His Spanish Bride by Teresa Grant Page A

man disappeared into the house directly across.” She jerked her head toward a pale blue stucco house with wrought-iron balconies, smaller than the embassy but still handsome. Good God. Wasn’t that—“I was there Thursday night,” Suzanne said, confirming his suspicions. “So were you. It’s been hired by Captain Haddon.”
    When would he learn to expect the unexpected? Malcolm let out a low whistle. “So Linford’s best friend is blackmailing him.”
    “For a record of his amorous conquests.”
    “Most of which presumably Linford has bragged to him about.” Malcolm pictured the two men, laughing together over glasses of brandy in a cloud of cigar smoke. “Unless Haddon suspects there’s a woman listed in the book whom Linford wouldn’t have told him about.”
    “You think Linford had an affair with Mrs. Haddon?” Suzanne asked.
    Malcolm recalled his exchange with Haddon at the embassy only a short time before. “I talked to Haddon earlier this evening. He mentioned unfaithful wives, as it happens. I didn’t have the sense he was talking about his own. But in light of this—”
    “It’s quite a betrayal. Not so much Charlotte Haddon’s infidelity, but Linford betraying his friend.”
    “Yes, I’d have thought Linford would keep his hands off his best friend’s wife, but I was probably doing Linford too much credit. Haddon’s the sort whose lack of fidelity wouldn’t make him at all a complacent husband.”
    “In which case instead of a duel between a British officer and a Spaniard, two of Wellington’s officers could be dueling.”
    “Not quite as disruptive but nearly as bad. And I wouldn’t wish discovery on Charlotte Haddon. She’s been through enough as it is.”
    “Do you think the cloaked man was Captain Haddon himself ?”
    Malcolm sifted through remembered details of the man in the garden. “It might have been. The height was right. And there was a touch of the north country in his voice, which Haddon also has. Of course it was also possible Haddon employed an agent for the rendezvous.” Malcolm looked down into his betrothed’s bright, intent gaze. For the past several minutes he’d been speaking to her as a fellow agent, not his fiancée. And his qualms and concerns about their betrothal had vanished in the face of the shared task. “I haven’t thanked you. I couldn’t have done this alone.”
    “You have no idea what it means to be able to do something. Not to sit on the sidelines.”
    “On the contrary. I know better than you think.” It was what he had done himself after his mother’s death, going off to the Peninsula and losing himself in his work.
    He saw questions flicker through her gaze, but instead of voicing them she said, “You’ll talk to Linford?”
    “He’s off to Villa Franca with a dispatch. He’ll be back Monday.”
    “So you can talk to him at our wedding.”
    In three days’ time. Dear God in heaven. “Quite.”

5
    T he air in the embassy sitting room was close and heavy, thick with the heat of the fire in the grate. The English were accused of keeping their rooms drafty, but with the windows shut tight against the cold the thick heat and puffs of smoke choked the air. Outside the windows the sky was gray and drops of rain spattered against the glass. The looped-back curtains were red velvet, the furniture solid English oak. One noticed such details as one waited for the company to assemble, moments before taking one’s wedding vows.
    “You make a very lovely bride, my dear.” Sir Charles Stuart, who was to give her away, came up beside her.
    “You always know just what to say, sir.” Suzanne had chosen a gown of rose-colored sarcenet edged with white lace at neck and sleeves, part of the new wardrobe Malcolm had purchased for her when he brought her to Lisbon, to augment the few things she had been carrying in her supposed flight from the French. He had been remarkably patient waiting at the modiste’s, though he had seemed as out of