It was past six when Matlin and his guest left the offices of the Admiralty. “You may be assured that any official deputation from the Spanish people will be welcomed and attended to,” Lord Musgrave said fulsomely. “Let them apply to me direct, or to Castlereagh, at the War Office. God knows we’ve been looking for the wedge to split Boney’s forces. If you believe your people will cooperate....”
Joaquín bristled. “Cooperate? You are speaking of a country, señor, my homeland. The Spanish know the British for their allies....”
“If they do, it’s more than they did when I was there,” Matlin broke in, hoping to forestall more oratory. Joaquín gave him a look of dislike and lectured on for a moment or two more.
“Well, quite so, quite so; we’ll discuss the whole with your delegation, if and when they appear. Damned Corsican must be stopped, that’s the point.” Musgrave did not give Joaquín the opportunity to begin his lecturing anew; he bade both men a curt good evening and turned away. As an afterthought he added, “Tell your Lady Matlin I send my compliments, Sir Douglas.”
Matlin and Joaquín shared a conscious look as they left the office.
Once out in the street again Matlin stopped abruptly and looked at the other man. “Well, your message is delivered, and you have had the reply you wished for. All your obligations to your people are met, at least for the moment; are they not?”
Joaquín nodded slowly. “You wish satisfaction?”
“Good God, man, you abducted my wife! London is not a backdrop for some damned tragedy, nor am I content to say ‘Heigh-ho, all in a good cause’ and let you go off into the sunset. Have you no family feeling, if no other? The child is your cousin; you scare her half out of her wits, keep her boxed up in that place in Chiswick—Chiswick, for God’s sake!—then are surprised that I want satisfaction?”
Joaquín bristled. “Not everyone is fortunate enough to live in Hill Street, Sir Douglas. As for family feeling—I gave my cousin the chance, the honor to work for her country, her people, and she failed, not once but twice, three times. It was obvious, Sir Douglas, that you did not care a whit what she said; she could not get near enough to you to introduce me as I wished her to do. She might have redeemed her mother’s fault, become part of our family again....”
“Fine family,” Matlin muttered sourly.
“Señor!” With an effort Joaquín calmed himself. “I do not see the need to insult my House. When all is said and done Dorotea is only a woman....”
“Only....” The rage which had simmered off and on all day boiled up in Matlin; he aimed a blow at Joaquín which caught him full on the jaw, a little off center but effective. The Spaniard staggered back a few paces; Matlin stood over him and glared.
Hand to jaw, Joaquín glared back. “That is twice; I must admit I did not realize you cared for my cousin in the least, Sir Douglas. You give very little evidence of it publicly, you know.”
“I don’t think we need discuss my manifold shortcomings as a husband on the steps of Whitehall,” Matlin said tightly. “Do you have someone who will act for you?”
“As a second?” Joaquín admitted sulkily that he had not.
“I’ll see if I can find someone to do so. If that is acceptable, of course. I had rather settle this as soon as possible. Let us go to my club; young Chase is there, he has already agreed to act as my second.”
Joaquín stroked his jaw. “Let us go immediately,” he agreed. “This is a barbarous country,” he added obscurely.
“A barbarous country which will save Spain for you.” Matlin had the last word.
Tony Chase was waiting for them at White’s; he was a little bleary-eyed with ale and lack of sleep.
“You want to duel now? B’God, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of....” He shut up at the sight of the two men’s faces. However irregular the situation might be, they were in earnest, and Chase could hardly blame Matlin. “Who’s to act as Mr. Joaquín—I mean, Señor Ibañez-Blanca’s second?”
“Isn’t there someone here with nothing better to do?” Joaquín waved his hand at the men settled around the gaming room.
“Just ask a stranger? Like that?” Chase was plainly horrified.
“Why not?” Joaquín asked offhandedly. After a moment he excused himself, made his way toward a crowd of men, and entered into their conversation. Not five minutes later he returned to them. “This gentleman has agreed to act for me.”
Chase and Matlin exchanged horrified glances. It was Matlin who spoke first. “Joaquín, do you know who this is? Is this some sort of bad joke?”
“The man offered to stand up for me; I presume one of you will introduce me?”
Chase gave a strangled yelp. “It’s Towles! By God, it’s Towles!” He had the satisfaction of seeing Joaquín’s jaw drop open while Sir Charles Towles surveyed his companions with mild, befuddled amiability.
“Affair of honor,” he drawled after a moment or so. “Attended to several in my day, ask anyone. Didn’t realize you were the other party, of course, Matlin.” He turned with interest to Joaquín. “D’ye mean to kill your man?”
It was Matlin’s turn to smother his reaction. After a moment he turned back to Joaquín. “Are you satisfied with your second?”
“I assure you I did not realize...” the Spaniard began.
“I’m sure you did not,” Matlin agreed. “Well, dammit, let us go if we’re going to do. I’d rather this did not become some damned picnic.” Sir Charles appeared breathtakingly innocent of understanding and lumberingly drew Chase to one side to begin a discussion of weapons and place. To Matlin’s surprise Towles displayed a calm familiarity with protocol which appeared to unnerve Tony Chase somewhat.
“Of all the damned choices to make,” Matlin marveled some minutes later, when he and Chase were in his phaeton and rolling toward the Hempstead Heath and a spot which Towles had described as “a cozy little hollow, just the thing for our business.”
“My God, that gabble-ratchet! That bag-pudding! This will be all over London by the time we’re half way home,” he added bitterly. “That rattle, that slug....”
“Sir Douglas?” Chase ventured.
Matlin raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Are you sure? I mean, do you really mean to kill him?”
“Kill him? I....” Matlin choked. “I don’t want to kill him. Like to knock his damned head off his shoulders for him, but I don’t really want to kill him. He is Thea’s cousin, after all.”
Chase murmured something inaudible.
“Let us go out there, fire off a few shots, go back to White’s, have a brandy. Then I have a deal of business to settle with my wife, if she’ll listen to me.”
“She will, sir. I think.”
“God. I hope you’re right. Where the Devil did Towles say the turn off was?’
The evening light was fading; it took them some time to find Sir Charles’s “cozy hollow.” They found Joaquín and his second waiting there; Joaquín had obviously worked himself into a state of wrath out of all keeping with Matlin’s notion of the duel’s magnitude.
“Are you sure....” Tony started dubiously.
“Good God, man, let us get it over with,” Matlin answered.
The seconds conferred. Since neither party would agree as to which was the injured party— “Dammit, he stole my wife! Don’t you consider that an injury?” Matlin fumed to Chase—they tossed a coin for position and paced out the field.
Finally, Matlin and Joaquín stood back to back. The light was almost gone; the shade of nearby trees threw uncertain black shadows across the field.
“Did you wish to leave a note for my cousin?” Joaquín asked solicitously over his shoulder.
“I intend to go home and to clear everything with her. It is high time I did so.”
“I hope you will convey my apologies to her?”
“Certainly.” Matlin called in answer to Towles’s question: “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Ready,” Joaquín agreed.
Sir Charles gave them instructions in his usual drawl. “You will walk fifteen paces. When I say turn, you turn. When I say fire, you, well, you....”
“Fire,” Matlin finished for him. “Get on with it, for the love of God. I have somewhere else to be.”
With a sigh at this lack of finesse Towles gave the command to mark. Matlin and Joaquín paced forward, stopped, and waited.
“Turn,” Towles drawled. They turned.
For a brief moment, awaiting the command to fire, Matlin wondered if Joaquín meant to kill him. He knew himself for a crack shot, but he found himself curiously loath to kill the other man. It was a question of what Joaquín’s feelings in the matter were. I should have written a note, he thought urgently. Thea....
“Fire!”
Matlin raised his gun, aimed, and fired.
The report was shockingly loud in the evening stillness. A moment behind his own shot, like an echo, he heard the report of Joaquín’s pistol; the shot went no where near him. In the dim light, giddy with relief, Matlin wondered if he saw a stain on Joaquín’s sleeve.
“Are you satisfied?” Towles called to them.
Matlin drew a breath. Had he really been holding his breath since the turn? “God’s sake, yes,” he said hoarsely. Then, as much to distract himself as to amuse the others, he added, “So long as my opponent promises not to abduct my wife hereafter.”
Across the field Joaquín’s voice rose a little thickly. “I promise. After all, I have my introduction. Milord Towles, you have perhaps an extra kerchief?”
Towles lumbered heavily to Joaquín’s side and waved his handkerchief like a pennant. Matlin stood bemused, watching as Chase and Towles bound Joaquín’s arm. When it seemed to be satisfactorily done Chase hurried to Matlin, enthusing like a puppy.
“I never saw anything like it, sir! You were such a cool hand! You winged him! He deloped, you know; he’d as well admit aloud that he was at fault....”
“Of course he was at fault; he kidnapped my wife! In any event, it is over.” Matlin drew a deep sigh and handed his pistol to Chase. “Go tell my opponent and his second that I will stand them a brandy at the nearest creditable posting house. I’m sure Towles will know of one nearby,” he added sardonically.
Joaquín, having suffered Sir Charles’s ministrations for several minutes, at last joined Matlin and Chase; he protested that the wound was nothing, a mere scratch. The four men retired from the field and made for a small inn which Sir Charles had, indeed, suggested.
An hour later and in a state of considerable relaxation, Matlin left his companions and started the drive to London and to Hill Street.
o0o
Bess Chase had spent the whole of the day with Thea and Lady Ocott. There had been a brief note from Tony some time after noon; it informed them that Matlin had taken Joaquín to Whitehall; he had very sensibly said nothing in his note of the possibility of a duel. Excuses went out from Ocott House, pleas of sudden indisposition, and Thea, Lady Ocott, and Bess all begged off their day’s engagements. They settled in to wait, fiddling nervously with ’broidery thread and linen, playing backgammon and killarney; they chatted nervously.
“This is a wretched way to spend an afternoon, and so I shall tell Douglas. Your cousin, too.” Lady Ocott surveyed her parlor with disfavor. “I have come to the conclusion that I shall have to buy new drapes. These are horrid.”
Thea said nothing.
By six o’clock, when the dressing bell was rung, Thea was plainly distracted. Lord Ocott made an appearance for dinner and tried his best to amuse his female audience, but he had little success. Lady Ocott frowned nervously, Bess twisted her napkin and bit her lip, Thea looked miserable.
“Why don’t they come? Or send word. Something!” Dinner, like the rest of the day, stretched to the screaming point, and still there was no word.
At ten that night Bess went home, attended by Lord Ocott, who had appeared again hoping for news. Not until after midnight did Thea, exhausted to the point of spurious calm, give up her vigil and retire to her room. Ellen was waiting; she undressed her, combed out her short curls, and laced her into a pale blue satin negligee which had been Lady Ocott’s gift to her. When the maid had left her, Thea sat, staring at the folds of the satin under her hands, remembering that the gown had been a honeymoon gift. So much, she thought, for that.
Where was he?
She could not sleep; even lying still was impossible. She tried to read, laid the book down, picked it up again and flipped through the pages, and laid it down again. She looked out her window and tried to read the inky darkness of the garden; she wondered. She had been so certain, had wanted so desperately for him to come tonight so that she could apologize, talk to him, tell him everything at last, and at least have no more secrets.
So deep in her distraction was she that Thea did not hear the first tap at her door. At the second knock her heart began a slow, strong pounding in her breast. “Come in.”
Matlin stood in the doorway looking tired and uncertain of his welcome. There were dark circles under his eyes and a deep, frowning crease in his cheek. “I came to see if you were all right.”
“I’m fine.” Thea gathered the folds of her negligee about her shyly. “Please come in.”
His look of uncertainty intensified. “I only came to ask....”
“How I am. That’s what you said. You haven’t told me what happened after I left.” She nodded as he came in and closed the door behind him. “Did my cousin get to speak to Canning?”
“Your cousin,” Matlin said acidly, “spoke to Canning, to Hammond, to Lord Chatham, to Musgrave at the Admiralty, to Castlereagh at the War Office—to everyone, in fact, except the charwoman. Uh, he asked me to convey his apologies to you.”
Thea laughed rustily, feeling a little giddy. “I’ll wager he did! I never in my life met a cooler hand than my cousin Joaquín. I wish Bess Chase joy of him! If Tony ever lets him near her,” she added thoughtfully.
“I think it is more likely that Joaquín will find it is Miss Chase who puts up the objections: she did not take kindly to the fact that he had abducted you.” Matlin’s tone was wry. When she turned to face him she was still smiling; the light from the hearth caught the soft curves of the satin she wore and made her hair a bright glow in the darkness. She did not look in the least like a child of fourteen.
Without thinking, Matlin blurted out, “Dammit, how old are you?”
“What?” Thea looked at him blankly.
It was out, and he had as well know now for good and all. “How old are you?” he asked again, more gently.
“Nineteen. I’m nineteen.” She looked at him curiously. “My birthday passed while we were on that wretched ship back to England.”
Matlin had the feeling that the floor had suddenly dropped several feet beneath him. “You were eighteen when we were married?”
Thea nodded.
He sat heavily on the end of her bed and shook his head. He muttered to himself. “Damn those women,” were the first words Thea could make out. “Do you know they had me believing that you were much younger? Much younger?”
“How much younger?”
“My child bride!” Incredibly, he was laughing. “Thirteen, fourteen years old. That was Mother Beatriz’s guess, and your Silvy just kept murmuring about her niña, her baby.”
“Don’t say anything about Silvy,” Thea began fiercely.
Instantly his laughter was gone. He rose and offered his hand to her. “Thea, I am sorry. Your cousin told me that Doña de Silva died. She was a very good woman.”
“She loved me.” Shyly, Thea took his hand. “And I loved her. She thought I would be happy, anyway. She was where she wanted to be, in Spain. It is funny the difference it makes; I might never have seen her again in the course of things, but to know that I cannot....” She stared into the fire.
“Thea?” Matlin said at last, very gently. “You say Silvy thought you would be happy. Was she so far wrong? I know we’ve made a muddle of it from the start, you and I, but do you think you could be happy with me?”
She looked down at their linked hands. “Could you?”
Carefully, with a sense of great daring, Matlin gathered her into his arms. “I love you; did you know? My aunt and uncle seemed to know it before I did; even Canning was aware of it. I only realized it yesterday. That was why I was at Ranelagh last night, to tell you.” He looked down into her face. “Don’t look so amazed! The only thing that kept me from admitting it before that was that I thought you were a—forgive me, but—a child. Good God, every time I thought of the night we...in the hut when I...well, I thought I had done something unforgiveable. I thought you had to hate me.”
“I was afraid I had done something wrong; you were so cold and sober I thought it had to be my fault. I was so achingly in love with you I didn’t....”
Whatever she had been about to say was forgotten. Matlin tightened his hold and kissed her. The tense excitement Thea had been aware of from the moment of his knock on the door blossomed into a fire somewhere inside of her. She slid her arms around his neck and returned his kiss with all her strength. It was Matlin who broke away first, to stare down at her.
“Lord, how could I ever have thought you a child?” He ran his hand over the smooth satin at her back. “I’ve been castigating myself for taking advantage of you.”
Unsteadily Thea raised herself on tiptoe and kissed him lightly, teasingly. “Idiot.”
“We’ve neither of us been particularly clever, have we? So you don’t mean to leave me to myself, sweetheart? You’ll forgive and forget?”
“Idiot,” she repeated. His mouth came down on hers hard, his hands at her back pressed her tightly against him. For a moment she returned the kiss avidly; her hands twined in his dark hair. Then, abruptly, she broke away, not only from the kiss but from his arms entirely.
“Thea?” Matlin was breathing heavily. “Did I frighten you? Dear heart, I....”
A moment before she had been flushed and smiling. Now Thea was pale, and her mouth trembled in the corners. “It isn’t you. It’s me. I lied to you; you may not want....” She turned her back and walked away nervously and twisted her hands together. “I didn’t mean to say it; it just came out of its own accord. I thought you didn’t want me. Perhaps now you won’t anyway.”
A dozen images passed through Matlin’s head; the first and worst was that of Joaquín, cousin or not, with his wife. It was none of her fault; he was sure of that; he would love her whatever had happened. If I let that Spanish bastard get away with a nick in his arm, if he laid a hand on her.... Aloud he said gently, “Nothing you can say will scare me away after all this trial, little one. What is your dire secret?”
“Douglas, there is no child.”
For a long moment Matlin stared at her uncomprehending. Child? What? Then it came to him. “You are not....”
Stony faced, Thea nodded. “I am not. When you said you wanted to annul the marriage I said the first thing that came into my head, and that was—it. I kept thinking that, if I could only keep you long enough to find out how I had displeased you, you would forgive me; I could make it up to you; you might love me some time.” Then, as if to deny any pathos in her words, Thea laughed a small, awkward laugh. “Idiotic of me, wasn’t it?”
He smiled. “Unconscionably. So there is no child?”
Thea shook her head.
Matlin reached out for her again. “That’s not to say there could not be another time; is it?”
“What?” Thea blushed deep crimson. “No. That’s not to say that at all. With a little effort I suppose there could be a baby. Sometime.”
He had her in his arms again, her yellow curls brushing his chin. “Think of my relief! Sweetheart, you had me believing I would have to call your cousin out.”
“Joaquín? When he isn’t thinking of his everlasting mission for Spain he has eyes for Bess only. I don’t think he even likes me much. You would never do something as stupid as that? Fight a duel over me, would you?”
Thinking of the meeting on the heath hours before, Matlin shook his head lightly. “Of course not, but I cannot admire his taste, your cousin. Miss Chase is a very pretty girl.” He bent his head and kissed her lightly. “But she cannot compare to a diamond like my wife.”
“Or Lady Towles?” Thea suggested.
He held her away from him for a moment and scowled fiercely. “I will make a pact with you: I will acquit you of your cousin if you will acquit me of Adele Towles. I have had enough to do with that entire family to last me well into another lifetime. My taste has improved since I met my wife. I thought Chase had explained the whole of that mess to you.”
“He did, and Douglas, I am so ashamed of what I said to you this morning.”
He laid a finger over her lips.. “Hush. It is all forgotten. Everything that was misunderstood between us is all forgotten. Now, it’s late. You will want your sleep.” He smiled into her upturned face. “In the morning....”
“Matlin, you aren’t planning on leaving me alone, are you?” A deep blush rose in her cheeks, but she held her ground; she felt at once shameless and daring and quite comfortable with him: he was as flushed as she.
“Thea,” he began. “Dear love, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t want to—I had meant to court you a little. I don’t want to take advantage....”
“Then you’re more honorable than I am,” Thea said tartly. “You make me feel as if there were something wrong with me for wanting you.”
“Perish the thought,” he said unsteadily. “You don’t know....”
“I have some idea,” she reminded him. “Here I am, being as forward as I know how to be, Douglas Matlin; the least you could do is to kiss me again.”
Absently he ran one hand along her spine; the other was tangled in her hair, and was twisting the curls. With difficulty he said, “I still have the feeling I would be ravishing a child.”
“You forget.” Thea moved closer to him and put her arms about his neck; she drew his face close to hers. “I’ve been ravished before, in a hut in the Spanish hills. I liked it.”
“Did you?” When at last he raised his head Matlin smiled a small, quirky smile. “I am a very lucky man. How could I have failed to notice before?”
Thea smiled at him lovingly. “Just so you don’t fail to notice it again!”
He picked her up, cradled her against his chest, and kissed her throat, her shoulder. “Oh, I won’t fail this time,” he breathed. “No fear of that.”