o0o
The fever burned on for three more days, and the man went from fits of delirium to equally frightening periods of deep, motionless stupor. Thea was at his bedside most of the time; alone, it took all her strength to calm him in delirium. “If I were like Sister Ana, I could sit on him and make him lie quiet,” she complained once to Sister Scholastica, who giggled but looked shocked.
At the dawn of the fifth day Thea was roused from sleep by Sister Juan Evangelista. The Infirmarian was smiling.
“The fever is broken,” she said. “He is sleeping normally. He will live.”
“Thank God.” Smiling lopsidedly, hoping she would not shame herself with tears, Thea admitted, “I don’t think I could have stood another night of wrestling with him.”
“Wrestling?” Sister Juan’s eyebrows shot up almost into her veil. “Child, I hope Señorita de Silva does not have reason to regret these liberties she has allowed you. Wrestling, por diós
“Well, now he’ll be quiet.”
As she stared down at her patient’s pale, damp face, Sister Juan shook her head. “Not this one, Señorita. I warrant we shall have as much trouble with your mysterious stranger now as before.”
She was right. When the man awoke from his first exhausted slumber he was weak, querulous, and arrogant. “What in God’s name has been done with my clothes?” He held up a hand and regarded the cuff of his shabby nightgown. “Where in Hell am I?”
“Nowhere in Hell, sir. You’re in the gate-cottage of a convent near Sepulveda.”
All the arrogance went from his voice. “In Spain. I dreamt I was in England again.”
Briskly, because it was quite a different thing to touch him now, when he was awake and aware, than it had been before, when he was raving, Thea took his arm and found his pulse. It was strong, a little fast, but no skips or flutters in the rhythm.
“Spain,” he said bitterly. “Might as well be Hell. If I might ask, Sister, what the devil does an Englishwoman do in a Spanish convent in wherever-the-devil you said it was? You are English, aren’t you? No Spaniard I ever met sounded so much like Somerset.”
“I was raised in Somerset,” Thea snapped, irritated by his tone. She had imagined gratitude at the very least, not his tense, arrogant questioning. She had some questions of her own. “I found you in the convent orchard, quite delirious. Sister Juan Evangelista says you would have died had we not brought you in. As to how you came to be there....” She faded off expectantly.
“I suppose I should thank you.” Rallying, he smiled at her, a slow thoughtful smile that lit his eyes and set Thea’s heart pounding uncomfortably. “Well then, little Sister, I do thank you and the other good Sisters of your order, for your well-intentioned interference in my otherwise inevitable demise. I only hope that you, that is, the convent, don’t regret the day you took me in.”
“I hope so, too,” Thea answered tartly. “Lie back, Señor Mysterioso. You’re still far from well.”
He lay back but did not cease his questioning. “How comes an English girl of, unless I miss my guess, good family to be in a convent in Spain, and in these days, too? Aren’t you a trifle young for...” he waved his hand idly, “this sort of thing?”
“This sort of thing? You mean holy orders? I only hope you’ll have a little more respect when Mother Beatriz or the others are by; they’d be hurt by your discourtesy.”
“Again, my apologies. You haven’t answered my question. You don’t look old enough to be out of the schoolroom. What were your parents thinking of....”
“My parents are dead.”
In the awkward silence Thea heard his indrawn breath. “I beg your pardon,” he said at length. “I’ve never been a good convalescent. I promise; no more rudeness. I will be a paragon of obedience.”
“I doubt that,” Thea said. “Señor, will you tell me your name, at least? Only so Mother and the others can stop referring to you as Señor Mysterioso? Unless of course you like being called by a name that sounds like something out of Mrs. Radcliffe.”
He grimaced. “I take your point. I am Matlin. Sir Douglas Matlin. There, that’s all in order like something from the refreshment rooms at Almacks’. God, what a world away that seems.” He leaned against his pillow, closed his eyes, and winced.
“I do wish you would keep still,” Thea said crossly. “Sister Juan will wish to change your bandage by and by.”
“I am all anticipation. You have not introduced yourself, little Sister.”
Startled, Thea realized that he thought she was a nun. It was stupid not to have understood it sooner, but she had become so used to the endearments—child, daughter, little one—that the Spanish used so lavishly that she had assumed his “little Sister” to be more of the same. “I beg your pardon,” she said helplessly. “I am Dorothea Cannowen, of Grahamley Hall.”
“And in religion?”
Thea laughed briefly to cover the awkwardness. “Oh, you mean these? Sir Douglas, I am not of the order. I wear the habit only for appearances. A nun!” A shadow crossed Thea’s face; was it not what she had thought herself? What other choice would there be for her in time? “I suppose I might as well be. I may be yet, if I cannot find a cure for it.”
He looked confused. “A cure? For being a nun? Surely you aren’t being held prisoner.” His eyes were open again, wide with amusement. Thea shook her head. “No. I see. A guest, even as I am?” She gave another nod. “Well, I suppose that some day, if I am patient, someone will explain to me how a girl from Grahamley Hall comes to be nursing strangers in a convent in Spain and wearing novice’s robes but not in Orders herself.”
Feeling that it was he who had explaining to do, Thea replied tartly, “Perhaps some day someone will. Just now, I think you should be asleep. I’ll make some chamomile tea.”
Mother Beatriz herself called in the stranger’s sickroom the next day and found Thea trembling with impatience while Matlin strove to shave himself with a rusty blade and a hand mirror borrowed from Manuel. “You’ll cut yourself; I know you will,” Thea insisted angrily.
“My dear infant, I have been shaving myself these last ten years; I know precisely what I am about.” Matlin’s drawl was amused, but his voice was weak and his hand shook slightly.
“Allow me, Señor,” the Superior said briskly in Spanish, taking the razor from him. “I too have done some nursing in my time.”
Thea was entertained by the spectacle before her: Matlin said nothing, kept as still as possible, and eyed the blade being plied at his chin while Mother Beatriz went cheerfully about her task.
“There,” she said at last. “When a man wishes to be shaved, hija, he is healing. Now, will you introduce me to our guest?”
Thea blushed under the Superior’s kind, ages-wiser tone and made Matlin’s name known to the nun.
“Siir Dooglath....” Mother Beatriz tried, lisping the D and S sounds hopelessly. “I think, if you do not much mind, Señor, I will call you by your family name. Mathleen.”
Matlin blinked at her pronunciation, then smiled and nodded agreeably.
“Good. Niña, I wish you would go to the anteroom and wait for Sister Juan to come.” It was not a request. Disgruntled at being so summarily dismissed from what had been her place, Thea left the room, glancing regretfully behind her. She settled herself ungracefully on a stool in the anteroom and watched for Sister Juan on the path from the garden gate. She found that by keeping very still she could hear all that Mother Beatriz said, and most of Matlin’s replies.
“I know this is a danger to you and your House, sheltering a stranger, an enemy to your country,” he was saying.
“There are enemies and enemies, Señor. The French are supposed to be our friends, but you strike me as a safer guest than any of Bonaparte’s men. Besides, this is the house of God; there are no enemies here,” the Superior finished sententiously. “But truly an enemy? I do need to ask, Señor, what an Englishman is doing, in these days, in Spain, with a bullet wound across his forehead; so Sist
er Juan Evangelista tells me.”
In the other room Thea started; she had not realized that.
“You may rest assured, Mother, I am a very harmless visitor. If I cannot speak kindly of your country, it is because some of your Spanish soldiery did not recognize my, uh, harmlessness. I will swear to you—on your Blessed Virgin, if you like—that I was here to inspect my uncle’s vineyards in Malaga and nothing more.”
“An oath will not be necessary, Señor. Surely, you are not a Catholic?”
“My mother was, ma’am.” Although Thea could not see him she could picture his smile, the air of rueful confession. She would never have escaped a lecture from Mother Beatriz for such an off-handed reply, but he went on untroubled.
“April of ’08? Then I have been a guest of your country for almost fifteen months and in custody in Madrid for nearly a year of that time.”
“You were released?” The Superior’s tone was nearly as dry as his own had been moments before. “I did not think so. You escaped?”
“During the celebrations after your King Carlos’ abdication in favor of Fernando. My jailers got a trifle careless and I saw my chance. It was not,” he paused, “not entirely without incident.”
“Whence the wound in your head. I see. And now, Señor?”
“Back to England, if I can make my way to Portugal and the coast. I had some friends when I passed through last time, although by this time....”
“Time and plenty to worry about your friends when you are stronger, Señor.”
Thea had forgotten to watch the path outside the cottage door as she listened. Now Sister Juan and Sister Ana stood in the doorway watching her as she, quite obviously, eavesdropped. “Señorita Cannowen,” Sister Juan began sharply, and “Niña, listening at keyholes again?” Sister Ana scolded. Thea rose, upsetting her stool behind her and blushing for the second time as Mother Beatriz joined them in the anteroom.
“Juan, you will wish to examine your patient, I think. As for you, Dorothea, I think it is time you had a rest from your nursing. Sister Ana will sit with our guest for a while.” At Thea’s transparent mutiny she only smiled. “I did not say that you may not sit with Señor Mathleen again, child, only that it is time you spent some time elsewhere, for example, with Señorita de Silva, who has missed you greatly.”
Thea dropped her head consciously; she had neglected Silvy of late, and she knew it. All the same, he was her stranger.
“No need for that Friday-face, child. I think Señor Mathleen will prefer an adult’s silence to a child’s prattling for a time.”
Child. There was that word again. Thea burst out, “I didn’t prattle at him! I only wanted to ask—Mother, it would be a perfect solution when he’s well. Silvy wants to stay with you; she’s happy here, but I haven’t a vocation, you know I don’t, and my grandfather doesn’t want me. I’d die first, and I wouldn’t be a danger to the House anymore, and....”
The nuns regarded her with vague alarm. “Dorotea,” Sister Juan said gently. “What is this solution?”
“I only thought—Mother, please, when Sir Douglas goes back to England I want to go with him. It isn’t that you have not all been kind to me; I’m grateful, but this is not my place.” Thea forced herself to slow down, adding, “You know it’s not.”
Mother Beatriz sighed unhappily, her sandy brows drawn together in a line across her round face. “I knew you were not happy here, hija. I had hoped that perhaps you would find a vocation, but I suppose that was not to happen. As for your plan, you must not think of such a thing. Even if such a man were willing to take you with him on so dangerous a journey!”
“He has to. No, I don’t mean has to, but I saved his life; even Sister Juan said so. Can’t I ask him to save mine, at least?”
In silence the nuns looked from Thea to each other and back to Thea. When Matlin called for Mother Beatriz they all followed after her, Thea at her heels and the others just behind.
Matlin laid his head back against the pillow; he was pale with the exertion of sitting up. “I thought you might as well ask the source,” he said with grim politeness. “You saved my life, just as you pointed out, Miss Cannowen. It seems only fair that I help you in my turn. If it is possible, when the time comes I will be pleased to take you to England with me.”
Chapter Three
Thea did not see her patient for three days, days spent alternately sewing in Silvy’s chamber or at prayers with the community. As she went about the few chores allotted to her or poked moodily at her sewing, she was aware of a weight of silent disapproval; indeed, sometimes not so silent.
“I raised you better than this, niña! To say nothing of the impropriety of such an undertaking, which is so much folly I cannot believe you would think of it for a moment. To importune that man, to take advantage of him! The whole thing is madness!”
Mother Beatriz agreed with Silvy. “Insanity. Hija, you have no idea what the dangers will be for Señor Mathleen on his way to England. Better you stay safely here where....”
“Where what?” Thea retorted at last, furious and resentful. “Mother, kind as you have been to me, you cannot keep me here forever. You know yourself what a sorry inmate I would make.”
“In time,” the Superior started. Meeting Thea’s obstinate look, she shook her head. “Perhaps you are right, child, but surely it is early to think of leaving Spain. Can you not try your grandfather again? Well, if you will not, child, I don’t know what else there is to be done with you. Many women have found great peace and joy in the Church.” To Thea’s irritable eye, Silvy was growing more saintly by the day. How was it, Thea wondered, that no one could be persuaded that Matlin’s arrival was a godsend, the answer to her dilemma.
“Mother, I don’t think,” she began, then tried another tactic. “Sir Douglas said he would take me with him. If he does not object, I don’t see why you should.”
“Will Sir Douglas see to your welfare for the rest of your life?” Silvy asked tartly. “I have not met this man, who was surely, if he has any pretension to gentility at all, out of his mind when he agreed to take you with him. He is probably another such as your papa: loud and crude and unthinking. He did not stop to consider that by the time you arrived in England your reputation would be in tatters. Think of it, niña. You wish to dance at Almacks’? To make a superior marriage? To make a marriage at all?”
“Marriage is a long way off, certainly,” Mother Beatriz added quickly, looking at Thea’s slight, childish form in the borrowed habit. “Clara, you must not excite yourself in this fashion.”
“I must make her understand. Dorotea, you think your aunts and uncles who did not want to bother themselves with you before will welcome you home under the escort of one lone man? Pfaugh! A breath of scandal and they will leave you to fend for yourself, worse off than you were before we left England in the first place.” Silvy’s mouth was pursed in anger and fatigue, and deep violet shadows were under her eyes. “It is not to be thought of.”
“So I must stay here for the rest of my life, against my will, not of the world, not of the Church, a part of nothing. I wish we’d never left England.” Choking back the tears which threatened to mar her angry departure, Thea stalked out of the cell, clutching her tambour frame like a weapon beside her.
o0o
In the gate cottage Matlin had come under fire more than once for encouraging his young nurse. “Putting ideas in the child’s head,” fat Sister Ana sputtered as she changed the linen on his bed. “An infant, being set up to disobey her elders, and Señor, the ruckus she is causing! Really.” She shook her finger at him as she might at a naughty schoolboy. “Really, sir, you should know better.”
“The girl seems to know her own mind,” Matlin objected mildly. He was sitting up a few hours a day now, wrapped in an old coat of Manuel’s with a blanket over his lap. His color was much improved and he could move without the angry lance of pain through his head, but the bandage remained bound over his brow.
“Know her mind! The chi
ld is a babe, an infant! What does she know of her own mind? You at least are old enough to have known better.” Still tssking under her breath Sister Ana went to fill the water jug tucked under her arm. She looked, Matlin thought watching her, like a big, disapproving crow.
Thus, when Dorothea next waited upon her patient, the two of them met awkwardly, like guilty children. After a few minutes of strained conversation Thea produced a pack of cards from one of the voluminous sleeves of her habit and asked if he knew how to play two-handed whist.
“Will Mother Beatriz disapprove of this?”
“Disapprove? She gave me the cards, Sir Douglas.” Thea put one hand up to push the heavy veil away from her face, thus exposing some of the fine, pale hair that was hidden under it. “Don’t tell me you aren’t bored to tears here.” She pulled the stool to his bedside and began to shuffle the cards. They played in odd, companionable silence for a while.
Finally, Thea looked up and asked, reluctantly, “They’ve been after you, haven’t they?”
“They? After me?”
“Mother and the Sisters. Scolding you about your offer. I am sorry. If I had thought it would start such a wrangle, I would have asked you in private first.”
“Or not asked at all? Poor babe, have they been hard on you at the House?”
“Thank heaven Silvy’s been feeling too fagged to come visit you or you’d know the full of it, with her telling you all the fusty reasons why I have to stay here for the rest of my life. I wish we’d never come into Spain.”
“Why did you? You owe me that story, don’t you?” He laid his cards down.
“It’s a long story,” she protested, but Matlin only waved his hand to indicate the room. “My dear child, I have nothing but time until your Sister Juan Evangelista declares that I am fit to travel again. Amuse me.”
“It’s not very amusing.” Haltingly at first, Thea told him the story of her mother’s marriage and death, her father’s death, the long slow months of impoverishment and worry, and the journey she and Silvy had made to Spain. “Silvy was so certain that my grandfather—the Barón Ibañez de Silva—would take us in. Silvy is a cousin of his, I’m his granddaughter, and she was so sure that everything would be wonderful. Well, no wonder, she was homesick, pining for this place. But the welcome we got when we arrived in Burgos, that took the heart out of her.
Spanish Marriage Page 3
