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SHE WAS BARELY INSIDE the doors of the hotel, when Juan Carlos stepped out from behind the chair where he’d been lurking. His face blushed red with anger and his mustache quivered with impatience. “You are late,” he said in Spanish. He took her arm then abruptly dropped it, looking down at his damp hands. “What happened to you?” His gaze flew to her face. “You look like a street rat.”
“I was caught in the storm,” she answered in his language. She continued walking, heading for the staircase. “If you do not mind, I would like to change before I catch cold.” She lifted the hem of her heavy skirts.
His dark eyes dropped to her valise. “Did he sign the papers?”
“No,” she said simply. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?” He followed her up the staircase. “You said this would be simple.”
“It will be simple, but it will also take more than a quarter hour. Benedict Draven is not the sort of man who acts without thinking.”
“Then he will sign tomorrow?” They reached the landing and she turned in the direction of the room she shared with Ines.
“He said he would call on me here the day after tomorrow.”
Juan Carlos made a sound of disgust. Catarina paused outside her room. “Do not fret, senhor. You will have control of my business soon enough.”
“Nonsense,” he said, reddening further. “I think only of your happiness and your marriage to my son.”
She gave him a hard look. “You think only of your own finances.”
“I am helping you, my dear.”
“I hardly consider blackmail a charitable endeavor. Buenos noches.”
She opened the door and Ines was immediately before her. Her younger sister had obviously been waiting on the other side and had probably heard the conversation with Juan Carlos. That was no matter. Ines knew all of her secrets, scant as they were.
“It seemed you were away forever. Oh!” Ines immediately began unbuttoning Catarina’s spencer. She was relieved as her own hands were too cold to manage. “You are wet to the bone.” She tugged the spencer off and turned Catarina around to begin unfastening her dress. Catarina felt as though she were the younger sister, though she was eight years older than Ines, who was barely eighteen.
“The weather is very bad.” Catarina stepped out of her gown and Ines started on her stays. “Cold and damp and wet.”
“I miss home.” By home Ines meant Portugal, not Barcelona, where the two had lived for the past three years.
“I do too.” But not as much as she would have thought. Catarina had liked the bustling city of Barcelona, and she found much in London to like as well. She might have wished to see the sun a bit more often than she had since arriving in England, but this was the land of knights and round tables. She found it enchanting. “Did Tigrino eat?”
“A little. He still hides under the bed and swats at the chamber maids’ feet when they walk by.” That sounded like her ill-tempered cat.
“I can do the rest,” Catarina said when Ines had loosened her stays. “Would you send for hot water?”
While Ines rang for footmen to bring hot water for a bath, Catarina stripped out of her wet stockings and chemise and wrapped a large blanket around her shivering body. She stood near the fire until she could feel her fingers and toes again.
“I am guessing your husband did not sign or Juan Carlos would have sounded happier.”
“I only spoke with Benedict Draven briefly,” Catarina said. “I waited for him at his home, but he did not return alone.” She gave her sister a meaningful look.
Ines furrowed her brow. “Why should that matter?”
Catarina wondered if she had ever been so innocent. “He had a woman with him.”
“His wife?”
Catarina had never even considered that possibility. Thankfully so. “No. He claims she is not his lover.”
“Do you believe him?”
Catarina shrugged. She had no reason not to believe her husband. To her knowledge, he had never lied to her before. He had always treated her with dignity, honor, and respect. “I lost my temper.”
“Oh.”
Her sister’s tone was one of horror.
“It was not so bad.”
Ines pursed her lips, looking dubious.
“We argued in the rain and—”
“And then he kissed you!”
Catarina rolled her eyes. Ines was in love with love. She supposed that was why her father had tried to marry the girl when she’d been fourteen. If Catarina hadn’t convinced her sister to run away with her, the girl would have a house full of babies by now, like four of her other sisters did. Perhaps five were married by now as Beatriz was sixteen already. Ines had been the only one of her six sisters who was anything like Catarina, though to be fair Joana had been only six when Catarina had left home and her personality still developing. But like all the others, Joana had shown signs of being shy and obedient and utterly subservient. It was difficult to be otherwise when one’s father was a tyrant who demanded submission and subservience from the women in his household.
Only Ines had shown a spark of rebellion. It wasn’t the stubborn, pig-headed rebellion her father said Catarina possessed. Ines was a dreamer and a romantic. She was also overly idealistic, which in itself did not recommend her to Catarina, except that she was willing to fight for her ideals. When she saw injustice, she challenged it.
Thank the Holy Mother Catarina had been able to spirit the girl away or she would have had her spirit crushed by whatever old man her father chose for Ines’s husband.
Her father hadn’t been able to touch Catarina by then. After twenty years of enduring her father’s control in every aspect of her life—from what she wore to what she ate to when she spoke—she had escaped. She had married and left her father’s house to live with Tia Alda, but after she’d convinced Ines to leave home, she thought it wise to leave her aunt’s house. She’d always wanted to go to Lisbon, and that was where she and Ines had first set up shop.
“He did not kiss me,” Catarina said.
“Oh.” Ines looked disappointed. No doubt she wanted to hear about the kiss in detail. Her favorite story about Colonel Draven was when he’d kissed Catarina after their wedding. Catarina had made the mistake of telling her sister about the kiss and regretted it ever since. She’d made it sound too perfect, too magical, too...everything. Now even she doubted if it could have ever been as wonderful as it was in her memory.
But then again, she’d thought her husband could not possibly be as handsome as she remembered him, and tonight that had proven untrue. If nothing else, he was more attractive to her. He wasn’t handsome, not in the way some of the boys she’d flirted with in her village had been. But he drew her nonetheless. It was more in the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the way she felt when he looked at her.
“I told him I wanted an annulment, and he agreed to come and sign the papers the day after tomorrow.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“But he is supposed to fight for you. He is supposed to save you from Juan Carlos.”
“I do not need saving from Juan Carlos. Marriage to his son will not be so bad.”
Ines’s expression turned stricken. “But all you have worked for will be taken away. You will be his property, and you always said you never wanted to be a man’s property.”
Catarina blew out a breath. She should learn to stop talking so much. “I was foolish to say so. I was already a man’s property.”
“Not really. Senhor Draven made no demands on you. You were free and independent.”
She was forgotten, which was not quite the same thing. “Yes, but those days are over. I have no one to blame but myself.”
“How can you blame yourself? It is not your fault you were attacked!”
“Ines, hush!”
“No one can understand Portuguese here.”
“We cannot be too careful. If you expose me, you do Juan Carlos’s work for him.”
“Good. Then he cannot force you to marry Miguel.”
“I would rather marry his son than dangle on a scaffold.”
“You wouldn’t—”
Ines was interrupted by a knock on the door, which turned out to be the footmen carrying water and a standing tub. Catarina went to the dressing room, as she wore only a blanket, and Ines directed them to place the tub behind a screen and fill it. When they were finished, Catarina discarded the blanket and poured the water over herself, warming her skin and washing away the mud and dirt splashed on her from the rains.
By the time she was in her night rail again, she hoped Ines had fallen asleep. But Ines, as usual, was full of energy. “Tell me how he looked. What did his house look like? What did the woman look like? Or do you not wish to discuss her?”
“I do not wish to discuss any of it,” Catarina said. She was exhausted, having barely slept the night before because she’d been worried about seeing Draven today. And now after seeing him, she didn’t think she’d sleep very well tonight. “I am tired.”
“But you haven’t eaten any supper. I sent for soup and a vegetable tart. It’s waiting on the table.” She indicated a small table in the corner of the room with a plate under a dome on top.
“I will eat tomorrow. I am too tired tonight.”
Ines gave her a look of incredulity. “May I eat it then?”
“Yes.”
And Ines scampered away to have her second dinner of the night. Catarina did not know how the girl stayed so thin when she ate so much. It seemed no matter how many times Catarina skipped a meal, her hips stayed round. But she was honestly not hungry tonight. Her stomach roiled, and she didn’t know if it was because she wouldn’t see Benedict tomorrow or because she would see him the day after.
At some point Tigrino curled up at her feet, and Catarina fell into a light sleep. Her thoughts were fraught with worry. How could she escape Juan Carlos and his son Miguel? How could she keep her business? And what would she say when she saw Benedict again? Finally, she dreamed, her mind returning to its favorite subject—that first, and only, kiss.