The Spanish Marriage (4 page)

“My parents are dead.”

In the awkward silence Thea heard his indrawn breath.
“I beg your pardon,” he said at length. “I’ve never
been a good convalescent. I promise; no more rudeness. I will be a paragon of
obedience.”

“I doubt that,” Thea said. “Señor, will
you tell me your name, at least? Only so Mother and the others can stop referring
to you as Señor Mysterioso? Unless of course you like being called by a name
that sounds like something out of Mrs. Radcliffe.”

He grimaced. “I take your point. I am Matlin. Sir
Douglas Matlin. There, that’s all in order like something from the
refreshment rooms at Almacks’. God, what a world away that seems.”
He leaned against his pillow, closed his eyes, and winced.

“I do wish you would keep still,” Thea said
crossly. “Sister Juan will wish to change your bandage by and by.”

“I am all anticipation.
You
have not introduced
yourself, little Sister.”

Startled, Thea realized that he thought she was a nun. It was
stupid not to have understood it sooner, but she had become so used to the
endearments—child, daughter, little one—that the Spanish used so
lavishly that she had assumed his “little Sister” to be more of the
same. “I beg your pardon,” she said helplessly. “I am
Dorothea Cannowen, of Grahamley Hall.”

“And in religion?”

Thea laughed briefly to cover the awkwardness. “Oh,
you mean these? Sir Douglas, I am not of the order. I wear the habit only for
appearances. A nun!” A shadow crossed Thea’s face; was it not what
she had thought herself? What other choice would there be for her in time? “I
suppose I might as well be. I may be yet, if I cannot find a cure for
it.”

He looked confused. “A cure? For being a nun? Surely
you aren’t being held prisoner.” His eyes were open again, wide
with amusement. Thea shook her head. “No. I see. A guest, even as I am?”
She gave another nod. “Well, I suppose that some day, if I am patient,
someone will explain to me how a girl from Grahamley Hall comes to be nursing
strangers in a convent in Spain and wearing novice’s robes but not in
Orders herself.”

Feeling that it was he who had explaining to do, Thea replied
tartly, “Perhaps some day someone will. Just now, I think you should be
asleep. I’ll make some chamomile tea.”

Mother Beatriz herself called in the stranger’s
sickroom the next day and found Thea trembling with impatience while Matlin
strove to shave himself with a rusty blade and a hand mirror borrowed from
Manuel. “You’ll cut yourself; I know you will,” Thea insisted
angrily.

“My dear infant, I have been shaving myself these last
ten years; I know precisely what I am about.” Matlin’s drawl was
amused, but his voice was weak and his hand shook slightly.

“Allow me, Señor,” the Superior said briskly in
Spanish, taking the razor from him. “I too have done some nursing in my
time.”

Thea was entertained by the spectacle before her: Matlin said
nothing, kept as still as possible, and eyed the blade being plied at his chin
while Mother Beatriz went cheerfully about her task.

“There,” she said at last. “When a man
wishes to be shaved,
hija,
he is healing. Now, will you introduce me to
our guest?”

Thea blushed under the Superior’s kind, ages-wiser
tone and made Matlin’s name known to the nun.

“Siir Dooglath....” Mother Beatriz tried,
lisping the D and S sounds hopelessly. “I think, if you do not much mind,
Señor, I will call you by your family name. Mathleen.”

Matlin blinked at her pronunciation, then smiled and nodded
agreeably.

“Good.
Niña,
I wish you would go to the
anteroom and wait for Sister Juan to come.” It was not a request. Disgruntled
at being so summarily dismissed from what had been
her
place, Thea left
the room, glancing regretfully behind her. She settled herself ungracefully on
a stool in the anteroom and watched for Sister Juan on the path from the garden
gate. She found that by keeping very still she could hear all that Mother
Beatriz said, and most of Matlin’s replies.

“I know this is a danger to you and your House,
sheltering a stranger, an enemy to your country,” he was saying.

“There are enemies and enemies, Señor. The French are supposed
to be our friends, but you strike me as a safer guest than any of Bonaparte’s
men. Besides, this is the house of God; there are no enemies here,” the
Superior finished sententiously. “But truly an enemy? I do need to ask,
Señor, what an Englishman is doing, in these days, in Spain, with a bullet
wound across his forehead; so Sister Juan Evangelista tells me.”

In the other room Thea started; she had not realized
that.

“You may rest assured, Mother, I am a very harmless
visitor. If I cannot speak kindly of your country, it is because some of your
Spanish soldiery did not recognize my, uh, harmlessness. I will swear to you—on
your Blessed Virgin, if you like—that I was here to inspect my
uncle’s vineyards in Malaga and nothing more.”

“An oath will not be necessary, Señor. Surely, you are
not a Catholic?”

“My mother was, ma’am.” Although Thea
could not see him she could picture his smile, the air of rueful confession.
She
would never have escaped a lecture from Mother Beatriz for such an
off-handed reply, but he went on untroubled.

“April of ’08? Then I have been a guest of your
country for almost fifteen months and in custody in Madrid for nearly a year of
that time.”

“You were released?” The Superior’s tone
was nearly as dry as his own had been moments before. “I did not think
so. You escaped?”

“During the celebrations after your King Carlos’
abdication in favor of Fernando. My jailers got a trifle careless and I saw my
chance. It was not,” he paused, “not entirely without incident.”

“Whence the wound in your head. I see. And now, Señor?”

“Back to England, if I can make my way to Portugal and
the coast. I had some friends when I passed through last time, although by this
time....”

“Time and plenty to worry about your friends when you
are stronger, Señor.”

Thea had forgotten to watch the path outside the cottage
door as she listened. Now Sister Juan and Sister Ana stood in the doorway
watching her as she, quite obviously, eavesdropped. “Señorita Cannowen,”
Sister Juan began sharply, and
“Niña,
listening at keyholes again?”
Sister Ana scolded. Thea rose, upsetting her stool behind her and blushing for
the second time as Mother Beatriz joined them in the anteroom.

“Juan, you will wish to examine your patient, I think.
As for you, Dorothea, I think it is time you had a rest from your nursing.
Sister Ana will sit with our guest for a while.” At Thea’s
transparent mutiny she only smiled. “I did not say that you may not sit
with Señor Mathleen again, child, only that it is time you spent some time
elsewhere, for example, with Señorita de Silva, who has missed you greatly.”

Thea dropped her head consciously; she had neglected Silvy
of late, and she knew it. All the same, he was
her
stranger.

“No need for that Friday-face, child. I think Señor
Mathleen will prefer an adult’s silence to a child’s prattling for
a time.”

Child. There was that word again. Thea burst out, “I didn’t
prattle at him! I only wanted to ask—Mother, it would be a perfect
solution when he’s well. Silvy wants to stay with you; she’s happy
here, but I haven’t a vocation, you know I don’t, and my
grandfather doesn’t want me. I’d die first, and I wouldn’t be
a danger to the House anymore, and....”

The nuns regarded her with vague alarm. “Dorotea,”
Sister Juan said gently. “What is this solution?”

“I only thought—Mother, please, when Sir Douglas
goes back to England I want to go with him. It isn’t that you have not
all been kind to me; I’m grateful, but this is not my place.” Thea
forced herself to slow down, adding,
“You
know it’s not.”

Mother Beatriz sighed unhappily, her sandy brows drawn together
in a line across her round face. “I knew you were not happy here,
hija.
I had hoped that perhaps you would find a vocation, but I suppose that was
not to happen. As for your plan, you must not think of such a thing. Even if
such a man were willing to take you with him on so dangerous a journey!”

“He
has
to. No, I don’t mean has to, but
I saved his life; even Sister Juan said so. Can’t I ask him to save mine,
at least?”

In silence the nuns looked from Thea to each other and back
to Thea. When Matlin called for Mother Beatriz they all followed after her,
Thea at her heels and the others just behind.

Matlin laid his head back against the pillow; he was pale
with the exertion of sitting up. “I thought you might as well ask the
source,” he said with grim politeness. “You saved my life, just as
you pointed out, Miss Cannowen. It seems only fair that I help you in my turn.
If it is possible, when the time comes I will be pleased to take you to England
with me.”

Thea did not see her patient for three days, days spent alternately
sewing in Silvy’s chamber or at prayers with the community. As she went
about the few chores allotted to her or poked moodily at her sewing, she was
aware of a weight of silent disapproval; indeed, sometimes not so silent.

“I raised you better than this,
niña!
To say
nothing of the impropriety of such an undertaking, which is so much folly I cannot
believe you would think of it for a moment. To importune that man, to take
advantage of him! The whole thing is madness!”

Mother Beatriz agreed with Silvy. “Insanity.
Hija,
you
have no idea what the dangers will be for Señor Mathleen on his way to England.
Better you stay safely here where....”

“Where what?” Thea retorted at last, furious and
resentful. “Mother, kind as you have been to me, you cannot keep me here
forever. You know yourself what a sorry inmate I would make.”

“In time,” the Superior started. Meeting Thea’s
obstinate look, she shook her head. “Perhaps you are right, child, but
surely it is early to think of leaving Spain. Can you not try your grandfather
again? Well, if you will not, child, I don’t know what else there is to
be done with you. Many women have found great peace and joy in the Church.”
To Thea’s irritable eye, Silvy was growing more saintly by the day. How
was it, Thea wondered, that no one could be persuaded that Matlin’s
arrival was a godsend, the answer to her dilemma.

“Mother, I don’t think,” she began, then
tried another tactic. “Sir Douglas said he would take me with him. If he
does not object, I don’t see why you should.”

“Will Sir Douglas see to your welfare for the rest of
your life?” Silvy asked tartly. “I have not met this man, who was
surely, if he has any pretension to gentility at all, out of his mind when he
agreed to take you with him. He is probably another such as your papa: loud and
crude and unthinking. He did not stop to consider that by the time you arrived
in England your reputation would be in tatters. Think of it,
niña.
You
wish to dance at Almacks’? To make a superior marriage? To make a
marriage at all?”

“Marriage is a long way off, certainly,” Mother
Beatriz added quickly, looking at Thea’s slight, childish form in the
borrowed habit. “Clara, you must not excite yourself in this fashion.”

“I must make her understand. Dorotea, you think your aunts
and uncles who did not want to bother themselves with you before will welcome
you home under the escort of one lone man? Pfaugh! A breath of scandal and they
will leave you to fend for yourself, worse off than you were before we left
England in the first place.” Silvy’s mouth was pursed in anger and
fatigue, and deep violet shadows were under her eyes. “It is not to be
thought of.”

“So I must stay here for the rest of my life, against
my will, not of the world, not of the Church, a part of nothing. I wish we’d
never left England.” Choking back the tears which threatened to mar her
angry departure, Thea stalked out of the cell, clutching her tambour frame like
a weapon beside her.

o0o

In the gate cottage Matlin had come under fire more than
once for encouraging his young nurse. “Putting ideas in the child’s
head,” fat Sister Ana sputtered as she changed the linen on his bed.
“An infant, being set up to disobey her elders, and Señor, the ruckus she
is causing! Really.” She shook her finger at him as she might at a naughty
schoolboy. “Really, sir, you should know better.”

“The girl seems to know her own mind,” Matlin
objected mildly. He was sitting up a few hours a day now, wrapped in an old
coat of Manuel’s with a blanket over his lap. His color was much improved
and he could move without the angry lance of pain through his head, but the
bandage remained bound over his brow.

“Know her mind! The child is a babe, an infant! What does
she know of her own mind? You at least are old enough to have known
better.” Still tssking under her breath Sister Ana went to fill the water
jug tucked under her arm. She looked, Matlin thought watching her, like a big,
disapproving crow.

Thus, when Dorothea next waited upon her patient, the two of
them met awkwardly, like guilty children. After a few minutes of strained
conversation Thea produced a pack of cards from one of the voluminous sleeves
of her habit and asked if he knew how to play two-handed whist.

“Will Mother Beatriz disapprove of this?”

“Disapprove? She gave me the cards, Sir Douglas.”
Thea put one hand up to push the heavy veil away from her face, thus exposing
some of the fine, pale hair that was hidden under it. “Don’t tell
me you aren’t bored to tears here.” She pulled the stool to his
bedside and began to shuffle the cards. They played in odd, companionable
silence for a while.

Finally, Thea looked up and asked, reluctantly, “They’ve
been after you, haven’t they?”