“Even if she does appear, I doubt she would be as lively as all that. One could hope, of course, that she might start clicking castanets in the midst of some staid country-dance.” Elizabeth tapped her fan thoughtfully against her chin. “I cannot account for it, brother. Usually you just sigh and roll your eyes at our frivolity.”
“I never roll my eyes.”
“I beg to differ! So—your curiosity is piqued by the condesa?”
“Perhaps a mere soupçon of pique,” Peter grudgingly admitted.
“But what of ...” Elizabeth’s voice fell to a whisper. “What of Yvette Montcalm?”
“I am not going to ask how you came to know that name, Elizabeth.”
“You needn’t try to freeze me with that tone, Peter. People tell things to artists, you know, while they are forced to sit still for a sitting. Delicious gossip—such as your cozy little pied-a-terre on Half Moon Street.”
“The mere fact that I listened to your tales of some Spanish woman has nothing at all to do with Madame Montcalm.” And he would not yet give his sister the satisfaction of knowing he and Yvette had parted ways.
“Of course not.” Elizabeth covered his hand with her own small one. “I am just glad that all this talk of Spain has not brought on unpleasant thoughts for you.”
“You needn’t fret, Lizzie. I have put all that nonsense quite behind me.”
“Excellent! Then, you must let me introduce you to my new friend Lady Halsby. Nick and I met her in Venice, she is quite lovely ...”
Peter laughed. “No, Lizzie! I have put Spain quite behind me, true, but that does not signify that I am ready for more of your matchmaking efforts. I will come to parson’s mousetrap in my own time, thank you.”
“Well, if you do change your mind ...”
Elizabeth’s words were lost as a furor arose among the crowd nearer the ballroom doors. Elizabeth stood and tried to peer above the heads of those around her, stretching on the toes of her satin slippers.
“How very vexing!” she cried. “I cannot see at all.”
“It is she!” someone said. “The condesa has arrived.”
“Look!”
A sudden hush fell as the doors to the ballroom opened, and the liveried footman announced, in ringing tones and an egregious Spanish accent, “The Condesa Carmen Pilar Maria de Santiago y Montero.”
Peter, who was considerably taller than his diminutive sister, had an excellent view over the crowd as a figure appeared in the doorway.
She was tall, taller than most women, with a proud, straight carriage and a horsewoman’s slim suppleness. She wore a dashing gown of black and gold lace over deep green satin. Antique gold Etruscan bracelets gleamed over long black gloves.
Her head was turned away as she greeted the Duchess of Dacey, but beneath the pattern of her black lace mantilla could be seen fashionably cropped night dark curls, interspersed with gold ornaments shaped like tiny jeweled butterflies.
Framed by the inlaid doors, she made quite a dramatic and eye-catching picture. Peter silently applauded the condesa’s keen sense of theatricality. It was obvious why she had the entire jaded ton eating from her silk-gloved palm.
Then she turned to reveal her face, pale as milk, with huge dark eyes that cooly surveyed the crowd laid out before her.
Peter’s champagne glass fell from his fingers to crash onto the marble floor, causing the ladies around him to leap back with startled cries, their skirts clutched against them.
The woman who had just made such a striking entrance was not a gypsy, or a Russian.
She was his wife.
Chapter Three
“Ah, Condesa!” The Duchess of Dacey was almost giggling, the orange plumes in her headdress acquiver, as she took her new guest’s arm and drew her into the crowded ballroom. “Such an honor you do my humble soiree!”
Carmen inclined her head in what she hoped was a regal manner, striving to keep her features smooth and mysterious, despite her exhaustion and nervousness. “I do apologize for my late arrival, Your Grace,” she murmured.
“Not at all! Why, we have not even gone in to supper yet.” The duchess linked her arm through Carmen’s and smiled brightly. “But you have not met everyone, Condesa! You are surely acquainted with the Marquis of Stonehurst? He tells me you met in Paris.”
“Yes certainly. How do you do?” Carmen held out her gloved hand to the portly little marquis and suffered him to drool over it, wondering if perhaps he could be her letter writer. She had met his brother in Spain, who had then conveniently died and left this man the title. But, no—he was so obviously concerned with only his own comforts. He would not have been concerned with his brother’s life in Spain; he would never have heard of Shadow or Alvaro.
Yet, as he attempted to peer down her bodice, she almost wished it was him. It would have been such a pleasure to skewer the little lecher with her dagger.
“Delighted to see you again, Condesa. It was such a pleasure to dance with you at Madame de Troyes’s ball last winter.” He smiled up at her in a particularly unpleasant manner. “I hope I may have the honor of dancing with you tonight?”
I would rather sink through the floor and die, Carmen thought. Then she smiled sweetly. “I am sorry, but I do not mean to dance tonight. Now, if you will excuse me ...” With a small nod, she moved away from the odious marquis and their giggling hostess, and made her own progress across the room.
She paused to speak with those people she had met on her travels, and to be introduced to their friends, who were all eager to make her acquaintance. She smiled, and nodded, and exchanged pleasantries, accepted invitations to take tea and to drive in the park.
Though, behind all this exquisite politeness, she was always watching. Wondering if one of these smooth-faced people, who were drinking champagne and attempting to make witticisms with her, could be the one who had either seen her themselves in Spain, or had a son or brother or husband who did. Wondering which of them thought they held so much of her past, and her future, in their grip.
Where could she even begin? It seemed hopeless.
And this ball did not seem the right atmosphere for making inquiries concerning military service. It was an evening of preliminary reconnaissance only.
At last she managed to evade the crowds and find a quiet corner, a tiny nook curtained in by one of the open French doors leading to the terrace and the gardens. Carmen slipped gratefully behind the heavy velvet draperies and let them fall behind her, enclosing her in silence.
The night air was blessedly cool on her face after the overheated, over-perfumed ballroom. She pushed her mantilla back from her flushed cheeks, and leaned her forehead against the door frame, closing her eyes.
She was utterly exhausted. A ball, particularly one of this magnitude, was the very last place she wanted to be after a long journey. All those silly people, eating and drinking far too much, whispering wicked things about one another—it was all so familiar. London was just Paris, Venice, and Vienna with a different accent.
She shuddered.
If she could follow her own wishes, she would be tucked away beside her own fire, with a new book and nice sherry. And she would assuredly be wearing her favorite old dressing gown, the red velvet with the mended elbow, and not this itchy thing from Madame La Tour’s Parisian couturier shop! It was said that the condesa (a creature Carmen considered rather separate from Carmen) was a woman of dashing style, but really fashion was a confounded nuisance.
She tugged the close-fitting lace and satin bodice away from her skin and let some of the cool air onto her shoulders. Yes, she would definitely change into her dressing gown as soon as she arrived home.
But for now she had work to do. What she sought would never be found if she stayed at home by her own fire.
“It will not be for long,” she whispered. “It will all soon be over.”
Carmen straightened her shoulders, and smoothed her bodice in preparation to rejoin the ball.
“Ah, the Condesa de
Santiago, I presume. I have heard much about you,” a low, velvet soft voice murmured behind her.
Someone had joined her, undetected, in her safe nest. Another who fancied himself an “admirer,” no doubt. Carmen pasted on a bright smile and turned.
A gasp escaped her lips before she could catch it. “Peter! Madre de Dios, is it you? But it cannot be!”
“My sentiments precisely,” he answered, his blue gaze flickering over her in freezing examination. “Carmen.”
The room spun about her head; there was such a roaring in her ears, like a dozen rushing rivers. She fell back against the door, hardly able to remain standing. She covered her face with her gloved hands.
“You are not going to swoon, are you?” he said. His voice was exactly the same, just as she heard it so often in her haunted dreams. Like warm brandy.
“No,” she replied. And promptly collapsed at his feet.
“By Jove, Carmen! Never say you have become a frail flower of a female.” He scooped her up easily in his arms, and nudged open the door with his shoulder.
She felt the cool air on her shoulders and face as he pushed back the lace of her mantilla. “Certainly not,” she managed to gasp, still overcome by the hazy sense of unreality. “I am far too tall to ever earn the sobriquet of ‘frail flower.’ It is only you English and your overheated rooms. I could not even catch my breath.” She looked up at him, wondering if everyone talked of such things as the temperature when faced with long-dead husbands.
She rather thought not.
“My apologies,” Peter said, “on behalf of all the English who overheat their rooms.”
He placed her carefully on her feet, and she leaned against the marble balustrade of the terrace, grateful for its cold solidity.
She studied him in the moonlight, this stranger she had once known so very well. He was as beautiful as ever, an Apollo with hair as bright as winter sunlight, tall and elegantly slim. But there was something there that had not been six years ago. Deep lines bracketed his lovely mouth; his eyes were as flat and still as a millpond, no stirring of emotion at seeing her again. It was almost as if another soul had come to inhabit the body of the man she loved.
How could her Peter be behind those eyes?
“I thought you dead,” she managed to say. “They told me you were killed that day.”
“Ah, my dear. What an impasse. I thought you were dead.”
“Me? Dead? Whoever told you that?”
He shrugged, the deep blue velvet of his coat rippling impressively over the smooth muscles of his shoulders. At least he had not become soft over the years. He was still sleek and strong as a tiger.
“I do not recall,” he answered. “But now I see that you are very much alive.” His eyes slid over her dazzling décolletage. “And unscarred. Come to finish the job, darling?”
Carmen started. “Job?” Surely he could not know of that. They had not seen each other in so long; he could not know of the letters, of why she had come to England. Despite his sorcerer’s eyes, he could not read her mind.
Could he?
She suddenly became very interested in the fan she held in her hands. She opened and closed the gold-and-black lace. “Whatever do you mean? I am here only to enjoy your London Season.”
Peter’s patrician features were tight, his hands curled at his sides. “I am talking of your job of betraying my regiment six years ago.”
If he had suddenly reached out and struck her across the face, Carmen could not have been more shocked. It seemed one shock too many. Her fan fell from her fingers, its delicate sticks shattering on the marble at their feet.
Major Chauvin had said those many years ago that she would be blamed for the demise of the Fifteenth Light Dragoons, and thus might as well tell him all she knew anyway. Somehow she had not believed him. Had not believed that Peter could ever think such a thing of her.
“Betrayed?” she whispered.
“Yes. You do remember the day after our wedding? Nicholas Hollingsworth almost died that day. Many men did die.”
“Nicholas!” Carmen remembered the dark, laughing man, who, next to Peter, had been the most handsome man of the regiment. A wave of nausea broke over her. She turned away from Peter, her hand pressed to her mouth. “No. I would not do such a thing.”
Peter took her arm and turned her to face him. His grasp was hard. “I saw you, Carmen! Riding away from the battle with Chauvin, cradled in his arms.” He shook her. “You knew of our troop movements. Did you run to him immediately after our wedding, from my bed to his? Did you, Carmen? Is that why you were so insistent on riding off by yourself?”
Six years of anger and grief shone in his eyes as he pulled her against him, drawing her up on tiptoe, her breasts pressed against his chest.
“Have you come to kill me?” he whispered.
“ ‘Tis you who are killing me, Peter!” Tears coursed unchecked over her cheeks and chin, spotting her expensive bodice. This man could not be her husband! Peter had been hard at times, yes, but never cruel. She pushed futilely against his chest, unable to bear his warm nearness, his familiar scent. “I never did those things you say.”
“Then, prove it! Prove you never betrayed me. Betrayed the love we had between us. I have been in torment for so long.”
“How can I prove anything? It was so long ago, a lifetime,” she sobbed. “You are obviously set against me in your heart, and have been for a long time. Nothing I say now could change that, could it? I claim innocence on my mother’s soul. That is all I can do.”
“Carmen!” He shook her arm again, and her ivory comb and lace mantilla slipped free from their fastenings and tangled at their feet.
Desperate to be free, Carmen lashed out, slapping him once across the face. He immediately released her, and fell back, trembling.
A thin line of blood had appeared at his lip. He touched it lightly, and Carmen stared down at her left hand as if it did not belong to her at all. Slowly she peeled off the black silk glove, and they both looked down at the ring that had caught his lip. A large square-cut emerald.
She folded her fingers into a fist.
“Carmen,” Peter whispered. “I did not ...” He was as pale as the marble of the terrace as he stared at that ring.
“Peter! There you are at last. I had quite despaired of finding you. It is time for supper, and I am famished. You did say that ...”
The tiny woman in blue silk, who had glided out onto the terrace behind them, stopped abruptly when she saw that Peter was not alone.
“Oh,” she said. “I do beg your pardon.”
Carmen bent to retrieve her mantilla, and arranged it carefully over her hair, bringing the lacy folds forward to conceal her tearstained face. “No, no, I beg your pardon, Señorita. I was just leaving.”
“Condesa de Santiago!” the woman cried. She rushed forward to seize Carmen’s bare left hand in her own small, gloved ones. “This is such an honor! I have been quite longing to meet you. Have you yet had your portrait painted in England?”
“My portrait?” Carmen glanced in bewilderment over the woman’s dark head to Peter, who was still as stone.
“Yes! Oh. I must seem very rag-mannered to you. Since my brother appears to have been struck quite mute, I shall introduce myself. I am Lady Elizabeth Hollingsworth, nee Everdean.”
“Brother?” Carmen looked down at the tiny, black-haired elf, who looked not a bit like the tall, golden Peter.
“Stepbrother, actually. I am an artist, and I should so love to paint your portrait.” Elizabeth dug about in her pearl-beaded reticule. “Here is my card. Do send me word when you are settled. You must come to Clifton House, to take tea with me.”
Carmen blinked down at the small square of pale blue vellum. “Hollingsworth? Such as Nicholas?”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Yes! He is my husband. Do you know him?”
“Only—only by reputation,” Carmen murmured.
Elizabeth laughed merrily. “Oh-ho, yes! So very many pe
ople do.”
Carmen smiled slightly and backed away toward the steps that led to the garden. “Do excuse me, Lady Elizabeth, but I really must depart. It grows very late.”
“Certainly! But, please, do call on me. Or allow me to call on you.”
“Yes, of course. Good night.” Carmen picked up her skirts and fled into the darkness of the garden, unmindful of the mud that sucked at her thin slippers. She only wanted to be away from there, so she could think quietly.
Elizabeth watched her flight with a frown, then turned back to her pale brother. “Peter? Whatever did you say to the poor woman?”
Peter shook his head and gave her an odd little half smile. “Why, nothing, Lizzie. I merely complimented her on her—sense of fashion.”
“Fashion? Do you mean you complimented her gown?”
“Yes, something of that sort. Shall we go in to supper?”
“Certainly. I hear that the duchess’s lobster patties are quite divine.”
Yet even as Peter took Elizabeth’s arm to escort her back into the ballroom, he could not resist looking back to where Carmen had disappeared into the night.
Then he saw, gleaming against the marble, the carved ivory comb that had fallen from the folds of Carmen’s mantilla. He picked it up and secreted it inside his coat.
Surely its owner would miss it.
Chapter Four
Home at last.
Carmen locked the front door behind her and made her weary way up the shadowed stairs to her bedchamber. Esperanza had seen to the airing of the room, and the bedclothes were turned back to reveal fresh linens. A fire burned merrily in the grate, and set on a small table before it was a light repast of tea sandwiches, a pot of tea, and a bottle of her favorite sherry.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of the mundanities of life, such as the fact that she had missed supper, and the duchess’s fabled lobster patties.
Madame La Tour’s stylish gown was rather difficult to remove alone, but Carmen managed to wriggle out of it, and left it and the mantilla in a heap on the floor. She turned toward her full-length mirror, and almost thought a stranger was staring back at her.
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