by Anne Gracie
Miguel regarded him with astonishment. “But why else would you shave?”
“She is my wife already,” Luke explained.
Miguel squinted up at him. “She is a bad wife?”
“No.”Luke lied.
“Then why did you place her in the convent with the nuns?”
“It’s complicated.”
Miguel walked along beside him for a while. “My father went off and left us when I was small, when the girls were babies.”
Luke glanced at the boy. “He never came back?”
“No.” The boy kicked a stone over the edge of the path and paused to listen to it bouncing down the cliff.
“He was killed?”
“No, he is living in Bilbao. He found another woman he liked better than Mama. Did you find another woman you liked better, señor?”
“No.” Luke increased his pace. The boy’s innocent chatter was somehow making him feel guilty. Which was ridiculous. He had nothing to feel guilty for.
“So you have come to fetch her and take her back to England with you.”
“Correct.”
“Do I know her, señor? I know some of the young ladies in the convent. What’s her name?”
He supposed it didn’t matter if he told the boy her name. “Señora Ripton.”
“Isabella Ripton?” Miguel’s face split in a grin. “But she is my friend.” And then his smile faded and he stopped dead. “You put Isabella in the convent and left her? She has lived in that place since before my father left my mother.”
The accusation in the boy’s eyes irked Luke.
Dammit, why was everyone looking at him as if the mess was all his fault? He was supposed to be the hero, dammit! First he’d saved her life and then he’d married her. He hadn’t had to marry her. It had been the only certain way to protect her from a forced marriage to her evil cousin Ramón. It hadn’t been for his own advantage in the least.
Somehow that had been forgotten and he’d become the man who’d abandoned his wife. And he hadn’t. Or he had, but not intentionally.
Well, yes, intentionally, but it had been for her own good.
But how did you explain that to a ten-year-old boy?
Or, indeed, to a girl of almost twenty-one. He rang the bell at the gate of the convent.
Five
“Blessed saints!” Dolores stopped stock-still at the entrance to the dining hall. She turned and said to Alejandra, “He is as beautiful as an angel.”
Alejandra was staring over Dolores’s shoulder. “Madonna, yes! A beautiful fallen angel. That mouth, those eyes, those cheekbones. So stern looking and yet somehow… wicked.” She sighed.
Immediately there was a faint scuffle as the other girls pushed forward, trying to see Isabella’s very real husband.
“Girls!” Sister Ignazia said, and when they did not immediately respond, she said in a warning voice, “Young ladies! Do I assume from this unseemly behavior that you have no wish to dine this evening?”
“No, Sister.” They hurried into the dining hall in relative silence, darting avid glances at Isabella’s husband.
“Do you think he would be stern in the bedchamber?” Alejandra whispered.
“Who cares?” Luisa giggled.
“Ooh, I do like a masterful man,” Dolores said with a dramatic shiver.
Isabella clenched her fists. He was her husband, even if he didn’t want her.
Lieuten— No, Lord Ripton stood behind his chair at Reverend Mother’s table, in formal garb and looking handsomer than ever. The only man in a room full of women, he was the center of attention. Bad enough the other girls were fluttering and whispering and giggling as they eyed him across the room, but even nuns were straightening their wimples and smiling at him.
And he, Isabella thought darkly, was perfectly comfortable with the fuss. This was to be her future. The man of her dreams, adored by every woman who saw him. And kind with it, so she couldn’t even hate him.
“Look, even Sister Gertruda is making up to him,” hissed Luisa. “I thought she hated men.”
Isabella watched as Sister Gertruda, normally a thin-lipped, humorless martinet, stood beside Lord Ripton, chatting animatedly. He listened with grave attention, nodding and making short responses, but his gaze wandered across the room to the knot of girls, his dark eyes sifting through them one by one.
Sister Josefina had decreed that their normal convent garb would be worn, no fancy dresses or hairstyles, no frills, perfume, or paint—on pain of punishment—so from a distance and at first glance, the girls would be hard to tell apart.
Isabella felt it the moment he first saw her—a faint prickle of awareness rippling over her skin. Reverend Mother noticed her arrival, and gestured to Isabella to join herself and Lord Ripton at table.
“Bring him over and introduce us after dinner,” Alejandra ordered as Isabella left. “I want to meet him.”
“Oh yes.” Paloma sighed and fluttered her lashes. “I want to meet a fallen angel.”
“Mmmm, I want to hear him speak, even if it is in English.”
“How long is it since any of us talked to a man who isn’t a priest?”
“I’ll try,” Isabella snapped, and she marched across to join her husband. Everyone had gone silly. He’d turned all their heads.
His dark eyes seemed to take in everything, but he said nothing, only murmuring a quiet greeting. His deep voice shivered down her spine.
The room fell silent while they all waited behind their chairs, then Reverend Mother gave the signal, and with a loud scraping of chairs everyone sat down.
Reverend Mother then said grace. It was a long grace and in Latin, and Isabella was so keyed up she couldn’t concentrate. She’d never been much interested in Latin anyway, so much of it was just mumble. She glanced at Lord Ripton and to her shock found he was watching her, his gaze dark and intense. She immediately squeezed her eyes shut. Was he a godless heathen like Papa that he didn’t close his eyes at grace?
Reverend Mother finished grace; then, just as everyone was about to reach for their food, she said, “We welcome Lord Ripton who joins us at table this evening.”
They put down their cutlery and waited. “As you all no doubt have heard, he has come to collect his wife Isabella who has been with us these last eight years.” She smiled at Isabella. “A most eventful eight years, may I say.” A ripple of amusement passed around the room.
Isabella stared at a knot in the grain of the wooden table, silently willing Reverend Mother to say no more about her time at the convent. He didn’t need to know any of that. And besides, the food was getting cold. Not that she was hungry; her stomach was in knots.
Why did he keep staring at her? She passed her hands over her hair, smoothing it down. Her hands were shaking. Stupid. It’s not as if anything could change. She was fated to this man. He was fated to her.
A life of solid contentment.
Reverend Mother went on, “Lord Ripton tells me he plans to leave first thing in the morning, so this will be Isabella’s last night with us before embarking on her new married life in England. We wish her well.” Everyone raised a beaker or glass—most drinking water, but Reverend Mother, Lord Ripton, and some of the older nuns drinking wine—and drank to Isabella and Lord Ripton.
Isabella forced her lips into what she hoped looked like a happy smile, then drank. All those faces beaming at her and Lord Ripton. All that joyful goodwill. Her mouth tasted of bile. It was all a charade, a farce. He didn’t want her. It was nothing but a horrid mistake.
She sat wedged between Reverend Mother and Lord Ripton, pushing her food around her plate. It was a sin to waste food—and God knew there were enough times during the war when they’d been desperate for it—but she couldn’t bring herself to swallow a mouthful of stew.
She broke off a small piece of bread and tried to chew. It wedged in a hard lump halfway down her throat. She drank from her beaker and managed to choke it down.
Luke forced himself to drag his gaze
off her. He couldn’t believe the difference in her appearance. The clothes were dreadful, of course—drab, concealing, and coarse—but their plainness suited her better than all those frills. And now he could really see her.
Not a little ugly duckling in a flock of swans, but something entirely different.
Her skin was palest ivory, and smooth, with a delicate flush that had been concealed by the garish rouge she’d worn before.
She’d abandoned the fussy, elaborate hairstyle. Her hair was now plaited in a simple coronet around her head, the thick plaits silken and glossy. She must have just washed it, for it seemed damp. Tiny curls clustered around her temple and nape.
The unfussy hairstyle revealed the elegant line of her head and neck and framed her face perfectly. She was not conventionally pretty—not pretty in the least, actually. With high cheekbones, a pointed chin, a commanding little nose bequeathed to her by some Roman ancestor, and golden eyes that met his with a mixture of shyness and defiance, she was something far more interesting than pretty. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He was married to this slender, stunning creature in the dreadful clothes.
He wanted to touch her, to see if that ivory skin was as soft and silky as it seemed. Her cheekbones gave her a faintly haughty look, and her nose was bold and commanding.
But her mouth—oh Lord, what a mouth… He hadn’t noticed it before, when it had been painted in a small cupid’s bow. Now he could barely drag his gaze from it. Au naturel, her lips were like rich, ripe berries with the bloom still on. Plump, luscious, edible.
He must have moaned, for Reverend Mother turned to him with a look of faint inquiry. He managed to clear his throat and regarded her solemnly.
“So tomorrow you two will leave us,” Reverend Mother said. “Where do you plan to go, Lord Ripton?”
Isabella turned her head to look at her aunt, and Luke noticed a tiny, velvet mole, just below the delicate whorls of her left ear. His mouth dried.
“Lord Ripton?”
He glanced at Reverend Mother. “Go?”
“On your honeymoon.”
Honeymoon? He hadn’t even thought about a honeymoon. This was to have been a duty. “We’ll make immediately for England, to my home there.”
Reverend Mother glanced at the silent girl between them. “I’m sure Isabella is looking forward to seeing her new home, aren’t you Isabella?”
Isabella made some sort of sound that might indicate assent, and the nun went on, “And I’m sure she’ll enjoy being out in the fresh air. She is very fond of fresh air.”
“Indeed?” Luke glanced at Isabella, noticed her mouth and immediately forgot what he’d been going to say.
“You have hired horses, I presume?”
Luke blinked and, with an effort, brought his attention back to the conversation. “Yes, I hope Isabella won’t find the journey too wearying.” It was easier to conduct a conversation with the nun than with his wife. She was seemingly the quiet type—he had no complaint there; it was restful—and it was easier to maintain a civilized conversation without being… distracted. It was most disconcerting.
“It will be a long time since she last rode a horse. No doubt she’ll be very stiff at first.”
“Oh, but—” Reverend Mother began.
“A horse?” Isabella looked up. “What kind of horse?”
He glanced down at her, surprised. “Just a hired horse; nothing very special. It took me some time to find a suitable mount. Reverend Mother, you were saying?”
“Suitable?” Isabella frowned.
“Quite suitable,” he assured her. He turned back to the nun. “Reverend Mother?”
But Reverend Mother had either forgotten what she was going to say or had thought better of it.
“You don’t plan to spend any time in Spain?” she asked. “Isabella mentioned your late uncle owned several Spanish estates in Andalusia. I presume they now belong to you.”
“Yes, however—”
“Excellent. You will wish to visit them, since you are in Spain now.”
Luke said nothing. He did not wish to visit them in the least. He addressed himself to his stew.
Reverend Mother frowned slightly. “You will want to see how they fared during the war, surely?”
Luke drank some of the thin, slightly acid mountain wine.
Reverend Mother took off her pince-nez and gave him a governessy look down her long nose. “Things are a little… shall we say ‘unsettled’ in Spain at the moment, Lord Ripton. It would be as well to consolidate your ownership.”
Luke stiffened, irritated by the gratuitous advice and implied moral lecture. He had an agent to check that sort of thing for him, but he had no intention of justifying himself to anyone, let alone a bossy nun, even if she was now his relative by marriage.
“I need to return to England,” he said brusquely. “I have an engagement there I must meet.” And he wouldn’t spend a single night more in this godforsaken country than he had to.
“It seems a shame not to—”
“A very important engagement,” he said in a final note. “Tell me, I noticed when I arrived here the walls of the convent had been damaged. Were you attacked?”
He’d intended it as a simple change of subject, but beside him, Isabella’s aimless stirring of the food on her plate stopped.
Luke went cold. The attacking of convents and churches had not been uncommon in the war. In postrevolutionary France the church was no longer regarded as holy, and nuns and monks and priests were simply men and women. Nuns had been raped and murdered, churches looted.
Reverend Mother’s thin mouth twisted with contempt. “French, and some deserters who’d joined them. Rabble. They’d heard rumors of a treasure here. Treasure!” She snorted. “We are a simple order. Our only treasures are our girls.”
As she talked, Luke relaxed. Her tone was merely indignant, with no echoes of past horror. Isabella sat quiet as a rabbit, pretending not to be there.
“I gather you managed to hold them off.”
“Yes, although if—”
Isabella coughed. Reverend Mother glanced at her and said smoothly, “Fortunately they were persuaded to leave.”
“My friends would like to meet you, Lord Ripton,” Isabella said abruptly.
“You must call me Luke,” he told her.
She turned to the nun. “Do I have your permission, Reverend Mother?”
The nun nodded, and Isabella jumped up, taking her plate to a sideboard.
The moment was lost. He’d probably never find out what happened, but he didn’t care. It didn’t do to stir up old memories.
He watched as Isabella carefully scraped her dinner into a pail—presumably there were pigs or chickens somewhere—and stacked her plate and cutlery. She seemed to have recovered from her upset and now appeared to accept her fate with good grace. As he’d hoped, her training in the convent had made her into a docile and obedient young woman.
The intense attraction he felt for her was the icing on the cake.
He sat back, satisfied, watching as she hurried across to the far end of the table where the schoolgirls sat. She was very slender, her figure, under the thick, concealing convent clothes, girlish rather than womanly.
“She’s very thin,” he observed. And underdeveloped for her age. The Spanish girls he’d known were lush and curvaceous. “She’s not ill, is she?”
“We’re all thin here,” the nun said dryly. “We almost starved during the war, and the country has been slow to recover. Trust me, Isabella has the appetite of any healthy young creature.”
Her reference to Isabella’s healthy appetite caused Luke to think of quite another sort of appetite. His body stirred at the thought. It was disconcerting, feeling the early stages of arousal while sitting at table with a middle-aged nun. But something about the way Isabella moved… appealed.
Begetting an heir was not going to be a duty after all.
What was she saying? Isabella’s expression looked q
uite severe as she spoke to her friends. One of them, a ravishingly pretty girl, glanced at him and said something. They all laughed except Isabella. She seemed one of them… yet not. A little apart.
The other girls quickly cleared away their plates and hurried toward him in a gaggle, smoothing down their hair and eyeing him in a flirtatious, fluttery manner that made him sigh. Not so different from the girls in London, then. Young, sheltered, and silly. Any remaining fears that attackers had invaded the convent faded.
He stood and bowed politely over each girl’s hand as Isabella introduced him. Then under Reverend Mother’s benevolent eye, the girls pelted him with eager questions.
“Have you traveled far to come here?” They spoke in slow, clear Spanish, watching him as if they might need to repeat the question.
“No, just from the village down the road,” he said in easy, idiomatic Spanish. Gales of giggles, as if he were a famous wit.
“But they said you were English,” the prettiest one—Alejandra?—said in surprise, and glanced at Isabella as if she’d lied to them.
“I learned Spanish when I was a boy,” he explained. “I spent several summers on my uncle’s estates in Andalusia.” They oohed and ahhed, as if this was somehow clever of him.
He supposed most girls raised in a tightly disciplined and isolated female environment would overreact to a male presence. They acted younger than they were.
Not that Isabella was giggling or flirting. In silence she watched her friends making up to him, asking no questions herself, taking no part in the conversation. Watching over them—or perhaps she was watching over him—like a small, plainly dressed hawk.
“Do you have any brothers?” This from the intense-looking one. Dolores? The others craned forward, breathless, hanging on his every word.
He shook his head. “Only sisters.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Are they married?”
“Yes, two are married; the youngest, Molly, is making her come-out this year.”
“How old is Molly?”
“The same age as Isabella.”
“So old!” they exclaimed in surprise. “Do all girls come out so old in England?”