The Sometime Bride

by Blair Bancroft

  “Not here! Come to bed, mi corazon,” she breathed against his lips. “Not even for you will I freeze myself!”

  Since he was as single-minded in his love-making as he was in his work, Blas paid her no mind, returning to his search with renewed determination which was soon rewarded by the warmth of a finely shaped bare leg. As his hand slid gradually upward, he deepened his exploration of her mouth.

  Even as he attempted to lose himself in Maria’s ever willing warmth, he was aware their days together were numbered. He would not take her into France. When the British army moved through the passes he was mapping, Maria Josephina, the guerrilleros, even the Spanish regulars would not be with them. Five years of French occupation had seen such atrocities in Spain that Wellington was willing to send the Spanish half of his army home rather than turn them loose on the French population. In any event Blas would not risk the reverse for Maria Josephina. She had been with him for most of the war. He was not a poor man—she would live well and never again have to take a lover. Unless she wished to.

  But their time together was nearly over. Suddenly the whole damn war came crashing down on his head. Blessed be the fact Maria never wore anything under her quantity of skirts. His fingers plunged inside her. He buried himself in the feel of her, the warmth and wetness of her. His lips bruised her mouth as he felt his flesh rise to aching hardness.

  A knock on the slatted wood door went unheard. A second knock. The knotty boards abruptly swung back. Marcio Cardoso’s brown eyes flashed their disapproval.

  “Marcio?” It was not an attack of modesty, or even guilt, which froze Blas in his chair. There was only one reason for Marcio to be here. His old friend had not made the hazardous five-hundred mile journey from Lisbon to the Pyrenees to bring him good news.

  Blas had been trained from birth to show no emotion, and what lay beneath the surface had been well scorched in the crucible of war. With rigid calm he touched his lips to Maria Josephina’s jet black hair, pulled her skirts down over her knees, gently set her on her feet. She stood, looking uncertainly from her lover to the intruder, and back again. Tension charged the icy air.

  “Don Alexis.” The young Portuguese regarded his old friend with cold eyes, his words and tone stiff with formality. In the old days he and Blas might have roistered their way through Lisbon, but somehow Marcio had not pictured this particular ending to his long, arduous journey. It was not fitting. He stood stubbornly in the doorway, saying nothing.

  “Brandy, Maria!” Blas growled. “Then leave us.”

  Silently, she did as she was told. After making a show of wiping two clay mugs with her shawl, she poured from a bottle of France’s finest which rested on the stone floor not far from the small table. A last worried frown at the two men, then she left to join the guerrilleros who were clustered around a smoky fire in the outer room.

  “Well?” Blas ground out. “I doubt you’ve come to tell me Boney’s resurrected the French navy and is sailing up the Tagus. Tell me quickly. Is it Tomás? Out with it!”

  “Charming as ever, I see. Do you think I might have the privilege of speaking with Don Alejo instead?” Marcio downed his brandy in one swallow, almost banging the mug down on the map before he saw what it was. With a growl of exasperation he retrieved the brandy bottle from the floor where Maria had left it and poured a refill.

  Blas closed his eyes, rubbed his long fingers across his forehead. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am a fool and a bastard, and at this particular moment speaking in the civilized tones of Don Alejo Perez de Leon isn’t going to make me any nicer. In the name of God, tell me what’s happened.”

  Marcio tossed off his second brandy, then carefully placed the mug on the floor beside the bottle. Slowly, he unfastened the many layers of his heavy clothing, retrieving a letter from an inner pocket. Blas had not been aware of the full extent of his fear until he recognized the writing on the envelope. Things were not quite the worst case he could imagine. It was Cat’s hand. She at least was still among the living. After motioning his old friend to a seat on the bed, Blas broke the seal on the letter. Turning in his chair, he held the closely written lines up to the thin glow of the candle.

  The sound of men’s voices, a woman’s giggle drifted through the rough slatted door. Wood smoke. The ripe odor of unwashed bodies. A foreign world. Marcio was suddenly grateful his role in the war had been to guard the Casa Audley and its residents.

  When Blas finally lowered the letter to the table, Marcio murmured, “I am sorry, very sorry. Senhor Tomás was a great man. I know you truly cared for him.”

  “He was more of a father than my own,” Blas admitted. And a friend as well.” Emotions, long stifled, threatened to overwhelm him. “Do you know when Catarina goes to England?” he asked with care. Marcio would, of course, tell him Cat had refused to leave. She would be there in the Casa Audley, where she had always been. Waiting for him.

  “She does not wish to go,” Marcio replied blandly, “but it was necessary to notify the English immediately because of Senhor Tomás’s work. It is expected someone will come soon to go through his papers and take Catarina back to London.”

  Blas dropped his head into his hands. Thomas had done it. Just as he said. Cat, his Cat, was going to England.

  Hidalgos did not sit with their heads clutched in their hands. Nor the sons of English noblemen. Nor bastards. Blas lifted his head, straightened his shoulders, his face a grim version of the bland mask Don Alejo always wore so well.

  “I am sorry for this,” he said, waving his hand to encompass the tiny room. By birth and upbringing he was unaccustomed to apologizing for anything, but he was not above guilt at being caught with his mistress by Marcio Cardoso. “You have reason enough to know I am no saint, but I could have wished you had come five minutes earlier. Guilt on top of grief is not at all comfortable.”

  “It is forgotten.”

  “But not forgiven, I think.” A rueful smile curled Blas’s generous lips. “Go warm yourself by the fire—Maria will find you some food. I need time alone.” He stood, clasped his old friend in a hug which brought sharp memories of a time when he was first learning a new and warmer culture. It was Marcio who had shown him how to laugh without cynicism, to love without a veil of ennui. A luxury, an indulgence, Blas could no longer afford.

  He stepped back, letting his artist’s hands fall to his sides. “Marcio, I thank you. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  The young Portuguese studied the shuttered face before him, regretting the loss of the hero he had expected to find at the end of his journey. With a slight shake of his head Marcio bid Blas goodnight and walked, with a guilty feeling of relief, into the outer room. He welcomed the wood smoke, leather, damp wool, the unwashed bodies, the lingering scent of roast mutton which permeated the air. The murmuring voices, bursts of laughter and general bonhomie which made the shepherd’s hut a universe apart from the man now alone in the chill little room set against the side of the mountain.

  Blas folded the map with elaborate care, stowing it in oiled paper inside a leather saddlebag, his mind spinning with old memories. From the same bag he fished out a letter-sized sheet of parchment, dipped his quill in ink and began to write, words spilling from his pen as a pent-up river rushes through a broken dam. Half way down the back of the paper, a roar of laughter penetrated from the adjoining room, and he paused, gazing blankly at what he had written. He sat for some moments with his head in his hands, then picked up the letter and held it to the candle flame. He watched with deliberate detachment as it disintegrated into ash.

  Blas read his wife’s letter once again, brushing his hands across the neat feminine writing, as if to feel some essence of the woman who wrote it. Then that, too, was consigned to the flame. He ground the last tiny scraps of the two letters into the rocky floor with the toe of his well-worn black boot.

  It was as if no message had ever come to this rocky refuge on the edge of a high pass throug
h the northern Pyrenees.

  P A R T II

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Immediately the fairy gave a stroke with her wand, and in an instant all in the hall were transported into the prince’s own land. His subjects received him with joy. He married Beauty, and lived with her many years, and their happiness was compleat.”

  Steadfastly ignoring the pain of the classic fairy-tale ending, Cat translated into French the final sentences from the well-worn book which was one of her childhood treasures. She held up an elaborate drawing of Beauty hugging the great rat-like beast. “See,” she said in English to the small fair-haired boy sitting on her lap. “La Belle, la Beauté. Beauty. Et la bête. The Beast. Dutifully, as if trying to please her, the little boy reached out a chubby finger and touched the picture.

  “The Beast is a Prince,” said Cat slowly and clearly. “He and Beauty are married. And very happy. Forever.” The little boy turned his thin face to hers, blue eyes wide in anxious inquiry. Abruptly, Cat closed the book and laid it aside, sweeping the solemn child into a warm embrace.

  Perhaps it was wrong to try to teach the boy English. No one was sure of his age—probably somewhere between three and four—and he had already had more grief than any child should bear. And a surfeit of languages. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and now English. Was it better to leave him alone, Cat wondered. Love was perhaps the only thing that could help him, and of that, she had more than enough to give. Catarina kissed the child’s cheek, told him he was a very good boy (in French), then allowed his nurse Rosalía Santos to carry him off for the lunch which the ship’s cook had prepared with great care for the vessel’s youngest passenger.

  Unlike Cat’s maid Juana who did not wish to leave her association with one of the Casa’s footmen, the plump, middle-aged Rosalía Santos had agreed to uproot her life to accompany a young French boy into a foreign land. She might be able to speak only Portuguese, but her heart made up for what she lacked in words.

  With the child gone, Catarina was once again overwhelmed by the enormity of what she was doing. The well-appointed ship’s saloon was suddenly stifling. She threw on the chinchilla-trimmed cloak Blas had given her so many years before and went out on deck. Overhead, the slap of the sails beat a rippling tattoo under sunshine which became steadily weaker and less warming as they traveled north. The October wind was brisk and chill. And welcome, for it cut through the miasma of grief, the pain of losing everything she loved. Father. Lover. Friends. Home. All that was customary, familiar. The very fabric of her life.

  Think about the child. The child was all she had left.

  “He was just sitting there,” Blas had said as they looked down at the small fair head sticking out of the blanket roll on Cat’s carpet. “Like a little statue in his blue jacket and big white collar. His bonne was lying dead at his side.”

  “Are you sure the woman was not his mother?” Cat asked automatically, still unable to credit the sight revealed by the pale morning light filtering into her bedroom.

  “She was dressed as a nanny. In black with a neat little cap still in place on her head. I doubt she’d been raped,” Blas added hastily. I think she was trampled. You can’t imagine the chaos, Cat. The French were so confident of victory, they even set up seats so their women could watch. When we routed them and cut off the road to San Sebastian, the soldiers dropped everything and ran down the track to Pamplona, their women and children following as best they could. Among the everything they left behind was all the treasure they’d looted from Spain. Gold, silver, jewelry, great works of art. Just lying there, spilling out of every wagon and carriage. Our soldiers went mad. Wellington could scarcely put together enough men to chase the French down the road to Pamplona.

  “I only found him,” Blas continued, “because one of our guerrillero scouts was missing.” I was searching the field for anyone not in uniform. And there he was, Cat, clutching his bonne’s crucifix, too shocked and frightened even to cry.” Blas’s eyes darkened. “There’s no way of knowing exactly how the nanny died—she could have been trampled by either side—but I believe she threw herself on top of the child to protect him. I couldn’t very well leave him there, now could I?” Blas added defensively.

  The question was not worthy of a reply. “And he couldn’t tell you who he was?” Cat asked, wondering why she was so sure Blas was telling the truth. A fleeting cynical whisper noted that the small blond boy bore absolutely no resemblance to Blas. And somehow Cat was quite certain any children of his would be a butterstamp of himself.

  Blas glanced down at the child who was still sleeping soundly. “I made inquiries among the French prisoners. There was an infantry lieutenant who thought he might be the child of a colonel of chasseurs whose name he didn’t know, but he’d seen the boy up before a colonel on a horse.”

  “And the mother?”

  “That was all the lieutenant knew.” Blas raised his amber eyes in the helpless male appeal which had melted hearts from London to Lisbon to Madrid. “Don’t be angry, Cat. I couldn’t leave him with the camp followers. He seemed so fragile, so alone. I just picked him up and brought him home.”

  “Angry? How could I be angry?” She looked down at the small sleeping child and swallowed hard. Until that moment she had not realized just how much she wanted a child of her own. “What is his name?”

  “That’s just it.” Blas shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Surely he’s old enough to know his own name.”

  “He doesn’t talk.”

  “O quê?” Startled, Cat lapsed into Portuguese.

  “Shock, I would think. He hasn’t said a word since I found him. Just looks at me with those big solemn eyes. I haven’t even managed to get a smile out of him. And believe me, I’ve tried. All I know is that he understands when I speak to him in French, so he certainly isn’t deaf. And his bonne must have called him ‘petit chou’ because that’s what he answers to.”

  “I refuse to call a child a cabbage,” Cat declared indignantly.

  “In France it’s a term of endearment. If that’s what he’s used to, I suggest you not be so stubborn.”

  “I shall call him Pierre,” she declared. “Anything is better than cabbage.”

  “He likes to be called a little cabbage,” Blas assured her. “Just wait, you’ll find out.”

  But Cat’s attention had somersaulted into a look of horror. “He was here last night. All night,” she accused. “How could you . . . how could we? . . . Blas, how could you leave him there like that?”

  “He was perfectly comfortable. That’s the softest bed he’s had since we left Vitoria.”

  “You know what I mean!” Cat hissed.

  Blas frowned, genuinely puzzled. “Oh . . . that,” he said at last. “Believe me, I’ve spent two weeks on the road with him. He sleeps like the dead. Which reminds me . . .,” he added with a leer, falling on top of his wife and pushing her back into the soft mattress, his mouth hovering over hers.

  She kicked him. Hard. But not where it would hurt the most.

  Cat’s lips tilted in reminiscence as the cold Atlantic wind whipped her hair, the salt spray stinging her face. Only Blas himself would she treasure as much as the gift he had brought her from the battlefield at Vitoria.

  A gift she might not be able to keep.

  When Blas returned to Spain he carried four identical letters, each with a different address. The letters would be passed across the French lines in one of the not uncommon exchanges between French and English pickets. With luck, one or more of the letters would find the man they sought. And one day . . . one day Pierre would go home.

  If there was no one left to claim him, however, then he was hers. Something . . . someone to love.

  Later that evening, after dining at the captain’s table, Sir Giles Everingham and his party made themselves comfortable in the ship’s well-appointed saloon. Still on the right side of fifty, Sir Giles was a quietly attractive man. His straight brown hair was not yet thinning, his love of good f
ood and excellent wine had thickened his waistline by only a few pounds. When working, he covered his penetrating gray eyes with a pair of spectacles. No stranger would ever take him for anything other than a typical English gentleman, except to speculate that he might be more given to his books than to his hounds.

  Sir Giles Everingham was, in fact, the spymaster’s master, the man who had just inherited the spymaster’s only child. He had come to Lisbon to wind up Thomas Audley’s affairs, both business and personal, and to escort his new responsibility back to England. He had not expected the supposed widow to be accompanied by a companion, a child and a nurse but, long accustomed to surprises, Sir Giles had adjusted with grace and aplomb.

  A low, musical laugh drifted above the murmured conversations in the saloon. Sir Giles turned his deceptively mild eyes toward Catherine, who was sitting on a sofa with one of the younger ship’s officers, her face tilted up to his in apparently rapt attention. Her shining hair was swept into a chignon under a very proper black lace cap which, on her, merely managed to look provocative. Wisps of golden red curls strayed onto her cheeks and forehead, swaying seductively as she continued her animated conversation. She was the epitome of a young widow totally at home in a world of men.

  So like her mother. Whose great beauty had been expected to bring wealth and prominence to her border family. And who, instead, had run off with the youngest son of an English vicar. Sir Giles had first seen Thomas and Elspeth Audley when he had been sent to assess the situation in Lisbon in the early days of the French Revolution. The two expatriots were managing quite well on Thomas’s extraordinary skill with cards and his genius for organization. Thomas Audley was already well known as a talented middleman in dealings with the English who, as all Portuguese knew, were quite mad.