The Sometime Bride (35 page)

A minx, a veritable minx. But surely, Wrexham thought, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Former Captain Gordon Somersby let out a whoop that was heard even by those who had not been stopped in their tracks by Cat’s cries. He spurred his horse toward the Everingham barouche, his companion valiantly following behind, as they wound their way around carriages and past outraged riders. As Gordon reined in beside the barouche, smartly kicking up the sacred turf of Rotten Row, Clara Everingham was reduced to rummaging through her reticule in a frantic search for her vinaigrette.

“
Cat Audley!” cried Mr. Somersby. “As I live and breathe! Where did you spring from?” He leaned down, seized both of Cat’s hands, and pulled her into as close an embrace as could be managed between a barouche and a mounted rider. Recollecting his manners at last, he made his bow to Lady Everingham and turned to introduce his companion. “You won’t credit it, Cat. You must have tempted the fates today. This young jackanapes with me is none other than some kind of a cousin of yours. First met him on the Peninsula. May I present Lieutenant William Audley, General Sir Quinton’s Audley’s son.”

Heedless of the cascades of shining hair streaming down her back and the elegant black bonnet hanging askew over one shoulder, Cat grasped her unknown cousin’s hand with joy. William Audley was a young man of nearly her own age. Of medium build with curling brown locks and a pleasant open smile, he was very finely arrayed in a uniform of rifleman green. General Audley was, she knew, her father’s first cousin.

“
I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant,” Cat said. “I had the sad duty of writing to Sir Quinton about the death of my father. But knowing you to be a rifleman, I never dreamed I would have the pleasure of meeting you here in London.”

“
Made a botch of it, don’t you know?” said Lieutenant Audley quite cheerfully. “Caught the fever during the siege of San Sebastian. Beastly thing to do. Missed the final assault entirely. Pamplona too. I say, has Sir Giles heard any news? It’s said Pamplona will fall any day, and then it’s straight on to France!”

Cat’s face sobered on the instant. “No, cousin, I am sorry, there’s been no news. No news at all.” Not from the army. Not from Blas. She turned back to her old friend. “And you, Gordy? Are you also on leave?”

“
Inherited,” that gentleman replied gloomily. “M’mother felt she couldn’t do without me. Sold out after Vitoria, been in the country ‘til this week.” Sympathy suffused his thin face as he noted Catherine’s mourning. “Your father too?” he asked.

Clara Everingham was not so shocked by Catherine’s behavior that she failed to note she was confronted by two stellar examples of England’s finest. Swiftly steering the conversation into a more cheerful vein, she invited both young men to attend the dinner party she was arranging for Catherine in a week’s time.

As the young men rode off, Cat—in response to a hissed instruction from Lady Everingham—reaffixed her black velvet bonnet and began to tuck her unruly hair under the high poke of its up-to-the-minute style. She had just firmly retied the black silk ribbons at a jaunty angle under her ear when she noticed their barouche had not moved on. A stranger had appeared beside them. Lady Everingham was eyeing the elegant gentleman on horseback with some disapproval.

“
Go away, Wrexham,” Clara snapped. “You are not at all the sort of person Mrs. Perez should meet.”

It was Cat’s turn to be shocked until the gentlemen’s slow quizzical smile revealed he was not insulted. He recognized Lady Everingham’s words were mere social jousting. A warning to Cat. As well as to himself.

Wrexham shook his head. “And here I have been thanking Fortune you and I are acquainted, my lady, so I might have the pleasure of an introduction to your companion.”

The earl turned the full force of his deep-set gray eyes toward Catherine. His appraisal, open and patently admiring sparked an unexpected frisson of interest. The earl was taller than Blas, she judged. Older. Over thirty, she judged. Faint lines of dissipation were beginning to appear in a long face marked by a hawk nose and topped by dark brown hair waving gently over his high starched collar.

“
My lord.” Cat acknowledged Lady Everingham’s reluctant introduction. She extended her hand, knowing full well he would take advantage of the opportunity to kiss it, although the gesture was almost entirely out of fashion in London. She was correct. Nor did the earl’s lips stay respectfully short of her hand but slipped close enough to brush lightly against her glove. A practiced courtier, this one. But fascinating. No wonder Lady Everingham had warned him off. She seemed to have forgotten Cat had spent a lifetime dealing with men like the Earl of Wrexham.

In spite of her misgivings, Clara Everingham was well aware Wrexham’s admiration, if carefully controlled, could only enhance her protégé’s debut. A rake he might be, but he was also a leading member of the
ton
. The earl soon found himself added to the Everingham’s guest list for the dinner party. He rode away quite satisfied with his afternoon’s prospecting. He did not so much as glance at the well-displayed charms of the other ladies in the park.

As the barouche continued its slow journey, Lady Everingham ignored the speculative and disapproving looks cast on her charge by some of the high sticklers who had witnessed Catherine’s farouche behavior. To each acquaintance she made a point of introducing Catherine as a widow - to whom far greater license was granted than to a young woman venturing into society for the first time. With charming insouciance Clara rattled on about how far Mrs. Perez was from home, how delighted to see a familiar face. Particularly, one of the gallant young men who had defended his country on the Peninsula. By the time the ladies left the park, Clara Everingham was satisfied she had pulled the claws of the
ton
’s sharpest tabbies. She was now free to wonder which acquaintances might have daughters of a suitable age to balance a table which had suddenly been gifted with three extra men.

“
No!
Absolutamente, não
!” Quivering, Cat glared at Monsieur Claude, the
ton
’s most talented coiffeur.

“
But it is the fashion, Catherine,” Lady Everingham protested. “Your hair is very fine, impossible to dress in the latest fashion. You look—forgive me, my dear—but you have the look of a-a
courtesan
.”

“
Catarina,
pobrecita
, what is the matter?” cried Blanca, hastening into Clara Everingham’s sitting room from the hallway. She found Cat with her fists clenched at her sides, nearly nose-to-nose with her astonished hostess while Monsieur Claude stood, mouth agape, waving his scissors in Gallic outrage.

“
I made a solemn promise to Blas I would not cut my hair,” Cat hissed. “A solemn promise, you understand. It is not possible, I cannot do it. Even if I wished to. Which I do not,” she added with a hiccup of a sob.

Clara Everingham threw up her hands. “My dear, I had no idea you felt so strongly.” She took a deep breath, summoned the pleasant dignified smile expected from a well-bred hostess. “Monsieur Claude, with your exceptional talent I know you will be able to contrive something suitable for Mrs. Perez for our little party this evening. I leave her in your capable hands.” With a significant glance at Blanca Dominguez, Lady Everingham wisely retired to the far reaches of the house.

That evening, when all of his guests were seated in the mahogany paneled dining room, Sir Giles Everingham remained standing at the head of the table in a gesture unusual enough to capture the attention of all in the room. “As you know,” he announced, “the
Grand Armée
was decimated by our European allies at Leipzig in mid-October. Today we have received word the fortress of Pamplona fell on October 25th.” Sir Giles paused, savoring the moment, as exclamations of joy echoed through the room. When he continued, his words were slow and clear. Closer to a prayer of thanksgiving than triumphant joy. “With the fall of this final French bastion in Spain, the road to France is clear at last.”

“
To the Peer, God bless him!” cried Lieutenant Audley, forgetting his lowly rank as he sprang to his feet to propose the toast.

“
And to all his gallant men,” Sir Giles returned as everyone rose to drink to the Peninsular army and its Commander in Chief.

“
His men took to calling Wellington The Peer as soon as he was made viscount after Talavera,” Cat whispered to Lord Wrexham as he seated her once again at his side. “It was their way of showing their pride in his title.”

“
Which they won for him,” said Wrexham drily.

“
It takes more than hard fighting to win battles, my Lord,” Cat chided. And not just the military genius of Wellington. Among the unsung heroes were Thomas, Blas, Sir Giles . . . and Tonio. The will-o-the-wisp she had never met, but who spiced his reports with humorous remarks which never failed to bring a smile to her lips. And all the other members of Britain’s network of spies. The Portuguese and Spanish
guerrilleros
. Their wives, children, and lovers who had suffered such horrible reprisals.

Cat was relieved as the next change of course signaled a conversational switch to the person on her left. This was scarcely the place to talk of atrocities on the Peninsula, and with Wrexham she might well have been tempted to do so. Though why she felt an empathy with this admitted rake, she did not have time to analyze.

Wrexham’s reaction to the change of partners was quite different. His dinner partner’s face proclaimed her an idle beauty with no thoughts beyond her reflection in a mirror. Yet he suspected she was so much more. He experienced keen disappointment when she turned her back to converse with an elderly gentleman widely known as Britain’s foremost expert on codes.

Later, as footmen began to serve a delicate
blancmange
, the words of a middle-aged Member of Parliament rose above the general polite table talk: “Is it true Wellington will send his Spanish troops home before he moves into France?” Directed to Sir Giles, the question effectively silenced all conversation.

The only censorship was a gentleman’s discretion, and Sir Giles, after only a moment’s hesitation, responded with the truth. “Your information is correct, Bennington. Wellington will not take Spanish troops into France.”

“
But that’s nearly half his army,” Lieutenant Audley sputtered.

“
Forty thousand men,” echoed Gordon Somersby.

Sir Giles’s lips firmed into a thin line. “The general has good reason for his decision.” He returned to his dessert, obviously bringing the discussion to a close.

Lord Wrexham raised an enquiring brow to Catherine.

“
Reprisals,” Cat explained. “Terrible, unbelievable things were done by the French. You have perhaps seen some of Goya’s drawings?” Wrexham nodded, his patrician face devoid of his customary cynicism. “It was not just soldiers who suffered, you understand,” Cat continued, “but women, children, priests, nuns. Everyone. The
guerrilleros
exacted revenge of course, but if Wellington goes into France . . .” Cat shrugged. “There would be no way to control the Spanish troops. It would be far worse than after Salamanca and Badajoz.”

“
Is it true our own troops sacked those cities?” It was something Wrexham, as a member of the House of Lords, found difficult to believe.

“
Oh, yes,” said Cat simply. “It was their reward, you see. So many of their friends died to take those fortresses. For the survivors there must be something.”

Wrexham could not remember ever finding a woman so unsettling to his peace of mind. To his surety he was an Englishman and therefore superior to the rest of the world. Catherine Perez did not merely come from another country but from a world beyond his imagination. Loosing her on the
ton
would quite literally set the Cat among the pigeons.

She was also unsettling to an entirely different portion of his anatomy. His eyes insisted on following Catherine Perez from the room when the ladies, at Clara Everingham’s signal, left the gentlemen to their port. He was a fool, Wrexham thought. A blithering idiot. Tumbled back in time to the infatuations of callow youth. Women like Catherine Perez should be kept locked up, the key thrown into a bottomless pit.

As long as he was locked up with her.

As Catherine entered the drawing room, a young woman detached herself from a group near the pianoforte and moved forward to greet her. “You probably don’t remember my name with such a sea of new faces,” she said, the lively intelligence glowing in wide gray eyes belying the shy diffidence of her tone. “I am Amabel Lovell, Mrs. Perez, and I hope we will be friends. Mr. Somersby, who sat next to me at dinner, has told me all about you, and I know I shall like you immensely.”

By this time Miss Lovell had succeeded in guiding Cat to a window seat in the far corner of the drawing room. “Mr. Somersby says you will understand the problems of a young lady raised in a household where her father actually
does
something,” Amabel Lovell confided with scarcely a pause in her monologue. “Here in London I sometimes think government work is almost as bad as being a Cit. My papa works with Sir Giles, you see, and I am to make my come-out this Season. And my mama says it is not at all easy for someone who has been raised in a political household to be enough of a widgeon to get by without being called a bluestocking. But Mr. Somersby says you do it superbly, that you actually hoodwinked Marshal Junot himself!”