Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (23 page)

“I can do even better.”

“Oh, yes?”

His dark eyes were serious as he looked down at her. “I can take you back to Italy.”

Her smile froze. “Italy?”

“Yes. If that is what you want. Or we could go to India, or China, or Canada. Anywhere you want, that is where we will go.”

“You would do that? Give up your place in London society simply so your wife could paint and cause a scandal on the Continent?”

“My entire life has been a scandal, my dear. What could one more be? For you, I would live in a hut in Siberia. I would walk across Egypt, take up residence in a Cairo tomb. You want to be in Italy, I can see it in your eyes when I speak of it. I would be a brute indeed to keep you here, and deprive the world of your talent.” He traced a thumb across her mud-streaked cheek. “And perhaps once we are in the sun again the color will come back to your cheeks.”

Elizabeth threw herself against him, her tears wet on both their cheeks. “It will, I know it! Once away from Lady Haversham, I will bloom like a veritable garden. We will be happy in Italy—or anywhere, as long as we have each other.”

Nicholas clung to her like a drowning man, his face buried in her black hair. “Even if you are angry with me still?”

“Even so.” She kissed him again, and then again. “I love you enough, Nicholas Hollingsworth, to overcome anything.”

“Then I should marry you very soon, before you lose this conviction.”

“Yes, you should.” She leaned against him, happily contemplating things she had never thought of seriously before—things like wedding gowns and baby rattles. “Shall we marry here, or in Italy?”

“Wherever you like, as long as you say ‘I do.”’

“Here, then. I don’t want to give you time to change your mind, though I have so shocked poor Mr. Bridges that he may refuse to perform the ceremony. And then ...” She stopped, blushing an absolute crimson.

“Then ... what?”

“Then what of, um, babies?”

Nicholas laughed. “I like babies. Do you?”

“Sometimes. If he has your dark eyes.”

“Oh, no, no. She will have your gray eyes, and your wondrous smile.”

Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile that wondrous smile. “So she will. And she will be quite gifted, I’m sure—she will be painting landscapes at age three.”

“Two!”

“Perhaps she will even be born with a paintbrush in her hand, so she can start right away.”

“My love.” Nicholas pressed a kiss against her hair. “I am sure of it.”

“There is just one thing you have to do before we can marry, go to Italy, and have this gifted, gray-eyed daughter.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“You must ask Peter’s permission.”

Chapter Twenty-one

E
lizabeth squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying not to wriggle about as Georgina, Daisy, and a fleet of housemaids fluttered around her.

“Can I not look now?” she said.

“Not yet!” Georgina admonished. “Just one moment more.”

Elizabeth could hear the rustle of satin, could smell tulle and roses. She twisted impatiently. “Georgie! Hurry. We will be late.”

“My dear, they can hardly begin without you. But you may look now.”

Georgina’s hands turned her toward the mirror, and she slowly opened her eyes.

“No,” she breathed. “That is not me.”

“Oh, I assure you that it is!” Georgina laughed.

A vision was reflected in the glass, an ethereal vision. The gown, newly arrived from London, was a soft sea of palest blue-green satin. The tulle overskirt was sewn with tiny pearls and crystals in the form of roses and lilies. The satin slippers peeping from the hem were sewn with the same beadwork.

The vision’s hair was a loose river of black, caught up with a wreath of white roses. Perfectly matched pearls, her betrothal gift from Peter, gleamed in her ears and about her throat.

“You are the most beautiful bride,” Georgina said. Tears shimmered on her cheeks.

“As beautiful as you, when you married Jack?”

“Oh, ever so much more beautiful! I wore a rumpled carriage dress over the anvil at Gretna Green.” Georgina dried her eyes, and turned to pick up a nosegay of roses that matched the hair wreath. “Here are your flowers, Lizzie.”

“I picked them from the garden just this morning, Lady Elizabeth,” said Daisy.

Elizabeth inhaled deeply of their sweet, early summer scent. “They are perfect. This is a perfect day.”

“And it has only just started!” Georgina checked her own reflection in the mirror, straightening her feathered hat and smoothing the bodice of her pale yellow silk gown. “It can only grow more perfect as it goes on. Such as when you see Nicholas waiting for you at the church.”

Elizabeth giggled into her flowers.

A knock sounded at the door. “Elizabeth?” Peter called. “Are you quite ready? The carriage is waiting.”

“Come in, Peter,” she answered.

Peter entered the room impatiently, shaking his watch by its gold chain, but halted abruptly at the sight of his sister standing there.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly. “You are the very image of your mother.”

Elizabeth smiled. She was not a bit like the blond Isobel, even in her stunning new gown, but it was a very nice thing to hear. It seemed to bring her mother closer to her on this most important day. “Thank you, Peter. And you look very like your father, even that waistcoat you are wearing. I have never seen you wear red brocade before!”

“It is a festive day, is it not? A time for new beginnings. Ivory satin just didn’t seem appropriate.” He took her arm and slowly, as if afraid she would pull back, kissed her cheek. “If my father were here, he would be filled with pride at the thought of escorting you down the aisle. I hope that you will accept me in his stead.”

“I would be delighted if you would give me away.” She gave him a small, ironic smile. “After all, if it were not for you, Peter, I would never have met Nicholas, and this day could never have happened.”

“Touche,”
he said, with an answering smile. “I know that you are not certain of your feelings toward me, Elizabeth.”

“Peter, I ...”

“No, please, let me finish. I know that I have a great deal of work in my future to make you forgive me completely, for us to make a new sort of friendship. But I do love you, Lizzie. I want to be your brother again, if you will allow me to.”

“I want that, as well,” Elizabeth answered slowly. “I cannot say that the past will be fully forgotten. But, God willing, the future will be a long one, and we will have many new roads to travel together. And my children will have great need of their uncle.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you. I vow that I will never cause you to doubt me again.”

“I do believe you. Now, we should not keep the vicar waiting.”

“No. We have a wedding to attend.”

The stone Norman church in the village was full, every pew taken and a few unfortunate latecomers standing at the back. Lady Haversham, her poodles, and all her pink lace-clad daughters had claimed one pew all for themselves. The Misses Allan had left off their black just for the occasion and wore dark green.

On the bride’s side of the church, a flurry of artists from Italy and London and Paris were seated in a sea of bright colors, laughing and gossiping and finding out who had gained what plum commission.

Yet even they fell silent as the organ swelled with the processional, and Georgina swept down the aisle with her bridesmaid’s nosegay held elegantly before her.

Then Elizabeth appeared, her fingers clutching Peter’s arm, her eyes only on her bridegroom, unhindered by a veil.

Nicholas was the most handsome she had ever seen him in his blue coat, his smile wide and white as he watched her come to him, as he took her hand in his, and kissed her cheek much to the disapproval of the vicar.

Then Mr. Bridges intoned, “Dearly beloved ...”

And Elizabeth smiled.

The Spanisk Bride

To the finest mentors a fledgling writer
could ever ask for—Tori Phillips,
Karen Harbaugh, Linda Castle, and Martha Hix.
I truly could not have done
this without all your help and advice.
Thank you!

Prologue

Spain, 1811

“I
pronounce you man and wife. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Carmen Montero, known in her Seville home as the Condesa Carmen Pilar Maria de Santiago y Montero, trembled as the priest made the sign of the cross over her head. Her fingers were chill in her bridegroom’s grasp.

It was done. She was married.

Again.

And she had always sworn to herself that she would never again enter the unwelcome bonds of matrimony! She had relished her widowhood, the freedom to live as she pleased, apart from restrictive Seville society. The freedom to work for the cause of ridding Spain of the French interloper.

Her husband, Joaquin, Conde de Santiago, had been good for nothing in life. She shuddered still to think of his cold cruel hands, his rages when, every month, she was
not
pregnant with a son and heir. At least in death his money had proved useful, working to help free Spain from the French.

Yes, she had sworn never to marry again.

Yet she had not foreseen that there could be anything like this man in the world.

When she had first seen Major Lord Peter Everdean, the Earl of Clifton, her heart had skipped a beat, just as in the silly novels her friends had slipped into their convent school so long ago. Then it had leaped to life again. He was just as handsome as she had heard whispered by her friends at balls in Seville, the Ice Earl, as the ladies gigglingly called him.

But it had not been only his golden good looks that drew her. There was something in his beautiful ice-blue eyes: a loneliness, an isolation that she had understood so deeply. It had been what she had felt all her life, this sense of not belonging.

Now perhaps she had found a place she
could
belong, even in the midst of war. Perhaps they both had.

Carmen peeked up through her lashes at the man beside her, only to find him watching her intently, a faint smile on his lips.

She smiled slowly in return, once she could catch her breath. The only word that could describe Peter was
beautiful.
He was as elegant and golden as an archangel, his fair hair and sun-bronzed skin gleaming in the candlelight of the small church. His broad shoulders gave a muscular contour to his red coat and his impossibly lean hips looked charming in tight-fitting white pantaloons. His rare smiles enticed women the entire length of Andalucia, and every place he went.

Now his ring was on
her
finger. Tall, skinny, bookish Carmen. This extraordinary man was her husband, her lover, even her friend.

It was all suddenly overwhelming, the incense in the church, the emotions in her heart. She swayed precariously, only to be caught in her husband’s strong arms.

“Carmen!” he said. “What is it?”

“I just need some fresh air,” she whispered.

Nicholas Hollingsworth, Peter’s fellow officer and their only witness, hurried down the aisle ahead of them to throw open the carved doors. “She is probably exhausted, Peter,” He pointed out. “She rode all day to get here!”

“Yes,” Carmen agreed. “I am just a bit tired. But the air is a great help.”

Indeed it was. Her head was clearer already, in the cool, dry night. She leaned her forehead against her husband’s shoulder and closed her eyes, breathing deeply of his heady scent of wool, leather, and sandalwood soap.

“I am a brute,” he murmured against her hair. “You should have been asleep these many hours, and here I have insisted on dragging you before the priest.”

Carmen laughed. “Oh, I do not think I mind so very much.”

“It was past time for the two of you to make it respectable,” Nicholas said. “You have been making calves’ eyes at each other for weeks, every time Carmen comes into camp. It was quite the scandal.”

“Untrue!” Carmen cried, laughing. “You are the scandal, Nick, chasing all the
señoritas
in the village.”

“I do not have to chase them! I stand still and they come to me.” Nicholas saluted them smartly, and turned to make his way back down the hill to the lights of the British encampment. “Good night, Lord and Lady Clifton!”

Carmen and Peter watched him go, silent together in the warm, starlit night, and in the sense of the profundity of the step they had just taken.

They had known each other only about two months, in intermittent visits Carmen made to the various encampments of Peter’s regiment. Yet Carmen had somehow
known,
the moment she had seen him, that he was quite special.

“I remember when I first saw you,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Yes. The day I rode in from Seville to speak to Colonel Smith-Mason. You were playing cards with Nicholas outside your tent, in just your shirtsleeves. Most improper. The sun was shining in your hair, and you were laughing. You were quite the most handsome thing I had ever seen.”