Margarita and the Earl Page 3

  Mr. Francis Sheridan, the earl’s lawyer, did nothing to put his mind at rest. After shaking hands and accepting a Madeira, he said, “Miss Carreño is still here, is she not, my lord?”

  Nicholas still found the new title startling, but now he hardly noticed it. “Yes. She took a severe blow on the head during the accident. I haven’t seen much of her, but she appears to be recovered.”

  “Good.” Mr. Sheridan studiously avoided Nicholas’s eyes. “I think she should be present for the reading of your uncle’s will,” he said quietly.

  There was a pause, then Nicholas answered bleakly, “I see. I’ll have her sent for.”

  When Margarita entered the room ten minutes later the two men were standing by the fire, staring down into the flames. There was silence in the room, and they both turned as the door opened and she came in, followed by Lady Moreton. Her cousin offered her a chair, and as she seated herself Mr. Sheridan looked curiously at the girl whose arrival had caused such consternation in the Beauchamp family circle. He saw a small face with skin the color of warm ivory. Her eyes were enormous, brown, and set slightly slantwise under dark, level brows. The nose was small and straight, the mouth surprisingly wide and full. She was lovely, he thought, and very young. “Thank you for coming down, Miss Carreño,” he said. “I am about to read your grandfather’s will, and as it concerns you, it will be best if you are present.”

  The grave, dark eyes widened a little in surprise. “Concerns me?” she asked. Her voice was very low, but clear and unaccented.

  “Shall I go?” asked Lady Moreton.

  “You may as well stay, Lucy,” Nicholas said tautly. “The contents will hardly remain a secret for long.” He gestured toward Mr. Sheridan. “Get on with it, then.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the lawyer replied calmly, and he took up the papers he had spread out on the desk.

  Chapter Four

  “My scheme was worth attempting: and bears fruit,

  Gives you a husband and a noble name,

  A palace and no end of pleasant things.”

  —Robert Browning

  Fifteen minutes later he was still reading. The minor details, the bequests to old retainers, had all been taken care of. Mr. Sheridan cleared his throat and said quietly, “This next is what you will be interested in, my lord. ‘I give devise and bequeath my entire art collection, the catalogue of which is attached to this document, to my nephew Nicholas Alexander George Beauchamp.’” There was a movement by the fireplace, and Mr. Sheridan looked up to meet Nicholas’s suddenly brilliant eyes. “There is a condition, my lord. Your uncle added it only a month ago.”

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “And what is the condition, Mr. Sheridan?”

  The lawyer looked back at the document. “‘This bequest is made on the condition that the said Nicholas Alexander George Beauchamp marry my granddaughter Margarita Josefina Theresa Carreño within two weeks of the reading of this will.’”

  “What!” It was Lady Moreton’s voice. “You must be joking. Even Lord Winslow would not be as absurdly autocratic as that.”

  Mr. Sheridan was looking at the new earl. Nicholas’s nostrils were pinched and there was a white line around his mouth. He gave a bitter little laugh. “On the contrary, it is exactly like him.”

  “I tried to convince him to change his mind, my lord. There is more than enough to provide for the both of you without necessitating this—arrangement, But you know how he was.” The lawyer sighed. “If you don’t agree to the condition, the collection is to go to the state.”

  “The will is legal?” asked Nicholas.

  “It is legal, my lord.”

  There was silence as three pairs of eyes turned, as of one accord, to the small figure sitting so silently in the large armchair. Margarita’s face, still and shuttered, gave away nothing. The lawyer thought suddenly that no girl of seventeen ought to be able to look like that. She turned her eyes toward Nicholas. “Do you need the collection?” she asked simply.

  His mouth set in a hard, unpleasant line. “I need the collection. Winslow has been bled dry.” His eyes, gray-green as a forest pond on a cloudy day, were steady on her face. “It appears it will be up to you, Cousin, whether I get it or not.”

  “You would be willing, then, to marry me?” Her low, clear, precise voice expressed nothing but polite interest.

  A muscle jumped in Nicholas’s jaw. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

  “I see.” She rose to her feet and said, with a lovely dignity, “I shall have to think about this. May I let you know my answer tomorrow?”

  She had spoken to the lawyer and he nodded hastily. “Of course, Miss Carreño.”

  She nodded to him gravely and walked to the door, which Nicholas was holding for her. She stopped for a moment and looked up at him, a long, clear look. “I will tell you tomorrow,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” he said evenly. “I heard you.”

  Lady Moreton stood silently watching them. She thought Margarita looked very small and helpless next to Nicholas’s great height. The top of her head did not quite come to his shoulder. But the slim back was as straight as a ramrod, the head held proudly on its long slender neck. She passed out of the room with the grace and dignity one usually saw only in older women. Lady Moreton waited until the door was closed to ask Nicholas, “Would you really marry that child?”

  “I don’t have any choice, do I, Lucy? Nor does she, really, as I hope you will make clear to her. I may need that damn collection but so does she. Unless she brought money with her from South America?” Lady Moreton shook her head and he shrugged. “She has nothing, then. If she marries me, she will have money and position and a permanent home. Make her understand that, will you?”

  Lady Moreton stood for a minute looking at the face of her younger cousin. It was a startlingly handsome face, with unusual gray-green eyes that were cool and deep and hard to see into. His brows and lashes were brown as was his thick, straight hair. That hair was the only boyish thing about Nicholas. His nose was high-bridged and imperious, his mouth beautifully shaped but with a look of ruthlessness about it that was very evident at the moment. He looked at present just what he was, a very intimidating young man in a temper. “Why on earth did he do it?” Lady Moreton asked him slowly.

  He smiled. “He wanted his granddaughter here at Winslow,” he said. “He always regarded me as an interloper.”

  His voice was perfectly pleasant, but Lady More-ton found herself saying hurriedly, “That’s not true, Nicholas.”

  He shrugged. “Why he did it is not of importance at the moment, Lucy.”

  “No, I suppose not.” She walked to the door. “I’ll speak to Margarita.”

  *

  What Lady Moreton had to say was little more than what Margarita had deduced for herself. Lady Moreton’s representations were only echoes of Margarita’s own Spanish logic, her impregnable sense of what she called la realidad. She had no choice. She must marry Nicholas Beauchamp.

  What she didn’t say to Lady Moreton, what she would never admit to anyone, was that she was afraid of him. He did not want her, of that she was certain. And he was too big, too forceful. Life would never be too much for him. His kind of tough competence would deal with anything—even her. He was dealing with her already, as Lady Moreton’s visit demonstrated. And she did not want to be dealt with. She wanted to be left alone. But she had to live somewhere. That was la realidad. And he needed the art collection. The following morning, she told Nicholas Beauchamp that she would marry him.

  *

  It was not a happy wedding. At Margarita’s insistence it was performed by a Catholic priest. Lady Moreton had been slightly shocked, but Nicholas had not cared.

  They were married in the late afternoon with Lady Moreton and Sir Henry Hopkins acting as witnesses. Sir Henry was the owner of Twinings, a lovely Elizabethan manor not far from Winslow. He and his wife and Lady Moreton sat down to dinner with the newly married pair, a dinner that was not as awkward as it might have be
en under the circumstances. Margarita had the rigid Spanish sense of etiquette, and as hostess she rigorously subdued her own very real apprehensions and concentrated on her guests.

  Those guests had the tact to leave early, and Lady Moreton too excused herself. She felt a pang of pity as she left Margarita alone in the drawing room with Nicholas, but there was nothing she could do to help the child now.

  The two remained in silence for a full minute, then Margarita, seated in a wing chair by the fire, raised her eyes to where he stood by the chimney piece. “What do you want me to do?” she asked simply.

  He looked at her for a moment before he answered, his eyes inscrutable. “Your things have been moved to the yellow room,” he said, referring to the bedroom that adjoined the earl’s, which was now his own. “Go upstairs and get into bed and wait for me.”

  Nicholas stayed where he was, his eyes on the empty door. He was angry about this marriage, and although he knew his anger should not be directed toward Margarita, he could not help some of it spilling over onto her. It was not that Nicholas had ever cherished romantic notions about marriage. He was himself the product of a notably unsuccessful union, and the breakup of his parents’ marriage had left scars that were still not healed over. His father, a dashing twenty-eight-year-old naval hero, had married Charlotte Holt, a seventeen-year-old heiress whose family was of the city not the country. He had brought her to Winslow, got her with child, and gone back to sea. He appeared again from time to time, when he needed money to furnish a new ship, but for the most part Charlotte had been left to the companionship of Christopher’s elder brother, the earl, and his unbending, censorious wife.

  She stuck it out for eleven years and then, having fallen deeply in love with the gentle, scholarly John Hamilton, she eloped with him. Two years later, after Christopher’s death at the Battle of the Nile, they married.

  Nicholas was devastated by his mother’s elopement. All through his childhood she had been the sun around which his life revolved. He had loved her with the fierce devotion only a child can give. The letter she left him he did not understand. He only knew that she had deserted him, and he had been left with emotions of bitterness, pain, and heart-scalding hurt.

  He never allowed himself to trust a woman again. He accepted the fact that he must marry some day, but he was not yet prepared to have anyone in so intimate a relationship with him that she could by rights push herself into his own fenced and guarded world. He was furious with his uncle for forcing this girl on him, and he was, unfairly, furious at Margarita as well.

  He glanced at the clock on the table, put down the poker he had been holding, and walked with his distinctive, catlike stride to the door.

  *

  For Margarita too, it was the wrong time for marriage. The brutality of the last year had battered and drained her until every physical feeling in her was dead. Even had she been going to a man she loved, she would not have been able to respond. The wellspring of feeling in her had dried up.

  The only emotion she felt, as she watched the door open and Nicholas come in, was fear. Like all Venezuelan girls she had been very strictly reared, very carefully sheltered from any sexual knowledge at all. In her mind now were all the terrifying stories she had heard this last year, of the llaneros and the unspeakable things they did to Creole women. She didn’t know what those things were, but she knew her brother Fernando had said he would kill her before he let her fall into the hands of the llaneros.

  And now here was Nicholas, terrifyingly large, alone with her in her bedroom. He was her husband, she told herself sternly, staring at him with huge, black eyes. She must do what he wished.

  For the first time Nicholas was really looking at Margarita as a woman, not as a potential rival. Her hair was loose and hung over her shoulders in a shining, silken fall. It was warm brown, Beauchamp hair, the same color as his own, he noticed with a little surprise. She was sitting up against the pillows, her dark eyes fixed steadily on him, her face carefully guarded and very still. She wore a long-sleeved nightgown that was buttoned up to her chin.

  He came across the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed. Amusement gleamed in the gray-green of his eyes. “You won’t need that, sweetheart,” he said and reached out to unbutton her gown. She said breathlessly, “I’ll do it,” and continued the task with hands that were not quite steady. When she had finished, she looked up at him. He raised his brows a little, and without speaking, she pulled the gown over her head.

  Nicholas’s eyes widened as he regarded the delicate beauty of his wife. He reached out almost tentatively to touch the small, fragile bones at the base of her throat, then moved his hand slowly down her shoulder to her breast. Her skin was like silk. He felt her shiver and looked into her eyes and said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Margarita, but if this is the first time for you, it is bound to be a little painful. Is it?” Mutely she nodded in reply, and he slipped off his dressing gown and got into bed beside her. “Relax, sweetheart,” he said. “It won’t be so bad, really.”

  But Margarita could not relax. It took all her determination to force herself to remain passive in his arms, not to push him away. And, finally, when she realized what it was he wanted of her, to maintain a proud and desperate silence.

  Chapter Five

  “Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall.”

  —Matthew Arnold

  Lady Moreton left the next day for her own home in Sussex. She had gleaned nothing from Margarita’s face about how the wedding night had been and since she knew Nicholas’s reputation with women, she assumed it had gone all right.

  “God knows there’s enough here at Winslow to keep you occupied for a while,” Lady Moreton said briskly as she prepared to depart. “Nothing has been done to the house for at least forty years. It needs painting and new draperies and upholstery. Don’t let Nicholas spend all the money on the property, my dear. I’ve spoken to Mrs. Gage, and she will be happy to take you around the house whenever you desire.”

  “Thank you, my lady. I hope you will have a safe journey home.”

  “I hope so, too, my dear.” Lady Moreton hesitated, looked at the delicate, straight-browed faunlike face in front of her, then said, “Remember, my dear, you always have a friend in me.”

  Margarita’s face broke for a moment into its rare smile. “You have been so good to me. Thank you.”

  She watched in silence as Lady Moreton was assisted into the waiting carriage, then turned and went back into the house. Mrs. Gage, the housekeeper, was waiting for her. “I shall be happy to show you over the house any time, my lady,” the broad, ruddy-faced woman said cheerfully.

  Margarita had no intention of taking Lady More-ton’s advice. She knew very well how to run a large country house; her father had owned two of them as well as a plantation at San Pedro. But she thought she also knew how her attempts to take up the reins at Winslow would be regarded by Nicholas. She was an outsider, an intruder, foisted upon him against his will. Nor had she any sense of the “coming home” her grandfather had predicted. “Home” was a lovely, warm, colorful country thousands of miles away from England. She would stay here because she had to stay somewhere, but she was an alien and she knew it. She had resolved last night, after Nicholas left her, that she would keep as much out of his way as possible. Perhaps, after a while, he would simply leave her alone.

  She looked now at the housekeeper’s expectant face and realized she would at least have to let herself be shown over the house. They started immediately, and almost despite herself, Margarita found herself interested in Mrs. Gage’s narrative. Winslow was so old. The two main wings of the house dated from the Jacobean era, but the architect had built them to connect the Great Hall to the two formidable towers, all of which dated from the reign of Edward III in the fourteenth century.

  “The Great Hall was the main living part of the castle,” Mrs. Gage explained to this stranger from South America. “During the Middle Ages the household would gather here to talk and to work and t
o eat.” Margarita looked with interest around the enormous oak-ceilinged room. “The staircase was originally stone, but when Lord Thomas Beauchamp had the house rebuilt in the seventeenth century, he replaced the staircase with the painted wooden one you see today. It is supposedly one of the finest Jacobean staircases in the country.”

  “It is very lovely,” Margarita murmured obediently.

  Upstairs was a room that was originally Edward Beauchamp’s great chamber, his personal bedroom. It had been converted into a state drawing room by the Jacobean builder, and Margarita privately thought that it looked as if no one had touched it since.

  The North Wing of the house contained the state rooms and ended with the Donnington Tower, a fortification built by Edward Beauchamp, who had been, so Mrs. Gage informed Margarita, one of Edward III’s most distinguished generals. Margarita was most impressed by the long gallery on the first floor. It was a beautifully paneled room whose walls were hung with portraits of the Beauchamp family. The furniture was all arranged along the walls. “The purpose of the gallery was to allow space for walking up and down on a cold or wet day,” Mrs. Gage informed Margarita. Margarita thought that the gallery most probably got a great deal of use, as it seemed to her to always be cold or wet, or both, in England.

  The North Wing also contained a black and white marble-floored room that was used as a dining room, a large, formal drawing room, and a “royal suite” that was intended to accommodate visiting royalty. All of the rooms had magnificent carved oak chimney pieces and molded wood ceilings, but the furnishings did look rather threadbare.

  The South Wing was the area of the house Margarita was familiar with. It stretched from the Great Hall to the Lores Tower, which had been built by Edward Beauchamp’s son, Guy. The rooms in this wing were smaller and more intimate, planned as a series of small suites with each room carefully proportioned to the next. Here were the family bedrooms, several sitting rooms, a smaller dining room, and the library. Now that she was looking more closely, Margarita noticed for the first time that much of the draperies and the fabrics on chairs were faded and the furniture arrangement was not particularly comfortable.