Spanish Marriage Read online

  The Spanish Marriage

  A Regency Romance

  Madeleine Robins

  Book View Café Edition

  May 22, 2012

  ISBN 978-1-61138-172-6

  Copyright © 1984 Madeleine Robins

  Dedication

  For three good friends, with a lot of love:

  Susan Mezoff, Elaine Rado, and Barbara Dicks,

  who have severally seen me through a lot of Romance.

  Chapter One

  Despite the heavy layers of her borrowed novice’s habit—black gown and scapular, long white veil—Thea shivered slightly in the cool dimness of the Superior’s sitting-room. The motion, slight as it was, must have caught Doña de Silva’s eye: she looked up, frowned reflectively, and scolded: “You are pale as a ghost, Dorotea. Go walk in the garden.”

  “I am perfectly fine as I am, Silvy,” Thea protested. Since their arrival in Spain, Dorothea had chafed under her duenna’s increasing tendency to condescend, to speak as if Thea were a schoolgirl, instead of a young woman of nearly nineteen years. At the convent matters had only gotten worse.

  “Doña de Silva is right, child,” Mother Beatriz said. Thea clenched her hands in frustration: everyone addressed her as “child.” “You have been too much inside,” the Superior went on.

  That made Silvy wince and flush unhappily; she was well aware that it was her illness that had kept Thea indoors in the first sunny days of spring. Thea could have struck the Superior for her well-intentioned words; she and Silvy had become fiercely protective of each other in the last months of their journey, and, with Silvy still weakened from her long fever, it was all Thea could do to distract her from fretting over their future. It was bleak enough, inarguably. Neither Dorothea, nor Mother Beatriz, nor Sister Juan Evangelista, the convent Infirmarian, saw any point in Doña de Silva’s undoing the hard work of her cure with worrying.

  “Do you hear me, Dorotea? Go walk in the orchard. Your blessed mother would never forgive me if I were to let you fall ill, and besides that, you make such a muddle of that linen it hurts me to see it,” Silvy added with heavy humor.

  That was that. When Silvy invoked the memory of her mother Thea understood that capitulation was the wisest course. She rose, made her curtsy to Mother Beatriz, kissed Silvy’s narrow, dry cheek, and left the room. She managed the awkward weight of the habit as best she could. After three months it was still unfamiliar and cumbersome to her; to a girl raised in the muslin dresses of an English schoolroom, the heavy layers of the borrowed habit were not only a sorry trial but, at times, an absolute menace. She had tripped over her skirts more times than her dignity permitted her to admit.

  Once she had closed the door behind her she was unable to keep from stopping for a moment, hovering near the door, listening for what they would say. They would be speaking of her. Not vanity, but an absolute comprehension of her situation and of the trouble she posed to her guardian and to the nuns made Thea think so. There was Silvy’s long sigh, the inevitable, unanswerable question: “What am I to do with her? If only her father were still alive, if only she had a vocation....”

  “Clara,” she heard Mother Beatriz begin. Then old Sister Ana came shuffling down the hall; she eyed Thea knowingly.

  “None of that, Señorita,” the old woman admonished. “Mother and your duenna will talk, if they must; you have no business to be listening. What sort of manners do the English teach their daughters, after all? Go play in the garden like a good child.” To ensure obedience Sister Ana settled herself heavily on the bench by the doorway, took her rosary in her hand, and began a mumbled Ave. Left with no choice, Thea gathered up her skirts and swept down the hall to the garden stair.

  She emerged from the cool and the damp of the hallway into the full noon glare of the courtyard and waited for a moment until her eyes could adjust; she picked out the darkened doorway of the kitchen to her left, the little pathway beyond leading to the Chapel, the scuttling shapes of chickens wandering across the yard. She paid no attention to what she saw: her mind was still on Silvy and Mother Beatriz in the dimness of the sitting-room; she wondered if they would come up with a new solution to the problem of her future. She doubted it.

  “I will not take vows,” she muttered to herself. “Silvy cannot ask that of me, and Mother won’t take me without a vocation. I hope.” For a moment Thea had a vision of herself: a member of the order, subject to the perpetual, sighing goodwill of the sisters—one of them herself. Feeling ungrateful at the same time, she shuddered. They had been kind—more than kind—since she and Silvy had arrived seeking refuge. In these days, to take in an Englishwoman, no matter if half-Spanish, was beyond kindness: it was bravery. After the months when she had realized that none of her own people, neither her father’s family in England nor her mother’s people in Spain, wanted her, Thea was grateful to these women who had taken her and her duenna in—strangers—and treated them with such open kindness.

  It was bitter to realize as well that she was a danger to them. Angrily, because she was so deeply aware of her obligation to them, Thea refused the only option that might have made her and the convent safe again: membership in the community.

  One of the kitchen sisters was sitting on a stool by the orchard gate and shelling beans. Thea smiled stiffly at her, dipped a curtsy as she passed through the gate, and started off for the orchard and the field beyond it, her steps as long as her height and the weight of her habit would permit. Silvy wore her own gowns, grey and black—sober enough for a nun, Thea had always thought. It had been decided when they arrived and were granted sanctuary that Thea should wear a novice’s habit, both as a disguise to cover her short, feathery, blond hair, and as a practical measure. Her day dresses were not suited to conventual life or to nursing.

  She was hoping to walk off some of her anger and worry; she was ashamed as always of the feelings every kindly-meant whisper and glance occasioned in her. A damnable sort of kindness that made her ever more aware of what a nuisance and trial she was to everyone. Especially Silvy, she thought miserably. That was hard: Silvy had practically raised her, had been the affectionate, worrying counterpoint to her father’s easygoing, neglectful presence. Silvy had come to England when her cousin Celia married Sir Henry Cannowen, and, on Celia’s death seven years later, she had stayed to raise Celia’s daughter, Dorothea. Thea had always known that Silvy disapproved of her father and that Sir Henry disliked her cordially. Privately, Thea had always enjoyed her blustery wastrel father, as she would a delightfully foolish companion, but she understood Silvy’s distress at him and the way he held household. Thea had never realized, until her father’s death, that Silvy’s dislike went beyond Sir Henry to include all of England and all things English. Watching Silvy as she spent weeks closeted with Sir Henry’s man of business, Thea saw the worried frown on her long, somber face deepen and heard increasingly bitter remarks about “this country,” “these people,” “this place.”

  None of Sir Henry’s family, which had been as little pleased by his marriage to Celia Ibañez-de Silva as her family had been, vouchsafed any assistance or advice after his death. It was a shocking thing for Henry to have died so young, and was it not fortunate that, while the Baronetcy had passed on to a cousin, Sir Henry’s estate was not entailed. The fact that Grahamley Hall was the only thing of value left to Dorothea, and that her father’s debts nearly outweighed the value of the estate, did not soften anyone’s heart. Dorothea’s grandmother, her aunts—Susan and Eliza—her uncle Edmund, all sent polite condolences. None was willing to attend Sir Henry’s funeral, let alone to take in his daughter.

  Silvy and Thea had stayed on at Grahamley as long as they could; they watched the slender monies of Dorothea’s inheritance disappear, as if by mag
ic: servants’ wages, mourning clothes, food, stable expenses, a thousand minor, damning things. In the end, it had been a neighbor, Mrs. Haddersleigh, who provided a solution to their slow impoverishment. “What I don’t see,” she had said, her plump, mittened hands clutching at the thin china teacup, as if she suspected it were capable of flight, “What I do not see is why you do not simply sell this place and go to your mama’s relatives in Spain. Surely they would be delighted to see you?” Then she added, lest Thea think her unneighborly, “You know, dear Miss Cannowen, that I would invite you to stay with us; only, Mr. Haddersleigh was saying just the other day that his cousin Sophy must needs come to us again this summer. Besides, my dear, I am afraid he has the most gothick objections to foreigners. Not that you are foreign, of course, but....” She glanced at Silvy’s impassive face with insensitive meaning.

  Dorothea had hastily ushered Mrs. Haddersleigh from the house; she heartily wished her at Jericho and returned to the drawingroom full of apologies. Silvy was smiling.

  “That one,” she began disdainfully. “That Mrs. Haddersleigh is an imbecile, but she is right. Niña, we will go to Spain! Your aunts and uncles there will take us in; your grandfather, the Barón, he will arrange a marriage....”

  “Wonderful,” Thea said dryly. Silvy was not to be stopped. For days, while their debating and considering went on, Thea was overwhelmed with stories of Spain, of sunshine, and of gracious, happy people. “The English are like frogs!” Silvy pronounced baldly. “I never wanted your mama to come to this place, niña. Now, when we go back, you will see what real people are.”

  The more that Dorothea had considered the matter, the more it seemed the solution to their problems. There was no future for her now in England but to go as governess, and Silvy would never have countenanced that. “You are Ibañez-de Silva,” she protested when Thea first offered the idea. “Even, you are Cannowen. Your papa would never have allowed such a thing!”

  “If Papa had wished to have a say in the matter, Silvy, he ought not to have gone out with the Hunt on a morning when he was still half-foxed and on a hunter he could not hold. Only think: we are nearly penniless, and if I could find a position....’

  Silvy had been immovable. She began to make inquiries about travel arrangements, about selling Grahamley.

  “Oughtn’t we to write and to see if my grandfather will take me in?”

  “Take you in? Of a surety, cara. We will write and tell the Barón we are coming. You who have been brought up in this cold country, do not understand. You are the daughter of the daughter of the Barón Ibañez-de Silva. Of course he will take you in. The Barón will arrange all.”

  o0o

  “The Barón will arrange all,” Dorothea repeated now, kicking a clod of dry, pale dirt, watching it disappear on the point of her shoe. “Yes, he arranged everything deedily, didn’t he? Thanks to the Barón poor Silvy practically catches her death of cold in the street in Burgos! Thanks to the Barón we go flying off to a nunnery like something out of Shakespeare! The Barón! Pfaugh. If I had my grandfather here, I’d tell him....”

  A sound like a low-voiced groan brought her out of her fine reverie of vengeance. Surely it was impossible, a man’s voice within the convent enclosure, but it was a voice nonetheless. Thea was almost certain. She was fluent in English, Spanish, and French, but this sound was none of them.

  “Hola!” she ventured nervously. No use trying English here; the English were enemies again, since the Bourbon king Carlos had signed the treaty of Fontainebleau with Bonaparte. It might be a French soldier—the thought made her shiver; she had heard stories about the French troops marching through Spain. If it was one such, her borrowed habit would be little protection from him. This complicity with the French had been another of her uncle Tomas’s reasons, there at the inn at Burgos: too dangerous to have a niece, even a half-Spanish one, with an English surname and wheat-blond hair, as part of his household. “Quien es?” she tried again.

  There was no sound this time, but a faint rustling in the brush by the ditch. Dorothea considered probabilities. A child from the village, looking for berries; a goat, foraging; a Bonapartist spy; a Fernandista, lost in the northern wilds and come to enlist the aid of the nuns in the Prince’s cause....

  “Fustian,” she said aloud. “Fairytales.” She turned around again, away from the culvert. At her first step the sound began again, faintly, a soft sporadic moaning that faded into the reedy sound of the wind through the brush. Someone has hurt an animal, Thea thought indignantly, and she moved toward the sound again. As she edged closer to the culvert Thea pulled the skirts of her habit closer, a foolish gesture which, unaccountably, made her feel safer. Carefully, so as not to startle it, whatever it was, she peered over the edge, into the underbrush, and found herself staring at the ragged, filthy body of a man.

  Her first thought, after her astonishment, was that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen, a hero from the pages of the novels of which Silvy so deeply disapproved. Not a bright, fair-haired hero; this man was dark, brooding, with black hair tumbled over his high, dirty forehead; he had a long nose and a shapely mouth, a narrow, determined chin. Certainly, she thought, if he opened his eyes, they would be black and filled with secret sorrows.

  “Owwrch.” The man was shivering convulsively. That was what made the brush rustle so.

  Heedless of the danger in attending a lone man here, out of sight of the convent, and quite careless of the damage to her habit, Thea clambered into the ditch and knelt beside the man. He did not have the look of a peasant, nor even that of a Spaniard. His clothes were rough, dirty, and torn; about him, there was an almost unbearable smell of sweat, sickness, and a trace of stale drink. Her first thought was that he was drunk, but she remembered too well from her father how a man deep in his cups smelled, how he acted; there was something much worse than drink to blame for the stranger’s stupor. Tentatively, she reached to touch his forehead.

  “Angel.” She drew her hand back, startled. “Can’ be angel. Not f’ me. Wunnever bleeve it.” His eyes had opened quite suddenly. They were blue, not black, and hazy with fever. “Are you an angel or not?” he demanded quite clearly—and in English. Then he gave a convulsive shudder and fell back again.

  “Sir?” She shook him gently, but there was no response. “Sir? Diós,” she muttered to herself. He was English; her heart had lifted momentarily at the sound of those few crisp, deep-voiced words. Here was a gentleman, whatever his dress. Thea was appalled by the stench when she leaned close; his forehead was burning hot, and, when she brushed the hair back, she was sickened by the sight of a deep gash smeared with blood and obviously infected. “My God.”

  What to do? Tell Mother Beatriz? Or simply fetch Manuel Ortiz, the man who was porter for the nuns, and have him bring the man up to the convent? He was as English as she herself was; she could hardly permit him to stay in the village where he might be discovered by the authorities. However, Mother Beatriz would fret, worry about the danger to the House, and by the time she made a decision, the stranger could well be dead.

  “Sir?” she tried again.

  Her voice or touch roused him a little. He opened his eyes and really seemed to see her this time. “Adele?” He was squinting; Thea realized that she must be framed against the sunlight, her face indiscernible. “Not Adele,” he added with a feverish chuckle. “Nor an angel either, but closer. Lo siento, hermana. Estoy enfermo.” His accent was dreadful.

  “Can you walk? Please, sir, I can take you to the convent, if you can walk.”

  “English? Must be an angel after all.” He peered up at her face, grimacing as he shifted positions to see her better. “Go away, little Sister. Dangerous companions....” He closed his eyes and seemed to be drifting toward unconsciousness again.

  “Sir?” There was desperation in Thea’s voice. “Please, sir, can you stand up?”

  The stranger’s eyes opened again, unseeing. “Adele?” he asked again. “Bitch,” he said, and he fainted dead awa
y.

  Nothing Thea could do would rouse him this time. He lay there, pale under the grime and sunburn, shivering in the noonday sun. There was no way to bring him to the convent alone. As she sat back on her heel and tried to think, he groaned again. Rising clumsily to her feet, Thea looked around her, then hitched up her skirts and ran for the convent.

  o0o

  Sister Maria Trinidad would not dispatch Manuel to the man without Mother Superior’s approval. “And she is in the chapel with the Sacristan and must not be disturbed,” she added. “These are dangerous times, child. Harboring an Englishman, if that is what....”

  “Is it any worse than harboring an Englishwoman?” Thea asked impatiently. “Sister, if something is not done for that poor man soon, he’ll die. I vow I will put on my English clothes and ride into the village on a donkey and announce....”

  “Hush, child, don’t speak foolishness. As if the villagers did not understand who you and Doña de Silva were. You keep up this masquerade against strangers—French soldiers. A stranger and a man? Where would we put him?”

  “In the guest house,” Thea suggested logically.

  “Inside the House?” Sister Maria Trinidad was shocked. “And who would nurse him, if he is sick as you say? Manuel is not a nurse, and two men inside the enclosure....”

  “I will nurse him then. I helped to nurse Silvy, Doña de Silva. Even Sister Juan Evangelista would tell you....” Seeing a trace of softening in Sister Maria’s eyes, Thea dropped to her knees and took the nun’s hands in her own. “Dear, kind Sister, let me do this. I’m half mad for occupation since Silvy is well again. Truly, the man will die if we don’t help him.”

  Sister Maria Trinidad regarded Thea with troubled eyes. “I will talk with Mother, child. Wait here.”

  So Dorothea waited. It seemed to her, as the minutes stretched on and on and her concern for the handsome stranger in the orchard grew, that Mother and Sister Maria must be talking over a great deal more than whether or not to aid a stricken traveller. Half an hour passed before Sister Maria Trinidad reappeared, puffing slightly after the rapid descent from the upper hall.