The Sometime Bride (38 page)

Amabel rushed to Catherine’s chair and knelt at her feet, clasping her hands in her own. “You must not take it to heart, dear Catherine. There is absolutely no point in your attempting to be deemed ‘unexceptional.’ In your case it is simply not possible. You must accept you are unique and pay no mind to what lesser mortals think.”

Lesser mortals. Lesser mortals indeed. Only Clara Everingham’s social consequence and the obvious and arrogant support of the Earl of Wrexham had turned aside the potential disaster of her letters to France.

Cat’s thoughts returned to Branwyck Park with reluctance. Her first day back and already she was discovering it was considerably easier to keep the ghosts at bay in London. Amabel’s gay chatter and kind heart, Clara’s competence and good sense, Wrexham’s admiring glances —sensual and exciting, a balm on the hurt of Blas’s silence. These new friends steadied her, gave her strength.

But here . . . here at Branwyck she was alone. For it was Blas’s house. And he was not here.

And then there was Thomas. His insistent whispers echoed through the halls.
Don’t trust so blindly, Catarina. Look around you. Blas is not the only fish in the sea.

But for her there was no one else. Would never be anyone else. Since that brief, horribly impersonal note Marcio had brought back in late August, there had been no word, no sign. Always before there had been a steady stream of reports decorated with odd little caricatures, whimsical faces, fantastical sketches of castles in the clouds, ogres, and maidens in varying stages of distress. And undress. Occasionally, a tiny folded note. A few precious personal words. In Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Sometimes even in Greek which sent her scrambling for a dictionary as there was no way she would ask Thomas to help her decipher the oddly shaped characters.

Now . . . for three months there had been nothing. Because Blas was obeying Thomas’s wishes? Because he was lying in a shallow grave in the mountains of Spain? Mourned only by
guerrilleros
who had already turned their backs on the
inglês
who had been their friend?

Blas. Mourned by his
guerrillera
mistress. For Cat was not naive enough to believe he did without. It was one of the many things they did not discuss.

Cat gazed out the window at the broad expanse of Branwyck Park. What did any of it matter if there was no Blas to share it? Was he dead?

Or dead only to his sometime wife?

Before her, the broad gardens stretched almost as far as the woods, the precisely clipped green of boxwood hedges nearly the only signs of color in the dull landscape of late fall. Here and there a few mums, dried on their brown stalks, glowed faintly in faded shades of orange and yellow and white. English gardens, unlike their Portuguese counterparts, must have their winter sleep. Their bleak months of brown earth and gray skies. Chill rain. Snow and ice.

Like her heart. Which knew only one cure.

When Papa asked you to agree to my going to England, Blas—you might have said
No.

Chapter Twenty

“
Viscount Norwell,” Rankin announced. The butler’s precise monotone was tinged by the faint warmth he reserved for visitors who met with his discriminating approval. Blanca and Catherine, who had returned to London only two days earlier, joined Clara Everingham in regarding the newcomer with lively curiosity.

Edmund Wareham Audley was a slight young man who looked even younger than his nineteen years. An owlish squint marred his not unhandsome features as he studied the ladies, for his mother had positively forbidden him to wear his spectacles except for reading. Though it must be admitted he had the backbone to resist this dictate when driving or he most surely would have found himself in the ditch on his way from Oxford. As Lord Norwell greeted the ladies, it could be seen that, though his manners were pleasing, a closer look at his cousin Catherine had rendered him speechless.

The head of the House of Audley might be a sad bore, but Catherine suspected she was going to like his heir. By the time Lady Everingham had rung for refreshments, Cat’s youthful cousin had recovered his voice.

“
I thought to pay my respects before returning home for the holidays, my lady,” Lord Norwell said to Lady Everingham, adding a few more dutiful words to his hostess before turning to Catherine. Dazzled, he swallowed painfully, ducking his head to study the pattern of the Aubusson carpet. He looked up to find Catherine regarding him intently. “I–I wished you to know, cousin,” said Edmund with determination, “I am very glad you have come to England. You see, Grandfather Audley—the old Earl, you know—was eldest brother to your grandfather Audley, and he told me many a tale about your father. He must have been quite a handful at the vicarage!” Young Edmund seemed to lose his shyness, his eyes suddenly alight with admiration. Not for herself, Cat realized, but for Thomas Audley. Nothing could have pleased her more.

“
I suppose you know he lived in border country,” Edmund said. “That’s how he met your mother. But you must have heard this a hundred times,” the young man apologized, embarrassed that he was babbling to these three polished ladies of the
ton
.

“
Oh, no,” Cat protested. “Please go on. My parents never spoke of their life in England.”

“
Truly?” Gratified by his beautiful cousin’s rapt attention, Edmund continued his tale. “I don’t recall all the details, I’m afraid, but they were both very young. Your mother came from a good Scottish family. Very strict Presbyters. How she ever met the son of an Anglican vicar who lived on the English side of the border no one quite knew, but . . . well . . .” Edmund stumbled to a halt, then rushed on. He might be shy and without town bronze; a coward he was not.

“
If Elspeth Drummon looked anything like you, cousin,” he said manfully, “a connoisseur like Thomas Audley would have found her. Even if she’d lived in the Highlands.”

Unlike the compliments of so many men of the
ton
, her cousin Edmund’s words rang with simple sincerity. Cat acknowledged this striking compliment with her most brilliant smile and waited in fascination to hear more.

“
You mother was expected to make a fine match of course,” Edmund continued, “and cousin Thomas certainly was not what her family had in mind. According to Grandfather, they never even bothered to ask. They just disappeared one night and never stopped until they got to Lisbon. I always suspected Grandfather rather admired his nephew’s daring. I doubt he would have told me so many Thomas stories else.” Edmund paused, shifted his weight in his chair and added softly, “I’ve often wondered if he wanted me to be . . . um . . . a bit more like Thomas, don’t you know.”

“
They were very happy,” Cat said, almost to herself. “I don’t recall a harsh word or so much as a hint of another woman.” Horrified as she recalled Blanca’s presence, Cat clamped her lips shut, grateful for the arrival of Rankin with an elaborate tea tray. One day, in private, she would get her cousin Edmund to relate all his grandfather’s tales of Thomas Audley’s undoubtedly colorful youth.

As Lady Everingham took her place behind the teapot, Lord Norwell reached a momentous decision. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out his spectacles, polished them with his handkerchief and set them upon his nose.

“
There are many kinds of courage,” Cat murmured with a winsome smile as she passed her cousin a plate of macaroons. Edmund, blushing to the roots of his hair, chose a macaroon, adjusted his spectacles, and fell in love with his cousin on the spot.

“
I cannot imagine,” said Clara Everingham a half hour later as the door shut behind the heir to the House of Audley, “how a pompous idiot and a sharp-tongued shrew managed to produce a boy like that.”

“
Character will out,” said Catherine blithely. “We Audleys are too strong to let the line stray far from the mold.”

She added one more reason to the growing list of why a future in England no longer appeared impossibly bleak.

The day before Christmas Catherine received a visitor she had not seen since her first days in London, her father’s man of affairs Ralph Carswell. After reading the note he sent round to tell her he was coming, Cat spent most of the two-hour wait pacing the floor. Solicitors, she well knew, were frequently the bearers of bad news. Blanca, abandoning her embroidery, begged Catarina to sit and talk, to occupy herself with a book. Cat made an effort, settling at the delicate desk in her bedroom, only to jump up a few minutes later to resume her pacing. In succession, she tried a comfortable chair in the library, the cozy sitting room at the rear of the house. Each time she found it impossible to sit still. Her black silk skirt rustled in accompaniment to her agitation. Cat ended her wanderings in the drawing room which was at least large enough to allow her pacing the scope it needed.

Another hour to wait. It seemed a lifetime.

With equal foreboding, Blanca followed Cat’s odyssey. She too feared the worst. While Cat measured the length of the drawing room, Blanca found the new novel
Pride and Prejudice
which Clara was reading and, with grim determination, began to read aloud, although she found herself unable to understand all the nuances of language. Nor did Cat, who heard not one word in ten.

Ralph Carswell, a young forty with a comfortable wife and two small children, was thinking of the Christmas holiday, the excitement of gifts, the satisfaction of good food and good company. Believing himself on a mission of joy, he was blithely unaware of his client’s fears. Since Sir Giles had solicited his opinion on the state of Catherine Perez’s marriage, he was aware of her anomalous relationship with Don Alexis Perez de Leon. He had thoroughly enjoyed the complexity of the problem, pronouncing after great deliberation that Catherine Audley was indeed legally married to Don Alexis Perez de Leon. But since Don Alexis was not a real person, the marriage was only as valid as the participants chose to make it. After careful examination of Catherine’s marriage lines, Carswell had, however, ventured a personal opinion. It would appear, he announced, that in the eyes of God the marriage was valid.

Ralph Carswell had colleagues who would have snorted and termed this opinion romantic. Nonetheless, he was convinced Catherine Perez was a married woman with a living husband. A wealthy and generous living husband. He was therefore shocked by his client’s obvious distress when he was ushered into the drawing room at Everingham House.

“
I am here on a somewhat mysterious errand, Mrs. Perez, but I don’t doubt it’s a happy one,” Carswell said hastily.

While Blanca accepted the solicitor’s best wishes for the holiday, Cat slowly, still fearfully, settled herself onto the sofa. Carswell declined an invitation to be seated. “I’ll be brief, Mrs. Perez,” he said. “A package was delivered to me yesterday from the firm of Bentham, Bentham and Wembley—which as you know purveyed to us the deed to Branwyck Park. The instructions were to deliver the package to you in person prior to Christmas Day. Since it is clearly marked Rundell & Bridges, I should think the nature of the gift should be obvious. Young Jonathan Bentham brought the box round himself and unbent enough to say that the items had been custom-made to a sketch by his client.” With a broad, reassuring smile Carswell handed Catherine a quilted black velvet jewelry box.

Her reaction was not at all what he expected. “Was there no letter?” she asked, green eyes huge with disappointment.

Mr. Carswell’s Christmas spirit, already shaken, plummeted further still. “Perhaps in the box?” he suggested lamely.

Cat tore at the velvet box with such eagerness some of the contents spilled onto the carpet in a brilliant shower of precious glitter. Resting among the remaining gems was a small folded slip of paper sealed with a plain blob of red wax. Ignoring the diamond and emerald parure, Catherine snatched at the paper, ripped open the seal. The note was painfully short.
“
Queridissima
- Do not worry. The war is nearly over. Have faith. Christmas of 1814 will be a better one.
” Scrawled at the bottom was Blas’s characteristic signature, the single letter
B
.

Graças a deus!
He was alive. He spoke of the future.

But what kind of a future? Cat wondered. The man with the wealth and power to give her Branwyck Park and gems worth a king’s ransom might want a lover. But not a wife who was the spawn of a spy, the darling of a gaming house in a foreign land.

Blanca, alarmed by Cat’s colorless face, deftly plucked the paper from her hand while Ralph Carswell rang for brandy. The solicitor’s eyes widened as he bent down to retrieve the forgotten jewels from the floor. No royal princess had anything finer. With great care he added a bracelet and an earring to the gems sparkling in the afternoon sun on their background of black velvet. Whoever his client’s husband was, he was even wealthier than Carswell had imagined.

“
It is not so bad, Catarina,” Blanca comforted as Cat sipped her brandy. “He is alive and expects to come home. What more do you wish? Has he ever written you a love letter? Not once in six years! This is Blas. He has sent you a fortune in jewels, designed just for you. And he has told you not to worry, that all will be well. I can tell you it is a great deal more than I expected from him.”