An Unsuitable Bride

by Jane Feather

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Peregrine awoke one morning after another tormented night and realized that it had been over a week since Alexandra had left. Just what was she doing at this moment? Sitting at breakfast with the poisonous Maude or already at work in the library, creatively moving sums of money from one account to another?

  He found to his surprise that the thought brought familiar exasperation but not the cold, despairing anger of the last days. Perhaps it just wasn’t possible to maintain such fury for any length of time; it was far too debilitating. He went to the window and looked out upon a bright, crisp day. And the blood once more stirred in his veins. He’d done enough sitting around and moping for a lifetime. He’d deal with Alexandra when the time came.

  He went down to the breakfast parlor, telling Bart in the hall to go to the mews and bring Sam around. The horse had been eating his head off for more than a week and would be chafing at the bit. Serena and Sebastian were already at breakfast when he went in. They both looked at him with shrewdly assessing glances that he now realized had been their habitual expressions for the last week.

  “Good morning,” he greeted them. “A fine one, it looks.”

  “You noticed?” Sebastian said with a quirked eyebrow.

  “Yes, finally,” his twin agreed, examining the offerings on the sideboard. “I have it in mind to ride in Windsor Park this morning, get rid of the fidgets. D’you care to join me?”

  “I wish,” Sebastian said with a mock groan and a grimace at his wife. “But Serena insists I must look at two houses with her, as she can’t make up her mind between them. My wife is being unusually indecisive.”

  “Well, you do have to live there, too,” Serena pointed out. “You’re looking more yourself, Perry?”

  “I am a little less enraged,” he conceded. “I still don’t know what to do for the best, but there’s nothing I can do about the wretched woman at present, so I’ll take my life back for now.”

  “Good.” Sebastian’s smile was relieved.

  Perry gave him a rueful smile of his own. “I’m sure I’ve been very difficult to live with.”

  “No, just not really here,” his twin said, burying his nose in his tankard.

  Peregrine left soon after, riding Sam through the still quiet streets of fashionable London and out into the countryside towards Windsor Castle and its parkland. He was glad his brother had declined his invitation; it was good to be alone in the fresh air, feeling Sam’s easy stride beneath him, feeling the dusty, tangled web of his thoughts clearing. He still couldn’t forgive her for leaving him without a word, and yet finally, he could feel some compassion. She had been abandoned, betrayed by a father she had trusted; maybe it was to be expected that she would need time to trust another man again.

  He still intended to make his point more than forcefully when . . . if . . . she returned to him. Melancholy loomed again, and he urged Sam into a gallop along a broad ride along the river, letting the horse have his head until the animal slowed of his own accord, and his own melancholy was expunged under the sheer exhilaration of the exercise.

  It was mid-afternoon when he was once more in the city, Sam picking his way wearily over the cobbled streets, Perry’s own body aching pleasurably. He left the horse in the mews and walked around to Stratton Street. Just as he reached his door, it opened, and Marcus Crofton stepped out into the street.

  “Oh, Perry, I’ve been looking all over for you. No one’s seen you in days, and your brother and his wife are not at home.”

  “Good to see you, Marcus. Now you’ve found me, will you come in, take a glass of wine?”

  “Gladly. I’ve some news that might interest you.” Marcus turned back to the house, his host moving ahead of him into the hall.

  An icy shaft of apprehension ran down Perry’s spine. He tossed his hat and whip onto the bench by the door and shrugged out of his riding cloak as he opened the door to the parlor, ushering his guest into the warmth.

  “Sherry or claret, Marcus?”

  “Claret, thank you.” Marcus sat down, crossing one elegantly booted foot over the other. He took the glass with a nod and sipped appreciatively.

  “So? News?” Perry prompted when he had sat down with his own glass.

  “Oh, yes . . . I had a letter from my mother this morning. ’Tis the damnedest thing . . . Mistress Hathaway, your pet librarian, if you remember?”

  “I remember,” Perry said, his gaze fixed steadily on his guest, his expression like stone.

  “Well, it seems she’s been thieving bits and pieces of the library all the while,” Marcus said. “Some precious volume . . . Chaucer, I think they said . . . and no one knows what else has gone, because only she knew what was there in the first place.”

  Peregrine had been living with this possibility for so long that he felt no shock, not even surprise, just an icy clarity. He needed help at this point, and he couldn’t wait for Sebastian to return. Besides, Marcus was connected to the whole mess, albeit without his knowledge. “Let me tell you a few things in the strictest confidence, Marcus.” Quickly, he told Marcus everything about his friend’s stepsisters and their circumstances.

  Marcus blinked, shook his head as if to clear his mind, drained his glass, and said, “Good God in heaven . . . that’s appalling. How could such a miscarriage of justice go unnoticed?”

  “Because there was no one who cared to notice it,” Perry pointed out. “Alexandra decided to reset the scales of justice. And this is where it’s led her.”

  “To Dorchester jail and the assizes,” Marcus stated, setting aside his glass. “If we take my curricle, change horses every couple of hours through the night, we can be in Dorchester by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Perry said, setting aside his own glass.

  “Well, of course I would,” Marcus declared forcefully. “These are my stepsisters, and I feel a responsibility to right what wrongs have been done them by the fact of my mother’s marriage.” He was on his feet. “I’ll fetch you here in half an hour.”

  Peregrine knew he could not get to Dorchester on horseback in that time. He stood up. “I’ll be ready.” He went into the hall to let out his guest. “Do you know when the Dorchester assizes are to be held, Marcus?”

  “The first Monday of the month . . . the day after tomorrow,” Marcus said as he stepped out into the street. “Half an hour, Perry.”

  Once Alexandra was in the dock, all hope would be lost. They had to get there by tomorrow. Peregrine took the stairs two at a time. They would change horses and share the driving. Barring highway accidents, they could do it . . . just.

  The next morning, just after dawn, they were on the coastal road into Dorset as a pale sun broke through the clouds, warming the air a little but not enough to combat the sharp sea breeze. It was a relief to turn inland, away from the gray green sea with its white-capped waves surging onto the pebble beaches below the cliff. They were both tired. They had kept up such a pace that it had been difficult to catch a few minutes’ sleep when the other was driving. They had changed horses, courtesy of Marcus’s purse, every couple of hours, so the animals were still fresh.

  They drove into the town of Dorchester soon after noon. As they passed the stone building of Shire Hall, Perry averted his gaze. He didn’t want to be distracted now by worry for Alexandra, by wondering what was happening to her in the dungeons below. Marcus was driving as they turned into the yard of the Red Lion.

  Perry jumped down from the curricle. “I’ll go in and order some food, Marcus. We’re famished.” Every moment’s delay hurt, but he knew he could be no good to Alexandra if he was fainting from fatigue and hunger.

  The landlord greeted him jovially. “Aye, I can give you a good pot of rabbit stew, sir. Good job you’ll not be wantin’ a chamber, mind. The assizes start tomorrow, and there’s not a chamber free in town. Such a to-do as ’tis, wi’ all the folks ’ereabouts come to watch the felons sentenced. There’ll be a public ’anging a few d
ays after. O’ course,” he confided as he ushered Perry into the taproom, “depends on the judge. We likes the ’angin’ judges around ’ere. Some of ’em prefer sendin’ criminals to the hulks or to that there ’Merica place. What’s the fun in that, I ask you?”

  “None, I daresay, for anyone,” Perry observed drily.

  A few hundred yards away, Alexandra nibbled a hard crust of bread and watched her candle flicker and die. The jailer had not appeared since that morning, and she had no way of replenishing her light. Once the flame guttered, she would be in that peopled darkness, with nothing to distract her from the sounds. But somehow, she had achieved a strange kind of resignation. She no longer felt hope or purpose, and without those, there was really nothing to fear. She was lost, the world was lost to her, and she slipped into a void, a dark place empty of all emotion, aware only of physical sensations, of the cold and the damp, hunger and thirst. Her only thoughts now were how to alleviate those discomforts. They seemed the only things of any importance now.

  Marcus mopped his bowl with a thick slice of wheaten bread and heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “So, are we going to bribe the jailers to let her go? I doubt they’ll be averse to a healthy sum.”

  “No.” Peregrine drained his ale tankard, setting it down on the deal table with a thump as he pushed back his stool. “ ’Tis too risky, Marcus. Sir Stephen’s her accuser, and he’s the Justice of the Peace. It won’t be worth their while to take a bribe and face his wrath. They’ll lose their livelihoods. It won’t do.”

  “No, I see your point. So?”

  A grim smile hovered around Peregrine’s mouth. It was time to play the game his way now. Alexandra had insisted on playing it her way, and it had landed her in a prison cell. It was past time he asserted himself. “She’ll be out of there within the hour, if I have to kill someone first.”

  “But we’ll do our best to avoid that, I trust,” Marcus murmured wryly as he followed Peregrine back outside.

  Peregrine’s fatigue had vanished. He was infused with purpose now, his plan forming and reforming in his mind. First a visit to the prison to see how many jailers they would have to contend with, and then they had to gain access to the prisoner. Money would do that much, he was certain. He refused to allow his imagination to wander, to start thinking about how she was, what conditions she was living under. He must concentrate only on getting her out of there.

  But what if she is in the common cell, among the rogues and ruffians of the highways and byways? Not even Alex, fighter though she was, would be able to hold her own among a mob of rough, thieving women. For an instant, the ghastly thought intruded, and it took all of his willpower to dismiss it. He could do nothing to alter the past but everything to change the present. He would adapt his plan to whatever conditions he found her in.

  “Do you have a pistol with you?” he asked Marcus as they went into the stable yard.

  “Yes, and my sword.” Marcus touched the hilt of the sword at his hip. “So, we are going to be fighting our way out of there?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Perry said. “But sometimes a show of force is necessary. I have a pair of pistols and my sword.”

  “We’ll play it by ear,” his friend stated. “Dorchester is a sleepy market town. I doubt that the jail will be bristling with armed guards.”

  “Let us hope not.” Suddenly, Perry veered off towards the stable block. Marcus waited, and his friend eventually appeared with a rope halter that he pushed into the deep pocket of his coat. “Let’s go, then.” Perry set off at a brisk walk in the direction of Shire Hall, Marcus falling in beside him. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Alexandra paced the small cell back and forth, forcing her cold, cramped limbs to move, swinging her arms as vigorously as she could. She had the stub of another candle, begrudgingly provided by the old jailer when he’d brought her bread and water a few hours earlier. As always, she wished she had some sense of the passing of time. The old man had also produced a bowl of watery porridge on production of a silver shilling, but the price for these creature comforts, if they could be called such, increased day by day, and Alex was beginning to worry now that her supply of coin might not last until she was brought before the judge. As time inched by, she became increasingly impatient for the moment that hitherto she had been dreading. Anything was better than these interminable dark hours of inaction, not knowing what the future might hold for her.

  She had begun to exercise her body as much as she could and had started cataloguing the library in her head, going through the shelves one by one, methodically seeing herself pack and crate each individual book. When she missed one, she made herself go back to the beginning. It kept her mind off the sounds, which were as unbearable as ever, and gave her at least the illusion of a purpose.

  Above Alexandra, in the afternoon sunlight filtering through dusty windowpanes, Marcus Crofton idly twirled a gold sovereign on the table so that it caught the pale sun, winking seductively at the old man who hadn’t taken his eyes off it. He didn’t know his visitor, but everything about the young man bespoke authority.

  “As I said, I am Sir Stephen’s agent,” the visitor repeated when it seemed the man was so mesmerized by the dance of the coin that he wasn’t listening to him. “Sir Stephen wishes me to see your prisoner at once.” He caught up the coin and folded it into his palm, fixing the old man with a cold stare. “I would like you to take me to her now, if you please.” He tossed the coin into the air and caught it again.

  “Aye, sir. But I ought to ask the beadle, sir. Master Gilby’s mighty fussy about ’is prisoners, sir. He don’t like folks goin’ down to visit less’n he’s ’ere ’imself. I don’t ’ave no orders, sir.’

  Marcus smiled and flicked the coin with his thumb so that it fell onto the table beneath the jailer’s watchful eyes. “You do now. And I should remind you that Sir Stephen Douglas does not take kindly to having his orders countermanded.”

  The man’s hand in fingerless mittens shot out and scooped up the coin. “If ’tis Sir Stephen’s orders, then I s’pose it’ll be all right, sir.” He shuffled to a hook on the wall, where hung a ring of keys. “If’n ye’ll follow me, sir. Mind yer step, ’tis dark an’ a bit damp like.” He took up a horn lantern and held it aloft as he opened a narrow door in the far wall of the chamber.

  Marcus grimaced and followed close. A flight of stone steps led down into darkness. The lantern offered a swaying path of light, revealing a long corridor lined with wooden doors, all with gratings at the top. Whispers filled the air and grew louder as the lantern’s light swayed from side to side, offering momentary illumination in the barred windows of the cell doors. Marcus felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift. The jailer stopped at a door in the middle of the corridor and hung his lantern on a hook above the door before inserting a key.

  “’Ere’s a visitor fer ye.” He pushed the door open a crack. “I’ll ’ave to lock it after ye, sir. ’Tis the beadle’s orders, sir.”

  Marcus gave a quick thought for Perry, who should by now be in the chamber above, waiting for the old man. If their luck held, Perry would only have to immobilize the one jailer. He nodded his agreement and stepped swiftly into the dimly lit cell, grimacing at the reek of damp straw and ordure. The woman standing in the middle of the cell was immobile, staring at him, blinking as if she had never seen his like before.

  “Mistress Hathaway?” He had never called her anything else, and since, as far as he could see in the dim light, she still looked like the middle-aged spinster librarian he knew, he couldn’t think how else to address her. He looked more closely and saw that her appearance was, in fact, altered. Normally trim and neat to a fault, she was disheveled, her hair hanging lank and bedraggled to her shoulders. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, her skin waxen in the dim light of the tallow candle. Her gown was the same shabby one he remembered, but the humpback was gone, and the material hung in loose, limp folds around a body that seemed thin and frail. />
  “Dear God, what have they done to you?” he heard himself exclaim as the jailer closed the door and the key turned in the lock.

  For a moment, Alexandra didn’t recognize her visitor. She hadn’t known her stepbrother well, indeed had only seen him as an occasional visitor at the dinner table at Combe Abbey. Now she shook her head as if dismissing confusion. “Master Crofton . . . I . . . what are you doing here?”

  “Never mind that. Can you walk?”

  “Yes . . . yes, of course.” She could feel the blood beginning to flow again. Somehow, someone, someone with no reason to hurt her, knew she was there. He could get a message to Perry. “It’s only been a few days, I think, but in truth, ’tis hard to tell day from night down here.”

  “I don’t wonder,” he said with a shudder. “Peregrine will be dealing with the old man. As soon as he gets down here, we have to walk out. We have to walk out as if we have simply been about our legitimate business in the council chambers above.” He cocked his head, listening for a sound from above, but the walls and ceiling were so thick that no sound penetrated the dungeons from the upstairs chambers.

  Alex wrestled with her confusion. How did Peregrine get there? How was her stepbrother involved? But the question lost all significance as she registered what he had said. “Just tell me what to do,” she said simply.

  Peregrine had insisted on immobilizing the jailer himself. If the man was hurt, he didn’t want Marcus involved. So far, as far as they could tell, there was only the one jailer on duty, and if the gods smiled, their luck would hold. He could certainly handle one old man single-handed. It was also immensely reassuring to know that there was no reason for the elderly jailer, or indeed the beadle, to recognize either of them. He himself was completely unknown in Dorchester, and Marcus would have had no previous dealings with men such as the jailer and the beadle. If they could make their escape cleanly, without pursuit, they could be free and clear before anyone knew what had happened. The prisoner would have vanished off the face of the earth, the librarian a mere memory. And no one would look for the timid, mousy spinster in the radiant and assured wife of the Honorable Peregrine Sullivan.