The Marriage Contract

by Ruth Ann Nordin

  ***

  After dinner, Stephen and Tad went to the den. Though Edmund had fallen asleep, Stephen had asked Loretta if he could take him. Now, as he sat in the den by the fire where Edmund would be nice and warm, Tad set a glass of brandy on the table next to him.

  “I can’t think of any other gentleman who likes being around children as much as you do,” Tad said as he sat in the chair across from Stephen.

  Stephen looked up from Edmund. “I think children enjoy life more than adults do. They haven’t learned to care about others’ opinions yet. It frees them up to be happy.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right. My children certainly enjoy coming here, and it’s not just because you lavish them with gifts.”

  Stephen smiled as he turned his attention back to his nephew’s sweet face. “We all start out like this. Trusting. Happy. I’ve never seen anyone sleep easier than my niece and nephews.” His smile faltered for a moment. “It’s a shame we lose that, isn’t it?”

  “We can’t stay innocent forever. Sooner or later, the real world gets to us.”

  “That’s what I mean. The world does get to us. We don’t get to stay like this forever. Don’t you ever wish you could go back to being innocent?”

  Tad took a sip of his brandy. “I used to,” he whispered. “I used to wish it every morning when I woke up. But all the wishing in the world didn’t change anything. I was still stuck with my past. In the end, I realized the only thing I could do was learn from it. We become better people when we learn from our sins and don’t repeat them.”

  “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have sinned to begin with.” If it were up to him, he would remain like the peaceful baby sleeping in his arms.

  Tad shifted in the chair so that he was leaning toward him. “Stephen?”

  Stephen turned his attention to Tad.

  “You’ve repented of your sins. There’s nothing else you can do,” Tad said. “You’ll never get to redo anything. All you can do is create a better future for yourself. As long as you dwell on the past, that’s not going to happen. My advice to you is to appreciate the good you have in your life right now. Appreciate it and hold onto it. When you’re grateful for what’s right, you don’t have time to think about what went wrong.”

  “That’s a little hard to do when you did things deserving of the prison you find yourself in.”

  “We’ve all done things we regret. Some just have worse consequences than others. Besides, marriage to Eloise was more than you deserved.”

  Stephen shook his head. “No, it was exactly what I deserved.”

  “You need to forgive yourself.”

  How could Tad understand just how awful Stephen had been? Tad wasn’t the one who had mocked his wife in public, saying that no one in his right mind would take her to bed. Nor did he ruin all of her gowns just for laughs. He also hadn’t slipped disgusting things into her food or drink just to watch her reaction. He’d found ways to annoy Eloise, and at the time, he’d thought he was clever and funny.

  Which, of course, he hadn’t been. He’d been childish and spiteful. He’d been angry at Brad for making him marry her, and he’d taken that anger out on her. Eloise had been just as upset with the marriage. Her way wasn’t to find petty ways to annoy him, though. Her ways were a lot more effective, and she took great care and time in planning how to annoy him.

  She’d told everyone he was pathetic in bed. Not that she’d known that from personal experience, of course. He hadn’t been any more inclined to visit her bed than she’d been to visit his. But she’d spread the rumor all the same.

  Then she made a list of all the gentlemen who were much better lovers than him. And not only did she make the list, but she liked to bring her lovers to the townhouse so he could hear them in the other room while he was trying to sleep. That was, perhaps, the biggest scandal in London since she didn’t hide her affairs.

  They’d had lots of fights. Mostly, they would yell at each other. But there was one night…one night when he had pushed her too far. He’d told her the only thing she was good for was spreading her legs for any gentleman who wanted to relieve his baser desires, and she had picked up the hand mirror from her vanity and smashed it into his face.

  His butler had been the one to summon the doctor. All she’d done was laugh and said she hoped he’d never be able to show his face in public again. And she’d gotten her wish. He hid from London after that.

  To everyone, she’d made up a story about him coming down with a disease that was eating away at his skin. And as he was healing from the wounds on his face, he realized she was right. Except the disease wasn’t something physical. It was the sinful nature in him that was rotting away at his core. It was slowly destroying him because he continued to feed into it.

  If only he’d stayed a child. If only he’d held onto the goodness that had once been a part of him. But he hadn’t. He’d wanted to grow up. He’d wanted to have fun. He’d thought behaving respectably meant that life would be boring. He’d seen his brother, and, to him, Brad had lived a very dull life. To him, the gentlemen who were gambling, drinking, and taking mistresses were having a good time. And he had wanted that. He’d wanted to partake in all of the pleasures London had to offer.

  And it had cost him everything that mattered. In the process of living it up, he’d lost his soul. There was nothing he could do to get it back. Which was why he hoped his niece and nephews—and the child Patricia carried—would hold onto their youthful innocence for as long as possible. God willing, they would never end up like him.

  Stephen swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’m tired. I think I’ll retire for the evening.” He stood up and gently placed Edmund in Tad’s arms. “Will you give my sister and Patricia my regrets?”

  “You don’t have to run and hide,” Tad said.

  “I’m in no condition to entertain guests right now. I have to be alone.”

  “I’m sorry, Stephen. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t. It was all me.” He picked up the glass and drank the brandy in one swallow. “It was all me,” he whispered and then set the empty glass on the desk. “Stay for as long as you want.”

  Without looking back at Tad or Edmund, he left the room.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, Patricia ate alone in the drawing room. After dinner the previous night, she hadn’t seen Stephen. All Tad had said was that Stephen didn’t feel well and had to retire early. He’d seemed to be doing fine during the dinner, and no one had gotten sick from the meal. So she didn’t know what could possibly be wrong with him.

  She thought he would come down at some point during the day, but she was left all to herself. She even ended up taking a walk to the gazebo alone. It was reminiscent of her time while she was married to Ichabod. The silence hung heavy around her. The only thing she had to keep her mind occupied was the fact that the child in her womb kicked from time to time.

  That evening, she ate alone in the dining room. She tried not to glance over at the butler who stood nearby, ready to do her bidding. It was a lot easier to ignore him when Stephen shared the meal with her. After a while, she’d forgotten the butler was even there. But she was very much aware of him that evening. And each bite of food she took seemed to take longer for her to get through than the last. By the time she was done eating, she’d never been more relieved.

  Just how had she managed through all of this silence while she was married to Ichabod? Why hadn’t she gone insane with the unrelenting need to connect with another person but being unable to?

  After dinner, the butler came to clear the table, and she ventured to ask him, “Has Mr. Bachman been downstairs today?”

  The butler shook his head. “He’s been in his bedchamber the entire day.”

  So maybe he really was sick? Maybe last evening’s meal hadn’t agreed with him. “Is he feeling ill?”

  The butler shrugged. “I don’t think so. He hasn’t requested anyo
ne to take care of him. I assume he’s all right.”

  “Oh.” Now she was even more baffled by his absence.

  “This isn’t the first time Mr. Bachman’s kept to his bedchamber.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. He’s been known to spend up to a week up there all by himself.”

  “Doesn’t he get hungry or thirsty?”

  “He has gone for days without eating or drinking anything.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “He has?”

  “Yes, but those periods are brief. You needn’t trouble yourself. He’ll be back to his normal self soon.”

  She supposed that should make her feel better, but it only made her wonder what could possibly be responsible for him hiding in his bedchamber. Surely, he couldn’t be avoiding her. Had she said or done something to upset him?

  She thought about going to Stephen’s bedchamber and apologizing for being so bold in her speech. She even stood right in front of the door of his bedchamber as she thought over what she could say that might ease things between them. But in the end, she went to her bedchamber, undressed, and crawled into bed.

  Once more, she was staring at the ceiling. The fireplace kept the room warm enough, but there was still a chill in the air. She shivered and buried herself further under the blankets. She should have taken a hot water bottle to bed with her. It would have helped to take the edge off the chill.

  The flames from the fire in the fireplace danced about, creating all kinds of shadows in the room. She’d forgotten how scary those shadows could be. And right now, images of the gypsy came to her.

  “It’s not right to steal from a gypsy,” the old lady had told Patricia’s mother, staring her down in the dark alley.

  Patricia, who was only nine at the time, huddled behind her mother.

  “Please, don’t be angry,” Patricia’s mother had begged. “My daughter and I were hungry. You had so much that I didn’t think you’d miss it.”

  “Then why didn’t you just ask?” the gypsy had hissed, approaching them.

  “B-because I thought you’d say no,” her mother had replied. “If you give me a chance, I’ll repay you.”

  “Fool woman. You weren’t going to offer to repay before. You’re only doing so now because I caught you. You can’t get away from a gypsy. A gypsy will always find you.”

  Her mother had backed up, and Patricia had backed up with her…until she bumped into someone. Gasping, Patricia had turned and saw a tall man glowering down at her. In the darkness, she hadn’t been able to make out his features. She’d only known it was a man because of his broad shoulders and short hair.

  “I curse you and that child,” the gypsy had spat. “Neither of you will be happy. I’ll see to that if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Her mother had backed up again, and this time Patricia ended up stepping in a pile of human excrement in an attempt to avoid bumping into the tall man.

  The gypsy had gestured to the man, and the two left them alone in the alley.

  Her mother had hugged Patricia and whispered, “Don’t pay her any mind. No one can curse another person. We’ll be fine. Now that you and I have that job doing laundry, everything will be good. We’ll be able to afford our own food, and I will pay that gypsy back. You’ll see.”

  And though her mother had searched for the gypsy, she couldn’t find her. Over the next three years, her mother had gotten sick until she hadn’t been able to recover from the last illness. Though her mother had insisted the cause wasn’t the gypsy’s curse, Patricia hadn’t been convinced.

  After her mother’s death, Patricia kept on as a laundress, but the hours had been long and hard. She’d had to stay in the room in the back of the small building with other young women and a couple of girls younger than her. Many nights, she’d gone to bed hungry because it’d been hard to make a profit between all of them.

  Then she’d met Barnaby, and she’d thought the gypsy’s curse might not affect her after all. Until he died.

  She’d met Lewis by accident one evening. It was when the gypsy had come to her. She’d been doing laundry, and the gypsy had pointed her finger right at her. Patricia had been so scared that she ran out of the back of the building. She’d run down the alley, but at the end had been the tall man. And this time she could make out the scowl on his young face.

  “Don’t let her get away, Symon!” the gypsy had called out to him.

  When he’d headed in her direction, she went to the only place she could go. She’d bolted into the door of the adjacent building and ran out the front. She’d darted from one street to another until she’d tripped and fallen right in front of a gambling hell. Lewis had happened to be coming outside at that moment.

  And from there, he had taken care of her and sent her to marry his brother so she could have a better life. He had taken her far outside of London where she could—at long last—be safe. Safe from the curse.

  She hadn’t seen the gypsy or Symon since the night she’d met Lewis. But sometimes, especially on nights that went on too long, she could swear one of them was nearby.

  Waiting.

  And watching.

  She glanced at the corner of the bedchamber, and for a moment, she thought she saw a woman in the shadows. She bolted up in the bed, heart pounding.

  It was just the clothes she’d draped over the chair by the armoire. Exhaling, she settled back under the covers and pulled them up to her chin. She hated nights like this. She was sure the long day she’d spent all by herself brought up all of the memories.

  She shivered again and closed her eyes. Maybe if she didn’t look at the shadows, they wouldn’t bother her. The baby moved in her womb, and she decided to concentrate on the number of kicks she felt. The method worked. Shortly, she began to relax, and soon after that, she finally fell asleep.

  ***

  The next morning, Patricia ate alone in the drawing room. She kept glancing at the doorway, hoping Stephen would come in and join her. But he didn’t. She was all by herself.

  When she looked out the window, she saw the maze, and all it did was remind her of the time Stephen had shown her how to get to the center of it. She’d like to go back there again. But she didn’t want to go alone. She wanted to go with Stephen. Yes, she knew how to get to the center and then back out, but it wouldn’t be the same without him.

  Going for a walk anywhere wasn’t the same without him. Eating her meals wasn’t the same without him. She’d gotten used to having him around. It had been nice to spend time with him.

  If only she knew what had happened at the dinner party that made him keep to his room.

  Once she was done eating, she left the room and stopped at the foot of the staircase. It would take her to the bedchambers. Did she dare knock on his door and see if he would talk to her?

  “My lady,” the butler said as he approached her.

  She turned her attention to him.

  “Today the furniture for the baby will arrive,” he continued. “Would you like to tell me where you want everything?”

  Yes, that might be a good distraction. She nodded and led him up the stairs. She already had clothing for the baby. Patricia had made them as soon as she found out she was expecting. It’d given her a much needed reprieve from the resounding loneliness that had been her companion while she lived with Ichabod.

  She didn’t know what she could do to ease the loneliness this time. It might have been more bearable before she’d gotten to know Stephen. Granted, there were so many things she didn’t know about him. In many ways, he was still a mystery to her. But at least he had spent time with her. He had talked with her. He had shown an interest in her. She hadn’t been a wife he’d gotten for the sake of giving him an heir.

  Once she showed the butler where she wanted the baby’s furniture in her bedchamber, he left. Deciding on going for a walk, she pulled her cloak from the armoire and took out a fox muff to keep her hands warm. She put on the cloak and pulled up the hood to protect her ears from the chill
outside. Then she picked up her muff and headed out of her bedchamber.

  Her steps slowed as she approached Stephen’s bedchamber. She didn’t realize she had completely stopped until she’d been standing in front of his door for a few seconds.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she knocked on his door. When he didn’t say anything from the other side or open the door, she called out, “Stephen?”

  Her heart pounded as she waited for him to respond.

  But he didn’t.

  She knocked again, this time making sure it was louder. “Stephen? Would you like to go for a walk with me? We can go to the gazebo.”

  The gazebo had been his favorite place. She thought it might entice him to come out if she made the offer.

  But he still didn’t respond.

  She let out a defeated sigh. She didn’t know what to do. She blinked away her tears and trudged on down the hall. She hadn’t realized how much she’d gotten used to Stephen until he stopped spending time with her.

  Surely, she hadn’t done something to upset him, had she? She thought their last conversation had been pleasant. But maybe she’d gotten too personal with him. He didn’t really need to know how her baby had been conceived. Maybe he was disgusted by it. She’d been repulsed by Ichabod’s plan when she’d first learned of it. It wasn’t right that a baby should be conceived in such a cold and impersonal manner.

  But then, she realized it wasn’t all that different than having Ichabod come to her bed, hurry through the process of being intimate with her, and then rushing back to his bedchamber so he could get away from her. Either way, he didn’t really want to have any connection to her…to develop anything meaningful with her. She was only a means to an end.

  She forced aside her tears and focused on the prospect of going for a walk. Maybe she should go to London and visit Loretta tomorrow if Stephen didn’t leave his bedchamber before then. Maybe Loretta could shed some light on what was going on. Loretta knew Stephen much better than she did.