The Earl’s Intended Wife

by Louise Allen

  ‘We are safe here,’ he said, smiling at her as she knuckled her tired eyes. ‘You go with Anna, she will look after you.’

  ‘But, Alex!’ Hebe started to scramble down, conscious that several old ladies were regarding her attire with surprise. One crossed herself. ‘Alex, I do not speak any Spanish!’

  ‘But I speak English,’ said the woman who had been driving the oxen. She jumped down from the cart in a swirl of skirts and Hebe saw she was perhaps thirty years old, and tall. ‘I am Anna Wilkins. Mrs Anna Wilkins. And you are welcome to my brother’s house as is any friend of Major Alex.’

  Her accent was heavily Spanish, but Hebe could make out an underlying edge of cockney. She was urging Hebe towards the front door of one of the larger houses, talking as she went. ‘Do not worry about the Major, he is talking to the headman of the village. ’Ere we are.’ The tranquil shade hit Hebe like a breath of cool air. The shutters were closed and the evening light sent bars across the terra-cotta-tiled floor, falling here and there on the few pieces of massive oak furniture that flanked the wide fireplace.

  ‘Is this your house?’ Hebe asked. ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘My brother Ernesto owns it. I keep house for him, now I am a widow.’ She steered Hebe towards a door that opened to reveal stairs. ‘You like a bath?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please. I am sorry, was your husband an Englishman?’ It seemed quite unreal to be making polite conversation with this woman in a remote mountain village.

  ‘Yes, ’arry Wilkins, one of the Major’s sergeants. I follow him all over, until he died of the fever.’ She glanced at Hebe. ‘The Major had it too, it comes back I think, sometimes. He does not look well now.’

  ‘Yes, he was very ill for two days: we were washed overboard from a frigate on the way to Gibraltar. Al—the Major saved me.’

  Anna nodded sharply as though she would expect nothing else, and shouted down the stairs, ‘Donna! Venga aqui!’

  A woman appeared, was deluged with a rapid fire of instructions and retreated again, muttering. Anna rolled her eyes and showed Hebe through to a bedroom with a wide bed with a headboard of chestnut planks and a billowing mattress covered in white sheets.

  ‘Now, you have a bath…’ Anna tugged a hipbath out from behind a screen ‘…and then you go to bed and I fetch you some food and some drink and you sleep or eat as you want. Sì?’

  The maid must have had hot water on the fire awaiting her mistress’s return, for it seemed only a few minutes before she was puffing up the stairs, followed by a youth, both of them carrying buckets that steamed gently. When the bath was full Anna shooed them out of the room and lifted towels, fine but worn, and a long white nightgown out of the chest at the foot of the bed. ‘I help you undress?’

  She took Hebe’s tired fumblings with buttons and ties as assent and began to help her out of her clothes. Hebe was too weary to either feel any embarrassment, or wonder what state her adventures had left her in. It was not until the older woman gasped and took Hebe by the shoulders, turning her so she could look at her properly, that she realised that perhaps she was rather bruised and battered.

  ‘I must have got very knocked about in the sea,’ she said, looking down at her shins and the state of her forearms.

  ‘This was all not the sea,’ Anna said harshly, twisting her round until she faced a long mirror. Even in the gloom Hebe could see the finger marks on her upper arms and shoulders, the bruises on the white skin of her thighs. ‘The man that raped you, the Major has killed him, no?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ Anna said sternly. ‘And what is he about, not telling me so that I can look after you properly. I shall have words with him!’

  ‘No!’ Hebe said again with such an edge of desperation that Anna stopped fulminating on the idiocy of men and looked at her closely.

  ‘He does not know?’ Hebe shook her head. ‘But how is this? These are not old bruises, they are newer than the ones on your…’ She lost the English word and gestured at Hebe’s calves.

  Hebe gave a little sob and found herself wrapped in a warm embrace. ‘Come along, tell Anna. Who was it, ducky?’

  The foolish English endearment overturned what was left of Hebe’s resolution. ‘Alex,’ she whispered. ‘Last night,’ and burst into tears.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘The Major? The Major ravished you?’ Anna sounded incredulous as she gathered Hebe into her arms, wrapping the bedcover round her shoulders, before hugging her tightly.

  ‘Yes…no. I mean, it was him, but he didn’t know…’

  Anna was muttering in Spanish, then she broke into angry English. ‘How can I be so mistaken in a man?’ She produced a choice expression that she had obviously acquired from her sergeant. ‘And he shows no shame, no sorryness. There, there, ducky, you cry and then you have your bath and go to bed and I will talk to him. And if he does not do the right thing, why, then my brother will talk to him also and then he will be sorry!’

  ‘No!’ Hebe wriggled until she could look Anna in the face. ‘Anna, please, say nothing. He did not know it was happening, he was in a fever, delirious.’ At the look of puzzlement on Anna’s face she stumbled on, recounting the story of the French soldiers, that dreadful night trapped in the secret cupboard bed. ‘He remembered something in the morning, but I made him think he had been dreaming,’ she finished, wiping her eyes on the towel.

  ‘But why do you not want him to know? He will marry you then.’

  ‘He cannot, he is betrothed to a lady in England.’ Hebe squared her shoulders. ‘You promise you will not say anything, please, Anna.’ The Spanish woman gave a reluctant nod. ‘Thank you. May I have my bath now?’

  Anna helped her off the bed. ‘You want that I stay?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Hebe sniffed. ‘I am sorry I am being so feeble, it is just such a relief to feel safe and to have a woman to talk to. Alex has been wonderful, but it is not the same.’

  ‘Indeed, no,’ Anna agreed grimly, picking up the soap and starting to work a sponge into a lather.

  Hebe feel asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, only to wake, crying out in alarm, ‘Alex!’ to find the room in darkness except for a candle burning on a side table, and Anna hurrying to her side from the big chair by the window where she had been resting. She took Hebe’s hand and talked quietly in Spanish until her eyelids drooped and she drifted off again.

  She woke to find herself alone and the room flooded with light from half-opened shutters. The comforting noises of the village going about its everyday life drifted up from the square outside. Hebe sat up, wondering where her clothes were, then heard feet stumping up the staircase and the door opened to reveal the elderly maid, still muttering, and with a tray in her hands.

  Hebe summoned up her few words of Spanish and ventured, ‘Buenos dias, señora.’

  This earned her a glare and a returned greeting, pronounced with such emphasis that she was made quite aware that her own pronunciation had been sadly lacking. Hebe took the tray, considered trying a ‘thank you’, thought better of it and simply smiled and nodded before the old woman stumped out again.

  She must have reported that the Englishwoman was awake because a few minutes later Anna appeared, her arms full of clothes and a frown between her strong, dark brows.

  ‘Good morning, Anna. Is anything wrong?’ Suddenly anxious, she pushed aside the tray and started to get up. ‘You haven’t said anything to Alex about…you know?’

  ‘I promised not, so I don’t,’ Anna said, heaping the clothes on the end of the bed. ‘But I talk to him about your journey, and you are right, he does not remember. I say, it is very difficult for you, a young lady to be alone with a man in all that danger, and he agree. So I say, what a good thing you are there, Major, or she would have been ravished by those dogs of Frenchmen. And he agrees, but he is worried that he was sick and you had a bad fright and he could not protect you that night, and says you were very brave and sensible.’

  S
he began to shake out a selection of skirts. ‘And so I say, and it is wonderful, there is this nice English girl, so respectable, and she is rescued by a man who treats her just like a brother would.’ She raised an eyebrow at Hebe, ‘And you know, he goes red, what is it you call it?’

  ‘Blushes?’

  ‘Yes, blushes. But he does not look guilty like a man who has done something bad, just awkward, like a man who has thought things he should not. So I am not angry with him any more, just worried.’

  ‘Worried?’ Hebe queried. ‘What about? The more time passes, the more he will be certain it was all a dream in his fever. Oh, what pretty skirts, is one of them for me to borrow?’

  ‘Yes, whichever you like.’ Anna unrolled some white cotton stockings and laid them out. She added, half to herself, ‘It is not his memory I worry about. Still, time will pass, we will see what we will see.’

  She left Hebe to get washed and dressed. Anna’s words puzzled her, then she shrugged her shoulders and began to climb out of bed, shocked to discover just how stiff and sore she felt when she stood up. All her bruises seemed to ache at once, and her leg muscles were protesting violently about their steep climb the day before.

  Still, it was a pleasure to wash in warm water and to dress in clean clothes. She pulled on the stockings, tying the red garters, then tried a petticoat. It was much fuller than the English fashion and flounced, although it was plain and untrimmed. There was a chemise with pin tucks and a white cotton blouse with full sleeves. Hebe pulled a skirt in a deep blue home-weave with a narrow red stripe running down it over her head, admiring the way it flared over the petticoat and showed a pretty glimpse of ankle. There was a jacket with short sleeves to go over the blouse and a shawl, which she would probably be expected to wear over her head.

  Hebe unplaited her hair, remembering Alex’s fingers gently untangling it, and re-made the plait so it hung smooth and heavy down her back with just of few curls around her face. The face that looked back at her from the glass was subtly different: lightly tanned, thinner, her cheekbones more pronounced and the severe hairstyle showing off her wide brow and grey eyes. Hebe wondered what her stepmother would think when she saw her, and had to fight down the surge of worry about just what Sara would be going through.

  When she walked slowly downstairs, the shawl in her hand, the living room was deserted, so she opened the front door and looked out. Someone had set a table and benches in the shade outside their house under a tangle of vines stretched across wires and Alex was sitting on the table, talking to several men. Anna stood on the edge of the group watching him with an unreadable expression.

  She turned as Hebe approached, drawing the men’s attention to her and they all got up and greeted her, mostly in Spanish, but with the odd English word thrown in. Hebe smiled, and tried her Spanish again, this time to better effect and they moved away, leaving her with Alex, and the watchful presence of Anna.

  He looked at her for a long moment as though he hardly recognised her. ‘Hebe, you look—’

  ‘If you say “nice”,’ Hebe remarked, ‘I will scream.’

  ‘I was going to say, you look enchanting, but different.’ He put his head on one side, studying her. Hebe shifted a little under the scrutiny.

  ‘What? I know I have a tan. Mama is going to be livid.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that. You are Circe still, but a…grown-up Circe all of a sudden.’

  ‘Circe?’ Anna interrupted. ‘Who is this Circe? The child has lost weight, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes…’ Alex sounded dubious. He stood up and before she could stop him he had cupped Hebe’s face in both hands as he had done on the boat in the harbour. And as they had then, his thumbs gently traced the line of her cheekbones. ‘Yes, that must be it. Your eyes look enormous.’

  Anna coughed sharply and the moment was over. Alex crossed his arms and became expressionless, Hebe threw the shawl over her head and pretended to concentrate on tying it. ‘When do we start, Major?’ Anna said briskly. ‘Everything is ready.’

  ‘Start?’ Hebe asked, clashing with Alex who said,

  ‘We? Who is we?’

  ‘Me, and you and Hebe,’ Anna said simply. ‘I go with you and we are careful about what we tell Hebe’s madre and she thinks I have been with you all the time. And then you don’t have to marry her, because it is all respectable. No?’

  Alex glanced sharply at Hebe. ‘Indeed? Hebe and I have not yet discussed this. I suppose you think we can convince Lady Latham that you were conveniently standing on the beach in France, Anna?’

  She gave him a withering look. ‘Of course not, stupido, but even the fiercest mother would not believe you are able to…what is the word? Disgrace? Ah, compromise, a young lady in the sea, or on the beach when you are just washed up. I see it, exactly as it happened. You are on a Spanish beach—unconscious, that is most proper I think—and a peasant, known to me, of course—rides by and he rescues you both and he recognises the Major and tells the guerillas and I come and all is quite as respectable as if the nuns from the convent of Santa Maria had found you.’

  Alex looked from her to Hebe and back from under hooded lids. ‘It might do, I suppose, if we work on it a little. Anna, do you not mind coming? It might still be dangerous.’

  She made a contemptuous gesture. ‘No, I enjoy the change, and I look after Hebe. And when we get to Gibraltar, perhaps I find a handsome English sergeant. Poor ’arry has been gone a long time and I miss him, but I think I would like to be married again.’

  ‘Hebe, what do you think? Will Lady Sara believe that story? Do you really want to tell something that is less than the truth?’

  ‘What is the alternative?’ Hebe asked, trying not to sound waspish.

  ‘We tell the truth.’

  ‘And then Sir Richard demands that you marry me, but you are betrothed to Clarissa, and it all becomes very awkward and embarrassing.’ He opened his mouth to speak and Hebe added tartly, ‘When—if—I marry, I want a love match.’

  ‘Well, that is very clear,’ Alex snapped back. ‘Just so long as we all know what tale we are telling.’ He clapped a slouch hat on his head and turned to walk off across the square. ‘I will be ready in half an hour.’

  ‘Tch!’ Anna watched him go. ‘Men! Now you have hurt his…’ She waved a hand in the air. ‘Do not tell me, I must practise my English. His proud, no, pride. You hurt his pride, now he will be cross with us all the way to Gibraltar and that is very good because then he does not think about how lovely you are and how much he wants you.’

  ‘He is in love with Lady Clarissa Duncan, not with me.’

  Anna snorted. ‘You are here, she is not and he is a man. Come, Hebe, we will pack some things and you will tell me who this Circe is.’

  Anna was still puzzling over the Greek enchantress when they returned to the square with two battered valises, which she threw into the back of an old donkey cart. ‘But why does he think you are like a witch? That is not very flattering, I think.’

  ‘Not a witch, an enchantress. Someone who makes spells to make men fall in…I mean, admire her.’

  ‘That is a good word, enchantress.’ Anna rolled it round her tongue. ‘You tell me how you become an enchantress, Hebe, and I will try it on a handsome sergeant.’

  ‘You do not need any lessons,’ Hebe laughed, looking at Anna’s flashing black eyes and sensual, swaying walk.

  ‘What are you laughing about?’ Alex asked, joining them and loading some wicker baskets of food into the cart.

  ‘Men,’ the women said in unison.

  ‘Are you ready, Major?’ Anna added, managing to make it sound as though he had been keeping them waiting for an hour.

  Alex narrowed his eyes at her, but did not rise to the bait. ‘Quite ready, thank you, Anna, let’s go.’

  Afterwards the days the three of them spent walking towards Gibraltar seemed to Hebe to be part of a story from a book that she had been told but which she had not really experienced. It had all the hazy quality of a dream a
s they walked steadily through green farmland and dusty plains, climbed ridges that seemed like hills after the foothills of the Pyrenees, and made their way across old bridges arching over rivers still swollen from the spring snowmelt.

  Sometimes they saw French troops, but they seemed to be convincing in their role as three farmers moving from field to field or travelling to the next village and they were not challenged. Each night Alex found friends, or friends of friends, to stay with and Hebe began to develop a Spanish vocabulary she was quite proud of.

  But somehow she and Alex were never alone and never spoke about more than the most commonplace things. Hebe missed their closeness, even as she recognised its dangers. And, she told herself as she trudged along beside their patient donkey, she would be parting from him soon, so the earlier she got used to it, the better.

  That evening she wandered away from the house where they were staying with a large and exuberant family who proved to be distant cousins of Anna’s. Anna was admiring the new baby and Alex was deep in conversation with the village mayor and several leading citizens who were describing in detail what they had observed locally of French troop movements so close to the front line with the English. Hebe felt restless and lonely. She knew that if she stayed where she was she would spend the evening gazing at Alex, wishing they were alone, wishing she was in his arms again.

  She found a spot where a large tree trunk had been washed up on a bend in the river and sat on it to watch the swallows hunting gnats over the water. It was quiet and she fell into a sort of doze, thinking about Alex, aching for him and trying to find the strength of mind to stop. He would be gone from her life soon, back to England and the woman he truly loved and would marry and raise a family with. It was wrong of her to feel like this, and dangerous too, for she knew she must not let her guard down and let him glimpse her feelings or guess at what had happened that night.