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at him with cautious eyes. Her heart-shaped face marked her indelibly as Caroline's daughter, but it was a moment before Adam could make sense of this. Neither the officials in Lisbon nor the officers in Jared's regiment nor any of the people he had questioned on his journey had mentioned a child. Nor had the villagers who directed him to Mrs. Rawley's cottage. They had also not told him that Mrs. Rawley's husband was dead.
    The sound of her daughter's voice seemed to return Caroline to reality. "This is Mr. Durward, Emily," she said, putting an arm round the little girl. "I knew him in England, a long time ago, and I need to talk to him now. Wait for me in the other room. I won't be long."
    Emily nodded solemnly and walked toward the door to the cottage's second room, giving Adam a wide berth but staring at him with curiosity as she passed. "Put your shawl on, querida," Caroline added as Emily reached the door. "It's cold."
    Adam watched the small figure vanish into the inner room, then turned back to Caroline. "I'm sorry about Jared."
    "Please, Adam. Hypocrisy was never one of your sins." Caroline moved to a broken-down chair that stood beside the table where she and Emily ate their meals. Disgust at the treachery of her thoughts had ended her paralysis. Anger had restored her to sanity. She could not make sense of Adam's sudden appearance, but she knew she could not trust him.
    "Very well," Adam said. "I'm the last person to offer sympathy when it isn't wanted. How soon can you be ready to leave?"
    "Leave?" Caroline thought she had recovered from the shock of seeing him, but this last took her by surprise.
    "Yes, that's the idea," Adam said in a brisk voice. "Or did you think I followed you to sample the delights of village life? Believe me, these past years I've seen enough of poverty and disease to last a lifetime."
    Caroline stared up at him. In the fading afternoon light, his face seemed little changed, but it appeared harsher, the mouth more firmly set, the eyes cold and implacable. He had not looked like that the last time they met, at least not for the whole of that devastating encounter. But to recall the way Adam's eyes could be lit with passion or tenderness, or the way his mouth softened just before it claimed her own, was to risk shattering her fragile self-command. "You're saying you came all this way just to look for me?" she demanded.
    "And Rawley," he reminded her. "And Emily, though I wasn't aware of her existence until a minute ago."
    His voice, Caroline noted with relief, was perfectly level. There was no reason he should suspect that the shattering night they had spent together was responsible for the one thing that still made her life worth living. "Why?" Caroline asked. "Did the British Embassy send you?"
    The mistrust in her voice brought a bitter taste to Adam's mouth. Even after five years, even after he had convinced himself he was long past caring, she could still stir a tumult of emotions in him. "You could say so, if it makes you feel better," he said evenly. In fact, it was Adam who had gone to Sir Charles Stuart, the British Ambassador in Lisbon, and insisted he be given leave to find Caroline. "This is scarcely the time to debate minor details. When can you be ready to leave?"
    Caroline could not have said whether it was the bland certainty in his voice, or the memory of his betrayal, or the even more disturbing memory of his passion, but she knew without question that no matter how desperate her circumstances she could not accept his help. "You never were a fool, Adam," she told him. "Do you think I would go as much as two miles with you, let alone halfway across Spain in the middle of a war?"
    Adam moved, suddenly and decisively, so that he was facing her across the table, his hands spread firmly on its scarred top. "God damn it, Caroline, there are two armies out there. Once the spring thaw begins, they're both going to start to move. You're English, and a woman, and you're