The Sometime Bride

by Blair Bancroft

  “He is not my Anthony,” she said in the tone of one who has repeated the statement many times. “Though I hope he may be,” she admitted quietly. Amabel cocked her head to one side, considering Catherine’s question. “I think him quite gorgeous of course, but Anthony’s features are what are generally described as strong. A Lord Byron he most certainly is not. I fear Anthony Trowbridge is a farmer at heart, for he is seldom coaxed away from his acres. Indeed, I have seen him only three times in the last five years.”

  “He will come for the Season, will he not?” Flora inquired, her kind heart roused to sympathy.

  “Oh, yes. Now that I am making my come-out, he is expected to reach a decision about our betrothal. So undoubtedly he will be here to look me over,” Amabel said with understandable asperity.

  “That does not sound very comfortable,” Cat said with a frown.

  “Comfortable?” cried Amabel. “You are spoiled, Catherine, marrying so young. “Society’s mating season is never comfortable.”

  “But why then do you wish to marry him if you feel like a–a porco being taken to market?”

  Amabel took the question seriously. “Because there are very few gentlemen whom I would describe as capable. And because he does not mind that I am clever.”

  “You must snap him up immediately,” Catherine approved with a wry smile. “You have my complete blessing. He is a veritable treasure indeed.”

  Christmas Day 1813. The four young women talked, laughed, drank champagne, and hugged to themselves their thoughts of the promised joys of 1814. Not once was there a hint of the devastating drama to come.

  The weather continued cold and miserable. By mid-January there was no doubt London was in the grip of one of the worst winters in memory. On the Peninsula the Duke of Wellington’s troops were encountering similar harsh conditions. Little progress had been made after crossing the Pyrenees into France. In London Catherine was en route to a ball at the home of Baron and Lady Hawley, parents of Adelaide and Flora.

  “When does Wrexham return?” Clara Everingham asked as their carriage slowly moved up in the long line outside the Hawley’s townhouse.

  “Another fortnight, I believe,” said Cat.

  “You may have made a conquest there, my dear,” said Clara. “I admit I am quite surprised. With a bit of encouragement you might actually bring him up to scratch.”

  “I thought you did not approve of him,” said Cat, surprised.

  “I do not approve of his rakishness,” Clara declared, “but as a husband he is a superb parti.”

  “I assure you, my lady, your original opinion was correct. Wrexham wants me, but not as a bride. Please do not concern yourself. I am long accustomed to the Wrexhams of this world. I find him charming. And useful. Nothing more. I do not wish him to find himself twenty paces from Blas with a pistol in his hand.

  “Merciful heavens, child, you believe it could come to that?”

  “I think—no matter what his promise to Thomas and no matter whether he considers me wife or mistress—Blas will not tolerate poachers,” Cat declared without hesitation.”

  There was a clang as the groom put down the carriage steps. The conversation came to an abrupt halt with Clara still shaking her head over this unexpected complication.

  As they stood in the line of guests waiting on the gracefully curving marble staircase, Cat was very aware of the raised quizzing glasses, avid eyes peering over unfurled fans, the whispers and conjectures. Clara and Blanca were hard put not to beam in triumph. They had not yet been announced, and already their protégé was causing a sensation.

  The nap of Cat’s gown of jade green silk velvet rippled in the reflection of hundreds of candles in their crystal chandeliers. The utter simplicity of the gown was designed solely as a backdrop for her jewels—tiny puffed sleeves, décolletage revealing the swell of her fine figure, the straight Grecian fall of her skirt from bust to hem. The delicate diamond and emerald tiara nestled in swaths of red-gold hair, the elaborate tiers of the necklace, the swing of pendant earrings, the matching bracelet, the ring—all caught the candlelight, dazzling those who were not already dazzled by the beauty of the newcomer.

  Long before Catherine Perez de Leon reached the ballroom, she was the cynosure of all who had glimpsed her. They saw a woman of wealth, beauty, and good taste. The ton, forever on the qui vive for something new, was intrigued.

  Thomas Audley would have loved it.

  For a ball held when most of the ton were visiting their country estates, the rooms at Hawley House were a surprising squeeze. Catherine did not have an opportunity to seek out Amabel, for her cousin William seized her before she was three steps into the ballroom, stating that a soldier about to depart for the wars was entitled to the first dance with the most beautiful woman in the room. Not averse to such flattery from a cousin whose handsome boyish face grinned at her above the silver and white trim on his green dress uniform, Catherine followed him into the line for a country dance.

  “I leave within the week,” William declared with ill-concealed glee as the dance brought them together for a few moments. “The weather’s brought the Peer to a standstill, so I daresay I shall not miss any battles after all.” Cat forced herself to respond with a smile to her cousin’s eagerness. Without the Audley men—William, his father the general, and Thomas—the world would be a less safe place. The possible sacrifice of this delightful newfound cousin cast a pall over the gaiety around them. She could not be happy to see him go.

  Cat was twirling around the ballroom in the arms of Gordon Somersby when she finally located Amabel Lovell sitting out the daring dance under the watchful eye of her mother. “When our dance is finished, Gordy, please take me to Amabel. This is her very first ball, and I must tell her how charming she looks.”

  “She does indeed,” agreed Mr. Somersby, following Cat’s eyes. “And how old were you, my ancient one, when you attended your first ball?”

  “Fourteen. You may recall my telling you about it when you returned to the Embassy after the Occupation. When I think on it, it doesn’t seem possible I was ever that young.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you were ever young at all,” Gordon replied. “You must have been carrying messages by the time you were ten or eleven. There we were—two innocent English children exchanging a few words, a basket of bread, fresh-gathered eggs, a flagon from the Casa Audley for the evening table.” He broke off. “Do you miss it, Cat? Do you wish you were back in Lisbon?”

  For several measures Cat did not reply. The colorful gowns of the women swirled around her, punctuated by the precise black and white Beau Brummel dictated for the men. Suddenly, there was a glitter of mirrors. The dress of the men changed to a sea of blue. She was fourteen. Dancing with Blas. Flirting—badly—with a Marshal of France. Terrified. Rescued by a French major who, more rightly, should have been arresting her.

  “No,” she replied to Gordon, “I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. If I could go back and find Papa there, and Blas not forever running off to the mountains, then I would leave all this behind without a backward look. But that life is gone now. It will not come again.” Cat looked up into the sympathetic eyes of this, her oldest friend, and added quite truthfully, “What lies ahead is unclear. We shall simply have to wait and see.”

  As the musicians brought the lilting music to a lingering note of finale, Cat shook off her melancholy. “Now, if you please, take me to Amabel,” she commanded.

  “It is not at all nice you may dance the waltz and I may not,” Amabel cried. “But you and Mr. Somersby quite outshone them all!” She clapped her hands. “I have it. We shall have a waltzing party. And then I shall be ready when I have been given permission to waltz. Oh, mama, do say we might. Catherine and Mr. Somersby shall show us all how to go on, for I know the waltz will be all the rage this season. There is bound to be the most grand celebration when the war is ov—”

  “Hush!” said Catherine sharply. “Do not say it aloud. There is too much talk of vic
tory. I have grown superstitious, I fear. Say rather that we expect to have cause to celebrate.”

  Catherine looked up to find an expression of astonishment on Gordon Somersby’s normally pleasant features. “Cat!” he muttered in strangled tones.

  Amabel, following his gaze, shrieked then clapped a hand firmly over her mouth. Her mother’s horrified gaze turned to delight as all eyes focused on the newest guest to enter the ballroom. A broad-shouldered young man in impeccable evening clothes was nonchalantly surveying the ballroom through his quizzing glass.

  “It’s Anthony!” Amabel bubbled. “I cannot believe he has left his cows or sheep or whatever it is he raises in Derbyshire.” Amabel’s adoring gaze was drawn back to the striking young man who was now being greeted with enthusiasm by several of the younger gentlemen in the crowded ballroom. Eyes clinging to Anthony Trowbridge, her heart on her sleeve, Amabel added, “I am so glad you are going to have an opportunity to meet him, Catherine. You will like him excessively, I know you will.”

  Frantically, Gordon Somersby tried to catch Cat’s eye, but she was staring at the newcomer with as much fascination as Amabel. She had no difficulty understanding his attraction for Amabel Lovell. At that moment, however, she doubted she would like him excessively.

  He did not look at all like a farmer. He stood there in the doorway, every inch of his arrogant stance proclaiming him the son of one of England’s premier dukes. His waving black hair was arranged in a halo around his aristocratic head. His black and white evening ensemble was exactly as proclaimed by Beau Brummel. Even across the room a diamond could be seen glittering in the perfection of his cravat. He was Anthony Trowbridge, son of Sebastian, Duke of Marchmont.

  He was Don Alexis Perez de Leon. Blas. The Bastard.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Each was so adept at deception, Lord Anthony and his sometime bride had no trouble finding a private moment later in the evening. “There is a morning room at the rear of Everingham House,” Cat stated from behind a set social smile designed to allay the curiosity of anyone who might be observing their momentary tête-à-tête. “Overlooking the gardens,” she added on a hiss. “Be there. Tonight. I shall light a candle.” Cat’s eyes glittered as coldly as the emeralds which framed the pale perfection of her face. Lord Anthony’s white teeth flashed. Don Alejo at his most charming. An almost imperceptible nod, and he was gone. Moving off into a welcoming bevy of old acquaintances.

  Lord Anthony Trowbridge regarded the brick wall behind Everingham House with a jaundiced eye. Cat had not mentioned it. Nor the close proximity of the mews and the sleeping stable boys. Obviously, she wished him to suffer a bit. Not that he blamed her.

  Peeling off his tight-fitting black tailcoat, Anthony handed it to the hackney driver along with his waistcoat and cravat. His white shirt shone like a beacon in the London night. His lips tilted in a wry grin. How fortunate detection would bring only embarrassment instead of death.

  Women could be a very great trial, Anthony decided as he gazed at the forbidding wall. And this woman in particular had brought him more than his share of anguish. Yet he was not free to say the words which could cut the tangle they had made of their lives. Anthony’s heartfelt sigh of resignation echoed through the dark alley. He leaped for the top of the fence, clung there a moment, thinking what the watch would say if they saw him. Then he hauled himself up, scrambled over the top, and dropped lightly down onto the crunchy brown of plants frozen under a thin blanket of snow.

  He scanned the rear of the house. Light a candle, would she? The sarcasm had not escaped him. As he drew closer to the house, a faint sliver of light shone through a slit in the draperies covering a pair of French doors. He had been at war too long not to be cautious. Approaching from the side, he peered into the room. And swallowed hard. Cat en déshabillé was a sight which inevitably unnerved him.

  She had definitely undressed for the occasion. Artfully, carefully arrayed, she was stretched full length on the sofa, a quilted robe of turquoise silk not quite concealing a nightgown of white. Nearly transparent white. Anthony swallowed hard. Cat’s hair was loose, the red-gold strands tumbling to her waist. He leaned back against the door and shut his eyes, his mind echoing with anguished words said long ago. Damn and damn and damn! She was taunting him. This would be the last time. Absolutely the last time. He could not maintain the masquerade much longer.

  With a soft click of the latch he opened the door and went in.

  For Catherine and the man she always thought of as Alejo, there would be no longed-for joyful reunion. Even during Amabel’s bubbling introduction, she had known. This was her husband’s other persona. Her friend. Not her lover. Which had not kept her from making one last effort, the careful selection of her most seductive silk nightwear.

  Silently, Cat watched as this English stranger, son of a duke—this man she thought she knew as well as herself—sat in the chair she had arranged with as much care as she had arranged herself. By the dim light of a single candle, they faced each other at a distance of less than two feet.

  As had happened so frequently in the past, Cat’s first words were not at all what he expected to hear.

  “What are you doing here?” she challenged. “And do not say because I asked you to come,” she added tightly, “because that is not at all what I mean.”

  “What am I doing in England,” he murmured, thinking fast. Easy enough. He could actually tell the truth. “My work with the guerrilleros was finished. Thomas’s network is shut down. Wellington is bogged in the cold and the mud. I am out of a job, so I came home.”

  The reply suited Don Alejo. But not Blas. Never Blas. Blas the Bastard would stay ‘til he could forge Napoleon’s chains himself. “You will go back, then?” Cat inquired.

  Not bloody likely. “Of course,” he agreed, tossing off the expected response. “You can’t think I’d miss the glorious finale.”

  Cat caught the underlying cynicism, but was not overly surprised. Alejo’s view of the world was frequently more detached than the fire and passion of Blas. She had known and loved both personalities for so long she seldom questioned the oddity. It simply was. As the war was. A reality she could neither understand nor change.

  He was so close she could reach out and touch him. The tousled black hair, the aristocratic forehead and black brows, the strong nose, the full sensuous mouth. So familiar. So well-loved. And yet a stranger. Named Anthony. If she threw herself into his arms and cried the rivers of tears bottled up inside, what would he do? Pat her awkwardly on the back and exit rapidly into the darkness of the night?

  Her path was clear. She would have to bear this latest blow alone, as she had always done.

  She should be furious, but this was not her Blas. Blas would fight back. Or laugh at her. This was Alejo, so sorrow, not anger, colored her words.

  “What was such a deep dark secret that you could not tell me who you were?” Cat asked. “If I had known . . . perhaps I might have had the sense to be realistic. To know there could be no dreams of the future. I would have understood father was right, that I must look elsewhere. I might even have been sensible enough to save myself for marriage. A real marriage. Certainly I would not have pictured us living in Lisbon, operating the Casa, raising our children.”

  Her words—so horribly true—stabbed him to the heart. To hide his anguish, Anthony turned his face toward the double doors leading to the garden.

  Cat steepled her hands in front of her mouth, squeezed her eyes together in a vain effort to shut out her humiliation. “At least I choose to believe I would not have indulged in such stupidly false hopes,” she amended quietly.

  Silently, Anthony chanted a litany of the most profane words he knew. He ran his hand behind his neck, rumpled his artistically arranged black locks into a tangled mess. His fingers moved down to rub his forehead in guilt and frustration above amber eyes filled with pain. He reached out and took her hand. “It will come right, Cat, I promise you. Somehow I will make it right.”

>   When he touched her, Cat stifled a gasp. This was Alejo who took such great care not to keep his distance. The Alejo who never came to her room, let alone her bed.

  His hand should have been comforting. It should have sent shivers up her spine. But it felt . . . wrong. Firmly, Cat drew free of his grip. She twisted the sash of her quilted silk robe, winding it around her fingers, then tugged at the front of the robe, closing the gap which revealed the transparency of the nightgown beneath. Her gaze fixed on her lap, she said, “Amabel loves you, you know.”

  “She’s a child. She knows nothing of love.”

  With sudden intensity Cat’s eyes focused on his. “That is not true! Can you have forgotten so easily that other child who loved you?”

  “Don’t be absurd. You and I lived together, Cat. For years. I’ve had perhaps five conversations with Amabel Lovell in my entire life. And, believe me, none of them was intimate!” She was a child. With considerable feeling, he added, “Sometimes I think you never were.”

  As the silence stretched between them, Cat decided to let it go. Amabel was too sensitive a subject to be discussed at three in the morning. “When will you return to the continent?”

  “I’m not sure.” He lied with an ease which he had had some difficulty learning. “I should visit my estate in Derbyshire, then anything is possible. I might even decide to enjoy the Season with the rest of the beau monde. You may not believe it, Cat, but you are more important to me than witnessing Wellington march through the streets of Paris.”

  That nagging doubt again. The words pleasing, yet not right. Not Blas.

  Anthony unfolded himself from the chair. Gruffly, he told her to go to bed, not to worry; they would talk again tomorrow. He kissed his fingertips, then laid them, lingeringly, against her quivering lips. For a moment his eyes glowed with a fierce light, then he was gone, out into the garden as silently as he had come.