Free The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins Page B

of thanks to the sergeant,
Thea saw him exchange a look with Matlin that plainly said “Women!”
Then, with a courtliness which belied his girth, he bowed to her. “Perhaps
the Señora will take a cup of wine with me?” Thea felt Matlin stiffen at
her side. She rose, tugging her shawl down and tight about her head, and bobbed
a rustic curtsy. “Thank you, oh a thousand times, Señor, but Miguel and I
are promised for my cousin’s wedding, and now he has made us late with
his poor head and....” Looking up into the man’s moon-shaped face
and willing him to believe her, Thea did not see his large arm reaching for her
waist.
    “Come, Señora, a little kiss for a soldier of the
Empire,” he wheedled.
    Thinking quickly, Thea twisted away with something between a
laugh and a cry of outrage. “Sergeant, I am a good wife! If I were a
young girl again...” she managed, back safely by Matlin’s side, to
imply that alone she would have been his for the asking. The assurance was
enough, it seemed. With another creaking bow the sergeant closed the door and
left Thea alone with Matlin.
    They looked at each other for a long moment, paralyzed.
“Are you all right?” Thea asked at last, low and in English. “They
said you’d fallen at someone’s feet.”
    “Tripped, more likely. My Spanish began to fail me
and, thank God, they seemed ready to believe the same fable you so capably
spread about: that I was an imbecile of some sort.” His smile was white
in the dim light. “You’re a valuable companion, child; my
congratulations.” Thea tried to pull away, bristling, but his arm was
around her. “We’d best get clear of this town before your suitor
decides to try his luck with you again. Bastard,” he added viciously,
under his breath.
    Leading the mules between them they left the town in silence
and listened for sounds of other soldiers, ready to fall into their roles again
if necessary. Not until they had put a good two miles between the encampment
and themselves did Matlin let them stop, and they made camp a short way from
the road, under a circle of fir trees.
    “Do we dare have a fire?” Thea asked when he had
handed her the hamper which held their dwindling supply of food.
    “Can you manage without? I don’t think it will
be very cold tonight.”
    Thea only nodded and busied herself in tearing apart the stale
loaf. It was a grim enough meal: cold, stale water, crumbling bread, crumbs of
cheese left from the generous piece the Sisters had given them. For the first
time Thea thought kindly of her small cell at the convent. When the food was
gone and she had not even the entertainment of a fire, when she was worn out
with worry, play-acting, and Matlin’s strained silence, there was nothing
for Thea to do but pull her shawl about her shoulders and curl up miserably against
one of the trees. A few feet away Matlin sat, absorbed by his thoughts; he was
staring at nothing. Just before she drifted into exhausted sleep Thea opened
her eyes to look at him and heard again the French footsoldier’s words, esposo?
esposo? A question indeed.
    o0o
    Matlin was aware of Thea’s misery but not sure of its
origin, and as there was nothing he could do for her, certainly nothing he
could do that would not increase his own sense of shame at the sorrowful figure
he had cut that day, he said nothing, did nothing. It had not occurred to him.
He thought of her as such a child still that he had never imagined she could be
offered the sort of insult she had met with that day. She had handled
it; she had let him know with a quick pressure of her hand against his side
that she must be the one to answer the sergeant’s advances. That she had
been correct made no difference. What treatment had she met before she found
him in the hut? The joke of it, a child barely in her teens handling those
damned brutes of soldiers while he sat there struggling to keep his mouth shut.
    Another part of his mind willingly acknowledged that in the
skirt