heart’s content.’
Hastily Hebe turned away and started to climb again. After last night she was never going to be able to accept a proposal of marriage, whoever it came from. ‘Or I shall become an eccentric spinster and have a country cottage,’ she tossed back over her shoulder in an attempt at lightness.
They went on in silence for another hour, interrupted only by Alex calling to her to stop and drink from the canteen at the saddlebow. She insisted he drink first, noting with relief the colour that was coming back into his face and the sharp, alert look in his eyes as he scanned the slopes around them.
‘Are we likely to see any French?’ she asked, made uneasy by his constant watchfulness.
He shrugged, shifting his grip on the musket. ‘I doubt it. They hold territory on the other side of the border almost to Gibraltar, so they have no need to patrol unless they have intelligence that a guerrilla band is on the move. You were unlucky with that group last night; I suspect they were moving
along the flank of the mountain to provide high-level lookouts over the coast.’
‘So we are no safer when we cross the border?’ Hebe twisted in the cork and handed the canteen back to him.
‘Much safer. The French are on enemy territory there, and I know the partisans.’ He pointed up the mountain-side. ‘You see that break of slope there? We will stop at that point and have something to eat. After that it gets much steeper.’
