Authors: Teresa Grant
His Spanish Bride (6 page)
“And of course I’m remembering it as well,” Isabella said in the same bright voice. “Oh, there’s Lady Sherringford, I must—”
Isabella hurried off. The marques followed her with his gaze. “You and your husband are fortunate to be of an age, Señora Rannoch. A man of my years perhaps has no business marrying. At least not to a young girl. I shall never be the figure of romance she deserves.”
“And yet, if you’ll forgive me, sir, your feelings for her appear to be all the most romantic young lady could desire.”
He raised a brow. “Perhaps, being a romantic young lady yourself, you’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
“I’m not in the least romantic. But I am passingly good as discerning unexpressed feelings.”
A faint smile curved his mouth, redolent of regret. “I find myself curiously reluctant to argue with you, señora. But even if I had such feelings, I lost the language to articulate them years ago. And I’m not sure they’d be welcome.”
“You won’t know that unless you try.”
The marques cast a glance at his wife, then turned his gaze back to Suzanne. “The optimism of the young is charming. I wish you very happy, my dear. I hope your husband realizes what a jewel he has.”
“Surviving?” Malcolm met Suzanne in the middle of the room as the company prepared to go into the dining room for the wedding breakfast. Strain showed round his eyes, but his mouth lifted in a smile.
“It’s easier for the bride. The teasing isn’t as merciless.” She scanned his face, realizing precisely what would rescue them both from the awkwardness. “Learned anything?”
Malcolm offered her his arm. “Linford doesn’t deny he had an affair with Charlotte Haddon. But he claims he’d have realized if Haddon had known of the affair.”
Suzanne curled her fingers round his arm. “Haddon doesn’t precisely strike me as a master dissembler. On the other hand, Linford isn’t what I’d call discerning, either.”
“No.” Malcolm turned, his head brushing her curls, his voice pitched for her ears alone. “Still I can’t very well confront Haddon and risk giving the game away if there’s a chance he doesn’t know the truth.”
She smiled up at him, a happy bride basking in the glow of her wedding day. “What will you do then?”
“Break into his rooms.”
Suzanne studied the man she’d married. Sober, serious. Far too ethical and honorable to be an agent. “You’re a constant source of surprise, darling.”
The English endearment came out unbidden. Malcolm appeared too intent on the mission to notice it. “Stealing the letter back would be the simplest solution all round,” he said. “The Haddons are having another of their routs on Thursday. So I won’t actually have to break into their rooms. But I may need you to help create a diversion.”
“Of course.”
He grinned. The strain had eased round his eyes. Nothing like a mission to drive away thoughts of marriage.
6
S
uzanne paused on the threshold of her husband’s lodgings. The books caught her eye first. Lining the shelves, stacked on every available surface and on the floor, filling the air with the scent of old paper and worn leather. Unexpected comfort washed over her at the sight and scent. Books were something she associated with her parents. With Raoul. With rare moments when she could be herself.
uzanne paused on the threshold of her husband’s lodgings. The books caught her eye first. Lining the shelves, stacked on every available surface and on the floor, filling the air with the scent of old paper and worn leather. Unexpected comfort washed over her at the sight and scent. Books were something she associated with her parents. With Raoul. With rare moments when she could be herself.
A frayed tapestry chair and another chair covered in newer-looking claret-colored velvet stood before the fireplace. A log fire burned in the grate, giving off the scent of pine. The light of a single lamp and a brace of candles burnished the old wood and mellowed leather, glinted off gilded book spines, created islands of warmth. A vase of fresh peach-colored roses stood on a small, round table between the chairs. Other than the flowers and the books and a pianoforte against the wall, the room was bare of personal touches, giving few clues about the man who lived here. Unless that very lack of personal detail was a clue in and of itself.
Miles Addison, Malcolm’s valet, walked toward them. “Mrs. Rannoch. If you will permit me, my felicitations to you both.”
Mrs. Rannoch. A married woman and an English married woman at that. Suzanne smiled. “Thank you, Addison. You’re very kind. It looks lovely.” She suspected the roses had been his touch.
She and Malcolm had stayed on at the embassy after the wedding breakfast so he could meet with Stuart and she could pack up her things, and then they had dined with Stuart and Wellington and a handful of other diplomats and officers. By dinner, talk had thankfully moved from their marriage to the plans for the spring campaign (she’d made some interesting mental notes she would write up for Raoul later). Stuart had sent them back to Malcolm’s lodgings in his carriage. There had been little time for conversation on that brief journey, and they had had Blanca with them. Except for their exchange about Linford and Haddon and the letter on the way into the wedding breakfast, she and Malcolm hadn’t had the chance for private speech all day.
“We’re woefully unaccustomed to visitors, I fear.” Malcolm set down her two bandboxes. Behind him, Blanca stayed in the shadows by the door, surveying their new accommodations. Suzanne had been aware of Blanca’s mingled support and disapproval all day on the edge of her consciousness. In changing her life so drastically, she had changed Blanca’s as well.
Silence gripped the room. They were all, Suzanne realized, hopelessly out of their element and unsure how to pick their way through the alien terrain. In an odd way, the need to reassure the others eased her own qualms. “What could be more welcoming than books?” she said with a smile. “I so miss my parents’ library.”
“I hope you’ll make yourself free of the collection.” Malcolm turned to include Blanca in his words as well. “You’ll find books in Spanish and French as well as English.”
“And Latin and a smattering of Greek,” Addison added.
“Miss Sai—Mrs. Rannoch reads Latin,” Malcolm said.
“A bit.” And some ancient Greek. Both were very useful for codes. “I should be glad of the chance to practice.”
“I daresay you will wish to make some changes, madam,” Addison said. “I am happy to assist you in any way. I have coffee brewing. I thought you might prefer it to tea.”
Addison carried her bandboxes into the adjoining bedchamber and then went to prepare the coffee. Blanca went into the bedchamber to unpack. Suzanne realized that Malcolm couldn’t sit down until she did so. She dropped into the velvet chair, guessing the other chair must customarily be his, a suspicion confirmed when he moved to the tapestry chair and sank into it with the ease of familiarity. Alone at last in his lodgings. Their lodgings.
“All things considered, I thought it went very well,” she said, plucking at the pomegranate crêpe of the dinner dress she had changed into. “And your friends didn’t actually hang a ‘Benedick, the married man’ sign on you.”
Some of the tension left his face. He shot her a grin. “Was I that obviously nervous?”
“No more so than the average bridegroom, I should think. And perhaps with more cause.”
He leaned back and turned his head against the tapestry to meet her gaze. “You looked very lovely. I should have said so sooner.”
“It was hardly the sort of wedding that required conventional platitudes.”
His gaze remained on her face. So often his expression was armored, and then there were moments like this when all barriers seemed stripped from his gaze to leave unvarnished honesty. “I didn’t mean it as a platitude. I meant it as the truth.”
When he looked at her like that, she could almost believe she was the girl in her masquerade. And the girl in her masquerade could almost believe this marriage had a chance of being something real. Wariness shot through her, as though she had walked into an ambush. She looked round seeking escape. That is, distraction. “I didn’t realize you played the pianoforte.”
“We haven’t exactly had a lot of leisure for music in our acquaintance.” His voice was easy, but his fingers tightened against the chair arms. Somehow she had stepped onto personal territory.
“Do—”
The door opened on her words to admit Addison with a blue and white porcelain tray holding a silver coffee service. The pungent smell of fresh, hot coffee filled the tense air. Addison set the tray on the table between them with a quiet click. “Will there be anything else?”
His words were addressed to her, not to Malcolm. She realized as the lady of the house it was up to her to pour. Thank God for Raoul’s training in the intricacies of aristocratic life. She thanked Addison, filled two cups with a reasonably steady hand, and passed one to Malcolm. She already knew he took his coffee black. Her first wifely duty, successfully accomplished. She added milk (warmed, how lovely) to her own cup and took a grateful sip. Blessedly strong. Though brandy would have been preferable.
“You must play frequently to have a piano in your lodgings.”
Malcolm blew on the steam from his own cup. “Other than books, my favorite form of solace.”
“Would you play something?”
The words came out without thinking. Only from his slight hesitation did she see the pitfalls. Music was unfettered emotion. And emotion was something they were both trying to hold at bay.
“Of course,” he said. “Anything in particular?”
She shook her head. He moved to the piano and hesitated for a moment, his fingers hovering over the keys. Then he touched the keys and let loose a torrent of sound.
Beethoven. The piano sonata number 2 in A major. The music washed over her. For a moment the world fell away and this room and her mission with it. And yet while it transported, that sound also took her straight through to Malcolm’s soul. Like the look in his eyes when he spoke his vows, it carried an upwelling of raw emotion. For the music itself, she told herself, not for her. Yet the torrent rippling beneath the stroke of the keys revealed how much he was capable of feeling. And a man who could feel so deeply could be just as deeply hurt.
Her fingers curled round the chair arms, her nails scraping the wood. Her breath tangled in her throat. The last note seemed to hang in the air long after the actual sound died away. The silence that followed music was so rich. So different from the awkward silence of earlier. “Thank you.” Her voice sounded thin and dry to her own ears, parched for something she could not name. “I’ve always loved Beethoven.”
“I thought you might.” He turned on the piano bench to smile at her, one of those smiles that seemed to slip from behind his guard. “I’m more of a Mozartian myself. A bit safer perhaps.”
“Or the emotion’s simply more under the surface. ‘Dove Sono’ always makes me cry.” She swallowed, wondering how the aria would sound now that she was married herself.
“Marriage is perhaps more safely begun without illusions.”
“Then we’re off to an excellent start.” No romantic illusions between them. Merely lies.
“Honesty is worth a great deal.” He leaned his arms on the piano. His hair fell over his forehead. For a moment the hardened man she’d met was replaced by the schoolboy he must have been not so very many years ago. Idealistic and full of hope.
She set down her cup, harder than she intended, jostling coffee into the saucer. “Blanca should have my things unpacked by now. It’s been a long day. I think I’ll retire.”
“Of course.” He got to his feet. His voice was even, but he looked rather paler than he had a few moments before. A wedding night was awkward in any event, and in their case awkwardness was layered upon awkwardness.
What was a gently bred bride supposed to say to her husband before she retired?
I’ll see you shortly? I’ll call when I’m ready?
“Thank you.” She meant to put a faint tremor in her voice, but it trembled more than she intended. “For the music. For everything.”
I’ll see you shortly? I’ll call when I’m ready?
“Thank you.” She meant to put a faint tremor in her voice, but it trembled more than she intended. “For the music. For everything.”
He only had one bedchamber in his lodgings. Somehow he hadn’t properly considered the implications until now, home—odd word, “home”—from the embassy, Suzanne’s bandboxes carried into his cramped lodgings. Suzanne behind the bedchamber door. By the time he could remember, his parents had slept at opposite ends of whichever of their houses they were occupying. Assuming they were even in the same house. Much of the time they contrived not to be. Couples on more intimate terms still had their own bedchambers and dressing rooms. Even if they ultimately spent the night together, they had somewhere separate to retire to to prepare for bed.
Which presumably was what happened on most wedding nights among his circle. The bride retired to her bedchamber to disrobe while the groom went to his bedchamber to do the same before discreetly tapping at her door. Instead, Suzanne was in the one bedchamber with Blanca, preparing for bed, while he cooled his heels in the sitting room. And no matter what happened between him and Suzanne tonight, they only had one bed.
He shouldn’t have played the piano. Music created a false sense of intimacy. And at the same time it could reveal far too much. He never felt so stripped of his defenses as when he sat at the keyboard.
His cravat bit into his neck. The whisky decanter on the table by the windows called to him, but he subdued the impulse. He needed all his wits about him. This was no time to let himself be ruled by impulse. Or desire. What mattered was Suzanne—his wife, good God—and what was best for her.
Which was probably to be left alone.
Suzanne stared into the dressing table looking glass. “Odd that bride is one role I’ve never played.”
Blanca ran a brush through Suzanne’s hair. “There’s a nice bedchamber down the passage for me. Mr. Addison saw to that. He’s thoughtful, that one.”
“Yes, he’s very kind. And more than a bit fond of you, I think.”
“But he’s the sort who thinks it would be dishonorable to do anything about it. I’ll have to see if I can change his mind. I’m not used to having so much time to get to know someone.” Blanca pulled loose hairs from the brush.
Suzanne leaned closer to the looking glass to rub at the blacking below her eyes. “There. I should do.”
“He’ll expect you to take your time. He’ll expect you to be nervous.”
“Not entirely an act.” Suzanne tugged at the muslin frill at the neck of her nightdress.
Blanca set down the brush. “I heard him play the piano.”
“He’s very talented, isn’t he?”
“You can’t tell me he isn’t in love with you.”
Suzanne’s fingers closed on the muslin. “He’s a skilled pianist. Putting emotion into music is like acting. It doesn’t mean one really loves the other person onstage.”
Blanca shook her head. “I’m not a musician, but I have ears. That piece was as directed straight at you as a love sonnet.”
“Malcolm isn’t the sort for sonnets.”
“Which is why he played the piano.”
Suzanne turned round on the dressing table bench to look up at Blanca. “I know you disapprove of this.”
“It’s not a question of disapproving. I think you need to know what you’re risking, for yourself as well as him.”
“When have I ever been blind to risks?”
“These risks are different. You know you aren’t invulnerable to a bullet. You think you’re invulnerable to this.”
“This?”
Blanca set the brush down. “Feelings.”
“His feelings?”
“And your own.”
Suzanne got to her feet and put a hand on Blanca’s arm. “Blanca—I already knows this is more complicated than I thought. But I have to go forward. I’ll protect him as much as I can.”
“And yourself ?”
“I wouldn’t have survived this long if I wasn’t good at taking care of myself.”
Blanca snorted. “You’ve never lived with anyone like this. You’re not used to it.”
“I’m good at adapting.” Suzanne glanced at the door to the sitting room where her husband waited. “It’s barbaric if you think about it, a couple gathering together with their friends and family and more or less announcing that they’re going to spend the night together for the first time. But then a lot of things about marriage are barbaric.”
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