The Sometime Bride (32 page)

“
Like the Prince o’ Darkness ’imself!” said Bess with fervor. “And sat ‘is ’orse like billy-be-damned to the world! Oh! I surely beg your pardon, Ma’am, but I’m thinkin’ you know what I mean!”

Yes, indeed. Cat knew quite well what she meant.

And however was she to stay widowed if—
when—
Blas came back to England? Cat could not resist a smile, a surge of hope. If Blas did not wish to acknowledge her, he had gotten himself into a bit of a pickle. A very un-Blas-like thing to do.

By the time Cat descended to the ground floor, Sir Giles Everingham was waiting to bid her farewell, promising to send his carriage for the ladies in two weeks time so they might meet his Clara and begin to become acquainted in the
ton
. After an outpouring of thanks for Sir Giles’s escort into their new life, Cat and Blanca waved him on his way.

A visit to the nursery found Rosalía and Pierre exploring the contents of long-disused cupboards for toys and books of another age. After a quick hug for the little boy who seemed not at all disturbed by yet another place to lay his fair head, Catherine and Blanca met with Mrs. Plumb in the morning room, which overlooked the now rained-soaked rear park and gardens of the charming old house.

“
I am pleased we are blessed with a cook who is as competent in her position as you are in yours,” Cat said, bringing a flush of pleasure to Mrs. Plumb’s cheeks as the housekeeper murmured her thanks, “but I fear I do have one request. Would you be so good as to procure some coffee, even if you must send to town for it. I was raised on Brazilian coffee, and chocolate is not at all what I can like in the morning. At bedtime, perhaps, but never in the morning.” Cat evinced a delicate shudder. “Please do not apologize, Mrs. Plumb. I am aware that it is the custom. Dona Blanca—Mrs. Dominguez—and I are attempting to accustom ourselves to English ways, but we are agreed that mornings without coffee are simply not possible.”

After repeated apologies and assurances that coffee would be procured that very day, Mrs. Plumb ventured hesitantly onto another tack. “I was wishful of knowing about Bess Fielding, Ma’am. I realize she cannot be what you’re accustomed to either. But knowing you’d be going up to the city where you’d want to hire a fine London dresser, I hoped Bess might do while you were at the Park.” Nervously, Mrs. Plumb plucked at the heavy keys dangling from her waist, setting them to jingling. “She’s the oldest of seven children—her father Jem Fielding is one of your tenants—and she fair leaped at a chance to come to the Park. But she’s been helping out at home for so long that I fear she has no notion of how to go on. Shall I send to London for a proper maid for you, Ma’am?”

The thought crossed Cat’s mind that if Pierre was exposed for very long to Bess Fielding and Mary Plumb he could not help but learn to talk. Then again, he might stay silent for lack of finding a way to get a word in edgewise. “I find Bess Fielding quite satisfactory, Mrs. Plumb. In fact, I plan to take her with me to London if she cares to go.”

Cat swept away Mrs. Plumb’s astonished protests, as she later dismissed Bess Fielding’s tearful cries of gratitude. A young and cheerful presence would be a much needed asset in the vast and unknown city of London.

There were no neglected corners in Branwyck Park. According to Mrs. Plumb who had served the former owners, many fine pieces of furniture had come with the house, but every room had been refurbished, worn furniture reupholstered or carted to the attics; rugs, draperies and bedhangings cleaned or replaced. In short, an astonishing amount of time, effort and money had been spent on Branwyck Park. Except for the nursery, Cat would not change a thing. Creating a bright, cheerful place for Pierre was, in fact, the only challenge left her. She could not, however, refrain from wondering at the significance of Blas leaving the nursery untouched.

Cat spent the remainder of the dreary afternoon in the library writing letters to her relatives in England. Over the years she had kept up a desultory correspondence with her grandparents and with the titular head of the family, the present Earl of Ailesbury. The last time she had written was to inform them of the death of her father. That Catherine Audley was now resident in England would come as a surprise. That she was Catherine Audley Perez de Leon would come as a shock. The circumstances of her marriage, and her age at the time, had led Thomas to forbid her to mention it in her letters to her English relations.

Cat quickly discovered the letters were not easy to write. The unceasing pounding of the rain against the library windows did not help. She was eminently grateful when she heard the pad of small feet on the carpet followed by small arms clutching her knees.

“
Ah,
bonjour
, Pierre. Good morning!” Cat cried, sweeping the little boy up into her lap as Rosalía came huffing and puffing into the room behind him, apologizing for allowing her charge to get away from her.

“
Sit down, catch your breath,” said Cat in Portuguese. And to Pierre in precise English: “I am glad you have come to see me. This is the library. See all the books.
Beaucoup, beaucoup des livres, non
?” Dutifully, the little boy turned his head and stared at one long wall which was covered from floor to ceiling with books. Many of the shelves were so far above the floor that a tall wooden ladder ran on a track set into the shelves.

Cat pushed back her chair and set Pierre on his feet. Taking his hand, she led him to the shelves which were solidly filled with leather-bound volumes imprinted in gold. She encouraged Pierre to touch the books, feel their texture, trace the shining letters of the titles. “One day,” she promised, “you will be able to read all these books.” Owlishly, Pierre stared at her. He either did not understand her English or he found the prospect of all that reading quite daunting.

Almost hidden behind the sliding ladder Cat saw a book in a bright burgundy binding which looked as if it might have drawings in it. She pushed the ladder aside and reached for the book, her hand freezing on the cover at the sound of a distinct, “Ah!” from Pierre. The book was of no interest at all. His small hands grasped the ladder and tugged. Nothing happened. Frowning mightily, he put his full weight into a forceful push. Fascinated, Cat watched his face light up as the ladder moved a few inches.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Cat picked Pierre up and put him on the ladder, his shoes on the bottom rung. After making sure his hands were tightly clasped on the sides of the ladder, she gently moved it about a foot . . . then stopped.

Glee turned to swift disappointment. Almost . . . almost she saw his lips move. Expectantly, encouragingly, she waited.

He was trying. She could see it clearly. Then the light faded from his clear blue eyes; he hung his head, turning his face away. He started to step down from the ladder.

“
Ah, no!” Cat cried, setting him firmly back in place, horrified she had caused him pain. It was too soon. He would talk when he talked. Never again would she push him. “Let us go for a ride,” she said brightly. Placing her body behind his to shield him if he slipped, she slid the ladder the full length of the wall. The second time they tried it, Cat moved twice as fast; the third time, she ran. Gleeful, if unintelligible, cries of merriment tumbled from both young woman and boy.

When, breathless, Cat swung Pierre off the ladder, it was to find an audience hovering in the doorway. Rosalía, Arthur Goggans, Mrs. Plumb, two housemaids, and a footman. There wasn’t a soul in the house who had not heard the story of the little boy who didn’t talk. The little boy left alone in the midst of a battlefield. Frenchie or not, he was nothing but a poor lost tyke and he had already won their hearts. Mrs. Plumb was crying, as was Rosalía Santos.

Goggans hastily shooed the staff back to work. Cat promised Pierre they would ride the ladder again soon and returned him to Rosalía. When the room was once again quiet, she had difficulty returning to her letter-writing. There was a great hollow in her heart. No one would abandon such a child. Someday the war would be over, and a colonel of
chasseurs
would come looking for his son. Somehow she was certain of it.

However would she be able to give the boy up?

Chapter Seventeen

Cat was a child of the city. As she rode into London, accompanied by Blanca and Bess, she could not resist lowering the window of Sir Giles’s traveling coach. Eagerly, she leaned forward to absorb the sights and sounds of the great city. The rumble of wheels over cobbles, the bustle and hum of people working, shopping, hustling to survive. Buildings towering above narrow side streets, glimpses of a women slouched doorways. Even the smells—from the glorious odor of baking bread to the stench of the sewers—were wonderfully familiar. Not Lisbon, but close enough. Exciting, yet exotic. This was London. Heart of her father’s homeland.

And yet . . . London in late October was cold and drab, the buildings shadowed by soot from thousands of chimneys, their dull facades decorated only by a glistening coat of damp left by fog drifting up from the river in soft swirls of white. In Lisbon there would be sunshine reflecting in dazzling rays off white stucco walls under a colorful canopy of red tile roofs. Balconies with flowers spilling from pots in brilliant cascades of color through every month of the year. And hills. Marvelous hills where one could stand on top of the world with the city and the harbor spread out below. The Tagus. So much broader, so much longer than the Thames.

London. Cat shivered, then raised her proud head still higher. If London and Lisbon were not different, what was the point in being here? She would explore this new world. Tame it. Unlike many young women coming to London for the first time, the city would hold no terrors. She was no innocent eighteen-year-old being brought to the marriage market with little or no experience of cities or the male of the species. Perhaps . . . just perhaps Thomas had not been completely wrong when he insisted on this visit.

“
This is more acceptable,” Blanca approved as their coach passed into the West End, revealing shops with neatly painted signs or discreet brass plates beside elegant doorways. Some homes were row houses; others, individual dwellings set back behind wrought iron fences with green lawn and trees and a glimpse of garden and mews behind.

Cat gasped as a high-perch phaeton trotted by, the handsome young driver easily able to look down at the occupants of the coach. His full-face view of Catherine Audley Perez de Leon surprised a wide grin from his formerly blasé countenance. The gentleman tipped his beaver, gave her an appreciative wink.

Cat pressed back against the bronze velvet squabs of Sir Giles’s coach, folding her hands primly in her lap. “You need not frown,” she muttered to Blanca from under lowered lashes. “I know my conduct must be more perfect than Caesar’s wife, but it is not possible to see London when I sit like a statue in a corner.”

“
A man has only to look at you to love you,” said Blanca severely. “With ladies it will be quite the opposite. Society in London cannot, I think, be very different from society on the continent. So I tell you that in society the women rule, and it is the women you must please. And since you will inspire lust in their men, I fear their friendship will not be easy.”

“
Blanca!
”

“
Do not be naive, Catarina. We can only hope Sir Giles has married well, that Lady Everingham is not of a jealous disposition.”

Cat, who was already suffering qualms about her reception in her guardian’s home, felt her stomach churn. Blanca was right. She had no idea how to deal with a world of women. Dismissing the fascinating sights and sounds of London, Cat clenched her hands in her lap and wished herself back behind the comfortable, familiar walls of the Casa Audley.

The residence of Sir Giles and Lady Everingham was at the corner of a row of houses on a modest square not far from Hyde Park. Although set close to the sidewalk with stairs leading up to a pedimented front door, its rear prospect opened to a fine expanse of gardens leading to fenced mews behind. It was, Cat discovered, not so different from the courtyard and carriage house of the Casa Audley. As the butler showed them into the tastefully furnished drawing room, Cat could see the gardens were alight with a colorful display of chrysanthemums.

To complete the pleasant picture, Sir Giles had indeed married well. Lady Clara Everingham was a woman of good countenance, cheerful temperament, and possessed of that incredibly scarce commodity, good sense. For twenty years she had raised her sons and managed an active participation in the
ton
with very little assistance from a husband who had devoted himself to the demands of his country through two decades of nearly ceaseless war. While the nobility of England, including many who sent sons to war, spent long hours attempting to alleviate their boredom with an endless round of mindless activities from games of chance to criticizing the extravagance of their Prince to the latest tales of illicit lovers, Sir Giles Everingham had merely adjusted his spectacles and seen the guttering of countless midnight candles.

Cat could scarcely have been more fortunate in her sponsor into society. Since Clara Everingham had never had the opportunity to hang on her husband’s sleeve, even if she should have wished to do so, she had no difficulty understanding the independence of a young woman who had had a similar experience with her father and her husband. Lady Everingham also had had the time to cultivate a vast acquaintance among the females in the upper echelons of society, a characteristic devoutly to be wished in a lady sponsoring a young woman into the
beau monde
.