His Spanish Bride by Teresa Grant Page B

place there as he was in this marriage. Suzanne had draped a white lace mantilla over her head and shoulders. The color of purity and innocence. An irony lost on this company. The pearl comb in her hair had in fact been her mother’s. Suzanne had hesitated to wear it, as though it would be somehow dignifying the wedding as more than it was, but at the last minute she had grabbed it and stuck it into her hair, aware of a shrewd look from Blanca.
    “It’s a great pity your parents aren’t here to see this day,” Stuart murmured, his voice unwontedly serious. “I’m sure they would be very proud.”
    Their images flashed into her mind, breaking through the wall she usually kept up against her memories. Maman, bending over the crib in a cloud of dark ringlets and spicy scent. At her dressing table mirror surrounded by candlelight. Viewed onstage from the wings. Waxy pale as she lay on her deathbed after the birth of Suzanne’s little sister. Frozen in death when they put her in her coffin. Papa, his face alight with laughter from below when he tossed her in the air. Features stamped with the grief at Maman’s graveside. Bending over a book with Suzanne on his lap. His concise voice giving her stage directions as Jessica or Juliet. Sprawled on a tiled floor, his head shattered by a bullet.
    If they could see her now, would they even recognize the woman she’d become?
    “Thank you,” she said. “It’s comforting to think so.” Though in truth she knew neither of her parents would approve of this marriage. But then neither of them could have conceived of this world she had entered into.
    “I have no doubt of it.” Stuart’s smile was affectionate. For all his womanizing reputation, he was a kind man and remarkably thoughtful. The antithesis of Edward Linford.
    She had to think of the present and future, not the past. That way lay madness. Why should the absence of her parents matter at a marriage that didn’t mean anything in any case? Yet part of the success of carrying off a role, as an agent as well as an actor, was finding the core of oneself in the part and incorporating details of one’s own life.
    Malcolm was across the room speaking with the chaplain. He wore a light blue coat, biscuit-colored breeches, silver-buckled shoes. A typical English gentleman. He came from a world that represented everything she was fighting against. She should hang on to that.
    His gaze met hers and his mouth lifted in a smile. She returned the smile. How absurd, with all the lies between them, to feel that they shared a secret the others in the room could not know.
    Lord Wellington walked up and clapped Malcolm on the shoulder. For an instant, she glimpsed the raw tension in Malcolm’s face. A band clamped round her chest. Dear God, what she was doing to him—
    Malcolm and Wellington crossed to join her and Stuart.
    “Mrs. Gordon’s been saying it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding,” Wellington said. “Lot of superstitious nonsense. Glad you don’t pay heed to it.”
    Malcolm took her hand. “No second thoughts?” he asked in a lowered voice.
    “None.” That much was true. She’d made her decision for better or worse. “But I’d understand if you’re having them.”
    “No.” The single word was more heartfelt reassurance than the most fulsome declaration.
    They took their places before the polished oak table that stood in for an altar. Geoffrey Blackwell stood up with Malcolm, a brisk, reassuring, unromantic presence. Malcolm’s fellow attachés, Thomas Belmont and Fitzwilliam Vaughn, were present along with Fitzroy Somerset and a handful of other diplomatic and military personnel. Enough to give the feel of a wedding rather than a business transaction. William and Charlotte Haddon sat side by side without so much as the flounce of her muslin skirt brushing his Hessian boots. Haddon’s gaze kept straying to one of his fellow officers’ wives whose gown was cut low and worn