And then there was Thomas. His insistent whispers echoed through the halls. Don’t trust so blindly, Catarina. Look around you. Blas is not the only fish in the sea.
But for her there was no one else. Would never be anyone else. Since that brief, horribly impersonal note Marcio had brought back in late August, there had been no word, no sign. Always before there had been a steady stream of reports decorated with odd little caricatures, whimsical faces, fantastical sketches of castles in the clouds, ogres, and maidens in varying stages of distress. And undress. Occasionally, a tiny folded note. A few precious personal words. In Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Sometimes even in Greek which sent her scrambling for a dictionary as there was no way she would ask Thomas to help her decipher the oddly shaped characters.
Now . . . for three months there had been nothing. Because Blas was obeying Thomas’s wishes? Because he was lying in a shallow grave in the mountains of Spain? Mourned only by guerrilleros who had already turned their backs on the inglês who had been their friend?
Blas. Mourned by his guerrillera mistress. For Cat was not naive enough to believe he did without. It was one of the many things they did not discuss.
Cat gazed out the window at the broad expanse of Branwyck Park. What did any of it matter if there was no Blas to share it? Was he dead?
Or dead only to his sometime wife?
Before her, the broad gardens stretched almost as far as the woods, the precisely clipped green of boxwood hedges nearly the only signs of color in the dull landscape of late fall. Here and there a few mums, dried on their brown stalks, glowed faintly in faded shades of orange and yellow and white. English gardens, unlike their Portuguese counterparts, must have their winter sleep. Their bleak months of brown earth and gray skies. Chill rain. Snow and ice.
Like her heart. Which knew only one cure.
When Papa asked you to agree to my going to England, Blas—you might have said No.
Chapter Twenty
“Viscount Norwell,” Rankin announced. The butler’s precise monotone was tinged by the faint warmth he reserved for visitors who met with his discriminating approval. Blanca and Catherine, who had returned to London only two days earlier, joined Clara Everingham in regarding the newcomer with lively curiosity.
Edmund Wareham Audley was a slight young man who looked even younger than his nineteen years. An owlish squint marred his not unhandsome features as he studied the ladies, for his mother had positively forbidden him to wear his spectacles except for reading. Though it must be admitted he had the backbone to resist this dictate when driving or he most surely would have found himself in the ditch on his way from Oxford. As Lord Norwell greeted the ladies, it could be seen that, though his manners were pleasing, a closer look at his cousin Catherine had rendered him speechless.
The head of the House of Audley might be a sad bore, but Catherine suspected she was going to like his heir. By the time Lady Everingham had rung for refreshments, Cat’s youthful cousin had recovered his voice.
“I thought to pay my respects before returning home for the holidays, my lady,” Lord Norwell said to Lady Everingham, adding a few more dutiful words to his hostess before turning to Catherine. Dazzled, he swallowed painfully, ducking his head to study the pattern of the Aubusson carpet. He looked up to find Catherine regarding him intently. “I–I wished you to know, cousin,” said Edmund with determination, “I am very glad you have come to England. You see, Grandfather Audley—the old Earl, you know—was eldest brother to your grandfather Audley, and he told me many a tale about your father. He must have been quite a handful at the vicarage!” Young Edmund seemed to lose his shyness, his eyes suddenly alight with admiration. Not for herself, Cat realized, but for Thomas Audley. Nothing could have pleased her more.
“I suppose you know he lived in border country,” Edmund said. “That’s how he met your mother. But you must have heard this a hundred times,” the young man apologized, embarrassed that he was babbling to these three polished ladies of the ton.
“Oh, no,” Cat protested. “Please go on. My parents never spoke of their life in England.”
“Truly?” Gratified by his beautiful cousin’s rapt attention, Edmund continued his tale. “I don’t recall all the details, I’m afraid, but they were both very young. Your mother came from a good Scottish family. Very strict Presbyters. How she ever met the son of an Anglican vicar who lived on the English side of the border no one quite knew, but . . . well . . .” Edmund stumbled to a halt, then rushed on. He might be shy and without town bronze; a coward he was not.
“If Elspeth Drummon looked anything like you, cousin,” he said manfully, “a connoisseur like Thomas Audley would have found her. Even if she’d lived in the Highlands.”
Unlike the compliments of so many men of the ton, her cousin Edmund’s words rang with simple sincerity. Cat acknowledged this striking compliment with her most brilliant smile and waited in fascination to hear more.
“You mother was expected to make a fine match of course,” Edmund continued, “and cousin Thomas certainly was not what her family had in mind. According to Grandfather, they never even bothered to ask. They just disappeared one night and never stopped until they got to Lisbon. I always suspected Grandfather rather admired his nephew’s daring. I doubt he would have told me so many Thomas stories else.” Edmund paused, shifted his weight in his chair and added softly, “I’ve often wondered if he wanted me to be . . . um . . . a bit more like Thomas, don’t you know.”
“They were very happy,” Cat said, almost to herself. “I don’t recall a harsh word or so much as a hint of another woman.” Horrified as she recalled Blanca’s presence, Cat clamped her lips shut, grateful for the arrival of Rankin with an elaborate tea tray. One day, in private, she would get her cousin Edmund to relate all his grandfather’s tales of Thomas Audley’s undoubtedly colorful youth.
As Lady Everingham took her place behind the teapot, Lord Norwell reached a momentous decision. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out his spectacles, polished them with his handkerchief and set them upon his nose.
“There are many kinds of courage,” Cat murmured with a winsome smile as she passed her cousin a plate of macaroons. Edmund, blushing to the roots of his hair, chose a macaroon, adjusted his spectacles, and fell in love with his cousin on the spot.
“I cannot imagine,” said Clara Everingham a half hour later as the door shut behind the heir to the House of Audley, “how a pompous idiot and a sharp-tongued shrew managed to produce a boy like that.”
“Character will out,” said Catherine blithely. “We Audleys are too strong to let the line stray far from the mold.”
She added one more reason to the growing list of why a future in England no longer appeared impossibly bleak.
The day before Christmas Catherine received a visitor she had not seen since her first days in London, her father’s man of affairs Ralph Carswell. After reading the note he sent round to tell her he was coming, Cat spent most of the two-hour wait pacing the floor. Solicitors, she well knew, were frequently the bearers of bad news. Blanca, abandoning her embroidery, begged Catarina to sit and talk, to occupy herself with a book. Cat made an effort, settling at the delicate desk in her bedroom, only to jump up a few minutes later to resume her pacing. In succession, she tried a comfortable chair in the library, the cozy sitting room at the rear of the house. Each time she found it impossible to sit still. Her black silk skirt rustled in accompaniment to her agitation. Cat ended her wanderings in the drawing room which was at least large enough to allow her pacing the scope it needed.
Another hour to wait. It seemed a lifetime.
With equal foreboding, Blanca followed Cat’s odyssey. She too feared the worst. While Cat measured the length of the drawing room, Blanca found the new novel Pride and Prejudice which Clara was reading and, with grim determination, began to read aloud, although she found herself unable to understand all the nuances of language. Nor did Cat, who heard not one word in ten.
>
Ralph Carswell, a young forty with a comfortable wife and two small children, was thinking of the Christmas holiday, the excitement of gifts, the satisfaction of good food and good company. Believing himself on a mission of joy, he was blithely unaware of his client’s fears. Since Sir Giles had solicited his opinion on the state of Catherine Perez’s marriage, he was aware of her anomalous relationship with Don Alexis Perez de Leon. He had thoroughly enjoyed the complexity of the problem, pronouncing after great deliberation that Catherine Audley was indeed legally married to Don Alexis Perez de Leon. But since Don Alexis was not a real person, the marriage was only as valid as the participants chose to make it. After careful examination of Catherine’s marriage lines, Carswell had, however, ventured a personal opinion. It would appear, he announced, that in the eyes of God the marriage was valid.
Ralph Carswell had colleagues who would have snorted and termed this opinion romantic. Nonetheless, he was convinced Catherine Perez was a married woman with a living husband. A wealthy and generous living husband. He was therefore shocked by his client’s obvious distress when he was ushered into the drawing room at Everingham House.
“I am here on a somewhat mysterious errand, Mrs. Perez, but I don’t doubt it’s a happy one,” Carswell said hastily.
While Blanca accepted the solicitor’s best wishes for the holiday, Cat slowly, still fearfully, settled herself onto the sofa. Carswell declined an invitation to be seated. “I’ll be brief, Mrs. Perez,” he said. “A package was delivered to me yesterday from the firm of Bentham, Bentham and Wembley—which as you know purveyed to us the deed to Branwyck Park. The instructions were to deliver the package to you in person prior to Christmas Day. Since it is clearly marked Rundell & Bridges, I should think the nature of the gift should be obvious. Young Jonathan Bentham brought the box round himself and unbent enough to say that the items had been custom-made to a sketch by his client.” With a broad, reassuring smile Carswell handed Catherine a quilted black velvet jewelry box.
Her reaction was not at all what he expected. “Was there no letter?” she asked, green eyes huge with disappointment.
Mr. Carswell’s Christmas spirit, already shaken, plummeted further still. “Perhaps in the box?” he suggested lamely.
Cat tore at the velvet box with such eagerness some of the contents spilled onto the carpet in a brilliant shower of precious glitter. Resting among the remaining gems was a small folded slip of paper sealed with a plain blob of red wax. Ignoring the diamond and emerald parure, Catherine snatched at the paper, ripped open the seal. The note was painfully short. “Queridissima - Do not worry. The war is nearly over. Have faith. Christmas of 1814 will be a better one.” Scrawled at the bottom was Blas’s characteristic signature, the single letter B.
Graças a deus! He was alive. He spoke of the future.
But what kind of a future? Cat wondered. The man with the wealth and power to give her Branwyck Park and gems worth a king’s ransom might want a lover. But not a wife who was the spawn of a spy, the darling of a gaming house in a foreign land.
Blanca, alarmed by Cat’s colorless face, deftly plucked the paper from her hand while Ralph Carswell rang for brandy. The solicitor’s eyes widened as he bent down to retrieve the forgotten jewels from the floor. No royal princess had anything finer. With great care he added a bracelet and an earring to the gems sparkling in the afternoon sun on their background of black velvet. Whoever his client’s husband was, he was even wealthier than Carswell had imagined.
“It is not so bad, Catarina,” Blanca comforted as Cat sipped her brandy. “He is alive and expects to come home. What more do you wish? Has he ever written you a love letter? Not once in six years! This is Blas. He has sent you a fortune in jewels, designed just for you. And he has told you not to worry, that all will be well. I can tell you it is a great deal more than I expected from him.”
“He has said nothing!” Cat cried. “Nothing. Since August, not a word, and now he sends me this!” She shook the scrap of paper in fury. A small blob of red wax fell off onto her skirt, glowing against the cream silk as if it were blood.
With the discretion of his profession, Ralph Carswell took his leave, considerably relieved to return to the conventional trappings of his own family’s holiday celebrations.
“I think we must accept that Blas has a great deal of money,” declared Blanca, holding the stunning necklace of diamonds and emeralds up to the glow of the chandelier. A delicate tiara, a matching bracelet, pendant earrings and a ring remained in the case in her hand.
“He treats his mistresses well, does he not?”
“Catarina!”
“He talks of a better future, but where, I ask you, do you see the word marriage?”
“You are too young to be so cynical,” said Blanca severely. “Although Tomás is much to blame.”
“A few jewels and Blas becomes a hero?” Cat mocked. “Ah, deus, forgive me,” she cried, throwing her arms around Blanca’s comfortable plumpness. “A thousand pardons. I am a beast. A veritable beast.”
Accustomed to Cat’s volatility, Blanca merely shrugged. “You may call them a few jewels, Catarina, but they are worth a king’s ransom. Like Branwyck Park, they are not the gift of a man to his mistress, but of a man to his beloved wife. You are woman enough to know he is saying quite clearly he will come home to you. He is, in fact, cheating a bit on his promise to your father to cut the cord which binds you together. But that is only to be expected. Tomás and Blas are who they are because they never accept the rules of others.”
With a rueful smile, Cat nodded. Blanca’s logic could not be faulted. “It will be months yet,” she said with a sigh. “It’s a very long way from the Pyrenees to Paris. And you know Blas will not leave until Wellington rides down the Champs Elysée. But, as Papa always said, I am stubborn as a Spanish mule. So I shall wait. When Blas comes, he will know where to find me. After that . . . after that we shall see. I have had enough of secrets. I shall not make it easy for him, I think.”
“Oh, Ma’am, you do look something like!” said Bess Fielding with fervor. Catherine, regarding herself in her bedroom mirror, saw a young woman she had sometimes thought lost forever. Miraculously, the gown of silver-shot silk, the magnificent reproduction of her wedding gown, still fit. It was Christmas Day and, as promised, Cat had put off her mourning. In honor of the occasion, she had donned the design she had worn for Christmas and her birthday each of the six years since Alejo handed her the original sketch and she had torn it into pieces and thrown it at his feet. The gown Blas had chosen for her wedding, but had not seemed to recognize. The gown she loved so much she had even had it copied in black.
Reverently, Bess Fielding clasped the diamond and emerald necklace around her mistress’s slender neck. The largest emerald, perfect in clarity and cut and surrounded by diamonds, hung invitingly just above the cleavage of her breasts. Bess added the bracelet and earrings, then slipped the ring onto Catherine’s right hand. An hour earlier Monsieur Claude had made the tiara a focal point of Catherine’s elaborate coiffure. The overall effect was stunning. Catarina, the child bride, was gone forever. But Catherine Audley Perez de Leon was a woman of grace, beauty and intelligence. A woman to be reckoned with.
Cat accepted her gloves and reticule from a wide-eyed Bess and started down the staircase toward the Everingham’s Christmas Day gathering of friends and colleagues. Beside her walked Thomas Audley and Blas the Bastard. And ever so faintly, in a mysterious realm of which she was barely conscious, walked the shadow of the man who had designed her gown. Don Alexis Perez de Leon.
In mid-November Wellington and his troops, minus their Spanish and Portuguese allies, had successfully crossed the Pyrenees into France. Although bogged down by torrential rains, the army’s rest would be short. While English noblemen such as the Earl of Wrexham enjoyed Christmas at their country estates, those responsible for sending fresh troops, arms, food, and the latest intelligence coming in from all over Europe, were still hard at work in L
ondon. And on Christmas Day 1813 a goodly portion of them were at Everingham House.
In time-honored custom the men were clustered around the punch bowl at one end of the large drawing room, the older ladies formed a comfortable circle around the fireplace, while the younger women grouped themselves near the piano where, after the buffet, one of the Hawley sisters was expected to sing. Throughout the room, no matter how varied the point of view, there was only one topic of conversation. After twenty years, the war with France was coming to an end. What would life be like when Boney’s teeth were drawn at last?
“By summer they’ll be home,” breathed Adelaide Hawley, eyes shining with romance. “Perhaps even by late spring, Papa says. I truly can’t believe it. After all this time, our soldiers will be coming home.”
“And we all know which soldier you mean,” her sister Flora teased. “I declare she is quite besotted,” she confided to Catherine and Amabel Lovell as Adelaide blushed quite prettily.
“Do you think they will send the men home as soon as Napoleon surrenders?” Adelaide asked anxiously.
Catherine smiled indulgently. “I am sure they will send them home as soon as possible—if only because it takes such an effort to feed them all!” When the giggles had died down, Cat added, “I fear the men I know will be among the last to leave. They are the kind who will wish to personally turn the key on the emperor’s cell.”
“Oh, my dear Catherine,” cried Adelaide, suddenly aware of the enormity of her faux pas. “Forgive me for talking of what can only cause you pain.”
“I have put off my blacks, Adelaide,” Catherine assured her. “After twenty years of war, nearly every family has suffered a loss. Be comfortable with your joy, you give no offense.”
In a deliberate effort to restore the lightheartedness of the holiday, Cat turned to Amabel. “Not all the eagerly awaited are soldiers, I believe,” she said, a mischievous glint in her green eyes. “Tell us about your Anthony, Amabel. I don’t believe you have ever mentioned what he looks like.”
The Sometime Bride Page 28
