by Anne Gracie
The sons of the nobility, of course, were snapping up as brides the daughters of these same wealthy, jumped-up peasants. Their blood was unfortunate, but the noble family name must not die out, and the bride’s wealth would help rebuild the family fortunes.
Bella had explained this to Paloma a dozen times, but all Paloma did was smile and say, “We must all have faith.”
She’d make a good nun, Isabella thought. Or a saint. St. Paloma of the missing dowry. Paloma’s brother had gambled Paloma’s dowry away, and now he was refusing to let her return home. Things were different since Papa died, he’d written. There was no appropriate husband for her, and she was better off in the convent, in the tranquil environment she was used to.
Bella picked up a well-worn bedsheet and ripped it savagely in half. Tranquil environment indeed! She’d love to lock Paloma’s brother up here, to give him a taste of tranquil environment. Endless prayers, endlessly repeated dreary, pointless conversations, and endless, endless sewing.
She started stitching the two halves of the sheet together. Bella only ever did mending. The other girls and the nuns mostly did fine embroidery. The convent was famed for it. Bishops all across Spain, and even in Rome, wore vestments and used altar cloths embroidered here in this remote mountain convent.
Before King Ferdinand had been crowned, the girls had been mainly occupied in sewing their trousseaux. Now they worked almost wholly on altar cloths and vestments. Like the nuns.
Isabella’s talents lay in other areas, Reverend Mother always said. The other girls thought she was just saying that, being Isabella’s aunt, but Bella and Reverend Mother knew better.
“I wish I had your faith, Paloma,” Dolores told her. “I think we’ll all still be sitting here when we’re old and wrinkled, snoring away the day like Sister Beatriz.”
“Speak for yourself, Dolores,” Alejandra snapped. “I, for one, will not be left rotting in a convent. Even now my father is in discussions with a noble family from Cabrera.”
Dolores huffed and threaded her needle. “The only eligible man left in Cabrera—of noble blood, I mean—is the old vizconde, who is past sixty, twice widowed, and desperate to get an heir. If it is him your brother is courting, I pity you.”
Alejandra shrugged. “I would rather wed an old man than be forced to become a nun.” The girls glanced at Sister Beatriz, but the elderly nun snored gently on, oblivious. “Besides,” Alejandra continued, “as my father said, he is rich, and old men die. Then I will be free to do as I want.”
Another girl spoke up. “They say the old vizconde is poxed and that is why he could not get a son on either of his wives.”
The girls exchanged glances.
“That cannot be true. My father would not marry me to a poxed man,” Alejandra said into the silence. “He would not.”
The others nodded, murmuring reassurance. But they had all heard the tales that lying with a virgin could cure a man of the pox…
“Papa would not do such a thing,” Alejandra repeated. “He is too fond of me, I’m certain.” But her confidence was clearly shaken, and it was more a prayer than a certainty.
It would be her father’s decision and the vizconde’s, not hers. She was just a daughter, to be given where it would do her family the most good. And times in Spain these days were desperate.
“If he does, you must refuse,” Bella told her.
“Refuse?” Alejandra gasped. “Disobey my father? Are you mad? I couldn’t!”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Alejandra repeated. “Because I couldn’t.” She added, after a moment, “I have never disobeyed him in anything. Never.”
Bella knotted her thread. “Then it would be good for him to experience something new.”
All the girls stared at her, shocked.
“How do you think he would react?” she asked Alejandra.
“He would kill me!” she said with a shudder.
“Kill you, or merely beat you?”
“Merely? He would thrash me to within an inch of my life!”
“One recovers from a beating. A poxed old vizconde, though…” Bella let that thought sink in. “Has your father ever beaten you before?”
“Never,” Alejandra said proudly.
“Then why do you think he would beat you now?”
Alejandra looked surprised, then thoughtful. “It’s my duty to my family to marry well.”
“It’s a father’s duty to find you a decent husband,” Bella countered.
Alejandra bit her lip. “I don’t know… Papa would be so disappointed in me.”
Bella snorted. “He will survive his disappointment. He might also come to respect you.” She shrugged again. “It’s not my business what you do, but if it was me, I’d refuse.”
“Which is why you’re always in trouble,” Alejandra retorted.
Sister Beatriz snorted and sat up. “What’s that? Tongues wagging? Sewing, girls! Sewing!” She clapped her hands in a brisk manner, and the girls bent over their sewing. Needles flashed in silence, and in a short while the elderly nun dozed off peacefully again.
“Isabella’s husband might come for her soon,” Paloma said on a bright, let’s-change-the-subject note, and Bella groaned silently. She knew what would come next.
Alejandra gave a scornful snort. “Who, the imaginary one?”
“He’s not imaginary, is he, Isabella?” Paloma turned to Bella.
Bella didn’t answer. They’d been over this a hundred, a thousand times. At first she’d fought the accusation tooth and nail, but now, after all these years, she was half inclined to think she’d dreamed it, dreamed him. But Reverend Mother had the marriage papers in her desk, and his signature was on them, firm and black and clear. Lucien Alexander Ripton, Lieutenant.
“Of course he is,” Alejandra insisted. “Her tall English lieutenant, with his broad shoulders and his so-beautiful face just like an angel!” she said in a mocking voice. “An angel, wed to Isabella Ripton?” All the girls laughed.
Bella doggedly sewed on. She understood why they pecked at her. She might attack someone, too, if she was about to be married to an old, poxed vizconde.
Besides, it was her own fault. She shouldn’t have told them in the first place.
After the hasty marriage, Lieutenant Ripton and her aunt had decided to place her in the convent under the name of Ripton, Bella taking his name in the manner of English wives instead of keeping her own name, as Spanish women did.
Her aunt had instructed Bella not to tell anyone she was married—not the Mother Superior of the time, nor the other nuns, nor any of the girls. Then, she said, if Cousin Ramón came looking for Isabella Mercedes Sanchez y Vaillant, daughter of the Conde de Castillejo, Mother Superior could truthfully tell him that no such girl was in the convent; only the sister of an English lieutenant.
It was strange, but exciting, having a new name.
And sure enough, Cousin Ramón had come, and Reverend Mother had assured him no girl of that name was in the convent. Sweet, elderly Reverend Mother, so patently truthful and innocent, and so obviously distressed by his tale of a young girl who’d fled her home to cross Spain in such terrible times—anything could have happened to her, the poor, young innocent. Dreadful, dreadful! She’d offered immediate prayers for the lost girl’s safe recovery, and even Cousin Ramón had to believe her.
So at first, Isabella never told a soul she was married, and when the elderly Mother Superior died and Isabella’s aunt took her place, Isabella’s security was assured—as much as anyone’s security could be in wartime.
But a few years later the fighting was over in Spain. Napoleon’s puppet was ejected, and King Ferdinand was crowned king of Spain, and relatives turned up to collect this girl or that. The convent was full of talk of dowries and settlements, of betrothals arranged and marriages planned. The girls were abuzz with excitement and nerves and romantic speculation.
At almost sixteen, Isabella was still plagued by pimples and a flat chest, and whe
n even the younger girls started to patronize and pity her, she could not bear it. In secret whispers in the dark one night, she’d confided in her friend, Mariana, about Lieutenant Ripton, her tall, dark Englishman, as beautiful as an angel, who’d killed a man to protect Isabella, and then married her to save her from her evil cousin Ramón. Now the war was over, he would surely come for her and take her away to England.
But Mariana had whispered Isabella’s secrets to another girl, and soon it was all through the convent, and of course, nobody had believed her. Skinny, plain Isabella Ripton, secretly married to a handsome Englishman? As if anyone would believe that.
Her name? Pshaw! So she had an English surname—many Spaniards had English surnames. It proved nothing.
“Has he seen a picture of you—a truthful one?”
“Why would he want to marry a girl who looks like a boy?”
“He knows what I look like. He chose me,” Bella used to tell them proudly, hoping her pimples would be gone and her breasts would grow by the time he came for her. “Nobody had to arrange it.”
“So you know nothing about him. For all you know of his family, he could be some peasant!”
“He was an officer, so of course he’s not a peasant. And he’s tall, strong, and fearless; the most beautiful man I ever saw in my life!”
“Beautiful?” The other girls laughed.
“Beautiful like an archangel,” Bella insisted. “Beautiful and terrible. A warrior angel! Just wait till he comes. You will see.”
And some girls would continue to scoff, and some would sigh and secretly envy her.
At night, in her small stone room on her hard, narrow bed, Bella would spin dreams of Lieutenant Ripton…
Lieutenant Ripton lay mortally wounded, and Isabella would find him and care for him, and he would be miraculously cured by her tender solicitude, and fall madly in love with her.
Lieutenant Ripton would be attacked by the enemy, and Bella would stand by him, and together they would fight them off, and as the enemy fled, he would turn to her and say, “Isabella, without you my life would be over. I love you.”
Many and varied were the deeds of bravery and daring she performed in her dreams, and at the end of each one, Lieutenant Ripton would say, “Isabella, I love you.”
Lieutenant Ripton would know Isabella as nobody in the world would know her. And he would love her. Truly love her. And she would love him back with all her heart. And they would be happy forever and ever after.
Day after day, week after week, Bella had prayed for Lieutenant Ripton to come—even to write, but there was no word, no sign.
Still, she would rage and defend herself, defend him—he was as beautiful as an angel, he was busy fighting, he was a hero, he was too important to be able to come just now, but he would come for her, he would!
Gradually her skin cleared up. Her breasts remained disappointingly small, and she learned from a smuggled-in looking glass that she would never be a beauty, not even pretty. “Interesting” was the most charitable assessment of her features.
Still, Lieutenant Ripton did not come, and as the years passed, the dream of the handsome husband who would love her—must love her—slowly began to wither on the vine.
The truth was there, staring her in the face. Like the fathers and brothers of the other girls who remained in the convent, Lieutenant Ripton had taken her money and abandoned her. He was not much better than Ramón. He’d done it more kindly than Ramón, perhaps, but in the long run, the result was the same.
Some nights, lying in her hard, narrow bed, Bella secretly wept for her broken dreams. But tears did nothing, so she scrubbed them away. She would look up through her high, barred window and gaze at the stars outside.
There was a world out there, and she wanted to be part of it.
The other girls continued to taunt her, teasing her about her imaginary husband. And Bella still defended him, still stubbornly claimed there was an important reason why he couldn’t come—one had one’s pride, after all—but nobody believed her; not even Bella herself. It was a routine like everything that happened in the convent.
She said to Alejandra, “You could come with me, if you wanted.”
“Come where?”
“I’m leaving the convent.” Her announcement was followed by a stunned silence.
“Is he comi—” Paloma began.
“No. Nobody is coming for me, Paloma.” Isabella glanced at Sister Beatriz, who was still asleep, and said in a lowered voice, “I’m leaving anyway.”
“Reverend Mother won’t allow it,” Alejandra said.
Bella shrugged. “She can’t stop me. I’m a married woman, and in two weeks I will be one-and-twenty.” And if Reverend Mother tried to stop her, she’d go over the wall. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before, and Reverend Mother knew it.
Alejandra sniffed. “I don’t believe you. What will you do? How will you support yourself? Who will protect you? It’s dangerous—”
“I will support myself,” Bella said. “And I will protect myself. I won’t stay here, waiting forever for someone to rescue me. Life isn’t a fairy tale.”
“Isabella Ripton,” said a voice from the doorway.
All the girls jumped guiltily.
“Isabella,” Sister Josefina repeated as she entered the door. She was the youngest and prettiest of the nuns, closest in age to the girls, merry and lively, but dedicated to her vocation. “Tidy yourself up. Your hair is a mess. Reverend Mother wants you to come to her office at once. You have a visitor!”
“A visitor? Who?” In eight years, Bella had never had a visitor. Not since Ramón had come looking for her, and failed to find her. And why would Ramón come back after all this time?
Sister Josefina smiled. “Can’t you guess?”
Mystified, Bella shook her head.
“An Englishman.”
Bella froze.
Sister Josefina nodded. “Tall, dark, and as beautiful as an archangel.”
Bella couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t utter a word or even marshal a coherent thought.
“A very stern, very masculine archangel.” Sister Josefina sighed. And a blush rose on her cheeks.
Lieutenant Ripton was here?
“Isabella?” Sister Josefina said.
Bella started. Everyone was staring at her. She pulled herself together. “I told you he’d come,” she managed and moved toward the door.
“Tidy your hair,” Sister Josefina reminded her, and Isabella started tucking in the errant strands that had come loose from her braid.
“Her hair?” Alejandra exclaimed. “You can’t let her go dressed like that!”
“Like what?” Isabella glanced down at herself, puzzled. She looked the same as always; neater than usual, in fact. She smoothed her hair back.
“In those…”—Alejandra gestured—“those convent clothes! She hasn’t seen her husband for eight years. She can’t go to him in those!”
“Yes, she needs something pretty,” Dolores agreed.
Bella looked down at her plain dark blue and gray dress. “I don’t have anything pretty.” She’d arrived at the convent with nothing, and the convent had dressed her ever since. The lack had never bothered her. Until now.
“No, but I do,” said Alejandra. She turned to Sister Josefina. “Sister, let us dress Isabella nicely to meet her husband. Please, Sister, we won’t take long.”
“Yes, pleeeeease, Sister,” the other girls joined in.
The young nun glanced from the girls’ eager faces to Isabella standing there in her drab clothes. “Be quick then,” she said. “Reverend Mother is waiting.”
Luke sat across the desk from Isabella’s aunt and willed himself not to fidget. She was now the Mother Superior and seemed in no hurry to move things along. He’d left his horses outside the convent in the care of a grubby urchin. Times were still bad in Spain, and the mountains were no doubt still full of brigands. And most thieves started young.
“She won’t be
long, Lieutenant Ripton.” Isabella’s aunt had aged a good deal in the last years, Luke thought. Her face, under the severe nun’s garb, was thinner, her pale ivory complexion drawn tight over high cheekbones and blurred with a web of fine lines. The war had not been easy on her.
“Lord Ripton,” he corrected her. Her brows arched, and Luke explained. “I inherited the title from my uncle who was drowned in an unfortunate boating accident.”
“I had not realized you were the heir to a… ?”
“Barony. I had no expectations of it, but my uncle’s two sons drowned with him, and so the title and estates came to me.”
“Estates?” she inquired delicately, a reminder that however the marriage had been made, any alliance was still about blood and wealth. She was still Isabella’s aunt, after all.
Luke, however, had no intention of discussing it. “Suffice it to say I still have no need of Isabella’s fortune. How is she?”
“Isabella is well. Grown up. In two weeks’ time she will be twenty-one. She will, I am sure, be surprised to see you after all this time.” Said with an edge of acid.
Her tone annoyed Luke. He pulled out the letter he had received and broached the matter bluntly. “This letter denies my application for annulment. It says, ‘On information received by the Mother Superior of the Convent of the Angels.’ ” He slapped the letter on her desk. “Eight years ago you told me an annulment would be a straightforward arrangement.”
She fixed him with a steady gaze. “I did not know then that Isabella was no longer a virgin.”
Not a virgin? Damn. The bastard must have got to her after all. Luke had been sure he’d saved her in time. Apparently not. His brows snapped together as another thought occurred to him. “Don’t tell me she—”
“No, there were no unfortunate consequences,” Mother Superior said in an austere tone. “Isabella herself told me of the attack—she had nightmares afterward, you see. But what’s done is done, and so…” She spread her thin-veined hands in a fatalistic gesture.
Luke nodded. “How did Isabella take the news?”
“Isabella is a lady by birth and training.”