The Sometime Bride

by Blair Bancroft

  Wine. It was the wine, Cat told herself. Whatever the cause, a glimpse of the Blas of old could only be good. Cat rubbed the sleeve of her robe over her eyes, managed a watery smile. It was not the first time she had seen Blas with a full bottle inside him. He was quite funny when he was drunk, his humor bubbling into playfulness. Tonight seemed no exception as, with slow deliberation, he started to unwrap the towel.

  “In Medieval times,” Blas said blandly, “the lady of the castle was expected to bathe each itinerant knight. It was part of the ritual of hospitality.”

  Fiercely, Cat bent to scrub a spot of blood which had stained the soft pastels of the carpet. “I cannot,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  With a rather wicked smirk, he took the cloth from her limp hand and finished the wash himself. Through lowered lashes, Cat peeked. This was the only part of him she had never seen, though the uncensored contents of Thomas Audley’s library had provided her with a more than adequate supply of artist’s renderings of the nude male body. He was quite large, her husband. Very, Cat amended, as his maleness seemed to swell before her eyes. With a tiny gasp, She ducked her head and turned her face away.

  Blas found the sight of his Cat peeping at him while attempting to look as if her thoughts were elsewhere as exciting as it was amusing. Though a glance downward revealed that he was perhaps overdoing the exposure a virgin wife might find acceptable. With a grimace for his frost-bitten feet, Blas levered himself to his feet and flopped onto the bed, face down. “My back, Cat, he ordered. “That ought not to offend your modesty.”

  The damp cloth had moved over only a portion of his broad shoulders when her hand slowed to a stop. “You may as well tell me,” she said. “I will find out when I write father’s report to London.”

  Though muffled by the pillow, the stark tragedy and bitterness of Blas’s reply was all too clear. “Moore’s dead, six thousand men lost, the remains of the army en route back to England. The Lisbon garrison is all that’s left of our troops on the Peninsula. Napoleon has two hundred thousand men in Spain. He could retake Lisbon in the twinkling of an eye.

  “At her sharp gasp of horror, Blas added harshly, “You knew this could happen, Cat. It was the way it happened that was so bloody awful.”

  Automatically, Catarina returned to washing his back. He needed her touch, that she understood. “Tell me,” she commanded fiercely.

  “When Moore saw he was vastly outnumbered, he ordered a retreat to La Coruña . . . but that idiot Frere—the British minister in Salamanca—asked him to go to the aid of Madrid. So Moore called off the retreat, and Boney himself came after him with eighty thousand men. Our army was nearly surrounded, but they broke through and started back toward La Coruña, harassed by the French nearly every step of the way.”

  “And you went with them?” cried Cat incredulously.

  Blas’s English heritage betrayed him. “It seemed the sporting thing to do.” He pounded his fist into the pillow, startling her hot reply into silence. “Cat, I saw what happened in Madrid, what happened to your father and Dona Blanca. I’ve seen the guerrilleros do much the same in return. But never . . . never did I think to see our own men—a British army—act like rats deserting a sinking ship. Fighting, clawing their way over each other’s dying backs, humanity forgotten. Camp followers, Spanish peasants, the ill and wounded used as human bridges across icy swamps, killed for a scrap of bread . . .”

  The cloth had come to rest, unheeded, on the small of his back. “Surely . . . not all?”

  Blas rolled over and stared up at her. “No, of course not all. There were good men, brave men. But, believe me, it was an incident to be swept into the dustbin of history. When we finally made it to La Coruña, our ships weren’t even there yet. Three days we waited! Soult was able to bring up his troops and attack in force. That’s when Moore was killed . . . but nearly fifteen thousand finally made it to the ships.” Blas paused. The evacuation of Britain’s army may have been a triumph of logistics. For Lisbon it could be a death knell. “Once again we’ve been abandoned, Cat,” he admitted, “and who can say if our government will have the stomach to fight again.”

  She could not go through it again, Cat thought. The constant fear. The rapacious looks of the conquering French. The little humiliations, the terror of the slightest slip of the tongue. The shadow of death which would once again envelop them all, most particularly Thomas Audley and Don Alexis Perez de Leon.

  “Will Soult march south?” Cat inquired with what she hoped was an admirable appearance of calm.

  “He could still be in La Coruña or hot on my heels just outside the city,” Blas murmured. “At the moment I’m just too damn tired to care.” As Catarina gently pulled the covers over his battered body, Blas’s eyes closed. Cat tiptoed around the room, cleaning up the mess. Trying not to think. Of war. Defeat. Of Blas. To whom she was only a sometime bride.

  When she removed her robe and climbed into bed, Cat kept her eyes averted, refusing to look at the enigma who was called Blas. Don Alexis. Don Alejo. She stayed at the edge of the bed, careful not to touch him. It was a long time before she slept.

  Hours later, she woke to the touch of a hand . . . stifled a cry as the hand squeezed her breast, a thumb rubbed across her nipple. She knew instinctively Blas was half asleep, still full of wine and dreaming of one of his women. If she cried out, she never doubted he would stop. As much as he needed her, Blas would not go this far. Their game—that childish bit of daring—was the outside limit of their relationship. He would never, ever, touch her so.

  But she did not cry out. She did not move.

  Suddenly, her gown was up around her neck. Blas’s mouth followed his hand. Cat thought she might die of it. The delicious horror of what he was doing, the warmth . . . Ah, deus! What was he doing now?

  The shock as his hand drifted lightly across her navel and down to places where she had never been touched before. She froze, torn between the joy of his tongue and teeth nibbling her breast and horror at what his hand was doing as he parted her thighs. A soft contented hiss of breath escaped his mouth. As he caressed her breast with one hand, he cupped the seat of her femininity with the other.

  No, no, no, he must not do this!

  But Blas was doing it. And she could not bring herself to stop him. She loved him. He was hurt, he needed someone.

  Even if that someone could have been anyone.

  Cat bit her lip and was silent even when his sudden weight brought claustrophobia. And fear. The teasing, tantalizing, terrifying hand returned to part the lips which could bring him peace. Surely he could not be doing what she suspected he was doing. Conversations with Dona Blanca had been considerably more specific than those with Dona Felipa, but for this small detail she was unprepared. It was not physically possible. She had just seen him naked. He was too big. Much too big.

  The pain was sharp, searing her inside. She would not cry out. Cat covered her mouth with her fist and gritted her teeth, inadvertently increasing her pain. Perhaps Dona Felipa’s strictures on the marriage bed had been correct after all.

  Why then did men enjoy it so much?

  As the bed rocked with his demanding rhythm, Cat tried to disappear into the mattress. Anything to escape the pain. Fortunately, it did not last long. She could not know he had not touched a woman in months. In Blas’s great need for release, Cat’s pain was blessedly short-lived.

  Deus! He had hurt himself! What was this terrible thing which wracked his body and made him cry out? Horrified, Cat lay very still, suffocating under his full weight, quite sure he must be dead.

  When Blas rolled away as abruptly as he had begun, she knew with awful clarity that it was quite, quite terrible to be so stupidly young and ignorant. Even more terrible to have lost her virginity and still be so stupidly young and ignorant. She had not even known it was possible to do that without even kissing. While Blas slept without stirring, Catarina pulled her gown back down to her ankles, firmly turned her back on her sometime husband. It wa
s not rape of course. It only felt like it. She had been willing. Intellectually, she had been willing. Her body had not.

  This could not possibly be the thing the poets acclaimed, that women whispered of behind their fans. The end result of starry eyes and flirtatious glances, the goal of swaggering men with a gleam in their eyes. This could not be the act of love. Surely not.

  Cat did not want to move. She wished to stay frozen, to stop time in its movement across the heavens, to keep the morning sun from revealing this night’s work. But move she finally did, using the remains of Blas’s washwater and a great deal of the lavender-scented soap to clean away the telltale traces of blood. There was little of Blas to wash away. The seed he had spilled was inside her.

  Carefully, quietly, she climbed back into bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin, keeping so close to the edge of the bed she nearly fell off. Blas slept sprawled across the bed. When her toes touched his, she jerked back as if scalded, pulling her knees nearly up to her chin. Wide-eyed, Cat stared into the darkness which was lit only by the fading glow from the fireplace.

  It was not rape. She was not expected to kill herself.

  They were not really married. She might have a baby.

  Perhaps then she was supposed to kill herself.

  It was not rape. Blas did not realize what he had done.

  It was not rape. Nor was it love.

  She could not cry.

  The fire faded to embers. A gray January dawn came up over Lisbon.

  Cat finally slept . . . and woke to find Blas gone. Every trace of clothing, bandages and water pail gone with him. Perhaps it had all been a dream. She threw back the covers . . . and turned fiery red. No dream then. When she thrust her feet over the side of the high bed, muscles she never knew existed added their protest to her agony. Grimly, chin set in a determined line, she did something Catarina Audley had never done before in her life. She stripped her bed and remade it with fresh sheets, thrusting those with the telltale stains far down into the laundry basket, praying no one would notice. As she left her room, she caught a glimpse of Blas across the courtyard, just closing the door to her father’s room. Without a glance in her direction he limped down the far staircase, crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the stables at the rear of the house.

  Cat stared blankly out over the courtyard. Was that it then? He was off on his adventures once again. Without so much as a word.

  The wine. He did not remember.

  Cat winced, glared at the fountain which continued to send its innocent song throughout the courtyard. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath. She willed away Dona Felipa’s dire warnings about men. She was Catarina Audley Perez de Leon. She would survive.

  Spinning on her heel, Cat headed down to breakfast.

  At dusk, when Cat went to her room to dress for the evening, Blas was there, rummaging through her wardrobe. He did not bother to speak but peered at each gown in succession until his hand paused at last over a creation in purest white. “Put this on,” he commanded. “Wear your mother’s pearls and bring your cloak. We’re going out.”

  Out. Cat’s eyes were wide as she accepted the dress, but truthfully she was too relieved to quibble over a minor matter. Blas had not gone. He wanted her company. It was enough.

  When he tapped on her door a half hour later, she was ready . . . and so was he. Blas wore the short, elegant, black velvet jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons he had worn the evening of his debut in Casa’s gaming rooms. Even his hair was shining clean, curling lightly about his ears and onto his neck. Though how he had gotten his damaged feet into those tall black boots Cat refused to imagine.

  When the carriage turned away from the heart of the city, Cat still did not question their destination. Obviously, Blas planned to surprise her, and she was pitifully grateful for his attention, brusque and impersonal though it might be. He had not left her, as Dona Felipa had always warned, a despoiled and withered flower, forever beneath an hidalgo’s notice. He was here beside her. Taciturn but solid. Dependable.

  Sometimes.

  Cat’s mild curiosity gave way to genuine surprise as she recognized the glow of campfires, the murmur of a large body of men, the faint white blur of a field of tents. The British garrison? But why?

  They bypassed the imposing headquarters, drawing up in the inner courtyard of a sprawling farm complex about half a mile past the British tents. Cat held her cloak and gown high to avoid the muck of the well-trodden yard as she allowed herself to be led into the farmhouse. It was surprisingly neat and cheery, the parlor warmed by a fire and the glow of candles. But Cat blanched at the sight of the people who rose to greet them. A man of middle-years, his face seamed by some fifty years of strong Portuguese sunlight, his rotund wife smiling with shy but gracious welcome. Both were dressed in what was undoubtedly their Sunday best. The third person would have been recognizable even without the Book of Common Prayer clutched in his hands, for he was wearing a white ecclesiastical robe and gold vestments.

  Introductions flew over Catarina’s head. Without conscious volition she murmured appropriate greetings, then blurted out, “A thousand pardons . . . you will please excuse us a moment.” She dragged Blas back out into the hallway.

  “We will not discuss this!” Blas decreed, mouth set in the inflexible arrogance she knew so well.

  “You do not want to marry me, you know you do not,” Cat exploded. “It is all a matter of your stupid honor! I will not be the cause of making you miserable because then I too will be miserable.”

  “We are being married now. This moment.” Blas grabbed her arm, started back into the parlor.

  “Imbecil! I will not have a husband who thinks he is a martyr. Do you hear me? I will not do this!”

  Blas backed her into the wall, his arms on either side of her head. He held her there with his body, as he had done that long ago night in the alley. “You will marry me now or I will confess to Thomas that I have been using you as my whore for all this past year, and he will stand over us with the proverbial shotgun. Your choice. You can be married in shame while breaking his heart, or you can settle for doing things my way.”

  Cat squeezed her eyes shut, drew a ragged breath. When Blas felt the fight go out of her, he reached for her left hand and gently drew off the ring he had placed there so rudely more than a year before. He slid it onto the ring finger of her right hand. When Cat’s gaze flew to his, she saw only grim determination. Resigned, she let him lead her back into the cozy parlor. Blas removed her blue velvet cloak, laid it over a chair. They stood before the Anglican chaplain and repeated their vows, the farmer and his wife smiling benignly in the background. The ancient words flowed from both their mouths as if they had always known they would make these vows to each other. I, Catherine Elizabeth Audley, take thee Alexis António Perez de Leon . . .

  When it was time for the ring, Blas produced a band of Moorish gold filigree studded with small diamonds. It was exquisite, a perfect fit. Surely, Cat thought, not something he had picked up on the spur of the moment while running around Lisbon arranging a wedding. A very strange man, her Blas. Unfathomable.

  The Casa Audley was its usual quietly elegant bustling self when they returned. If they had gone into the gaming rooms, they would have found Thomas, Lucio Cardoso and Marcio in their customary places at the tables, the brilliant array of uniforms, the gentle murmur of voices, the clink of glasses, the old gentlemen holding forth in the Portuguese cardroom.

  And yet, Cat’s whole world had changed. “Blas,” she hissed as he dragged her up the gallery stairs, “why was Papa not at our wedding?”

  He hushed her into silence, continuing to pull her along the walkway. He opened the door to her room, thrust her inside. Blas sat her down on the embroidered cushion of the boudoir chair in front of her dressing table, then perched himself on the wooden footrail at the end of her bed. Tongue-tied, he simply stared at her, not knowing how to begin. Many things had happened since his dramatic homecoming the night b
efore. Meaningful conversation had not been one of them. He had been brought up to a rigid and exacting code of honor, and he would find the correct words. But, devil a bit, at not-quite twenty-three years of age he found himself well and truly married. To a bride of fifteen.

  “Why is our wedding such a secret?” Cat demanded.

  That at least was easy to answer. “Because we were already married,” Blas returned with elaborate patience. “More than a year ago, if you will recall.”

  “But Papa knew we were not . . .”

  “I am a fool, an irresponsible idiot,” Blas declared with strong emotion. “I am not suicidal,”

  For a moment Cat looked at him blankly. The emotional assaults of the past day had dulled her usually sharp intelligence. “Oh,” she said at last in a very small voice. “Papa would have realized that you . . . that we . . .”

  “Precisely.”

  Blas shifted uncomfortably on his perch, ran one long artist’s finger lightly down the bedcurtains, the light, airy, utterly feminine hangings of his child bride’s bed. “Cat, this is not easy,” he muttered. “I think you must know . . . must have realized that I thought you were . . .”

  “Someone else,” she supplied helpfully.

  “God help me, yes,” Blas ground out between tight lips. “You know I would never hurt you.” He grimaced. “I was certain I would never hurt you. I’ve been an arrogant ass. I had no right to play God with your life. And I most sincerely apologize. I assure you nothing like this will ever happen again.”

  Green eyes wide, Cat watched him in fascination. An apology she had not expected. It was not a Blas-like thing to do.

  He ran an agitated hand through his hair, tousling the thick waves of black. “Cat, listen to me,” he demanded. “I am going to stay in Lisbon a while. If you think you might be with child, you must tell me immediately. We will face Thomas together. There’s no problem with anyone else, except Blanca. Everyone believes us to be married long since.”