Bella didn’t answer. They’d been over this a hundred, a thousand times. At first she’d fought the accusation tooth and nail, but now, after all these years, she was half inclined to think she’d dreamed it, dreamed him. But Reverend Mother had the marriage papers in her desk, and his signature was on them, firm and black and clear. Lucien Alexander Ripton, Lieutenant.
“Of course he is,” Alejandra insisted. “Her tall English lieutenant, with his broad shoulders and his so-beautiful facejustlike an angel!” she said in a mocking voice. “Anangel, wed toIsabella Ripton?” All the girls laughed.
Bella doggedly sewed on. She understood why they pecked at her. She might attack someone, too, if she was about to be married to an old, poxedvizconde.
Besides, it was her own fault. She shouldn’t have told them in the first place.
After the hasty marriage, Lieutenant Ripton and her aunt had decided to place her in the convent under the name of Ripton, Bella taking his name in the manner of English wives instead of keeping her own name, as Spanish women did.
Her aunt had instructed Bella not to tell anyone she was married—not the Mother Superior of the time, nor the other nuns, nor any of the girls. Then, she said, if Cousin Ramón came looking for Isabella Mercedes Sanchez y Vaillant, daughter of the Conde de Castillejo, Mother Superior could truthfully tell him that no such girl was in the convent; only the sister of an English lieutenant.
It was strange, but exciting, having a new name.
And sure enough, Cousin Ramónhadcome, and Reverend Mother had assured him no girl of that name was in the convent. Sweet, elderly Reverend Mother, so patently truthful and innocent, and so obviously distressed by his tale of a young girl who’d fled her home to cross Spain in such terrible times—anything could have happened to her, the poor, young innocent. Dreadful, dreadful! She’d offered immediate prayers for the lost girl’s safe recovery, and even Cousin Ramón had to believe her.
So at first, Isabella never told a soul she was married, and when the elderly Mother Superior died and Isabella’s aunt took her place, Isabella’s security was assured—as much as anyone’s security could be in wartime.
But a few years later the fighting was over in Spain. Napoleon’s puppet was ejected, and King Ferdinand was crowned king of Spain, and relatives turned up to collect this girl or that. The convent was full of talk of dowries and settlements, of betrothals arranged and marriages planned. The girls were abuzz with excitement and nerves and romantic speculation.
At almost sixteen, Isabella was still plagued by pimples and a flat chest, and when even the younger girls started to patronize and pity her, she could not bear it. In secret whispers in the dark one night, she’d confided in her friend, Mariana, about Lieutenant Ripton, her tall, dark Englishman, as beautiful as an angel, who’d killed a man to protect Isabella, and then married her to save her from her evil cousin Ramón. Now the war was over, he would surely come for her and take her away to England.
But Mariana had whispered Isabella’s secrets to another girl, and soon it was all through the convent, and of course, nobody had believed her. Skinny, plain Isabella Ripton, secretly married to a handsome Englishman? As if anyone would believe that.
Her name? Pshaw! So she had an English surname—many Spaniards had English surnames. It proved nothing.
“Has he seen a picture of you—a truthful one?”
“Why would he want to marry a girl who looks like a boy?”
“He knows what I look like. Hechoseme,” Bella used to tell them proudly, hoping her pimples would be gone and her breasts would grow by the time he came for her. “Nobody had to arrange it.”
“So you know nothing about him. For all you know of his family, he could be some peasant!”
“He was an officer, so of course he’s not a peasant. And he’s tall, strong, and fearless; the most beautiful man I ever saw in my life!”
“Beautiful?” The other girls laughed.
“Beautiful like an archangel,” Bella insisted. “Beautiful and terrible. A warrior angel! Just wait till he comes. You willsee.”
And some girls would continue to scoff, and some would sigh and secretly envy her.
At night, in her small stone room on her hard, narrow bed, Bella would spin dreams of Lieutenant Ripton…
Lieutenant Ripton lay mortally wounded, and Isabella would find him and care for him, and he would be miraculously cured by her tender solicitude, and fall madly in love with her.
Lieutenant Ripton would be attacked by the enemy, and Bella would stand by him, and together they would fight them off, and as the enemy fled, he would turn to her and say, “Isabella, without you my life would be over. I love you.”
Many and varied were the deeds of bravery and daring she performed in her dreams, and at the end of each one, Lieutenant Ripton would say, “Isabella, I love you.”
Lieutenant Ripton would know Isabella as nobody in the world would know her. And he would love her. Truly love her. And she would love him back with all her heart. And they would be happy forever and ever after.
Day after day, week after week, Bella had prayed for Lieutenant Ripton to come—even to write, but there was no word, no sign.
Still, she would rage and defend herself, defend him—hewasas beautiful as an angel, he was busy fighting, he was a hero, he was too important to be able to come just now, but he would come for her, hewould!
Gradually her skin cleared up. Her breasts remained disappointingly small, and she learned from a smuggled-in looking glass that she would never be a beauty, not even pretty. “Interesting” was the most charitable assessment of her features.
Still, Lieutenant Ripton did not come, and as the years passed, the dream of the handsome husband who would love her—mustlove her—slowly began to wither on the vine.
