“I do beg your pardon,” Carmen said. “I fear I could not hear your question, Mrs. King.”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. King answered gaily. “Lady Elizabeth’s parties are always so loudly delightful! I was only speaking of the tableaux planned for Sunday evening. Such a quiz! Do you not agree?”
“Oh, yes. Indeed. A quiz.”
“Nicholas is in my little group.” Mrs. King waggled flirtatious fingers at Nicholas. “As are the Richardsons. We are to enact Hermes and Athena coming to the aid of Perseus and Andromeda.” She giggled. “I am to be Athena! I have found the most delightful armored breastplate in the attic.”
“Ah,” Carmen said, not entirely attending. “But your eyes are brown, Mrs. King.”
Mrs. King blinked her brown eyes. “My eyes, Condesa?”
“Yes. They are not gray.” When Mrs. King continued to look blank, she continued. “ ‘And gray-eyed Athena cried, Give the Greeks a bitter homecoming. Stir up your waters with wild whirlwinds—let dead men choke the bays and line the shores and reefs.’ ” So Theocritus had proved useful after all.
Mrs. King went a trifle pale at the mention of dead bodies, that could possibly clutter up her tableau. “Well. Yes, Condesa. But these are silent tableaux, you know. I needn’t learn any lines. Need I?”
Carmen took a sip of her wine and smiled reassuringly. “I shouldn’t think so. All you need do is look martial in your breastplate.”
“Oh, good!” Mrs. King cried in relief. “You are to enact a tableau with Lord Clifton, are you not, Condesa?”
Carmen nodded. “Endymion and Selene.”
“Yes. I did hear that that is the true reason Lady Deidra Clearbridge and her mother left.” Mrs. King looked down the table at Peter, who was talking with his sister. “He is so very handsome. You are so fortunate. How I wish I could have been chosen for his team! If I did not have my dear Mr. King to think of ...” She giggled.
Carmen was saved from replying by the arrival of dessert. She took a very large spoonful of the lemon trifle.
Ah, yes. Very fortunate indeed.
“We must have dancing!” Elizabeth announced. After supper, when the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, small groups had begun to break off and drift away to various corners, but her words brought them back.
“Dancing?”
“What fun!”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “The gentlemen will push back the furniture, so we needn’t waste time by having the ballroom opened. Miss Dixon, if you could oblige us with your delightful playing? A country-dance, I think, since we are in the country.”
As Miss Dixon struck up a lively tune at the pianoforte, Elizabeth took her brother’s arm and drew him onto the cleared floor.
Georgina Beaumont and Lord Richardson followed, and soon ten couples had taken their places in the set. The drawing room was a blur of jewel-bright gowns, music, and laughter.
Carmen watched it all from her perch on a settee, laughing as Peter swung Elizabeth about so energetically in the turns that her small feet left the floor and her skirts flew out in a shining sea-green silk arc.
She thought, as she watched all the merriment and calling out that went on, how very much more comfortable a country party was than a London party. It was all good fun among friends. Perhaps, she reflected, a country life with a husband and children would not be such a terrible thing. Especially after the tumult of her travels.
As the country-dance wound to its rowdy finish, Georgina Beaumont clapped her hands and called, “We must now have a waltz!” The dramatic redhead lifted the hem of her purple satin gown and twirled about her partner, to the applause of the others.
Miss Dixon said, “But I have not permission to waltz, Mrs. Beaumont!”
“Pooh!” said Georgina with a laugh. “This is not Almack’s, Miss Dixon dear. Lady Jersey will not catch you here. Will she, Lizzie? You do not have any patronesses lurking behind your curtains?”
“No, indeed!” Elizabeth answered. “Everyone is quite safe here. But perhaps you would prefer to continue playing to dancing, Miss Dixon? You played that last dance so beautifully.”
With that, she took her husband’s arm in one hand and Peter’s in the other, and marched them over to Carmen’s settee. “Here now, Carmen! Why are you sitting here all alone like such a matron? No one is allowed to be so serious and solitary at my party!”
“I do apologize, Lizzie,” Carmen answered with a laugh. “I vow to be nothing but merry and gay for the rest of your weekend.”
“That is more the thing,” Elizabeth said. “Nick has promised to dance with me, so unfashionable to dance with one’s wife, though I suppose we are allowed in our own home! So, Carmen dear, you must dance with Peter. We must not let him feel neglected, must we?”
Then, not giving her a chance to reply, she tugged on her husband’s arm and led him onto the floor.
Nicholas grinned at them over his shoulder and shrugged.
Carmen started to plead exhaustion, but then she looked up at Peter’s face. He looked positively—could it be eager? He was even smiling, without a hint of mockery.
That smile faded a bit as Carmen frowned in puzzlement. “We do not have to dance, you know,” he said. “If you are too fatigued.”
“Oh, I think we must dance, or Lizzie will surely have a fit and come make us dance!” She rose to her feet and laid her hand softly on his sleeve. “And I do so love a waltz. Remember?”
His smile returned. “Then, by all means . . .”
He led her onto the floor, just as Miss Dixon struck the opening chords of a Viennese waltz. His shoulder was warm and strong, the muscles tensed beneath the velvet of his coat as she touched him. His hand clasped hers firmly, and they swung into the dance, far closer than propriety allowed.
It was not a sunlit Spanish riverbank this time; Carmen’s trousers and boots were now an elegant blue velvet gown, and Peter’s regimentals were long gone. Years of pain and experience lay between the people they had been on that day, and the people that they were now.
But somehow that made this moment, this dance, all the more sweet. They had struggled long and hard to reach it, this instant of swaying together in a ballroom, her skirts wrapping about his legs as he twirled her around and around.
As Carmen looked up at Peter, into his sky-blue eyes, she knew that he felt the same. She knew, without a doubt, that it would be safe to trust him with her most precious possessions, her daughter and her heart. For now, and for all the future to come.
As the music ended, she leaned forward to whisper in his ear.
“I must speak with you, Peter. There are things—many things I must tell you. Will you come to me tonight?”
His warm breath stirred the curls at her temple as he whispered back, “As you wish, Condesa.”
Chapter Fifteen
Peter sat alone in his room for a long time after the rest of the household had retired, not lighting candles, just sitting beside the small, flickering fire. He sipped slowly on a snifter of brandy, and listened as a small group of late-goers talked and laughed in the corridor.
At last, in the very darkest part of the night, all was silent. Except for the soft, creeping sounds of people slipping illicitly toward bedrooms not their own.
As he should be doing, though it seemed a bit foolish to be sneaking into his own wife’s room. He knew she was waiting for him, waiting to impart whatever dire secrets she was holding. And he fairly ached to go to her, to see her again, even if he had only been parted from her hours ago. He felt like some overeager schoolboy, hungry to hold her in his arms, to smell her perfume.
But he hesitated.
He poured himself another measure of brandy. So many things had changed since he had lost her, his beautiful Carmen, his dashing Spanish bride. He had never in his life before her thought he could love someone so intensely, find the presence of another person in the world to be so vital to his own existence. When he had lost her so horribly, it had been as if all light
and beauty had left him forever, and he had known that he could never feel so strongly about a woman again.
So he had thought to contract a loveless, convenient union. Then Carmen had flown back into his life like a sparkling star, and he had seen how impossible such a bloodless life would be. He had known a great love; no convenience could ever compare.
The knowledge of her innocence, of Robert’s lies, had freed him of the dreadful weight he had carried for so long, had made him finally cease to look back, to move forward into life.
Forward with her.
When they had danced that night, he had truly laughed, had felt free and light with her in his arms. He had felt truly alive, perhaps for the first time since their wedding night. He loved her; he wanted the life they had dreamed of together, at long last.
All of which made him reluctant to go to her. He took another sip of brandy.
He was not a man who easily trusted deep emotions, unlike his sister, who rushed into them headlong. They so often seemed the herald of disaster. And Carmen’s eyes had been so dark and serious when she whispered that there was something she must tell him. Something that could not be kept from him for another night.
Peter was sick to death of secrets. He wanted nothing more than to move into the future fresh and free, and he knew that to do that Carmen must unburden herself of her last secret, whatever it was. And he would have to hear it—even if it was something dreadful, like she was in love with another man.
Carmen waited for Peter.
She waited while she listened to other guests slip from room to room, swift bars of light seen beneath her door then passing on, none of them stopping, no soft knock at her own door. Her own candles were growing shorter, and she had changed from her gown into a sensible nightrail and velvet wrapper.
She took Isabella’s pearl-framed miniature from her jewel case, and laid it out carefully beside two glasses of wine.
Finally, as the small ormolu clock on the mantel chimed three, she knew that if she did not go to Peter herself and tell him the truth, she would lose all her courage. So she drank both glasses of wine herself, tucked the miniature into the pocket of her wrapper, and went to seek him out. She only prayed she would not have an awkward encounter with another guest seeking a rendezvous in the corridor!
At his door, she knocked softly, the light cast by her candle wavering as her hand trembled. “Peter?” she whispered. “It is Carmen. Are you asleep?”
There was a long silence on the other side of the door. She almost began to think he had fallen asleep. Then a low voice called, “The door is not locked.”
She slid quickly inside the room, shutting the door carefully behind her. There were no candles lit, and the room was deep in shadows. So deep that at first her eyes could not make out anything; then she saw him, seated beside the dying fire. He was still dressed, having only removed his coat and loosened his cravat. A half-empty bottle of brandy was on the small table beside him.
Good, thought Carmen. Perhaps if they were both mildly foxed it would be easier to say what she must.
“I was just getting ready to come to you,” he said. “I wanted to wait until the house settled.”
“Yes. It would never do for the Earl of Clifton to cause a great scandal by slipping into his wife’s room! Not the done thing at all!” said Carmen, making a weak attempt at humor. “Well, I could not wait. I had to come.”
He leaned back in his chair and brought his steepled fingers to his chin. He regarded her steadily over their tips. “So, Carmen. Tell me your dreaded secrets.”
She sighed. “You are not making this at all easy.”
“I do apologize. Would you care for some brandy? It is excellent, some of the finest from Nick’s cellar.”
“Yes, please.” She seated herself in the chair across from his and accepted the brandy, welcoming its calming warmth. She was suddenly very grateful for its smooth flow, for the darkness and intimacy of the room; it did seem to make painful confidences a modicum easier.
Peter leaned toward her, laid his hands lightly on her velvet covered knees. “You can tell me anything, Carmen. Surely I have proven that to you by now.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Then, if you are in love with someone else, if you wish to end our marriage . . .”
Carmen choked on her brandy. “In love with someone else!”
“Is that not what you wish to tell me?”
“Certainly not!” She reached into her pocket, quickly, before she could lose her courage, and drew out the miniature. She turned one of his hands over and pressed the ivory oval into his palm.
He turned it to the light of the fire, studying the painted image with a thoughtful frown. She hoped that the golden curls of the girl, the straight, small nose and stubborn chin, would tell him all he needed to know and her words could be kept to a minimum. She twisted her hands against the arms of her chair as the silence grew longer.
Then he looked up at her again, his face smooth and unreadable as marble. “What is this?”
She took a deep breath. “This is Isabella. My daughter.” He said nothing, only watched her. “She is six years old.”
Peter looked back down at the painting. “She is—very lovely.”
“Yes, she is.”
“And what you are saying, I assume, is that she is mine.”
Carmen bit her lip. “Yes. She is yours.”
He closed his fingers tightly over his daughter’s image. “Oh, Carmen.”
Not certain what that could mean, she plunged on, telling him all she had longed to say for so long. “I think it happened on the night that we—we gave in to our feelings, after that kiss on the riverbank. Or perhaps on our wedding night. I did not realize until, well, until everything had happened and I was on my way back to Seville. I thought at first that I was ill from grief. Isabella was very tenacious to survive so much before she was even born! She stayed with me when I ran about the countryside, wounded and ill, hiding with friendly families and in gypsy camps.” She paused, uncertain now what to say, what to tell next.
Without looking at her, Peter whispered, “Tell me more.”
“She was born a bit early,” Carmen continued, lost in her own bittersweet memories. “She was so very small. Esperanza, my old duenna, thought she would not live. She sent for the priest. But I knew, when I held her in my arms, that my girl would live and be strong. She was very small, but she was fierce, a true warrior; she would wave her little fists in the air both night and day, never silent. It was as if she knew what she faced, and she was fighting to live. I knew then that she was like you, with a will of iron, and that she would be fine.”
A small smile touched Peter’s lips. “A true Everdean.”
“Oh, yes! She is very much your daughter, so stubborn, so certain of her own mind. But she is so very sweet and loving, so full of laughter. We have a grand time together.” She paused. “When I thought you were dead, I wanted nothing more than to die myself. I thought I could never enjoy my life again. Isabella changed all that. She was a part of you, a gift from you, and that gave me the will to live on. Eventually I did come to enjoy my life, to appreciate a fine day, a ride on a good horse, a dance. That is entirely thanks to Isabella.”
Suddenly exhausted, Carmen fell back onto her chair, trembling with emotion at all she had poured forth. Despite any lingering apprehension, she felt a very deep sense of relief. Peter knew everything, at last. Now, whatever was meant to happen could happen.
“For God’s sake, Carmen!” Peter suddenly snapped. “I have a daughter. Why did you not tell me this sooner? Why did you not tell me the very instant we met again?”
Carmen laughed bitterly. “At the Dacey ball, you mean? And when should I have announced that we have a child together? When you were shaking me? Or when I slapped your face?”
Peter grimaced. “Touché, my dear. Yes, I was quite overcome with shock and anger when I first saw you again. But after we had come to an understanding, you could have to
ld me at any time. This is so very enormous—why did you wait until now? You could have told me that day in my library.”
“Elizabeth and Nicholas interrupted us, and . . .” Carmen broke off, shaking her head. “No, that is a mere excuse. I should have said something earlier, I know. I was frightened.”
“Frightened? Of me?”
“You needn’t look so incredulous, querido. You can be very intimidating, you know!”
He laughed reluctantly. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Indeed you do! And even though things appeared to be mended between us—well, disaster has come upon us unexpectedly before. Isabella was too important to risk.” She reached for the bottle and poured herself another measure of brandy, taking a comforting amber swallow before she continued. “I swore to her on the day that she was born that I would always protect her, that she would never face the things I had seen. I was not certain of what you might do when you learned of her existence. You could have married Lady Deidra, and taken Isabella away to be raised by her, and I could have done little about it! Children, after all, legally belong to their fathers only. I could not risk that.”
“Ah. What a sad pair we are, Carmen. I doubt even lovers in romantic novels could have been as wrapped up in half-truths and self-deceits as we have been.” He held out his hand to her, and she slowly slid hers into its warmth. His fingers closed over hers. “Do you not know by now, my darling, that I could never, from the day I found you again, have wed Lady Deidra? Or indeed anyone else?”
“If it is because of our wedding, I am sure an annulment would be easy to obtain for a Catholic ceremony . . .”
His other hand came up, one finger pressed to her lips to stop the flow of words. “It is because I love you. There has never been another woman like you in the history of the world, I am sure, and no other could ever tolerate me.” He grinned at her crookedly.
Carmen very much feared she would soon start crying again, and she had no handkerchief at hand. She reached up and moved his finger from her lips. “Do you truly mean that? Do you still love me?”
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