The Soldier's Rebel Lover

Historical Note

The inspiration for Finlay Urquhart, the Jock Upstart, arose when I was reading Richard Holmes’s excellent book Redcoat while researching my previous book in this series, The Soldier’s Dark Secret. It was, I discovered, extremely unusual for a man of humble origins to work his way up through the ranks in Wellington’s army. He’d have to have been exceptional in every way—brave, bold and bright—but he’d always have remained an outsider to the establishment elite. I do love an underdog, and so Finlay was born.

The main part of my research for the partisan war in Spain came from Ronald Fraser’s book Napoleon’s Cursed War. There were indeed female partisans fighting what was referred to, for the first time, as a guerrilla war—including Catalina Martin, who was promoted to second lieutenant, and Dominica Ruiz, said to have killed three imperial soldiers with her own hands.

Isabella’s alter ego, El Fantasma, was a spy rather than a guerrillero, her values influenced by what I was hearing in the news—which at the time I was writing, focused on the conflict between matters of state security and freedom of speech and information: the so-called ‘enemy within’.

I already knew that Finlay would be disillusioned by the lack of any meaningful change for the better wrought by peace, just as his comrade Jack was. I began to wonder about Isabella, too. My reading implied that in many ways Spain regressed, in terms of social justice, after the end of what they called the War of Independence. I wondered how my heroine would feel, forced to take a back seat in the country she’d fought so hard to liberate.

As always, I’ve strived to set this story in as accurate a historical background as possible. In July 1813, when the story opens, the French had been driven into the north-eastern corner of Spain after the bloody Battle of Vitoria. Wellington was forced to withdraw from his attempt to storm the fortress town of San Sebastian, and it was not until September that the town finally surrendered, and was immediately sacked by the British—forcing the French to retreat across the Pyrenees. Any mistakes or inaccuracies are entirely my own fault.

Finally, a note on Finlay’s accent. He is a Highlander. His family come from Oban, in Argyll, not far from my own home, and he would, of course, have been a native Gaelic speaker. His English would have become fluent in the army, giving him, more than likely, an English rather than a Scots accent. But I wanted my hero to be unmistakably Scots—gritty and a bit rough round the edges—so I’ll put my hands up right now and confess that the slang he uses has large elements of straight, modern-day Glaswegian.

Anachronistic, completely historically incorrect, I know, but I hope it works. I leave it up to you to decide.

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE FORGOTTEN DAUGHTER by Lauri Robinson.