Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

To see her with his sock in her hand made his heart swell; he said unsteadily: ‘Can you darn such holes as that, alma mia?’

‘Of course! I can do everything!’ He smiled. ‘Ride?’

‘I can learn,’ she replied with dignity. ‘It will not be at all difficult, for already twice I have ridden upon a donkey.’

That made him laugh. The desire to take her in his arms was beginning to master him; he controlled it for a little while yet, afraid of frightening her, himself strangely moved, and diffident. His voice was rather strained, unnaturally light. ‘Bravo! And these great journeys?’ ‘Once I went to visit my grandmother; and once we went, all of us, to Olivença, to escape the siege of Badajos. Not this siege. And I rode on a donkey.’

‘Now you must learn to ride a horse.’

‘Naturally. A donkey is stupid and slow, besides being not at all English.’ ‘Do you wish to become English, hija?’

‘Yes, for I am your wife. Do you not wish it, Enrique?’ ‘I love my Spanish wife.’

She shook her head, frowning, but pleased. ‘What did they call me, your friends?’ ‘Mrs Harry Smith.’

She tried to repeat it, but stumbled over it, and gave a trill of laughter. ‘I am too Spanish!’ He moved a pace towards her, and removing the sock from her hand, tossed it aside, and gathered both her hands in his, holding them against his chest. She looked up at him, not timidly, but suddenly submissive. Staring down into her eyes, he read a girl’s hero-worship there. For the first time in his heedless life, he was afraid. His sinewy clasp on her hands tightened unconsciously; his face, in the lamplight, looked a little haggard. She said wonderingly: ‘How strongly your heart beats!’

‘Yes. It beats for you.’

She drew his hands away from his chest to lay them on her own slight breast. ‘And mine for you,’ she said simply.

He felt the flutter of her heart under his palms; he put his arms round her, but gently, and held her so, his cheek against her hair.

‘What are you thinking of, mi Enrique?’ ‘Praying to God you may not regret this!’ ‘Why?’

‘I am-I am a frippery, careless fellow, not worthy of you!’ he said, as though the words were wrung from him. ‘I’m selfish, and bad-tempered-’

‘Ah, ah!’ A gurgle of laughter escaped her. ‘I, too, amigo!’

‘No, listen, mi queridissima muger! I swear I will try to be worthy of you, but they’ll tell you-Stewart, Molloy, Beckwith, Charlie Eeles: all my dearest friends!-that I’m thoughtless, conceited, not fit to be your husband, and O God, it’s true, and I know it!’ ‘Mi esposo!’

‘Yes! And what a husband!’ he said. ‘Forgive me, forgive me! I should not have done it!’ ‘But how is this? Do you not love me?’

‘Con toda mi alma! With all my soul!’

‘It is enough. Think! I am only a silly girl: I know nothing, merely that I love you. I have all to learn: my sister told me I should make you a sad wife. Mi Enrique, I too will try.” He thrust her away from him, holding her so, at arm’s length, while his eyes stabbed hers. ‘No regrets? You’re not afraid? Even though your sister has gone, and you are left amongst a foreign people, to a life that’s hard, and bitter for a woman?’

‘But this is folly!’ she said. ‘How should I be afraid? Will you not take care of me, mi esposo?’

‘’Till death!’ he said in a shaking voice, and at last released that iron hold he had kept over himself, and seized her in a cruel embrace, crushing her mouth under his. Her body yielded adorably; one arm was pinned to his side, but the other she flung up round his neck, to hold him closer. He lifted her, and strode forward with her, checking under the lamp she had trimmed, and putting up a hand to turn it down. The little flame flickered blue, and went out.

Harry had got a woman belonging to a man in the 52nd regiment to wait upon his bride. She was a rough, stalwart creature, but decent. If she knew little of an abigail’s work, she knew well how to guard a girl from the crudities of camp life. When Harry’s friends saw big Jenny Bates, standing belligerently at the entrance to his tent, they laughed, and asked him whether his soul were still his own. But Jenny, a gorgon to any interloper, knew her place, and seemed to respect the thin flame-like creature who possessed her mistress. She was gruff, and dour, and no man could greatly impress her. If Harry turned his tent upside-down in a storm of impatience, all for the sake of a handkerchief, which would finally be discovered in his own pocket, Jenny would stand over him with arms akimbo, a grim smile on her lips, ready to set things to rights when he should have done. If he cursed her, she took it in indulgent silence; if he praised her, she would very likely snort. But if he gave her an order for Juana’s well-being, she would obey it to the letter. Her knowledge of Spanish was elementary, yet she always seemed to understand her mistress. She watched over Juana, rather like a sour-tempered yet faithful mastiff. In her spare moments she pursued a never-ending feud with West, Harry’s groom, who was as devoted to Harry as she was to Harry’s wife. Joe Kitchen, his batman, she despised. He was a creature of no account, easily bullied. She did not hold with Harry’s greyhounds, but tolerated them, not because they were the pride of Harry’s heart, but because Juana loved and fondled them. A fine establishment, young Harry Smith’s: just the thing, mocked his friends, for an officer employed on active service! It consisted of a wife, her maid, a groom, a batman, a stud of horses, a string of five greyhounds, a Portuguese boy in charge of a cavalcade of goats, and a sprinkling of villainous-looking persons whom Harry always managed to collect, wherever he went, to act as guides through a strange country. Did any officer desire to find the way to some inaccessible village? Ask Harry Smith for one of his cut-throat guides! Harry, the very morning after his marriage, paraded his stud, and finally chose from it a big Portuguese horse of sluggish disposition to be his wife’s first mount. Captain Ross’s Chestnut Troop, of the Royal Horse Artillery, was attached to the Light division, and Captain Parker, temporarily in command, owing to Ross’s having been wounded during the siege, was beset by Harry, quite early, with an urgent demand that someone, anyone, should immediately convert one of his saddles into a lady’s saddle. Harry had the saddle over his arm, and Parker, though he might groan, knew him too well to expostulate. By nightfall Juana had a passable saddle, and next morning was taking her first lesson. It was her intrepidity, perched upon the back of Harry’s great brute of a horse, that won English West’s heart. ‘She’s a rare one, the missus!’ he said, chuckling over her gritted-teeth endeavours to master this difficult art of riding.

Juana cared nothing for the grins of the soldiers who watched her, nothing for her aching limbs, or bruises. All she thought of was to be rid of the obnoxious leading-rein, which Harry insisted on. He had to be very firm with her, so firm, in fact, that they found themselves, almost before they knew it, right in the middle of their first quarrel. Both being hot-tempered, the quarrel rose quickly to an alarming pitch.

‘Espadachin. Tirana odioso!’ Juana spat at Harry, transformed from a loving, eager child into a raging fury.

‘Estupida!’ Harry tossed back at her. ‘Why, you obstinate little devil, if ever I saw such a shrew!’

A torrent of swift Spanish invective drowned his words. He laughed, and Juana, wrenching at the riding-switch he had given her, struck at him. Harry caught the switch, twisted it out of her hold, and grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her till she caught her breath on an angry sob.

‘Now, listen, you!’ Harry said, in the voice his men knew well. ‘You will do as I bid you! Is it understood?’

‘No!’

‘Then you’ll ride on a pack-mule, with the baggage,’ said Harry coolly, releasing her. ‘I’ll procure one.’

‘You dare not!’ ‘Wait and see!’ said Harry, over his shoulder.

Tears sprang to her eyes; Harry whistled carelessly between his teeth, a snatch of one of the songs of the moment. Juana stamped her foot. ‘Insensate! I hate you!’ ‘It is seen!’ said Harry, flinging up his hand to show the weal her switch had raised across his palm.

There was an awful silence. ‘I did not do that!’ Juana said chokingly. ‘No! No!’ ‘Si!’

She flushed scarlet; the tears chased one another down her cheeks; she turned away, hanging her head. ‘I am sorry! Indeed, I am sorry!’

Two strides brought Harry to her side. ‘It’s nothing, hija, nothing at all! I was only teasing you!’

She nursed his hand against her wet cheek. ‘I am horrible and wicked! I am ashamed! Yet I do not wish to have my bridle held. Please, Enrique?’

‘No, you little varmint, no!’ Harry said, pinching her nose. ‘Not till you can ride well enough to satisfy me.’

‘When we go on the march?’ ‘I promise nothing.’

‘Ay de mi!’ sighed Juana, temporarily accepting defeat.

Harry would not let her stir beyond his quarters without himself or West’s being in attendance on her. Happily, her strict upbringing led her to yield without protest to this decree. The camp, ever since their marriage-day, fairly seethed with activity. Country people from miles round drifted in to buy the plunder which the soldiers, lurching out of Badajos, brought with them for sale,

‘Damme, the camp looks like a lousy fairground!” exploded Charlie Beckwith, glaring at a knot of bargainers vociferously besieging a gentleman in a French grenadier’s coat, and a Rifleman’s green-tufted shako, who was offering to the highest bidder a roll of cloth, and a picture in a gilt frame. A soldier, who looked as though the sack of Badajos had exhausted him more than the siege, stood owlishly at gaze. ‘Get to your quarters, you drunken swine!’ rasped Beckwith. ‘I’ll tell you what, Harry: you’ll do well to keep that wife of yours under guard! I never saw the men in such a state!’

‘Damn all sieges!’ said Harry heartily. ‘Juana’s safe enough. Thank God, we’re to shake the dust of this hellish place off our feet at once!’

But before he could collect all his men from the ravaged city, Lord Wellington was forced to march a regiment of Portuguese into the market-place, and to erect three grim gallows there. He hanged one or two men, and the rest took timely warning, for they knew his lordship’s temper, and slunk back to camp. There, the officers wrought with them to such purpose that on 11th April, five days after the storm of Badajos, the Light division was able to break camp, and march north to Campo Mayor.

They left behind them scores of smouldering bonfires, for every man, before he marched, was ordered to open up his kit-bag, and to disgorge any plunder he had hidden there. Every illicit possession that could be burnt was flung on to the fires, but most of the soldiers had contrived to sell what they had brought out of the town, and cherished in place of useless treasures a few precious coins.

It was a division sated with excesses that marched away from Badajos. Some men returned cheerfully to the normal routine of army life; some grumbled, and some were dangerously sulky. ‘Give us but a week on the march, and the Sweeps will be themselves again!’ said Jack Molloy, casting a fierce, affectionate glance over his ragged company.

They had a fortnight. They marched out of Spain into the deadly Alemtejo province of Portugal. They did not linger there. ‘Once in Alemtejo, never out of it again alive,’ ran the proverb. For six days, until they reached Castello Branco, they marched every day, always northward. They went by way of Campo Mayor, Arronches (where Juana, wrapped in Harry’s boat-cloak, bivouacked in a wood, sleeping soundly on the ground by the embers of a camp-fire), and Portalegre, somewhat battered, but still one of the best of the Portuguese border towns. They crossed the Tagus by Villa Velha, a ruined village built on the side of a ravine, and reached Castello Branco on 16th April, there to halt for a day, to rest the men, and to give the supplies time to come up.

If Harry had doubted Juana’s ability to keep up with the division, or to bear with equanimity the fatigue of long marches, and the discomfort of primitive lodgings, his doubts were very soon put to rest. She was a born campaigner. She rode her Portuguese horse in the rear of the column, with West, when Harry went ahead, and never a murmur of complaint was heard to pass her lips. Unused to riding, she was, during those first days, so stiff and cramped when she was lifted down from her saddle that sometimes her legs would not bear her, and she would have fallen had no arm been there to support her. But there was always an arm: if not Harry’s, West’s, or, very soon, the arm of any officer or private who was at hand. She had a genius for making friends, and this quality in her, coupled with the romantic circumstances of her marriage (the story of which was, in a very short time, known to everyone in the division), made her an interesting figure. The men’s imaginations were fired before ever they saw her; when they became familiar with her friendly smile, and saw how her gallant, erect little figure never sagged in the saddle, they took her to their hearts, and were even pleased when she rode with the column, a thing not generally popular with infantry regiments.