The Spanish Marriage

The Spanish Marriage

A Regency Romance

Madeleine Robins

Book View Café Edition
May 22, 2012
ISBN 978-1-61138-172-6
Copyright © 1984 Madeleine Robins

For three good friends, with a lot of love:
Susan Mezoff, Elaine Rado, and Barbara Dicks,
who have severally seen me through a
lot of Romance.

Despite the heavy layers of her borrowed novice’s
habit—black gown and scapular, long white veil—Thea shivered slightly in
the cool dimness of the Superior’s sitting-room. The motion, slight as it
was, must have caught Doña de Silva’s eye: she looked up, frowned
reflectively, and scolded: “You are pale as a ghost, Dorotea. Go walk in
the garden.”

“I am perfectly fine as I am, Silvy,” Thea
protested. Since their arrival in Spain, Dorothea had chafed under her duenna’s
increasing tendency to condescend, to speak as if Thea were a schoolgirl,
instead of a young woman of nearly nineteen years. At the convent matters had
only gotten worse.

“Doña de Silva is right, child,” Mother Beatriz
said. Thea clenched her hands in frustration: everyone addressed her as “child.”
“You have been too much inside,” the Superior went on.

That made Silvy wince and flush unhappily; she was well
aware that it was her illness that had kept Thea indoors in the first sunny
days of spring. Thea could have struck the Superior for her well-intentioned
words; she and Silvy had become fiercely protective of each other in the last
months of their journey, and, with Silvy still weakened from her long fever, it
was all Thea could do to distract her from fretting over their future. It was
bleak enough, inarguably. Neither Dorothea, nor Mother Beatriz, nor Sister Juan
Evangelista, the convent Infirmarian, saw any point in Doña de Silva’s
undoing the hard work of her cure with worrying.

“Do you hear me, Dorotea? Go walk in the orchard. Your
blessed mother would never forgive me if I were to let you fall ill, and
besides that, you make such a muddle of that linen it hurts me to see it,”
Silvy added with heavy humor.

That was that. When Silvy invoked the memory of her mother
Thea understood that capitulation was the wisest course. She rose, made her
curtsy to Mother Beatriz, kissed Silvy’s narrow, dry cheek, and left the
room. She managed the awkward weight of the habit as best she could. After three
months it was still unfamiliar and cumbersome to her; to a girl raised in the
muslin dresses of an English schoolroom, the heavy layers of the borrowed habit
were not only a sorry trial but, at times, an absolute menace. She had tripped
over her skirts more times than her dignity permitted her to admit.

Once she had closed the door behind her she was unable to
keep from stopping for a moment, hovering near the door, listening for what
they would say. They would be speaking of her. Not vanity, but an absolute
comprehension of her situation and of the trouble she posed to her guardian and
to the nuns made Thea think so. There was Silvy’s long sigh, the
inevitable, unanswerable question: “What am I to do with her? If only her
father were still alive, if only she had a vocation....”

“Clara,” she heard Mother Beatriz begin. Then
old Sister Ana came shuffling down the hall; she eyed Thea knowingly.

“None of that, Señorita,” the old woman
admonished. “Mother and your duenna will talk, if they must; you have no
business to be listening. What sort of manners do the English teach their
daughters, after all? Go play in the garden like a good child.” To ensure
obedience Sister Ana settled herself heavily on the bench by the doorway, took
her rosary in her hand, and began a mumbled
Ave.
Left with no choice,
Thea gathered up her skirts and swept down the hall to the garden stair.

She emerged from the cool and the damp of the hallway into
the full noon glare of the courtyard and waited for a moment until her eyes
could adjust; she picked out the darkened doorway of the kitchen to her left,
the little pathway beyond leading to the Chapel, the scuttling shapes of
chickens wandering across the yard. She paid no attention to what she saw: her
mind was still on Silvy and Mother Beatriz in the dimness of the sitting-room;
she wondered if they would come up with a new solution to the problem of her
future. She doubted it.

“I will
not
take vows,” she muttered to
herself. “Silvy cannot ask that of me, and Mother won’t take me
without a vocation. I hope.” For a moment Thea had a vision of herself: a
member of the order, subject to the perpetual, sighing goodwill of the sisters—one
of them herself. Feeling ungrateful at the same time, she shuddered. They had
been kind—more than kind—since she and Silvy had arrived seeking
refuge. In these days, to take in an Englishwoman, no matter if half-Spanish,
was beyond kindness: it was bravery. After the months when she had realized
that none of her own people, neither her father’s family in England nor
her mother’s people in Spain, wanted her, Thea was grateful to these
women who had taken her and her duenna in—strangers—and treated
them with such open kindness.

It was bitter to realize as well that she was a danger to them.
Angrily, because she was so deeply aware of her obligation to them, Thea
refused the only option that might have made her and the convent safe again:
membership in the community.

One of the kitchen sisters was sitting on a stool by the orchard
gate and shelling beans. Thea smiled stiffly at her, dipped a curtsy as she
passed through the gate, and started off for the orchard and the field beyond
it, her steps as long as her height and the weight of her habit would permit.
Silvy wore her own gowns, grey and black—sober enough for a nun, Thea had
always thought. It had been decided when they arrived and were granted
sanctuary that Thea should wear a novice’s habit, both as a disguise to
cover her short, feathery, blond hair, and as a practical measure. Her day
dresses were not suited to conventual life or to nursing.

She was hoping to walk off some of her anger and worry; she
was ashamed as always of the feelings every kindly-meant whisper and glance
occasioned in her. A damnable sort of kindness that made her ever more aware of
what a nuisance and trial she was to everyone. Especially Silvy, she thought
miserably. That was hard: Silvy had practically raised her, had been the
affectionate, worrying counterpoint to her father’s easygoing, neglectful
presence. Silvy had come to England when her cousin Celia married Sir Henry
Cannowen, and, on Celia’s death seven years later, she had stayed to
raise Celia’s daughter, Dorothea. Thea had always known that Silvy
disapproved of her father and that Sir Henry disliked her cordially. Privately,
Thea had always enjoyed her blustery wastrel father, as she would a
delightfully foolish companion, but she understood Silvy’s distress at
him and the way he held household. Thea had never realized, until her father’s
death, that Silvy’s dislike went beyond Sir Henry to include all of
England and all things English. Watching Silvy as she spent weeks closeted with
Sir Henry’s man of business, Thea saw the worried frown on her long,
somber face deepen and heard increasingly bitter remarks about “this
country,” “these people,” “this place.”

None of Sir Henry’s family, which had been as little
pleased by his marriage to Celia Ibañez-de Silva as her family had been,
vouchsafed any assistance or advice after his death. It was a shocking thing
for Henry to have died so young, and was it not fortunate that, while the
Baronetcy had passed on to a cousin, Sir Henry’s estate was not entailed.
The fact that Grahamley Hall was the only thing of value left to Dorothea, and
that her father’s debts nearly outweighed the value of the estate, did
not soften anyone’s heart. Dorothea’s grandmother, her aunts—Susan
and Eliza—her uncle Edmund, all sent polite condolences. None was willing
to attend Sir Henry’s funeral, let alone to take in his daughter.

Silvy and Thea had stayed on at Grahamley as long as they
could; they watched the slender monies of Dorothea’s inheritance
disappear, as if by magic: servants’ wages, mourning clothes, food,
stable expenses, a thousand minor, damning things. In the end, it had been a
neighbor, Mrs. Haddersleigh, who provided a solution to their slow
impoverishment. “What I don’t see,” she had said, her plump,
mittened hands clutching at the thin china teacup, as if she suspected it were
capable of flight, “What I do not see is why you do not simply sell this
place and go to your mama’s relatives in Spain. Surely they would be
delighted to see you?” Then she added, lest Thea think her unneighborly, “You
know, dear Miss Cannowen, that I would invite you to stay with us; only, Mr.
Haddersleigh was saying just the other day that his cousin Sophy must needs
come to us again this summer. Besides, my dear, I am afraid he has the most
gothick objections to foreigners. Not that
you
are foreign, of course,
but....” She glanced at Silvy’s impassive face with insensitive
meaning.

Dorothea had hastily ushered Mrs. Haddersleigh from the
house; she heartily wished her at Jericho and returned to the drawingroom full
of apologies. Silvy was smiling.

“That one,” she began disdainfully. “That
Mrs. Haddersleigh is an imbecile, but she is right.
Niña,
we will go to Spain!
Your aunts and uncles there will take us in; your grandfather, the
Barón,
he
will arrange a marriage....”

“Wonderful,” Thea said dryly. Silvy was not to
be stopped. For days, while their debating and considering went on, Thea was
overwhelmed with stories of Spain, of sunshine, and of gracious, happy people. “The
English are like frogs!” Silvy pronounced baldly. “I never wanted
your mama to come to this place,
niña.
Now, when we go back, you will
see what real people are.”

The more that Dorothea had considered the matter, the more
it seemed the solution to their problems. There was no future for her now in
England but to go as governess, and Silvy would never have countenanced that. “You
are Ibañez-de Silva,” she protested when Thea first offered the idea. “Even,
you are Cannowen. Your papa would never have allowed such a thing!”

“If Papa had wished to have a say in the matter,
Silvy, he ought not to have gone out with the Hunt on a morning when he was
still half-foxed and on a hunter he could not hold. Only think: we are nearly
penniless, and if I could find a position....’

Silvy had been immovable. She began to make inquiries about
travel arrangements, about selling Grahamley.

“Oughtn’t we to write and to see if my
grandfather will take me in?”

“Take you in? Of a surety,
cara.
We will write
and tell the
Barón
we are coming. You who have been brought up in this
cold country, do not understand. You are the daughter of the daughter of the
Barón
Ibañez-de Silva. Of course he will take you in. The
Barón
will
arrange all.”

o0o

“The
Barón
will arrange all,” Dorothea
repeated now, kicking a clod of dry, pale dirt, watching it disappear on the point
of her shoe. “Yes, he arranged everything deedily, didn’t he?
Thanks to the
Barón
poor Silvy practically catches her death of cold in
the street in Burgos! Thanks to the
Barón
we go flying off to a nunnery
like something out of Shakespeare! The
Barón!
Pfaugh. If I had my
grandfather here, I’d tell him....”

A sound like a low-voiced groan brought her out of her fine
reverie of vengeance. Surely it was impossible, a man’s voice within the
convent enclosure, but it was a voice nonetheless. Thea was almost certain. She
was fluent in English, Spanish, and French, but this sound was none of them.

“Hola!”
she ventured nervously. No use
trying English here; the English were enemies again, since the Bourbon king
Carlos had signed the treaty of Fontainebleau with Bonaparte. It might be a
French soldier—the thought made her shiver; she had heard stories about
the French troops marching through Spain. If it was one such, her borrowed
habit would be little protection from him. This complicity with the French had
been another of her uncle Tomas’s reasons, there at the inn at Burgos:
too dangerous to have a niece, even a half-Spanish one, with an English surname
and wheat-blond hair, as part of his household. “
Quien es?”
she
tried again.

There was no sound this time, but a faint rustling in the
brush by the ditch. Dorothea considered probabilities. A child from the
village, looking for berries; a goat, foraging; a Bonapartist spy; a
Fernandista, lost in the northern wilds and come to enlist the aid of the nuns
in the Prince’s cause....

“Fustian,” she said aloud. “Fairytales.”
She turned around again, away from the culvert. At her first step the sound
began again, faintly, a soft sporadic moaning that faded into the reedy sound
of the wind through the brush. Someone has hurt an animal, Thea thought
indignantly, and she moved toward the sound again. As she edged closer to the
culvert Thea pulled the skirts of her habit closer, a foolish gesture which,
unaccountably, made her feel safer. Carefully, so as not to startle it,
whatever it was, she peered over the edge, into the underbrush, and found
herself staring at the ragged, filthy body of a man.