The Stand-In Bride

CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTMAS weather had come early. Although it was only the first day of December there was already the promise of snow, making the air sparkle and the street decorations gleam. High over London’s West End they shone against the darkness, multi-coloured confections of angels with long golden trumpets, elves, fairies dancing with long streamers, silver bells hanging in clusters.

But the two young women hurrying along the glittering street had no attention for the beauty overhead. They were arguing.

‘Catalina, please don’t be unreasonable,’ Maggie begged for the third time.

‘Unreasonable!’ Catalina snapped. ‘You want me to spend an evening looking at men wearing nighties and little skirts, and I’m unreasonable? Hah!’

‘Julius Caesar is a great play. It’s a classic.’

Catalina made a sound that might have been a snort. She was eighteen, Spanish and looked magnificent in her blazing temper.

‘It’s Shakespeare,’ pleaded Maggie.

‘That to Shakespeare!’

‘And your fiancé wants you to see it.’

Catalina said something deeply uncomplimentary about her fiancé.

‘Hush, be careful!’ Maggie urged, looking around hurriedly, as though Don Sebastian de Santiago might appear from thin air.

‘Pooh! I am here in London; he is in Spain. Soon I shall be his prisoner, and behave myself, and say, “Yes, Sebastian,” and “No, Sebastian,” and “Whatever you say, Sebastian.” But until then I do what I like, I say what I like, and I say I don’t like men with knobbles on their knees wearing skirts.’

‘They probably don’t all have knobbles on their knees,’ Maggie said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Catalina let forth a torrent of Spanish and Maggie hastily seized her arm and steered her along the road, weaving in and out of the seething crowd. ‘It was supposed to be part of your English education,’ she said.

‘I am Spanish; he is Spanish. Why I need an English education?’

‘Why do I need-’ Maggie corrected her automatically.

‘Why do I need an English education?’ Catalina repeated in exasperation.

‘For the same reason you needed a French education, so that you can be a cultivated woman and host his dinner parties.’

Before her rebellious charge could answer, Maggie steered her into a teashop, found a table and said, ‘Sit!’, much as she would have done to a recalcitrant puppy. The young Spanish girl was delightful but exhausting. Soon Maggie would see her off to Spain and retire to the peace of a nervous breakdown.

For the last three months it had been Maggie’s job to perfect Catalina’s English and share chaperoning duties with Isabella, her middle-aged duenna. The two Spanish women lived in one of London’s most luxurious hotels, courtesy of Don Sebastian, who had also arranged the highlights of their schedule, and paid Maggie’s wages.

The whole thing had been arranged at a distance. It was six months since Don Sebastian had last found time to see his fiancée, and that had been on a flying visit to Paris, during which he seemed to have checked the improvement in her French, and little else.

Day-to-day decisions were in the hands of Donna Isabella, who hired teachers locally, communicated with Sebastian and relayed her employer’s wishes to her employer’s bride-to-be.

He was in America at the moment, expected to arrive in London the following week, after which Catalina would accompany him back to Spain to begin preparing for her wedding. Or possibly he wouldn’t have time to come to London at all, in which case they would travel without him. Whatever else he could be accused of, Maggie thought, it wasn’t flaming ardour.

She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking of to choose a wife so totally unsuitable. Catalina was ignorant and empty-headed-clothes-mad, pop music-mad, boy-mad. By no stretch of the imagination was she a proper consort for a serious man with a seat in the regional Andalucian government.

Catalina’s efforts to master languages were halfhearted. She managed fairly well with English because she’d watched so many American television programs, but her French was dire, and her German had been a waste of everybody’s time.

Yet Maggie was fond of her. Exasperating Catalina might be, but she was also kind, warm-hearted and fun. She needed a young husband who would be entranced by her beauty and high spirits, and care nothing for her lack of brains. Instead she would soon be imprisoned in a world of premature middle age.

‘All right,’ Maggie said as they ate tea and cakes. ‘What do you want to do this evening?’

‘Die!’ Catalina declared passionately.

‘Short of that,’ Maggie said, firmly dousing melodrama with common sense.

‘What does it matter? In a few weeks my life will be over anyway. I will be an old married woman with an old husband and a baby every year.’

‘Is Don Sebastian really old?’ Maggie asked.

Catalina shrugged. ‘Old, middle-aged. So what?’

‘I wish you had a picture of him.’

‘Is bad enough I have to marry him. What for I want his picture?’

‘Anyone would think I hadn’t taught you any English,’ Maggie complained. ‘It’s not “what for I want his picture?”, it’s “Why should I want his picture?” Now, let’s try it. I say, “I wish you had his picture”, and you say-?’

‘I say if I have his picture here, I stamp on it.’

Maggie gave up.

‘Maybe he’s only middle-aged outside, but he’s old in here.’ The girl tapped her forehead, then her chest. ‘And it’s in there that counts.’

Maggie nodded. She knew only too well how a man could look one thing and be another. Four years of marriage had taught her that. Blissful happiness, followed by disillusion, then heartbreak, disgust and despair. To cover her sudden tension she ordered more tea.

The two women made a study in contrasts-the one still in her teens, all proud, passionate Spanish beauty, dark, glittering eyes and a warm complexion, and the other in her late twenties, with soft fair skin, dark brown eyes and light brown hair. Catalina was tiny, built on dainty lines, but her lively temper and excitable personality tended to make her the centre of attention.

Maggie was tall and statuesque, but her manners were so quiet that she could be overlooked beside the magnificent Catalina. Yet she too had a touch of the Mediterranean. Her grandfather had been Alfonso Cortez, a Spaniard from Andalucia who had fallen madly in love with an Englishwoman spending a week in Spain. When it was over he’d pursued her all the way home, never seeing his own country again.

From him Maggie had inherited her large, dark eyes that suggested unfathomable depths. They were alluring in themselves, but doubly so against the Anglo-Saxon pallor of her skin. Observers would have summed Catalina up in an instant, but would have lingered over Maggie, puzzling over her mystery, and the pain and bitterness that she strove to hide. They might have read the sensuality and humour in her mouth. The sensuality she tried to conceal, even from herself. The humour was her weapon against the world. Once, and it seemed a long time ago, she had laughed all the time. Now she laughed to protect her privacy.

‘If you feel like that about your fiancé, you should tell him,’ she said.

‘You think Sebastian would let me go, after he’s spent two years grooming me? Everything I do is under his control. I am taught what he wants me to know-languages, how to dress, how to eat, how to behave.

‘Even on this tour of Europe, I have no freedom because he has organised everything. In Rome, in Paris, in London I stay in hotels he chooses, and do what he say.

‘And now, it’s Christmas and there are so many lovely things in London: decorations and Christmas trees, and children singing carols, the stores are full of lights, and we buy lots of lovely presents, and visit Santa in his grotto…’

‘I’m not taking you to any more grottoes,’ Maggie interrupted with a shudder. ‘You nearly got us thrown out of the last one for flirting with an elf.’

Catalina giggled. ‘Wasn’t he the most handsome boy you ever saw?’

‘But you’re practically a married woman.’

The girl’s laughter faded. ‘Si! And when all these lovely Christmas things are happening, Sebastian want me to see a worthy play. Why not a pantomime? Widow Twanky and Principal Boys. We don’t have that in Spain, so is part of my English education, si? But no! Julius Caesar!’

It would be impossible to convey the depth of loathing and disgust she put into the last two words. Maggie sighed in sympathy.

Having exploded, Catalina settled to submerge her sorrows in chocolate éclairs doused in cream. ‘And always there is Isabella,’ she sighed. ‘Spying on me.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Maggie protested. ‘She’s kind and very fond of you.’

‘I’m fond of her, but I’m also glad that tonight we could come out without her. She means well, but she is Sebastian’s poor relation, and she thinks he’s God. Always she say, “Don Sebastian’s wife would never do this,” and “Don Sebastian’s wife would always do that.” One day I will reply, “Then Don Sebastian’s wife can do it, but I’m going to do something else.”’

‘Good for you. Tell him that the wedding’s off.’

‘If only I dared! Oh, Maggie, I wish I was like you. You had the courage to follow your heart and marry the man you loved.’

‘Never mind that,’ Maggie said hastily. Catalina’s curiosity about her marriage was making her tense and edgy. To change the subject she said, ‘We’ve still got time for a show.’

‘Oh, yes, we must go somewhere, or we shall look nice for nothing,’ Catalina said fervently.

She seized any excuse to wear her loveliest clothes, so even for an outing with her chaperone she was done up to the nines. The floor-length peacock-blue dress looked glorious with her warm colouring. The diamonds, perhaps, were a little old for her, but she knew she looked beautiful, and was happy.

Maggie would have preferred to dress with restraint, but Catalina viewed restraint with horror. She had insisted on a shopping trip and, with an unerring eye, steered Maggie towards a black silk cocktail gown that moulded itself to her womanly curves.

‘It’s a bit low,’ Maggie had said hesitantly.

‘So what? You have a magnificent bosom; you should show it off,’ Catalina had said imperiously.

Even Maggie could see that the dress had been made for her, and she bought it, compromising with a black silk chiffon scarf that she could whisk about her shoulders. She was wearing the scarf now but, even so, she wished that the dress was a little less revealing.

‘What shall we choose?’ she asked now.

‘Your Place Or Mine?’ Catalina said at once. ‘I have wanted to see that ever since I read that it was very rude and naughty.’

‘Just the sort of thing Don Sebastian’s wife shouldn’t see,’ Maggie teased.

‘No, she shouldn’t,’ Catalina said happily. ‘So let us go immediately.’

Isabella turned her heavy bulk over in bed, trying to ignore the nagging pain in her side. She wondered when Maggie and Catalina would return, but a glance at the clock told her they had been gone barely an hour.

A sudden noise made her stiffen. It came from the other side of her bedroom door, where there was the large sitting room of the luxurious suite she shared with Catalina. Somebody had entered by stealth, and was looking around.

Summoning her courage she slipped out of bed, found her bag, dropped a heavy ashtray into it, and crept to the door. Then, with one wild movement, she yanked the door open and swung the bag at the intruder.

The next moment her arm was seized in a grip of steel, and she was looking at the astonished face of Don Sebastian de Santiago.

‘Merciful mother of heaven!’ she moaned. ‘What have I done?’

‘Nearly brained me,’ her employer said wryly, feeling into the bag and removing the ashtray.

‘Forgive me, Señor. I thought you were a burglar.’

The habitual stern, haughty look on Don Sebastian’s face softened. ‘It is I who should ask your forgiveness for intruding on you without warning,’ he said courteously. ‘I ought to have knocked, but knowing it was your night for going to Julius Caesar I assumed the place would be empty, and persuaded Reception to give me a key.’ He regarded her face with concern. ‘Are you un-well?’

‘A little, Señor. It is nothing, but I preferred not to go out, and I knew I could entrust Catalina to Señora Cortez.’

‘Ah, yes, you mentioned her in your letters. A respectable English woman, who teaches languages.’

‘And the widow of a Spaniard,’ Isabella said eagerly. ‘A most cultivated and reliable person, with a mature outlook and the highest principles.’ Fearful that her chaperonage might be found wanting, she continued to expatiate on Maggie’s virtues until Don Sebastian interrupted her gently.

‘I don’t wish to keep you from your bed. Just tell me how to find them.’

Isabella produced her own unused ticket from the bag. ‘They will be sitting here.’

He shepherded her kindly to the door of her room, bid her farewell, and departed. In fifteen minutes he was at the theatre, arriving in the middle of the first interval. Rather than waste time searching the crowd, he went to the seat number on his ticket, and waited for Catalina and her companion to join him.

Your Place Or Mine? was only mildly shocking, but to a girl from a sheltered background it seemed deliciously risqué. Afterwards they walked to a nearby restaurant, Catalina blissfully remembering tunes and jokes from the show.

‘Sebastian would be so cross if he knew where I’d been tonight,’ she said cheerfully as they sat waiting for their food.

‘I can’t imagine why you agreed to marry him if you dislike him so much.’

‘I was sixteen. What did I know? Maggie, when you live in a convent boarding school with nuns saying, “Don’t do this,” and “Don’t do that,” you will agree to anything to get out.

‘And along comes this old man-OK, OK, middle-aged man-who was a friend of your Papa-also he is your distant cousin, third or fourth, I forget. But Sebastian is the head of the family, so when your Papa die this man is your guardian. And he say he has decided you will make him a suitable wife.’

‘He has decided?’

‘He is a decisive man. It is his way.’

‘What about what you want?’

‘He says I’m too young to know what I want.’

Maggie appealed to heaven. ‘Give me patience!’

‘Anyway, you say yes, because if you don’t get out of that school you will scream,’ Catalina explained, adding with a big sigh, ‘but he’s much worse than the nuns. A girl should go to her wedding joyfully, full of adoration for her groom. How can I adore Sebastian?’

‘Since I’ve never met him, I don’t know whether he’s adorable or not,’ Maggie pointed out.

‘He is not,’ Catalina said firmly. ‘He is a grandee, an aristocrat. He is proud, fierce, haughty, imperious. He demands everything and he forgives nothing. He believes that only honour matters, for himself, for his family. He is impressive. But adorable-no!’

‘Well, adoration is fine for the wedding day,’ Maggie observed. ‘But a marriage needs to be built on reality.’ She poured them both a glass of the light wine she had ordered.

‘What are you thinking?’ Catalina asked, looking curiously into her face.

‘I-nothing. Why do you ask?’

‘Suddenly your face has a strange expression, as though you could see something very far away that nobody else could see. Oh, no!’ Her hand flew to her mouth in a conscience-stricken gesture. ‘I have made you think about your own husband, and that makes you sad because he is dead. Forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ Maggie said hastily. ‘It’s four years since he died. I don’t brood about it now.’

‘But you do. You never talk about him, so you must be brooding in secret,’ Catalina said with youthful romanticism. ‘Oh, Maggie, how lucky you are to have known a great love. I shall die without ever knowing a great love.’

That was the thing about Catalina. One moment she could discuss her predicament with a clear-sightedness that made Maggie respect her, and the next she would go off in a childish flight of melodramatic fancy.

‘I wish you would tell me about Señor Cortez,’ she begged.

‘Start eating,’ Maggie advised quietly.

The last thing she wanted to discuss was her husband, whose name had been Roderigo Alva. After his death she had reverted to her maiden name of Cortez, determined to cut all connection with the past. Normally she kept her secrets, but in an unguarded moment she’d let slip that she’d once had a Spanish husband, and Catalina had naturally assumed that Cortez was her married name. Rather than correct her, and prompt more unwanted questions, Maggie had let it pass.

To divert the girl’s attention, Maggie said, ‘I’m sure Don Sebastian will see that he can’t hold you to a promise given when you were sixteen. If you just explain-’

‘Explain? Hah! This isn’t a reasonable Englishman, Maggie. He only listens to what he wants to hear and insists on his own way-’

‘In short, he’s a Spaniard. And I’m beginning to think any woman who marries a Spaniard is crazy,’ Maggie said with more feeling than she’d meant to reveal.

‘Oh, yes,’ Catalina agreed. ‘Let me tell you what my Grandmama used to say about my Grandpapa-’

Maggie was a good listener, and Catalina poured her heart out in a way she could never do with the easily shocked Isabella. Maggie already knew much of the story of her childhood in the old Moorish city of Granada, motherless, because her mother had died at her birth, leaving her with a bewildered father who was already middle-aged. But Catalina told it again anyhow, talking about southern Spain, its vineyards and olive groves, orange and lemon orchards.

Just outside Granada stood the Santiago estate, or at least part of it, for it also included extensive property in other parts of Andalucia, all owned by the rich and powerful family head, Don Sebastian de Santiago. Catalina had met him once, when she was ten, and she was taken to the Residenza Santiago, his great home that was like a palace. For this visit she wore her Sunday dress, and was warned to be on her best behaviour. She recalled little of that meeting, save that he had been formal and distant. Soon after that she was sent to the convent school. When she emerged at sixteen her father was dead, and she found herself the ward and betrothed of a man she hardly knew.

She was still chattering as they hailed a cab to take them the short distance to the hotel, travelled up in the lift and walked along the corridor to the suite.

They found the main room almost dark, except for a small table lamp.

‘We have a cup of tea, like true English people,’ Catalina said. While she called room service, Maggie took off her coat, yawned and stretched.

‘I so envy you that dress,’ Catalina said longingly. ‘No straps and only your bosom is holding it up, so when you stretch your arms over your head it look like maybe it fall down, and maybe not. And all the men are watching and hoping. I wish I can have a dress that look like it fall down.’

‘Catalina!’ Maggie said, half-amused, half-horrified. ‘You make me out a terrible chaperone.’

Impulsively the girl hugged her. ‘I like you so much, Maggie. You have an understanding heart, I think.’

‘Well, you take my advice. Stand up to this ogre and tell him to get lost. This is the twenty-first century. You can’t be forced into marriage against your will-certainly not with an old man. One day you’ll meet a nice boy of your own age.’

Catalina chuckled. ‘I thought you believed a woman was crazy to marry a Spaniard of any age.

‘I meant any English woman. I dare say if you’re Spanish they might be just about tolerable.’

‘How kind of you,’ said an ironic voice from the shadows

They whirled and saw a man rise from the armchair by the window, and switch on a tall standard lamp. Maggie felt a frisson of alarm, and not only because of his sudden appearance, the way he seemed to loom up from nowhere. It was to do with the man himself. There was something inherently dangerous about him. She knew that by instinct, even in that brief moment.

Before she could demand to know who he was and how he came to be there, she heard Catalina whisper, ‘Sebastian!’

Oh, heavens! Maggie thought. Now the fat’s in the fire.

Obviously he’d heard every word she’d said. But that might even be a good thing. A little plain speaking was long overdue.

She surveyed him, realising that she had been seriously misled. Catalina’s notion of elderly was coloured by her own youth. This man bore no relation to the grey-beard they had been discussing. Don Sebastian de Santiago was in his thirties, perhaps his late thirties but certainly no older. He stood a good six foot two inches tall, with a lean, hard body that he carried like an athlete.

Only on his face did Maggie see what she had expected, a look of pride and arrogance that she guessed had been imprinted there at the hour of his birth. And right now, to pride and arrogance was added anger. If she’d cherished a hope that he hadn’t heard all her frank words, a look at his black, snapping eyes would have dispelled it.

But for the moment anger was just below the surface, almost concealed by a layer of cool courtesy. ‘Good evening, Catalina,’ he said calmly. ‘Will you be so kind as to introduce me to this lady?’

Catalina pulled herself together. ‘Señora Margarita Cortez, Don Sebastian de Santiago.’

Sebastian inclined his head curtly. ‘Good evening, Señora. It is a pleasure to meet you at last. I have heard much about you, although I admit that I had not expected to find you so young.’

His eyes flickered over her as he spoke, as though he were sizing her up, prior to dismissal.

Maggie raised her chin, refusing to be discomposed.

‘I was not informed of any age qualifications for my job, Señor,’ she replied crisply. ‘Only that I should speak fluent Spanish, and be able to introduce Catalina to English customs.’

He seemed a little surprised that she had turned his remark back on him. He surveyed her ironically.

‘Then permit me to say that you seem to have exceeded your brief. Was it part of the terms of your employment to criticise me to my bride, or is that an English custom I’ve never heard of before?’

‘You take a light-hearted conversation too seriously, Señor,’ Maggie said, managing to sound amused. ‘Catalina and I have enjoyed an evening at the theatre, followed by a meal, and we were in the mood to talk nonsense.’

‘I see,’ he said sardonically. ‘So you were talking nonsense when you told her that she couldn’t be forced into marriage with an ogre. I can’t tell you how greatly that relieves my mind. For if you were to seriously oppose me, I tremble to think of my fate.’

‘So do I,’ she riposted. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that.

He raised his eyebrows slightly, but otherwise didn’t deign to react.

‘It’s time for me to be going home,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ll just call a cab-’

He moved swiftly to put himself between her and the telephone. ‘Before you do, perhaps you could favour me with an account of your evening. Did you enjoy Julius Caesar?’

‘Very much,’ Catalina burst out before Maggie could stop her. ‘Such a great play, and an inspired performance. We were thrilled, weren’t we, Maggie?’

‘Yes, do tell me.’ He turned to her. ‘Did you enjoy the performance as much as Catalina-?’

Maggie’s alarm bells rang. ‘Don Sebastian-’

‘Or will you, at least, have the sense to admit the truth?’ he cut across her sharply. ‘Neither of you were there tonight.’

‘But we were,’ Catalina plunged on, unwisely. ‘Truly, we were.’

‘That’s enough,’ Maggie said, laying a hand on the girl’s arm. ‘There’s no need for this, Catalina. We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. Perhaps it’s Don Sebastian who should be ashamed, for spying on us.’

‘That was a most unwise remark, Señora,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘I do not owe you or anyone an account of my actions, but I will tell you this. I arrived unexpectedly and decided to join you at the theatre. When it was clear that you weren’t there, I returned here to wait for you. It’s now past one in the morning, and if you know what’s good for you, you will explain exactly where you were, and who you met.’

‘How dare you?’ Maggie snapped. ‘We met nobody. Catalina has been in my company, and mine alone, the whole evening.’

‘Dressed like that?’ he asked scathingly, taking in the elegantly sexy contours of her dress. ‘I don’t think so. Women flaunt themselves for men, not each other.’

‘Piffle!’ Maggie said, losing her temper. ‘Catalina likes to dress up for the pleasure of it, as does any young girl. I dressed up to keep her company.’

‘You’ll forgive my not accepting your word,’ he said coldly.

‘No, I won’t forgive you, because I don’t tell lies.’

‘But Catalina does. Under your chaperonage she feels free to deceive me. Now I know the kind of example you set her. You take her out gallivanting heaven knows where, and encourage her to lie about where you’ve been.’

‘I didn’t encourage her-I couldn’t stop her. Yes, it was a stupid lie, but only a small one, and it wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t act like a man bringing the word down from the mountain. Stop making such an issue of something so trivial. She’s eighteen, for pity’s sake, and entitled to some innocent fun.’

‘I will be the judge of that.’

From behind the bedroom door came the sound of a groan.

‘Poor Isabella,’ Catalina said hurriedly. ‘I was forgetting that she isn’t well. I should go to her.’

‘Yes, do,’ Maggie advised, regarding Don Sebastian out of glinting eyes. ‘We’ll fight better without you.’

Catalina scuttled away, leaving the other two eyeing each other like jousters. Again Maggie had the sensation of danger that she’d felt in the first moments of meeting him. She wasn’t frightened. There was something about danger that exhilarated her when she could meet it head-on. Perhaps he should be afraid.