Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (38 page)

“Come along, you two!” called Elizabeth. “No lagging behind, if you please. What kind of chaperone do you think I am? Even if I
am
an artist!”

The others shrieked with laughter.

Peter placed Carmen on her feet and wordlessly offered his arm. She took it, and they walked together into the clearing where the medieval watch tower, half ruined, stood sentinel.

Some of the others were already climbing up inside the tower, and their laughter cast a warm golden glow over the ancient stones. A stream rushed along behind it, its gurgle and tumble mingling with that laughter.

The moon bathed the whole scene in a gentle, silvery luminescence, giving it the unreal atmosphere of a painting.

Carmen thought it the perfect setting for a reawakening love.

Georgina leaned out of a window at the very top of the tower, her long red hair falling over her shoulders. “Look!” she called. “I am Rapunzel!”

Carmen laughed as she took in the whole enchanted, fairy-tale scene. “Is it not wonderful?”

“Lovely,” Peter said. “It is an enchanted night.”

“That is exactly what I thought.” Carmen looked up at him, to find he was watching her. “I am so happy we are sharing this together, Peter. I thought never to see such a thing with you again.”

“Neither did I, Carmen,” he answered. He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a tender, lingering kiss to her wrist. “Neither did I.”

Chapter Twelve

“ ‘E
ndymion the shepherd... the moon Selene, saw him, loved him sought him... Kissed him, lay beside him.’ Hmph.”

Carmen tossed aside the volume of Theocritus she was perusing over her morning chocolate. She slid down among the mound of pillows on her bed, and turned her face into the lavender-scented linen with a giggle.

Nothing, not even hiding her face, could erase the persistent vision of Peter clad in nothing but a brief, a very brief, chiton. And perhaps a pair of sandals.

She was beginning to suspect that Elizabeth, seemingly so very charming and sweet, was nothing but an imp.

Endymion and Selene, indeed! Carmen shuddered to think of what Elizabeth might conjure up next, in her misguided scheming.

“Carmen?” Elizabeth knocked softly at the door, seemingly conjured by Carmen’s thoughts. “Are you awake?”

“No,” Carmen called.

Elizabeth came inside anyway, already carefully coiffed and dressed in blue muslin and a lacy shawl. “I so need your assistance in organizing today’s excursion!”

Carmen pulled the bedclothes down from over her head, and peered at Elizabeth over the edge. “Not if it involves bloody tableaux.”

“Tsk tsk. Wherever did you learn such language? And the tableaux are our grand finale for Sunday.” She paused. “Though today would be an excellent opportunity for rehearsal. I was thinking of a small picnic at the tower we went to last night. The day looks to be a wonderful, sunny one, and you should see the tower in the light!”

“That does sound delightful,” Carmen answered reluctantly.

“I knew you would think so! Now, I must tell the others, so that we may be off directly after breakfast.” Elizabeth began to turn away, then paused, reaching into her pocket for a small bundle of letters. “I very nearly forgot! These came for you with the morning post.”

Carmen took the letters from her, but waited until she was alone again to peruse them. One was from Esperanza, with a carefully penned postscript from Isabella, detailing all they had been doing in Carmen’s absence (a pantomime at the Sadler’s Wells Theater seemed foremost among them). There were also two missives from friends in Paris, full of lively and amusing gossip.

And the last—the last was written on cheap, smudged paper and sealed with black wax.

Carmen dropped the letter, one hand pressed to her mouth to stifle a cry. How could they have found her. How could they have known where she was?

They were everywhere now. She was safe nowhere.

“I believe I owe you an apology, Carmen.”

Carmen, who had deliberately wandered from the others on their picnic excursion in order to be quiet and think, whirled around with a gasp at the unexpected sound of Peter’s voice. She crumpled the letter in her hand, pressing it tightly against the folds of her skirt.

He stood at the edge of the small circle of trees Carmen had found beside the stream, poised hesitantly, as if unsure of his welcome and prepared to instantly depart.

He was so achingly handsome, with the sunlight falling across his windswept golden hair, gilding it like a Greek icon. Carmen could almost have wept at his loveliness.

“Another apology?” she said. “What have you done this time?”

“For Lizzie’s—overly eager behavior. She has the artistic temperament, you know, and once she has a goal in mind she will not relinquish it.” He paused, watching the stream just beyond her figure. “I had the impression that she made you uncomfortable with her silly tableaux, which she no doubt learned about in Italy, and I wanted to be certain you knew you were under no obligation to go along with her. I could speak with her.”

“Oh, no,” Carmen protested. “I would not like to ruin Lizzie’s plans. Unless, that is,
you
do not wish to participate in the tableaux.” She glanced at him to gauge his reaction, but his expression was only very polite.

Then he smiled, the odd, crooked half smile that always made her stomach leap into her throat with no warning at all. “And forfeit the sight of you in a chiton, Carmen? Certainly not.”

“How very strange.”

“Strange? That a man should want to see you in a chiton?”

Carmen laughed, her mood instantly lightened. “I should hope not! Only odd because I had thought exactly the same about you. But I added sandals to the ensemble.”

Peter’s eyes widened, and Carmen feared she had ventured too far into flirting. It was early days yet, after all. She turned away to look at the water. “Is it not lovely here? So very peaceful.”

“Beautiful.” Peter moved to stand behind her, his breath warm on her cheek. “I used to come here often.”

“I thought that Elizabeth and Nicholas only recently purchased the property?”

“Oh, yes. But it is only a short ride from here to Clifton Manor. Old Lord Mountebank, the former owner, never cared if we ran wild here as children.”

“Clifton Manor. Your home.” Peter had spoken to her often of Clifton Manor while they were in Spain. He had told her of the house, of how it began life as a Tudor manor, the long-ago dowry of an Elizabethan bride to the second earl, and of how each earl had added to it until it was a sprawling amalgamation. He had told her of the hidey-holes he and Elizabeth had found as children, of the great gardens, and the lake with its Oriental summerhouse.

She had always felt as if she could see it, touch it, feel its spell woven of so many generations of love and laughter, reaching out to enfold her in its history.

Once, for a brief while, she had thought to be its mistress. To belong there, as Peter and Elizabeth did. To watch her children playing in the gardens.

Then she had known she would never live there.

“Yes,” said Peter. “My home.”

Carmen sat down on the grassy bank of the stream, tucking the thick green velvet of her habit beneath her against the damp. “Was it still all you had dreamed of when you returned there after Spain?”

He sat beside her, his long legs in their fashionable doeskin breeches stretched out before him. “Clifton had not changed at all. That is the beauty of it. It was still as green and peaceful as ever. It even smelled the same, of wax candles and beeswax polish. But I had changed. So much, too much. That I had not counted on. I had foolishly thought that when I came home I would be the same as before I left. I would forget the war and be at peace.”

“Yes,” said Carmen with a sigh. “I felt the very same, when I went home to my family’s house in Seville. I thought I could rejoin society, be a devout Spanish lady again.”

“When did you go back?”

“After I learned that you were dead. I was so exhausted, so ill. I only wanted to go home. Though my parents were long dead, I still thought of that house, so dark and quiet, as home. The places I had known as a child. I, too, thought I could forget and be at peace. So I went back, and I never spoke of what had happened, not to anyone.” Her fingers closed tighter about the crumpled letter she still held in her hand. The edges of the paper cut into her palm. “I only discovered, as we all must, that peace is only to be found in my heart. And my peace had gone.”

Peter leaned back on his elbows to look up at the sky above them, covered by the interlocking branches of the tress. The laughter of the group could be heard faintly as they climbed up inside the tower. The two of them seemed enclosed in a world of their own, though.

“Did Elizabeth tell you how I was ill when I returned home?” Peter said.

Carmen looked down at him, at his beautiful, still face. “Nicholas said that it was difficult for you. That you were not at all yourself. Did you have a fever from your wounds?”

“I was ill in my mind. I could not forget you, never leave what had happened between us behind me. It made me cruel, especially to my poor sister. All I could ever think about, ever see, was you.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “And I you.”

He touched her then, his hand warm on her arm, burning through the heavy fabric of her sleeve. She leaned against him and closed her eyes, letting herself feel, just for the moment, a measure of the security she had longed for for so long.

“This place,” Peter said. “Does it not remind you of another we have seen?”

She smiled without opening her eyes. “That river in Spain, near your camp. Where you asked me to dance . . .”

“And asked you to be my wife.”

“And I said yes, yes, yes!”

“And where I kissed you...”

Carmen laughed. “I do believe we did much more than kiss!”

Peter laughed, too, a rich sound rusty from disuse. “Oh, yes! I also recall that.”

Carmen opened her eyes and smiled at him. How could anyone call him the Ice Earl, she mused, when he was as golden and alive as the sun.

He gently reached up and touched her face, cradling her cheek in his palm as if it were the most precious, fragile crystal. “Carmen. Are you truly here with me, alive, or are you another dream?”

“I could ask the same of you,” she murmured. “I dreamed of a moment like this one so often during these years. Am I awake? Is this real?”

“Does this feel real to you?” Peter sat up and touched his lips softly to hers.

It was so strange, so familiar, so thrilling. Carmen leaned closer into the kiss, opening her lips under his inquisitive pressure. Her fingers reached to touch the satin of his hair, to feel him against her...

“Lord Clifton? Are you here?”

“I say, Clifton? Are you hiding from us?”

Carmen gasped at the sound of voices—Lady Deidra and Viscount Huntington. She pulled her mouth from Peter’s, drew out of his reaching arms to scramble to her feet. She brushed at her skirts, frantically trying to disentangle leaves and grass from the velvet.

It was a hopeless cause. She simply looked too much like a woman who had been rolling about on the ground, right to the guilty flush she was sure must be staining her cheeks.

“What was I thinking of?” she muttered. “Anyone could have seen us! What a scandal! What if ...”

Peter also rose to his feet, somewhat stiffly, and attempted to come to her aid. “Carmen, I never . . .”

He held out his hand to her, but she did not see it, stumbling back out of the clearing.

“Oh, Peter!” she cried. “Do not say you are sorry again! I couldn’t bear it.”

“Then please, let me ...”

She turned away from him and scooped up her hat and gloves from where they lay on the ground. “I must be alone right now, must—think. But we will speak later, Peter, I promise. It is only that—oh, it is
nothing
!
”

Then she rushed away to where the others were gathered beside the tower, brushing past Huntington and Deidra with only a distracted nod.

She did not even notice the balled-up, smeared note that had fallen from her hand, only to be found by a very puzzled Peter.

His face darkened as he read it, a rushing fury thundering in his ears. “By damn,” he whispered.

“Lord Clifton?” Deidra asked softly. “Is something amiss?”

He forced himself to look up at her serene face, and smiled tightly. “Not at all. Lady Deidra. Not at all.”

“I do not understand women in the least!”

Elizabeth looked up from the menus she was perusing to blink at her brother in surprise. He very seldom came into her personal rooms at all, let alone unannounced, to throw himself into a chair and make odd pronouncements.

“You, Peter? Not understand women?” she said with a snort. “I can scarce fathom that. They are always flocking about you so.”

“That does not mean I understand them; quite the opposite. The more I meet, the less I understand. And why should women want to
flock
at all?” He leaned his head back against the satin cushions of the chair, and closed his eyes. Yet he could still see Carmen by the stream, her dark hair tousled, her lips red from his kiss. The image seemed emblazoned on his eyelids, there for all time. “And Carmen de Santiago is the worst of the lot.”

“Ah, yes.” Elizabeth nodded sagely. “I often said the very same when I first met Nick—men are unfathomable, and Nicholas Hollingsworth is the very worst. I still think that, on occasion. That is what love does to a person, I suppose.”

“Love!”

“Yes. You love Carmen. There is no use in denying it.”

Peter could feel a blinding headache coming upon him, born of having to deal with
females,
whether they were mercurial wives-who-weren’t-wives, or too wise sisters. He shook his head slowly. “I was not going to deny it. I do love her. I have since I first saw her, and I suppose I never truly stopped. Even when she was dead.”

“Then, what is wrong?”

“I do not know!” Peter slapped his open palm against the arm of the chair. “It is Carmen. Every time it seems we may become close again, every time I try to understand her, she shies away like a skittish colt. She runs from me.” He remembered Carmen in Spain, on that afternoon by the river. How she would spin away from his arms, laughing, beckoning, her long curtain of hair spilling about her. It seemed she was still doing that. “She was always elusive as water, so intent on her independence. She always said she would never be as helpless as she was with her dreadful first husband again. Perhaps it is only the same thing now.”