Read Online The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer - Free Book Online
Authors: Georgette Heyer
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into an officer’s tent? By God, they will not!’
She seemed to be doubtful; to set her mind at rest, he called up his private groom, a stolidly respectable person who inspired even a nervous Spanish lady with confidence, and laid on him strict orders to keep his guests’ privacy inviolate.
‘Yessir,’ said English West woodenly, betraying no surprise. He took a look at the elder lady, and decided that there was nothing in it; he looked at Juana, all her alarms now ended, sitting on the edge of Harry’s bed, like an inquisitive robin, and encountered a shy smile that reminded him of an urchin detected in crime. He was visibly shaken, and retired with his head in a whirl.
Despairing of getting Harry to listen to reason, James Stewart, seeing in the marriage the ruin of his friend’s career, suggested desperately that it was not fair to pitchfork so young a girl into matrimony. Speaking to her in halting Spanish (for he could never achieve any fluency in a foreign tongue), he tried to ask her what her real wishes were, at the same time assuring her of protection in the camp.
She caught at his meaning, and smiled happily. ‘Please, I will marry Enrique,’ she said. She was quite sure, neither bashful nor coquettish. Life in the tail of an army held no terrors for her. She liked soldiers, she told Jack Molloy sunnily. Her own brother had been a soldier. Dead now, of course: killed by the French. Jack, seizing the opportunity afforded by Harry’s temporary absence, tried hard to paint for the little Spanish lady a true picture of the privations and the dangers ahead of her if she became Harry’s wife. She listened to him politely, encouraging his stumbling Spanish, occasionally supplying him with an elusive word, but she did not seem to be in the least impressed by what he said. When he described the discomforts of travelling in the rear of the army, all amongst the cumbrous baggage-train, and surrounded by camp-followers, perhaps not setting eyes on Harry for days together, she looked wise, and said with considerable decision that she thought better, perhaps, not to travel in the rear of the army
‘Much better!’ Molloy assured her. ‘You see, you did not entirely realize, señorita, what such a life would mean to a delicate female.’
‘It is very true. Besides, if I could not see my Enrique for days together I should not like it,’ said Juana.
‘How should you, indeed? And for him, consider the anxiety of being separated from you, not knowing how you fared, and unable to go to you!’
‘Yes, that is so,’ she agreed. ‘It is a very good thing that you have told me all this, for I am quite ignorant, though not, I think, stupid. I shall not go to the rear. It is not at all what I wish. I shall stay beside Enrique.”
She seemed to think that she had discovered the obvious solution to any possible difficulty in the way of her marriage. Molloy felt rather helpless. He tried to tell her that what she suggested was quite unheard of, but faltered under her candid, trustful look of inquiry, and muttered: ‘Oh, the devil!’
‘The worst of it is that she’s such a dear little soul—really, an angelic creature, Charlie!—that it makes it hellish hard to tell her the brutal truth,’ he told Eeles later. ‘Dash it, there she sits, not a bit shy, and with no more knowledge of what’s ahead of her than a baby!’ ‘Well, why couldn’t you tell her?’ demanded Eeles irritably. ‘That’s what you went to do, isn’t it?’
‘I did try. But she’s got a way of looking at one that makes it impossible for a man to go on. She says she shall stay beside Harry.’
‘Then poor Harry’s lost!’ said Eeles. ‘He, who used to be the example of a duty-officer! Damn it, he must listen to reason!’
‘Well, he won’t. He’s quite mad, and is gone off to find a decent woman to be the girl’s servant.’
‘Barnard must speak to him, then!’
‘No use. By what Kincaid tells me, the girl’s family is
She seemed to be doubtful; to set her mind at rest, he called up his private groom, a stolidly respectable person who inspired even a nervous Spanish lady with confidence, and laid on him strict orders to keep his guests’ privacy inviolate.
‘Yessir,’ said English West woodenly, betraying no surprise. He took a look at the elder lady, and decided that there was nothing in it; he looked at Juana, all her alarms now ended, sitting on the edge of Harry’s bed, like an inquisitive robin, and encountered a shy smile that reminded him of an urchin detected in crime. He was visibly shaken, and retired with his head in a whirl.
Despairing of getting Harry to listen to reason, James Stewart, seeing in the marriage the ruin of his friend’s career, suggested desperately that it was not fair to pitchfork so young a girl into matrimony. Speaking to her in halting Spanish (for he could never achieve any fluency in a foreign tongue), he tried to ask her what her real wishes were, at the same time assuring her of protection in the camp.
She caught at his meaning, and smiled happily. ‘Please, I will marry Enrique,’ she said. She was quite sure, neither bashful nor coquettish. Life in the tail of an army held no terrors for her. She liked soldiers, she told Jack Molloy sunnily. Her own brother had been a soldier. Dead now, of course: killed by the French. Jack, seizing the opportunity afforded by Harry’s temporary absence, tried hard to paint for the little Spanish lady a true picture of the privations and the dangers ahead of her if she became Harry’s wife. She listened to him politely, encouraging his stumbling Spanish, occasionally supplying him with an elusive word, but she did not seem to be in the least impressed by what he said. When he described the discomforts of travelling in the rear of the army, all amongst the cumbrous baggage-train, and surrounded by camp-followers, perhaps not setting eyes on Harry for days together, she looked wise, and said with considerable decision that she thought better, perhaps, not to travel in the rear of the army
‘Much better!’ Molloy assured her. ‘You see, you did not entirely realize, señorita, what such a life would mean to a delicate female.’
‘It is very true. Besides, if I could not see my Enrique for days together I should not like it,’ said Juana.
‘How should you, indeed? And for him, consider the anxiety of being separated from you, not knowing how you fared, and unable to go to you!’
‘Yes, that is so,’ she agreed. ‘It is a very good thing that you have told me all this, for I am quite ignorant, though not, I think, stupid. I shall not go to the rear. It is not at all what I wish. I shall stay beside Enrique.”
She seemed to think that she had discovered the obvious solution to any possible difficulty in the way of her marriage. Molloy felt rather helpless. He tried to tell her that what she suggested was quite unheard of, but faltered under her candid, trustful look of inquiry, and muttered: ‘Oh, the devil!’
‘The worst of it is that she’s such a dear little soul—really, an angelic creature, Charlie!—that it makes it hellish hard to tell her the brutal truth,’ he told Eeles later. ‘Dash it, there she sits, not a bit shy, and with no more knowledge of what’s ahead of her than a baby!’ ‘Well, why couldn’t you tell her?’ demanded Eeles irritably. ‘That’s what you went to do, isn’t it?’
‘I did try. But she’s got a way of looking at one that makes it impossible for a man to go on. She says she shall stay beside Harry.’
‘Then poor Harry’s lost!’ said Eeles. ‘He, who used to be the example of a duty-officer! Damn it, he must listen to reason!’
‘Well, he won’t. He’s quite mad, and is gone off to find a decent woman to be the girl’s servant.’
‘Barnard must speak to him, then!’
‘No use. By what Kincaid tells me, the girl’s family is
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