by Anne Gracie
“It’s not all right,” she began indignantly.
Luke scanned the room. “Where is the she-devil?”
“She’s dead.” Bella glanced at the old marqués.
He stood behind Bella, looking gray and somehow shriveled. “Lord Ripton, I apologize, most sincerely, for the actions of my wife.” The old man’s words were both formal and sincere, but underneath, he was shattered.
Luke’s anger that Bella had been endangered drained away. How could he blame this dignified old man for doing exactly what Luke had done? “Not your fault, sir,” Luke managed. “Destiny. Always gets you in the end.”
So she was dead. An end to it, at last.
“I killed my wife—no.” The old man corrected himself heavily. “I executed La Cuchilla myself.”
Not his wife: La Cuchilla. The simple statement held a great deal of pain. And humiliation. He’d loved his wife, but she’d betrayed him and he’d killed her. And now he was grieving.
Bella placed her hand over the old man’s. The marqués withdrew it with quiet dignity.
Pride. It could lead a man into the worst of mistakes, or carry him through the unthinkable.
“I’m sorry,” Luke said. He was tempted to lie back, close his eyes, let it all float away, but the stench of the past was bitter in his nostrils, and if he didn’t explain now, he suspected he never would. Besides, he owed an explanation to his wife and the old man. Luke had set the whole disaster in motion by coming here. He struggled to sit up. It was more difficult than he thought. He was weak as a kitten and every movement swamped his shoulder with liquid fire.
“Later. You need to rest,” Bella insisted.
“I’ll rest better once I get this off my chest.” Luke had heard confession was good for the soul. He hoped it was true.
“Very well, but make it quick. The doctor said you should rest.” She fussed around him for a moment, arranging pillows behind him, fetching him a glass of water, and making sure he was comfortable.
“It didn’t happen quite the way I told you,” Luke admitted when she was finished. “Michael and I both knew La Cuchilla seven years ago. Knew her quite well, in fact.”
“You knew—”
“This was long before we were captured and tortured. We had no idea she was La Cuchilla, of course. We knew her as Señorita Martinez, Rosa Martinez, a Spanish lady. Michael was in love with her.” He met Bella’s gaze and added, “We both were. At least we thought so at the time.” Looking back, he could see it wasn’t love at all, but a heated, heady brew of lust, well spiced with danger and rivalry.
Luke grimaced. “We were young men at war, far from our homes and our families. We were young, impressionable, and lonely. And she was very beautiful.”
“She is still beautiful—or was.” The old marqués crossed himself. “And she was very, very charming.”
Bella gave an unimpressed sniff. “So everybody fell in love with her. Go on with the story.”
Luke might have smiled at her caustic tone, but the prospect of confessing what he’d done weighed heavily on him. “Michael wanted to marry her. He’d actually proposed to her, had even spoken to his commanding officer, seeking permission to wed.”
“And you? Did you want to marry her, too?” Bella asked.
Luke shook his head. “No, not at all. I desired her, of course.” A cool statement for the white-hot blaze of lust Rosa Martinez had incited in him seven years ago. “But marriage never occurred to me—well, she wasn’t the kind of woman one marr—” He broke off and turned to the marqués. “My apologies, sir. I meant no offense.”
“None taken, Ripton. I knew Rosa was no innocent when I married her.” He made an expressive gesture. “Truth to tell, when a man gets to my age, he prefers a woman of some experience.”
Luke acknowledged the statement. He could appreciate that now. “She was experienced even then,” he said. “We were no match for her. Michael was determined to marry her, despite his commanding officer’s orders to the contrary. And I…” I was a fool for lust, Luke thought.
“And you?” Bella prompted.
Luke closed his eyes briefly. “Rosa chose me. She made it very clear she preferred me to Michael and she did everything she could to encourage my attentions.” From flirtatious behavior to plain speaking to…
“What did you do?” Bella asked.
“I tried to stay away from her.”
Her brows rose. “Even though you desired her and she wanted you?”
“Yes, of course. It was a point of honor. She was my friend’s beloved, and he had honorable intentions toward her—marriage, no less. So I tried to have nothing to do with her.”
“Rosa wouldn’t have liked being refused,” the old marqués said. “Especially by a handsome young man.”
“She didn’t,” Luke admitted. He ran a hand across his chin. “She redoubled her efforts. She used Michael to try and make me jealous, tried to play us off against each other.” He glanced at the marqués. “She kept building up Michael’s hopes and dreams, talking about their future together, but all the while, her attentions were aimed at me. And then, one night…” He swallowed. “One night…” It was damnably hard to spit out what he’d done.
“She seduced you.” The marqués said it for him.
Luke nodded. “I woke up one night and she was… there, next to my bed.” Dressed in a black velvet cloak and wearing nothing under it. “I tried to send her away, but…”
“No man could have,” the marqués said bluntly. “Don’t blame yourself. How did the other boy react when he found out?”
The old guilt swamped Luke. “I should have told him, but… I couldn’t. It would have been like—I don’t know—like kicking a puppy. Michael was a believer. A dreamer. He thought Rosa was a saint, but he was the saint. He put women on a pedestal, to be worshipped from afar. He’d never even had a woman before: Rosa was his first.” Luke shook his head. “So I couldn’t tell him, couldn’t bring myself to tell him of the double betrayal, his friend and his betrothed.”
“So Rosa told him,” the marqués said.
Luke nodded.
“How?” Bella asked. “When?”
Luke looked at Bella. “I told you about the day we rode out after the briefing. It was Rosa we met on the road in apparent distress, so of course neither of us thought twice about stopping. In moments we were captured and the next thing we were imprisoned in a cottage. And being questioned about the information we carried,” he explained to the marqués. “We carried messages in our heads for the allied command.”
“And that’s when she told your friend?” Bella asked.
Luke nodded. “Yes, but only during the—while she was—”
“Torturing him,” Bella said grimly.
Luke nodded. “She used it to torture him—oh, she used her knife with wicked skill, but she also described what she and I had done together. In great detail.” His eyes were bleak and somber. “That’s the real reason Michael gave in, why he told her what she wanted to know. Because he had no will to resist. Because between us, La Cuchilla and I broke Michael’s heart.” His voice was harsh, scalding with self-recrimination, as he added, “I might not have betrayed my country, but I sure as hell betrayed my friend.”
Luke couldn’t bring himself to look at his wife or his host, knowing the condemnation he would see in their eyes.
“Of course you didn’t.” Bella slid her arms around him and rubbed her cheek gently against his chest. “That evil bitch was the one to blame, not you. You were her victim as much as Michael.”
Luke blinked. Absolution didn’t come as easily as that, surely?
“Exactly!” the old marqués said. “You only think that because your friend died and my w—La Cuchilla killed him. As she had killed many a good and true man before. That’s what she did, my boy. It was her particular skill, to find men’s weaknesses and exploit them. She was Michael’s weakness, Michael was yours. She tortured you both, that day, remember? And she didn’t only use her b
lade on you, either.”
Luke stared at the old man, struck by the truth of the old man’s words, yet still unwilling to believe.
The marqués continued, “If it hadn’t been you, she would have seduced another of Michael’s friends—and of course you were seduced, do not pull that face at me! Who was just twenty, still wet behind the ears, and who was thirty and had no doubt had more men than you’d had hot dinners?” He patted Luke’s arm. “A pair of young, idealistic boys would have been putty in La Cuchilla’s hands. Don’t blame yourself over such a thing. Look at me, I am old and consider myself a man of the world, but I am just as foolish. More so—I married her.” He gave a humorless laugh. “To tell you the truth, I am heart-sore, but also… embarrassed.” He shook his head. “To marry my mortal enemy…” He contemplated his folly for a moment, then said as an afterthought, “And let me tell you, a young man’s heart doesn’t break so easily, not over an unfaithful woman. Perhaps, since you say your friend was young and naive, it was a painful awakening, but it would have happened anyway. It was inevitable.” He grimaced and added, “And better before the wedding than after it.”
He leaned forward and poked Luke firmly on his uninjured shoulder. “So cease this self-recrimination, young man, else it will poison your life. Terrible things happen in war, but the war is over. The dead cannot be brought back, but in the matter of La Cuchilla, justice has at last been done. Your friend is dead, but not at your hand or by your will, and he is revenged and will be at peace now. And you, my boy, are alive—spared again this very day! And you have this lovely young wife, so do not waste the gift that God has given you—live well and be happy.” He rose to his feet and said wearily, “Now, I must be off. I must bury my wife.” There was both grief and acceptance in his voice.
After the marqués had left, Luke, dazed, turned to Isabella. “I’ve always blamed myself for Michael’s death. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“Don’t think,” she told him. “Sleep. You will feel better in the morning.”
Luke, exhausted by his injury and his admissions, obeyed and soon slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Later that night the fever started. Bella sat up with Luke all night, feeding him willow bark tea and sponging down his heated flesh.
As she sponged, she thought about the story he’d told. Two young men’s lives had been destroyed by that woman. Almost destroyed.
Luke felt such guilt over his betrayal, but even Bella, with her limited experience of life, could see that an eager and impressionable young man would have no chance against the wiles of a clever and beautiful woman. Witch.
The rose carved into Luke’s flesh was a constant reproach. A brand of guilt.
It was too late to save Michael, but as she tended Luke’s feverish body, Bella vowed she would make the rest of Luke’s life as happy as she possibly could.
Luke’s fever passed quickly, and in two days he was well enough to insist they continue on their way.
Bella, of course, gave it a flat veto. “It’s ridiculous to think you can travel yet. Riding is out of the question! You’ll open up that wound again, and then it will get infected and—and, people die from such infections, Luke!”
The marqués had intervened. He owed them a debt, he insisted. If it was ever discovered that he, a known patriot, had married a notorious French agent, a traitor, and a torturer… No, no, and no! That woman was never to be mentioned in the Castillo de Rasal again. He had wiped the whole unpleasant incident from his mind.
The old gentleman was putting a brave face on it, Bella thought. Deep down he was grieving. His wife’s betrayal had cut deep. He had been intensely humiliated, and yet… he loved her.
Love is pain.
The marqués was also, Bella suspected, only too glad to get rid of herself and her husband; reminders of his grievous mistake in judgment, as well as witnesses to his killing of his wife, so when Luke had proved so stubborn about traveling on, the marqués had seized on the excuse and pressed his best traveling carriage on them so Luke could travel in the utmost comfort. He’d provided a coachman and grooms and two outriders and had sent riders on ahead to arrange the change of horses with minimum delay.
Apart from sleeping overnight at various inns, they’d traveled almost nonstop for four days. Bella was weary of it.
Luke was dozing again. He’d spent a good part of the journey sleeping. It was good for his recovery, she knew, but carriage travel, even in a well sprung, comfortable carriage, was so dull. She’d attempted to read one of the books the marqués had pressed on her as a parting gift, but the carriage bounced so much, trying to concentrate on the print made her feel ill.
They hit a pothole, and Luke grabbed a strap with his good hand. Good, he was awake.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking in the last few days while you’ve slept, Luke, and I’ve made a few decisions.”
“Sounds ominous,” Luke said with a faint smile. There was a new ease to him since they’d left the Castillo del Rasal. A lightness. As if he’d started to forgive himself. Not that he talked about it, or probably ever would, but she was hopeful.
“It’s not quite that, but you might not like what I’ve decided to do,” she said seriously. “It concerns my mother’s fortune.”
“Your fortune,” he reminded her.
“Yes, exactly,” she said, leaning forward. “It is my fortune, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And I can do with it whatever I want, and you won’t try to stop me?”
He considered that for a moment. “I suppose it depends what you want to do. If it seems to me unwise or imprudent, I will voice my opinion, possibly quite strenuously.”
“But you won’t actually stop me?”
“I can’t stop you,” he said. “It’s your fortune.”
Bella could still hardly believe it. For so long she had owned nothing, and before that she hadn’t had any choice in any of her life. But this man, this beautiful wonderful man had signed away all his rights to her fortune—and though she had no exact idea of the extent of it yet, she knew it must be substantial.
“I’ve decided what I want to do with it—part of it, I mean, not the whole.”
“I see.”
“I’m going to give some of it to the other girls in the convent.” And before he could say anything, she rushed on, “You see they’re all stuck there because they have no dowries and their families are too proud to admit it or to let their daughters marry men not of their class. It’s such a waste. They’ll end up having to become nuns and nobody should be a nun unless they want to! And they’re my friends.”
He nodded. “So you’re going to give them a dowry? All, what is it, six of them? That’s quite a sum.”
“I know, but you said I could spend—”
“I’m not arguing,” he pointed out gently.
“Oh. Good. But that’s not all. I want to give a share of the fortune to Perlita.”
“Perlita?” He stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“What is so funny?”
“After all the trouble we went through to keep Ramón’s greedy paws off it! You know she’ll give it all to him, don’t you?”
She grinned triumphantly. “Ah, but it will be Perlita’s dowry. Ramón will only get it if he marries her.”
“And if he doesn’t marry her?”
“He will,” she said confidently. “He loves her. He’s only considering marrying someone else because he’s desperate to bring Valle Verde back to its former glory. And I want that, too, for it was once my home and I love it. So…” She tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look. “What do you think of my plan?”
“It’s an excellent solution to all your worries.”
“My worries?”
“You have a tendency to fret about other people’s welfare,” he told her. “This way you’ll only have one person to fuss over.”
She frowned. “Who?”
He leaned forward and
tugged her out of her seat and onto his lap. “Me.”
“Luke! Your wound.”
“Treat me gently,” he murmured.
Eighteen
“I’ve never seen so many people in one place.” Bella’s head swiveled left and right as the carriage Luke called a “yellow bounder” wove through the crowded streets of London.
They’d landed at Portsmouth that day, and raced across the country at a speed Bella could barely believe. They’d only just arrived in London. It was the night of Molly’s ball.
“Grosvenor Square on our left,” he pointed out. “Have you ever eaten ice cream?”
“No, but—”
“I’ll take you to Gunter’s, then. You’ll like it—damn!”
“What is it?”
“I’d forgotten about the dinner.”
“What dinner?”
“The dinner before the ball. I’d hoped to introduce you to my mother before the ball, but she’s giving a dinner beforehand and her guests are arriving already. See all those carriages lined up ahead? That’s my mother’s house. Your house, in fact. It actually belongs to me.”
Bella glared at him. His mother’s house? He’d completely ignored all her protests. “I told you, Luke, I’m not going to your sister’s ball. I don’t have anything to wear. This is my best dress and look at it!” They both studied her red dress. It was looking sadly the worse for wear. “Even a housemaid wouldn’t wear this.”
He dismissed it with a gesture. “I know that. I’d planned to get Molly to lend you a dress.” He pulled out his watch and consulted it. “But we’re running later than I’d hoped. There won’t be enough time for the maids to adjust it.”
“Adjust it?”
“Yes, Molly is plumper than you. And a bit taller, too.” He narrowed his eyes at her in calculation. “I have it—Nell!”
“Nell?” She knew who Nell was; the wife of one of Luke’s closest friends, Harry. But her lack of dress wasn’t really the problem. It was a useful excuse, that was all.