The two young ladies excused themselves as he came up. “What were you plotting?” he asked Señora Alvarez.
She shook her head. “They so long to join in a plot,” she said. “But I see no place for them. This matter of the opera dancers is rather more serious than a thieving crow or even a hidden treasure.”
“They told you about unmasking the crow.”
“Each of them, in slightly different versions.”
“They are proud of that.”
“I admire their…ingenio. But the disappearances are not part of the world they know. I think they must be left out of this.”
“You will not exclude me, I hope.” He hadn’t meant to allow so much emotion in his voice, but in the end he wasn’t sorry. It seemed that he had been trying for eons to let her know how he felt.
Señora Alvarez gazed up at him. A man might fall into those dark eyes and lose himself, Arthur thought. Unless he already had. “Can we never be alone,” he complained. They were constantly surrounded by people. He could not take her hand or pull her close in this chattering crowd. He couldn’t sue for the right to do so.
“To speak about the dancers,” she replied.
“No!” The exclamation drew a few glances. He turned his back on them. “Of course we will plan what to do about that. But there are other things I wish to say to you.”
“Other?”
“You must have some hint of my feelings. I would have spoken before this, but I think you have been avoiding me.” He hadn’t meant to sound accusing.
There was a pause that went on far too long for Arthur’s comfort. Señora Alvarez looked as if she was considering a knotty problem. Conversations washed around them while they stood like rocks in a sea of words. This was not the response he’d hoped for. But then she said, “I suppose your carriage is here.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you would drive me home.”
“With the greatest pleasure.” He thought he managed to hide his flare of triumph. Or perhaps he didn’t. He didn’t care.
“Very well.”
She didn’t take his offered arm but simply walked out beside him. Arthur saw people noticing. He was happy to let them.
His town carriage was brought around promptly, and he handed her in. As they started off, she gazed out the window, not at him. “People here drive their carriages through the park, do they not?” she said. “Perhaps we could do that.”
Surprised and pleased, Arthur gave the order to his coachman. Now he just had to find the right words to woo her. “Your company is a rare treat,” he said.
Teresa glanced at him and away. Lord Macklin had a touch of arrogance, as was only to be expected from an English lord. But other emotions moved in his blue-gray eyes. He was going to say things that should not be. She didn’t know exactly what things, but she knew that she had to speak before he made some impossible declaration. He was a man of honor. He would feel bound by his words, and she would not have him so.
She had thought of her earl for many hours since the arrival of the false Conde de la Cerda, while waiting for the Spaniard’s malicious tongue to begin to wag. She had pondered love and pain and dreams and fate. She had remembered, so vividly, the feel of disaster, of a whole life sliding away—slowly at first like the tipping snows of an avalanche, building to a roar of devastation.
It was time to end this…friendship that should never have begun. She could feel the sadness already welling up in her chest. The avalanche would bury her. But she owed him this much.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
He was a man who noticed, and cared. A rare man. Unique. She would not see his like again. The ache inside grew sharper. But there was no help for it. She would find no better opportunity, if that was the word. Here, they would not be overheard. There was no Eliza hovering nearby, no workmen, no Tom to interrupt. “I am going to tell you the truth now,” she said.
“About what?” he asked.
“About me.” And when she had finished, she could leave the carriage and make her way back to her small home, take up the life she had carved out for herself. The bitterness would fade in time, as all things did. She would recover, as she always did. Unless the wound was too deep this time. “I will not give you my real name,” she continued. “That is dead forever. But as for the rest.” She made a throwaway gesture; one could only begin. “I am not a widow. That was a lie.”
“Your husband is alive?” He straightened, as if ready to square up against a rival.
She would have laughed if the pain in her heart had been less. “I never had a husband,” she replied. “He was always a fiction.”
“But—”
“It is best to let me speak,” she interrupted. If he didn’t, she would falter and perhaps fail.
Lord Macklin nodded. She could see no censure in his face. She was going to tell him everything. She’d never told anyone. But then, she’d never known anyone—else—who so deserved her confidences.
Having decided this, she found her voice frozen in her throat. Step by step, she thought. Go back to the beginning.
“I was twenty when war came to northern Spain,” she said. “I was to have been married before that, but the man my father chose had died of a fever and another match was still being arranged. Rather slowly.” She didn’t even know what had caused the delay. Money, no doubt. Or perhaps the rising conflict had affected those negotiations as well.
“Arranged,” said Lord Macklin.
“It was the way of my family.” She waved this away as irrelevant. She mustn’t let the look on his face shake her resolve. Sympathy was not the point. “This was before the great battles of your Wellington. Perhaps you know that the end began in 1807 when Napoleon pushed French troops through Spain to invade Portugal. More than one hundred thousand men, I have heard, only to pass through. Of course he lied. Once they were there, his troops threw out King Carlos and put in his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. We have spoken of that cabrón before. The royal family was not so much beloved. Prince Ferdinand had tried to overthrow his father the year before. But they were better than being ruled by the French. Spain rose up. Things fell into chaos.” She pressed her hands together in her lap at the memory of fear. “There was no organized conflict at first. It was worse. Roving bands of men, some desperate and hungry and more like bandits. One didn’t know where their loyalties lay.”
“It must have been dreadful,” said the earl.
Teresa bowed her head in acknowledgment. It had been, but she was also aware that she had been avoiding the personal by reciting history. She took a breath and went on. “One of these groups came across my family’s land. They claimed to be French troops, but I think now they might have been deserters. They seized livestock and food, terrorized the people. My father went to order them off. He thought himself the monarch of his acres, you see. He was so used to being obeyed that he did not know how to expect anything else. But these men cared nothing for his authority. They jeered and spit at him. Papa turned his whip on one of the officers, and a soldier shot him.”