Peter had seemed almost a fairy tale then, a knight who would carry her away from the fears and the danger with only his kiss. But, of course, that had been an illusion. He had died and left her alone, and she had carried on as best she could. It had not been a fairy tale by any means, her life of travel and searching, but she had survived. She had even carved out a measure of happiness with her little girl.
If Peter discovered Isabella, he could take her away if he chose. He had seemed quite angry enough last night to so choose. That would be the one thing that could shatter Carmen’s life utterly and beyond repair.
Perhaps it would be better if she left England right away, and be damned to the blackmailer. She could go to Russia, or America, or anywhere far away where no one could find her daughter.
And yet ... she could not ignore the way her heart sang when she saw his face again, his beautiful face. She had longed to throw herself against his chest, to bury her face against his neck and inhale his well-remembered scent, to feel his arms safely around her again.
Those warm Spanish nights they had shared had come rushing back to her in that moment, and it was as if the years had never passed.
She had missed Peter terribly, for six long years. And she had seen the look on his face when he saw the moonlight flash on her ring. He had missed her, too.
Despite the lies and the misunderstandings, he had missed her.
If only the years and experience did not lie between them. And so very many secrets.
Carmen pressed her hands against her eyes, trying to hold back the flood of futile tears that threatened to flow.
A knock sounded at the closed door.
“Carmen?” Esperanza called. “Are you there?”
Carmen blinked fiercely and scrubbed at her cheeks. She picked up her pen and tried to appear unruffled. “Yes, Esperanza, what is it?”
Esperanza opened the door and came in, her silver tray bearing a single calling card held before her. “You have a visitor. A man.” Her sniff conveyed her disapproval.
“A man? It is not my at-home day. Whoever can it be?” She reached for the card and stared down at the elegant script printed there:
Peter Everdean, the Earl of Clifton.
She turned it over and read the one word scrawled there in pencil.
Please.
“Madre de Dios,” she whispered. “What is he doing here? How did he find my house?”
Well. It seemed there was nothing for it. She would just have to see him.
Chapter Six
Carmen smoothed her hair for the fifth time, staring intently into the mirror, but not really seeing the neat fall of short curls bound by a blue satin ribbon. She was only searching for excuses not to enter the drawing room.
Peter waited for her there. Peter, here, in her very home.
She was only glad that Esperanza had been able to slip Isabella down the back stairs for her outing, with no questions asked.
She glanced at the small clock on her library mantel, and realized that he had been waiting for almost fifteen minutes. Carmen was many things, but she hoped that rude was not one of them! She patted her hair once more, smoothed the skirts of her blue muslin morning gown, and went to meet her fate.
His back was to her as he studied the view out of her windows, but even so he quite overwhelmed the small drawing room. His elegant doeskin breeches, blue coat, and champagne polished boots gleamed among her well-loved, well-traveled, if rather battered Spanish antiques. A mahogany walking stick and a pair of butter-soft chamois gloves rested on a crate of still-to-be-unpacked paintings.
Carmen nudged a doll that lay on the carpet beneath a chair with the toe of her slipper, and gathered her Indian cashmere shawl closer about her shoulders. “Good morning, Peter. Such a surprise to see you.”
He turned and smiled at her, an oddly sweet, crooked half smile. One she remembered so well that she almost forgot to breathe.
“Not a very pleasant surprise, eh, Carmen?” he said quietly.
She looked away to conceal her breathlessness and bewilderment, and sat down on the nearest chair, arranging her skirts carefully. “Not at all, I assure you.” Then she looked up at him again. He seemed more her Peter in the fresh morning light, not so much the intimidating earl as he had been in the modish surroundings of a ton ball. Now, when she watched his familiar face, it seemed almost as if they had been apart for only moments, not years.
“Indeed?” His golden brow arched. “I gathered from your rather precipitate departure last night that a visit from the devil himself might be more welcome.”
Carmen had to almost sit upon her hands to stop herself from reaching out, from touching him to be certain he was real. “I thought of nothing else last night but our meeting,” she confessed.
“Neither did I.” He took a step closer to her, so close that she could breathe of his clean, sandalwood soap scent. He reached out his hand, very slowly, to touch her cheek.
Carmen could have wept. She closed her eyes and leaned her head slightly, infinitesimally, into the warmth of his palm.
“Carmen,” he whispered, his voice low and agonized. “You are alive.”
“Yes,” she answered softly. “I am now.”
“I thought never to see you again. But—how?”
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “I might ask you the very same question.”
“Ah, Carmen,” he sighed. “What a pair we are.”
“I looked for you,” she said. “At the hospital. The surgeon who was still there told me that you, or rather ‘that bloke,’ had died.”
Peter’s mouth tightened. His hand fell away from her cheek. “The hospital. I was not there for long, and in the confusion, I am sure it was easy to assume my demise. I was wounded while carrying Nicholas to the hospital, but not seriously. They sent me to Madrid, then home.”
Carmen remembered well the anguish of that long-ago day when she had stumbled, pregnant and ill, into the almost empty hospital, only to be told of his death, the death of most of the regiment. “Fortune has been against us,” she murmured.
“Yes, fortune has not been kind to us, has it?” She looked up at him, at his smile, so warm only moments before, now sardonic and empty. “Why are you here, Peter? You have never been the sort to dwell on the past in a sentimental fashion.”
“No, indeed I have not. Though I must say it is a rather tempting prospect in the present circumstances. I am rather curious as to what the famous condesa has been doing since our little interlude in Spain.”
Carmen swallowed a bitter retort. She waved her hand airily, her emerald catching the sunlight from the window and reflecting it back to him. “Oh, this and that. Many amusing things. Nothing of consequence.”
“Becoming quite the toast of the Continent, so I hear.” There was barely controlled, fierce anger in his voice.
“There was that. But if you think me so wicked as to betray the entire Fifteenth to their deaths, then why do you care what I have been doing?”
There. It was said at last, and there was no recalling it.
Peter flushed a dull red. “Yet you claim innocence in the whole affair.”
Carmen rose to face him, her own cheeks decidedly warm. “I do not claim it; it is the truth! I had nothing to do with that ambush at Alvaro. I was a victim of it.”
“You needn’t flash that Spanish temper at me! I saw you, riding away with Chauvin. I heard that ...” He bit his words off abruptly.
“If you have based your suspicions on that flimsy piece of evidence, then you never knew me at all,” Carmen interrupted.
“No,” he said. “I suppose I did not.”
Peter stared down at Carmen, at her flushed cheeks, her long, elegant hands curled into fists, as if she longed to plant him a facer. A surging joy threatened to overcome years of anger.
Oh, dear Lord, this was Carmen. Carmen, alive and beautiful, within reach of his arms. Not the elegant condesa, but his Carmen. The woman whose laughter and kisses had been
his only refuge in the darkest days of war. His love, his wife.
She stared at him now with a flash of rage in her dark eyes. She was so furious, so full of righteous anger.
Could she have been innocent of what he had thought for so long? Could his eyes have deceived him?
“And I never knew you,” she said quietly, interrupting these tumultuous thoughts. “Not truly.”
“Once, you knew me better than anyone else ever did,” he answered.
“I thought so, too. Once.” Carmen twisted her ring on her finger. “Why did you come here today, Peter? To hurl some more accusations?”
“No, indeed. I came to give you this.” He reached inside his coat and took out her missing comb, carefully wrapped in a handkerchief.
“Thank you.” She took the comb from him, her fingertips brushing ever so briefly against his palm. “I was afraid I had lost it forever.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “Some things when lost are irredeemable, are they not?”
Carmen looked up at him steadily. “Yes.”
He wanted, with all his being, to say something more, but he knew not what. His hand lifted, just the merest amount, toward her. Then it fell back to his side. “Well, I shall inconvenience you no longer, Condesa. I shall say good afternoon.”
Carmen smoothed her skirts carefully again, appearing unaffected and slightly bored with the whole scene. But her cheekbones were flushed. “Good afternoon. And thank you.”
“Thanks? For what?”
“For returning my comb, of course.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” He gave her a small bow and turned to leave.
“Peter?” she called after him.
He looked back to her, one brow arched inquiringly. “Yes?”
“I ... well. I just wanted to say ... good day.” Carmen could feel herself blushing again, but she could not remember at all what it was she had wanted so desperately to say.
He smiled then, and nodded. “Good day.”
Then he was gone, his footfalls fading on the tiled floor of her foyer and the front door clicking shut behind him.
She waited until she saw his phaeton go past her window and out of sight, then she collapsed onto the sofa, her face buried in a velvet cushion.
“You widgeon!” she moaned. “How could you have been so cabbage-headed as to actually speak to him?”
She could have kicked her heels in utter vexation.
She even did, just a bit.
But it did not make her feel one jot better.
“Oh, Condesa! What a very charming house. And so kind of you to have me here for tea.”
Lady Elizabeth Hollingsworth settled herself comfortably on a satin settee, spreading her peach muslin skirts about her. Even the feathers in her fashionable hat seemed alive with enthusiasm.
“Not at all,” Carmen replied, carefully pouring out tea from her silver Russian samovar. Her hands were trembling so she feared she would spill some, and that would be quite embarrassing! “I was quite looking forward to your visit. I know so few people in London.”
“But you seemed to know everyone at the Dacey ball!” Then Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly. “You have considered sitting for a portrait?”
Carmen laughed at Elizabeth’s zealousness, the abrupt change of subject. “Perhaps! I understand that your work is wonderfully fine. But not any time soon, I fear. I have only just arrived, as you can see, Lady Elizabeth. My house is still in chaos.”
Elizabeth looked about at the boxes, the disarranged furniture, the paintings propped against the walls. “Pooh! This is hardly chaos. You should see my home in Venice. That is chaos. And you must call me just Elizabeth. Or Lizzie.”
“Very well, if you will call me Carmen.” She offered the plate of Esperanza’s delectable almond cakes.
“Well, then, Carmen. What exactly is between you and my brother?” Elizabeth popped a cake into her mouth, and watched Carmen expectantly.
Carmen nearly choked on the sip of tea she had just taken. She blotted with her napkin at the amber droplets that had fallen onto the silk bodice of her gown. “I scarcely know your brother, La—Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth smiled sympathetically. “Yes, so he says. He thinks I am completely fooled. But I am an artist, you know; a student of human nature, in many ways. And I would be very surprised indeed if you had truly only met last night.”
“Elizabeth ...” Carmen’s voice trailed away as Elizabeth turned her wide gray eyes toward her. Somehow she, who had lived with lies for years, could not lie to this woman. “Yes.”
“You knew him in Spain, did you not?”
“Yes,” Carmen whispered. “Did you know ... ?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I saw a miniature of you once. You have changed a bit since it was painted, certainly. You are thinner, and the short hair makes such a difference. But your eyes are the same.”
“Then, you know?”
“Yes. Peter told me, the day he showed me the painting. Quite reluctantly, I might add. He probably wanted to keep you a secret eternally. But that was when he thought you dead. Everything is changed now, of course.”
Carmen couldn’t help but laugh at Elizabeth’s tone, so blithe in such a strange situation. “Yes, everything is changed now. Not necessarily for the better.”
Elizabeth munched on another cake. “How can you say that? Of course it is for the better! It is like a-a novel, a romantic novel. He thought you dead ...”
“As I thought him.”
“Yes. It was very sad, Carmen; he almost went insane from mourning you! Yet you have found each other again. It will mean the end of—less satisfactory things, and we shall all grow old and fat together, watching our children play.”
If only. “Oh, Elizabeth. What a lovely picture. And so lovely of you to accept me so swiftly. But there are so many complications. Too many, I think.”
“Nonsense! What possible complication could override the fact that you have found each other again so miraculously ...”
“Mama, Mama!” A tiny, golden-haired whirlwind chose just that moment to fly into the drawing room and throw her arms about her mother’s waist. Her pink hair ribbons were quite undone, the ends trailing from her curls, and her skirt hem was muddied. Yet nothing, not even hoydenism, could disguise the patrician perfection of her small face.
“Esperanza took me to the park!” she said, oblivious to their guest. “We fed the ducks, and saw lots of other children, and ladies all dressed up. Will you walk with me tomorrow, Mama? I was so very, very good, so can we go to Gunter’s now, please?”
Carmen put her arms around her daughter and held her very close, despite the mud. She looked at Elizabeth over the tangle of Isabella’s bright curls.
Elizabeth’s mouth was agape. “Oh,” she whispered.
Carmen pressed a kiss atop Isabella’s head. “We will go to Gunter’s soon, darling, when you have washed and changed your dress. But right now Mama has a guest.”
“Oh!” Isabella spun about, then pressed back into her mother’s skirts, suddenly shy.
“Introduce yourself, dear,” Carmen prompted.
“I am Isabella de Santiago,” the child said, bobbing a small curtsy. “How do you do.”
Elizabeth smiled. “How do you do, Miss Isabella. I am Lady Elizabeth Hollingsworth, but you must call me Lizzie. Your mother and I are becoming friends, and I am sure that you and I will be, too.”
Isabella took a tentative step toward her. “You are very pretty,” she announced.
Elizabeth laughed merrily. “So are you, Miss Isabella!”
“Are you coming to Gunter’s with us?”
Elizabeth looked up at Carmen. “Well, that is for your mother to say. But I do adore a strawberry ice.”
Carmen hesitated only a moment. After all, Elizabeth had already seen Isabella. Had realized the truth. What harm could come of accompanying them for ices?
And Carmen did truly like Peter’s sister. Her sister now, she supposed.
“Of course,�
� she said. “We would love for you to accompany us.”
Chapter Seven
Carmen watched distractedly in the mirror as Esperanza brushed out her short black curls and bound them with a fillet of amethysts and pearls.
“Am I making a mistake?” she murmured to herself.
“A mistake?” Esperanza answered, herself distracted by trying to make the stubborn curls fall just so. “About your gown? Should you rather wear the blue velvet?”
“What?” Carmen shook her head. “No, the aubergine satin is quite all right. I was merely wondering if I am doing the right thing in accepting Lady Elizabeth’s invitation to the theater.”
“You love the Shakespeare!”
“I do. But really I invited her to tea in the first place to decline her kind offer to paint my portrait. Then suddenly we were at Gunter’s with Isabella, and she was saying I had to meet her husband! Then I agreed to this theater outing. I probably should have gone to Lady Wright’s card party instead.” Carmen’s gaze dropped to the jewelry arrayed before her, her wedding ring winking amid the glittering tangle. She picked it up and slid it onto her finger. “Yet Elizabeth is so very friendly, so persuasive. Just as her brot ...” Her voice faded.
Esperanza plucked up the amethyst necklace and clasped it about Carmen’s throat. “I did hear that Lady Elizabeth has a very handsome bachelor brother,” she said, just as if she had read Carmen’s mind. “An earl. Perhaps she is intent on a bit of matchmaking.”
Carmen looked up sharply. “Where did you hear this?”
“When I took Isabella walking in the park, I met nursemaids and governesses, all of them full of silly gossip. They say every single lady in Society has set her cap for this earl. But he is called the Ice Earl, because he pays scant attention to any of them ...”
Carmen stood abruptly and reached for her gown, pulling the rustling purple folds over her head to disguise her bewilderment. “They say no one can hold his regard?” she said, muffled.
Scandalous Brides Page 23