The Spanish Marriage (5 page)

“They? After me?”

“Mother and the Sisters. Scolding you about your
offer. I
am
sorry. If I had thought it would start such a wrangle, I
would have asked you in private first.”

“Or not asked at all? Poor babe, have they been hard
on you at the House?”

“Thank heaven Silvy’s been feeling too fagged to
come visit you or you’d know the full of it, with her telling you all the
fusty reasons why I have to stay here for the rest of my life. I wish we’d
never come into Spain.”

“Why did you? You owe me that story, don’t you?”
He laid his cards down.

“It’s a long story,” she protested, but
Matlin only waved his hand to indicate the room. “My dear child, I have
nothing but time until your Sister Juan Evangelista declares that I am fit to
travel again. Amuse me.”

“It’s not very amusing.” Haltingly at
first, Thea told him the story of her mother’s marriage and death, her
father’s death, the long slow months of impoverishment and worry, and the
journey she and Silvy had made to Spain. “Silvy was so certain that my
grandfather—the Barón Ibañez de Silva—would take us in. Silvy is a
cousin of his, I’m his granddaughter, and she was so sure that everything
would be wonderful. Well, no wonder, she was homesick, pining for this place.
But the welcome we got when we arrived in Burgos, that took the heart out of
her.

“Silvy had sent ahead to the Barón’s estate when
we got to the Burgos. He lives there with half a dozen of my aunts and uncles,
all in each other’s pockets. So we waited for a day, got no reply, and
Silvy sent another note, the kindest, most conciliatory thing you could
imagine. We were staying at the
fonda
in Burgos and she had given that
as our direction; we were easy enough to find, but we heard nothing. On the
fourth day my uncle Tomas called on us.”

Matlin saw Thea’s hands curl into tight little fists;
her voice was surprisingly bitter and adult. “It seems that I am so
loathsome an object to the entire family, particularly to my grandfather, that
no one could bear to write a letter to me. Since Mama married my father without
his permission, the Barón will have nothing to do with me. At least
Papa’s relatives answered Silvy’s letters, even if they had nothing
of use to say.”

“So your Uncle Tomas called?” Matlin urged.

“We were nearly down to our last
peseta.
My
uncle called, making it clear that he had left my cousin and my grandfather in
the coach.
They
could not be troubled to greet us. Silvy ordered wine
which he would not drink, and was so pathetically glad to see him. That man
told us, in the most brutal terms, just what help we could expect from my Spanish
relatives—none. His most gracious suggestion was that we return to England
immediately, or come here. Then, as an afterthought, just as he was leaving he
threw a purse at Silvy, as if she were an obliging chambermaid to be paid off!
To Silvy, who is worth a dozen of him! I wish I knew a name bad enough to call
him.”

“I know several,” Matlin offered. “No,
child, I can imagine what the Mother and your Señorita de Silva would think of
me then. Go on with your story.”

“I think it had been raining every day that week, and Silvy
had a miserable cold, but now, when she saw my uncle and my grandfather for
what they were, I couldn’t keep her inside. She had a cold, but she ran
out to find Tomas and to throw the purse back in his face. When I caught up
with her she had already found them.
He
was talking to her.”

“Your grandfather?”

Thea nodded. “The
Barón.
Sitting comfortably
inside with the curtain only half-way down while Silvy stood there in the rain,
arguing with him, more bedraggled every moment and shivering with cold and wet.
She was trying to give him the purse when I got to her, and the carriage
started moving away; she was almost thrown down on top of me. The last thing I
saw of my grandfather, almost the only thing, was his arm when he threw that
purse back at us.” Thea’s hands went up in an angry, helpless
gesture. “I used the money to bring us here, to Sepulveda.”

Matlin tried to think of something to say to her. “Are
there no other relatives you could go to in Spain?” he asked at last.

“You don’t understand the way it is here. There
are two sorts of nobles in Spain, Sir Douglas: the Grandees, with money and
power, and the Hidalgos. They have the birth and the arrogance, but precious
few of them have either money or power. My family is Hidalgo, and while my
grandfather has money, the rest of the family are his pensioners. Do you think
any of my relatives would risk my grandfather’s anger over a relation
they’ve never met? Uncle Tomas was right about one thing: we had two
choices—return to England or retire to a convent. Poor Silvy was so ill
by the time I got here that I was afraid....” Seeing it all again, Thea
let her voice drop to a whisper.

“What will happen when you return to England?”

Thea raised her face, very pale, and her blue eyes met Matlin’s,
unblinking. “I don’t know. Someone will take me in. I imagine I
shall probably be made useful in one of my aunt’s nurseries or something.
Perhaps they’ll find me a curate to marry. At least I will be home. Sir
Douglas, the Sisters are everything kind, but I’m stifling here.”

“I can imagine. You appear to be a very, uh, unmonastic
sort of girl.”

“That’s what Mother says. Will you take me with
you? Please?”

“Wait a moment. Your Silvy has a point, after all.
When you are ready to think of marriage it will hardly do you credit to have
traveled across Spain in my company, even if you did so for a good reason. I
was no rakehell, but my reputation in London society was hardly that of a
‘gentil
parfait
knight’.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Thea agreed,
unconcerned. Then, as if following a thought, “Who is Adele?”

The light in Matlin’s eyes died. “I must have
been raving. Did I speak of her? Adele was—a kind of madness for a while.
You will oblige me by forgetting her name, child.”

“You said you weren’t married,” Thea
insisted. “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t take me because this
Adele wouldn’t like it.”

Matlin laughed, an unpleasantly mocking sound. “Adele
Frain has far too much appreciation of her own worth to be jealous of an infant
like you, although you are a redoubtable child. All right then, as you will
have it. I was engaged to her in England.”

“Was?”

“We had a difference of opinion and ended the
arrangement. She and I have very different ideas of what marriage is, and Adele
appeared to have no intention of giving up her flirts after the wedding.”
He laughed unpleasantly. “If you can imagine, I was fool enough to have
planned to play the reformed rake. Well, that was the end of that.”

“So you came to Spain to forget your sorrow?”
Thea asked shrewdly. His remark about redoubtable children rankled, and she
could not forbear her own irony. Matlin heard it; his look was sharp and wholly
unappreciative.

“I came to look after my uncle’s vineyards,”
he said depressively. “Are we going to play cards or will you prattle on
this way forever?”

Smarting under the snub, Thea returned her attention to her
cards. In a few minutes, contrite, Matlin tried to tease her into good humor
again, but she was not to be won. Even the subject of her return to England
brought no return of her earlier, appealingly confiding manner, and when she
left the cottage to go for Compline prayers it was with a cool goodnight. He
was not sure whether to be amused or sorry. He liked the girl and regretted
that he had dampened her enthusiasm, but sometimes she had a damnably adult way
of asking questions, of deflating him with a look.

That night, he slept fitfully, waking to remember the story
she had told him, dwelling on the image of the girl and her duenna making their
way alone from England to Spain, of the older woman pleading the girl’s
case. That there was pleading to do, that that girl whom any family should be proud
to own had been cast off in England and Spain both, was depressing in itself.
He thought of Thea’s face, lively with anger when she spoke of her
grandfather: “I despise him.” And it occurred to him that, in a few
years and with the proper clothes and that funny, confiding mixture of dignity
and innocence, she would be the toast of St. James’s. To waste that in a
convent....

When he slept again Matlin dreamt confusingly of Adele
Frain, Thea Cannowen, and faceless, laughing women who danced relentlessly in
the rain.

o0o

“Señor Mathleen, you look better by the day.”
Mother Beatriz sat gingerly on the chair at his bedside and took her rosary in
hand, while running one finger over the smooth beads. “Our Sister Juan
says a week should see you well enough to leave us.”

“And I will, I promise. I don’t wish to repay
your kindness by endangering you and the others. I wish there were some way I
could
repay you. As for that child....”

“You have given up the mad idea of taking her with
you? That makes me easier in my mind, I must say. It is no journey for a babe
like her.” The nun drew her hand across her face as if to hide a smile. “Although
I doubt there is a child in the world more ready to try than Dorotea.”

“What will become of her, if she stays?”

Mother Beatriz shrugged. “If God is good, in time she
will find a vocation. If not? I wish I knew.”

“She’s very young to become....” he
paused, fearful of offending. “Mother, you think she could make the
journey?”

“I thought you had given up this idea, Señor? Even
beyond that, what would happen if you and she survived the trip and made your
way to England? Would her family take her in? Señorita de Silva thinks not, and
she should know. The child must be protected.”

“Her family might not take her in, but I’d lay
odds that mine would.”

“Yours?”

“Yes! I can’t think why I didn’t think of
this earlier. Mother, I’ve an aunt at home who has pined for a daughter
for years. She would love to take Dorothea under her wing, to raise her, to
bring her into society and to marry her off appropriately when the day comes. I
would like to see the girl have her chance at it, ma’am.”

“Do you think someone would marry her, sir, if it were
known that she had spent however-many-weeks alone with you on the journey from
England?” Mother Beatriz asked shrewdly. “It is kind;
Diós,
it
is more than kind, what you offer, but I think it would not work.”

“And if we married, Mother?” As soon as he said
the words Matlin wondered what had possessed him. Marry that baby? After he had
sworn never to consider marriage? “In name only, of course,” he
heard himself assuring the Superior. “The girl is so young, but if we
were married in form, when we reached England the marriage could be annulled,
the proprieties would have been attended to, and my own family would take her
in happily. I am much interested in her future; after all she did save my life.”

“You think because I have lived in a convent most of
my life I do not understand that for Dorotea our life might be wrong? I think
perhaps it is so. But this idea is still mad. I wonder if it is mad enough to
work. If Clara would agree—Señorita de Silva, her duenna—and the
girl herself, of course.”

As if she had heard her name, Thea’s laughter rang up from
the yard at the back of the cottage under Matlin’s window. Wordlessly he
rose from his bed and went to stare out the window. At a distance of some
twenty feet, Thea was playing with the convent cat and her kittens. As Matlin watched,
two of the kittens began to climb their way straight up the skirt of her habit,
and she bent quickly to pick up another kitten and to deposit it in the cuff of
her sleeve. A fourth kitten appeared, perched precariously on her shoulder;
half under the veil, it played with a wisp of Thea’s hair.

“How old
is
she,” Matlin asked. “Sometimes
she could be ten years old; other times I would swear she was thirty.”

“I suppose her to be thirteen, fourteen years of age.
Perhaps less, perhaps more.”

“Young enough so that she won’t conceive of any
nonsense about me, in any case,” Matlin concluded naively. Mother Beatriz
regarded him with faint amusement. “Will you speak to Señorita de Silva
at least? Tell her what I’m offering?”

The Superior was silent for a few moments. “You are serious?
Then I think you and Clara must speak with each other. You are well enough now
so I think I will bring you to her; she is not well. The child does not
know,” she added quickly. “This is all much against our custom,
Señor, but custom must take a back seat to necessity sometimes. Shall I tell
her you will come?”

Matlin looked out the window again. “Do, please,
Mother.”

o0o

“I do not like it,” Silvy protested again. “Who
is
this man, after all? What sort of future does he promise my Dorotea,
away from me?”

“What sort of future do we promise her here? In
honesty, Clara?” The Superior was concerned for her friend: Clara de
Silva’s skin had taken on a gray pallor of late, she grew thinner and
more insubstantial by the day. “He’s a good man, Clara, I would
swear to that, and he has a softness for your Dorotea. He would look to her
happiness. What more can any man offer her? At least you could speak to him.”

Silvy sighed deeply. She was dying and had suspected so for
some time. Her heart was bad, her strength failing, and hope had been taken clean
out of her by the treatment they had met with from Tomas and the Barón Ibañez-de
Silva. The Superior was right; what other choice did she have but to listen to
the man? Dorotea was half in love with him already, she thought. What happiness
would this marriage of convenience bring to her? Still, it was a chance. “I
will speak with him.”

That evening, when Thea had been sent with the convent’s
four novices on an errand in the village, Matlin, dressed in clean, ill-fitted
garments borrowed from Manuel’s family, was introduced to Doña Clara de
Silva in the guest house of the convent. The woman he found seated severely
upright in a chair by the window wore a black gown as Thea did, but her long,
horsey face was unsoftened by veil and wimple. Her voice, when she greeted him,
was high-pitched and flat, faintly strained and threaded with a rale. She was
ill indeed, he thought.