The Makeshift Marriage

by Sandra Heath

  “I am not interested in your feelings—”

  “I have possessed her, Nicholas; she has lain in my arms and given to me that which you have chosen to ignore.”

  “Have a care now, Daniel,” said Nicholas softly, “for I am not a man to lightly suffer your taunts.”

  Daniel looked away, not daring to go too far, for there was much to fear in Nicholas’s cold, controlled anger.

  “She is my wife, Daniel, and I fully intend keeping her. Because you were once my friend, and because I owe you my life, I give you this warning, but if I learn that you have so much as looked at her again, then so help me I will extinguish you. I do not toy with you, and I trust that you understand that fully.”

  “And if she wishes to come to me—as I know she does?”

  “She will not come.”

  “She is coming to America with me, Nicholas. Hasn’t she told you she is leaving King’s Cliff?”

  Nicholas said nothing.

  “Face facts, Nicholas, your loss is my gain. Laura is mine.”

  “I need face only one relevant fact, Daniel, and that is that I am prepared to kill you if you persist.” With a cold nod of his head, Nicholas turned and left.

  Daniel leaned his hands on the table, his head bowed. Only a fool would not fear such a warning. And only a fool could fail to see that Nicholas behaved as he did because he loved his wife. Only a fool. Or poor, unhappy Laura, who believed he loathed her.

  Slowly Daniel raised his head, glancing at his own reflection in a mirror that hung on the whitewashed wall. Guilt looked back at him from the dusty glass. He had broken a cardinal rule, for he had now openly lied and cheated to win her. He had stooped to a depth that only months earlier he would never have dreamed possible. But that had been before he had fallen under her spell. Love could steal the halo from a saint, and Daniel Tregarron had never been a saint….

  * * *

  It was dark and Laura sat reading in the red saloon. Nicholas still had not come to speak to her, and Augustine and her mother had not returned from the Countess of Bawton’s. She looked up from the book as she heard a sound. Puzzled, she went to the window, looking down at the main entrance where she saw a carriage being loaded with trunks. There was a great deal to be put on the vehicle and the sound she had heard was the footmen as they sought to shout up to their companion on top of the carriage. Arms gesticulated and fingers pointed urgently in differing directions, and the poor fellow looked quite perplexed by the light of the lanterns.

  As she watched, another carriage arrived, this time approaching along the drive, and she recognized it as the one that had conveyed Augustine and her mother the day before.

  The door of the second carriage was opened, and Augustine stepped down first. She turned as her mother alighted, and at first did not glance at the carriage that was being loaded, but when she did her whole body stiffened visibly as she stared. Her mother’s hand crept to her throat. Augustine seemed to recover then, hurrying up into the house and out of Laura’s sight.

  Slowly, Laura returned to her seat and picked up her book, but she was no longer interested in the beauty of Shakespeare’s writing; she was too preoccupied with the odd scene she had witnessed at the main entrance. What did it mean?

  Then she heard Augustine’s raised voice by the door of the red saloon and Nicholas’s more quiet reply. He opened the door then and his voice became clear. “I will not argue publicly with you, Augustine; nor will I be questioned in my own house. If you will step in here, I have a great deal to say to you.”

  Augustine swept in. Spots of high color touched her cheeks and her eyes flashed angrily when she saw Laura. Mrs. Townsend followed her in but said nothing at all. Her face was white and she twisted a handkerchief in her restless hands.

  Augustine faced Nicholas imperiously. “I will not discuss any of this in front of her.” She nodded briefly in Laura’s direction.

  “Laura remains here, for she is the mistress of this house—which you will never be, Augustine.”

  Laura stared at him. Augustine’s face was thunderstruck. “You cannot mean that,” she breathed. “Not after all you have said to me.”

  “I have said very little—you have assumed a great deal. Does it not occur to you that I may be as consummate an actor as you are actress?”

  “What do you mean? And why have you ordered that all my belongings and those of my mother should be removed?”

  “It must be obvious that the answer to your second question is that you are soon to leave this house forever.”

  “No!” she cried. “No, you cannot mean that!”

  “But I do. And you may be thankful that I am contenting myself with banishing you, not only from King’s Cliff, but from England itself, for it could have been so much worse a fate for you, could it not?”

  The color drained from her face. “I don’t understand.”

  “No? Perhaps it would make things a little clearer to you if I told you that I have been making detailed inquiries at a certain King’s Head hostelry in Taunton.”

  Mrs. Townsend gasped, weakly collapsing into a chair.

  Laura put her book down completely now. What was behind all this? There was more to it than merely discovering that Augustine had been conducting an affair with James Grenville. Unbidden, a thought entered her head, a thought concerning the earl’s secret, discovered and condoned by Augustine and her mother….

  Nicholas was contemptuous. “Augustine, do not think that I am in the least concerned to know that you are my cousin’s mistress, for your sexual proclivities are of absolutely no interest to me. You leave me quite unaroused, I promise you that.”

  “I know that that is not true, Nicholas,” she replied softly.

  “It suited me to encourage you and the actor in me was equal to the task. That is all there is to it.”

  “You are only saying these things because you think I have been unfaithful to you.”

  “I could not care less if you were unfaithful with the entire British cavalry!”

  “I deny that I have ever been untrue to you, Nicholas,” cried Augustine. “But even if I had, it is no reason to throw me out of my home. I am a free agent and do not need to seek your permission for anything. You married another, Nicholas, and you thereby relinquished any rights to interfere in my life!”

  “You do not see, do you? My actions today have nothing whatsoever to do with your sordid affair with my cousin.”

  Tears were pouring down Mrs. Townsend’s cheeks now and she was so distraught that she rocked herself backward and forward, moaning quietly.

  Augustine threw her a furious look. “Be silent, Mama!”

  “But he knows, Augustine,” whispered her mother. “Can’t you see that he knows?”

  “There is nothing to know.”

  Nicholas smiled without humor or warmth. “I fear there is no point in denying anything anymore, Augustine, for I have absolute proof of everything. At this moment my kinsman James Grenville languishes in Taunton jail, charged with plotting my murder, and he now awaits trial for his miserable life. You and your mother are as guilty as he is, for you discovered what had been done and chose to keep silent. You condoned my murder, Augustine.”

  Laura rose unsteadily to her feet, shaken by the enormity of what she had heard. He glanced quickly at her and, seeing how pale her face was, held out his hand to her. He smiled just a little as his fingers closed reassuringly over hers, but she could see how harrowing and how very horrible he was finding this vile turn of events. She felt almost faint for a moment. She had been right; her instinct in Venice that the baron had deliberately forced the duel had been right. But oh, the reason, the cause behind it all….

  Augustine was staring at him, her own cheeks ashen now. “I am innocent,” she whispered. “I am innocent and so is my mother. We know nothing of what you say.”

  “I am prepared to believe that originally you did not, but that state of innocence did not last for long, did it? I believe I can with great ac
curacy pinpoint the exact moment when you found out what he had done—it was that moment when your mother fainted in the dining room at the King’s Head. Am I right, Augustine?”

  She did not answer.

  “I have a witness,” he went on, “who can reliably prove that in early January this year my cousin stayed at the King’s Head, and at the same time a certain Baron Frederick von Marienfeld, an Austrian hussar officer, stayed at the same hostelry. Unfortunately for you, the baron has a predilection for pretty maidservants, but his boorish behavior did not make him friends among their ranks. So confident was he that when he met my cousin, he left a certain Jenny Hobson in the adjoining bedroom. She heard every word which passed between them and she is prepared to give evidence in a court of law. She heard my cousin require the baron to put an end to me in Venice, and he handed over half of a considerable sum of money for this service—the other half to be paid when the deed was done and I had been neatly consigned to my Maker. It was in order to receive this second sum that the baron sent false word to my cousin afterward, and his deceit paid dividends, for my cousin duly and gladly sent the outstanding money.”

  “We know absolutely nothing of all this, Nicholas, I swear that we don’t,” said Augustine, but her voice was wooden with fear.

  “Nothing I have said has really been news to you, except the fact that the dealings between my cousin and the baron had been overheard. I know you are guilty of complicity. The proof of it all is there in the King’s Head—dates, witnesses, even the baron’s signature on a letter he happened to leave behind. My cousin told you what he had done, and why he had done it—to gain King’s Cliff and to persuade you to marry him. He judged you sweetly, my dear, for you decided to hold your tongue because of the glittering prize he held out to you, and the moment you made that decision you were in his hands.”

  “But I love you, Nicholas, I have always loved you—”

  “A washy emotion such as you are capable of, my dear Augustine, can hardly aspire to the name of love. If you love anyone, it is yourself, for in your opinion there is no one else worthy of you but your own self.”

  “No—”

  “I feel nothing but contempt for you, and I felt like that before I realized what you were guilty of. Once I was away from you, far away in Venice, I could see you in a clear light for the first time—and what I saw disgusted me. Never in your life had you done anything out of kindness, never had you thought of anyone but yourself, and never had your damned pride unbent sufficiently to make you even remotely lovable. You are very beautiful, dazzlingly so, but you are an empty shell, madam—if there is anything inside you, then it is stone.”

  “No, Nicholas, please no…. I love you.” Tears shone in Augustine’s magnificent eyes, and Laura could see how she trembled from head to toe. But Laura felt no pity, no compassion at all.

  “One circumstance and one alone makes me offer you a chance to escape the fate which will befall my cousin,” went on Nicholas, “and that is that you did not know of the crime before it had been committed. That is my only reason for sparing you, Augustine.”

  “I am innocent,” she repeated. “Before God I swear I am innocent.”

  “You will spend tonight in a room which has been prepared for you. It has no windows and its door will be guarded—you will have no chance to escape. In the morning you will be conveyed to Bristol where you will take a ship to whatever foreign destination you please—but you will never dare to return here, for the moment you have set sail, I shall report what I know to the necessary authorities. Set foot in England again, Augustine, and you and your mother will face arrest and trial for attempted murder.”

  She flinched as if he had physically struck her. “No,” she cried. “No, this house is mine, I will not leave it!”

  “You have no choice.”

  “She has no right to this house!” breathed Augustine, pointing a quivering finger at Laura.

  “I do not intend to speak further on the subject with you,” said Nicholas, going to the door and opening it to admit several footmen who had been waiting.

  “I am innocent, Nicholas!” screamed Augustine then, sinking to her knees as the tears poured helplessly down her cheeks.

  Her mother got up and went to her, putting a soothing hand on her trembling shoulder. “Be done with denials, my love, and be thankful that we are to be spared. Come.”

  Augustine resisted, still weeping bitterly, but gradually she allowed her mother to draw her to her feet once more. Mrs. Townsend put her arm around her, looking at Nicholas. “You have my gratitude, sir, for I know we do not deserve this leniency. We are guilty, but it was a tangled web….” She gave a faint smile. “Not that that excuses our crime.”

  They went to the door then, and Nicholas made it plain that he intended to see them locked away safely for the night. He turned back to Laura before leaving the saloon. “I will return in a moment. I promised that I would speak with you, and so I will.”

  “After all that has been said here tonight, I am sure that our talk can be put off until tomorrow.”

  He shook his head. “No, Laura, I will have everything dealt with tonight.”

  “Very well. I will wait here.”

  Chapter 39

  Alone in the red saloon again, she sat down on the sofa. Her thoughts went back to Venice. So much was explained now, from the strange interest the baron had shown in her from that very first morning, to the inevitability of the challenge. She had provided the baron with the means, and she had unwittingly done as he wished, involving Nicholas in her affairs and thus placing him in an impossible position when the baron chose to pounce.

  But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed—well, almost completed…. Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, then I should still have come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly….

  The Baron’s words were so clear it was almost as if he was in the room with her. She felt cold suddenly, and it was as it had been in Venice when he had always seemed to have stepped from sight but a moment before she looked around. His purpose was clear now, as it had been almost clear to her then.

  Now too she understands the behavior of James Grenville, Augustine, and her mother that first time she had seen them, alighting from his carriage after attending a ball. James Grenville, so villainous and so triumphant that his evil plot had brought him everything he desired. Augustine, embarked upon her own scheme, prepared to accept the attentions of a man she loathed because he offered her the wealth, position, and the house she craved. Any lingering heartache for Nicholas had been buried beneath her all-consuming ambition, and only when Nicholas had returned from the dead had she realized that she felt more for him than she had known. Mrs. Townsend, the sheep not the bellwether, prepared to go along with everything even though she, of the three of them, had a terrible conscience about what had been done.

  Nicholas returned. “In the morning they will be gone, and that part of it at least will be over.”

  “I would not have spared them. They should face the law as well, for I believe them as guilty as the earl.”

  He smiled. “How hard your heart is, Laura.”

  “Not hard—just. They laughed and made merry when they thought you had been murdered. They showed hardness. I feel that justice will only be really done when they appear in a court of law for what they did.”

  He nodded. “You are right, of course, but I just could not bring myself to have them arrested. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, but that does not mean to say I agree.”

  “Ah, that would appear to be you running true to form,” he said, remembering her arguments against the duel that had been the cornerstone of it all.

  “I am right now and I was right then,” she said, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “For so much of all this could have been avoided by simply refusing to be drawn by the baron.
”

  “Yes, Laura,” he said quietly, “so much could have been avoided—including our marriage. Which brings us to the reason for this conversation now.”

  She looked up at him, “You would not have married me had you not thought you were dying, would you?”

  “We will never know, for events overtook us. Laura, I will be blunt with you. I will never submit to the ignominy and scandal of an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation, and as there are no other grounds, then an annulment can only be out of the question.”

  “And what grounds there are can be readily removed, as you reminded me earlier. I am your wife and my body is yours.”

  “I spoke in the heat of the moment.”

  “But nevertheless, what you said was true, wasn’t it? You would be prepared to do that in order to avoid such an annulment.” She looked up, trying to read his eyes.

  “Laura, that is a question I would rather not answer.”

  “So, what it comes to is that I am your chattel and you are going to keep me, for whatever reason.”

  “Believe me, Laura, I do not mean it like that.”

  “How else then?” She stared up at him, still bewildered by his apparent contrariness.

  “I mean that I see no burning reason to end this marriage.” Daniel Tregarron is not going to have you…. But his face bore no expression that even remotely reflected his thoughts as he looked down at her.

  “Do you then see a burning reason to keep it?”

  “Our relationship may not be the stuff of dreams, but then neither is it a disagreeable nightmare. I know full well that you entered into the contract for reasons that were thrust upon you in the heat of the moment. You say that I would not have married you at all had it not been for the extenuating circumstances, but then exactly the same can be said of you. I am not the husband you would have chosen, am I? Nevertheless, I am your husband, and you are my wife. Tomorrow morning when Augustine and her mother depart, many of the reasons for your unhappiness here will be removed. I can offer you a comfortable life here; you will lack for nothing and you will certainly not be at the beck and call of a harridan like Lady Mountfort.”