by Gayle Wilson
“You are of an age.”
“No more than you, I think. Are you planning to wed?”
“Not, I assure you, until we have settled the unfortunate problem of our own marriage.”
“Problem?”
“Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is,” she said.
Almost exactly as his brother’s had, his lips pursed before he opened them again. “I see nothing so very difficult about it. We did the best we could under the circumstances. If the legality of the marriage troubles you, then I am perfectly willing to go through another ceremony. If that’s what you wish, of course.”
“What I wish?”
“Forgive me for putting that decision entirely on your shoulders, but my name is hardly likely to be blackened by the fact that we were forced to travel as man and wife on our journey home. And it won’t be, even if our marriage is eventually proved to have been somewhat irregular.”
It was, as he well knew, more than “irregular.” But she had to agree with his opinion about the likely response of the respectable people in England to that information. She would be judged little more than a whore. While he…
He would probably be seen as daring. A rake. Perhaps he would even be admired by some for what he had done.
“The only way to avoid having your name blackened,” he continued, “will be to maintain that the marriage was a valid one.”
“Do you consider it to have been?”
“Legally—” he began.
“I don’t mean legally,” she interrupted. “Although your brother seems determined to delve into the legalities, I am asking if you, yourself, consider what we did to constitute a valid marriage.”
It took him far too long to answer. Long enough that the hope she had not dared acknowledge had time to die a little.
“Are you asking if I consider the vows we made to be binding?” he asked finally.
Despite having posed the question, she wasn’t sure that was what she’d meant. Part of it, she supposed, but she had been far more interested in his emotional response to having pronounced them.
“Do you?”
“Of course,” he said readily. “So unless you are prepared to set up a household or start with someone else the nursery my brother seems so anxious for me to establish, I don’t believe you have anything to worry about. At least not until all the legal questions about the ceremony have been answered.”
“And the religious questions?” she asked.
His eyes changed. It was subtle, perhaps, but she had been watching them intently.
“The religious considerations must be all yours, Pilar. My convictions don’t preclude an acceptance of the authority by which we were joined.”
“Meaning that you consider us to be married.”
“I believe I have just said that,” he said, smiling at her.
“But…” She drew a breath, thinking how promising that seemed.
“I have made no demands on you,” he said. “Nor shall I. Nothing about our relationship will change. At least not until Dare completes whatever inquiry he has set in motion.”
“And if there proves to be no legal impediment to considering those vows binding…”
“I suppose the next decision is also up to you,” he said softly. “Nothing is as yet irreversible. I believe the church provides a remedy for situations such as ours.”
“An annulment.”
“Leaving you free to marry again,” he said.
And so would he be. Perhaps this was what his brother had been trying to suggest to her. That she appeal to the church for an annulment.
But if this were not a true marriage in the eyes of the church, why would she need an annulment?
She wasn’t sure of the theology, but the logic made sense to her.
“Since the marriage was never blessed by the church, perhaps in their eyes I am already free to marry again.”
“And in yours?” he asked.
It shouldn’t be, but she found that was a much more difficult question. And she found that when she searched her heart, her answer was the same as his.
“It seems that once you have repeated those particular words,” she said, feeling her way through the confession as a blind man would, “no matter the circumstances, you can’t simply ignore them. No more than you would be free to ignore any pledge you had made, whether it was sanctioned by some authority or not. That is the essence of vows, after all—that you intend to keep them.”
“Then you consider ours to be binding as well?”
Of course. For some reason the words didn’t present themselves at her lips and demand expression.
She didn’t want to have been married by virtue of necessity. Not even to him. Not even for all the good reasons for which they had undertaken those particular promises.
And neither of them had addressed the real questions that lay at the heart of this issue. Do you want to be married to me? If you had been free to choose, would I have been the one you would have chosen? Or even that which was, by far, the most fraught with danger. Do you love me?
She had done what the Earl of Dare had suggested. She had sought a frank discussion about their situation with her husband. And after it, despite the acknowledgment that both of them felt bound by that exchange of vows, she knew that nothing that was truly important had been settled.
Chapter Ten
“To Sebastian,” the Earl of Dare said from the head of the table, raising his glass in a salute. “The last of the wayward Sinclairs, who has finally returned to the bosom of his family.”
“To Sebastian,” Ian echoed, raising his own glass.
For the first time Pilar allowed her eyes to rest openly on the face of the man she had married. In the general acclamation of the toast, she felt sure no one would notice. Even as she thought that, those blue eyes found hers, holding there a few seconds before he turned to incline his head, acknowledging the toast that had been proposed by his brother.
“The wayward Sinclair who is very glad to be home,” Sebastian said.
“And to Pilar,” Anne said, “a most welcome guest.”
The glasses were politely lifted again, this time in her direction. She knew kindness had prompted Anne’s tribute, but to be included in the homecoming toast made her feel like an impostor. Was it possible no one but the earl had been told the full story of how she came to be here?
“To our guest Pilar. Who is attempting to leave us, I’m afraid.”
The focus of every eye shifted from Pilar’s face to Dare’s. He calmly drank from the glass he had raised as if what he had said was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Leave?” Anne repeated in confusion, turning back to Pilar. “But…whatever for?”
Pilar had suspected the Earl of Dare didn’t play by the rules. She had not, however, expected the game to begin so soon.
“Doña Pilar feels that she must go out into the world and earn her keep,” the earl explained.
The silence that fell after that was surely awkward enough to satisfy even Dare’s desire for drama, she thought. The gazes of those gathered around the table had returned to her face, their expressions varied.
Anne and her husband seemed genuinely concerned. The countess’s countenance was as serene as the earl’s was mocking. And Sebastian’s…
“That’s hardly necessary,” he said.
“I believe it is,” she countered.
Why had his brother done this? At table was not the proper place for a discussion of something like this, even if they were, as tonight, en famille.
“Why?” Sebastian demanded.
“Because I cannot live upon your family’s charity. As soon as certain issues have been resolved…” She paused, glancing at Dare.
“What issues?” Anne asked. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s because we’re not intended to understand,” Elizabeth said. “A masculine conspiracy, I think. Something at which the Sinclairs excel. Since this one appears to conc
ern Pilar quite as much as Sebastian, however, perhaps a more feminine perspective on whatever is involved might be of some value.”
Her eyes had found her husband’s face. She seemed to be waiting for him to explain.
Pilar hoped that he wouldn’t. It had been embarrassing enough to be presented last night as a refugee in need of their protection. To be exposed as a woman Sebastian had been forced to marry was nothing short of humiliating.
“In order to be allowed to take Pilar on board the troop transport…” Sebastian began, without waiting for his brother to speak. And then he hesitated, his eyes still on Pilar’s face. “She was forced to marry me.”
It must have been as obvious to the rest as it had been to her that he had adjusted that wording in mid-sentence. What he had started to say was that he had been forced to marry her. Not the other way around.
“You’re married?” Anne asked.
“But it was not a mass, you see,” Dare said, his eyes also on Pilar’s face, that small enigmatic smile playing about his lips. “And since no one seems certain what the laws regarding marriage are in France these days, perhaps it was not even legal.”
There was another silence. She could imagine the thoughts that were forming in their minds in response to Dare’s revelations. Last night they had courteously ignored the fact that she had traveled from Spain in the company of two men, neither of whom was related to her.
Now they had been informed that she was married to one of them, which, depending on their individual impressions of her, had either relieved or exacerbated their dismay. And Dare was insinuating the marriage that had taken place between her and Sebastian had the blessings of neither the church nor the state.
“If that is the case,” the countess asked her husband pointedly, “why ever should you feel it necessary to discuss the subject at dinner?”
The earl smiled at her before he answered. “Because I am hoping for your aid, my dear, and Anne’s as well, of course, in convincing Doña Pilar to stay with us. At least until the question of this marriage can be fully resolved.”
Elizabeth held his eyes a long moment. Then she turned, smiling at Pilar.
“You mustn’t let him ride roughshod over you, you know. It’s quite the worst thing you could do where Dare is concerned. It is possible, however, that in this situation he may be right.”
“Where should you go if you leave?” Anne asked. “Or do you have friends in England?”
“I have no friends,” she said.
No acquaintances. No family. And nowhere to go. Dare was very well aware of that. She had asked for his help, and instead—
“It isn’t necessary for you to leave,” Sebastian said. At the quiet conviction in those words, the attention of everyone at the table shifted yet again. His eyes, however, were locked on Pilar‘ s face as he continued.
“I shall be rejoining Wellington as soon as he arrives from Paris. After that, as you know, I have some…unfinished business. You are free, therefore, to stay here without the inconvenience of my presence. Anne and Elizabeth will look after you. And now, if you’ll all excuse me.”
He began to rise, the startled footman hurrying forward from his place against the wall to pull back his chair. Although his voice and face had been perfectly composed, the abruptness with which Sebastian flung his napkin down onto the table revealed that calm to be the result of a precariously imposed control. Even from where she was sitting, Pilar could see that his hands were trembling.
“Whatever Dare is playing at,” Ian said to his younger brother, “it isn’t directed at you. Since Wellington hasn’t yet returned to London and seems unlikely to do so tonight, there’s no need for you to leave, either. This is a celebration of your homecoming after all.”
“Is it? I had somehow thought that, like last night, it was an inquiry into my actions.”
“No one is questioning those, I promise you,” Ian said soothingly.
Sebastian considered the face of the man at the head of the table. “Is that true, Val? Are you or are you not questioning what I did in France?”
“Whatever occurred in France is your concern. Mine is what occurs here.”
“Here? In your house, do you mean?” Sebastian asked, seeming confused by the earl’s comment. And then his face suffused with color. “If you’re implying—”
“I’m implying nothing,” the earl interrupted. “Except that I don’t wish Doña Pilar to leave. For one thing, I’m not convinced it’s safe for her to do so. That is why you brought her here, isn’t it? To protect her?”
“As well as to introduce your wife to your family, I should hope.” That was Anne, of course, smiling at her as if this familial contretemps wasn’t embarrassing to them all.
“The ceremony that took place in France was purely a matter of expediency, I assure you,” Pilar said. “As Sebastian said at the time, there was really no other alternative available to him.”
The crease she had noticed before formed between his dark brows. He opened his mouth, but the earl intervened.
“Whatever the two of you feel about the validity of those vows—”
“Whatever the two of us feel is of absolutely no concern to you,” Sebastian said angrily, turning his attention back to his brother. “Nor to anyone else at this table. While I recognize your right as the head of the family to investigate the legality of our marriage, I deny your right to offer either advice or an opinion about our feelings. I’m sure the conduct of yours and Ian’s courtships and your marriages enjoyed the approval of everyone in London. That doesn’t grant you the freedom to concern yourself with whatever irregularities you may find in mine. And now, if you will excuse me, I shall bid you all good-night.”
Sebastian’s eyes met hers again briefly. It seemed there was some message hidden in the glance. Whatever it might have been, she was unable to decipher it before he turned and stalked out of the room.
Silence settled over the table as the door slammed behind him. Whatever Dare had been hoping for when he had begun this, Pilar thought, surely it wasn’t what had just occurred.
“Oh, dear,” Anne said, the words very soft.
“I’ll go to him,” Ian offered, beginning to rise.
Before he could get to his feet, Pilar had already risen, looking at the man at the head of the table. At least the mockery had been wiped from his eyes, she noted with satisfaction.
“He’s right,” she said. “This is not your concern. It’s not the concern of any of you, whether you are his family or not. Whatever Sebastian has told you about me…”
The memories of everything that had happened since her father’s death bombarded her. And suddenly she knew that she couldn’t possibly make these people understand the evil of someone like Julián Delgado.
Here in the safety and splendor of this London town house, his depravity seemed almost unreal, even to her, who had lived through it. They had probably never in their sheltered lives been exposed to the kind of evil of which Julián was capable.
“Whatever he told you, it won’t have been the whole,” she finished quietly. “The judgment you make or have made about your brother’s actions— or about mine—is flawed by your lack of knowledge about the kind of opponent we faced.”
No one responded. And the guilt she had expected to see in their faces over the lack of understanding she had just accused them of didn’t appear.
The gap that lay between their lives and what she and Sebastian had faced in Spain must indeed be too wide to be breached by mere words, no matter how well chosen. Having reached that conclusion, unconsciously she raised her chin, defying them to judge either her or her husband.
Then, with the breeding and culture of a thousand years behind her, Pilar straightened her spine. She lifted her skirt in one hand and swept from the room like the daughter of a Spanish grandee she had been since birth.
“I assume,” the Countess of Dare said into the equally stunned silence that had fallen after Pilar departed, “that was exactly wha
t you intended when you began this.”
“Slightly more spectacular than I’d anticipated, I confess. It seems our brother has met his match,” the earl said, no longer bothering to hide his amusement.
“I have a feeling life in that household will never be dull,” Ian suggested with an answering smile.
“Do you think someone should explain to them…” Anne began, and then she hesitated, her eyes troubled.
“Someday,” Ian said. “But not tonight.”
“Definitely not tonight,” Elizabeth agreed. “There will be time enough for explanations when they have had a chance to comfort one another. There’s nothing like opposition to force two people together, united against the world that doesn’t understand them.”
“How well you know me,” her husband said. “By the way, I have offered Doña Pilar the position of governess to our son or daughter. I hope that meets with your approval.”
“Given the Sinclair propensity for attracting excitement, I had rather been hoping to introduce a calming influence into the nursery. Your father must have employed a series of Amazons as wet nurses.”
“Then if Pilar accepts, we shall simply be carrying on a family tradition. What could be better than that?”
“Nothing short of employing the entire Mongol horde,” Elizabeth said with a perfectly straight face.
The logical place to seek a man who had just announced his intent to leave home would probably have been in his rooms, where he might be expected to be engaged in gathering together his belongings. For some inexplicable reason, that wasn’t where Pilar went to look for Sebastian.
And as soon as she stepped out into the moonlit garden, she knew she had not been mistaken. The faintest scent of tobacco smoke was carried to her on the night air. She lifted her face, breathing in the smell of it as if it were some exotic Eastern perfume.
When she lowered her eyes, they had adjusted enough that she could see him standing where he had stood this morning, his figure shadowed by the same oak. She watched as he brought the cigarillo to his mouth, the tip glowing redly in the darkness. She started toward him, knowing that he would recognize the paleness of her cream-colored gown long before he could distinguish her features.