by Anne Gracie
“It was a chance encounter,” Luke said easily. “One of those things. One meeting and that was it. My fate sealed.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized how she would take them. He hadn’t meant that, not at all. He’d meant it to sound romantic.
The marqués nodded. “It was like that for the marquésa and me. We met a year ago, in Madrid. She’d had a terrible war, poor girl. Lost every one of her family, as with so many of us.” His glance embraced Isabella in acknowledgment of her own loss.
He lifted his wineglass. “But we must rebuild, must we not? To Spain, and to rebuilding.”
They drank the toast.
“Toasting me? How kind,” purred a sultry voice. A woman in her midthirties glided in, dressed in a dark red dress cut low to frame a magnificent bosom, cinched tight at a narrow waist, and sleek over voluptuous hips. Hair, black as a raven’s wing, was drawn back in an elegant coiffure, highlighting perfect skin, delicate cheekbones, and full, rouged lips.
No secret why the marqués had married her.
The scent of roses emanated from her perfect body.
Luke’s gorge rose.
“Ah, my dear.” The marqués rose to greet his wife, and Luke rose with him, jerkily, shoving his chair back so roughly that it almost fell. A servant caught it.
The marqués performed the introductions. Luke barely heard a word.
He couldn’t think. His skin grew clammy. From the other side of the table he heard Isabella give a meaningful cough. He didn’t so much as glance at her.
“Delighted to meet you, Lord Ripton.” The marquésa held out her hand to him. Luke made no move to take it. He stared at the elegant, outstretched hand as if it were a cobra.
The lustrous dark eyes widened, then narrowed. They caressed his face, drifted down his body and up again, then came to rest just below his right shoulder. The rouged lips curved in a tiny smile.
She laughed, a rich contralto chuckle. “So delightful that I can still have that effect on a young man.”
Luke stiffened. She was toying with him. Incredible. She had no fear he would denounce her.
Did that mean the marqués knew who his wife really was?
“Isabella, we’re leaving,” he snapped.
“What? But Luke—”
“Now!”
“No. It’s the height of incivility—”
In English, he said, “It’s her, the person I told you about.”
“What person? What are you talking about?”
“The one who did this.” He touched his shoulder.
Her eyes widened. “La Cuch—?”
“Don’t say it,” he cut her off sharply, keeping a wary eye on the marqués and marquésa. “Do not say the name,” he repeated, still speaking English. “There is danger here, and you must get away.”
It took her a moment to absorb what he was telling her. “It was this woman who did that frightful thing to you? I cannot credit it.” But though she was incredulous, he could see she believed him. She stared at the marquésa in horror. “But we must tell the marq—”
“No! He knows. Now do as I tell you and get up and leave the table, quietly and quickly.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I’ve known him all my life and he is a man of honor. He cannot possibly have knowingly married La Cuchilla.”
Damn! She’d said it. Now the fat was really in the fire.
“La Cuchilla?” the marqués exclaimed. “What is this about La Cuchilla?” He rose to his feet, his brow furrowed with confusion. Or was it apparent confusion? Luke wondered.
In two strides Luke was beside his wife. He pulled her to her feet and pushed her behind him. “We’re leaving now,” he told the marqués. “Don’t try to stop us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear fellow,” the marqués said, holding up his hands pacifically, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about. What’s all this about La Cuchilla?”
Luke glanced from the man to his wife and back again. Was it an ingenuous effort to lull him into a sense of safety? Could the man really not know? No, a Spanish patriot who’d commanded a guerrilla force would surely know La Cuchilla. And that being so, he’d have every reason to kill anyone who knew it.
“Isabella, come,” Luke said, taking her arm and keeping himself between her and the marqués.
But Isabella was having none of his protection. She stepped forward and said to the marqués, “My husband recognizes your wife, Tío Raul. The marquésa was once a French agent known as La Cuchilla. She tortured young men for pleasure.”
The marqués stared, then shook his head. “No, no, my dear, that cannot be right. I’ve heard of La Cuchilla, of course—who in these parts has not? But she died several years ago.”
“Died?”
“She was caught and hanged by patriots. A well-deserved death for a witch and a traitor.”
“Then they hanged the wrong woman,” Luke said grimly. “Because the real La Cuchilla is sitting there, at your side.”
The marqués looked at his wife.
She gave him a look of faint bewilderment. “The poor young gentleman is mistaken, of course, my dear. Perhaps his ordeals in the war have left him… confused. Or perhaps he has me mixed up with another woman.”
The marqués, relieved, nodded. “Yes, that must be it.”
“He is not confused,” Isabella insisted. “If he says you are La Cuchilla, then you are.”
“Isabella!” the marqués exclaimed. “My wife cannot possibly be—”
“She is,” Luke said. “She tortured and killed dozens of men.”
“La Cuchilla did, yes,” the marqués agreed. “But not my wife. La Cuchilla operated in the north, and was seen back and forth across the border, but I met my wife in Madrid. The first time she had ever been this far north was when she came here, on our honeymoon.”
“So she said,” Luke said.
The marqués drew himself up. “Sir, you are offensive. A case of mistaken identity is forgivable, but to insult my wife, in my own home…”
“It’s not a case of mistaken identity, Tío Raul,” Isabella intervened hotly. “My husband was himself tortured by La Cuchilla. Do you think he would then mistake another woman for her?”
The marqués’s dark brows snapped together over his beak of a nose. “You were tortured, sir?”
“I was,” Luke said stiffly. He loathed admitting it.
“And yet you survived,” the marquésa said softly. “An odd kind of murderer, this La Cuchilla.”
Luke stared at her. Was he meant to be grateful she’d spared his life?
Isabella flung her a look of hatred. “Show him, Luke.”
Luke tried to hush her with a look, but she ignored him and pulled open the neck of his shirt. “There,” she said, exposing the carved rose.
There was a hiss of intaken breath as the marqués saw the design. He gave his wife a troubled look. “Rosa?”
“Show me.” The marquésa sauntered over and reached for Luke’s shirt with a single polished fingernail.
He stepped back, rigid with loathing. “Touch me again, you witch, and I’ll kill you.”
She swiveled to face her husband and gave a helpless feminine sigh. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, my dear, and if he won’t even show me the pretty design…”
“Pretty design? You know exactly what he’s talking about! You carved that vile thing in my husband’s flesh!” Isabella said furiously. “You think you can wriggle out of it because Tío Raul and my husband are too gentlemanly to put a woman to the test. But I’m no gentleman!” And snatching up a carving knife from the table, she grabbed the marquésa around the neck and placed the blade against her cheek.
“Isabella!” Luke and the marqués exclaimed in unison.
“Put the knife down.”
“Isabella, child, this is madness. Rosa is my wife!”
“Raul, help me! She’s insane!”
Isabella ignored them all. “Now, marquésa—tell us the tr
uth, or I’ll carve a ‘pretty design’ on your cheek. Of course, I’m not an artist like you, but perhaps I could manage a B for ‘bitch,’ or an M for ‘murderer’…” She pressed the cold edge of the blade against the smooth damask cheek.
The woman shrieked. “Raul, Raul, I beg of you!”
The marqués made a halfhearted move to help her, but Luke grabbed him by the arm, murmuring, “Leave it. Isabella won’t hurt her, but if you interfere, someone really will get hurt.” And it might be Isabella.
The marqués heard him and made no further move.
The marquésa heard him, too, and braced herself to fight.
“Make no mistake,” Isabella murmured in her ear. “I’ll happily carve your cheek into mincemeat.”
The rouged lips curled in a sneer. “You haven’t the guts, little sheltered bud of the aristocracy.”
“Oh, haven’t I?” Isabella said silkily. “I might not be old like you, but I lived through a war, too—and I killed three men. Now I know that’s nothing by your standards—they were all vile pigs who were attacking a convent—but believe me, I would have no trouble at all killing a vicious she-wolf who tortured and maimed my husband, murdered his friend, and”—she glanced at the marqués—“deceived a kind and noble patriot who deserved better. Why wouldn’t I carve my initials into your face?” She pressed the blade against the smooth cheek. “Now talk.”
The marquésa said nothing.
“That poor woman who was hanged in your place, was it a lucky case of mistaken identity?”
The woman’s eyes flickered with brief scorn. Both Luke and the marqués saw it.
“Ah,” Isabella said. “So you arranged for her to die in your place. Very clever.”
“Rosa.” There was a world of horror in the marqués’s voice.
“See, he knows it now, so you might as well admit it: you are La Cuchilla.”
There was a long silence. Isabella pressed the knife deeper, and the woman hissed, “Yes, yes, very well, yes. But it was a long time ago.”
The marqués’s breath gushed out. Luke released him, and the marqués sagged onto a chair, looking suddenly old.
“Raul,” the marquésa pleaded. “It makes no difference to you and me. We all did things in the war that we want to forget. Raul?”
He stared at her a long time. Then he said, “I married La Cuchilla,” in the oldest, weariest voice. He buried his head into his hands.
“Raul, please…” He didn’t move, and the marquésa knew she’d lost him. Lost everything. Her claws rose. Isabella moved the knife. Bright beads of blood appeared in a line across the pale cheek. Her eyes glittered hatred and she hissed with fury, but she did not move.
“You tortured my husband?”
“Yes.”
“And his friend. You murdered his friend.”
She snorted. “Michael? He was no loss to the world.”
“He was a loss to his family and friends.”
The woman looked at Luke and said deliberately, “Michael was a nuisance. A dead bore.”
It was an odd thing to say. Bella glanced at Luke. His face was stark and drawn, his fists clenched.
“Why do you say that?” Bella asked.
Silence.
“Was it because Michael gave you the information?”
The woman’s lush lips thinned in a sneer. “Every detail.”
“Is that why you murdered him?”
“No, I cut his throat to stop his whining,” La Cuchilla said coldly. “I despise weaklings.”
“Did my husband give you any information?”
“No. That one took twice the punishment and said nothing.”
“And that is why you left him alive?”
She gave an infinitesimal shrug of her elegant shoulders. “He was beautiful and brave—a worthy enemy. Why would I kill him?”
“Why would you carve that, that thing into his flesh?”
“My pretty rose?” La Cuchilla smiled. “A whim. A little something to remember me by.”
A whim? To painfully brand a young man with a mark that she knew would shame him for the rest of his life? Luke would have seen it every day of his life since, a reminder that he had betrayed—or believed he had betrayed—his country and his friend.
It was pure, cold-blooded evil. Bella’s hand shook visibly with the desire to plunge the knife into the woman’s black heart.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d found out all she needed to know. Luke now knew what had happened. Perhaps now he could forgive himself. Not that he had anything to forgive himself for. He was a hero. With a sob, Bella flung the knife away, pushed La Cuchilla aside, and dived straight into Luke’s arms.
He hugged her tightly. “You crazy, crazy girl! To put yourself in such danger!”
“I had to. Neither you nor Tío Raul would ever hurt a woman, even one such as she. I knew the threat to destroy her beauty would make her talk. The beautiful ones are always the vainest.”
The marquésa pressed a white lace handkerchief to her cheek. It came away smeared with blood. She stared at it, and her face twisted with hate. “For that, you ugly little stick, you will die!” She produced a small, deadly looking pistol and aimed at Isabella.
The marqués yelled a warning. Luke turned, saw what was happening, and shoved Isabella behind him, protecting her with his body just as the pistol went off. The ball slammed into him and he crashed to the floor.
The marqués moved. A knife flashed through the air. La Cuchilla staggered, the blade buried deep in her throat. She gurgled horribly, clawing at the knife, then slowly sank to her knees and toppled over. Her blood spread in a crimson pool across the white marble floor.
“How bad is the injury?” the marqués asked. The body of his wife had been removed. There was no sign of blood on the smooth marble floor. Bella didn’t ask what had been done with the body. She didn’t care. All her concern was for Luke.
“A flesh wound only,” Doctor Lopez said. “He was very lucky it struck where it did. As far as I can tell, no bones have been damaged. Bone fragments are the worst, but I believe he will recover, as long as there is no infection.” The doctor, a surgeon-physician, had arrived almost immediately. He lived on the estate, the marqués said. A good man, very experienced with wounds of all kinds. The war, you understand.
Bella clung to her husband’s hand, unable to take her eyes off his face for even a minute. “He’s still unconscious.”
“Be grateful for it,” the surgeon told her. “It will spare him the pain when I remove the ball.” He drew out a long pair of silver tongs, inserted them carefully into the hole beneath Luke’s shoulder, and began to grope around inside.
In an extraordinary act of fate, the bullet aimed at Bella had pierced Luke through the center of the rose carved into his skin. It was nothing but a mess of blood and torn flesh now.
The surgeon probed, Luke groaned, even in unconsciousness, and Bella’s stomach lurched. She clutched his hand to her breast and prayed silently.
“Almost there… just… yes.” Doctor Lopez drew out the ball. He sprinkled sulfur powder into the wound and looked at the marqués. “Gunshot wounds are poisonous. I ought to…” He glanced at the fire and then at Bella.
“Ought to what?’ she asked.
“Cauterize the wound. It is the accepted practice, but—”
“But what?”
“It is not pleasant for ladies to watch.” He took out a long metal implement and placed it in the fire to heat. It was like a bent poker, with a drop-shaped metal end that was, Bella realized with a sick feeling, about the same size and shape as the hole in her husband’s body. She shuddered.
“It will not be pleasant for my husband, either.” She took Luke’s other hand. “Do it. Quickly, while he’s still unconscious.”
The marqués came to stand behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Your father would be very proud of you, my dear.”
The surgeon carefully lifted the cauterizing tool from the flam
es and tested it by sprinkling a few drops of water on it. They sizzled. When he judged the temperature was right, he said, “Hold him still.”
The marqués held Luke down by the shoulders. Bella closed her eyes. There was a hissing sound and a ghastly smell of burnt flesh. Luke’s body jerked.
For a moment Bella thought she would faint. She clung tightly to Luke’s hand, determined not to leave him, even for an instant, and after a moment or two the dizziness passed.
“It’s done.” The surgeon bent over the wound, examined his handiwork, and nodded. “It looks good. Smother it with fresh honey and cover it lightly with clean gauze. Keep it clean and let the air get to it as much as possible. If there’s no infection, he should be fully recovered in a couple of weeks.”
If… Bella thought. How would they know?
“He may have a little fever,” the doctor continued. “Give him willow bark tea and such like—the usual treatments. And plenty of rest for the next few days.”
Bella nodded. The convent had educated all the girls in the treatment of illness.
“Don’t look so worried, my dear. Your husband is a strong, healthy fellow,” the marqués said in hearty reassurance. “And if Doctor Lopez says he will recover, he will, never fear. The good doctor looked after us during the fighting. He lost fewer than most.”
“How very reassuring,” said Bella faintly.
The first thing Luke was aware of was pain. His shoulder was on fire. His mind was fuzzy. And there was something he was supposed to… La Cuchilla? He could smell sulfur… burned flesh. . . gunpowder. The usual nightmare?
It all came back to him in a flash. La Cuchilla had pulled out a gun. . . and shot at— Bella?
His eyes flew open. “Bella!”
There she was, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his hand, looking pale and worried but otherwise undamaged. At the sight of her sweet, anxious face, something in his chest clenched like a fist. He tried to sit up. “Did she hurt you?”
She pressed him back against the pillows. “Hush, don’t move. You’ll hurt yourself.”
He scanned her body frantically. “Dammit, did she get you?”
She smoothed his brow. “No, my love, I am unhurt. It was you she shot.”
My love. The words, as well as the knowledge she was unhurt, seemed to ease the burning in his shoulder. And the ache in his chest. “That’s all right, then.”