Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

General Ross thought that his new Staff-officer looked rather fine-drawn; he hoped he was not ill?

‘Not a bit, sir! I’m never ill,’ said Harry briskly.

‘Good!’ said Ross. ‘I’ve heard a great deal about you from Colonel Colborne.’ He added, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘I understand you’ll take the command out of my hands, if I’m not careful.’

‘Oh, that’s too bad, sir!’ protested Harry, blushing. ‘At least I never did so with dear Colborne!’

‘Ah, we know what you Sweeps are!’ murmured Tom Falls.

Harry laughed, and began to think that he would go on very well with his new General, and his Staff.

Soon after Ross’s coming aboard, the Royal Oak weighed anchor, and stood out to sea. Harry remained motionless on deck, watching the coast of France dwindle in the distance, until nothing but the line of the horizon could any longer be seen.

Juana’s first sight of London was by lamplight. Parting from her friends on board the convoy at Portsmouth, she had spent an hour or two at the George Inn, while Tom saw Tiny, and Old Chap, and all the greyhounds ashore, and arranged with Digby’s servant for their conveyance to Whittlesey. Tom was in tearing spirits, quite forgetting the pain in his knee in his delight at being in England again. He was not an exile of such long standing as Harry, who had not been in England for five years, but his last visit, in 1810, after the battle of the Coa, had been made in such unpleasant circumstances that it seemed as though it hardly counted. He had been carried off the ship then, suffering the most dreadful agony, and had been so ill that the noise and bustle of the port had hurt his head, and he had not cared even to look out of the coach window at the familiar countryside. All was different now. It was true that his old wound was troubling him a good deal, but it was not bad enough to prevent his walking about the town, and revelling in being in his own land again. It seemed strange, and delightful, to be able to walk into a shop and speak to its owner in English. So accustomed had he become to the use of Spanish or Portuguese, that he found himself addressing a bewildered haberdasher in the most fluent Castilian, and quite burst out laughing at his own forgetfulness.

Juana had declined going to walk about the town with him. Harry had so often drawn pictures of what they would do together as soon as they set foot in England, that the thought of being in Portsmouth without him for some time threatened to overpower her. She had promised to be good, however, and knew enough about men to realize that Tom would like nothing less than to be obliged to escort all the way to London a sister-in-law who was labouring under all the miseries of homesickness and grass-widowhood. When he returned to the inn, he found her sitting by the window in the parlour, watching the busy quayside. Her eyes were rather red, but he was too excited to notice that, and he found nothing to complain of in her demeanour, which was subdued, but perfectly cheerful. He had hired a post-chaise-and-pair to carry them to London, and the question now occupying his mind was to which hotel he should take Juana.

‘You know, we shan’t get to London until late,’ he said. ‘I daresay Harry would wish me to take you to Grillon’s, or Fenton’s, for he said you were to have everything of the best, but the thing is that we haven’t much money, until I can see my father, and those grand hotels are devilish dear.’

‘Oh, don’t take me to a grand hotel!’ begged Juana. ‘I have been watching a party of ladies, and I know my dress is quite out of fashion.’

‘Well, I must say I should prefer to go to a good inn, but the thing is, would you be comfortable?’

That made her laugh. ‘Oh, Tom, how foolish of you! Do you remember the cottage at Pobes, when I slept on the table because of the bugs?’

‘Well, that you won’t have to do, at any rate!” grinned Tom. ‘The post-boy says the coaches set down passengers at the Angel, at St Clement’s-in-the-Strand, a tolerable sort of a place. Shall we go there for a night at least?’

She was quite agreeable, so the post-boy was told to carry them to the Angel, and off they set.

The Angel was found to be a busy, cheerful inn, its proprietor too well accustomed to having shabby, sunburned officers from the Peninsula set down at his door to think the arrival of a gentleman in a green jacket and a black shako in any way remarkable. The discovery that the gentleman’s companion was a Spanish lady was something entirely out of the way, however, and Juana found herself being stared at so hard that she began to blush. Then Tom had to explain that she was not his wife, but his sister-in-law, whose husband had gone to America; and the landlord evidently thought it all very odd and said that he for one didn’t hold with this American war, dragging on and on, and, if anyone wanted his opinion, the sooner it was over the better. From having been in the habit of accommodating foreign visitors for many years, he was able to speak a little bad French, but as none of the chambermaids could understand anything but the few English words Juana knew, she was obliged to make known her wants by signs, and began to wonder, with a sinking heart, how she would fare in London, once Tom was no longer at hand to act as her interpreter. They spent the following morning looking for suitable lodgings. Juana was quite bewildered by the size of London. Every street seemed to be full of traffic, chairs, hackneys, elegant barouches, and sporting curricles seeming to jostle one another on all sides; while nattily-dressed gentlemen on horseback picked their way through the crowd of vehicles. The shops seemed very fine, particularly in Bond Street where Juana and Tom encountered the elite of fashion promenading, and Juana felt herself to be quite a dowd. However, chancing to see a very pretty hat of satin-straw trimmed with pomona-green ribbons, in one of the shop-windows, she prevailed on Tom to go into the shop with her to buy it. He said he felt a fool in milliners’ shops, but Juana reminded him with paralysing frankness that he had not seemed to feel a fool in Toulouse, when he had bought an Angouleme bonnet of white thread-net for the lady then living under his protection.

‘Now, Juanita, for the Lord’s sake don’t talk so!’ begged Tom. ‘You know, it won’t do in England! People wouldn’t understand! You must forget all those bits of muslin, really you must!’

‘Well, I don’t want to remember them,’ said Juana. ‘I thought your bit of muslin was a very vulgar person.’

‘You never clapped eyes on her!’

‘Yes, I did. I saw you with her at the theatre, and Harry told me she was your Cyprian.’ ‘Well, upon my word! There’s a brother for you!’ said Tom indignantly. ‘You won’t go and tell my family, will you?’

‘No, of course not, stupid! But can I have that hat?’

‘Oh, very well!’ Tom replied. ‘But it’s three o’clock already, and we still haven’t found an eligible lodging for you, and now here you are wanting to buy hats!’ But Juana’s desire to buy a hat turned out to be a most fortunate circumstance, for, upon entering the shop, she discovered that the milliner was a Frenchwoman, and at once fell into conversation with her. Madame Celeste was much affected by her story, and, learning that she was in search of a lodging, at once recommended her to go to Panton Square, where, at No. 11, a French émigrée resided, a most respectable widow, with five children, who eked out her slender means by boarding one or two select visitors.

The prospect of lodging with a woman who would be able to converse with her made Juana feel much more cheerful. Tom, discovering that Panton Square was situated quite close to St James’s, pronounced the locality to be unexceptionable-indeed, a most fashionable quarter-so as soon as the satin-straw hat had been paid for, and packed into a bandbox, a hackney was called for, and they drove off hopefully to Panton Square. When the hackney turned into the Square, it was found to be a quiet little cul-de-sac, rather than a square, surrounded on three sides by flat-fronted, narrow houses built mostly of weathered bricks, each with its area guarded by iron railings. Some of the houses were larger than others, with their front doors flanked by sash windows; and some had been covered with stucco, in conformity with the prevailing fashion; but No. 11 was found to be a modest, three-storey residence, with a row of dormer-windows set in the roof, and a green front-door with a bright brass knocker on it. The shallow door-step was gleamingly white, and the curtains in the windows clean, which had not always been the case in the lodgings Juana had seen.

As luck would have it, Madame Dupont was able to offer Juana a pair of tolerable rooms upon the first floor. Her terms, to the wife of an officer engaged for seven years in helping to bring about the ruin of the Corsican Monster, were most reasonable. She was very sympathetic when she heard of Juana’s temporary widowhood, and privately assured Tom that he need have no qualms at leaving his sister-in-law in her charge. Since the Angel, being situated in the Strand, was a noisy inn where it was almost impossible to sleep at night, it was arranged that Juana should remove to Panton Square without loss of time.

Tom, who was obliged to report his arrival in England to the army medical authorities, was relieved to have found a safe harbourage for Juana. He promised to visit her frequently, if the doctors did not clap him into hospital; warned her that she would very likely receive a visit from his married sister, who lived just out of London, at Clapton; bade her be a good girl; kissed her in a brotherly fashion; and took himself off.

He was not condemned to a hospital, but as Juana seemed to be quite comfortable in her lodgings, he thought he should take a journey into Cambridgeshire to visit his family. Feeling very much as though her one sheet anchor were being taken away from her, Juana said bravely that of course he must go. Being well aware of his besetting sin, she added that considering he had not written to his father or sisters for years, the least he could do was to visit them without an instant’s loss of time.