Teresa turned back to her painting. She raised her brush but did not touch the surface. What could it even mean—to be in love? For her, here and now? She had fought to find safety, to take control of her life. Would she throw all that away? Wasn’t that what love would require?
Tom struck his gong again. A signal, Teresa thought, but the message was a mystery. Was it a harbinger of change? Did it urge her toward some…indulgence? Or warn her of doom? Abruptly, fiercely, she longed for the first choice. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t go under.
“Señora Alvarez?”
His voice was like the touch of seductive fingers. “I must finish this painting today,” she said. “I have promised.”
There was a pause. Her heart teetered in the balance. Then he said, “Of course.”
She heard his footsteps move away. She’d saved herself from the clutches of that overwhelming wave. And she was not in the least relieved.
Eight
Teresa was more tired than usual when she reached home that afternoon. Lord Macklin had left the workshop soon after their conversation, but he might as well have been standing close behind her, looking over her shoulder the whole day. With every stroke she’d painted, her mind had wavered back and forth, vibrating between words like independence and ruin, prudence and daring, discipline and desire. Her thoughts had grown more and more jumbled as time passed without her coming near any resolution. She was still trembling.
Eliza appeared in the kitchen doorway as Teresa was taking off her bonnet. “A fellow called while you were out, ma’am,” she said.
“Fellow?” No one visited her here.
“He wanted to wait, but I told him he couldn’t come in.”
So Eliza hadn’t liked this man’s looks. Who could it have been? “Not someone from the neighborhood?”
“No, ma’am. I never saw him before. He was a foreigner.” Eliza held out a square of pasteboard, using only the tips of her fingers as if the object was distasteful. “He left a card.”
Not a thug then, Teresa thought. They didn’t leave cards. But not a gentleman, if Eliza’s judgment was correct.
“He said he’d come back this evening,” added the maid, clearly not happy about the prospect.
Teresa took the card and read it. “Conde Alessandro de la Cerda. I don’t know who this is.” The man sounded Spanish, but she recalled no one of that name. Why had he sought her out? A visitor from Spain was unlikely to be good news. And how had he found her?
“Is conde some kind of title?” asked the maid.
“It is the same as a count.” Which England did not have, Teresa remembered, though it had countesses. The wives of earls. As todos los caminos led to Rome, all her thoughts seemed to circle back to Lord Macklin.
Eliza sniffed. “He weren’t like any nobleman I’ve ever seen.”
Wondering if Eliza had seen any, Teresa put the card down. “He said nothing about what he wanted?”
“He only said he’d be back, ma’am.” She frowned. “I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”
A threatening Spaniard was not coincidence, Teresa thought. It was her fate, the doom that had dogged her existence since she was a girl. Today, she’d dared to dream just a little, and now her dream was to be shattered. She didn’t know precisely how, but she had no doubt it would be. A host of bitter experiences told her so.
She sat down. A Spaniard most likely brought word of her past. There was so little of that Teresa wished to revisit. She would have avoided it if she could. But she didn’t have the means to repel this caller. And it was probably best that she discover who he was and what he wanted.
The knock came at seven that evening. Teresa let Eliza answer it, but there was nowhere for her to wait but the main room. Lurking upstairs and then coming down seemed silly in this tiny house.
A slender man of medium height entered her home. His clothes were rich, though not quite fashionable, his smile sleek and self-satisfied. Black hair, dark eyes, smooth tan skin, an aquiline nose, she recognized him at once. He was no count. His name was Alessandro, but an entirely common Alessandro Peron. The last time she’d seen him he’d been a member of the household of a Spanish duke. More than a servant, but not really a friend of the grandee. A hanger-on. There was an English word she’d come across—a toady. That fit him. He was rather like a sapo, a toad.
Teresa greeted him in Spanish. This was likely to be a difficult conversation, and she preferred that Eliza have no idea what they said.
“Teresa,” he replied.
She felt a spurt of rage at his disrespectful use of her name and the caressing tone he used to speak it. She hid this. He would want her to react.
“I was so happy to learn that you were living in London. Though surprised at the address.” He looked around the room with a mixture of derision and pity.
“How did you learn?”
He raised one eyebrow.
He had learned that trick from the duke. He did it less well. She began to lose patience. “How did you find me?” She knew no Spanish people here.
“The embassy told me.”
She didn’t believe him. She’d had no contact with the Spanish embassy. Wanted none.
“Shall we sit down?” he asked.
She acceded with a gesture, taking the armchair while he settled on the small sofa.
“A glass of wine perhaps?”
“I have none,” she lied. “What do you want?”
“A cold welcome for an old friend, Teresa.”
“We were never friends.”
He put a hand to his chest as if wounded. “Was I not always pleasant to you?”
Outwardly, with a running undertone of insolence. He was the sort who fawned over those above him on the social scale and spurned those below. She had been a bit of both, so he had indulged in ambiguity. “What do you want?” she repeated.
“I have come to live in England,” he said, spreading his hands. “I wish to establish myself here.”
“As a conde?” Teresa indicated his visiting card, lying on a small table at her side.
“But I am, my dear Teresa. I recently inherited the title from a distant cousin.”
She gritted her teeth at his form of address. He was probably lying about the legacy, but the point wasn’t worth an argument. She didn’t care.
“Sadly, there was no property to go with honor.” He shrugged and smiled. “So I still must make my fortune. I heard that foreign titles impress the English, and so I have arrived.” He made an openhanded gesture meant to be charming.