Garlands of Gold

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘A commendable aim,’ he said with a grin. ‘But now I want to discuss the business matter with you that would have brought me to London with or without my godson’s christening. I want you to hear me out before you voice any opinion.’

  Smiling, she raised her eyebrows questioningly. ‘How on earth do you expect me to advise you on any business matter?’

  ‘You will be able to do very well in this case. I believe you have heard from Elizabeth – and perhaps from others – that Master Wren does not consider me a sufficiently pious man to work at his right hand on the cathedral and the many churches that are to be rebuilt, even though I know he approves my talents.’

  Saskia nodded. ‘I have heard your situation mentioned.’

  ‘What’s more, he would have no hesitation in taking me on if I could present myself as a reformed character.’

  ‘Are you leading such a wild life?’ she asked teasingly on a smile.

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘In the dales of Yorkshire? There it is all fresh air and long walks!’ Then he paused briefly. ‘I’m not ashamed to admit that I have sown plenty of wild oats in my earlier years and some would say until comparatively recently, but those times are past. If I can present myself as a responsible man settled into marriage Master Wren will accept me into his fold.’ He tightened his hand into a fist on his knee, unconsciously displaying the intensity of his feelings on the matter. ‘To have the chance to design beautiful houses for graceful streets where once there were only slums and wretched pest-ridden alleys is every architect’s dream.’

  ‘Then you must find yourself someone to love and marry,’ she advised sensibly.

  He had turned his head to gaze unseeingly into the fire, his thoughts far distant as he paused for a few moments before he spoke again.

  ‘I have found her,’ he said quietly, his frown heavy and his tone deeply serious. ‘Her name is Jane Montgomery and she would marry me tomorrow if the chance were ours. Unfortunately she is the daughter of the baronet for whom I’m building the York mansion and she is already betrothed. Her parents had arranged the marriage some months before I first went to view the site for the house and to have preliminary discussions about what was required in style and embellishments.’ He got up from his chair and moved restlessly across to the bottle he had left on the library table. There he poured himself a refill, she having shaken her head when he had glanced enquiringly at her half-emptied glass. ‘I wish you could meet her, Saskia. I believe you would have liked each other. She is beautiful and intelligent and everything any man could wish for in a wife.’

  ‘Is there no chance at all of her breaking that betrothal?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s signed and sealed.’ Then he returned to stand with his back to the fire as he looked down at her. ‘So now you and I are in the same boat. You can never have Grinling as a husband or lover and Jane is beyond my reach. Neither of us can have the one person that matters most to us.’

  ‘I’m learning to live with the situation and so must you.’

  ‘I’m taking the first step by being here to talk over with you the business proposition that I have in mind.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, her curiosity roused.

  He sat down again, leaning towards her with an elbow on his knee. ‘As I said to you earlier, I must have a wife if I’m to get the work I want from Master Wren. Marry me, Saskia. It will be a business arrangement, a marriage of convenience as most are these days, but without demands. Separate bedchambers and, in a way, separate lives beyond necessary appearances together. In exchange for marrying me you’ll have a comfortable home and, if you should wish it, a shop in an elegant street where you could sell your beauty preparations and become financially independent. Then I’m sure you would find among your clientele some ladies willing to subscribe to your book. In return I can promise you without any false pride that my architecture will enhance Wren’s own beautiful works for centuries to come. You have nothing to lose, not even your virginity.’

  She had sat still and speechless, but now her eyes widened even more. ‘You are very blunt in your speech!’

  ‘I’m putting all my cards on the table,’ he said in the same controlled and yet curiously angry way. ‘We should be equal partners, but – using discretion – we would go our own ways, although I suppose in your devotion to Grinling you are hardly likely to fancy anyone else. But it is not in my nature to live like a monk. I’m not asking for a reply now, but I want you to think about it.’

  She had risen slowly to her feet. ‘I can tell you now that even a marriage in name only would be too high a price to pay for the loss of my freedom.’

  ‘Would it be freedom to end up managing a stall in a dirty London square in all weathers? All your grander customers would desert you. None would ever buy from a market woman.’

  ‘It did not put them off when I had my stall at the cottage!’ she retaliated fiercely.

  ‘Then you were a novelty. A pretty young woman with charmingly presented wares outside her own cottage. It was fast becoming a vogue to buy from you.’ He saw that he had surprised her. ‘Did you not know that?’

  Subdued, she shook her head. ‘No, but I’m well aware how women can be swayed by fashionable notions that come and go.’

  ‘If it had not been for the fire you might eventually have made enough profit at your stall to rent a property, but it would have taken a long time again – if ever – before you could get a shop in an area where the right kind of affluent customer would have come to you. Now I’m giving you the chance to get business premises of your own a deal quicker than the decades that it would take otherwise.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something most important of all?’

  ‘That we each may meet someone to love again?’ He gave a careless shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Divorce is not impossible, although it’s a lengthy process.’

  ‘I’m not listening to anything more,’ she replied emphatically, rising to her feet. ‘You have put a most extraordinary proposition to me and I’m quite stunned and bewildered by it.’ She made a wavy movement with her hands. ‘I’m going to bed. Good night.’

  He made no attempt to detain her. ‘Sleep well, Saskia. If you have any doubts about me I can assure you that as a royalist and as a gentleman I always keep my word.’

  She did not doubt that he meant what he said. Englishmen of breeding were renowned for their word being their bond. In the hall she took up a candle-lamp from a side table to light the way upstairs. One phrase he had used danced in her mind. He had said she could make herself financially independent. It was like a beacon in the darkness. Therein lay the only true independence for a woman, but few could obtain it when by law upon marriage everything the bride owned became her husband’s property. Yet Robert had made it clear he would want nothing from her in any way. Had she become so mercenary that independence meant more to her than any relationship?

  She shook her head fiercely against the thought. Since the love she had yearned for could never be hers she had to be practical about her future, fulfilling her life in another way. She would give his proposal very careful thought. If she should decide to accept him on the terms he had put to her she would in return do her utmost not to let Robert regret his generosity. She was determined that to the world she would appear to be the perfect wife for him.

  In the library Robert refilled his glass again and sat down to finish off the rest of the bottle. He could not understand now why he had ever thought that if Jane had been free that she could even begin to take the place of the only woman he wanted above all others. Saskia was always a challenge and created depths of feeling in him as no other woman had ever done.

  His thoughts drifted back to when he had seen her earlier that day and lingered on the memory of when he had opened the kitchen door. Botticelli’s Venus, rising from the waves, was not more alluring than Saskia in her wooden tub, reaching for her bath-towel.

  Fifteen

  Saskia gave her answer
to Robert three days later on the morning he was to journey back to Yorkshire. His coach had been repaired with a replacement wheel and the restoration of the damaged paintwork before being returned to him. The horses, although they had been frightened at the time of the accident, had been unharmed. She had seen little of him. He had been out most of the time, keeping appointments by day and involved in social occasions by night, but now there was half an hour remaining before his departure and they had left the breakfast table to go into the library where a cheerful fire was blazing.

  She held out her hands to the flames. Right up until this last minute she had been undecided whether to accept the offer he had put to her or to turn it down. She could tell with every nerve in her body that he was watching her, knowing that she was about to announce her decision.

  In a curious way she felt that because of her mother’s hours of self-sacrifice in making up the collections of pots and flasks she was equally committed to such a task. It made no difference that the conflagration that had destroyed the collection had been no fault of hers. The guilt of losing what had been bequeathed to her would remain a torment until somehow her heritage was fully restored. Only then could she pick up the threads of her life again. Robert’s offer was a swift route to achieving her goal among other advantages.

  ‘I will enter this marriage of convenience with you,’ she stated decisively as she turned to face him, ‘but it will be exactly on the terms that you stated and we shall remain totally independent of each other.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘In the meantime go ahead with the marriage arrangements. Get the banns read and order a whole new wardrobe of clothes for every occasion. I confided in Elizabeth that I hoped we would soon be wed. She will help and advise you. We’ll be married at Aldgate Church and have a banquet after the ceremony.’

  She frowned. ‘Why were you so sure I would not refuse?’

  He smiled slowly at her. ‘Because I know you better than you realize. You have the same ruthlessly ambitious streak in your nature as I have in mine and when you have set your mind on a goal nothing will deter you. Admittedly you failed to win Grinling, but that matter was entirely out of your province. So, since my terms suit you, I think we shall do very well together.’

  ‘You can be very cruel at times,’ she said, wincing at what she saw as a taunt.

  ‘It is not my intention,’ he said, holding out his hand for hers, not to put it to his lips as she would have expected, but to clasp it firmly as if she were a man with whom he had reached a satisfactory business arrangement. ‘I want us to share an agreeable partnership.’

  ‘I have one stipulation,’ she said. ‘We shall not be married in Aldgate Church.’

  ‘You have another that you prefer? It is of no consequence to me.’

  ‘No. It is just that I could not in all conscience stand before a holy altar in any church and make false promises to love, honour and obey you till the end of my days. I want a Fleet wedding.’

  He stared at her in astonishment. The notorious Fleet prison had become a place where those in haste to be married could be wed at short notice without a licence or banns being read as well as no awkward questions asked. The reasons for such marriages might be an unexpected pregnancy, men departing overseas with the armed services sooner than expected, elopements when couples needed to escape parental wrath, and sometimes simply to avoid the cost involved through the festivities that accompanied a church marriage. The reason why it had become quick and easy to arrange a wedding ceremony within the prison’s dank walls was that among the many prisoners there was always a small number of clergymen incarcerated for various crimes, some of them defrocked, and all thankful to earn a little money to help towards their debts that had put them behind bars or to purchase ale and other comforts to ease their grim circumstances.

  ‘Do you really want to be married in that notorious, fever-ridden place?’ Robert questioned on a note of total disbelief.

  ‘Yes, I do. Find a defrocked clergyman in there. One who is no longer ordained and without authority to perform marriages or anything else. He will be only too eager to carry out the charade for good payment and any words spoken by us will have no more meaning than if we were actors in a play.’

  He regarded her steadily. ‘Did you keep awake all night thinking this out?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, and the other nights too. In fact, I have not stopped considering every aspect very seriously ever since you put your proposition to me. I know as you do that the alternative would be very bleak for me. You said yourself that my previous success with well-to-do clients was only because I was a novelty, and I know that none would ever buy from me again if I sold at a common market stall.’

  ‘You can be sure of it,’ he agreed. He could see that although she wanted no part of his life, she was also too level-headed to take the grim alternative. It pleased him that she lacked foolish sentiment and had so much common sense.

  ‘If you delay your departure just by a few hours,’ she continued, ‘we could get the whole business of a sham marriage over and done with completely today. People will think that we were swept away by love and wished to marry before you had to return to Yorkshire.’ Then she smiled wryly. ‘I believe that should convince Master Wren that you have finally mended your ways and settled down.’

  He gave a quiet laugh on a triumphant note. ‘It should indeed.’ Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a small box. Opening it, he presented a very fine emerald and pearl betrothal ring set in gold for her inspection and with it was a gold wedding ring.

  ‘Allow me to put this ring on your finger now that we are betrothed,’ he said courteously, but with no more emotion than if he was wanting her to pour him a cup of tea.

  She held out her hand once again and this time, after slipping on the ring, he did raise her fingers to his lips with a formal bow.

  ‘It’s a beautiful ring,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I chose it to match your eyes,’ he replied, his fierce dark gaze holding hers as he pocketed the wedding ring. ‘Now is there anything more we have to discuss?’

  ‘No. I think we have settled everything.’

  ‘Then I’ll delay my departure until this afternoon and go to the Fleet prison now to make the necessary arrangements.’

  It was just before noon when Saskia arrived with Robert at the great grey stone building that was the Fleet prison. There was to be a hanging of a highwayman that day and people were already gathering around the scaffold outside the prison walls.

  Inside the prison the stench from the cells wafted around the wedding couple as they were led along a wide hall into a side room. They had been offered the use of the chapel for their marriage, but Saskia had been swift to refuse. The clergyman, who awaited them, had creases at the corner of his eyes as if he had once enjoyed laughter and jovial company in the past, but judging by his oversized cassock and desperate expression he must have lost a deal of weight as well as his joie de vivre since coming into prison through gambling debts. He introduced himself as the Reverend William Walburton. Two of the wardens, who had followed Saskia and Robert into the room, were to be witnesses.

  It was all over very quickly. The marriage certificate was signed and handed to Saskia. Robert gave a purse of money to each of the witnesses and a heavier one to the clergyman, who clutched it to his chest, closing his eyes in thankfulness for the jingle of gold.

  They returned to the house where Robert discussed the financial arrangements he had made for her with his banker before he had made the wedding appointment, putting no limit on whatever she wished to spend.

  ‘There is no equipage for you to use in my absence,’ he said, ‘except a little carriage for two in the coach-house, which was here when I bought this property. Get some advice from Grinling and buy a pony for it. Then you can use it to go visiting.’

  Now it was time for him to leave and his coach stood waiting. As he and Saskia stood facing each other in the hall by the open front door she
spoke very seriously.

  ‘You said you wanted me to let our marriage be known.’

  ‘Yes, of course. The sooner the better.’

  ‘Yet I shall wait until I receive word from you, because if you and Jane should decide to elope I would never breathe a word to anyone of what has taken place here today. You would be free to make a marriage of love.’

  He eyed her cynically, taking her chin between his finger and thumb to tilt her face upwards. ‘An elopement would cost me all my ambitions for this life. I know of nothing that could cause me to jeopardize my ultimate aim, least of all the scandal that such an action would create.’

  Then he lowered his lips on to hers into what became a deeply passionate kiss, holding her locked in his arms as they swayed together. Then gently he released her, aware that she was flushed and breathless.

  ‘That was to seal our bargain,’ he said drily. ‘Nothing more than that. It will not happen again.’

  She stood at the door to watch him depart, but when seated in the coach he did not glance back or raise his hand in a wave as he was borne away. As she shut the door again she was left wondering just how deep his feelings were for Jane Montgomery since he would not risk endangering his future through an elopement to win her.

  Upstairs she gazed into her looking-glass, expecting to see her lips swollen by such a kiss. It had been an experience she would not easily forget. In fact it seemed to have inflamed her whole being in a way she had never known before. Remembering what Elizabeth had said about his male magnetism she supposed that briefly she had fallen victim to it.

  In the coach Robert congratulated himself on his restraint. It had not been easy, but he would keep his word. At least Saskia could never marry anyone else now, which had removed his fear of losing her. If she had already gained a husband during his absence from London he would have probably made Jane his wife. She was beautiful, well educated, intelligent and also passionate, which he knew from the occasions when he had been alone with her. If he had given her the slightest encouragement she would have told her father that she had changed her mind and no longer wished to marry her betrothed. She would not have been denied, for she was the apple of her father’s doting eye. Yet Robert knew that her chief attraction for him had been in a faint resemblance to Saskia, who was as firmly entrenched in his heart as Grinling was in hers.