The Spanish Marriage (23 page)

“Where’s the message? By God, the man has the
soul of a fiend, making me wait this way. What does he think to gain by it?”

Chase was unable to answer him. After a while Matlin suggested
they would both feel better for a wash and a change of linen, and offered to
send his man to Chase with anything he might require. They met an hour later in
the library, where coffee and bread was waiting for them. While they were
breakfasting Joaquín’s second note came.

“Well?” Chase waited uncertainly, tempted to
read over his host’s shoulder.

“It’s an address in Chiswick.” Matlin’s
voice was tired. “He says nothing of my wife.”

“She is surely all right, sir. I mean, he would not
harm her. Would he?”

“Would you have expected him to abduct her? The man seems
a trifle unconventional, who knows what he balks at.” Matlin drained his
cup and set it down. “Well, shall we go effect a rescue? Chase?”

“Sir?” Tony was collecting his great coat and
hat from the chair where he had discarded them the night before.

“If the need arises, may I count on you to second me?”

Tony Chase gulped. Then he straightened his shoulders and
smiled at Matlin. “I would be honored, Sir Douglas, if the need arises.”

“Well.” Matlin waved the younger man out the
door before him and followed, calling loudly for Platt and his phaeton.

The drive to Chiswick was accomplished in near silence. Matlin
had left his groom behind, and it was Chase who climbed down from the carriage
to inquire the way. The house they wanted was set a little apart from its
fellows and surrounded by a small, tidy lawn. It looked deserted, but when
Matlin and Chase climbed down from the phaeton and went to knock at the door,
it was opened at once by a hatchet-faced woman in black. Her dark hair was
parted severely in the center, and her expression was sullen.

“Yes?”

Matlin restrained an urge to yell, to demand. “I am
looking for a Señor Ibañez-Blanca and for my wife.”

“Come in.” She would have closed the door in
Tony Chase’s face, but Matlin’s arm went out, and he held the door.

“My friend comes with me, with your permission, of
course.”

“If you wish.” Her accent was thick. She stood
away from the door to let the men enter, then shepherded them down a narrow
hallway to a small parlor. The drapes and upholstery were of a dark dusty color
between red and brown; the two windows were closed and curtained, and the room
was dim and musty. The only sign of recent human tenancy was a bible, a wicker
workbasket, and a brace of half-guttered work candles.

“You will wait,” the woman instructed.

Left alone, Matlin and Chase looked around the dingy room
again, looked at each other, at the floor, at each other once more. Matlin’s
hands were balled into tight fists at his sides; Chase’s were jammed into
his trouser pockets.

“Damned gothick, all of it,” Matlin muttered.
Still, it was impossible to imagine a rape in such surroundings and with such a
chaperon; he relaxed a little.

There were footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs. “Sir
Douglas?” Joaquín stood in the doorway smiling cordially at his guest.
When Tony Chase moved into his sight his smile slipped a little. “Mr.
Chase? Your sister....”

Tony stepped forward angrily. “Leave my sister out of
it, you....” He brought his hands out of his pockets, and it was only
Matlin’s hand on his shoulder that kept him from striking a blow.

“Gently, Chase. Your sister is safe at home. My wife,
however, is still a prisoner.” Matlin released Chase’s shoulder
with a slight shake and motioned him to one side. “Where is she?”

Joaquín smiled again. “My cousin is perfectly safe,
Sir Douglas. I apologize to you for this inconvenience, but this was the only
way I could be assured of an entree to the Foreign Office.”

Matlin and Chase stared at the other man, utterly
astonished. After a moment Matlin cleared his throat. “Would it not have
been simpler to have come directly to me? Or to Whitehall?”

Now Joaquín looked astonished. “You think that someone
there would have listened to me? A foreigner, a Catholic? I am aware of what
has been happening in this country, Señor Matlin, the persecution of those of
my faith. My messages are too important to be swept under the rug by some underling
at your Foreign Office. Besides that, I thought my cousin would help me speak
to you. What could be more simple? Only she could not accomplish this easy thing....”
The scorn in his voice was grating. “By the time, last evening, I
realized she had failed again, there was no time to do the diplomatic
thing....”

“So you abducted my wife.” The only sign was a
tightening in Matlin’s jaw before he stepped forward and hit Joaquín a
square blow that knocked him to the ground.
“Where is my wife ?
When
I have her safe and away from here I will listen to whatever stories you have
to tell. Then I will decide whether to call you out or not.”

Joaquín made a job of rising from the floor; he was striving
for dignity and fingering his jaw at the same time. “You may certainly
call me out, Sir Douglas, if you feel that honor demands it, but not, I beg,
until I have spoken with your superiors at Whitehall. Believe me, my messages
are too vital.”

“I’ll judge that, after you bring my wife to me.”

“Of course,” Joaquín assured him icily. Striding
to the door he called loudly for Señora Lorca. The hatchet-faced woman
reappeared, and they had a brief interchange in Spanish. Just before Joaquín
and the woman left the room Matlin added a comment of his own, also in Spanish.

“What did you say to her?” Tony Chase murmured
to him.

“Only that I would be obliged if she would hurry. I
wanted to let them know I understand Spanish, so there would be no attempts at
double dealing. Although I doubt there will be. The man is mad, but he seems to
be mad in his own singular fashion. It seems Thea is somewhere in the house.”
Matlin cast another glance about the drab, respectable room.

Steps sounded outside the room, and in a moment Thea stood
in the doorway, with Joaquín and the Señora behind her.

“Oh, Douglas!” She was still clad in her evening
dress from the night before; crumpled and dirty, she was still an incongruous
bright spot in the dim room. She darted to Matlin’s side and buried her
face in his shoulder.

For a moment he just held her, too grateful to have her in his
arms to think of anything else.

Then, “You see? My cousin will tell you she met with
no ill treatment at my hands.” Joaquín still fingered his jaw, which was
rapidly swelling. A little vengefully he added, “No young women will kiss
me
in gardens for some time, I am afraid.”

Thea stiffened in her husband’s arms, looked up, and
saw her cousin. “You hit him?” It was plain she was remembering the
last sight she had had of Matlin, locked in Lady Towles’ embrace. She
stepped away, suddenly cool. “I might have expected you’d have hit
him.”

All the warmth in the room had left him when Thea pulled out
of his arms. Where a moment before there had been a pretty, trembling girl
there was now a cool, self-possessed woman.

“Thea,” Matlin began.

“I don’t wish to speak with you. I should like
to go home. I doubt that you have anything to say to me that would explain your
striking my cousin, humiliating me....”

“Lady Matlin!” Tony Chase interjected.

“Kissing that abominable, vulgar woman! Accusing me of
flirting, and then going on to meet with your....”

“LADY MATLIN!”

Thea was startled into silence by Chase’s shout. The
young man whose admiration she took for granted was frowning at her and shaking
his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“O, don’t I? You saw, Tony; he was....”

“I think it would be best if I take you home. Sir,
with your permission?” Chase turned diffidently to Matlin.

Matlin, white faced, managed a tight smile. “I am
grateful to you, Chase. If I—er—have need of you, I will send. I
will do nothing unadvised.” He reached tentatively toward Thea, then
pulled his hand back again. “See that she gets home safely?”

“I will, sir.” Without ceremony Tony Chase
tugged on Thea’s arm and pulled her from the room. “Come along.”

Furious, Thea waited until they were in Matlin’s
phaeton before she started in. “All I want to know is whose side you are
on, Tony Chase. You saw him at Ranelagh. Then he made me wait all night with my
horrid cousin and that Gorgon of a woman all night. He must hate me to use me
this way, Tony. I wish I were dead. He....”

Chase pulled the reins so savagely that the carriage came to
an abrupt halt. “You know nothing about it at all. You’re
hysterical, that is all. If you want, I will tell you what did happen at
Ranelagh last night, if you promise to be quiet.”

Thea promised.

Chase urged the horses forward again and told Thea Matlin’s
story. “When Lady Towles saw you across the crowd she decided it was time
to throw a branch into the spokes. She kissed
him,
and he looked up and
saw you and....” Looking sideways, Chase saw Thea slump into her seat, a tight
distracted expression on her face. “I never saw anyone so distressed as
he was last night when we realized that your cousin—
is
he your
cousin, really?—had vanished with you. If your husband had known where to
find you, we would have come at once; believe me. I thought he was going to
kill that blackguard Joaquín on sight. Thank God he had a little more sense
than that. I only hope....”

Thea clutched Chase’s sleeve. “You only hope
what? What did he mean by ‘doing nothing’ and having need of you
and all that?”

Gauging that Thea could withstand the salutary shock of a little
anxiety, he told her quite baldly. “It is a matter of honor. Sir Douglas
may call your cousin out, or,” he added reflectively, “Joaquín may
call him out for that nice left he struck him.”

“Oh my God.” Thea had dozed uneasily all night,
waking unrested and full of misery and worry. This, on top of the shocks of the
last day, was too much for her. She leaned back in her seat again and began to
cry silently, shaking and gasping while tears ran down her face. Chase endured
this as long as he could, but finally he told her in such tones as he would
have used to his sister not to make such a cake of herself.

Thea pulled herself together sternly. “I have
withstood French dragoons and Spanish peasants; I have been abducted; I have
spent the most excruciating week of my life being ill on a ship; and I have
waited in the night to hear if Bonapartist spies had killed my husband. I
suppose I should not be undone by a little thing like a duel at this late date.”

Chase appeared to miss the sarcasm in her voice. “I
suppose so,” he agreed.

Thea looked at him consideringly. “You’ve
changed, Tony,” she said.

“I suppose I have.” They said nothing more until
they reached Hill Street.

Lady Ocott and Bess Chase were there waiting for them, and
Thea was immediately borne off in a flurry of female embraces and cluckings. As
they started to climb the stairs Thea stopped, her aunt on one side, her friend
on the other, and called back to Chase.

“Tony? You’ll go back to him, won’t you?
In case he needs you?” There was no mistaking the anxiety in her voice.

For the first time since they had left Joaquín’s house
together Chase smiled. “I will. Don’t fear, I won’t let
anything happen to him.” He drew himself up and bowed to her. “Your
obedient servant, Lady Matlin. I mean that.”

Thea smiled back. “It’s more than I deserve, I
think. Thank you, Tony.” She turned and let the other women take her up
the stairs.

o0o

After he had watched Tony Chase hand his wife into the phaeton
and depart for Hill Street, Matlin turned weightily toward Joaquín.

“I suppose that now you will tell me why I should not
kill you or at least surrender you to the authorities as a spy? You Spanish are
still Bonaparte’s allies.”

Joaquín spat. “Bonaparte! You do not know. I told you,
my message is more important than my cousin’s comfort or yours or my own.
Do you know what is happening in Spain, Señor?”

“I have a good idea. British intelligence is not
wholly inefficient. If you’re going to tell me Bonaparte has offered the
crown of Spain to his brother....”

“I am going to tell you that Spain will come to
Britain begging for her help. It is my mission to make sure that whoever comes,
they will have a welcome, people who will be sympathetic.”

“You can’t plead the Spanish cause yourself?”

“I am not a representative of the government, Señor. I
had word only last night that there are provisional governments forming. My
people will not sit still under Bonaparte, I promise you. It is better for all
that our government treat with yours, not with one lone man.” His face
darkened. “Can you have any idea what my country is like now, Señor?”

“I have a good idea,” Matlin protested. “My
wife and I left your country not five weeks ago.”

“It was bad enough then, but since the uprising the
French have turned vengeful. If you thought my country was under the thumb of
the French before, Sir Douglas, you should see Spain now. Murat made a
proclamation that made criminals out of old women carrying scissors, for God’s
sake. Hundreds have been shot down, Señor....”

“Spare me your rhetoric, Señor Ibañez.” Matlin
said dryly. “My government is not unsympathetic, you know. Nor are we
totally out of touch.”

“You will take me to see the minister?”

“Good God, man, of course I will, but why the Devil
had you to go creeping about my wife in that fashion—let alone abducting
her? If you had come straight to me and laid the whole before me....”

“Would I have got in your door? Your secretary or your
man of business would have fobbed me off.”

“This is not Spain, Señor. Our retainers and relatives
do not hedge us off from honest petitioners.”