The Spanish Marriage (21 page)

Flustered and angry, it still took him a moment to break her
hold. He had no wish to hurt her or to cause a scene. When he straightened up
from the embrace Adele Towles was smiling, a strange hard smile. “My
farewell present to you, my darling.” She turned, and when he followed
her gaze he could see Thea, her hand on Tony Chase’s arm and her mouth
open in a small “o” of surprise and hurt.

“Damn you to Hell, Adele. I don’t know what
Charlie Towles did to deserve you, but it could not have been bad enough.”
He shook off her hand and started to push through the crowd, but it was too
late. By the time he reached the spot where Thea had been only a moment before,
she was gone, disappeared without a trace in the milling crowd. Behind him he
thought he heard Adele Towles’s laugh.

Thea had been grateful for the presence of Bess and Tony
Chase when Joaquín arrived in Hill Street to take them all up in his carriage for
the short drive to Ranelagh. She had successfully put off thinking about the
debacle she had made of her plea to Matlin all day, but she was certain that
sooner or later Joaquín would demand to know if she had spoken with her husband
or not. She had a good notion of what her cousin’s reaction would be when
she tried to explain what had happened. She had failed him, failed the cause,
failed her marriage. She deserved every wretched epithet in the dictionary, and
it was only the fear that Joaquín would actually call on her in Hill Street, if
she did not give him a more circumspect meeting place, that had given her the
strength to go tonight.

Her respite was brief. When they alit at Ranelagh and a
groom had taken the carriage off, Joaquín neatly arranged it so that he was
Thea’s escort into the park, while Tony Chase squired his sister. This
was not to Bess’s liking or Tony’s; it was certainly not to Thea’s.
Bess made a little face at Thea before Tony swept her down a green-hedged
pathway.

“Well?” Joaquín prodded.

“Well?” Thea returned defensively.

“Did you speak to your husband, cousin?”

Thea blinked, looked away, looked back and got the worst of
it out. “We had a quarrel. Cousin, I would help you if I could, but I
promise that nothing I say will be of any help to you or to Spain. My husband....”
She paused painfully. “He does not think very highly of me just at this
present, and I had as well tell you he has taken you in strong dislike as well.”

“Me? He does not even know me.”

“He saw you last night, talking to me. He thought you were
too particular in your attentions. He blamed me for encouraging you.” She
laughed bitterly. “I did not even have the chance to explain to
him....”

Joaquín stopped in his tracks, his eyes cold. The hand that
had cupped her elbow with a courteous guiding touch seemed suddenly hard as
iron; it bruised her. “You should have run after him. You should have
crawled after him, if you had to, made him understand the desperate case we are
in.”

“You don’t understand.” She tried futilely
to pull her arm away from his grip.

“I don’t need to understand, cousin:
you
don’t
understand. This is more important than you or me or your husband’s prejudices.
You must talk with him....”

“I cannot.” Thea’s tone was suddenly as
hard as his own. “Speak with him directly, cousin. Perhaps he will listen
to you. I am no longer going to play at go-between, I hardly know why I began
in the first place. Bess!” She pulled away from him and started toward
Bess and Tony Chase as they paused, buffeted by the crowds at a path-crossing.

For the rest of the evening Thea stayed with Bess or Bess’s
brother and gave Joaquín no chance to renew his urgings. Her cousin seemed to
accept Bess’s obvious admiration with pleasure; once or twice Thea
wondered if her cousin was as hard-hearted in everything as he had been this evening
with her. Then their eyes would meet, and she would see the steel in his, the
hard resolve, and she would shudder. When Tony proposed to go in search of a
friend he had hoped to meet in the gardens, Thea at once volunteered to
accompany him. He apologized and said she would find his friend deucedly flat.

“By which he means, I collect, that he is going off to
settle a wager, and you would be
de trop.”

“I suppose I would,” Thea agreed flatly and let
Tony go alone. She privately did not expect to see him after that and resigned
herself to an evening spent as a gooseberry; even that was preferable to facing
Joaquín alone. She was surprised, then, when Chase returned to their seats not
fifteen minutes later, and the more surprised by his message.

“Matlin is here?” she paled. “He can’t
want to see me.”

“He came a-purpose to find you; he told me so. He
seemed in a very good humor, Lady Matlin. I told him I would bring you out to
him.”

The spark of hope which Thea had imagined to be dead,
drowned or strangled or buried alive, flared up again. She was dizzy with hope,
giddy with it. “Where is he?” she asked. From his place at
Bess’s side Joaquín nodded approvingly.

“I’ll take you to him. If you are
certain....” Chase let his voice trail off suggestively. He had never
made an impassioned declaration to Thea, but she had read the look in his eyes
before and understood the power she had with him. Her word would be his law.

“I’m sure, Tony. I thank you.... for caring.”

“I should always do that, I hope,” he replied
briefly. “Well, let us find Sir Douglas then.”

He threaded a path expertly through the crowd, past noisy
revellers playing in the mist from a fountain, past a stand of musicians
scraping through a country dance. When he paused, searching the crowd for
Matlin, Thea stopped too, hoping to read her husband’s mood before they
spoke.

She saw him. Adele Towles had her arms around his neck and
they were kissing for all the world to see, in the middle of Ranelagh gardens.

“Tony, take me home,” she commanded waveringly.
He must have seen what she saw, for he was close behind her as Thea began to
push back to Bess and Joaquín. She was weeping, barely able to see in the dusk
and the press of the crowd. Chase said something to her as he followed, but she
could not make it out.

When they reached their table Tony murmured a few words to
them, and immediately Bess folded Thea in an embrace; she soothed and patting
her tousled curls. The two men spoke in undertones for a few minutes. Then Thea
was pulled gently from Bess’s arms and urged in the direction of the
gates. It was not until she had climbed into a carriage that she realized that
it was Joaquín, not Chase who accompanied her. Miserably she recalled what a
rapprochement with Matlin would have meant to him and to his cause.

“I’m sorry....”

Surprisingly, he seemed unperturbed. “Cousin, you have
nothing to apologize for. You were correct: I did not understand your
situation.” Joaquín’s tone was kindly, but there was a cold quality
to his words which was not entirely comforting. “Lie back and rest,
cousin. We will be there shortly.”

Obedient as a baby, Thea sat back against the cushions and
closed her eyes. Dimly she was aware of the carriage’s sway, the sound of
crossing-sweeps arguing and the rattle of other vehicles in the street. She was
too confused to think. Exhausted by emotion, she fell into a kind of doze.

“Cousin? Wake up. We’re here.”

Joaquín’s voice roused her; it was quiet but
insistent. He was urging her up and out of the carriage, toward a doorway, up a
few stone stairs. Flambeaux burned brightly on either side of the door, but
when Thea looked up she realized it was not a door she knew.

“Where?” she began. Joaquín impelled her forward
with the same gentle, inexorable clasp on her elbow. “Cousin, where is
this?”

“Shhh, Dorotea, you don’t wish to make a scene,
do you? Don’t worry; you are with friends. We are in Chiswick, where I
have been lodging with friends of mine. Ahh. Señora Lorca; here, cousin, go
with this lady and she will see to you.”

Thea was given into the custody of a severe woman of
middle-age whose black dress and dark hair did little to mitigate her
forbidding expression. Eying the woman dubiously, Thea said, “My
apologies, Señora, but I am going nowhere until I understand what is going on.
Joaquín, I want to go back to Hill Street immediately.”

He shook his head as if he genuinely regretted the
inconvenience. “It is not possible, cousin. If you think upon the matter
a little, I am sure you will see that it does not serve your purpose or mine to
return you to Señor Matlin’s household just yet.”

“Cousin?” The truth of it struck her at once. “You
mean to hold me to ransom until Matlin takes you to speak with Canning or
Castlereagh!” She laughed. “I cannot seem to make you understand
that I am not the route to Matlin’s attention, can I? Believe me, if you
present yourself at the doorstep announcing you have abducted me, he’ll
either laugh you out of the house or shoot you down where you stand. Probably
he’ll just shrug the whole thing off as the end of a bad job.”

“Go with Señora Lorca, Dorotea. I know better than you
what a man will do in such a case. Sir Douglas will come after you, and while I
have you here I can make him listen. He may be fool enough to dally with other
women in public parks, but no man will permit his wife to be stolen from
him....”

“As if I were a book-end or a boot? You’ll see,
Joaquín. Matlin won’t care a fig what happens to me.” The words
were a bitter admission. While she still had some dignity left, Thea turned
back to Señora Lorca. “If you will show me to my room, Señora? My cousin
will see that I am right.”

The woman turned without comment and led Thea up the stairs
to a narrow, musty corridor. The chamber to which she was shown was small and
as dim as the hallway, and the fire which burned dispiritedly in the grate made
a scant difference to the chilly dampness of the air. It was colder in the house
than out.

“May I have some hot water, please?” She smiled
as best she could at Señora Lorca and received no response; the woman only
turned and left the room. She returned a few minutes later with a can of lukewarm
water in which Thea was able to wash her hands and face. Then, without even Señora
Lorca’s grim company, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared
hopelessly into the fire. Oddly her thoughts were not of Matlin or Adele Towles
or even of her cousin Joaquín. “The sheets on this bed are probably damp,”
she said aloud. “I suppose that fire won’t last long, either.”
As if in confirmation, the fire gave a feeble snap. “I don’t care. I
won’t think about it.” Instead, she thought of Silvy and remembered
her at the convent, at Grahamley, from the dim days when her own mother had
been alive. The memories were comforting.

After a while she was filled with a curious numbness which
was itself peaceful. She stared at the dwindling fire, pulled off her slippers,
dropped her pelisse on a chair, pulled back the thin cover on the bed, and
curled up there. When Señora Lorca stopped to peer into the room half an hour
later she found her guest fast asleep and the fire out.

o0o

He had not been able to catch Thea, but he had recognized Tony
Chase at her side, so the first thing to do, Matlin reasoned, was to find
Chase. He stopped briefly to leave a message in Hill Street, then went to the
Chases’ hired house in Upper Wimpole Street. There, over the butler’s
protests, Matlin sat down to wait.

His wait was not long. Within half an hour he was roused from
deep, bitter thought by the sound of Bess Chase’s voice in the hallway
and by that of the lower voice of their butler.

“Here? He’s here?” Miss Chase squeaked. “Good
God, Woods, fetch my brother at once! Where did you put Sir Douglas?”

Matlin felt it was time to announce himself. He rose and went
to the door of the little book room. “Good evening, Miss Chase. I
apologize for forcing myself upon your hospitality, but you can understand that
I am—” he gave a wry sniff— “a little distracted this
evening.”

“If making yourself free with our book room is all you
have to apologize for, Sir Douglas,” Bess began hotly. She was stopped
from continuing when her brother appeared at her side and put a quick hand on
her arm. Where Bess’s pretty round face was red with indignation, young
Chase was cool and distant, as angry as his sister but filled with icy politeness.
“Sir Douglas?” he said evenly.

“Chase.” Matlin inclined his head. “I was
saying to your sister that I apologize for foisting myself upon you in this
fashion, but I must know where my wife is.”

“Why? So you can flaunt that horrid Towles woman
before her eyes?” Bess shook off her brother’s restraining hand and
squared her shoulders. “No, I won’t be quiet, Tony. Thea—Lady
Matlin—is the bravest, best, kindest—”

“I know.” The two words cut Bess off cold. “What
my wife oversaw in the gardens was Lady Towles’s last attempt to rekindle
an old closeness between us. I had indicated to her that I was not interested,
and that kiss was, well, her form of revenge. She had seen Thea in the crowd,
you see, and I had not.”

“Even so,” Bess began.

“Bess, be quiet. Sir Douglas, why did you come?”
Tony Chase’s manner was warmer by a degree or so.

“I have said: I came to find my wife. I told you. I
saw you were with her, so I assumed you would have brought her here with you.”
There was a pause. “I see she is not here. Then where the devil can she
be? She hasn’t many close acquaintances in London, not of the sort to
whom she could go in distress.”

“Wasn’t she at Ocott’s house? That was
where Joaquín set out to take her.”

Matlin’s face darkened. “Joaquín? What the devil
has he to do with this?”

“He was part of our party at Ranelagh. When Lady
Matlin and I, uh, came upon you and Lady Towles, he volunteered to drive her
home. I could not very well leave Bess with him, and I thought that since they
are cousins....”