“Then why did you place her in the convent with the nuns?”
“It’s complicated.”
Miguel walked along beside him for a while. “My father went off and left us when I was small, when the girls were babies.”
Luke glanced at the boy. “He never came back?”
“No.” The boy kicked a stone over the edge of the path and paused to listen to it bouncing down the cliff.
“He was killed?”
“No, he is living in Bilbao. He found another woman heliked better than Mama. Did you find another woman you liked better,señor?”
“No.” Luke increased his pace. The boy’s innocent chatter was somehow making him feel guilty. Which was ridiculous. He had nothing to feel guilty for.
“So you have come to fetch her and take her back to England with you.”
“Correct.”
“Do I know her,señor? I know some of the young ladies in the convent. What’s her name?”
He supposed it didn’t matter if he told the boy her name. “Señora Ripton.”
“Isabella Ripton?” Miguel’s face split in a grin. “But she is my friend.” And then his smile faded and he stopped dead. “You put Isabella in the convent and left her? She has lived in that place since before my father left my mother.”
The accusation in the boy’s eyes irked Luke.
Dammit, why was everyone looking at him as if the mess was all his fault? He was supposed to be thehero, dammit! First he’d saved her life and then he’d married her. He hadn’thadto marry her. It had been the only certain way to protect her from a forced marriage to her evil cousin Ramón. It hadn’t been for his own advantage in the least.
Somehow that had been forgotten and he’d become the man who’d abandoned his wife. And he hadn’t. Or he had, but not intentionally.
Well, yes, intentionally, but it had beenfor her own good.
But how did you explain that to a ten-year-old boy?
Or, indeed, to a girl of almost twenty-one. He rang the bell at the gate of the convent.
Five
“Blessed saints!” Dolores stopped stock-still at the entrance to the dining hall. She turned and said to Alejandra, “Heisas beautiful as an angel.”
Alejandra was staring over Dolores’s shoulder. “Madonna, yes! A beautifulfallenangel. That mouth, those eyes, those cheekbones. So stern looking and yet somehow… wicked.” She sighed.
Immediately there was a faint scuffle as the other girls pushed forward, trying to see Isabella’s very real husband.
“Girls!” Sister Ignazia said, and when they did not immediately respond, she said in a warning voice, “Youngladies! Do I assume from this unseemly behavior that you have no wish to dine this evening?”
“No, Sister.” They hurried into the dining hall in relative silence, darting avid glances at Isabella’s husband.
“Do you think he would be stern in the bedchamber?” Alejandra whispered.
“Who cares?” Luisa giggled.
“Ooh, I do like a masterful man,” Dolores said with a dramatic shiver.
Isabella clenched her fists. He washerhusband, even if he didn’t want her.
Lieuten— No, Lord Ripton stood behind his chair at Reverend Mother’s table, in formal garb and looking handsomer than ever. The only man in a room full of women, he was the center of attention. Bad enough the other girls were flutteringand whispering and giggling as they eyed him across the room, but evennunswere straightening their wimples and smiling at him.
