by Shirl Henke
Joss, seeing Alex stare off into space as if in a trance, ceased her frantic discourse and sighed, reaching out gingerly to touch his arm. "Alex, are you all right? I did not mean to overburden you with my troubles. Perhaps it would be best if I simply resigned myself to the odious marriage and tried to reach some accord with Yardley. Failing all else, I could slip laudanum into his tea on our wedding night or cosh him on the head with a fireplace poker."
Alex leaned forward, shaking his head as he reached for her hand. "No, Joss, you won't ever have to deal with Yardley. I have an idea that might solve your problem as well as my own...."
Joss looked into his liquid brown eyes and felt herself drowning in their depths. Whatever did he mean? His touch sent a tingling premonition dancing up her arm straight to her heart. Her breathing hitched. "Your problem, Alex?" she queried, suddenly breathless with anticipation.
Well, it's now or never, some inner voice urged him. "You know my family has been putting increasing pressure on me to marry over this past year."
Her heart gave a painful lurch. "You mean they've selected a young lady for you?" Visions of some wildly beautiful colonial lass filled her imagination. How could she bear it?
"No, Joss. My parents know better than to try that."
"B-but then, what is your problem if they are not forcing you into marriage—and how does it relate to my present difficulty?" Now she was the one bewildered.
Alex released her hand for a moment and combed his fingers through his hair with a grin. "It's sort of complicated—my problem, that is. I... oh, hell, Joss, I suppose I'm utterly incorrigible in spite of all your prayers. I like the life I lead, the freedom I have to drink and gamble and .. . er, to pursue other pleasures not appropriate to mention in a lady's presence."
Joss nodded, biting her lip, half in vexation, half in amusement at her Alex, her angelic rake. "Working on the docks, I'm acquainted with that profession. Bit o' muslin' is the euphemism, I believe?" she asked dryly.
Alex felt a sudden need to stand up and pace. "Er, well, yes, that is one. But getting back to my family," he continued doggedly, "I feel guilty about worrying them. Since Poly's gone and found herself a husband, they've turned their full attention on me. What I mean to say, is, well... I need to find a wife—not a real wife," he hastened to add, then faltered once more. "I just need to be married so that my parents will cease hounding me and fretting about the way I choose to live my life."
A horrible suspicion was beginning to form in Joss's mind, but it was so presumptuous, so wildly preposterous that she dared not voice it aloud. Instead she moistened her dry lips and said, "Pray continue."
She was not making this any easier, he thought pettishly, trying to read her expression. Those damnable thick glasses always seemed to catch the candle's light in such a way as to obscure her eyes. "Well, Joss, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I could marry you—a marriage in name only, of course," he hastened to add. "You need protection from your uncle. What better way to foil him than to turn up with a husband before he can force Yardley on you?"
The earth would open up and swallow her now. Surely it would. It must! Her worst suspicions were realized. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I could marry you. She sat frozen, not daring to breathe as Alex, her beautiful golden Alex, resumed pacing nervously across the crowded office. She clenched her hands into painful fists, and concealed them in the folds of her skirt as he warmed to his scheme, continuing to lay it out.
"My uncle could procure a special license. He has some very influential friends. Once the matter had been legalized and presented to the earl as a fait accompli, there would be nothing he could do about it but give over, Joss. And when I informed my parents that I had married, they'd rejoice and cease hounding me. It would serve us both handily." When she made no further response, Alex went on. "You would be free to continue your work at the hospital and school, do anything you wished." He stopped and looked directly at her for the first time in several moments.
Joss sat perfectly still, flummoxed over how to respond. "How would we live, Alex? Surely the Carutherses would not desire us to share their city house." Why am I even considering this! she railed at herself.
"Since I began working here I've been drawing commissions on the profits. Oddly enough, my income from honest toil nearly equals my ill-gotten gains at the tables and the track," he said with a rueful laugh. 'That has led me to consider finding my own lodgings. I can afford nice quarters, perhaps a place on Chapel Street that I inspected just last week. There are rooms upstairs that could be converted into your own private apartment. Where we live would be your choice, Joss."
"And you would keep the downstairs." It was not quite a question. She knew he would continue to live as he had, bringing Cyprians to share his bed while she languished in loneliness upstairs.
Alex grinned in that rakish, bone-melting way that made her heart stop. " 'Pon my honor, you would never be exposed to my wicked, wicked ways, Joss," he replied, holding up one bronzed hand in mock pledge.
And you would never have any idea that I love you. How could she do it?
How could you give up your one opportunity to be with him for the rest of your life? an inner voice tormented her. This was her one golden opportunity—if she had the courage to seize it. "I do not know, Alex ...," she replied gravely.
Alex could hear the uncertainty in her voice. "Damnation, Joss, can't you see—"
His frustrated protest was cut short by shouts echoing through the warehouse. "Search everywhere. Leave not a bale or cask standing until you locate her!"
"The earl!" Joss gasped, looking frantically around their cramped quarters for a means of escape.
Alex bolted across the room and rushed through the door to the outer office. "Bertie—you must keep the earl from searching here. Tell him you've not seen Miss Woodbridge or me. It's of the utmost urgency!" he said in the old man's ear trumpet.
When Therlow nodded with a somewhat befuddled expression on his face, Alex left him, turning the lock on the inside door. "Quickly, follow me," he whispered, siezing her by the hand.
A second small door in the little room was partially hidden by a tall case cabinet stacked with records. He shoved it open, then dragged her through it, closing and locking it behind them. They were once more out in the warehouse. Before she could catch her breath, he took off in a swift dash, nearly yanking her arm from its socket.
They raced past kegs of molasses and crates of oriental pottery, zigzagging through the maze of narrow aisles, headed to one corner of the immense building where a rickty flight of stairs led up to a loft.
"Where are we going?" she managed to gulp out as they approached the steps.
"There's a window and a gutter pipe beside it, if memory serves me," he replied, starting to climb.
"Memory had best serve you or you'll be serving a sen- ence at Newgate," she replied, then stumbled on the second step before breaking free of his protective hold to gather her skirts. Thanking heaven for her sensible flat-soled shoes, she scrambled up the narrow wooden risers.
"There—up there, yer lordship," one of the earl's servants yelled, and the chase was on.
Misjudging the depth of the last step, Joss pitched face forward into the cobweb-strewn loft. Alex scooped her up and resumed dragging her toward a small sooty window in he far corner. It was high and narrow. As he forced open the glass, he asked her, "Can you climb through after me and catch hold of the drainpipe?"
"Do I have a choice?" she hissed, pulling the back of her skirt between her legs and fastening it into her waistband, forming makeshift britches as she'd seen the washerwomen do down at the docks.
"Good girl," Alex said with a chuckle as he climbed through the window and seized hold of the heavy pipe, shinnying down far enough to allow her room. "If you lose your grip I can catch you—or break your fall," he said by way of encouragement.
Trying not to look at the ground, Joss ignored that dubious bit of reassurance and swung out of the window,
clinging like a leech to the rusty pipe. As she half slipped, half scooted down, she felt Alex's hand indelicately but helpfully supporting her derriere.
Then without more warning than a sharp expletive, his one-handed purchase abruptly slipped and he was forced to release Joss in order to keep from falling. As soon as he let go of her surprisingly well rounded buttocks—a fact that did not register in the distress of the moment—she gave a startled "murph" and slid rapidly down. Her legs scissored frantically until they came in contact with the first obstruction, which happened to be his head and shoulders. Involuntarily, using muscles she did not even know she possessed. Joss clamped his neck with her thighs and squeezed.
Alex was the one who now gave a loud grunt of surprise and dismay as her weight landed solidly on his shoulders, nearly causing him to drop the remaining twenty feet to the cobblestones below. When her legs imprisoned his head, he stiffened in surprise. Then the hem of her skirt worked loose from her waistband and flopped over his face. Now completely blinded, not to mention suffocated by layers of cloth, Alex coughed and tried to take a deep breath, which proved to be a grave error since all he succeeded in doing was to suck in a sheer linen petticoat.
He scrambled down faster, certain that if he did not break his neck in a fall or have it wrenched from his shoulders by Joss, he would asphyxiate before they reached the ground.
"They're making for the alley," a voice called out from above.
With a strangled curse, Alex picked up speed in his desperate descent. "How far are we from the ground?" he hissed, spitting out muslin with every word.
"I'm too afraid of heights to look," she replied, squeezing her eyes closed, completely unaware that her lower extremities reacted similarly, tightening around her victim's neck. Alex gurgled something unintelligible in reply.
Feeling one of the pursuers on the pipe above them, he took a chance and jumped clear. They landed, Joss on top of him, on the hard, cold cobblestones. Luckily the fall was only eight or ten feet. Unluckily, one of her heels landed in an exceedingly vulnerable part of his anatomy.
"Alex, are you all right?" Joss asked fearfully, squinting as she pulled her skirt away from his slightly greenish face.
"Couldn't... be ... better," he replied, rolling up as stars spun crazily in front of his eyes.
The noise of the two men climbing down the pipe drew their attention. Joss untangled herself from Alex's semi-prone body and seized hold of the shaking pipe in an attempt to dislodge it. It was loose but she needed something for leverage. The bottom section of the pipe worked free when she yanked on it. Joss swung it with all her strength against the pipe still attached to the wall, then jammed it between the bricks and the rusty metal and pulled back. She was rewarded with a sharp screech, followed by a loud snap.
Their two pursuers fell one on top of the other, much as she and Alex had, but from more than twice the height. As they lay dazed and groaning, Joss tugged frantically on Alex's arm. "We have to go!"
Shaking his head to clear it and ignoring the ache in his nether regions, he lurched up and started off, keeping a tight grip on her hand. They rounded the end of the alley and came out on a busy thoroughfare, where he quickly hailed a hackney.
Collapsing on the shabby velvet cushions, he groaned and looked over at Joss, saying, "It's a bloody good thing this is to be a marriage in name only, for I fear you've damaged my ability to perform husbandly duties for some time."
A startled expression swept over her as she recalled landing, with him cushioning the fall. Then her face crimsoned in acute embarrassment. "Oh," she squeaked, raising one rust-stained glove to her warm face, only to bring it away with cobwebs clinging to it. Her own horrid dishabille was forgotten as an image of that disastrous climb flashed into her mind.
"I had my l—limbs around your... your head! Oh, Alex, I shall simply die of mortification!"
He managed a rueful chuckle. "Frankly, my dear Joss, it wasn't your limbs' proximity to my head that distressed me most."
"Will you give me no peace, Alex? Think of my sensibilities," she chided, deciding there was no hope of redeeming her dignity under such circumstances.
"My prim bluestocking, you have far more sense than sensibility, thank God." He looked at her dirt-smeared face and cobweb-coated hair with a lopsided grin. Somewhere in their escape she had lost her bonnet and her braids hung askew on the nape of her neck. They had landed in a puddle of rainwater in the alley and her clothes were damp, giving off a distinct scent of eau de rust. Joss never changed.
I do really love her, he thought suddenly. He certainly did not desire her, he hastened to assure himself with an inward chuckle, but she was more fun than any of his sisters and by far the brightest person he knew. There was no one, not even Drum, in whom he could confide with more confidence. "I think we shall rub on quite splendidly together, Joss."
"I haven't agreed to your bizarre proposal," she reminded him. "Think, Alex, about what you are doing. What if you change your mind one day? What if you fall in love with a woman you wish to truly make your wife?" she asked, playing devil's advocate. "Then you shall be stuck with me.”
"Never fear. I have no plans to fall in love with one single female. I love the infinite variety of them all far too much," he replied with a devilish wink.
Of course the idea never crossed his mind that she would find a man who might wish to wed her, Joss thought with a pang. I was content when I met you, Alex, having forsaken those painful girlish dreams of husband and children. Now you make me want to dream again. And dreaming, Jocelyn Woodbridge knew, was a bittersweet torment indeed.
"See here, Joss," he said, breaking into her preoccupation, "if you are concerned that I might wish to cry off one day—which I assure you I will not—well, we could always apply for an annulment. I would provide for you so that you would never again be at anyone's mercy. And I promise never to subject you to ... well, to impose upon you."
Joss digested this. Could she bear to grant him an annulment after they had been together for years? Every golden moment you can spend with him is worth any cost, that inner voice urged.
"Well, Joss?" he cajoled as they climbed down from the hackney. "What's it to be?"
"Very well, Alex. I shall marry you," she replied in a small voice, uncertain whether she had just openeid the gate to paradise or Pandora's box.
Alex gave her a brotherly hug of delight. "I knew you'd
see the logic in my plan! Come, let us break the news to Drum," he replied, taking her arm.
She balked. "Drum?" she echoed, squinting up at the elegant flat where the hackney had let them off. She'd heard Alex give an address to the driver but in the confusion of their harrowing escape, had not thought to ask precisely where they were going.
"We could not return to Uncle Monty's house and I did not think you would favor meeting my latest 'bit o' muslin' any more than she would you ... so that rather left Drum."
In spite of her melancholy thoughts about mistresses and annulments, she could see the humor in their situation. "He shall be positively flummoxed. I cannot wait to see the look on his face when you announce our impending nuptials."
"Then what are we waiting for?" he dared. She took his proffered arm and they walked up the steps.
* * * *
Drum idly stirred a tot of brandy into his afternoon tea while he studied Miss Jocelyn Woodbridge, soon to be Mrs. Alexander Blackthorne, as she sat primly on the Grecian couch in his parlor. In spite of her attempts to freshen her appearance, she looked like one of the rats her dog dragged in. Limp frizzy hair was clumped on top of her head in a great wad. Her pale face was smudged and her thick glasses were askew on the bridge of her nose. The frumpy tan dress she wore was wrinkled and stained, hanging on her body like a sail that had lost the wind.
Whoever would have believed Alex would marry her? Drum had stood in gauche amazement while Alex laid out their insane scheme, but then as they had discussed the rash plan, he had observed the interchange between the "brid
al couple" and it troubled him very much indeed. The way she looked at Blackthorne when she thought no one was watching . . .
For almost two years he'd been more than passing curious about the nature of Alex's friendship with the preacher's daughter. Though he had teased the American about desiring this female for her mind, he never dreamed Alex would be so precipitous as to actually leg-shackle himself to her.
She'd always been snappish and cool around him. Although he'd come to a grudging admiration of her wit, he knew she tried to conceal her genuine detestation of him because he was Alex's friend. Alex looked on her as a friend, just as he did Drum. But marriage certainly placed extreme stress upon friendship. If he was still uncertain about Alex's finer feelings for Jocelyn Woodbridge, he had become increasingly more certain about hers for Alex. After observing the two of them that afternoon before Alex went in search of his uncle and a special license for marriage, Drum was positive that she was quite in love with his friend.
"You keep staring at me as if you expect I'll grow fangs and pounce on you as Poc would fall upon a juicy rat," Joss said at length. They had endured an uneasy silence since Alex departed. She took another sip of her tea and waited the odious little man out.
"An interesting idea, but I rather fancy the female of the species as a spider industriously spinning her web to entrap her hapless victim," he drawled.
"And that is how you see Alex—as my hapless victim?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps."
" 'Twas he who proposed this most unconventional arrangement, not I. It suits him as much as it does me... perhaps more," she added softly, thinking of the succession of Cyprians who would sleep in his bed while his wife lay alone abovestairs.
"Aha, but 'tis he who shall be the husband—or did you not know, Miss Woodbridge, that it is the poor male spider who is devoured by his mate?"
"You have my assurance, Mr. Drummond, that I shall
refrain from devouring Alex in the foreseeable future," she replied, striving for a light tone.