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Reverend Mother took off her pince-nez and gave him a governessy look down her long nose. “Things are a little… shall we say ‘unsettled’ in Spain at the moment, Lord Ripton. It would be as well to consolidate your ownership.”

Luke stiffened, irritated by the gratuitous advice and implied moral lecture. He had an agent to check that sort of thing for him, but he had no intention of justifying himself to anyone, let alone a bossy nun, even if she was now his relative by marriage.

“I need to return to England,” he said brusquely. “I have an engagement there I must meet.” And he wouldn’t spend a single night more in this godforsaken country than he had to.

“It seems a shame not to—”

“A very important engagement,” he said in a final note. “Tell me, I noticed when I arrived here the walls of the convent had been damaged. Were you attacked?”

He’d intended it as a simple change of subject, but beside him, Isabella’s aimless stirring of the food on her plate stopped.

Luke went cold. The attacking of convents and churches had not been uncommon in the war. In postrevolutionary France the church was no longer regarded as holy, and nuns and monks and priests were simply men and women. Nuns had been raped and murdered, churches looted.

Reverend Mother’s thin mouth twisted with contempt. “French, and some deserters who’d joined them. Rabble.They’d heard rumors of a treasure here. Treasure!” She snorted. “We are a simple order. Our only treasures are our girls.”

As she talked, Luke relaxed. Her tone was merely indignant, with no echoes of past horror. Isabella sat quiet asarabbit, pretending not to be there.

“I gather you managed to hold them off.”

“Yes, although if—”

Isabella coughed. Reverend Mother glanced at her and said smoothly, “Fortunately they were persuaded to leave.”

“My friends would like to meet you, Lord Ripton,” Isabella said abruptly.

“You must call me Luke,” he told her.

She turned to the nun. “Do I have your permission, Reverend Mother?”

The nun nodded, and Isabella jumped up, taking her plate to a sideboard.

The moment was lost. He’d probably never find out whathappened, but he didn’t care. It didn’t do to stir up old memories.

He watched as Isabella carefully scraped her dinner into a pail—presumably there were pigs or chickens somewhere—and stacked her plate and cutlery.

She seemed to have recovered from her upset and now appeared to accept her fate with good grace.

As he’d hoped, her training in the convent had made her into a docile and obedient young woman.

The intense attraction he felt for her was the icing on the cake.

He sat back, satisfied, watching as she hurried across to the far end of the table where the schoolgirls sat. She was very slender, her figure, under the thick, concealing convent clothes, girlish rather than womanly.

“She’s very thin,” he observed. And underdeveloped for her age. The Spanish girls he’d known were lush and curvaceous. “She’s not ill, is she?”

“We’re all thin here,” the nun said dryly. “We almost starved during the war, and the country has been slow to recover. Trust me, Isabella has the appetite of any healthy young creature.”

Her reference to Isabella’s healthy appetite caused Luke to think of quite another sort of appetite. His body stirred at the thought. It was disconcerting, feeling the early stages of arousal while sitting at table with a middle-aged nun. But something about the way Isabella moved… appealed.

Begetting an heir was not going to be a duty after all.

What was she saying? Isabella’s expression looked quite severe as she spoke to her friends. One of them, a ravishingly pretty girl, glanced at him and said something. They all laughed except Isabella. She seemed one of them… yet not. A little apart.

The other girls quickly cleared away their plates and hurried toward him in a gaggle, smoothing down their hair and eyeing him in a flirtatious, fluttery manner that made him sigh.

Not so different from the girls in London, then.

Young, sheltered, and silly. Any remaining fears that attackers had invaded the convent faded.

He stood and bowed politely over each girl’s hand as Isabella introduced him. Then under Reverend Mother’s benevolent eye, the girls pelted him with eager questions.

“Have you traveled far to come here?” They spoke in slow, clear Spanish, watching him as if they might need to repeat the question.

“No, just from the village down the road,” he said in easy, idiomatic Spanish. Gales of giggles, as if he were a famous wit.

“But they said you were English,” the prettiest one—Alejandra?—said in surprise, and glanced at Isabella as if she’d lied to them.

“I learned Spanish when I was a boy,” he explained. “I spent several summers on my uncle’s estates in Andalusia.” They oohed and ahhed, as if this was somehow clever of him.

He supposed most girls raised in a tightly disciplined and isolated female environment would overreact to a male presence. They acted younger than they were.

Not that Isabella was giggling or flirting. In silence she watched her friends making up to him, asking no questions herself, taking no part in the conversation. Watching over them—or perhaps she was watching over him—like a small, plainly dressed hawk.

“Do you have any brothers?” This from the intense-looking one. Dolores? The others craned forward, breathless, hanging on his every word.

He shook his head. “Only sisters.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Are they married?”

“Yes, two are married; the youngest, Molly, is making her come-out this year.”

“How old is Molly?”

“The same age as Isabella.”

“So old !” they exclaimed in surprise. “Do all girls come out so old in England?”

“No, they are usually eighteen or nineteen,” he explained. “Molly’s first come-out was delayed by the death of my uncle and postponed again the following year because of an illness. This year she is hoping it’ll be third time lucky.”

“Is she pretty, this Molly?”

“Very.”

“Are all your sisters pretty?”

“Yes, they are.” His oldest sister was a famous beauty. And as bossy a female as he’d ever seen.

“When you go to England, will you and Isabella live in London?”

“Part of the time. I have a house in the country and would prefer to spend most of the year there.” He glanced atIsabella. “We will, of course, come to London for the season.”

“The season in London!” they exclaimed. “Isabella, you are so lucky!”

He glanced at her again, and she gave a polite, noncommittal smile. Catching the exchange, the one called Alejandra asked, “Has Isabella changed much since you saw her, Lord Ripton?”

“Somewhat,” he said dryly. “She’s grown up.” This produced a gust of feminine tittering.

“Perhaps you and Isabella will spend part of the year in Spain, as you did when you were a boy. Perhaps she can visit us.”

“No.” They looked startled. He must have said it more brusquely than he’d intended. “I won’t be returning to Spain again.”

“But—”

He glanced at Reverend Mother. “That’s enough, girls,” she said immediately. “Lord Ripton and Isabella have a long journey ahead of them tomorrow—”

“And a long reunion tomorrow night,” the frizzy-haired one said, causing an outbreak of fresh giggles.

“Luisa!” Reverend Mother said sternly, and the girls immediately put on solemn faces. “Bid Lord Ripton good night; he is no doubt weary of your silly chatter.”

One by one, they bade him good night, Isabella waiting to the last.

Reverend Mother rose. “Good evening, Lord Ripton. Isabella will show you out. I imagine there are one or two things you will wish to say to each other in private. I will see you in the morning. I hope the village accommodations are adequate.” She swept from the room in a stately manner, shooing the girls still hanging around the door before her.

Luke offered Isabella his arm.

She hesitated. “Lord Ripton—”

“Luke,” he reminded her.

“I don’t want to go straight to England from here,” she told him bluntly. “I want to visit my home first.”

Luke frowned. “You told me when we first met you no longer had a home.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and strode toward the door.

“I don’t. It’s not my home anymore. But I still want to go there.”

“It’s a bit late to be having second thoughts about Ramón, isn’t it?”

She pulled away from him, stopping dead. “Ramón! This is not about Ramón. I despise Ramón. I never want to see him again.” She folded her arms. “But I must return to my former home.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”

She hesitated. “I need to check that everything is all right. That everyone is all right.”

“There’s no point in wondering about that now,” he said crisply. “Besides, if it’s not all right, if the place is in a mess, what can you do about it? It’s Ramón’s responsibility now.” They emerged into the main courtyard.

“But—”

He patted her hand and said in a firm voice, “No, there’s no point in going back. Trust me; it’ll just upset you to no purpose.”

“No, you don’t understand—” A nun hurried across to unlock the convent gate and, distracted, Isabella broke off. The nun took a lantern from a hook, lit it, and handed it to Luke. She waited, smiling, ready to lock the gate after his departure.

The opportunity for a private conversation was over. Luke could not regret it. He’d said all he intended to say on the matter; there was nothing further to discuss.

He bowed, touching his lips to the back of Isabella’s hand, and as mouth met skin, the desire that had been simmering in him all through dinner spiked.

She shivered, blinked at him wide-eyed, then snatched her hand back.

Luke tried not to smile. So she felt it, too.

“Tomorrow will be a long, hard ride. I’ll collect you at eight,” he told her. “Sleep well.” For, he thought, tomorrow night she’d get no sleep at all.

T hat hadn’t gone well, Bella thought as she slowly made her way back to the girls’ dormitory. He hadn’t listened to her at all.

She had to go back to Valle Verde. The guilt was eating away at her.

She would have to make him listen. It was a simple matter of respect.

She might not know how to make a man love her—from all she’d ever seen it depended on being beautiful and knowing how to flirt and flutter eyelashes.

Well, she wasn’t ever going to be beautiful, and she felt stupid trying to flirt—like a dog trying to perform ballet—and anyway his lashes were longer than hers.

Respect, however, was just a matter of being strong-minded.

Reverend Mother was not the least bit pretty, but everyone respected her—even Lord Ripton.

And her predecessor, the old Reverend Mother, had been tiny and gentle with the sweetest little crumpled face, like a pale little raisin, yet even Ramón had obeyed her.

Both women were, in very different ways, strong-minded.

They simply assumed people would obey them, and everyone did.

Tomorrow she would look Lord Ripton in the eye, tell him firmly and clearly what she needed to do, and assume his cooperation.

She hoped he wouldn’t demand an explanation—she would have to think of something convincing. She was too ashamed to give him the real one, and have him know what a selfish, small-minded, disloyal creature she truly was. And how she needed to make up for what she had done.

She hoped it would still be possible.

She didn’t want to start her new life with the weight of Valle Verde on her conscience.

She reached the girls’ dormitory, but Sister Josefina was just coming out. “Time for bed, Isabella,” she said.

“Yes, Sister. Good night.” Isabella headed for her own room.

She’d only slept in the dormitory a few times when she’d first arrived at the convent, but her nightmares had disturbed the other girls, and eventually she’d been moved to a cell in the same wing, where she had her own little window looking out into the sky, barred, admittedly, but the fresh air and the sight of the stars had helped.

She couldn’t bear to be closed in, especially in the dark.

In one way she would have liked to spend her last night in the dormitory, with the girls whispering secrets and sharing laughs, and she was sure Sister Josefina, who was kindhearted and sweet, would allow it.

But in another way it was a relief to be spared the questions.

After meeting him, the other girls would be full of envy for her, and excited, and would ask all kinds of questions about the man who was her husband, and she didn’t think she could bear that.

Especially knowing he didn’t want her at all.

Besides, she had to pack.

Packing took her less than ten minutes. She’d arrived at the convent with nothing, and she’d leave with not much more.

She packed a change of clothes and a few small items of sentiment: a decorative comb and a small, silver brooch—gifts from friends over the years—and a small Bible with inlaid mother-of-pearl on the cover, given to her by her aunt. It had once belonged to Papa’s mother.

As for a trousseau, she owned nothing like that, nor any dowry chest full of embroidered linen like the other girls allhad. Not so much as a monogrammed or lace-edged handkerchief.

She stuffed everything into a cloth bag and fastened it with a strip of leather. Not much to show for eight years. Almost half her lifetime.

Poverty, chastity, obedience: all that was about to change.