An Infamous Marriage

by Susanna Fraser

  “That’s what I kept telling myself,” she said. “But today he keeps growing weaker and weaker, and—and I’m so afraid.” Her voice broke, and Jack wondered what he was supposed to do with a sobbing woman on her own doorstep. To his unspeakable relief, she swallowed and mastered herself. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I should not be burdening you.”

  This he knew how to answer. “Nonsense, ma’am. Giles is my oldest friend, so he could never be a burden. May I come in?”

  She stepped back with a distracted gesture of welcome. “Of course.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth had never seen a healthier specimen of a man than Giles’s friend, the lieutenant-colonel. Everything about him, from his brightly dark eyes and the thick, close-cropped brown curls atop his head to the brisk, firm steps of his booted feet, spoke of strength and vitality. A week earlier she would have admired him for it, but now it almost appalled her that anyone could be so vividly alive while her own beloved lay upstairs fighting for each breath.

  “Will you take me to him?” he asked as soon as he’d shut the door behind him.

  She studied him for a moment. So many visitors had come since Giles had fallen ill, and she’d kept almost all of them out of the sickroom, accepting their offerings of food and medicine and sending them on their way. But this man had been Giles’s closest friend as a boy, and it had been years since they had seen each other. Surely she ought to make this one exception, and perhaps it would strengthen her husband to see his old friend again.

  “Yes,” she said. “He was looking forward to seeing you, after we got your letter. It may hearten him.” Immediately she began leading him toward the stairs. Part of her hoped that Colonel Armstrong could somehow lend Giles some of his strength, even as the little Fordham children had passed their illness to him.

  No. Health wasn’t catching, but dying was. She halted abruptly just short of the staircase, and her guest almost barreled into her.

  She turned to face him. They stood uncomfortably close for strangers. She could feel the heat from his body—good, warm heat, not a burning fever like Giles had suffered for the past five days—and breathe in his scent, a sweet, out-of-doors, horsey sort of aroma. She couldn’t put him at risk.

  He took a step back. She would’ve done the same, but the lowest step of the stairs already pressed her skirts against her calves. “I must ask,” she said. “You have had the chicken pox, haven’t you, sir?”

  “Of course, when I was nine.” He frowned at her and shook his head in bafflement. “Never say Giles is dying of chicken pox.”

  She supposed it did sound absurd. She and Giles had laughed at first, when the clear blisters appeared and they’d realized he’d caught a child’s illness at such an advanced age. But from that hour on, no matter how often Mr. Elting bled him or what medicines they tried, he’d only grown weaker and more ill.

  A hot tear slipped down her cheek, and she swiped it angrily away. How could she have any tears left in her? “I never wished to say it, but it is true. I suppose it might be more precise to say he is dying of pneumonia, since it has settled in his lungs, but chicken pox began this.”

  She turned her back on him and began to mount the stairs, even in her anger and grief taking care to tread lightly.

  “Wait, ma’am.”

  She halted and looked over her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry for speaking hastily. I know well how dangerous any fever can be. Has anyone been called? Dr. Adams in Alnwick is a fine physician. If money is a difficulty, I’d be happy to cover his fee. I owe your husband a great deal, you see, for his friendship when we were boys.”

  Money was a difficulty, but she hadn’t let that stop her. “He was here yesterday, and Mr. Elting has come every day. They bleed him and leave me with medicines and poultices, but nothing helps.” She swallowed hard. “Nothing helps.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “More sorry than I can say.”

  She nodded tightly and continued upstairs.

  She winced at how the steps creaked under his tread, but she knew he couldn’t help it. He was a big man, almost as tall as Giles and more sturdily built. The stairs were noisy, that was all.

  The bedroom door creaked, too, despite all the care she took to open it slowly and softly. It was strange how all the cottage’s little quirks, which had charmed her when it was only their first home, their place of newly wedded bliss, now added to her despair as she kept death watch.

  Giles had been asleep when she left him to answer the door, but now he stared at them and tried to push himself up on one elbow. Elizabeth hurried to his side, yet not before she heard Colonel Armstrong’s sharp intake of breath. It shocked her too. Seven days ago Giles had been well. They’d lain in this bed together, skin to skin in a lovers’ embrace, talking of the future, planning names for the son or daughter they hoped they’d already begun together, just a week into their marriage. She’d traced his face—the smooth skin of his high, noble forehead, his straight Grecian nose, the faint rasp of beard stubble along his jaw. He had been beautiful.

  Now all that was gone, buried under the blisters and sores of the worst case of chicken pox she’d ever seen. And he was so weak—how could it be that the man who had carried her so effortlessly to that very bed now lacked the strength to sit unaided?

  She helped him, propping him up with pillows. “Look, Giles,” she said. “It’s your friend, Colonel Armstrong.”

  “I know,” he murmured with a faint hint of his old gentle smile. “Jack, do come in and let me—” His words ended abruptly in a coughing fit. “Water, my dear.”

  Elizabeth handed him a glass of water blended with a concoction Dr. Adams swore would relieve his pain. He took a tiny sip and pushed it back to her with the most strength she’d seen him muster today. “Not that vile medicine, plain water.”

  With a sigh, she poured him an unmixed glass from the ewer on the little table by the bed. He drank deeply, then turned to Colonel Armstrong, who had taken up a post on the opposite side of the bed. “Our letters found you, I see.”

  “Eventually.”

  “So—so glad you’re here.” Giles tried for a deep breath, horrible and gurgling, then coughed again. Elizabeth saw flecks of blood on the handkerchief when he was done. That had begun just last night, and terrified her more than all his other symptoms combined.

  “I’m sorry to see you in such a case, old fellow.” Colonel Armstrong had just the right sickroom voice, Elizabeth noted with approval, low yet hearty.

  “Not as sorry as I am.” Giles choked back yet another coughing fit, tossing his head from side to side.

  Oh, this wasn’t helping, not at all! If anything, his friend’s presence was only tiring him. Elizabeth pressed him to drink more water. Surely it wasn’t too late, if he was only careful. He had to recover. She couldn’t go on without him. “My dear, you must save your strength.”

  Giles shook his head insistently. “No. Nothing to save it for. Must...must use it while I still have it.” He handed the glass to her and reached a shaking hand toward Colonel Armstrong.

  The colonel took it between his own. Elizabeth bit her lip and blinked hard. Giles’s hand looked so frail now, so white, clasped between Colonel Armstrong’s square, strong hands.

  “Glad you’re here.” Elizabeth saw Giles’s hand spasm, attempting a stronger grip. “Just the man I wanted... Will you promise me something?”

  “Anything.” The colonel sounded so fervent, so sure, before he even knew what Giles was going to ask. Elizabeth knew Colonel Armstrong had been Giles’s closest boyhood friend, though she hadn’t understood the strength of their bond before. But what was her husband going to ask? He had no family left living, no fortune to oversee. All he had was...her.

  “Good.” Giles coughed, took a careful breath and stared hard at his friend. Elizabeth had never seen him half so fierce. “Marry Elizabeth when I’m gone.”

  Colonel Armstrong’s mouth fell open, then shut with a snap.

  Eliz
abeth stared at Giles in horror. Marry this...this stranger? “What?” she cried, her own sickroom voice momentarily forgotten. “No! Giles, you cannot ask such a thing.”

  “I can, and I am,” he insisted, then fell into a coughing fit. After a swallow of water and some labored breaths, he spoke again in a fast, frantic whisper. Elizabeth and Colonel Armstrong had to lean in so closely to hear him their hair almost touched. “I leave her with nothing, Jack, nothing. We married before I could get the Kirkham living because after her great-uncle died she had no place to go. And now to leave her homeless and friendless? I cannot bear it. Please promise me so I can die in peace.”

  Giles must have peace—but at this price? “No,” she said. “I shall contrive somehow.” She didn’t know how—Great-Uncle Oxnard truly had left her homeless and penniless—but surely she could find some sort of respectable work. At least now that she was Mrs. Hamilton she no longer bore the taint of the Ellershaw name. “Don’t worry over me.”

  “My dear, I go to God. You are all I have left to fear for. I cannot bear to think of you destitute and alone.” He breathed several shallow, crackling breaths, paused, breathed again and turned back to Colonel Armstrong. “She will make you a good wife, and she’ll look out for your mother while you’re away. And I will know she is safe. I must know she is safe.”

  He wasn’t about to be persuaded out of this, but when he died—no, if he died—surely they need not consider themselves bound by a promise made to bring comfort to his last hours. She stood straight again and caught Colonel Armstrong’s eye. “Humor him,” she mouthed.

  He gave her a faint, barely discernable headshake of negation, then turned back to Giles. “I’ll see that she wants for nothing.”

  She could accept that. If the colonel wanted to hire her as his senile mother’s companion, or if he had a friend or cousin who needed a governess, she would gladly take any help he offered. But marriage was too much.

  Giles managed to roll his eyes. “I’m dying. I haven’t lost my wits. I asked you to promise to marry her. That isn’t the same.”

  “You cannot ask this of him,” Elizabeth pleaded. “He doesn’t know me. I don’t know him.”

  “But I know you both. Promise. Both of you. If ever you loved me, promise.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. She understood what Giles was trying to do. He had wanted to take care of her, he’d told her, from the first moment he saw her. He’d met her while serving as tutor to the grandson of one of her great-uncle’s cronies in York, and he’d determined to save her from the drudgery and hopelessness of her old life. Now he was using the last of his dying strength to ensure that she wouldn’t fall back into loneliness and poverty. As Colonel Armstrong’s wife, she’d be mistress of Westerby Grange, with a fine house and a stable full of the best hunters in the North. Compared to the life she’d known since her father’s ruin, she’d be rich indeed. But what could be more lonely than marriage to a man who didn’t want her?

  “Very well,” she heard Colonel Armstrong say in a grave, level voice. “I swear it.”

  She opened her eyes and met his, bleak and grim. He didn’t want this, and why should he?

  Giles sagged back into his pillows. “Thank you. Thank you.” With visible effort he turned toward her. “Elizabeth?”

  She hesitated. If this was the only way to make Giles easy again...perhaps he would get better after all, and all three of them would laugh at this morning’s work as a great embarrassing joke on them all. “I promise,” she said at last.

  Chapter Two

  As soon as Jack got back to Westerby Grange, he stopped by his tenant farmer’s cottage and asked the farmwife, Mrs. Purvis, if she could go into the village and help nurse Giles Hamilton.

  She responded with a brisk nod. “That I will. Sally here can see to the house and the cooking for a few days, can’t you?”

  “Of course, Mama,” the girl, whom Jack thought must be fourteen or fifteen by now, agreed.

  “He’s worse, is he?” Mrs. Purvis asked.

  “I don’t know how he was before, but he’s in a dreadful state now,” Jack said. “He and Mrs. Hamilton both think he’s dying, and from what I saw, I’m very much afraid they’re right.”

  Mrs. Purvis shook her head. “The poor lambs, and they were so happy together when Mr. Hamilton brought his bride home. I’ll do all I can for them, and maybe he’ll pull through yet.”

  “I hope so.” If only Mrs. Purvis herself could somehow save Giles with her patience and practical skill where Dr. Adams and Mr. Elting had failed with their bleedings and medicine. He was all but certain it was too late, however. “What do you know of the new Mrs. Hamilton?” he asked, keeping his voice casual.

  His hostess and her daughter both shrugged. “Not much,” Mrs. Purvis said. “Mr. Hamilton met her in York, and I believe she’s from there. I heard her parents died years ago, and she’d been living with her great-uncle, but then he died and left her without a feather to fly with.”

  That much Jack already knew. “What was her name, before she married?”

  “Elizabeth Ellershaw,” young Sally put in. “A very pretty name, isn’t it?”

  Ellershaw? Good God. If she was who Jack thought she was—and surely there couldn’t be that many Ellershaws out there—then Giles had bound Jack to marry the daughter of a banker-turned-thief. Nine or ten years ago the Ellershaw Affair had been the scandal of England for a time, and Jack had never forgotten because one of his closest friends had lost his savings in the bank’s resultant collapse. He supposed enough time had gone by that few would remember the details now, but he had always hoped to marry a lady whose connections would help him to rise in the world, not one who would bring him down if anyone found out who she was.

  Still, his word was his word. If Giles died, he must marry her. As he arranged for Mrs. Purvis’s oldest son to drive her to Selyhaugh in the gig, he prayed as fervently as he knew how that his friend might be saved—and that he and Mrs. Hamilton might be saved from each other.

  But Mrs. Purvis came back early the next morning. Jack knew what her news would be even before she shook her head and told him Giles had died a little after midnight. Woodenly, he thanked her for her help even as he began making plans. The decorous thing would be to wait at minimum several months before marrying his newly widowed bride-to-be, but his duties made that impossible. He had only a dozen days left here before he must ride south to take ship for his return to Canada.

  He had no desire to marry the plain, pale creature he’d met at Giles’s deathbed, especially now that he knew who her family was. Yet there were undeniable benefits to this arrangement. With a wife at home, while he followed his duty and inclination back to Canada, he could trust that his mother would be cared for and the Grange kept in good heart—always assuming his new wife was prudent and honest, but even gentle, saintly Giles was not naïve and unworldly enough to have ignored those considerations.

  Before he left to pay a condolence call on his future bride and make their arrangements, Jack trudged up the stairs to his mother’s room. She still had yet to truly recognize him. Nonetheless he believed she had a right to be the first person to know of his plans.

  He knocked on her door. Metcalf, her maid for many years, who had chosen to stay on as her nurse, opened it promptly. “Good morning,” he said. “How is she today?”

  Metcalf’s lips twisted in a grimace. “No better, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “Ah. Nonetheless, I must speak with her.”

  “Yes, sir, but perhaps I should stay with you? She’s used to seeing me every day, and...other people confuse her.”

  In other words, Jack confused her. He supposed a perfect son would have stayed at home with her all along, but he had always been destined for the army, and he loved military life. He would have made a dreadful farmer. A settled life, rooted to a single plot of land, did not suit him.

  “You may wait in the dressing room,” he said. He would tell the servants about his marriage after he and Mr
s. Hamilton had settled matters between them and not before. “I’ll call you if she becomes distressed.”

  After a faint hesitation, Metcalf stepped aside and slipped through the door into the dressing room, shutting it behind her.

  He paused in the doorway of his mother’s sitting room. It was a small chamber, warm and comfortably furnished but painfully neat. Years ago, her private rooms had been marked by the mild chaos of a busy woman, with baskets of mending, account books and half-finished letters scattered here and there.

  Mama sat at the window, paging through a book of engravings in the weak light of a gray morning. Before her mind had begun to go, she had been a creature of energy and alertness. If she sat during the day, she’d had a quill or needle in her hand. The only books she’d read were gothic novels—she’d claimed their horrors and thrills calmed the mind by contrast—and she had reserved them for the evening hours after her day’s work as mistress of Westerby Grange was done.

  Seeing her so frail and faded broke Jack’s heart. How could Providence have been so cruel as to wreck such a fine mind, so vivid a soul? It would almost have been better if she had died, though he immediately sent up a guilty prayer assuring God he hadn’t meant it.

  “Good morning, Mama,” he said gently.

  She turned her head and peered at him out of gray eyes that had once been sharp and twinkling but had now grown soft, almost empty. She frowned. “Ned?”

  That was a first. So far she’d only mistaken him for his uncle and father, whom he greatly resembled, and not for his blond brother. “It’s Jack. Your younger son.” Her only child now. Ned had been killed in a riding accident shortly after Jack had gone into the army as an ensign of sixteen, and their older sister had died as a young child, long before his birth.

  “Jack,” she said carefully. “You’ve grown so. I...I don’t remember.”