The Spanish Marriage (20 page)

“No. That is, I thought I would have breakfast with
Nigel and Douglas; only Nigel had already left the house, and Douglas....”
Lady Ocott stopped, unsure of how to continue.

“Gone off to Whitehall? Welladay, we shall do very
well without him, I am sure.” Thea tossed envelopes on the counterpane
with a savage gesture. “What did you plan for today, Aunt Sue? More
shopping? I hope you will hold me excused, but I would like some fresh air
today, perhaps a drive or a picnic if one can be got up on such short notice.
Do you like the idea?”

Feeling that this mummery had gone on long enough, Lady
Ocott shook her head. “Dorothea, stop this nonsense at once. Get a hold
on yourself.”

Between her teeth Thea muttered, “I
have
a hold
on myself. I hate to think what I should do if I did not. I assure you,
ma’am, it’s much better this way. Why, I feel perfectly splendid
this morning; don’t you? Such a fine, sunny day.” Her voice wavered
on the last words, but her smile was indomitable.

Lady Ocott felt rather ill and sat heavily on the edge of the
bed. “Thea, dear child.” Reaching to take one of the younger
woman’s hands in her own, Lady Ocott started on a confused but heartfelt
assurance that everything would be all right, that all would be well with time,
with time. “You’ll see, dearest lamb, it will all come right, I
know it.”

Thea smiled brightly. “It’s more than
I
know, ma’am. I am afraid you will have to give up this plan of yours for
Matlin and me. I’m afraid we are not going to live happily ever after.
What a drab ambition, after all! But look!” She held a note aloft in a
dreadful coquettish imitation of a tonnish belle. “Bess Chase has
persuaded my—Mr. Joaquín to take her to Ranelagh this evening, and she
wants me to chaperon them. I can imagine Bess persuading Mr. Joaquín to
persuade her.... I think I shall go.”

“No, Thea, for heaven’s sake.”

Thea’s look was suddenly blackly unforgiving. “I
am tired of being told what to do, and with whom, ma’am. I know better
than to compromise myself, if that is what you’re afraid of; I am not
going to ruin my husband’s precious career! All I want is to be able to
enjoy my friends, which seems little enough to ask. I am an adult, whatever
he
thinks; I was old enough to save his life
twice,
I made the crossing
on that horrid boat, I left Silvy behind....” After a moment of silence
Thea tried unsuccessfully to smile again. “Well, I am certainly old
enough, after all that, to go to a party with Bess Chase and her brother. If
you would like to join us, ma’am, I am certain Mr. Joaquín would be
delighted. Now, if you will excuse me?” She nodded toward her bath.

Lady Ocott shook her head. “Dear lamb, don’t
take it all so hard, I beg you. See how miserable you make me?” In truth,
there were tears in her eyes; they were caught by the bright sunlight which
streamed through filmy draperies.

Thea softened a little. “I don’t wish you to be
unhappy, Aunt Sue; don’t
you
take it all so much to heart, I beg. Douglas
and I—well, that’s of no account. I think nothing of it, truly.
Even a marriage of convenience must be a little inconvenient at times, I
suppose. Now, I must take my bath if I am to be ready to drive out with Lady
Duncannon this afternoon. Go on, there’s nothing in the world wrong with
me.”

Lady Ocott left, frustrated and miserable. “What good
does it do to rise at dawn, practically, if these idiotic children refuse to be
helped?” she muttered wrathfully to an underfootman polishing brass in
the hallway. The man made no answer; she passed to her own chamber unsatisfied.

o0o

The drive with which Matlin had hoped to clear his head and
gain some thinking time had only made matters worse. His head pounded
unrelentingly; his stomach was delicately settled at best, and none of his
thoughts seemed worth thinking. He had an appointment with Canning’s
undersecretary, George Hammond, that afternoon, and had made no plans to fill
time until then. Why should he have had to do so? Now Thea’s words and
his uncle’s and Aunt Susan’s rang in his ears; his stomach churned,
and he wanted distraction.

Briefly he considered boxing at Cribb’s and shooting
at Manton’s gallery, tailors, and the horse auctions at Tattersall’s.
There was nothing he wanted to do or, rather, what he wanted to do he could
not. So he found himself by default at White’s Club, where the doorman
admitted him with a sympathetic look and a waiter brought him a mild brandy-and-water
and the morning’s
Gazette.
Other members of the club were warned
off by Matlin’s absentminded grimace, and he spent a comparatively
restful few hours reading the foreign news and waiting for the pitching in his stomach
to abate. When he left White’s for the Foreign Office he was feeling much
better and had managed to ignore entirely the issue of his marriage and his
wife. With any luck, he thought grimly, Hammond would have enough work for him
to distract him from any thoughts of Dorothea at all.

There was indeed work for him to do: a report to be
translated and annotated, which Hammond pressed into his hands at once.

“You’ve passed through this territory, Sir
Douglas. You should be able to tell me how much of this dispatch is flummery
and how much is solid information. I shall want you to speak with Mr. Canning
later today, if that is convenient. You hadn’t any engagements for this
evening, had you?”

“None.” Matlin’s smile was perfunctory.

“Good. Well then?” Hammond turned away absently.
Matlin found a desk and chair and set about his task.

Thea’s face kept superimposing itself upon the page.
The thoughts he had suppressed all day began to haunt him, and the work before
him went slowly, then more slowly, until at last he threw his pen across the
room in frustration and muttered an oath.

After all, what did it matter what the girl thought or did not
think about him or Adele Frain or anything else?
He
had fulfilled his
promises to her and the Sisters, hadn’t he? He had brought her back to
London, seen that she was brought out, that she was meeting people, had the
chances that a girl of her age deserved. He had offered her her freedom in good
faith and thought that she would find a boy closer to her own age and of her
own choosing. So, why should he care now what she thought of him? What she
felt, after last night, was no longer in doubt, and Matlin found the honesty to
admit that he cared very much. Beyond his horrified guilt and the awkwardness
of their situation, the weight of obligation he had felt to her for saving his
life, the anger which blossomed in him when he saw her surrounded by other men,
particularly that damned Spaniard, Joaquín, there was something else. The
images of Thea refused to be dismissed.

An elderly clerk shuffled into the room breathing noisily.

“What the devil is it?” Matlin snapped. The
answer came to him startlingly. He loved her. He was in love with his wife,
fourteen years old or not, faithful or not. It was so amazing a thought that
for a few minutes he could do nothing but sit, gazing at the far wall.

When he came to himself the clerk had left, daunted. As he
stared down at the papers before him, Matlin wondered: had matters gone too far
to be made up?

He sped through the rest of the report; he went as quickly as
he could; his annotations were terse, and his translations more functional than
literal. When he had finished he brought the report straight to Canning.

“Well, ye made quick work of it, Douglas.” The
Foreign Secretary looked disposed to be chatty.

“Sir, I wonder....”

Canning raised an eyebrow. “Yes? You wonder what?”

“Hammond said you wished to speak with me, but I wonder
if I might be spared tonight. I just recalled something. My wife....”

Canning smiled shrewdly. “Met her last week, Douglas.
A very charming girl and a thought underappreciated, I would say. Never seems
to have your escort.”

“I mean to right that, sir. That is, if you don’t
need me.”

“The Foreign Office has survived this long without
you; I imagine that one evening won’t make the end of the world.”
Canning flipped through the papers Matlin had handed him and began to read.
Matlin found himself stuttering thanks like a schoolboy as he left the room and
started for Hill Street.

“Lady Matlin has gone to Ranelagh with Miss Chase and Mr.
Chase,” Platt informed him. Some curious instinct had prompted the butler
to refrain from adding Mr. Joaquín’s name to the list. “Lady Ocott
is gone with Mrs. Caddish to the play, sir, and my lord is....”

“I don’t really need to know where my uncle is,
Platt. I shall be joining my wife at Ranelagh as soon as I have changed. Will
you have my phaeton brought round in half an hour?” Eagerly, surrendering
himself to a new-found sense of adolescent joy, Matlin took the hall stairs two
at a time and rang impatiently for his valet.

Within an hour he was walking over the Ranelagh grounds,
pushing his way through the press and acknowledging greetings from friends with
a barely civil brevity. A group of women, demi-reps from the look of them,
drifted past him in a cloud of transparent muslin and overpoweringly musky
scent. Matlin had a twinge when he thought of what he had said to Thea about
her own clothes.

“I’ve a deal to apologize for, sweetheart,”
he murmured to himself. “Only let me find you and begin.” Nowhere
in the crowd did he see Thea’s face. At last he sighted, not Thea, but
Tony Chase.

“Chase, by God I’m glad to see you.”

Tony looked at Matlin dubiously. “Good evening, sir,”
he began cautiously. “Your wife did not say you would be here this
evening.”

“My wife did not know,” Matlin said cheerfully,
quite in charity with the younger man. “Where is she now? I came on
purpose to join her.”

Chase temporized awkwardly. “She—my sister was
with her by the decorative fountain....”

“Fine.” Matlin made to take Chase’s arm. “We’ll
join them together.”

“Sir Douglas, perhaps I can bring her to you? That is....”
Chase looked very uncomfortable. “You and Lady Matlin had a quarrel, did
you not? I don’t wish to intrude, but I could not help noticing that Lady
Matlin....”

Matlin nodded, chagrinned. Did everyone know the state of
his marriage except himself?” I came to apologize to her. Look, Chase, if
you will bring Thea out to me, I will be your debtor for life. I’ll wait
here.” He indicated the lamp-post by which they stood.

“Very well, sir. I’ll meet you here in five
minutes.” Still looking somewhat uncomfortable and bewildered, Tony Chase
disappeared into the crowd. Matlin waited with growing impatience, an
affectionate irritation. “Thea, sweet idiot, will you hurry up?” It
seemed to him now that he had realized he loved her he must tell her at once,
make her forgive him, make her love him. “Damnation, how long does it
take to fetch someone across the park?”

“Douglas?”

His heart stopped, then started again. The feminine voice
was not Thea’s. The delicate hand deliberately poised on his arm was
Adele Towles’s.

“At least say good evening, my dear.” Her smile
was intensely intimate.

“Good evening, Lady Towles. I hope I see you well?”
He peered over her shoulder and hoped for a glimpse of his wife.

“Lady Towles?
Come now, Douglas, we were never
so formal before. Won’t you take me somewhere where we can talk?”

Good God.
“I am sorry, ma’am, but I am
waiting for someone.”

“Just someone, Douglas?” She ran one finger up
his sleeve. “You don’t mean to say you can’t spare
me
a
little time in favor of just
someone?”
When he looked at her
unencouragingly, she went on. Her scent was very potent, and she pressed
herself against his side in an outrageous manner. “Douglas, we were very
close once. You wanted me, didn’t you?”

There was enough pleading in her voice so that he was distracted.
He made himself answer her question, although his attention was on the faces in
the crowd before him. “It was a long time ago, Adele.”

“Not so long. I never forgot you, Douglas, you know
that. I was devastated when I thought you had died.”

“I’m gratified, Adele. Now you are a married
woman....” Why in Hell would she not go away? The last thing he wanted
was for Thea to find him speaking with Adele Towles, after the things she had
said the night before.

“Does that bother you, that I married Charlie Towles?
Douglas, darling, you mustn’t let that trouble you in the least. You know
what Taffy is: the dearest creature in the world, but so slow, so amiable. All
he wanted was a pretty face and a complaisant body, and he got both, but
Douglas my darling, you don’t think he ever had my heart, do you?
You
had
that, my dear, even when I thought you were dead....”

“Not when I was alive, if you recall.... We decided we
did not suit then, Adele, and I have no reason to believe we were wrong. You
have your husband. I have my wife.”

For the first time Adele Towles showed signs of annoyance. “That
infant? I grant you, Douglas, she’s a pretty little baby, but hardly a
woman. You need a woman, Douglas.”

He was aware, more with annoyance than with any other feeling,
of the pressure of her breasts against his arm, her hip against his own. In the
fading light her eyes shone avidly, and her mouth, half open, looked hungry. He
stared at her for a moment with revulsion. “I need my wife, madam,”
he said at last. “I’m flattered by your offer—it was an
offer, I collect? I think I have gone a little past that sort of offer and had
when we broke our engagement.” He peered over her shoulder again.

“What are you looking for?” she cried. Then,
before he could tell in which direction she had looked, she turned back to him.
“Is
that
who you’re waiting for? Weil, then, Douglas, if you
don’t want me, the least you can do is bid me farewell. Properly.”
And she reached up and drew him down to meet her kiss.