Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (24 page)

“I also remember that day. You were riding hell-for-leather through the camp, on that demon you call your horse. You were wearing trousers and that ridiculous hat you love so much.” He laughed. “I had never seen a woman like you.”

“Hmph, thank you
very
much! I will have you know that that hat is the height of fashion right now.”

“I stand corrected, Condesa. But I could not believe that anyone so very lovely, so refined, could be a spy.”

“I am not a spy,” she corrected him. “I simply sometimes overhear useful information that could perhaps aid you in ridding my country of this French infestation.”

“So that is not spying.”

“No. It is—helping.”

Peter laughed, the rumble of it warm against her. “Then, I am very glad indeed that you have decided to help us. You, my dear, could be a formidable foe.”

“Not as formidable as you.” Carmen fell silent, turning her new ring in the moonlight to admire the flash of the single, square-cut emerald. Peter had told her that the ring had been his mother’s, who had died when he was a small child. “This war cannot go on forever.”

“No.” Peter’s hand covered hers, tracing the ring with his thumb. “Are you sorry now, Carmen, that we married so hastily? Are you having second thoughts about sharing your life with mine after the war?”

“No! Are you?”

“Of course not. You are the only woman I have ever loved.”

Carmen’s brow arched doubtfully. “Really?”

His laugh was rueful. “I did not say the only woman I have ever
known.
You would see that for a sham immediately. But you are the only woman I have ever loved.”

“Then, you did not ask me to marry you out of some sense of obligation, after—well, after what occurred last week?”

“Are you referring to the fact that we anticipated our wedding vows?” Peter clicked his tongue. “My dear, how indelicate!”

Carmen couldn’t help but blush just a bit at the memory of that night, when, tipsy with brandy and kisses and a dance beside a river, they had fallen into his bed and done such incredibly wonderful, wicked things. Peter’s hands, his sorcerer’s mouth ...

A giggle escaped.

“No,” Peter continued. “I married you because I think it is so charming that, despite the fact that you can ride and shoot like the veriest rifle sergeant, you still blush at the mention of the, ah, small preview of our marital bed.”

“Small,
querido?”

“Well, perhaps not so small.”

“No.” Carmen smiled. “Yet have you thought of after the war, when we must leave here and go to England, and you must present me as your countess?”

“Of course I have thought of it! It is almost all I do when we are apart. It will be wonderful. I have a sister and an estate that I have neglected these many years, so we must go there as soon as we can.”

“You have been doing your duty for your country ‘these many years.’ Surely your family must understand that?”

“Yes, but it does not make it any easier to be parted from them. Sometimes, when I cannot sleep at night, I think of them, Elizabeth and Clifton Manor. I can almost smell the green English rain ...” His voice trailed faintly away.

Carmen looked out over the lights of the camp. She had never been to England, or indeed anywhere but Spain. It was all she knew, warm, sunny, tradition-bound Spain. How would she fare in a new, English life?

She leaned her head against his shoulder, her eyes tightly shut. “Will they like me at your home? Will your sister like me?”

Peter tipped her chin up with one long finger, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Elizabeth will love you; you are very much like her. They will all love you at Clifton. As I do. Believe me, darling, it is much easier to be an English countess than a Spanish one, and you have done that wonderfully. You must not be afraid.”

Her jaw tightened. “I am not afraid.”

Peter laughed “Excellent! I knew that a woman who does the things you do could not possibly be frightened of the English
ton.”
He kissed her lightly on her nose. “Are you ready to return to camp?”

“Oh, yes.”

The encampment was uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way hand in hand to Peter’s tent. A few groups of men played desultory games of cards around the fires. Outside the largest tent, Colonel Smith-Mason stood with some of his officers, talking in low voices over a sheaf of dispatches.

Peter glanced at them with a small frown.

“Do you think there is something amiss?” Carmen whispered. She had lived long enough with the intrigues of war to know that events could change in an instant, but she had hoped, prayed, that her wedding night at least could prove uneventful.

Outside the bedchamber, anyway.

“I do not know,” Peter answered, his watchful gaze still on the small group. “Surely not.”

“But you do not
know?”

He shrugged, “We have more important things to think of tonight,” he said, bending his head to softly kiss her ear.

Carmen shivered, but waved him away. “No, you must find out. I will wait.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Go on. We have many hours before dawn.” He kissed her again, and she watched him walk away, his polished buttons gleaming in the firelight. Then she turned to duck into his tent.
Their
tent, for that night.

It was a goodly size, but almost spartan in its tidiness. The cot was made up with linen-cased pillows and a blue woolen blanket; a stack of papers and books was lined up exactly on the table, and the chairs pushed in at precise angles. His shaving kit and monogrammed ivory hairbrush were flush with his small shaving mirror. The only bit of personal expression was in the miniature portrait on a small stand beside the cot: of his younger sister, Elizabeth. Next to it was a portrait of Carmen, painted when she was 16, which she had given him as a wedding gift.

Carmen laid her small bouquet of wild red roses beside the paintings and went to open her own small trunk, which had been brought there while they were at the church. In it were the only things she had brought away on her journey from Seville: two muslin dresses and a satin gown, a pair of boots, rosary beads, men’s trousers and shirts, and a cotton nightrail that was far too practical for a wedding night.

She slipped out of her simple white muslin wedding dress, and took the high ivory comb and white lace mantilla from her hair. She brushed out her waist-length black hair. Then she sat down on the cot to wait.

She was quite asleep when she at last felt Peter’s kiss on her cheek, his hand on her back, warm through her silk chemise. She blinked up at him and smiled. “What was it?”

“It is nothing.” He sat down beside her and gathered her into his arms. He had shed his coat and shirt, and Carmen rubbed her cheek against the golden satin of his skin. “There were rumors of a French regiment nearby, much closer than they should be.”

“Only rumors?”

“Yes. For tonight.” He wrapped his fingers in her loose hair and tilted her face up to his, trailing small, soft kisses along the line of her throat. “Tonight is only ours, my wife.”

“Oh, yes. My husband.
Mi esposo.”
Carmen moaned as his mouth found the crest of her breast through the silk. Her fingernails dug into his bare shoulders. “Only ours.”

The bridal couple was torn from blissful sleep near dawn by the horrifying sounds of gunfire, panicked shouts, and braying horses.

Peter was out of bed in an instant, pulling on his uniform as he threw back the tent flaps.

Carmen stumbled after him in bewilderment, drawing the sheet around her naked shoulders. “What is it?” she cried. “A battle?”

“Stay here!” Peter ordered. Then she was alone.

Carmen hastily donned her shirt and trousers, and tied her hair back with a scarf. She was searching for her boots when she heard her husband’s voice and that of Lieutenant Robert Means, a young man she had sometimes played cards with of a quiet evening. And fleeced regularly.

“By damn!” Peter cursed. “How could they be so close? How could they have gotten so far without us knowing?”

“Someone must have informed them,” Robert answered. “But we are marching out within the quarter hour.”

“Of course. I shall be ready. Has Captain Hollingsworth been alerted?”

“Yes. What of ...” Robert’s voice lowered. “What of your wife, Major?”

“I will see to her.”

Carmen stuck her head outside the tent. “She will see to herself, thank you very much! And what are you doing running about unarmed,
husband?”
She rattled his saber at him.

“Carmen!” Peter pushed her back into the tent. “You must ride into the hills and wait. I will send an escort with you.”

“Certainly not! You require every man. I have ridden about the country without an escort for months. Shall I ride to General Morecambe’s encampment and tell him you require reinforcements?”

“No! You are to find a safe place, and wait there until I come for you.”

“Madre de Dios!”
Carmen pulled her leather jacket out of her trunk and thrust her arms into the sleeves, glaring at him all the while. “I will not hide! I cannot play the coward now. I will ride for reinforcements.”

“Carmen! Be sensible!”

“You be sensible, Peter! I have been doing this sort of thing for a long time.”

“But you were not my wife then!” he shouted.

“Ah. So that is it.” Carmen left off loading her pistol to go to him, and framed his handsome, beloved face in her hands. “I cannot give up what I am doing to become a fine, frail, sheltered lady again, simply because I am now your wife. No more than you can stay safely here in camp because you are now my husband.”

He turned his head to kiss her palm. “No. Even though I wish it so, you are quite right.”

“We shall have many, many years to sit calmly by the fire,
querido.”

He smiled against her skin. “And will you long for your grand adventures, Carmen, when you are chasing babies about Clifton Manor?”

“Never!”

Peter caught her against him and kissed her mouth, hard, desperate. “I will see you at supper, then, Lady Clifton.”

“Yes.” Carmen clung to him for an instant, an eternal moment, then stepped away. “Promise me you will fight very, very carefully today, Peter.”

“Of course, my love.” He grinned at her, the white, crooked grin that had won her heart. “I never fight any other way.”

Then he was gone.

The men had been gone for almost a half hour when Carmen rode out for the hills, set on her task.

She did not even see the glint of the sun on the rifle barrel as it aimed through the trees. She heard nothing, until the bullet shot from the barrel and landed in her shoulder.

The force of the shot knocked her from her horse, and she lay there in the dust, too stunned to feel pain.

She reached her fingers slowly to touch her shoulder. They came away a bright, sticky red.

“Is this it, then?” she whispered. “Madre de Dios, how can I die now?”

Her vision was very blurred when a face swam into view. A broad, sun-burned face, with drooping mustaches and deceptively merry blue eyes. A face she recognized from balls and receptions in Seville, where she danced with French officers and sometimes ferreted secrets from them.

“Well, well, señora!” he said. “Or should I say,
Madame la Condesa?
You must allow me to offer my best wishes on your nuptials.”

“Chauvin,” she whispered.

“Ah, so you are conscious?
Très bein!
You have been plaguing my regiment for weeks, you and your friends the so-called partisans. Now it is my turn,
Madame la Condesa.
There are some small questions I would like to ask you.”

“I won’t ... tell you anything,” she managed to croak through her parched throat.

“Au contraire, ma belle chère.
I think you will. But back at my lodgings, where we can speak—comfortably. After I have a glimpse of the little battle that is taking shape. Perhaps we will even see your new husband there!”

Major Chauvin slid his arms none too gently beneath Carmen and pulled her to her feet.

Not surprisingly, she fainted quite away.

“Nicholas!”
Peter shouted out, unheard over the infernal din of battle, as he watched his friend fall beneath a rifle shot, facedown in the mud and muck.

He fought his way to him, slashing out like a mad-man at any who dared get in his way. When he at last reached Nicholas, Peter hoisted him onto his shoulder and dragged him out of the very thick of the fighting.

“Hot fighting today, eh, Peter?” Nicholas gasped, choking blood onto the sleeve of Peter’s already ruined uniform.

“For God’s sake, man, don’t talk!”

“Am I ... done for?”

“Not if I can help it.” Peter squinted through the smoke and dust. “Where is the damned field hospital?”

“North of here.” Robert Means had appeared beside them, his red hair quite black with gunpowder and mud. “Is he badly off?”

“Bad enough.” Peter looked down at Nicholas, who was now slumped in a stupor. “But he can live if I get him to a surgeon soon.”

“I’ll help you.” Robert slipped Nicholas’s other arm over his shoulder, and looked about to take their direction. “Bloody hell!”

“What now?”

“Look!”

Peter followed the line of Robert’s pointing finger, and saw Major Francois Chauvin, the French leader they had been parrying with and retreating from for months. He was mounted, and his horse was climbing swiftly into the hills above the heat of the fighting. Perched before him, cradled in his arms, lover-like, was a woman.

Even from this distance, Peter could recognize the banner of black satin hair. The hair that had been spread across his pillows only that morning.

It was Carmen in the Frenchman’s arms, Peter’s one-day wife.

“Ah,
ma chère.
How very thirsty you look, how very much in pain,” Chauvin cooed. He poured himself a glass of water from an earthenware pitcher and sipped at it, his cool, hawk-like eyes never leaving Carmen. “It would be so very much easier on you
and
me if you would simply tell me what I must know. Then I could summon the physician, who could give you laudanum. Please,
ma belle,
let me help you.”