The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins

Thea had made herself flippant and
teasing, trying to hide an embarrassing urge to subside into worshipful
silence. He was handsome; he was the very figure of romance; it was no wonder.
But she had never thought to have her feelings returned, if indeed they were returned.
    How did he feel about her? To marry her, the impatient
nurse, the teasing schoolroom chit. How did he see her; she wondered now. Like
a schoolgirl? Even Matlin called her child, as everyone else in the convent
did: niña, hija, child, daughter. She kicked a clod of dirt and watched
it powder into dust. “He can’t be in love with me,” she said
aloud, “but he might be someday.”
    That tiny shred of hope was comforting, exhilarating. He
might marry her out of kindness now, but perhaps he would come to love her in
time. Once they were married there would be all the time in the world. “I’ll
make him,” she said.
    For an hour, until the bells rang for None, she paced
unseeingly, thinking of her marriage. When she turned back to the convent her
mind was more at ease, but the hem of her robe was impossibly muddied and her
nose was burnt quite scarlet.
    o0o
    “You may travel at the end of the week,” Sister
Juan Evangelista pronounced. To Matlin’s exquisite relief, she had not
read him a lecture on taking care of Dorothea Cannowen; she had been
refreshingly matter of fact as she took his pulse and examined his wound.
“You must be careful not to overexert yourself, Señor. The infection is
cleared now, but you sustained a bad blow to your head when you were injured.”
    “Shot.” Matlin grimaced. “I still have
headaches from the damned thing—pardon, Sister. Anyway, we could perhaps
leave after Mass on Sunday.”
    “I think your health will permit it, yes. Señor, you
are really taking Señorita Cannowen?”
    He had relaxed too soon, Matlin thought grimly, and agreed
that yes, he was taking Thea with him. “I’ve given my word.”
    To be honest, since the moment he had done so that morning
he had been plagued by moments of lucid dismay so powerful he was tempted to
skulk off in the night and beg the question of the marriage and the journey
altogether. Only the memory of Thea’s face, pleading eyes that belied her
determinedly disciplined expression, stopped him from escaping.
    “We think well of the girl here, Señor, for all that
she can be heedless. She did an excellent job of nursing you and her duenna,
both. You will take care of her.”
    “Sister, I swear....”
    “Of course you do,” Sister Juan agreed, unperturbed.
“So now it is for Mother to arrange the marriage. Don’t concern
yourself over that, Señor. Mother can arrange anything.”
    Matlin reflected that she doubtless could. In the next week,
as he sat in the sunny warmth of the courtyard playing two-handed whist with
his betrothed or chatted idly with Manuel, he was treated to bits and pieces of
the wedding preparation. The Sister’s own chaplain would marry them;
Mother Beatriz had managed to allay the priest’s concerns about the
hurried marriage. “The girl is no better church-woman than you yourself,
Señor,” the Superior confided dubiously, “but at least it is not
the marriage of a devout woman to a....” she paused delicately.
    “A heathen?” Matlin suggested dryly. They smiled
at each other. He had grown fond of the Sisters, and particularly of their
Superior; he admired the effective mixture of piety and hardheaded practicality
with which she ran the convent. Mother Beatriz and Sister Juan, even old Sister
Ana, who could be teased until she shook her quivering chins in reproach, had
made his fortnight in their gate cottage a time of peace for him, and he was
grateful to them and to Thea, too, of course, with her charming, vaguely
disturbing presence.
    It was settled that the wedding would take place directly
after Mass on Sunday. There would be a sort of wedding breakfast afterward; the
nuns, it seemed, had their hearts set on some sort of festivity