Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (34 page)

“You asked me to dance because you wished to speak with me. I merely inquired what about. After all, when you came to call on me at my house, you seemed to have everything settled about me in your mind.”

“No more than you have about me!” he snapped.

“I beg your pardon? I did not hurl accusations at
you.”

“No. You just think me capable of being cruel and close-minded. You think me bitter and implacable.”

Carmen rather felt that was the gist of it. “Did you not accuse me of spying against your regiment?”

“Yes, of course. But—no.” He shook his head. “Forgive me, Carmen. I am rather confused.”

“Well, that makes two of us. I have been utterly bewildered ever since I saw you again.”

Peter drew in a deep breath. “It is true that I have buried myself in regrets these past years. I did think those things of you, on the evidence I had at hand.”

“The flimsy evidence of seeing me with Chauvin!”

“That, and—other things.” But he did not want to bring Robert Means into it just at present. He only wanted Carmen to understand his own feelings. “Yes, flimsy evidence, as you say. But as the years passed, I clung to my anger, and it grew. Anger was so much preferable to grief.” He laid his hand, very gently and tentatively, against her own. “Now, as I see you again, I remember other things.”

“Things such as what?”

“How very brave you were. How outspoken, how valiant. How you made me laugh, made me want to dance, when it seemed I would never want those things again.” His hand moved on hers, his fingers curling beneath her palm. “What a grand kisser you were.”

Carmen gave a choked laugh. “Oh, Peter!”

“It is true that you were! Why, I recall that afternoon we went walking beside what you called a river, but what was really only a small creek ...” He broke off and stared at her. “That was it, was it not? When I asked you to dance, you thought of that afternoon.”

“Yes. I remembered how very happy we were that day, and how our lives have changed since then. I was—overcome.”

“I remember that day, too.”

“Do you?”

Their gazes met, clung, and a silence, deeper than words, fell around them.

Then a carriage clattered past in the street. Carmen pulled away from him and rose to her feet. “We should go back. It will already be a great
on-dit
that we are both missing, and Elizabeth will be looking for me.”

Peter stood beside her. “Yes. Of course. But I still have so many questions, Carmen.”

She was walking away from him, her train now caught up and tossed over her arm. “As do I,” she called. “I am sure we will meet again, Peter. And then all questions will be answered.”

Carmen shut her bedroom door firmly, and leaned back against the solid wood. Her ribs ached from her swift run up the stairs to the safety of her room, and something that felt suspiciously like tears was making her cheeks damp.

She wiped at them impatiently with her gloved hand, then tossed her wrap and reticule onto the turned-down bed. As she stripped off her gloves, she noticed that somewhere she had lost her painted silk fan. It seemed she was losing bits of apparel every time she went out in public, first her comb and now her fan. And not even for interesting, amorous causes.

“Ah, Peter,” she sighed.

She sat down at her dressing table, and rested her chin in her hand. In the glass, she appeared a disgruntled, rumpled-haired schoolgirl, with an unflattering frown on her face.

Peter was as much a puzzle as he had ever been. Did he hate her? Or did he—and this was the truly frightening thought—love her still, deep in his heart?

As she still loved him. So very much.

There. She had thought it. She loved him.

She shook her head fiercely, and sat up straighter. There was nothing she could do about Peter, or her feelings for him, that night. A better subject to occupy her mind was her own silly behavior.

“What a nodcock you were!” she told her reflection sternly. “Dashing out of there simply because he asked you to dance. What were you thinking? Do you want to cause a scandal?”

And she had been having such a productive evening with Robert Means. Robert, so open, artless, and charming. So very happy to see her again.

He had been such an unlikely soldier all those years ago; more a gentleman farmer than a warrior. He seemed an unlikely blackmailer now. Yet Carmen had learned, in very difficult and painful ways, that the way things seemed were so often not how they were.

Robert could very well be her letter writer. He knew of her activities in wartime; now he knew of her new place in Society. He was really her most likely candidate, as painful as that was to confess. But she would need more time to be sure.

Elizabeth’s house party would be the perfect chance to become better acquainted with Robert Means. She would have to be sure he received an invitation.

Carmen’s bedroom door opened, interrupting her thoughts. A tiny, white night-gowned figure appeared there, clutching a favorite doll with one hand and rubbing sleepily at her eyes with the other.

Carmen smiled at Isabella, and held out her hand. “What is it, darling? Could you not sleep?”

“I had a bad dream. I was going to find Esperanza, but I saw your light.” Isabella glanced speculatively at the bed. “Could I sleep with you, Mama? Just for tonight?”

“Of course you may! Come to Mama, and tell her all about your dream.” Isabella rushed into her arms then, and Carmen pressed kisses to her daughter’s sleep-warm curls. Spies and blackmailers were completely forgotten. “Telling about it makes it disappear ...”

Chapter Nine

“W
ell, you certainly jumped into the scandal broth last night, brother.” Elizabeth stood before him, her face fierce and frowning in the harsh morning sunlight that flooded from the high library windows.

“Not now, Elizabeth,” Peter bit out.

“Yes, now! Whatever were you thinking? It is not at all like you to behave so—so improperly. Embarrassing Carmen in front of everyone! Tell me what you were thinking.”

“I was not thinking.”

Elizabeth snorted. “That is obvious! I do not rightly understand you. You say you want nothing to do with her, that you have made a new life, then you accost her on the dance floor and cause quite an
on-dit.
Have you read the papers this morning? Are you trying to drive her back to the Continent? Do you love her, or do you not?”

“I—do not know,” he said quietly.

Elizabeth shook her head at him. “Oh, Peter. Of course you know. You love her, despite everything. Just as I love Nicholas.”

“But the past ...”

“Bother the past! If I can move beyond what happened when I first met Nick, then you can surely find a way to be with the woman you love.” She smoothed her hair back into its neat coiffure and tucked her shawl about her shoulders, her mind obviously now spoken. “I must go and finish packing for the journey to the country. We will see you this weekend at Evanstone Park, will we not?”

“Will Carmen be there?”

“Of course!” she answered blithely. “As will Lady Deidra Clearbridge and her
dear
mother. I received their note just yesterday.”

Two days after the disastrous Carstairs rout, Robert Means came to call on Carmen.

Unfortunately, despite his cheering presence and conversation, Carmen was still distracted over her moonlit conversation with Peter.

What could it all mean, his sudden desire for peace between them? Could it mean he was at last willing to listen to her account of what had occurred in Spain? Did he merely wish to wed his proper Lady Deidra, without the dark cloud of his hasty marriage hovering over him?

Or did he desire that they be friends again? Or, perhaps, more than friends? And what did she feel about that?

Hm.

“Carmen,” Robert said. Then, louder, “Condesa!”

She snapped her gaze back to him and smiled. “Yes?”

He shook his head ruefully. “You have not attended a word I have been saying.”

“Indeed I have!”

“Then why, just now when I mentioned an orphanage my mother is sponsoring in Cornwall, did you smile?”

“Oh, Robert. I am sorry. I have been so tired these last days, so—distracted, by many things.”

“Yes.” He looked away from her, to the fire that was crackling in her drawing room grate, and to the mantel above it, crowded with many objects and pictures. “And I believe I could say what one of the chief distractions could be.”

The blackmailing letters? Carmen leaned toward him. “Yes? And what is that?”

“Your husband.”

“Oh.” The word seemed to strike her physically, and she leaned back in her chair. “Yes, it has been rather a shock to find him suddenly in my life again, after so many years.”

“You still love him, do you not?”

“I—oh, Robert, really!” she protested.

“Forgive my informality. I still find it difficult to remember that I am no longer in an army billet! Especially with old friends such as you.”

“I sometimes have the same problem. And, yes—I do still love Peter.” And what a relief it was, to finally say it aloud.

“Does he love you?”

Carmen shrugged. “Perhaps not. We
have
been apart a long time.”

“I doubt that very much. That he does not love you, that is. How could he not?”

“Do you really think so, Robert?”

“I do.” His voice hardened just a bit, and he would not meet her eyes. “I never saw a man so in love as Peter was—is with you. We seldom saw each other when we returned from Spain, but I did hear that he was not doing well at all. I knew it was hopeless mourning.”

Carmen could feel the hot pricking of tears behind her eyes, and she blinked very hard to hold them back. It would never do for her to suddenly become a watering pot, especially in front of someone she was not entirely certain of. “I mourned, as well. But that was a long time ago; Peter has a new life now. As do I.”

“Now, that I do not believe.” Robert still would not look at her directly, but he smiled. “I will confess, Carmen, that when we met again, I cherished a few hopes of my own.”

“Robert!”

“Yes. I so admired you in Spain. I had never met anyone like you. Then I saw you again, here in England, and I thought perhaps ...” He broke off on a short bark of laughter. “Now I see I was mistaken.”

Carmen reached over and patted his hand gently. “You are a dear man, Robert. I am sure you will find happiness very soon, with a very proper English miss!”

He shook his head. “Such as Lady Deidra Clearbridge, mayhap?”

Carmen laughed. “How very convenient that would be! If only you could be so obliging, Robert.”

“I am not certain even I could be so obliging, Carmen.”

“Well, Elizabeth kindly obtained vouchers to Almack’s for us. I am sure she could do the same for you, and then we could look over the newest crop of young misses and find you a lovely one.”

“I will look forward to it. But now, I must be going.”

“Of course. It was so kind of you to call. And I am sure we shall see more of each other in the future.”

Robert bowed over her hand, lingering just an instant more than was proper. “I am sure we shall. Good day, Carmen.”

“Good day, Robert.” And she watched him leave, more puzzled than ever before.

But she did not have time that day to sit and ponder over Robert Means, and whether or not he could be the blackmailer or was just a lovestruck swain. She had packing to do.

Carmen carefully folded a soft Indian shawl and laid it atop the gowns already in her trunk. “I do believe that is everything I shall need.”

Esperanza handed her a pair of satin dancing slippers. “You forgot these, Carmencita.”

Carmen groaned. “Dancing! I do not think I’ll want to do very much of that this weekend.”

“You love to dance!” Esperanza’s tone conveyed that she did not exactly approve of
dancing,
not for proper widowed ladies anyway.

“Yes, of course I do.” She slid the shoes into the trunk, and shut the lid with a bang. “Under the right circumstances.”

“Isabella is very disappointed not to be going to Lady Elizabeth’s party.”

Carmen sighed. “Yes, I know. She was inconsolable. But I told her there would be no other children there, and she would be very bored.” She sat down at her dressing table and picked up a hairbrush, only to put it back down again. Her hands simply would not be still. “Do
you
mind staying in Town alone for a few days, Esperanza?”

Esperanza shook her head. “Not a bit! The little one and I will have a splendid time. I have promised her we could have ices at Gunter’s again, and go to that Astley’s you told her about.”

“She will adore that!” Carmen picked up the brush again and ran it quickly through her hair. “I simply could not take her with me this time.”

Peter was sure to be there, and she was not at all prepared to tell Isabella’s father of her existence, even though she knew it would have to be done. If only she could be certain of Peter’s reaction ...

One day she would tell him. Just not yet.

“Pardon me, Condesa.”