The Sometime Bride (14 page)

And finally the tears came. For both of them.

When Catarina returned to the Casa Audley, everything had changed. Her world had gone awry, and there seemed to be nothing which could make it right.

Two months passed before Brother Basilio acquiesced to Thomas’s increasingly vociferous demands to return to work. The damn war was happening without him! He might not be able to get around, but he could still think, by God!

Catarina would not allow Dona Blanca to say no to her entreaties to accompany them to Lisbon. “We need you,” Cat insisted. “Now that we know each other so well, I cannot imagine living without your calm and steady counsel. And Papa? I think he will drive me insane if he does not have you to bully as well. Please, Blanca
cara
, say you will come!”

Dona Blanca, never dreaming how far from home her consent would take her, did not require much urging. The Casa Dominguez held only sad memories; the winery could get along without her. Thomas, possibly even his self-sufficient child, could not.

“
You’d think this was a damned funeral procession!” Thomas complained as their coach inched toward Lisbon with Blas setting a pace slower than his ancient ox cart. But Blanca, who seemed to have a gift for dealing with the difficult invalid, merely patted his hand, assuring him it would of a certainty be his funeral procession if he did not stop fussing himself into a fever.

Cat’s sympathies were with her father. The thirty mile journey did indeed seem to go on forever. She wished to be home. She wished to be back to a time when she could share private moments with Blas.

And yet, when the journey was finally over, she found she did not like to be back in the room of her childhood. There before her was the flounced bedcover of pristine white muslin embroidered with flowers of pastel silk. The matching canopy, the plain white hangings gracefully draping the bedposts. More pastel embroidery at the sides of the double doors to the balcony. Her utterly feminine dressing table in white and gold. All so totally, immaculately . . .
virginal
.

Cat ground her teeth. She threw open the doors to the balcony which overlooked the street, letting in the golden glow of the October sun. Just so had it been the day a voice, singing to the accompaniment of squeaking cartwheels, had stolen her heart and changed her life. But where was he? She had expected him to come to her as soon as Thomas was settled in his room. He would tell her all that had been happening in Lisbon, the small funny moments as well as the dramatic events of the day. Yet, after supervising Thomas’s move from the coach to his room—the room Blas had occupied for so many months—he had disappeared. It was, Cat suddenly realized, very odd indeed.

Once a week, Blas had traveled the road from Lisbon to the Casa Dominguez to make his reports to Thomas and satisfy himself that all was going well with his adopted family. At all times he had been his dynamic self. And determinedly cheerful. He seemed, in fact, to thrive on the responsibilities Thomas has heaped upon his young shoulders. And yet this morning, when he had greeted Cat with a dutiful and somewhat distracted peck on her cheek, she had sensed something was not right. Blas had avoided her on the journey, riding in advance of the carriage, cautioning the coachman, in a manner quite out of character, over every bump and pothole in the road.

Cat told herself he was merely overly concerned for Thomas’s health and safety. But in truth a nervous, even skittish, Blas the Bastard was a contradiction of basic character. Prickles flickered across the back of her neck. Something was wrong.

There was no answer when she knocked on the door next to hers. She turned the knob and walked in. So . . . Blas
had
arranged things as they had planned. Dona Felipa’s old room now belonged to Don Alexis Perez de Leon. Refurbished to eliminate all traces of the testy old governess, the room was wholly and firmly the masculine chamber of her husband Blas. And it was empty.

Virgin she might be, but in the past year Cat had grown accustomed to many of the little joys of being married. The shared confidences, the laughter. The glow of Blas’s presence. Of entering a room and finding his eyes locked with hers. He always knew when she was there. Frequently, they seemed to know each other’s thoughts.

And now . . . he was gone. Deliberately avoiding her? But why? She was no longer a child who did not understand desire. Was he afraid to be near her? Had Papa warned him off? Again. Those were, of course, the most obvious explanations. But, somehow, neither explanation felt right. Cat’s first glimpse of her husband came only as night descended on the Casa Audley and Don Alexis Perez de Leon assumed his accustomed place at the faro table.

As was expected of her, Cat made a grand entrance through the elaborately tiled front hall. Pragmatism forced aside her memories of the black days at the winery. No matter what she thought of the French, a fashionable appearance in the Empire style was necessary in the gaming rooms of the Casa Audley. Cat floated past the courtyard’s bubbling fountain in a gown of seafoam green, the bodice and hem embroidered with delicate white vines and flowers. She was Catarina Perez de Leon. It was a night like any other at the Casa Audley.

On the threshold of the largest gaming room she paused in shock. The room had changed color. As if a magician had waved a wand and redecorated the rooms in an instant. The solid phalanx of French blue had become a multi-colored panoply of uniforms of nearly overwhelming brilliance. British infantry scarlet, rifleman green, cavalry blue, plus the gamut of primary colors signifying Spain and Portugal, each jacket faced in a contrasting color and smothered in gold braid. The faces were still young and eager, but even the languages and accents had changed.

Sternly, Cat took herself in hand, stepping forward to greet her father’s customers as she had so many times before. She proffered a particularly warm welcome to the Portuguese officers who had never come near the Casa during the Occupation, partly from shame and partly from fear of creating trouble. The Spanish officers, who had been among the occupation troops in the garrison at Lisbon, had changed from stern soldiers doing their duty for their French ally to debonair
caballeros
eager to drive the invader from their country.

One and all, they nearly smothered her with attention, kissing her hand, begging to be allowed to bring her some wine . . . supper. Would she not like a cool walk by the fountain? The British officers new to Lisbon hovered in the background, waiting for an opportunity to beg an introduction. During a moment when the crowd briefly parted, Catarina looked up, expecting to catch Blas’s sardonic acknowledgment of her triumphal return. His eyes were fixed on the faro card box. Without looking up, he casually tossed a card to one of the players and continued the round. Cat addressed the glowing smile planned for Blas toward a very young lieutenant, allowing him to lead her to the refreshment table. With rueful laughter her other admirers returned to the play.

“
You’ve heard what’s being said?” Marcio asked Catarina later that evening.

“
About Napoleon? I heard it from Papa this afternoon. The great monster himself has come to rescue his generals in Spain. Papa says Boney has two hundred thousand men and will probably push us into the sea.” So much had happened in Catarina Audley’s young life that this latest rumor failed to arouse even a flicker of fear.

“
And assuredly twenty-five thousand of them are the men Dalrymple and Burrard returned to France!” Marcio growled.

“
I do not at all blame Sir Arthur for resigning,” said Cat sadly, “ but he will be sorely missed.”

“
But not Dalrymple and Burrard,” Marcio retorted.

“
Papa says their recall means somebody in the government has finally shown a bit of sense. But with Wellesley gone to Ireland, there’s no one left but Sir John Moore.”

“
You are forgetting the Portuguese and Spanish armies,” Marcio reminded her indignantly. “Five thousand of us helped Wellesley at Vimeiro! Now they have given us General Beresford, we will soon be able to fight as well as the British.”

“
I am sorry,” Cat apologized swiftly. “You are right. But Papa says all three countries together will still be no match for Boney. It is true, you know. Father and I have done little else but talk for the past month. I have had lessons in tactics using Blas’s maps and drawings—he is very good, you know. Papa says I probably know more of what is going on than any but the generals themselves. And I can tell you it does not look good.”

As Marcio began a muttered catalog of what the allied troops would do to the famed army of France, Catarina bit her lip. Peeking at her friend from under lowered lashes, she asked, “Marcio? Do you think . . . have you noticed that Blas seems . . . well, different? Has anything happened I do not know about?”

Marcio shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Don Alejo has seemed a bit absent-minded,” he admitted. “But he has been very busy doing the work of Senhor Tomás as well as his own. Things should be better now that your father is back.” He hesitated before adding, “You know, Cat, you should not mind about other women. It is just part of his job.”

“
Of course.” Trembling, she dashed upstairs to her room, buried her outburst of tears in her pillow. She lay awake, listening for Blas to enter the room next door. It was her first night home. He would come to her, she knew.

From the gaming rooms below sounds of the evening’s special entertainment drifted up to her room. The haunting, mournful strains of the
fado
. The lament for lost souls, lost lives. Lost love. It was an accompaniment perfectly attuned to Cat’s vigil.

For at dawn, wide-eyed and cold of heart, she was still waiting.

Sing
fado
, sing
fado
. Sing
fado
for me.

Chapter Eight

It was over. As if it had never existed. Gone was the intense camaraderie of the days of the Occupation. The excitement and fear. The sharing of small moments . . . the laughter. The sheer joy of living. The secret joy of loving.

Cat spent many a lonely moment in her room puzzling over what had gone wrong. Blas may not have loved her, but she had reveled in finding an occasional delicious telltale sign that he truly cared for her, no matter what that emotion might be called. But now . . . they were not even as close as they had been in Blas’s early days at the Casa Audley. Sometimes—if Cat looked up very quickly—she would catch him watching her, his expression as inexplicable as his behavior. A look compounded of wariness . . . and awe. With perhaps, just perhaps, a soupçon of regret.

It made no sense. A Blas wary of his Cat, awed by his Cat, was even more unbelievable than a Blas who fussed over potholes. The Blas she knew—confident, arrogant—might have shouted curses at the potholes, the horses, even the coachman. He would not have fussed. If his frustration with his wife—with his lack of a wife?—grew too strong, he might have stalked the corridors in panther-like rage. He might have seized her, kissed her, whacked her bottom and pushed her away. And, late that night, he would have come to her room, and . . .

It was a game they played. An exhilarating game, almost as dangerous as Russian Roulette. Sometimes during the long months of the Occupation—after the last patron had left the gambling rooms, the last bolt on the great doors had been shot home, the last echo of footsteps on the courtyard tiles had died away—Blas would come to her room. He would simply stand there with his back against the door, saying nothing, doing nothing. Willing her to come to him.

On these nights he was Blas the Daring, Blas the Hunter, playing a game with himself as well as his young bride. Cat, understanding him very well, plunged into the game with no qualm about propriety. She was eager, every nerve alive and tingling. Each of them an adventurer, living tamely did not suit them. Though always restricted by Thomas’s expectations of their behavior, they would push the confines of their odd marriage to its outer limits. But with their combined age less than Thomas’s thirty-eight years, neither had yet learned caution.

When Blas came to her, it would be late—at a moment he could be certain his young wife wore nothing more than her nightgown. He himself wore only a shirt, ruffles flowing down the front, dangling from the cuffs. The shirt reached his thighs. Barely. The game, after all, must be as dangerous as each could make it.

After the first of Blas’s visits, Cat—more than willing to participate in this Game of Temptation—ordered a panoply of nightgowns suitable to the wife of a man who was known as a connoisseur of fine things, particularly women. The gowns—what little there was of them—did not go unappreciated. One more bit of spice added to the game.

Many times Cat was already in bed when he came to her room. If it were a night for talk—for the serious business of war and politics—Blas would simply sit on the edge of her bed while she reclined against her pillows, covers up to her chin. He would give her his Big Brother smile, tweak the end of the shining night braid which fell over her shoulder, and be off, walking jauntily back to his room, long legs golden below his robe of black silk, under which he wore nothing at all. If Blas owned a nightshirt, she had never seen it. Her eyes would always follow him every step of the way until the door shut behind him, obliterating her view.