The Spanish Marriage (6 page)

Silvy, for her part, looked up at a tall man, dark hair brushed
away from the still-livid scar on his forehead, and thought, Poor Dorotea! No
wonder!

“Sir Douglas,” she began at last. “You
must understand that Dorotea is a daughter to me; I am not merely an
interfering woman when I tell you I fret for her safety on your journey and
afterward. Her mother was my cousin and my dearest friend. You cannot expect
that I will be delighted by the notion of Dorotea travelling in helter-skelter
fashion with one of whom, I beg your pardon but, I know nothing.”

Matlin smiled, trying his best to put her at ease. “I
do
understand, ma’am. In the ordinary way—but it’s not the
ordinary way, is it?” He pulled a stool close to her and took one of
Silvy’s cold hands in his own. “I will tell you anything you wish
to know.”

A quarter of an hour passed before Silvy raised her free
hand—the other was still in Matlin’s gentle grasp—and
protested that she knew him well enough. “Your honesty is overwhelming,
Sir Douglas,” she said with a trace of humor, the first he had heard from
her.

“The important thing is the girl, Señorita. She has
been raised to expect that her future would be no different from that of any
English girl: a season, presentation at Court, a good marriage. I will
undertake to assure you that she will have all those things, the best chance a
young lady can have to establish herself, when the time comes, and I promise
you I will do everything possible to ensure that she is never hurt through my
offices....”

“I believe you! I am not a selfish woman, and I know
my time is coming quickly. If my
niña
wishes to go with you, I will not
protest. I ask only,” her voice broke, then steadied, “only that
you be kind to her, Señor. These last months there has been little happiness
for Dorotea, she has mostly made her own.” She has a
tendre
for
you which makes her terribly vulnerable, Silvy thought, but she did not say it
aloud.

“Then shall we put it to Dorothea herself?”
Matlin suggested. His eyes met Silvy’s, and they shared a long look of understanding.

“Yes. I doubt we need wonder what her answer will be.”

“Marry him.” Dorothea turned to stare at Matlin.
“You want to marry me?”

Taken aback, Matlin assured her that his offer was quite
genuine. “Your Señorita de Silva and I have discussed it, Miss Cannowen,
and it seems the only way to return you to England with your reputation intact.
I hope you would not very much dislike it.”

“Dislike it?” Thea heard the enthusiasm in her
voice and some instinct for caution made her temper the tone of her next words.
“I am honored, of course, Sir Douglas....”

“You had as well call me Matlin, child. You will see
when we are back in London that nearly everyone does.”

“Yes, Matlin, but do you really wish to marry
me?” she asked dubiously. “There is that woman in England....”

“I knew I would regret having told you that story. I
beg you will not let any consideration of Adele Frain constrain you. Miss
Cannowen.” His tone was formal, but he smiled. “My aunt will take
you in hand when we reach England; you will like her, I warrant, and she will
enjoy having you to dress and to cosset.... I hope you shall not mind being a doll
for her! And your family....”

“I haven’t any family. Except for Silvy, of
course,” Thea added conscientiously. “If I were a married woman
they would not matter a whit, would they?” She seemed, for a moment, to
be entertaining some private, delicious fantasy. Just as quickly her expression
changed to one of concern and she dropped down at Silvy’s side. “I’d
be leaving you, Silvy. Do you really want to stay
here?”

“Dorotea, you are hardly courteous to our hosts,”
Silvy reproved gently. “Now, you are not to concern yourself with me,
niña.
I am where I wish to be. Besides, think of the nuisance I would be on such
a journey. It won’t be an easy one,
hija,
you understand? You will
not be travelling in comfort as we did when we arrived here.”

Thea, recalling the journey from Burgos made in a crowded
mule coach with a dozen other people, squeaked, “Comfort!”

Matlin was agreeing. “What your duenna says is true,
infant. The number of French troops is increasing daily, from what Manuel tells
me, and since the abdication the countryside is unsettled. My Spanish is of the
rough and ready sort, and we will have to travel overland to Portugal, probably
on foot most of the way.”

“In that case, it’s as well I shall be with you.
My
Spanish is excellent.” Thea was not displeased by the gentle,
conspiratorial laughter of Silvy, Matlin and the Mother Superior. They were all
determined to be amused by her? Very well, let them. She was going to return to
England. “When do we leave? When are we to be married? Mother,” she
turned anxiously to the Superior. “Must I be married in this?” She
gathered the folds of her habit in one hand with obvious distaste, and the
others laughed again.

“I think,
hija,
that we will find you something
else to marry in, and for your journey as well. Now, Señor Mathleen, you look
fatigued; it is time you returned to your bed, if you wish to be healthy enough
to start on your journey soon. We will speak more of plans tomorrow, when Sister
Juan can tell us how long until you are fit to travel.”

Dismissed, Thea and Matlin went their separate ways. Thea
passed Sister Ana, ignored the questions in her friendly, curious eyes, and
came at last to the orchard where she could pace luxuriously. From the corner
of her eye she caught a glimpse of shaking brush over the culvert where, twelve
days before, she had found Matlin.

England.... Home and a chance for freedom.... Then she
thought, an odd sort of freedom, as a married lady, but then, she would be
married to Matlin. Her heart beat more quickly at the thought, and at the thought
of vaguely understood secrets, hints overheard since her girlhood, hints about
marriage and men. All the nights when she had sat staring down at his pale,
drawn, tired, impossibly beautiful face, she had berated herself for being an
idiot with a foolish schoolgirl
tendre.
When Matlin’s fever had
broken and he was able to talk freely again, Thea had made herself flippant and
teasing, trying to hide an embarrassing urge to subside into worshipful
silence. He was handsome; he was the very figure of romance; it was no wonder.
But she had never thought to have her feelings returned, if indeed they were returned.

How did he feel about her? To marry her, the impatient
nurse, the teasing schoolroom chit. How did he see her; she wondered now. Like
a schoolgirl? Even Matlin called her child, as everyone else in the convent
did:
niña, hija,
child, daughter. She kicked a clod of dirt and watched
it powder into dust. “He can’t be in love with me,” she said
aloud, “but he might be someday.”

That tiny shred of hope was comforting, exhilarating. He
might marry her out of kindness now, but perhaps he would come to love her in
time. Once they were married there would be all the time in the world. “I’ll
make him,” she said.

For an hour, until the bells rang for None, she paced
unseeingly, thinking of her marriage. When she turned back to the convent her
mind was more at ease, but the hem of her robe was impossibly muddied and her
nose was burnt quite scarlet.

o0o

“You may travel at the end of the week,” Sister
Juan Evangelista pronounced. To Matlin’s exquisite relief, she had not
read him a lecture on taking care of Dorothea Cannowen; she had been
refreshingly matter of fact as she took his pulse and examined his wound.
“You must be careful not to overexert yourself, Señor. The infection is
cleared now, but you sustained a bad blow to your head when you were injured.”

“Shot.” Matlin grimaced. “I still have
headaches from the damned thing—pardon, Sister. Anyway, we could perhaps
leave after Mass on Sunday.”

“I think your health will permit it, yes. Señor, you
are really taking Señorita Cannowen?”

He had relaxed too soon, Matlin thought grimly, and agreed
that yes, he was taking Thea with him. “I’ve given my word.”

To be honest, since the moment he had done so that morning
he had been plagued by moments of lucid dismay so powerful he was tempted to
skulk off in the night and beg the question of the marriage and the journey
altogether. Only the memory of Thea’s face, pleading eyes that belied her
determinedly disciplined expression, stopped him from escaping.

“We think well of the girl here, Señor, for all that
she can be heedless. She did an excellent job of nursing you and her duenna,
both. You will take care of her.”

“Sister, I swear....”

“Of course you do,” Sister Juan agreed, unperturbed.
“So now it is for Mother to arrange the marriage. Don’t concern
yourself over that, Señor. Mother can arrange anything.”

Matlin reflected that she doubtless could. In the next week,
as he sat in the sunny warmth of the courtyard playing two-handed whist with
his betrothed or chatted idly with Manuel, he was treated to bits and pieces of
the wedding preparation. The Sister’s own chaplain would marry them;
Mother Beatriz had managed to allay the priest’s concerns about the
hurried marriage. “The girl is no better church-woman than you yourself,
Señor,” the Superior confided dubiously, “but at least it is not
the marriage of a devout woman to a....” she paused delicately.

“A heathen?” Matlin suggested dryly. They smiled
at each other. He had grown fond of the Sisters, and particularly of their
Superior; he admired the effective mixture of piety and hardheaded practicality
with which she ran the convent. Mother Beatriz and Sister Juan, even old Sister
Ana, who could be teased until she shook her quivering chins in reproach, had
made his fortnight in their gate cottage a time of peace for him, and he was
grateful to them and to Thea, too, of course, with her charming, vaguely
disturbing presence.

It was settled that the wedding would take place directly
after Mass on Sunday. There would be a sort of wedding breakfast afterward; the
nuns, it seemed, had their hearts set on some sort of festivity for Dorothea,
and it seemed a small enough thing to do. From somewhere among Manuel’s
relatives in the village clothes had been produced for Dorothea a
tatterdemalion collection of black and grey skirts, jackets and shawls in which
to travel; a yellowed white muslin dress at least twenty years out of fashion
and far too big for her, which would somehow be made seemly for the wedding.

Inevitably, Matlin thought of Adele Frain and how she would
have taken to all this. The image was incongruous: Adele’s vivid,
imperious beauty and fastidious tastes in such a time and place as this. Thea
was still an infant, young enough to make a game of her hardships. He could not
for one moment imagine Adele taking in the seams of a twenty-year-old dress or
feeding the convent chickens or allowing those ridiculous kittens to climb up
her skirts.

As for Thea, the brief card games with Matlin were almost
her only contact with her betrothed, a circumstance somewhat unsettling to her.
Most of her time was spent with Silvy in the cool, dim confines of her chamber.
They wound skeins of wool, and darned the piles of dark clothes Manuel’s
kinswomen had brought for her, all of them ragged and, despite many washings,
redolent of past owners. Her wedding dress had to be bleached in the sun,
rinsed in lavender water, and bleached again; then Silvy, with hundreds of pins
and the tiny, precise stitches she had taught Thea to make, took the dress in
and up until it fit properly.

It was awkward, uncomfortable somehow, sitting with Silvy in
the small, cool room where they mended and stitched. This business of marriage
had come between Thea and Silvy in a way that Thea did not understand; it made
Silvy prone to heavy sighings and significant looks. Thea had so much to think
about, the adventure she faced, Matlin; Silvy’s unreproaching, heavy
silence made her very self-conscious. Would it have been any different, she
wondered more than once, if the marriage were to take place in England, in the
Grahamley chapel?

“It is a serious thing,
niña,”
Silvy
murmured more than once. “You are
marrying
this man.”

Nothing Thea could say seemed to make any difference to Silvy,
and after a day or two she ceased to try, as much interested in putting off
this strange discussion as Silvy seemed to be herself. To Thea the whole matter
was something of a mystery, the marriage a magical solution which would solve
all her problems; she had a vague notion that, if too closely examined, the
magic would simply disappear. It was enough to say that on Sunday afternoon she
would be Matlin’s wife, regarded as the woman she was, no longer a
tiresome child, a responsibility and a danger to her friends. Even were it not
Matlin she was marrying, the feeling of release would be worth the marriage for
her.

o0o

Sunday morning half the village was waiting outside the chapel
betimes for early Mass. Señorita de Silva and her charge were known and liked
by the villagers, who had kept their secret well. The marriage of the young
Señorita to a mysterious foreigner was one more matter for secrecy, another way
to guard their Sisters. Sister Ana and Manuel, who regarded himself now as
Cupid, had broadcast the word in their search for garments, and an invitation
to one or another had become a general invitation to the wedding for the whole
town.

Dressed in the formal muslin dress Thea was conscious of sudden
dignity, as if the dress itself conferred a new and weighty status upon her.
Sister Scholastica and Sister Ana, who had the dressing of her, fluttered and
clucked and swore that Thea resembled sisters, cousins, nieces, anyone beloved.
A veil of lace was settled lightly over her yellow hair.