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“Of course, but…” He considered. “Even they will benefit from new ideas and…youthful energies. People who are encouraged to use their skills are happier, and that makes society more pleasant.” He shook his head. “And I sound insufferably pompous.”
“No.” Something in his manner—perhaps the way he treated all people as equals—kept him from pomposity. He was proper, yes. Good manners and the rules of society fit him like his perfectly cut coats. But he was never stuffy or narrow.
“I think perhaps I do,” he replied with a rueful smile. “But I thank you for making me think. I shall try to find ways to say it better.”
She was in love with him, Teresa realized. The knowledge seemed to burst over her, like an ocean wave that knocked one tumbling and then pulled irresistibly toward the depths. But it wasn’t really sudden. The sentiment had been building, bit by bit, over these last weeks. He had added to the flood with each thing he said or did.
Madre de Dios. She’d renounced everything to do withamoryears ago. That haunted word was just another term for oppression. It was a deception, a cheat, made you commit all sorts of stupidities and then broke your heart.
But this man wasn’t like the others she’d known. Perhaps he could love in the way the poets imagined. Or was that simply a sad rationalization for her weakness?
She was staring up at him. She saw an arrested expression rising in his eyes. The smoldering heat of the kiss she’d denied him was flowing back. With it came a question she had no idea how to answer. What was she going to do? She had to stop this.
Teresa turned back to her painting. She raised her brush but did not touch the surface. What could it even mean—to be in love? For her, here and now? She had fought to find safety, to take control of her life. Would she throw all that away? Wasn’t that what love would require?
Tom struck his gong again. A signal, Teresa thought, but the message was a mystery. Was it a harbinger of change? Did it urge her toward some…indulgence? Or warn her of doom? Abruptly, fiercely, she longed for the first choice. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t go under.
“Señora Alvarez?”
His voice was like the touch of seductive fingers. “I must finish this painting today,” she said. “I have promised.”
There was a pause. Her heart teetered in the balance. Then he said, “Of course.”
She heard his footsteps move away. She’d saved herself from the clutches of that overwhelming wave. And she was not in the least relieved.
Eight
Teresa was more tired than usual when she reached home that afternoon. Lord Macklin had left the workshop soon after their conversation, but he might as well have been standing close behind her, looking over her shoulder the whole day. With every stroke she’d painted, her mind had wavered back and forth, vibrating between words likeindependenceandruin,prudenceanddaring,disciplineanddesire. Her thoughts had grown more and more jumbled as time passed without her coming near any resolution. She was still trembling.
Eliza appeared in the kitchen doorway as Teresa was taking off her bonnet. “A fellow called while you were out, ma’am,” she said.
“Fellow?” No one visited her here.
“He wanted to wait, but I told him he couldn’t come in.”
So Eliza hadn’t liked this man’s looks. Who could it have been? “Not someone from the neighborhood?”
“No, ma’am. I never saw him before. He was a foreigner.” Eliza held out a square of pasteboard, using only the tips of her fingers as if the object was distasteful. “He left a card.”
Not a thug then, Teresa thought. They didn’t leave cards. But not a gentleman, if Eliza’s judgment was correct.
“He said he’d come back this evening,” added the maid, clearly not happy about the prospect.
Teresa took the card and read it. “Conde Alessandro de la Cerda. I don’t know who this is.” The man sounded Spanish, but she recalled no one of that name. Why had he sought her out? A visitor from Spain was unlikely to be good news. And how had he found her?
“Iscondesome kind of title?” asked the maid.
“It is the same as a count.” Which England did not have, Teresa remembered, though it had countesses. The wives of earls. Astodos los caminosled to Rome, all her thoughts seemed to circle back to Lord Macklin.
Eliza sniffed. “He weren’t like any nobleman I’ve ever seen.”
Wondering if Eliza had seen any, Teresa put the card down. “He said nothing about what he wanted?”
“He only said he’d be back, ma’am.” She frowned. “I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”
A threatening Spaniard was not coincidence, Teresa thought. It was her fate, the doom that had dogged her existence since she was a girl. Today, she’d dared to dream just a little, and now her dream was to be shattered. She didn’t know precisely how, but she had no doubt it would be. A host of bitter experiences told her so.
She sat down. A Spaniard most likely brought word of her past. There was so little of that Teresa wished to revisit. She would have avoided it if she could. But she didn’t have the means to repel this caller. And it was probably best that she discover who he was and what he wanted.
