Bride By Mistake (10 page)

Luke listened with half an ear.

Isabella’s reaction to his arrival had been a little disturbing. It was clear to him that she wanted the marriage as little as he had. A situation that could not be allowed to continue.

His title hadn’t impressed her in the least. Well, she was the daughter of a
conde
.

She’d seen through him at once. He did need an heir. There was no shame in that. It was his duty to his family name. Bearing an ancient name herself, she should understand that.

And if nothing else, duty would have been drummed into her at the convent. Particularly the wifely duties: to love, honor, and obey.

They were stuck with each other and would have to make the best of it. He needed to reconcile her to their situation, and quickly. He had no intention of putting up with tantrums from a reluctant bride.

His own attraction to her was lukewarm at best—not that she’d shown herself to advantage, with that ghastly old-fashioned dress with the frills and flounces, and that hairstyle, and the paint. But that didn’t matter. He’d give her no cause to regret their marriage. He’d treat her well and be a faithful husband to her. And by the time children came along, they might even have found love of a sort. Many people did.

He thought of her odd golden brown eyes staring out from behind the powder and paint like an angry little hawk hidden in a posy. She might have changed out of all recognition, but those eyes of hers were exactly as he remembered, especially when they flashed with temper or were drowning with hurt.

The one part of her that was without artifice, reminding him of the brave little girl he’d married. Change was inevitable, he supposed, after eight years. He would have to get to know the young woman she’d become. And she would have to accustom herself to the man he’d become.

A new start for them both, to begin at dinner.

They rounded a rocky bluff, and a small village came into view: a handful of ragged-looking cottages huddled on the edge of the mountain. Not a prosperous place.

Miguel pointed to the smallest and meanest-looking house of all. “I will tell my mother you are coming,” he said and ran ahead.

Luke resigned himself to a night spent in the company of bedbugs and fleas. He’d had worse during the war.

By the time Luke reached the cottage, the mother was waiting in the doorway. She was fairly young, not yet thirty. Two small children peered out shyly from behind her skirts. Miguel, with a freshly washed face, introduced them, then took Luke around the side of the house so he could see what good care he’d taken of Luke’s horses.

They were tethered in a kind of open lean-to shed and had been given clean straw and water. The tack was hanging from nails driven into the wall, and the horses had been rubbed down. Luke nodded his approval, and Miguel led him back to the front door of the cottage, stepping aside with a flourish to allow Luke to enter.

The cottage was gloomy inside, but once Luke’s eyes adjusted, he saw that though poor, it was clean and neat. The only smell he could detect was of something cooking, some kind of stew pungent with garlic and herbs. He’d slept in much worse conditions during the war.

“You can sleep here,” Miguel announced, pulling back a curtain and pointing to a pallet on a kind of raised shelf in the
corner of the room. It was large enough for two and covered in a handwoven cloth. Luke’s leather portmanteau sat beside it.

He’d been offered the only bed in the house, the mother’s bed. And possibly the children’s, too.

“No, no, I couldn’t—” he began.

“The bedding is clean,
señor
, just washed today, and dried in the sun, the mattress straw fresh and sweet,” the woman told him. “And the children will not bother you—they will be quiet as mice. Or if you want, we will all sleep outside.” She bit her lip and twisted her hands in her apron.

“There is no better place in the village,” Miguel assured him. Four pairs of big brown eyes watched Luke anxiously.

They needed his money. Desperately.

“Very well,” Luke agreed. “And I wouldn’t dream of putting any of you outside.” He nodded at the two little curly heads peeping out from behind their mother’s skirts, and they immediately disappeared.

Luke pulled out his watch and checked the time. “Would there be any hot water?”

“He will want the hot water to make tea,” Miguel, knowledgeable in the ways of Englishmen, explained to his mother and siblings.

“No tea,” Luke said, running his hand over his chin. “I need a shave.”

An hour later, Luke set out again for the convent, changed out of his riding clothes, freshly shaved and as neat as he could make himself in the limited conditions of the cottage. His every move had been made under the solemn gaze of two dark-eyed little girls who had no regard for the sanctity of an Englishman’s curtain.

He’d sent the diminutive man of the family off to buy wine, bread, meat, and whatever else he could think of, just to get rid of him and his incessant chatter. The family could do with the food.

But now, as he made his way back up the path to the convent, Miguel joined him. “You look very handsome,
señor
. And you smell beautiful, too. You are courting one of the young ladies, yes?”

“No,” Luke lied.

Miguel regarded him with astonishment. “But why else would you shave?”

“She is my wife already,” Luke explained.

Miguel squinted up at him. “She is a bad wife?”

“No.”Luke lied.

“Then why did you place her in the convent with the nuns?”

“It’s complicated.”

Miguel walked along beside him for a while. “My father went off and left us when I was small, when the girls were babies.”

Luke glanced at the boy. “He never came back?”

“No.” The boy kicked a stone over the edge of the path and paused to listen to it bouncing down the cliff.

“He was killed?”

“No, he is living in Bilbao. He found another woman he liked better than Mama. Did you find another woman you liked better,
señor
?”

“No.” Luke increased his pace. The boy’s innocent chatter was somehow making him feel guilty. Which was ridiculous. He had nothing to feel guilty for.

“So you have come to fetch her and take her back to England with you.”

“Correct.”

“Do I know her,
señor
? I know some of the young ladies in the convent. What’s her name?”

He supposed it didn’t matter if he told the boy her name. “Señora Ripton.”

“Isabella Ripton?” Miguel’s face split in a grin. “But she is my friend.” And then his smile faded and he stopped dead. “You put Isabella in the convent and left her? She has lived in that place since before my father left my mother.”

The accusation in the boy’s eyes irked Luke.

Dammit, why was everyone looking at him as if the mess was all his fault? He was supposed to be the
hero
, dammit! First he’d saved her life and then he’d married her. He hadn’t
had
to marry her. It had been the only certain way to protect
her from a forced marriage to her evil cousin Ramón. It hadn’t been for his own advantage in the least.

Somehow that had been forgotten and he’d become the man who’d abandoned his wife. And he hadn’t. Or he had, but not intentionally.

Well, yes, intentionally, but it had been
for her own good
.

But how did you explain that to a ten-year-old boy?

Or, indeed, to a girl of almost twenty-one. He rang the bell at the gate of the convent.

Five

“B
lessed saints!” Dolores stopped stock-still at the entrance to the dining hall. She turned and said to Alejandra, “He
is
as beautiful as an angel.”

Alejandra was staring over Dolores’s shoulder. “Madonna, yes! A beautiful
fallen
angel. That mouth, those eyes, those cheekbones. So stern looking and yet somehow… wicked.” She sighed.

Immediately there was a faint scuffle as the other girls pushed forward, trying to see Isabella’s very real husband.

“Girls!” Sister Ignazia said, and when they did not immediately respond, she said in a warning voice, “Young
ladies
! Do I assume from this unseemly behavior that you have no wish to dine this evening?”

“No, Sister.” They hurried into the dining hall in relative silence, darting avid glances at Isabella’s husband.

“Do you think he would be stern in the bedchamber?” Alejandra whispered.

“Who cares?” Luisa giggled.

“Ooh, I do like a masterful man,” Dolores said with a dramatic shiver.

Isabella clenched her fists. He was
her
husband, even if he didn’t want her.

Lieuten— No, Lord Ripton stood behind his chair at Reverend Mother’s table, in formal garb and looking handsomer than ever. The only man in a room full of women, he was the center of attention. Bad enough the other girls were fluttering and whispering and giggling as they eyed him across the room, but even
nuns
were straightening their wimples and smiling at him.

And he, Isabella thought darkly, was perfectly comfortable with the fuss. This was to be her future. The man of her dreams, adored by every woman who saw him. And kind with it, so she couldn’t even hate him.

“Look, even Sister Gertruda is making up to him,” hissed Luisa. “I thought she hated men.”

Isabella watched as Sister Gertruda, normally a thin-lipped, humorless martinet, stood beside Lord Ripton, chatting animatedly. He listened with grave attention, nodding and making short responses, but his gaze wandered across the room to the knot of girls, his dark eyes sifting through them one by one.

Sister Josefina had decreed that their normal convent garb would be worn, no fancy dresses or hairstyles, no frills, perfume, or paint—on pain of punishment—so from a distance and at first glance, the girls would be hard to tell apart.

Isabella felt it the moment he first saw her—a faint prickle of awareness rippling over her skin. Reverend Mother noticed her arrival, and gestured to Isabella to join herself and Lord Ripton at table.

“Bring him over and introduce us after dinner,” Alejandra ordered as Isabella left. “I want to meet him.”

“Oh yes.” Paloma sighed and fluttered her lashes. “I want to meet a fallen angel.”

“Mmmm, I want to hear him speak, even if it is in English.”

“How long is it since any of us talked to a man who isn’t a priest?”

“I’ll try,” Isabella snapped, and she marched across to join her husband. Everyone had gone silly. He’d turned all their heads.

His dark eyes seemed to take in everything, but he said nothing, only murmuring a quiet greeting. His deep voice shivered down her spine.

The room fell silent while they all waited behind their chairs, then Reverend Mother gave the signal, and with a loud scraping of chairs everyone sat down.

Reverend Mother then said grace. It was a long grace and in Latin, and Isabella was so keyed up she couldn’t concentrate. She’d never been much interested in Latin anyway, so much of it was just mumble. She glanced at Lord Ripton and to her shock found he was watching her, his gaze dark and intense. She immediately squeezed her eyes shut. Was he a godless heathen like Papa that he didn’t close his eyes at grace?

Reverend Mother finished grace; then, just as everyone was about to reach for their food, she said, “We welcome Lord Ripton who joins us at table this evening.”

They put down their cutlery and waited. “As you all no doubt have heard, he has come to collect his wife Isabella who has been with us these last eight years.” She smiled at Isabella. “A most
eventful
eight years, may I say.” A ripple of amusement passed around the room.

Isabella stared at a knot in the grain of the wooden table, silently willing Reverend Mother to say no more about her time at the convent. He didn’t need to know any of that. And besides, the food was getting cold. Not that she was hungry; her stomach was in knots.

Why did he keep staring at her? She passed her hands over her hair, smoothing it down. Her hands were shaking. Stupid. It’s not as if anything could change. She was fated to this man. He was fated to her.

A life of solid contentment.

Reverend Mother went on, “Lord Ripton tells me he plans to leave first thing in the morning, so this will be Isabella’s last night with us before embarking on her new married life
in England. We wish her well.” Everyone raised a beaker or glass—most drinking water, but Reverend Mother, Lord Ripton, and some of the older nuns drinking wine—and drank to Isabella and Lord Ripton.

Isabella forced her lips into what she hoped looked like a happy smile, then drank. All those faces beaming at her and Lord Ripton. All that joyful goodwill. Her mouth tasted of bile. It was all a charade, a farce. He didn’t want her. It was nothing but a horrid mistake.

She sat wedged between Reverend Mother and Lord Ripton, pushing her food around her plate. It was a sin to waste food—and God knew there were enough times during the war when they’d been desperate for it—but she couldn’t bring herself to swallow a mouthful of stew.

She broke off a small piece of bread and tried to chew. It wedged in a hard lump halfway down her throat. She drank from her beaker and managed to choke it down.