Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (37 page)

But her attention strayed often down the length of the flower-laden table, to where Peter sat between Lady Deidra and her orange satin-clad mother. Deidra spoke with him, quietly, earnestly, her bright head bent near his shoulder. Though he smiled and nodded at her words, Carmen couldn’t help but notice that he, too, reached for his wineglass often. He seemed distant from all the merriment and chatter that flowed around them, preoccupied, but always unfailingly polite.

She wished she could read him, so cool and polite, so distant. She wished she could tell what he was thinking; most of all, what he was thinking of her. She wanted to tell him all about Isabella, the beautiful, delightful girl they had created together.

If only she could be certain ...

Carmen sighed and took another sip of her wine.

“... Would you, Condesa?”

Viscount Huntington’s voice drew her back from her imaginings, into the gaiety of the supper table. She blinked up at him.

“I am sorry, Lord Huntington. I must have been woolgathering. Did you ask me something?”

He nodded understandingly. “Quite understandable, I’m sure. The trip from London is quite tiring. I just hope that you are not too tired for the charades after supper.”

Carmen was appalled. “Ch-charades?”

“Yes. Lady Elizabeth was just saying that she planned for everyone to draw names for charade teams after supper. We will perform them on Sunday evening.”

Now Carmen knew why she had truly never come to England before. It had not been grief. It had been the British propensity for party games. She had hoped to be safe at least at Elizabeth’s house! “Well—no, of course not. One can never be too tired for charades.”

“Excellent!” He smiled at her shyly. “I hope we are on the same team, Condesa.”

She smiled at him, and took another sip of wine. Her gaze slid once again down the table, expecting to find Peter still conversing with Lady Deidra.

Yet Deidra had turned her attention to the gentleman on her left. And Peter was instead watching her, his eyes a warm turquoise in the candlelight. He raised his glass, and in a small, subtle gesture, tilted it in a salute.

Carmen almost choked on her wine.

After the ladies departed to take tea in the drawing room, Peter stayed at the supper table with the other men to sip his port and smoke his cigar. He even managed to engage in the discussion concerning politics and horses with a bit of coherence.

Yet his mind, as always of late, was elsewhere. It was in the drawing room, to be precise, with his wife and her damnably dashing gown!

She was hiding something, he thought. The Carmen he had known in Spain had been more than free with her views and opinions; she had argued with him heatedly on many topics, from politics to art and music, and had never hedged. He thought that it must have arisen from her careful, traditional upbringing; they had been tamped down inside for so long, just waiting to spring free. And he had adored that about her.

This new condesa had certainly learned subtlety. Age had lent her a new beauty and a new careful sophistication.

But she would not meet his gaze directly, would not smile at him with her old, open, sunny ways. Even after their revelations in his library.

What could it be she kept inside her? He burned to know, to understand this new Carmen.

No woman but Carmen, either before or after her, had ever stirred this wild need to know, to possess every secret and desire of her heart. After so many years of a frozen anger, his own heart had dared to begin to hope again. There were many things between them, good and terrible, but she still spoke to his soul as no one else ever could.

Yet she still held herself apart!

Could it be she had no feelings left for him, that he had killed them and there was not an ember left in her heart?

Could it be she cared for another? She was so beautiful, so unique. Many men surely desired her.

Men like—that Viscount Huntington Elizabeth had insisted on pairing Carmen with.

Peter looked at the man who was talking with Nicholas. He was a handsome man, Huntington, a wealthy man, so Peter had heard, who lived a quiet, content life in the country. He had been in Spain, as well, but had seemingly left the war behind the instant he returned to England, and had never lost his sweet ways.

Unlike Peter, the darkness had not swallowed him.

Huntington had smiled and talked with Carmen throughout supper, his face open and warm and a bit shy as he watched her. And she had laughed with him, the rich, brandy-dark laughter that Peter had not heard since their wedding night.

Damn Huntington.

Peter tossed back the last of his port and reached for the decanter.

“Well,” Nicholas said, too cheerfully in Peter’s opinion, as he rose from his chair. “Shall we rejoin the ladies, then? I think Elizabeth was planning some amusement.”

“May I join you?”

Carmen looked up from her book, surprised, nay
shocked,
to see Lady Deidra Clearbridge standing beside her chair. The other woman’s serene smile was in place, her blue-blue eyes placid, giving no clue as to her motivation in seeking out Carmen. She looked very pleasant, and bland, and English.

What a perfect Countess of Clifton she would make,
Carmen reflected wryly.

She smiled in return and tucked away her book. “Of course, Lady Deidra. Please do.”

As Deidra sat, her pale pink skirts fluttered about her like the petals of a dainty rose. She even smelled roselike, and a wreath of white roses twined in her red-gold curls.

Carmen had thought she had long ago left behind her awkward schoolgirl days, towering like a gawky giant over all the other girls at the convent. Now those days came back upon her in a rush.

“I do hope you are enjoying your stay in
our
country, Condesa,” Deidra said, her eyes wide and polite over the edge of the teacup she raised to her lips.

“Oh, yes,” Carmen answered. “I have found it very charming.”

“Though I am certain it cannot be as exciting as Paris, or Italy. Or Spain.” One dainty brow rose. “I myself have never wanted to venture away from England. But I did hear you were lately in Paris?”

“Indeed. And before that in Italy, and in Vienna.”

“Yes. The Continent is growing ever smaller, is it not? Travel is so very much easier since the end of the war. You must have found it so yourself, being so very well traveled.”

“Oh, yes,” said Carmen, a bit puzzled. “I have enjoyed great ease of travel. And the variety of company I have encountered is always a pleasure.”

The drawing room doors opened then, to admit the gentlemen who had concluded their rituals of port and cigars. Deidra glanced at them briefly before turning her smile back to Carmen. “I presume then that we must soon lose your delightful company to the lure of travel and variety. What a great loss to England.”

Carmen eyed her companion impassively, thinking,
Why, the little baggage!
She almost laughed aloud at these attempts to be rid of the foreign interloper. “That is very kind of you to say, Lady Deidra.”

“Well, I am very happy, Condesa, that we had this chance to chat. I am certain we shall see each other again, before the weekend is concluded.”

“I am sure we shall.”

Deidra nodded and rose to cross the room in her graceful pink flutter. She took Peter’s arm with her small hand, and stood on tiptoe to speak quietly in his ear.

Carmen looked away, into the flames that leapt high in the marble grate. She could feel a headache forming behind her eyes, a sharp pain born of confusion, exhaustion, even apprehension. She was just gathering her book and shawl, to make her excuses to Elizabeth and then retire, when she felt a warm, masculine hand alight briefly on her shoulder.

She turned, almost hopeful, to see Viscount Huntington standing behind her. Peter was still across the room, with Lady Deidra.

Carmen forced herself to smile in welcome, and patted the arm of the chair that had been recently vacated by Lady Deidra. Huntington, after all, was a very amiable gentleman.

He sat down shyly. “I saw that you were conversing with the Clearbridge Pearl, Condesa.”

“Is that what she is called? I found her more of a ...” Carmen paused. “Rose.”

“Oh, yes. That, too. She is much admired. Young fops compose odes to her eyelashes, that sort of thing. They say she has had twenty offers.”

Carmen laughed. “Was one of them yours, Lord Huntington?”

He looked affronted. “Lud, no. I couldn’t tolerate being leg-shackled to such alabaster dignity my whole life, even if she would accept my addresses. Pardon my saying so, Condesa.”

“Of course. But why would she not accept your addresses? You seem a very nice young man to me.”

He blushed a bright pink, all the way into his cravat. “I’m not top-lofty enough for an earl’s daughter!”

“Ah.”

Then Elizabeth interrupted their conversation, swooping down upon them with folded bits of paper clutched in her hand.

“Oh, Carmen, there you are!” she cried. “Do forgive me, Huntington, for stealing her away, but I simply must beg her assistance in setting up my game.”

“Elizabeth,” Carmen protested, “if it is charades, I do not know how...”

“Not at all! I would not have
charades
at my party. This is
tableaux.”

Carmen did not see how that was any different. “Tableaux?”

“Yes. Here, hold these papers for me.” Elizabeth had gathered a crowd with her enthusiasm, and she now clambered onto a chair to make her instructions heard. “Every team will be assigned a scene from Greek mythology to enact. The team which is the most dramatic, the most convincing, shall win the prize!” A small murmur of excitement arose, and she raised her hand for silence. She flashed a brilliant smile at Carmen, and then turned one onto her brother. “I shall assign the first scene to none other than my own brother, Lord Clifton, who, along with the Condesa de Santiago, shall enact Endymion and Selene!”

Carmen closed her eyes. She could hear Lady Deidra’s hissing whisper, “Well, this is a most shocking pastime! I must say I had hoped Lady Elizabeth would show more propriety, despite being an
artist.”

Yet, even with her eyes squeezed shut and her ears trying to do so, Carmen could feel the weight of Peter’s regard from across the room as he watched her. When she opened her eyes to look back at him, to beseech him to talk some sense into his sister, he
winked
at her!

“Psst! Carmen! Are you awake?”

Carmen rolled over in her bed and blinked sleepily, certain she must be dreaming. But when she pinched herself, it did not go away. Elizabeth still stood at her bedside, wrapped in a cloak, a lantern held aloft.

“I am now,” Carmen said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “Whatever are you about, Lizzie?”

“Some of us are going out to look at the moon from the medieval ruins nearby. It is full tonight, you know. So romantic!”

“The ruins? But it must be after midnight!”

“Nearly two, I believe. Do you want to come?”

Carmen glanced at her window, at the bar of silvery moonlight that spilled from between the velvet drapes. She could feel the old excitement of adventure tingling in her fingertips again, something that had not happened for so very long.

The fact that this adventure was looking at the moon at two in the morning rather than facing French guns made it all the better.

“I may as well, since I am already awake.” She climbed out of the bed and reached into the wardrobe for a plain muslin day dress and her cloak.

The others were already waiting for them on the drive. There was Georgina Beaumont, who carried a large picnic hamper; Nicholas, with a bottle of champagne; Lord Huntington, and Miss Dixon. And Peter.

Lady Deidra and her mother were nowhere in sight.

Elizabeth and Nicholas led the way down a narrow, tree-lined pathway that veered off of the main drive, closely followed by the chattering, laughing group. Carmen and Peter brought up the rear.

“I saw that Robert Means declined Elizabeth’s invitation,” she said quietly.

“Yes. I do believe that he has kept his word to me, and retired to the country for good. I went to see him after—well, after we spoke in my library. He promised he would leave London.” Peter’s hand sought hers, warm and reassuring in the chilly darkness. “He will not be bothering you again.”

Carmen squeezed his hand. “He never
bothered
me. That is what makes his lies so very shocking.”

“Perhaps even more shocking than that I would believe them?”

“Perhaps,” Carmen whispered.

Peter jumped lightly over a fallen log, and reached back to assist Carmen, swinging her up into his arms.

When she was on the other side of the log, he did not release her, but held her against him. Carmen looped her arms about his neck and looked down at his lovely, patrician face, illuminated by moonlight.

“I can never say I am sorry enough, Carmen,” he said softly. “I should have had more faith in you, in our feelings for one another.”

“So you should have,” she answered lightly. “But I have already forgiven you.”