Lucy Gordon: The Stand-In Bride

‘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.’