Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (28 page)

Carmen started. “Job?” Surely he could not know of that. They had not seen each other in so long; he could not know of the letters, of why she had come to England. Despite his sorcerer’s eyes, he could not read her mind.

Could he?

She suddenly became very interested in the fan she held in her hands. She opened and closed the gold-and-black lace. “Whatever do you mean? I am here only to enjoy your London Season.”

Peter’s patrician features were tight, his hands curled at his sides. “I am talking of your job of betraying my regiment six years ago.”

If he had suddenly reached out and struck her across the face, Carmen could not have been more shocked. It seemed one shock too many. Her fan fell from her fingers, its delicate sticks shattering on the marble at their feet.

Major Chauvin had said those many years ago that she would be blamed for the demise of the Fifteenth Light Dragoons, and thus might as well tell him all she knew anyway. Somehow she had not believed him. Had not believed that Peter could ever think such a thing of her.

“Betrayed?” she whispered.

“Yes. You do remember the day after our wedding? Nicholas Hollingsworth almost died that day. Many men did die.”

“Nicholas!” Carmen remembered the dark, laughing man, who, next to Peter, had been the most handsome man of the regiment. A wave of nausea broke over her. She turned away from Peter, her hand pressed to her mouth. “No. I would not do such a thing.”

Peter took her arm and turned her to face him. His grasp was hard. “I saw you, Carmen! Riding away from the battle with Chauvin, cradled in his arms.” He shook her. “You knew of our troop movements. Did you run to him immediately after our wedding, from my bed to his? Did you, Carmen? Is that why you were so insistent on riding off by yourself?”

Six years of anger and grief shone in his eyes as he pulled her against him, drawing her up on tiptoe, her breasts pressed against his chest.

“Have you come to kill me?” he whispered.

“ ‘Tis you who are killing me, Peter!” Tears coursed unchecked over her cheeks and chin, spotting her expensive bodice. This man could not be her husband! Peter had been hard at times, yes, but never cruel. She pushed futilely against his chest, unable to bear his warm nearness, his familiar scent. “I never did those things you say.”

“Then, prove it! Prove you never betrayed me. Betrayed the love we had between us. I have been in torment for so long.”

“How can I prove anything? It was so long ago, a lifetime,” she sobbed. “You are obviously set against me in your heart, and have been for a long time. Nothing I say now could change that, could it? I claim innocence on my mother’s soul. That is all I can do.”

“Carmen!” He shook her arm again, and her ivory comb and lace mantilla slipped free from their fastenings and tangled at their feet.

Desperate to be free, Carmen lashed out, slapping him once across the face. He immediately released her, and fell back, trembling.

A thin line of blood had appeared at his lip. He touched it lightly, and Carmen stared down at her left hand as if it did not belong to her at all. Slowly she peeled off the black silk glove, and they both looked down at the ring that had caught his lip. A large square-cut emerald.

She folded her fingers into a fist.

“Carmen,” Peter whispered. “I did not ...” He was as pale as the marble of the terrace as he stared at that ring.

“Peter! There you are at last. I had quite despaired of finding you. It is time for supper, and I am famished. You did say that ...”

The tiny woman in blue silk, who had glided out onto the terrace behind them, stopped abruptly when she saw that Peter was not alone.

“Oh,” she said. “I do beg your pardon.”

Carmen bent to retrieve her mantilla, and arranged it carefully over her hair, bringing the lacy folds forward to conceal her tearstained face. “No, no, I beg your pardon,
Señorita
. I was just leaving.”

“Condesa de Santiago!” the woman cried. She rushed forward to seize Carmen’s bare left hand in her own small, gloved ones. “This is such an honor! I have been quite longing to meet you. Have you yet had your portrait painted in England?”

“My portrait?” Carmen glanced in bewilderment over the woman’s dark head to Peter, who was still as stone.

“Yes! Oh. I must seem very rag-mannered to you. Since my brother appears to have been struck quite mute, I shall introduce myself. I am Lady Elizabeth Hollingsworth, nee Everdean.”

“Brother?” Carmen looked down at the tiny, black-haired elf, who looked not a bit like the tall, golden Peter.

“Stepbrother, actually. I am an artist, and I should so love to paint your portrait.” Elizabeth dug about in her pearl-beaded reticule. “Here is my card. Do send me word when you are settled. You must come to Clifton House, to take tea with me.”

Carmen blinked down at the small square of pale blue vellum. “Hollingsworth? Such as Nicholas?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Yes! He is my husband. Do you know him?”

“Only—only by reputation,” Carmen murmured.

Elizabeth laughed merrily. “Oh-ho, yes! So very many people do.”

Carmen smiled slightly and backed away toward the steps that led to the garden. “Do excuse me, Lady Elizabeth, but I really must depart. It grows very late.”

“Certainly! But, please, do call on me. Or allow me to call on you.”

“Yes, of course. Good night.” Carmen picked up her skirts and fled into the darkness of the garden, unmindful of the mud that sucked at her thin slippers. She only wanted to be away from there, so she could think quietly.

Elizabeth watched her flight with a frown, then turned back to her pale brother. “Peter? Whatever did you say to the poor woman?”

Peter shook his head and gave her an odd little half smile. “Why, nothing, Lizzie. I merely complimented her on her—sense of fashion.”

“Fashion? Do you mean you complimented her gown?”

“Yes, something of that sort. Shall we go in to supper?”

“Certainly. I hear that the duchess’s lobster patties are quite divine.”

Yet even as Peter took Elizabeth’s arm to escort her back into the ballroom, he could not resist looking back to where Carmen had disappeared into the night.

Then he saw, gleaming against the marble, the carved ivory comb that had fallen from the folds of Carmen’s mantilla. He picked it up and secreted it inside his coat.

Surely its owner would miss it.

Chapter Four

H
ome at last.

Carmen locked the front door behind her and made her weary way up the shadowed stairs to her bedchamber. Esperanza had seen to the airing of the room, and the bedclothes were turned back to reveal fresh linens. A fire burned merrily in the grate, and set on a small table before it was a light repast of tea sandwiches, a pot of tea, and a bottle of her favorite sherry.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of the mundanities of life, such as the fact that she had missed supper, and the duchess’s fabled lobster patties.

Madame La Tour’s stylish gown was rather difficult to remove alone, but Carmen managed to wriggle out of it, and left it and the mantilla in a heap on the floor. She turned toward her full-length mirror, and almost thought a stranger was staring back at her.

She looked like a wraith, silvery-white in the firelight, her eyes huge and her dark, short hair tangled over her ears. Even her nudity, the tall, angular body she had despaired of all her life, seemed not her own. She looked, and felt, quite otherworldly.

Everything had turned top-over-tail, the whole existence she had painfully built for herself, and it seemed certain that it could never go right side up again.

Peter was alive! She had hoped, oh, a thousand times that she could she him again, just once, to touch his face, feel his arms about her. For just a glimpse of his smile, she would have given her own soul.

Now it seemed her prayers were answered. He was
alive
! Yet how he had changed. He seemed so old now, as old as she herself often felt, and so very hard. And his anger toward her was a very powerful force; it had obviously been festering inside him for six years, poisoning all they had once had, and hoped to have, together.

Carmen’s hand drifted over her pale midriff, to her belly above the white silk drawers, across the faint stretch marks from when she had been carrying Isabella inside of her. She had been a small baby, but so active, always kicking and turning ...

Isabella
!

Carmen pressed her fist to her mouth to muffle a sudden cry. What if Peter came to hear of Isabella? What if he saw her, this golden-blond child? He would doubtless guess the truth in an instant.

And she, though titled, was a foreigner. She would be powerless against the Earl of Clifton if he decided to take their child.

“That cannot happen,” she said aloud, fiercely.

A knock sounded at the door, startling her. She grabbed up her dressing gown and slipped it over her nakedness. “Yes?”

Esperanza peered around the door, her wrinkled face framed by an absurd pink ruffled nightcap. “Carmencita! You are home early.”

Carmen forced herself to smile lightly. “It is hardly early, after one.”

“That is early for you. You are usually gone until the dawn.” Was there a hint of disapproval in her tired voice? If there was, it was concealed as she bustled about the room, shaking out the discarded gown and locating hastily kicked off slippers. “Did you have a good time at the ball?”

“Hm, not really. It was such a dreadful crush, just as everyone said it would be. I could not breathe at all. And so many things happened ...”

“Things such as what, Carmencita?”

Carmen shook her head. “I will tell all later, Esperanza, but I am too tired now.” She sat down beside the fire and poured herself a liberal amount of the sherry. “I cannot remember when I was last so tired.”

Esperanza eyed the sherry. “You should eat something before you drink that, Carmencita. Did you have supper at the ball?”

“No, more is the pity! I heard that the duchess’s lobster patties are delightful.”

“Then, you must eat those sandwiches. You look pale as the grave.”

Carmen gave an unladylike snort. “Thank you, Esperanza, for that encouraging compliment!” But she did pop a cucumber sandwich into her mouth.

Esperanza nodded in satisfaction, and bent to pick up the mantilla. “Carmen!”

“Yes?”

“Did you not wear your ivory comb tonight?”

Carmen’s hand flew to her hair. “Oh, no! It must have fallen at the ball.”

“How could that have happened? We used ever so many pins!”

Carmen closed her eyes and shook her head. “It simply fell, that is all. I will send a note ‘round to the duchess tomorrow, and see if anyone found it in her ballroom.”

“That comb belonged to your mama,” Esperanza clucked. “Really, Carmen, sometimes you are so very careless.”

Esperanza was always quick to point out her shortcomings, and had done so ever since Carmen’s babyhood. “I am certain someone will have discovered it. But I am far too tired to think of it now!”

“My poor
niña,”
Esperanza cooed, her irritation forgotten. “You must sleep. I know something did happen tonight, something terrible you are not telling me. I can see it in your eyes. But I will wait.”

Carmen kissed Esperanza’s cheek. “I
will
tell you later. Now, dear one, good night.”

“
Buenos noches, niña
.”

When Esperanza had gone, Carmen climbed gratefully between her cool sheets and fell into deep, dream-plagued sleep.

At last Peter was alone in his bedchamber. It was nearly dawn; a few gray-pink tendrils were reaching through the curtains. Yet it had still taken several protestations of complete exhaustion on his part to persuade his chattering sister to cease prattling about the ball and retire to her chamber.

He splashed cold water from a basin onto his face, unmindful of the damp spots that appeared on his open shirt and scattered across his chest. When he lifted his eyes to the small shaving mirror, the face that stared back at him was positively haggard. Haggard, and pale, and ... haunted.

Could Elizabeth have been right when she expressed concern for him in the carriage on their way home? Was his old madness coming back upon him?

Peter pushed away from the mirror with a muttered curse. It could not be. He had fought too hard to overcome his ghosts, to come back to the light and try to make a life for himself where he could not hurt anyone ever again. He would not give in to that darkness again, even if he had held a ghost in his arms that night.

The darkness, what Elizabeth called his spells, had come over him when he had returned from Spain, wounded in both body and spirit. Home was not as he had remembered it, not the fantasy he had longed for when he had lain alone in a Spanish field hospital. Elizabeth had grown up into a dark beauty in his absence, with an iron will of her own that he had not been prepared to deal with. And her every glance at him had spoken of how frightened she was of the monster he had become. It finally forced her to run away.

Six years ago, on that fateful day, he had thought Nicholas Hollingsworth, his best friend, dead. Yet fortunately he had lived and was now married to his sister. However, Peter had thought Carmen not only dead, but had later learned she was their betrayer.

Now he saw that Carmen was not dead, and the realization was vexing. She was here, in England, healthy and whole, and more beautiful than she had ever been even in his dreams.

Why had she come into his life again, opening old wounds and reminding him of the foolish dreams he had once cherished? Peter could not flatter himself that she had come to England to find him. She had been so obviously shocked to see him; as shocked as he was to see her.

To see that emerald on her finger.

Carmen, dead Carmen, was the famous condesa. It was strange, a nightmare—a dream. But he also could not ignore the deep joy that had coursed through him when he had first glimpsed her face.

Then his eye caught on the ivory comb he had tossed onto the bed, gleaming against the burgundy velvet counterpane. He reached for it, turning it over and over on his palm.