The Penniless Bride

by Nicola Cornick

  She saw Robert Selborne’s shadow turn towards her. She could tell that he was surprised at the question and surprised at her for asking it. The servant classes seldom asked impertinent questions. Nor did they generally quote Dr Johnson. After a moment, however, he gave her a straight answer.

  ‘No, I am not. I could never tire of London, Miss Jewell, although I do prefer the country. And yourself? You must see a different side to the city, I imagine.’

  Jemima was surprised that he knew her surname. He must have picked up one of the handbills her father had had printed. It was even more surprising that he had remembered what that name was. In her experience the nobility had difficulty realising that the working classes were called anything at all other than ‘you’.

  ‘I have certainly seen up enough London chimneys to last me a lifetime,’ she said. ‘I suppose that you could call that a different perspective.’

  Robert Selborne laughed. ‘And have you also had enough of dancing at aristocratic weddings?’

  Jemima looked at him. ‘Did I look as though I was not enjoying myself?’

  She could not see Rob Selborne’s expression, but she could hear the amusement still in his voice. ‘You looked as though you would rather have had a tooth pulled. Your mouth was smiling, but your eyes were not.’

  Jemima hesitated. ‘You see a great deal, my lord.’

  Rob Selborne shifted slightly. ‘I was watching you.’

  A shiver ran along Jemima’s skin, giving her goose pimples. ‘I hope that no one else was doing likewise,’ she said.

  Rob laughed again. ‘Oh, a great many people were watching you, Miss Jewell, the majority of them men. But do not worry—I do not believe that they saw what I saw. To all intents and purposes you looked to be having a fine time.’

  Jemima smiled. ‘As did you, my lord, with that charming bridesmaid to entertain you.’

  ‘So you were watching me as well,’ Rob Selborne said. ‘That is interesting. Alas for my cousin Augusta that I prefer your company to hers, Miss Jewell. As you will perceive.’ He made a gesture. ‘I am out here talking to you rather than in there dancing with her.’

  There was a rustic bench between two of the oak trees. Jemima sat down and settled her poplin skirts about her.

  ‘I do not believe Miss Selborne need repine, my lord.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because I overheard two ladies discussing that you might be looking for a bride and that your choice could fall on your cousin.’

  Rob turned towards her. He was but five steps away. Jemima could see the crisp white of his shirt and neckcloth in the first, pale moonlight.

  ‘I fear that that is true, at least in part,’ he said, ‘though I am not certain how anyone knows. My father’s will decrees that I am to choose a wife from the ladies assembled here tonight, Miss Jewell, if I am to inherit the fortune I need to restore my home.’

  Jemima raised her brows. ‘How piquant, my lord. And it is your cousin whose candidature you favour?’

  ‘No, it is not. Perhaps I am too nice in my requirements, but none of the ladies appeal to me. What would you do in my situation, Miss Jewell?’

  Jemima raised her brows. ‘What would I do? Choose the one who bored me the least and get on with it, I suppose.’

  ‘The one who bored you the least?’

  ‘Yes. You might be married for fifty years. How intolerably tedious would that be if you were stuck with a lady who did not hold your interest?’

  Rob inclined his head. ‘Sound advice. But you do not mention love, Miss Jewell.’

  Jemima smiled a little. ‘Oh, I do not have much time for that.’

  ‘I see. Plenty of literature is against you. Poets and novelists are often extolling the pleasures of love.’

  ‘And the pain of it.’

  Rob came to sit beside her. Jemima imagined that she could feel the warmth of his body even though he was not touching her. She told herself not to be fanciful.

  ‘Do you speak from experience, Miss Jewell?’ he asked.

  ‘Not I!’ Jemima said. ‘I speak from observation, my lord, and nothing else.’

  Rob took her hand. ‘Yet you kiss like an angel.’

  Jemima drew her fingers away, but not before they had trembled slightly within his. She rather thought that he had felt it too. The mention of the kiss had sent a flutter of sensation down her neck like the brush of a moth’s wing.

  She spoke severely to counteract the trembling inside. ‘That has nothing to do with love.’

  ‘I see. What does it have to do with?’

  Rob’s tone was very low and just the sound of his voice seemed enough to have the most peculiar effect on her. Jemima looked accusingly at the port bottle. Perhaps she had taken more than she thought.

  ‘Kissing is…oh, you know what I mean! Kissing is about desire and physical attraction and all those dangerous things—’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Rob leaned forward. His sleeve brushed her arm. Jemima’s throat dried. He was very close to her now and she wanted him closer still. She made a grab for the shreds of her common sense.

  ‘They are dangerous because they are misleading,’ she said. She made to get to her feet. ‘Excuse me, my lord. I am paid to dance at this wedding and that is what I should be doing.’

  Rob’s hand closed about her wrist, not hard, but in a gesture that stayed her when she would have moved away.

  ‘A moment. I could pay you more to stay with me.’

  There was a silence but for the whisper of the breeze stirring the leaves at their feet.

  ‘I think not,’ Jemima said. ‘Only some of my services are up for sale, my lord, and those right reluctantly.’

  She saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness as he smiled. ‘Do you include your kisses in that, dangerous or not?’

  ‘I do not,’ Jemima said.

  ‘You granted me one earlier.’

  Jemima’s heart skipped a beat. She was sure that he could feel her pulse racing beneath his fingers. ‘You took more than you paid for.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Rob said. ‘Did you object?’

  There was a silence. His fingers still encircled her wrist but lightly now.

  ‘No,’ Jemima said with reluctant honesty. ‘I did not object. But I will not grant you another.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Jemima gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Need you ask, sir? If a tradesman’s daughter is free with her kisses, then she gains a reputation of being free with other things too…’ She shrugged.

  She heard him laugh but he did not press her. ‘I understand. That is when matters may become misleading and dangerous.’

  ‘Just so.’

  Rob let go of her and moved away a little, leaning back against the bars of the wooden seat. Jemima started to breathe again.

  ‘Then talk to me instead.’

  ‘About what?’ Jemima’s voice was cool. She had to keep her defences in place.

  ‘About where you learned to quote Johnson. And to speak like—’ He broke off.

  ‘You were going to say “like a lady” were you not, my lord?’ Jemima enquired.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Rob sounded uncomfortable and Jemima liked him for it. ‘I did not intend to be rude. No doubt ladylike qualities, like nobility, are not a birthright.’

  Jemima smiled. ‘They certainly were not my birthright. I am the daughter of a chimney sweep and the granddaughter of a rat catcher. It is only because I was educated by that most strict moral arbiter, Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, that I could impersonate a Duchess if I wished.’

  Rob gave a low whistle. ‘A protégée of Mrs Montagu! That is no mean thing.’

  ‘Thank you. I was immensely grateful for her interest in me.’

  ‘And yet despite your education you consider yourself a counterfeit lady?’

  The crescent moon was rising, entangled in the branches of the tree above their head. By its light, Jemima could see that Rob was sitting back and studying her thoughtfully.

 
; ‘You may give the sweep’s girl an education,’ she said, smiling a little, ‘but at the end I am still here dancing at the wedding.’ She turned a little towards him. ‘You said that you had been away, my lord. Maybe you know how difficult it is to go away and then have to come back again.’

  Rob gave her a crooked smile. ‘Very perceptive, Miss Jewell. I went to the Peninsula and when I returned, everything that I had been fighting for had changed.’ There was a note of passion in his voice that struck Jemima forcibly. ‘My family died in an epidemic. I never expected not to see them again.’

  Jemima put out an impulsive hand.

  ‘I am sorry. That must be very hard for you. Not to be able to say all the things you might have wanted to say to them, I mean.’

  Rob caught her outstretched hand and once again his fingers entangled with hers. He did not speak, but his touch conveyed gratitude. Gratitude and something more. His fingers stroked hers very gently and Jemima felt her pulse leap. This seemed like madness, this attraction to a total stranger. And yet the night was warm and scented with the smells of late summer and there was a romantic little crescent moon overhead…

  This time when he leaned forward she did not draw back. His stance was relaxed, but there something watchful in his eyes. It was a warning. Jemima’s stomach turned over.

  ‘If I wanted to kiss you again now…’ Rob’s voice was low ‘…would you refuse?’

  He was so close that Jemima could smell the sharp lime scent of his cologne, mixed with the warmer smell of his skin. Her head swam. She tried to speak, failed, and cleared her throat.

  ‘It’s…probable. Are you in need of more good luck?’

  ‘I need a great deal of it. But that is not why I want to kiss you.’

  Danger beckoned, supremely tempting. Jemima closed her eyes for a second. One kiss…Surely there was no harm in it—and a great deal of pleasure? Except that this man was looking for a wife, and that was certainly not the role that he envisaged for her…

  Jemima stood up abruptly. ‘My father will be wondering where I have got to,’ she said. ‘I really must go.’

  Rob stood up too. ‘Miss Jewell—’

  Jemima stepped back, deliberately putting distance between them.

  ‘Lord Selborne?’

  Her use of his title and the coolness of her tone were intended to keep him at arm’s length. Nevertheless, Rob Selborne just smiled and took a casual step closer.

  ‘Farewell then, Miss Jewell. And good luck.’

  Jemima felt tense, though she did not know in all honesty whether it was from apprehension that he would kiss her—or fear that he would not.

  ‘I wish you good luck too, my lord,’ she said lightly. ‘In restoring your home—and in marrying your cousin.’

  Rob nodded slowly. She saw the shadow of his smile. ‘Do you really wish me luck in my marriage?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Jemima said. ‘In restoring your home, of course I do, but not in marrying your cousin. I think that she will probably drive you to bedlam within a twelve-month.’

  And before she could betray herself further, she turned from him and hurried up the path and away into the night.

  Chapter Three

  Rob was dreaming, tossed on a restless sea of memory and horror. There were scenes of carnage everywhere, bodies tossed in the street, women and children running for their lives. The excitement of bloodlust was in the air, tangible, thick as treacle. He could hear the screams, feel the sweat and blood and heat as though he were still in the Peninsula. Worse, he felt that desperate helplessness, that impotence that told him that no matter how he tried, no matter how many he helped, there were those beyond his saving. Men tortured, women raped, children murdered like stuck pigs. The knowledge burned through his mind, bringing with it the now-familiar nightmare. He was on horseback, riding through the town, and from the gutter a child reached out to him; a child dark-haired and dark-eyed, holding up her arms to him in a mute plea. He was leaning down, within an inch of touching her fingertips with his own, when she was quite literally cut down in front of his eyes. The scene dissolved, his head was full of noise and blood and unimaginable misery, and he woke up gasping, to find himself entangled in the sheets and drenched in sweat.

  He lay still for several minutes, allowing his breathing to calm, not attempting to shut the images from his mind, for he had found that that simply made the experience worse. Gradually the hideous scenes receded and he could see beyond his nightmare; see that the dawn was breaking and the light was creeping around the bed curtains.

  He got up, stripped off his nightshirt and splashed some water from the ewer on to his face. Then he walked slowly across to the window and edged the curtain back a little. London, early on an August morning, looked drab and grey, but it also looked immensely reassuring. Street vendors were already setting up their stalls and there was the rumble of wheels on the cobbles, the cry of the seabirds in the air.

  With a sigh Rob let the curtain fall back into place. His heart ached for the country, for the lush fields and wooded chases of Oxfordshire. He thought of Delaval, half-ruined now from neglect and decay, and a fierce determination took him. He would not let it fall down and his heritage tumble like the stones into the long grass and be lost forever. If he could not fulfil the conditions of the two wills then Ferdie would inherit all the money and he would simply have to find some other way to achieve his ambitions.

  The faint light fell on a crumpled handbill lying beside the hearth. Rob picked it up and recognised it as Alfred Jewell’s trade card.

  He smiled to himself. Miss Jewell had suggested that he should marry the lady who bored him the least. Ironically, all the ladies at Anne Selborne’s wedding had struck him as infinitely tedious, cardboard cut-outs of society ladies. All except Miss Jewell herself…

  Rob tapped the paper thoughtfully. An idea was starting to come into his head, an idea so preposterous yet so appealing that he scarce knew whether to embrace it or to dismiss it out of hand. Yet what did he have to lose? She could always tell him to go hang…

  He tucked the handbill into the pocket of his jacket and pulled the bell to call his valet. Now that he had resolved on a plan, he did not wish to waste any more time. He would call on Miss Jewell that very evening and make her a proposal.

  ‘I cannot do it!’ At the last minute Jemima had changed her mind, broken her word to Jack, and told her father that she could not marry Jim Veale. They were in the sitting room of her parents’ comfortable home in Great Portland Street, cluttered with the furniture and china ornaments and polished brasses that her mother so lovingly collected. It was as though Mrs Jewell, having spent so many of her years in poverty, had tried to reassure herself by stuffing her later life with the material symbols of prosperity.

  Sometimes Jemima thought that her mother did not know how to stop collecting. China dolls jostled for space on the mantelpiece with an ugly marble clock and several branches of candles. The walls were papered with paintings of the sweet, sentimental type. One sofa and no less than five fat armchairs were squashed into the space, between three polished walnut tables. There was not a speck of dust and the chimney did not dare to smoke. Jemima remembered Mrs Montagu’s words: ‘Less is more, Jemima. In furnishings and in personal attire, the most elegant style is always the simplest.’ Yet Jemima had a great deal of affection for her mother’s magpie acquisitiveness.

  Alfred Jewell looked out of place amidst this muddled gentility. It was not a room that he frequented very often for he was more at home out and about on his business, or supervising the work of his clerks. A stocky man, he had a ruddy countenance and a magnificent moustache and side-whiskers. Now, as he contemplated his daughter’s disobedience, his ruddy face grew redder still.

  ‘You cannot marry him? There is no can about it, miss. You will marry Jim Veale, aye, and the banns will be read next week!’

  Jemima locked her fingers together. She was sitting on the sofa, the wooden arm pressing uncomfortably into her back as s
he cowered away from her father. Mrs Jewell sat opposite, her pale eyes moving from one to the other in trepidation. She was murmuring under her breath:

  ‘Oh dear…oh dear…You must do as your father says, Jemima dear, indeed you must…’

  Jemima knew that her mother would never intervene to support her. Once, Mrs Jewell had confided that it was a shame her daughter could not marry a gentleman now that she was such a pretty-behaved girl, but when the match with Jim Veale had been mooted she had never uttered another word on the subject. Nor was Jack there to help her. He had gone to the alehouse and it was anyone’s guess when he would be home.

  Jemima stared up into her father’s angry black eyes. She tried to speak calmly. ‘I cannot marry Jim Veale, Father. I would be stifled.’

  The frown gathered between Alfred Jewell’s brows. ‘Stifled? What sort of talk is this? Jim Veale is a good man—’

  ‘I know he is,’ Jemima said desperately. ‘It is just that he…that I…we are not suited to each other. Not any more…’

  She could feel her words beating pointlessly against her father’s bafflement and indifference. What did Alfred Jewell care that she would be suffocated by the stolid worth of a tradesman’s home? It did not matter to him that she and Jim Veale had nothing to say to each other, that without books and conversation and wider interests her life felt intolerably constricted. When she had left school her father had reluctantly permitted her to continue visiting some of her former teachers, but that would be at an end on her marriage. Mrs Jim Veale could not go gallivanting about London mixing with bluestockings and visiting the art galleries and theatres. It would make her husband a laughing-stock in the community.

  Her father took her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. His fingers bit into her skin.

  ‘See here, girl, you’d best learn what’s good for you and that right quickly! The only reason I sent you to school was so that you could read and write, and help Jim balance the books. Should’ve known you’d take on these airy-fairy notions! Well, you can let them go again—as quick as maybe!’