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time, so he didn’t pursue the question. She was welcome to her secrets.
    She added impatiently, indicating her attire, “I have donned these barbarities, so can we leave now? Ramón will not be far behind me, and he rides with no care for his horse. I must get to the convent.”
    “Convent?” Luke swung onto his horse and held a hand down to help her mount.
    “The Convent of the Broken Angel. Up there.” She jerked her chin toward the mountains, then grasped his outstretched hand, placed a bare foot on his boot, and swung lithely up behind him. Without waiting, she thudded her dusty little heels into Brutus’s flanks and they moved off.
    Strangely, the higher into the mountains they went, the more he felt her tension rise. Her grip on him tightened, and her anxious craning around to look back the way they came became more frequent.
    “So, the Convent of the Broken Angel, is it?” Luke said. “Interesting name.”
    “The proper name is Convent of the Angels, but since lightning struck one of the angels and broke its wings, everyone calls it the Convent of the Broken Angel.”
    “Are you intending to become a nun?”
    She answered with a snort. “No. I go there on the instructions of my father. For safety… perhaps.”
    “Perhaps?”
    “My aunt is there. A nun.”
    “I see. I gather she is not related to this Ramón.”
    “No, she is from a different side of the family—from the side of my father’s mother.”
    “Then that should be all right,” Luke said in vague reassurance.
    There was a short silence, then Isabella added, “But I do not know her well. And nuns are sworn to practice
obedience
.”
    Luke’s mouth twitched. “I gather you don’t approve of obedience.”
    She sniffed. “It depends. I obey”—her voice wavered—“obeyed my father in all things. But my aunt, she is not the Mother Superior, and I do not know whose side the Mother Superior will take.”
    “In what way?”
    “Now that Papa is… is dead, and Felipe, too, who was my father’s heir and my betrothed, Ramón is the head of the family, and if he orders my aunt to give me to him… I do not know what the Mother Superior will do. These are dangerous times in Spain, and I do not know if the Mother Superior is with Papa’s side of politics, or against it. And I am another mouth to feed. If she is not a patriot, or Ramón offers her money…”
    There was much in what she said, Luke conceded. Spain was a country at war and split within by politics. But surely, if Ramón truly intended to force the child into marriage, no nun, no matter what her politics, would hand Isabella over to him.
    “Nuns are also sworn to chastity,” Luke reminded her. “Perhaps she will take your side.”
    “Perhaps,” she echoed doubtfully. It was clear she had no confidence in that.
    “If it was your father’s dying wish that you go to the convent, his wish must be honored.”
    For a few moments she said nothing, then she said, so softly that he almost didn’t catch it, “Perhaps.”
    A few minutes up the road they found the rest of her belongings scattered about. Luke stopped to let her go examine them in case there was something she could retrieve.
    But there was nothing. Everything, even the saddle, had been shredded in the search for the elusive jewels. Once an exquisitely made piece, the carved and decorated lady’s sidesaddle was now a wreck. Luke could see where some kind of metal decoration—possibly silver—had been wrenched off and the stitching slashed apart. Nothing of value remained.
    One thing was clear: all question of jewels aside, with clothing and a sidesaddle of the highest quality, Isabella must come of good family. It gave weight to the suggestion that she was an heiress.
    She picked over her ruined belongings, then picked them up and threw them into the bushes. She turned to him and said, “Take me with you.”
    “What?” And then he realized she’d spoken in English. “You speak English?”
    “Not well, but