The Sometime Bride (17 page)

With a sharp profanity, Blas abandoned the hasp. Cautiously, he shifted his right hand to a piece of wrought-iron scrollwork which he could only pray would hold his weight. He let go his left hand and swung hard right, arcing his body around the vicious spikes. His right foot came up, searching for a toehold between the vertical bars that extended down to the balcony floor. His left hand took another gash from the spikes but found a hold. For a moment he clung there, cradled against the black scrollwork until he caught his breath and was able to bring his left foot up to join the right. After that, with his last vestige of strength, Blas hauled himself up and over the spikes atop the three foot balcony railing. He tumbled hard onto the tiles and stayed there, on his knees, amazed by his weakness. When had he eaten . . . or slept? Was today Sunday? Let it be so, or Cat would be in the gaming rooms. And he needed her.
Now.

Blas cursed himself, the French, the Spanish, the goddamn British army, and the whole miserable unspeakable war. The balcony door was locked.

Like the twenty kinds of a bloody fool he was, he had come back like a thief in the night, shunning hearty welcomes, bright lights, the fatted calf. He needed Cat. No one but Cat. Or he would die of what he had seen. And done.

He scratched lightly on the door. She
had
to be there!

A long moment. Two. Three. A pair of eyes peeped through a crack in the draperies. The door swung open, Cat’s pale face, inquiring eyes shifting to joy, shone before him. Her long white gown billowed in the January wind. Blas surged forward, one hand propelling her back into the room while the other firmly closed the door behind him.

Cat went into his arms with a soft incoherent murmur. Immediately, she could feel his distress, the intensity of his need. And by some mysterious means she knew this was her very own Blas, not the oddly reticent Don Alejo. In the past Blas had supported her with his strength. Now he was the one in need. Even though he held her so close she thought she might be smothered against his jacket, Cat endured without a murmur. His grip as nothing compared to the inexorable force which bound them together.

“
Better light a candle before I ruin the carpet,” Blas said at last.

Cat gasped as the flickering light revealed his bloodied hand. Well aware a great fuss was the last thing he wanted, she moved quickly and efficiently. After wrapping his hand in a towel, she dashed down to the kitchen, struggling into her robe as she ran. Cook always kept a pail of water warming in a niche inside the great fireplace. Cat found cloth for bandages and paused long enough to stuff bread, cheese and a bottle of wine into a bag hastily contrived from a large white apron. By the time she returned, Blas had stripped himself down to his boots. The only other item he was wearing was the towel which he had secured around his waist. He had built up the fire and was sitting, head propped in his hands, in a chair drawn up close to the flames.

Catarina plunked the heavy pail and her makeshift carryall down onto the hearth, then paused to catch her breath as Blas devoured the food she had brought. He drank straight from the bottle, tilting the strong red wine down his throat in long, panting gulps, as if to wash away the nightmares which seemed to haunt him.

His hands . . .
ah, deus
, his hands! Horrified, Cat stared. Blas, like Thomas, had seemed invulnerable. Untouchable. And now . . . the long slim patrician fingers which dealt cards to perfection and brought blank pieces of paper to glorious life were battered and blackened, the nails broken and dirty, knuckles red and swollen.

Cat opened her mouth to ask what had happened, then snapped it firmly closed. This was not the time for talk.

When Blas finished the last crumb of bread and cheese, Cat went to work. The cuts were not so bad, she discovered as she wiped away blood that was already drying. Basilicum powder, a soft bandage across the palm. It did not matter that Blas seemed lost in thought, moving only to tilt his head back for another gulp of wine. He was her man, and she was caring for him. Never had Cat been more aware her next birthday would be her sixteenth. Most of her Portuguese friends were already married. One was about to bring a new life into the world.

And Catarina Audley Perez de Leon had a husband who would not touch her.

But tonight, obviously in distress, Blas had come to her for aid and comfort. Surely, that was good.

A smile lurked in her eyes as she finished off the bandage with a soft knot on the back of Blas’s wrist. “There,” she murmured. “Come to bed.” Blas did not resist as she grasped the half empty bottle and set it aside. Clasping his good hand in hers, Cat attempted to coax him to his feet.

“
I’m filthy,” Blas protested. A simple fact Cat could not deny. Only his bandaged hand was clean.

“
There is plenty of warm water,” Cat ventured a shade doubtfully as she eyed the water’s pinkish cast. She also had doubts about Blas’s state of undress. She had not seen so much of him since the night Major Martineau had chased a phantom into her bedroom. Even their game had never gone this far. Blas had grown, filled out. Though slumped in exhaustion and grimed with dirt, his shoulders and arms rippled with firm, strong muscles.

The towel seemed to have shrunk. Blas’s bronzed skin went on forever. Cat swallowed. Coherent thought disintegrated. Blindly, she reached for the lavender-scented soap she had used to clean his hand. After lathering a cloth, Cat began with his face. His beloved face which had aged ten years since she had last seen him. Ah,
deus
, where had he been? What had he done?

Once again, Cat dipped her cloth in the pail, wrung out the excess water. Her hands visibly trembled as they moved from the crevices of his neck and arms to the long, powerful length of his arms. The cloth moved gently over scrapes and bruises, lingered in the black curls shadowing his chest. She knew now why Blas had never taken their game beyond looking. Touching was lethal. She was consumed by emotions which, before, had only been tantalizing visions. Just out of reach. Forbidden.

Her hand slowed. Bypassing the towel, she knelt down to pull off his boots. They were so badly worn they nearly disintegrated at her touch. The boots would never be used again. Blas’s leggings were nearly as bad. A series of holes held together by strands of yarn instead of the fine wool knit they once had been. And his feet . . . Catarina slumped back onto the hearth, fearing for a moment she might be sick. How was it possible he could walk at all? She was a very great fool to be thinking of love when her Blas was so badly hurt.

Cat spent a long time on Blas’s feet, teeth clenched, her stomach threatening to revolt. Though his feet might heal, they would never again look normal, of that she was certain. Through all her ministrations Blas remained stoically unmoving—even when Cat knew she was hurting him. He had retrieved the bottle; while she worked, he finished it. When Cat finally looked up, tears running down her cheeks, Blas was regarding her with a glint which showed the first sign of revival of his spirits.

Wine. It was the wine, Cat told herself. Whatever the cause, a glimpse of the Blas of old could only be good. Cat rubbed the sleeve of her robe over her eyes, managed a watery smile. It was not the first time she had seen Blas with a full bottle inside him. He was quite funny when he was drunk, his humor bubbling into playfulness. Tonight seemed no exception as, with slow deliberation, he started to unwrap the towel.

“
In Medieval times,” Blas said blandly, “the lady of the castle was expected to bathe each itinerant knight. It was part of the ritual of hospitality.”

Fiercely, Cat bent to scrub a spot of blood which had stained the soft pastels of the carpet. “I cannot,” she whispered, shaking her head.

With a rather wicked smirk, he took the cloth from her limp hand and finished the wash himself. Through lowered lashes, Cat peeked. This was the only part of him she had never seen, though the uncensored contents of Thomas Audley’s library had provided her with a more than adequate supply of artist’s renderings of the nude male body. He was quite large, her husband. Very, Cat amended, as his maleness seemed to swell before her eyes. With a tiny gasp, She ducked her head and turned her face away.

Blas found the sight of his Cat peeping at him while attempting to look as if her thoughts were elsewhere as exciting as it was amusing. Though a glance downward revealed that he was perhaps overdoing the exposure a virgin wife might find acceptable. With a grimace for his frost-bitten feet, Blas levered himself to his feet and flopped onto the bed, face down. “My back, Cat, he ordered. “That ought not to offend your modesty.”

The damp cloth had moved over only a portion of his broad shoulders when her hand slowed to a stop. “You may as well tell me,” she said. “I will find out when I write father’s report to London.”

Though muffled by the pillow, the stark tragedy and bitterness of Blas’s reply was all too clear. “Moore’s dead, six thousand men lost, the remains of the army en route back to England. The Lisbon garrison is all that’s left of our troops on the Peninsula. Napoleon has two hundred thousand men in Spain. He could retake Lisbon in the twinkling of an eye.

“
At her sharp gasp of horror, Blas added harshly, “You knew this could happen, Cat. It was the
way
it happened that was so bloody awful.”

Automatically, Catarina returned to washing his back. He needed her touch, that she understood. “Tell me,” she commanded fiercely.

“
When Moore saw he was vastly outnumbered, he ordered a retreat to La Coruña . . . but that idiot Frere—the British minister in Salamanca—asked him to go to the aid of Madrid. So Moore called off the retreat, and Boney himself came after him with eighty thousand men. Our army was nearly surrounded, but they broke through and started back toward La Coruña, harassed by the French nearly every step of the way.”

“
And you went with them?” cried Cat incredulously.

Blas’s English heritage betrayed him. “It seemed the sporting thing to do.” He pounded his fist into the pillow, startling her hot reply into silence. “Cat, I saw what happened in Madrid, what happened to your father and Dona Blanca. I’ve seen the
guerrilleros
do much the same in return. But never . . . never did I think to see our own men—a British army—act like rats deserting a sinking ship. Fighting, clawing their way over each other’s dying backs, humanity forgotten. Camp followers, Spanish peasants, the ill and wounded used as human bridges across icy swamps, killed for a scrap of bread . . .”

The cloth had come to rest, unheeded, on the small of his back. “Surely . . . not all?”

Blas rolled over and stared up at her. “No, of course not all. There were good men, brave men. But, believe me, it was an incident to be swept into the dustbin of history. When we finally made it to La Coruña, our ships weren’t even there yet. Three days we waited! Soult was able to bring up his troops and attack in force. That’s when Moore was killed . . . but nearly fifteen thousand finally made it to the ships.” Blas paused. The evacuation of Britain’s army may have been a triumph of logistics. For Lisbon it could be a death knell. “Once again we’ve been abandoned, Cat,” he admitted, “and who can say if our government will have the stomach to fight again.”

She could not go through it again, Cat thought. The constant fear. The rapacious looks of the conquering French. The little humiliations, the terror of the slightest slip of the tongue. The shadow of death which would once again envelop them all, most particularly Thomas Audley and Don Alexis Perez de Leon.

“
Will Soult march south?” Cat inquired with what she hoped was an admirable appearance of calm.

“
He could still be in La Coruña or hot on my heels just outside the city,” Blas murmured. “At the moment I’m just too damn tired to care.” As Catarina gently pulled the covers over his battered body, Blas’s eyes closed. Cat tiptoed around the room, cleaning up the mess. Trying not to think. Of war. Defeat. Of Blas. To whom she was only a sometime bride.

When she removed her robe and climbed into bed, Cat kept her eyes averted, refusing to look at the enigma who was called Blas. Don Alexis. Don Alejo. She stayed at the edge of the bed, careful not to touch him. It was a long time before she slept.

Hours later, she woke to the touch of a hand . . . stifled a cry as the hand squeezed her breast, a thumb rubbed across her nipple. She knew instinctively Blas was half asleep, still full of wine and dreaming of one of his women. If she cried out, she never doubted he would stop. As much as he needed her, Blas would not go this far. Their game—that childish bit of daring—was the outside limit of their relationship. He would never, ever, touch her so.

But she did not cry out. She did not move.

Suddenly, her gown was up around her neck. Blas’s mouth followed his hand. Cat thought she might die of it. The delicious horror of what he was doing, the warmth . . .
Ah, deus!
What was he doing now?

The shock as his hand drifted lightly across her navel and down to places where she had never been touched before. She froze, torn between the joy of his tongue and teeth nibbling her breast and horror at what his hand was doing as he parted her thighs. A soft contented hiss of breath escaped his mouth. As he caressed her breast with one hand, he cupped the seat of her femininity with the other.

No, no, no, he must not do this!