Don't Bargain with the Devil (22 page)

clear that he wouldn’t allow their relationship to progress further. There’d been no talk of marriage, no talk of love. Only desire.

 

As she reached the grove’s edge, a figure melted from the shadows near the house, startling her. “I was afraid you would not come.” Diego tossed down a cigarillo, crushing it with his foot. “I have been watching for you a long while.”

 

With the moon only half full, darkness cloaked his features, but the familiar thrum of his voice settled her nervousness. “I couldn’t get away any sooner.”

 

He held out his arm. “Let us go in. I have papers to show you. It is too cold to stand out here, anyway.”

 

In for a penny, in for a pound. She took his arm. As they entered the manor, she realized she’d never been inside. When Mr. Pritchard had lived here, he had not welcomed visits from the residents of the school, and Seńor Montalvo was his first tenant. Gazing about, she marveled that Diego could stand to live in such a dismal place. And where were his servants?

 

Apprehension prickled along her spine until she reminded herself he wasn’t the wealthy man she’d imagined. Perhaps he couldn’t afford servants to man the doors.

 

“Tell me something,” she said as he led her into a small, dank parlor only marginally improved by the fire in the hearth. “Are you even really a count?”

 

His arm tensed beneath her hand. “Does it matter?” Releasing her, he stalked to a tea table, where sat a carafe and glasses. He poured red wine, then returned with the filled glasses.

 

“It matters to me.” She accepted a glass from him. “I want to be able to separate the truth from the lies.”

 

He stared her down. “As I said before, I told you as few lies as I could.”

 

She sipped wine to take off the chill. “So you really are a count.”

 

“Not that it matters, but yes. And a man of honor, too.”

 

The proud tilt to his head and the haughty inflection of his voice answered the question more than his words. She could easily see this rigidly arrogant man in the role of count. “Then tell me about my supposed grandfather.”

 

“There is nothing supposed about it,” he snapped. “You are the only daughter of Don Carlos’s daughter.”

 

“Catalina Crawford, you mean.”

 

Diego drank some wine, as if to fortify himself, then set his glass down. “There is no such person. The woman pretending to be Catalina Crawford was your nurse. And Sergeant Crawford was probably her lover. They stole you from your rightful parents.”

 

“My rightful…” A sudden chill swept her. Surely he could not have said…no, he must be confused. “What do you mean?”

 

“Your real parents are not the Crawfords. The real Catalina and her husband, Don Álvaro, had a four-year-old daughter named Lucinda. The girl went missing from San Roque, along with her nurse, while visiting her grandfather.” His gaze bored into her. “San Roque is across the Spanish border from Gibraltar. The woman you thought was your mother abducted you as she ran off with Sergeant Crawford, when the regiment left Gibraltar on transports headed for La Coruńa.”

 

For a moment, she could only stare at him in shock. Abducted? From
Spanish
parents? No, how could that be?

 

“That makes no sense. I remember the retreat to La
Coruńa. I remember my mother’s face.” Jerking the miniature from her pocket, she waved it at him. “I remember this face from when were on the march! I remember—”

 

“You might remember her face,” he said softly. “But it cannot be from the march. You were four,
mi dulzura.
Memories from that time become jumbled. Are you absolutely sure you remember her being with you in the mountain passes?”

 

She gulped more wine in a vain attempt to warm her chilled blood. It was so long ago. She remembered her mother…but she couldn’t remember anything else. “But why would Sergeant Crawford’s wife be named Catalina, too?”

 

“I suspect the nurse used her mistress’s name to keep you quiet.”

 

“Then why isn’t it
her
face I remember?” This was insane. He had to see it! “And why would my nurse steal me, anyway?”

 

“According to the
marqués,
she was fond of you and angry at your mother. She must have taken you to spite her mistress or out of jealousy. Who knows why a woman like that steals a child?”

 

Panic rose in her. “And Sergeant Crawford just looked the other way as he gained two people to take care of? That’s absurd. Besides, Papa would have known something of it. He was Sergeant Crawford’s commanding officer. Papa would have been the one to give him permission to take us on the transports.”

 

“Yes. He would have.”

 

As what he was implying sank in, she felt sick. The wine glass slipped from her fingers, but Diego caught it before it fell. She wrapped her arms about her waist. “You’re saying Papa had something to do with this.” She shook her
head violently. “No. He’d never…he’s a good man. He couldn’t—”

 

“Then why, when the
marqués
wrote to the regiments asking if there had ever been a child named Lucinda whose father served in the Forty-second, did they say they had no record of it?”

 

“Good Lord.” One thing she knew for certain—Papa had served in the Forty-second, and she’d been his daughter when he did. “Perhaps they…they misunderstood. Perhaps it was a mistake.”

 

“Or your ‘Papa’ convinced the authorities to keep quiet about it. He either participated in the abduction or covered it up afterward. He has certainly been doing so ever since.”

 

Her stomach churned. This was far worse than finding out that Papa had hidden her grandfather from her.

 

No, she wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. “Papa would never do anything so despicable. You don’t know his character.”

 

“I know he changed regiments shortly after legally adopting you. Why would he do so? Officers rarely change the regiment they have come up in.”

 

She knew that to be true. “H-he never said why.”

 

“Of course not. And what has he told you about the Crawfords? When you ask about them, what does he say?”

 

Very little. Papa always changed the subject.

 

Horror swept down her spine. “I don’t think he knew them very well.”

 

“Yet he adopted you when they died. He did not send you to an orphanage. He did not even give you to some other married couple. Instead, he—an unmarried soldier who, according to you, had no close friendship with your parents—adopted a four-year-old girl he barely knew.
Just like that. Carried you with him from battlefield to battlefield.” Diego fixed her with a pitying stare. “Does that sound like something the average unmarried soldier would do? For no reason?”

 

“He
had
a reason! My real father asked him to on his deathbed.”

 

“
Carińo,
be sensible.” Diego reached for her, but she backed away. His face hardened. “Do you truly believe a man takes on the raising and education of a child simply because a dying man he hardly knows asks him to?”

 

As tears burned her eyes, she turned away to hide them. Could her whole life really have been a lie?

 

She’d always wondered about Papa’s reticence in talking about her parents but had never questioned why he’d adopted her. He’d done it because her real father had asked it of him, simple as that. Like any child, she’d filled in the rest. Papa had thought she was adorable or had felt sorry for her or had been captivated by her childish smiles.

 

But Diego was right. Unmarried soldiers didn’t adopt small children.

 

“The colonel had to have known of the abduction,” Diego went on gently. “It would explain why he could not return you to your family in San Roque when Crawford and the nurse died. That would have meant facing the authorities, admitting his culpability. Instead, he adopted you and changed regiments to keep anyone from finding you.”

 

It was a monstrous idea, that Papa had adopted her to hide a crime. “It can’t be possible,” she whispered. “I don’t believe you.”

 

“Then believe this.” He picked up a letter that lay next to the carafe and handed it to her. “The
marqués
wrote it, in case I were ever to find you.”

 

With trembling fingers, she took the sealed parchment. The wax bore the same P as the one on the picture of her birthmark that Diego had shown her earlier. Breaking open the seal, she unfolded the letter. It was dated February 3, and was written in English in the shaky script of an old man:

 

 

My dear child,

 

If you are reading this, then my emissary, Don Diego Javier Montalvo, has found you at last. I have been searching for years, but only recently did I gain information leading me to believe you had left on the regimental transports with my daughter’s deceitful nurse.

 

You are all I have left in this world. My daughter (your mother) and my son are both dead, and your grandmother went on to heaven just last year, always hopeful that she would see you one day.

 

I cannot bear the thought of meeting her in heaven without having held you again in this life, my dear girl. I am very near death’s door, and I will not rest easy in the next world if I cannot be reunited with you before I die. Please do me the honor of indulging an old man and accompany my emissary and his friend back to Spain.

 

 

Her gaze jumped to Diego. “He wants me to go to Spain?”

 

Diego nodded. “As soon as possible. His doctors told me he does not have much longer to live.”

 

“Diego!” she protested. “I can’t just run off to Spain with you!”

 

“Gaspar will be with us. He’s off right now hiring a maid to attend and chaperone you for the trip. You have no reason to stay.”

 

“I have a very good reason,” she said stoutly. “I already have a life here.”

 

“Really? Is that what you call this? Being at the beck and call of some schoolmistress?” His voice tightened. “Enduring savage attacks from men like Hunforth who cannot see your worth, who revile you for your passion and your boldness, the very things that will make you admired in Spanish society?”

 

She flinched at his painfully accurate assessment of how she sometimes felt.

 

“When I spoke to your Peter alone,” he went on ruthlessly, “he called your mother a ‘Spanish whore.’ To these English
cretinos,
you are the daughter of a whore. You should show them you are no such thing.”

 

Swallowing past the lump of hurt in her throat, she said, “They don’t all see me that way. Peter, yes, because he’s a fool, but not the rest.”

 

He snorted, clearly skeptical. “Is that why a beautiful, desirable woman like you has not yet found a husband? Why you’re working as a teacher here instead?”

 

“You don’t understand. It’s temporary, and anyway—”

 

“In Spain, you are heiress to a vast fortune. Your grandfather has houses in Cádiz and San Roque and Marbella. He can make you the center of Spanish society. You were born to that.” He grabbed her hands. “You told me you yearned for family, for people of your own blood. Now you have a chance to have them, and if you do not go now, you will lose that chance. You will regret it forever if you do.”

 

“But I don’t even know if I can believe this
marqués
’s tale about me.”

 

“He knew of your birthmark.”

 

She couldn’t deny that. “At the very least, I have to hear Papa’s side of the story. I’m sure if I could only talk to him—”

 

“There is no time for that! Your grandfather is dying. Besides, that monster you call Papa has done nothing to earn such a consideration.”

 

“Except raise me and love me!”

 

“He had no right to! Your parents should have been the ones to raise and love you. But like all English soldiers, he took what he wanted without a care for the consequences. He covered up the abduction and kept you from your family for his own selfish purposes.
That
is the man you wish to alert to your plans? If you tell him you want to visit your grandfather, do you really think he will let you go?”

 

She doubted it.

 

“Has he ever encouraged you to look for your Spanish relations, ever made an attempt to seek out your English relations on your so-called father’s side?”

 

“He said I had none,” she whispered.

 

“Of course he did.”

 

“But I’m sure he could explain this.”

 

“I am sure he could. And it would all be lies.” Diego stared at her with a look of desperation. “I do not want to risk your ‘Papa’ trying to keep you from being reunited with your family. You said he is far away in Scotland. Even if I wanted to risk your contacting him, there is no time. Indeed, I have instructed the captain of our ship that we are to sail at dawn tomorrow.”

 

She blinked. “At dawn! So soon?”

 

“I would hate to arrive in Spain only to find that your grandfather had died before your arrival. Wouldn’t you?”

 

“All the same, I…I need time to think about this. I’m sorry, Diego, but I can’t just go off to Spain with you without looking for other corroborating evidence. You’ll have to wait until I can talk to Papa.”

 

The color drained from his face. Then he drew himself up with a haughty air. “Very well. But before you go to meet him, I must arm you against his lies. I have something more compelling to show you, but you will have to wait here while I fetch it from upstairs.”

 

“Why is it upstairs?” she asked suspiciously. He was giving up too easily.

 

He shrugged. “I could not be sure you would come alone tonight, and I could not risk having it seized by anyone, so it is locked away for safekeeping.”

 

The glance he cast her was intense, imbued with dark meaning. “I feared I would have trouble in England finding another copy of this particular document. It is the announcement of your birth in the Spanish newspaper.”

 

 

 

ďťż

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen