Bride By Mistake (11 page)

Luke forced himself to drag his gaze off her. He couldn’t believe the difference in her appearance. The clothes were dreadful, of course—drab, concealing, and coarse—but their plainness suited her better than all those frills. And now he could really see her.

Not a little ugly duckling in a flock of swans, but something entirely different.

Her skin was palest ivory, and smooth, with a delicate flush that had been concealed by the garish rouge she’d worn before.

She’d abandoned the fussy, elaborate hairstyle. Her hair was now plaited in a simple coronet around her head, the thick plaits silken and glossy. She must have just washed it, for it seemed damp. Tiny curls clustered around her temple and nape.

The unfussy hairstyle revealed the elegant line of her head and neck and framed her face perfectly. She was not conventionally pretty—not pretty in the least, actually. With high cheekbones, a pointed chin, a commanding little nose bequeathed to her by some Roman ancestor, and golden eyes that met his with a mixture of shyness and defiance, she was
something far more interesting than pretty. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He was
married
to this slender, stunning creature in the dreadful clothes.

He wanted to touch her, to see if that ivory skin was as soft and silky as it seemed. Her cheekbones gave her a faintly haughty look, and her nose was bold and commanding.

But her mouth—oh Lord, what a mouth… He hadn’t noticed it before, when it had been painted in a small cupid’s bow. Now he could barely drag his gaze from it. Au naturel, her lips were like rich, ripe berries with the bloom still on. Plump, luscious, edible.

He must have moaned, for Reverend Mother turned to him with a look of faint inquiry. He managed to clear his throat and regarded her solemnly.

“So tomorrow you two will leave us,” Reverend Mother said. “Where do you plan to go, Lord Ripton?”

Isabella turned her head to look at her aunt, and Luke noticed a tiny, velvet mole, just below the delicate whorls of her left ear. His mouth dried.

“Lord Ripton?”

He glanced at Reverend Mother. “Go?”

“On your honeymoon.”

Honeymoon?
He hadn’t even thought about a honeymoon. This was to have been a duty. “We’ll make immediately for England, to my home there.”

Reverend Mother glanced at the silent girl between them. “I’m sure Isabella is looking forward to seeing her new home, aren’t you Isabella?”

Isabella made some sort of sound that might indicate assent, and the nun went on, “And I’m sure she’ll enjoy being out in the fresh air. She is very fond of fresh air.”

“Indeed?” Luke glanced at Isabella, noticed her mouth and immediately forgot what he’d been going to say.

“You have hired horses, I presume?”

Luke blinked and, with an effort, brought his attention back to the conversation. “Yes, I hope Isabella won’t find the
journey too wearying.” It was easier to conduct a conversation with the nun than with his wife. She was seemingly the quiet type—he had no complaint there; it was restful—and it was easier to maintain a civilized conversation without being… distracted. It was most disconcerting.

“It will be a long time since she last rode a horse. No doubt she’ll be very stiff at first.”

“Oh, but—” Reverend Mother began.

“A horse?” Isabella looked up. “What kind of horse?”

He glanced down at her, surprised. “Just a hired horse; nothing very special. It took me some time to find a suitable mount. Reverend Mother, you were saying?”

“Suitable?” Isabella frowned.

“Quite suitable,” he assured her. He turned back to the nun. “Reverend Mother?”

But Reverend Mother had either forgotten what she was going to say or had thought better of it.

“You don’t plan to spend any time in Spain?” she asked. “Isabella mentioned your late uncle owned several Spanish estates in Andalusia. I presume they now belong to you.”

“Yes, however—”

“Excellent. You will wish to visit them, since you are in Spain now.”

Luke said nothing. He did not wish to visit them in the least. He addressed himself to his stew.

Reverend Mother frowned slightly. “You will want to see how they fared during the war, surely?”

Luke drank some of the thin, slightly acid mountain wine.

Reverend Mother took off her pince-nez and gave him a governessy look down her long nose. “Things are a little… shall we say ‘unsettled’ in Spain at the moment, Lord Ripton. It would be as well to consolidate your ownership.”

Luke stiffened, irritated by the gratuitous advice and implied moral lecture. He had an agent to check that sort of thing for him, but he had no intention of justifying himself to anyone, let alone a bossy nun, even if she was now his relative by marriage.

“I need to return to England,” he said brusquely. “I have an engagement there I must meet.” And he wouldn’t spend a single night more in this godforsaken country than he had to.

“It seems a shame not to—”

“A very important engagement,” he said in a final note. “Tell me, I noticed when I arrived here the walls of the convent had been damaged. Were you attacked?”

He’d intended it as a simple change of subject, but beside him, Isabella’s aimless stirring of the food on her plate stopped.

Luke went cold. The attacking of convents and churches had not been uncommon in the war. In postrevolutionary France the church was no longer regarded as holy, and nuns and monks and priests were simply men and women. Nuns had been raped and murdered, churches looted.

Reverend Mother’s thin mouth twisted with contempt. “French, and some deserters who’d joined them. Rabble. They’d heard rumors of a treasure here. Treasure!” She snorted. “We are a simple order. Our only treasures are our girls.”

As she talked, Luke relaxed. Her tone was merely indignant, with no echoes of past horror. Isabella sat quiet as a rabbit, pretending not to be there.

“I gather you managed to hold them off.”

“Yes, although if—”

Isabella coughed. Reverend Mother glanced at her and said smoothly, “Fortunately they were persuaded to leave.”

“My friends would like to meet you, Lord Ripton,” Isabella said abruptly.

“You must call me Luke,” he told her.

She turned to the nun. “Do I have your permission, Reverend Mother?”

The nun nodded, and Isabella jumped up, taking her plate to a sideboard.

The moment was lost. He’d probably never find out what happened, but he didn’t care. It didn’t do to stir up old memories.

He watched as Isabella carefully scraped her dinner into a pail—presumably there were pigs or chickens somewhere—and stacked her plate and cutlery. She seemed to have recovered
from her upset and now appeared to accept her fate with good grace. As he’d hoped, her training in the convent had made her into a docile and obedient young woman.

The intense attraction he felt for her was the icing on the cake.

He sat back, satisfied, watching as she hurried across to the far end of the table where the schoolgirls sat. She was very slender, her figure, under the thick, concealing convent clothes, girlish rather than womanly.

“She’s very thin,” he observed. And underdeveloped for her age. The Spanish girls he’d known were lush and curvaceous. “She’s not ill, is she?”

“We’re all thin here,” the nun said dryly. “We almost starved during the war, and the country has been slow to recover. Trust me, Isabella has the appetite of any healthy young creature.”

Her reference to Isabella’s healthy appetite caused Luke to think of quite another sort of appetite. His body stirred at the thought. It was disconcerting, feeling the early stages of arousal while sitting at table with a middle-aged nun. But something about the way Isabella moved… appealed.

Begetting an heir was not going to be a duty after all.

What was she saying? Isabella’s expression looked quite severe as she spoke to her friends. One of them, a ravishingly pretty girl, glanced at him and said something. They all laughed except Isabella. She seemed one of them… yet not. A little apart.

The other girls quickly cleared away their plates and hurried toward him in a gaggle, smoothing down their hair and eyeing him in a flirtatious, fluttery manner that made him sigh. Not so different from the girls in London, then. Young, sheltered, and silly. Any remaining fears that attackers had invaded the convent faded.

He stood and bowed politely over each girl’s hand as Isabella introduced him. Then under Reverend Mother’s benevolent eye, the girls pelted him with eager questions.

“Have you traveled far to come here?” They spoke in slow, clear Spanish, watching him as if they might need to repeat the question.

“No, just from the village down the road,” he said in easy, idiomatic Spanish. Gales of giggles, as if he were a famous wit.

“But they said you were English,” the prettiest one—Alejandra?—said in surprise, and glanced at Isabella as if she’d lied to them.

“I learned Spanish when I was a boy,” he explained. “I spent several summers on my uncle’s estates in Andalusia.” They oohed and ahhed, as if this was somehow clever of him.

He supposed most girls raised in a tightly disciplined and isolated female environment would overreact to a male presence. They acted younger than they were.

Not that Isabella was giggling or flirting. In silence she watched her friends making up to him, asking no questions herself, taking no part in the conversation. Watching over them—or perhaps she was watching over him—like a small, plainly dressed hawk.

“Do you have any brothers?” This from the intense-looking one. Dolores? The others craned forward, breathless, hanging on his every word.

He shook his head. “Only sisters.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Are they married?”

“Yes, two are married; the youngest, Molly, is making her come-out this year.”

“How old is Molly?”

“The same age as Isabella.”

“So
old
!” they exclaimed in surprise. “Do all girls come out so old in England?”

“No, they are usually eighteen or nineteen,” he explained. “Molly’s first come-out was delayed by the death of my uncle and postponed again the following year because of an illness. This year she is hoping it’ll be third time lucky.”

“Is she pretty, this Molly?”

“Very.”

“Are all your sisters pretty?”

“Yes, they are.” His oldest sister was a famous beauty. And as bossy a female as he’d ever seen.

“When you go to England, will you and Isabella live in London?”

“Part of the time. I have a house in the country and would prefer to spend most of the year there.” He glanced at Isabella. “We will, of course, come to London for the season.”

“The season in London!” they exclaimed. “Isabella, you are so lucky!”

He glanced at her again, and she gave a polite, noncommittal smile. Catching the exchange, the one called Alejandra asked, “Has Isabella changed much since you saw her, Lord Ripton?”

“Somewhat,” he said dryly. “She’s grown up.” This produced a gust of feminine tittering.

“Perhaps you and Isabella will spend part of the year in Spain, as you did when you were a boy. Perhaps she can visit us.”

“No.” They looked startled. He must have said it more brusquely than he’d intended. “I won’t be returning to Spain again.”

“But—”

He glanced at Reverend Mother. “That’s enough, girls,” she said immediately. “Lord Ripton and Isabella have a long journey ahead of them tomorrow—”

“And a long reunion tomorrow night,” the frizzy-haired one said, causing an outbreak of fresh giggles.

“Luisa!” Reverend Mother said sternly, and the girls immediately put on solemn faces. “Bid Lord Ripton good night; he is no doubt weary of your silly chatter.”

One by one, they bade him good night, Isabella waiting to the last.

Reverend Mother rose. “Good evening, Lord Ripton. Isabella will show you out. I imagine there are one or two things you will wish to say to each other in private. I will see you in the morning. I hope the village accommodations are adequate.” She swept from the room in a stately manner, shooing the girls still hanging around the door before her.

Luke offered Isabella his arm.

She hesitated. “Lord Ripton—”

“Luke,” he reminded her.

“I don’t want to go straight to England from here,” she told him bluntly. “I want to visit my home first.”

Luke frowned. “You told me when we first met you no longer had a home.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and strode toward the door.

“I don’t. It’s not my home anymore. But I still want to go there.”

“It’s a bit late to be having second thoughts about Ramón, isn’t it?”

She pulled away from him, stopping dead. “Ramón! This is not about Ramón. I
despise
Ramón. I never want to see him again.” She folded her arms. “But I must return to my former home.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”

She hesitated. “I need to check that everything is all right. That everyone is all right.”

“There’s no point in wondering about that now,” he said crisply. “Besides, if it’s not all right, if the place is in a mess, what can you do about it? It’s Ramón’s responsibility now.” They emerged into the main courtyard.

“But—”

He patted her hand and said in a firm voice, “No, there’s no point in going back. Trust me; it’ll just upset you to no purpose.”

“No, you don’t understand—” A nun hurried across to unlock the convent gate and, distracted, Isabella broke off. The nun took a lantern from a hook, lit it, and handed it to Luke. She waited, smiling, ready to lock the gate after his departure.

The opportunity for a private conversation was over. Luke could not regret it. He’d said all he intended to say on the matter; there was nothing further to discuss.

He bowed, touching his lips to the back of Isabella’s hand, and as mouth met skin, the desire that had been simmering in him all through dinner spiked.

She shivered, blinked at him wide-eyed, then snatched her hand back.

Luke tried not to smile. So she felt it, too.

“Tomorrow will be a long, hard ride. I’ll collect you at eight,” he told her. “Sleep well.” For, he thought, tomorrow night she’d get no sleep at all.