The Sometime Bride (50 page)

Their waving black locks matched the sheen of their black silk coats, their black silk breeches, their finely knit black stockings and black patent dancing slippers. Their modestly ruffled white silk shirts, their pearl gray waistcoats embroidered silver, each crease in their perfectly starched white linen cravats, the number of sparkling carats in the single diamond nestled among the folds were as well matched as the two strikingly powerful faces. A far cry from black velvet and mother-of-pearl buttons, yet Cat was overwhelmed by memories of the debut of Don Alexis Perez de Leon at the gaming tables of the Casa Audley. He had been so calm, so sure of himself. So perfect for the part.

She recalled the little girl—for fourteen was not at all the mature woman she had thought herself at the time—the foolish child who hid behind red velvet draperies, watching. Wearing her heart on her sleeve. The child who loved. Read
Romeo and Juliet
. And dreamed.

Was it prophetic? Shakespeare’s play was, after all, a tragedy.

The first violinist hissed at his musicians. The sets of the Quadrille reformed. The music swelled; the dancers once again bent to the intricate figures, though their loss of concentration resulted in a less elegant performance than usual. Gordon Somersby thrust a glass of punch into Cat’s hand. “Do you wish to go home?” he inquired anxiously.

The liquid sloshed over the rim of the cup as her hand shook. Her eyes clouded, her heart pounded with alarm. She
was
sick. She should go home. Gordy would take her. Gordy. Always reliable. And safe.

Receiving no answer, Gordon lowered his white-faced friend back into her chair. Clara plied her fan in front of Catherine’s face, while Gordy went in search of something stronger than punch. Blanca could only sit and stare at Catarina in perfect understanding. She too was speechless.

Gordy was urging brandy down Cat’s paralyzed throat when he heard Blanca’s gasp of alarm. There they both stood, Anthony clutching his brother’s arm, fiercely murmuring, “Not here, Alex. Not now! Remember what we planned. Later, dammit, later!”

Clara Everingham watched in fascination as the Marquess of Harborough took the brandy snifter from his wife’s hand, handed it with a curt nod to Gordon Somersby. After an equally brief acknowledgment of Blanca Dominguez, he simply swept an arm around his wife’s waist. Ignoring the shocked audience, he propelled Cat out the French doors behind the rows of gilded chairs and into the cool damp stillness of the April night. He did not stop until he found his way down a path between tall yew hedges. Until they were fully out of sight of the light spilling out of the ballroom.

Anthony stood just inside the French doors which his brother had kicked shut in his face. After a long, resigned sigh, he went back to comfort Blanca and Lady Everingham. And do what he could to stem the tide of disaster.

All their carefully laid plans blown to hell the instant Alex had gotten a good look at his wife.

The Marquess of Harborough was so furious, he was shaking. Which for Blas, Don Alexis, Alex, or whoever he was, was an extremely rare loss of control. “How could you?” he hissed at Cat. “I know you think you hate me, but to butcher your hair, your goddamn bloody beautiful hair? How could you do it, Cat? How?” By the time Alex finished, he was shouting.

The cool air revived Cat’s wits. And her courage. “You know perfectly well why I did it.”

He did know. She had done it to hurt him. And succeeded all too bloody well. He adored her hair, every shining glorious inch of it. She could grow it out for the rest of her life and it would never be the same. That golden red spill of hair dangling over the balcony rail, splashing the white of her apron with a waterfall of color. Burnished copper spilling over the white of her pillow, fisted in the bronze of his hand, tickling his chest, his stomach, his . . .

Alex threw himself back away from her, loosing the grip on Cat’s arms which he suddenly realized must be painful. It was war. And this battle he had lost.

“
As if that were not enough,” he ground out, his tone more controlled but still deadly, “I had not been in the receiving line five minutes before I heard the
on dit
circulating about Byron and his latest flirt. And of whom were they talking?
My wife
.” He stepped back, close enough to shock them both with the intense recollection of games once played. “You will have nothing to do with Byron, Catarina. Frankly, I thought you had better taste.”

“
You can say that when I slept with Blas the Bastard?” Cat inquired sweetly, her nerves steadying into the satisfaction of the quarrel.

“
At least I never tried boys.”

“
Blas!
” She almost laughed. And yet, to her astonishment tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks. “It’s over, don’t you see?” she whispered. “We can only hurt each other. With trust gone, there is nothing left to hold us together. Accept it and let me go.” A shiver rippled over her, the fine hairs on her arms bristling in the cool night air.

In silence, never taking his eyes from hers, Alex shrugged himself out of his tightly fitted black jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. His hands found the flapping sleeves, pulled them tight, swiftly knotting them in front of her, pinioning her arms inside. “I’ll let you go when hell freezes over,” he murmured. He threw her up over his shoulder, headed toward the gate in the fence at the rear of the garden. This part of the evening had been scouted and planned in advance. He knew exactly what he was doing. Dragging his wife bodily from the ballroom in front of hundreds of people had not been part of the plot, but Tony would manage. He always did.

The blatant kidnapping of his wife was no impulse, but yet another daringly executed raid to be brought to a swift and successful conclusion.

Hell, even a hairless wife was better than no wife at all.

Chapter Twenty-six

“
You can scream,” said Alex, “but the Hawleys wouldn’t welcome the scandal. Nor Sir Giles and his wife. O–oof!” Cat’s arms may have been immobilized, her head and shoulders dangling down his back, but she managed to connect the sharp point of her slipper with his groin, barely missing her goal of his most tender part.

Alex reacted with a vicious kick to the mews gate, which had cost him a hefty bribe to find unlocked. None too gently, he thrust his still struggling wife through the yawning blackness of a carriage door. The upholstery was neither soft nor welcoming as Cat was pitched against it, helpless to direct her fall. If she exaggerated her cry of pain as her knee hit the floor and her chin smashed onto a cushion causing her to bite her tongue, it was not by much. With the taste of blood in her mouth, anger swelled into a red haze of fury.

“
Go!” Alex barked to the coachman as he slammed the carriage door, then groped frantically for his wife.
Hell and damnation!
He had not meant to hurt her. Beside him, where she should have been, there was nothing. “Cat!” With a stifled cry Alex flailed about in the dark. There! The soft smoothness of satin, the stiff silk of his jacket, soft curls, a handful of pearls. She was kneeling on the floor, forehead against the seat cushion, body quivering. Pain? Tears? Rage?

“
God, Cat, I’m sorry!” Alex gathered her up, pulled her onto his lap. Alternately murmuring apologies and endearments, his lips sought, but did not find, hers as Cat frantically twisted away from what could only be danger.

“
Don’t touch me!” she hissed. “And get this jacket off!”

“
Make up your mind,” Alex retorted, guilt drowned in a rush of temper. “Unless I touch you, you’ll be wearing that jacket ‘til hell freezes over.”

With a quick intake of breath, Cat went very still.

Admittedly, his hand strayed as he fumbled over the knot he had made in the heavy silk. By the time the jacket had found its way to a far corner of the carriage, they were breathing considerably harder than the simple exercise warranted. Each from passion, though not necessarily of the same kind.

The carriage turned from the cobblestoned street onto the hard-packed earth of Hyde Park. The movement of the wheels became slow, fluid, peaceful. No sound but the steady clip-clop of the two horses, the call of an occasional nightbird breaking the steady background chirp of nocturnal insects.

Alex had planned this stolen hour with the care he gave to planning an attack by Spanish
guerrilleros
. Tony would explain the situation to Blanca and Clara Everingham, whose cooperation he never doubted. The ladies would announce Cat had been taken ill and returned to Everingham House. Tony would then circle the ballroom, sometimes as himself, sometimes as his brother. A dozen people would be able to swear they had spoken with the Marquess of Harborough well after midnight. Nor did Alex doubt one of his co-conspirators would concoct some story about Cat feeling faint and Harborough gallantly rushing her out for air. Then finding her no better, he escorted her to her carriage before returning to the ball. Considering the Trowbridge twins’ enormous consequence at the moment, they would very likely get away with it.

But all the words Alex planned to say welled up in his throat, choking him into silence. He wanted to gallop to Marchmont House, carry Cat up the stairs to his bed, make love ‘til morning. And through all the evenings and mornings to come. But first, there must be peace between them.

Forcing himself to a gentleness he did not feel, Alex wrapped his arms around his wife, pulling her tight against the white blur of his shirt, the pearl gray brocade of his waistcoat. The momentary resistance he encountered melted away as, with a small sigh, she nestled against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. He lost himself in the feel of her, the scent of her, the aura of fierce contentment which enveloped him, overwhelmed him, as it always did when he took her in his arms. She was his, and he would never let her go.

“
Do you remember the night Major Martineau followed me to the Casa?” he asked, his voice low and husky, “The night I had to hide in your bed?” Rhetorical question. Neither of them would ever forget. “You were so damn young and innocent, Cat. I’ve never seen eyes as wide as yours when I started to peel off my clothes. You must have thought I’d gone mad. And there I was, all of twenty-one, feeling like the ultimate old lecher. In a way, I was. I was shockingly, secretly, delighted to have such a fine excuse to jump into your bed. It’s a good thing my back was toward you when I stood up. You would have gotten the shock of your young life.”

“
You mean . . . you were . . . Martineau saw you . . . like that. His men? Marcio . . . Lucio?” Cat choked. Not even many years of marriage could keep her from blushing fiery red. “No wonder they believed you,” she murmured when she got her voice back.

“
Oh, God, Cat, we were both children,” Alex groaned. “Yet we thought ourselves so worldly and wise.” He shifted a hand to cup her chin. “Cat, you
do
understand I want to marry you. Properly. At St. George’s with all the pomp and circumstance anyone could want. I never had any other intention.”

She could find no words to answer him. No way to make him understand her terrible, lonely hours of doubt and pain, the certainty he loved her dissolved by an unrelenting succession of events. Her father’s caution that Blas might put her aside, the sterile letter of condolence Marcus had brought back from the Pyrenees, the odd behavior of the Blas who was Anthony Trowbridge. The tragedy of discovery. Of betrayal. The ultimate loss of trust.

In that awful moment when Cat realized her husband was not one person but two, she had lost what remained of her faith in the power of love. If Blas could keep a secret such as this, there was no life left for them to live. No chance for harmony or peace.

Bitterness helped focus her thoughts, the coldness of her tone. “When would you be off on new adventures, my lord? Three months, four? And then there is the matter of fidelity. We both know having a wife has never kept you out of other women’s beds. Tell me, please, what is your opinion of Tit for Tat? What if I wished to have your privileges? What if I wished to be a Lady Oxford and start my own Miscellany? How would you feel about that, I wonder.”

Alex’s groan echoed through the darkness. She had a right to taunt him. To twist the knife. It didn’t make her words more palatable. “Damn it, Cat, I’m not a bloody monk! I’d never mount a mistress when we’re together, and you damn well you know it. And if you ever so much as thought of starting a Trowbridge Miscellany, I’d lock you up first and kill your lover directly after. Believe me, complacency is not one of my virtues. If it can be called a virtue,” he added on a feral growl.

“
Nor is it mine,” was Cat’s pointed response.

Silence.

Alex found his wife’s face, tilted up her chin. He brushed her lips with his. “That night, Cat, when we were first naked in your mother’s bed,” he whispered against her mouth, “I should have been ashamed of myself. But I wasn’t. Not then or ever, because I always thought of you as mine. We were meant to be together. So stop fighting. Come and be my wife.”

Cat’s rage wavered, dimmed. Always—forever—his body could do that to her. The only solution was separation. She knew it, but could not force herself to move.

Beneath her cheek the sharp facets of the diamond in his cravat bit into her soft flesh. She welcomed the reality of this pinprick of pain. Desire was a terrible thing. As was rage. Sapping a person’s will, plunging reason into a black pit where compromise and common sense dared not go. If only the carriage could roll on forever, shutting out the world, carrying them to some fantasy land where they could pretend the war never happened. That they were two strangers newly met at the Hawley’s ball. Strangers who could marry and live the fairy tale lives which only happened in books.