The Spanish Marriage (13 page)

“Lady, that is, Aunt Susan? I don’t know where
to begin. Two days ago we were on a smuggling boat; two weeks ago I was riding
a mule down a road somewhere in Spain. Today I’m here.” She made a
little gesture that included the filmy drapes, the fire in the grate, the negligee
she wore. “It’s a little much to take in all at once. I suppose
what I need is something presentable to wear.”

Lady Matlin applauded. “My exact thought.... You
are
going to be a satisfactory guest. I thought perhaps a few things at first,
and then we’ll go to work in earnest and get you a wardrobe fit for
Douglas’s wife. Between the two of us, I believe Nevil wants to set him
up in politics.”

Thea looked blank.

“Nevil, my husband.... Never tell me that Douglas had
you calling him my lord or something so fustian?”

“I honestly can’t recall calling him anything,
ma’am. I was very tired last night.”

“I’ll warrant you were, my lamb, and convalescent
as well, I hear. Well, we shall take your trousseau slowly then, but fit for a
political hostess, just in case.... Young, but sophisticated. How old are you,
dear?”

Thea smiled slightly. “Nineteen. My birthday passed on
the ship to England.” Lady Ocott sighed wistfully.

“Such a lovely age.... From your face you could be an infant,
but from your figure,” she leaned back and appraised Thea critically. “Yes,
young but sophisticated. This is going to be such fun. Shall we have a birthday
dinner for you tonight, my dear? Or a party?”

“No!” Thea cried, panicked. “Dear,
kind
Aunt Susan this is very new to me. The last thing I need is a party in my honor,
until I’m up to all the rigs in Town.”

“Very wise.... Are you going to be a clever girl, too?
That will make a help to dear Douglas.”

Then Thea asked the question she had been longing to ask since
awakening: “Where is my husband this morning, ma’am?”

“Gone to a tailor, child, and then to Whitehall, with
Nevil. They’ll be speaking of Spain all afternoon, and I doubt we’ll
see them before dinner or, quite frankly, after that either. You know what men
are when they come to talking. I should have thought Douglas would have left
you a note or a card; mighty cavalier treatment of so new a bride, I must say,
and I’ve half a mind to tell him so.”

“Oh please don’t,” Thea pleaded. She had
begun to climb out of her bed and was stopped now, undignified; one leg was on
the floor; her hands were outstretched. “Please, no. We had, I don’t
know, a misunderstanding, I don’t know what; I keep thinking, if I am
just patient—but, if you scold him, Lady Ocott, Aunt Susan—oh
please, don’t.” To her horror Thea felt her face crumple up, and
tears slid down her cheeks. “I do love him, I do, really, and I want to
be a good wife to him,” she heard herself say. “If only I knew what
he wanted, but I don’t; I don’t know what I did wrong, and I do
love him....”

Lady Ocott dropped down on the bed beside her weeping guest
and gathered her into her arms. “Of course you do, lamb,” she
clucked distractedly. “Of course you do, and you shall. Whatever it is,
my lamb, it shall all come right. Trust me.” She rocked from side to
side, stroking Thea’s bright hair with one jeweled hand. “You trust
me. Now, that’s quite enough crying for now. First we shall see if you
can wear anything of mine, and then I shall take you to New Bond Street. I know
nothing better for a marital spat than a shopping trip; you would not believe
the number of bonnets I bought the first year Ocott and I were married.”

Lady Ocott retired to her room to search through her closets
for something suitable to lend her new niece-in-law. Thea sipped at her cup of
warm, rich chocolate, leafed through the current number of the
Gazette,
and
indulged herself with the remarkable luxury of another warm, scented bath. It
felt unreal to her, this warmth and comfort, after the weeks of worry and dirt
and aching tiredness and danger. By the time Lady Ocott returned with a small
retinue composed of Lewis, her private maid, and the upstairs maid who had been
promoted to wait on Lady Matlin, Thea was again dressed in Lady Ocott’s
silken negligee and sat idly fussing with her short, pale hair before a pier
glass.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” she
said fretfully. “The Sisters cut it short so that the veil wouldn’t
bunch up over it.”

“Your ve—well, never mind, lamb. Someday I don’t
doubt I shall hear all of the story. As for your hair, a short crop is quite
fashionable. It needs only a little trimming and some pommade to bring you
straight into fashion. Now, stand up. Lewis? Did you bring the pins? We are
going to have to do some tailoring, I can see.”

The next hour was filled with pins, basting, and Lady Ocott’s
preoccupied flutters. Thea thought in passing of the fittings for her wedding
dress in Silvy’s room at the convent, and the memory of Silvy was a tiny
private sorrow she did not share with the others. There was no time for
reminiscing; Silvy would not want her to be sad. When Lady Ocott stood back at
last and announced that they had done their best, Thea was quite recovered.

“Lewis, fetch my pelisse please, and tell Platt to
have the chariot brought round. Come along, my dear. Already it is so late, and
I had thought to pay a morning visit on Lady Melbourne today, quite shocking in
me to omit it, but it is far more important to see you decently dressed. I hope
we can have something ready for you for this evening. Lewis?” She raised
an eyebrow at her dresser, hurrying in with the swansdown-trimmed pelisse.

“I think we can have the blue lace taken up in time
for dinner, M’Lady,” Lewis agreed.

Satisfied, Lady Ocott swept Thea downstairs and out to where
her carriage awaited them.

Dizzied by the sights and sounds, her first awareness of the
bustling, crowded, noisome life of London, Thea kept her face turned to the
street as they drove toward New Bond Street. Lady Ocott wisely permitted Thea
to gawk as much as she pleased while they sat in the carriage. Once on the
street, however, she demanded that Thea exhibit a ladylike indifference to the
scene around them. Her martial air considerably at war with her cheerful
beribboned person, Lady Ocott managed their shopping tour like a general: first
this modiste, then that one, a brief visit to the shoemaker, and then to see
two elderly milliners in an odd little shop on an odd little street. One
modiste was actually bullied into promising three dresses, one a simple evening
gown and the others day dresses, to be delivered by the following morning. At
other houses Lady Ocott examined fabrics, discussed the current style, and
solicited Thea’s opinions, which she occasionally even attended to.

“Ma’am? Lady Oc—Aunt Susan,” Thea
murmured urgently once. “I haven’t any money, I can’t even
begin to think what this will cost, and....”

“My dearest child, we’ve barely begun. Tomorrow
we look for gloves and pelisses and spencers, negligées and shifts and
stockings and a habit; you do ride, don’t you, my lamb? Good. Today was
only the barest necessaries, to make sure you would not go barefoot while we
really set to work. As for the money, my dear, Douglas is quite well to do;
hadn’t he told you? He told me quite expressly this morning that I was to
rig you up suitably, which I take to mean in a style which will show you off to
best advantage. You
do
have a nice little figure, my love.”

“Do I?” Thea asked wistfully.

“Of course you do, lamb. I warrant that Douglas is
well aware of it, but if you have had some sort of tiff, then it is all the
better that he see you becomingly gowned. He’ll fall in love with you all
over again, I vow.”

If only he would for a first time, Thea thought. Aloud she said,
“It’s very generous of him, ma’am.”

“Oh, generous! You make it sound quite crushingly
dull, lamb. Generosity is a cardinal virtue in a husband, let me tell you.
Well, I am not going to pry into what the matter is between you and Douglas;
you’ll work it out yourselves, I am sure. Now, tell me: did you truly
like the opal satin?”

Thea stopped thinking about money. It felt odd at first;
from the time of her father’s death the subject had never been too far
from her thoughts, even at the convent. During the trip to Spain and the months
that had preceded it, she and Silvy had pinched every penny; on the journey
back to England she and Matlin had lived on the cheapest bread, made what they
could of stale ends and scraps. She assured Lady Ocott now that she truly loved
the opal satin and the striped muslin and the white jaconet they had chosen.

“Well, that’s a mercy, anyhow,” she said
comfortably.

It was past five o’clock when the chariot returned
them to Hill Street. A liveried coachman handed them down to the street, and as
Platt opened the door for them, he began to unload a pile of bandboxes from the
chariot. In the hallway Matlin and Lord Ocott stood in evening dress. Lady
Ocott immediately fluttered to her husband and received a brief kiss as
salutation.

“Nevil, you’re not deserting us for dinner?
Wretch, and going to your stupid club, I don’t doubt.” His wife
pouted.

“For once you read me wrong, my dear. Douglas and I have
been invited to dine at Castlereagh’s tonight. Most advantageous,”
he added with a meaningful glance in Matlin’s direction.

Thea was already staring at her husband. She had seen him
desperately ill; convalescent in clean but threadbare clothes; dirty and
rag-tag as a peasant travelling by her side. Now, dressed in well-fitting black
coat and immaculate knee breeches, his linen white and his cravat perfectly
tied, he was the handsomest, most formidable stranger she had ever seen. She
was trembling; it took a moment to realize that Lord Ocott had spoken to her.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I merely asked you to forgive me for taking your husband
away from you on your first evening with us, my dear. I must say, you look
charming.”

Thea smiled shyly. “You’re kind to say so, sir.
I’m clean again, at least, and out of those horrid black rags. I must
look better than I
did.”
She turned to her husband. “I hope
you enjoy your dinner, Matlin.”

He cleared his throat uneasily. “I didn’t think
you’d mind.”

“Of course not. I’m still a little tired; your
aunt has taken me all over the city today and bought such a lot of things! I
feel horridly extravagant. Aunt Susan, sir? If you’ll forgive me,”
she smiled at the Ocotts, “I think I will go upstairs now.” She
sketched a curtsy and left them; she was a small, dignified figure in Lady
Ocott’s made-over gown.

If he was made uncomfortable by his wife’s exit Matlin
hid it well. “Sir, I believe I’ll wait for you outside. Aunt Susan?”
He kissed her proffered cheek perfunctorily and left.

“Really, Nevil, how could you? Their first night home and
you drag Douglas off to play politics! And when they’ve had a quarrel,
too!”

“How was I to know they’d quarreled? It’s
the boy’s future I’m thinking of: Canning likes him, said to bring
him along. Good God, Sue, there will be other evenings, after all. Little
Dorothy didn’t seem so put out; she’ll have to get used to it to
make a politician’s wife, won’t she?”

Lady Ocott smiled ruefully. “She certainly will. In
the event, I will murder you myself if you let that boy be anywhere but in this
house tomorrow night for dinner. I think—yes, let us make up a party to
see the play afterward. I think it will do Douglas good to see the girl dressed
to the nines; poor thing, I suspect she was quite taken aback to see him in all
his splendor, and she in my hand-me-downs.”

Lord Ocott dutifully promised his nephew’s attendance and
his own for the next evening. Then, protesting that he could not keep his party
waiting further, he left his wife and doorstep and joined Matlin for the short
walk to Castlereagh’s.

o0o

Thea was uncertainly gratified by the theatre plan. The next
morning Lady Ocott’s hairdresser called and spent half an hour snipping
delicately at her curls and as long teaching Ellen, Thea’s new maid, how
to style and pommade them. The first dresses, including the evening dress of
soft ivory sarcenet, arrived and, with them boxes containing dancing shoes,
walking shoes, and sandals. By the time Lady Ocott, Ellen, and Lewis had done
fussing with her hair, settling the folds of the new evening dress in the most
becoming manner, and draping a deep blue shawl across her elbows, Thea had a
strong sense of unreality about the whole affair. The slender young woman with
the stylishly cropped hair was dressed in a simple, startlingly décolleté gown
with delicate blue ’broidery, and had white kid slippers on her feet,
lace mittens on her hands, and a narrow necklet of pearls about her throat; she
had to be someone else.

“My dear life, you look perfect.” Lady Ocott
swept her away from the mirror and down the stairs to join the men.

“My dear. My dears,” Lord Ocott corrected
himself with an expansive gesture which included both of them. “How lovely
you are! And you, Thea, what a change from the tatterdemalion figure you cut a
few days ago, I must say. I warrant you feel the better for it, don’t
you? Hey, Douglas?” He turned to include Matlin in his smiles.
“Sukey, you must have stood the mantua makers on Bond Street on their
ears to achieve such a toilette in two days.”

Lady Ocott smiled upon her husband fondly, took his arm and
urged Thea forward as she did so. Blushing slightly at her host’s
compliments, Thea came face to face with her husband and found that he was
staring at her. “Do you like my dress?” she asked seriously. Matlin
appeared to recall himself at the sound of her voice. His eyes flickered over
her again, a long look from head to toe, and he said unsmilingly, “It’s
very handsome. But surely you wish a shawl or something, child? It must be....”
His eyes lingered for a moment on the traceries of blue thread at Thea’s
neckline. “You must be chilly.” Thea turned a furious crimson.