Autumn Glory and Other Stories (18 page)

2

The sisters were still afraid of the dog, so nursing the grievously wounded gentleman fell to Marian. She believed that the nuns were more fearful of the marquess than of the mongrel. His lordship’s valet might have remained behind in Lisbon, but Lord Hardesty’s reputation had followed him to this tiny convent of Saint Esperanza in the desolate, devastated countryside.

Two days after the battle of Cifuente, Hardesty was a legend. The injured foot soldiers were full of his daring rescue, how he had ridden through the dust on a stallion as gray as English fog, delivering orders from headquarters. He had stayed, though, unlike any messenger they had ever seen, or any dandified civilian, for that matter. He had stayed in the fray, rallying the outnumbered, leaderless troop. He had been a madman, the soldiers declared, galloping here, there, sword flashing, a smile on his lips. He had performed more equestrian tricks than any bareback horseman at Astley’s Amphitheatre, they swore, and Marian translated for the nuns. Dodging, bobbing, feinting, weaving in and out, Lord Hardesty had defended the small band of survivors until they could reload and re-form their ranks. He was a true hero, and a true berserker.

Battle rage was not what had the sisters of Saint Esperanza so wary of the English peer. His other, earlier
reputation was
the
one no
God-fearing female could accept or ignore. Hardesty was a womanizer by all accounts, an unprincipled, hedonistic rake, who was as successful at his chosen vocation as he was handsome. As far away from London as Hampshire, Marian had read about him often enough in the social gazettes, in association with some dashing widow or straying wife. His name was never linked to the younger, more innocent, marriage-minded ladies of the
ton
,
which, Marian supposed, was to his credit. His eschewing wellborn virgins was about the only thing she had ever heard in his favor.

If she had gone to town for her own delayed presentation, as her parents had wished, they would not have traveled in the same social circles, despite her father’s title. Still, Marian knew enough of the marquess to despise him and all he stood for. Men who used women solely for their own pleasure were lower than the hard-packed Spanish dirt beneath her feet. Marian would not be here on this blasted, blood-soaked Peninsula if not for another such lying, licentious, lizard-tongued blackguard.

So she had warned the mother superior, who had Lord Hardesty moved to a small cell far removed from the nuns’ chambers, as if the wounded man were any threat in his condition. They all thought he would die, and if he did not, that his valet would arrive to tend him. Neither had happened yet, and Marian was left to care for the dastard and his dog while the sisters prayed for him. Considering his dire injuries, and her skill in the sickroom, prayers might not come amiss, Marian reflected.

The nights were the worst. During the day the true nursing sisters were in and out, or as far in as the marquess’s mongrel would permit. The convent’s manservant came to attend to the male patients’ bodily needs, and the surgeon called. Marian could go rest in her own assigned guest room when the other wounded English soldiers did not need comforting, help translating, or letters written back to their wives and sweethearts at home. But at night, which started after evening prayers, nearly at sundown, all was quiet except for Lord Hardesty’s
labored
breathing
and
the
dog’s snores. No
prayers echoed through the stone walls, no conversations, no laughter from the wide-eyed village children who were always underfoot during the day, curious about the British troops.

The marquess could not be left alone through the long, lonely hours of the dark, and Marian’s bedchamber was too far away, so she dragged a palette into his sparse little room. She thought she could nap, but she feared sleeping through one of his lordship’s prescribed medications. Then, too, her borrowed black gown was coarse and uncomfortable, but Sister Emanuella would be scandalized to find Marian in her nightclothes, no matter that the libertine lord was mainly unconscious. Her own frocks would have been just as outrageous in the good sister’s eyes. Mostly Marian sat in the hard wooden chair at his bedside until her back ached and her neck grew stiff, trying to read or do mending by the light of the one meager candle.

She had never mended anything in her life, although she had spent hours at fancy needlework, but no maidservant was going to repair her petticoats or stockings, and who knew how long before she could purchase new ones? Her best efforts would just have to be good enough, like her efforts to repair the battered peer.

While the nuns trusted in their prayers to heal Lord Hardesty, Marian relied on her own determination to keep the man alive. She had made mice feet of her own life; she was going to save his, even if it killed her. She might have wished for a worthier subject, one whose demise would not benefit all womankind, but the marquess’s welfare rested on her shoulders, and she did not intend to drop this burden. She would not fail, not this time. He needed her, and she needed to be a success at something, anything, to prove her own worth, if even to herself.

So she bathed his fevered skin, dribbled broth down his throat, made sure he had both the surgeon’s medications and Sister Conchita’s herbal infusions, and laudanum when the pain was too fierce. And she commanded him to fight. “Live, damn you,” she ordered when she was sure no one else could hear. “Live so some angry husband can put a sword through your black heart, or some scorned female can shoot you. Live so you can bedevil your poor family for ages more, and keep the scandal-sheet journalists in business. Live, you immoral maggot, live.”

The dog wagged his skinny tail, and the marquess kept breathing.

While he slept, when her eyes grew too weary for sewing or reading, Marian studied this duke’s profligate son who had become a hero of the Peninsula war. With nothing to occupy her thoughts but her own dismal past and more dismal future, Marian contemplated Lord Hardesty, trying to discover what made him so irresistible to women. The bandage around his head obscured most of his features, but Marian knew they were even, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, a wide brow. He had thick auburn hair, where the surgeon had not cut it away to dress the wound under the wrappings. One of his eyes was still swollen shut, all black and blue and purple, but the other was blue-green, with flecks of gold. Despite being glazed with pain and drugs and fever, that eye showed intelligence when he was awake, and awareness of his situation. He was no fool, this gazetted flirt. He knew he was inches away from shaking hands with the hereafter, and seemed to appreciate the efforts to widen the distance.

He had a strong jaw, and laugh lines around his mouth. Marian was sure that was what they were and wished she could see
him
smile. As handsome as he must be, a smile would make him devastatingly appealing—to a certain kind of woman, of course. That woman would not be disappointed when she unwrapped her gift, either. Marian knew from sponging his lordship’s chest how well muscled he was, how fit, without an ounce of softness to
him
. There was nothing of the idle wastrel in his physique, so he must exercise regularly. Marian blushed to think of what form a rake’s exertions might take. To maintain this form, he must practice a lot. Oh, my.

She dragged her eyes back to his face, where she saw pride and strength and something else she did not expect: sweetness. She knew he was courteous by how he tried to whisper his appreciation, and once his good hand reached for hers in thanks, but she thought she saw a gentleness, too, not just the boyish vulnerability sug
gested by his wounds and the bandage. She
nodded. That was why so many women sacrificed their virtue to Lord Hardesty, then. Not merely for his good looks or his physical prowess, although those were great inducements, Marian supposed, but for that unspoken promise of being cherished. Females would indeed be attracted.

Marian was not, of course. Lord Hardesty was half-dead, for one thing, and she was never going to trust another man as long as she lived, for another. He could be an Adonis from Aylesbury, a Romeo from Rye, or the finest lover in the British Isles. No matter. She was finished with men.

*

She was different, the nurse they called Marian. Of course she was, Hugh told himself. That much would be obvious to a blind man. She spoke English, by George. More unusual, she spoke in educated, refined tones without a hint of an accent. She had been reared as a lady, unless he missed his guess, which was something Hugh seldom did when it came to females. A British Catholic gentlewoman was rare enough, but a nun? Even if his attendant had taken a page from Ophelia and gotten herself to a nunnery, what the devil was she doing in a poor Spanish convent in the middle of a war?

She was different from the other sisters in other conspicuous ways, too. She wore no cross, no wedding band, and no beads at her waist. Neither did she disappear for prayers when the bell rang. And she swore like a soldier. Perhaps she had not yet completed her vows, Hugh considered, since no one seemed to call her
hermana.
She was taller than most of the women he had seen here, and younger, from what he could tell beneath the shapeless black gowns and the shawl-like black head coverings, although she was no girl. He thought Marian had blond hair, knew she had clear blue eyes, and was positive her soft, competent hands had never toiled at the hard labor these dedicated churchwomen endured.

She was not nearly as timid as the rest of the nuns, either. He’d seen handfuls of them scurrying past his room, fearful of both him and the dog. Not his Marian. Why, she had even taken the cur for a bath, to rid his fur of that acrid smoky odor he carried from the battlefield. The dog had suffered quietly after her sharp commands, which told Hugh the woman was used to giving orders, with an air of authority that never came from humble stock.

All in all, her presence here was as much a mystery as the dog’s. The mongrel could not answer his questions, and Marian would not. Every time he summoned enough energy to open his mouth to ask, she poured some noxious potion down his throat. For now he was content to have both of them nearby. The dog had saved his life, he understood, and so had the woman. He was
comforted by the dog’s warmth and steady heartbeat,
and encouraged by his nurse’s demands on heaven that he recover. Hugh’s lips quirked up in amusement. What
kin
d of nun gave the Almighty orders?

Soon he would
ins
ist on stopping the laudanum doses, before he grew too dependent on the drug. He’d seen other men succumb to the habit, and vowed not to take that pitiful path. Without the opiate his mind would clear, and then he could solve the intrigue of his English novitiate. Until that time he would rest and regain his strength, confident that he could charm the answers out of his Maid Marian. She might be a nun, but she was still a woman, wasn’t she?

3

Hugh had not lost his wits with the cracked skull, and he had not lost his limbs despite breaks and bruises, but he sure as Hades had lost his touch with the ladies. Nurse Marian was as close as a clam when it came to her personal life. As his health improved, so that he was awake more, and more in his right mind, her temperament deteriorated. Soon she was meeting every friendly, flirtatious effort on his part with a scowl and a sharp word. Now he could well believe she had sworn a vow of chastity, not that many men would be tempted to wed—or bed—such a poker-backed, prune-faced, preachy female. He was not tempted in the least, but he was still curious as to why a well-bred young woman, even a homely spinster firmly on the shelf, would give up hope of a home and family of her own. Marian was no beauty, he decided, but neither was she an antidote. Some poor fool, a banker or a vicar, might find her stiff manner appropriate to his calling, even if he did not find her appealing to his senses. If she had a large enough dowry…

No, the sisters of Saint Esperanza would not use his gift of gratitude to bribe a bridegroom for one of their members. And, truly, it was none of his business that an Englishwoman had renounced English gentlemen, and Spanish ones, and Portuguese, it seemed. But he could still be curious. With little else to occupy his time and his thoughts, the conundrum of the nonreligious nun intrigued him. There was more to the situation than he’d first supposed. Why, the woman would not give him her last name, to see if he knew any of her family. She read to him, tended to him, spooned gruel into him, but she would not warm to him. He was wounded indeed.

“What, not even a little smile, Maid Marian mine?”

Maid Marian, my foot, Marian thought. As if he were Robin of Locksley, come to her rescue. More likely he was Robin Hood, come to steal her heart. His smile was as breathtaking as she had supposed, despite the empurpled eye and the bandage, and his charm was as devastating, as all-encompassing, as a blizzard. A woman could lose herself there—if she were a fool twice over. He was a rake, for heaven’s sake. Of course he was charming. He meant nothing by it, and Marian took nothing from it but insult. She did not correct his presumptuous, provocative name for her, though. She was not about to tell
him
that she was Lady Marian Fortenham, daughter of Earl Fortrell of Hampshire. He would have heard of the scandal, of course, if not in England then here in Spain. Everyone on earth had heard of it, she was sure. Even Hottentots must be having a laugh at her humiliation. Marian was ashamed of her disgrace enough on her own, without seeing the condemnation on yet another face. His face. She frowned harder, and brushed a drip off his chin with a rough swipe of a towel.