The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Marriage. It rumbled through her. She jerked her arms free and stumbled back.

  “I was right all along. You are deranged,” she said tightly. “And I think this odious interview is at an end.” He lurched into her path as she headed for the door.

  “Listen to me, Antonia.” He tried to touch her again, but she jerked back out of reach. “I’ve never been more serious in my life. I accept full responsibility for your present difficulty—”

  “Difficulty?” she demanded, drawing herself up tautly, vibrating with rising emotion. “I am in no difficulty.”

  “You think not? By now word that you were caught in my bed has spread all over London. In every borough, lane, boulevard, and market stall, your name is being whispered, tittered, and slandered.” Sensing that to reveal the queen’s marriage edict at this point might be unwise, he omitted just how high the scandal had flown. “You’re a woman compromised, and I am the man responsible. I feel obliged to make it right … compelled by all that is honorable to offer you what protection I can. After all, what better protection can a woman have than marriage?”

  His mouth twisted slightly as he said it, as if the words left a sour taste on his tongue. Something in that unconscious tic of distaste made her feel desolate and cavernously empty. Obliged. Compelled. He didn’t want to marry, he loathed the very notion of marriage. But he would marry her to satisfy the needs of conscience, or perhaps to forestall society’s censure—certainly to salve his precious male honor.

  She recoiled inside. Somehow that proposal of marriage seemed as indecent and self-seeking as those made years ago by her father’s opportunistic business acquaintances and her uncle’s lustful cronies. Both made a means of her in achieving their ends, both reduced her to a commodity that could be acquired and disposed of to suit a man’s urges, for pleasure or for honor. Fresh pain unleashed a wave of raw anger in her.

  “Damned generous of you, your lordship, offering to salvage me.” She advanced on him, charged with emotion and generating sparks with every step she took. “But I’ll have to decline your noble offer to sacrifice yourself on my behalf. You see, I don’t feel ruined or disgraced or sullied—or anything else dirty little minds and still dirtier tongues care to call me. I made a grave error, allowing myself to be seduced by a dishonorable wretch. But the pain and humiliation I have already suffered on that account is quite enough. I refuse to be punished for the rest of my life by being shackled to you in marriage!”

  “Shack-led?” He nearly choked on his own tongue. He hadn’t expected her to be exactly overjoyed, but he certainly hadn’t expected her to think of marriage to him as being shackled. “See here, Antonia,” he said irritably, “you cannot ignore the problems this ugly bit of notoriety will cause. You need a husband, and I am offering to marry you.”

  “A husband?” She made a sound that was part laugh and part sob as she glimpsed the absurdity of it. The destroyer of her reputation now proposed to make himself the rescuer of her reputation by yoking her to his exemplary self. How outrageously, insufferably male of him!

  “Unlike most women, your high-and-mightyship, I have no need of a husband—especially one as treacherous as yourself. I have my own incomes and investments, I manage my own household, and I already live my life contentedly outside what you term ‘polite’ society. I do not feel the least bit ruined, and I certainly do not need to marry to hold up my head in the streets.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Antonia. You must marry me,” he demanded, his face and manner heating precipitously. She crossed her arms and looked him square in the eye.

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he declared, his shoulders swelling and fists clenching.

  “Oh, but I do.” She lifted her chin and refused to be intimidated by his display of brute male power. “You see, our encounter has reminded me of a very valuable lesson I once learned about the nature and character of men. I wouldn’t marry you, your lordship, if you were the last bachelor on earth!”

  She meant it. It struck him like a dousing of icy water; she was actually turning him down. This was not coquetry or feminine pique or even petty womanly retribution for the hurt she had suffered. She honestly refused to marry him!

  How could that be? In all his mental grappling and coming to terms with the idea of marrying her, he hadn’t even considered that she could possibly refuse him. He was a belted earl, a man of considerable wealth, and the man in whose arms she had found pleasure. And she was the Defender of Domesticity, the Maven of Matrimony—a woman passionately devoted to the idea of marriage. How could she not want to marry him?

  In a sudden and inexplicable reversal of intention, what had begun as a distasteful but noble duty was somehow transformed into a massive and intensely personal compulsion. He not only had to marry her, he felt a new and compelling urgency to marry her!

  “Don’t be absurd, Antonia,” he growled, running his hands back through his hair, pacing away, then back. “You have to marry now. It might as well be me.”

  “Absurd?” she said, letting the hurt and anger flow freely inside her. “On the contrary, according to your vaunted social theories, I am being utterly logical and completely responsible.” Her mind raced, propelled by her raging emotions. “In fact, I have decided to follow your advice that we widows—we surplus women—take up our own lives and make ourselves both independent and useful. I am well educated, sound of constitution, and free of the social constraints and obligations that bind a decent woman to her home and hearth. As a ruined woman, I can hardly be expected to conform to society’s womanly ideal. Thus I am free to pursue whatever I wish.”

  Even as she said it, she recognized a curious and defiant sense of freedom rising in her. It was new and a little frightening. But it energized her form and set her countenance alight.

  “It is quite liberating, your lordship, not having to worry about a husband, a home, or a reputation. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll start a business or take up a trade,” she said, gesturing toward the horizons opening before her. “I may decide to join the suffragettes and work for the vote, or write magazine articles or novels, or even organize an all-woman labor union. I may invent something … or manufacture something … or go to Barbados and paint pictures of flowers and naked people. And I may even take up drinking whiskey and smoking cigars! In fact, the one thing I know I will not do, your lordship, is marry you!”

  Before he could close his gaping jaw, she was already across the room and throwing back the door—which sent a number of ladies who had their ears pressed to the panels scrambling back to avoid being hit.

  “Hoskins!” she roared with exultant fury. “Show his lordship to the door!”

  Remington slammed back into the velvet seat of his carriage, outraged and frustrated and more than a little desperate. How dare Antonia refuse to marry him? Had the strain of what had happened completely unhinged her? Starting a business, joining the suffragettes, painting pictures of naked people in Barbados, and smoking cigars—damn-it-all!—she was talking pure nonsense!

  She didn’t seem to realize that her name would be bandied about, that people would refuse to include her on guest lists or speak to her in the streets, and that even the people she did business with—her brokers, investment bankers, and property managers—would be forced to retreat from contact with her in order to avoid suspicion and comment. Didn’t she understand that she would be asked to resign quietly from her charities, and that because of the smirch on her name, her time and efforts probably wouldn’t even be welcome at the women’s settlement house anymore? Didn’t she know that “reputation,” for a woman alone in the world, was everything?

  He felt a little sick at the dawning realization that he was the agent responsible for destroying her most precious asset—her good name. Perhaps it was merciful that she didn’t understand the full extent of the damage he’d done her. He groaned and dropped his head back against the seat, closing his eyes.

  That proved a dangerous
move, for into the darkness of his mind crept glimpses of her as she had been that night: soft, yielding, vulnerable to the passions and feelings he roused inside her. He felt again the gentle exploration of her hands, and tasted again the sweetness of her mouth. He watched her disrobing, saw her opening her feelings even as she opened her bodice, and heard her whimpers of pleasure as he brought her to the fullness of a woman’s response. He was caught unprepared by a towering wave of need.

  His head snapped up. His fists clenched and his body went taut with the need to pull her against him, to cradle her in his arms, to protect her. He wasn’t sure where this primal and overwhelming impulse came from; he only knew he was ready to put his still-aching fist through a thousand more leering, smirking faces if that was what it took to make her safe. A moment later he expelled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  He wanted Antonia Paxton more than anything he had wanted in his life. He wanted her safe and secure, in his house, in his bed, and under his name. He wanted her across the breakfast table each morning, and in his bed each night. He wanted to know she was his to enjoy and pleasure and make memories with. He wanted to take possession of her the way she had taken possession of him. And in order to have her the way he wanted, he would have to marry her.

  And just how the hell was he going to do that?

  He sat straighter, his eyes lidded, and his lips drawn tight in concentration. There had to be a way to make her marry him. He had schemed his way into this mess; he would just have to scheme his way out of it. Summoning every shred of his instinctive male cunning, he began to think. His eyes darted over the scenery passing outside the coach window, and something briefly caught his eye. No, it was someone. As he frowned at the memory of that fleeting image, the identity of the person came together in his mind. Lady Constance Ellingson.

  He scowled … gradually came alert … and broke into a beaming smile.

  “Ahhh, Antonia, you were so right,” he said wickedly. “I am deranged.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  That evening, when Antonia entered the drawing room, all conversation became stilted and self-conscious. The temperature of the room seemed to rise as she picked up her sewing basket and settled in her chair. Looking up, she found every eye in the room fastened on Hermione, who set her stitching aside and edged forward on her seat.

  “Forgive us, Toni dear. We’re not ones to pry, you know that.” She paused, evaluating Antonia’s mood and quizzical frown. “But would you just clarify for us … did his lordship ask you to marry him, or not?”

  She glanced around at their folded hands and intent expressions.

  “He did not,” she declared.

  “No?” Hermione drew back into a flurry of confused whispers and murmurs. They had been listening outside the door, Antonia realized, and had heard the word “marry” bandied about that afternoon. “But we understood that he—”

  “He did not ask it,” she clarified, “he demanded it. And I declined.”

  Another round of whispers and murmurs produced frowns and shakes of heads, where she was used to seeing smiles and nods. “But marriage, Toni,” Hermione went on, speaking for the group. “It’s what you’ve always believed in and worked to uphold. And now, with this fearful scandal raging, you will need protection. And you have always said that marriage is a woman’s best protection … that marriage and home are a woman’s rightful place.”

  Antonia gripped the edge of her chair with cold hands. “That may be true, marriage may be most women’s place. But it’s not my place, that much is clear.”

  The sound of those words coming from her mouth shocked not only her aunt and her ladies, it shocked her as well. She who had always championed marriage and believed it was the only real locus of power and protection a woman could have in this world, now found the thought of marriage for herself—especially to a man who had betrayed and hurt her—intolerable.

  “But, Toni, you have to marry his lordship.” Hermione looked to the others, reading their agreement in their eyes.

  “You’ve been … compromised,” Prudence said, looking genuinely disturbed.

  “You have to think of your good name,” Eleanor added anxiously.

  “You have to think of the future,” Florence contributed.

  “An’ of the baby,” Gertrude put in, raising eyebrows. “If there be one.”

  “You see? It’s the only decent thing to do,” Pollyanna proclaimed, crossing her arms emphatically.

  “No, I don’t see,” Antonia said in disbelief, pushing to her feet. “After what Remington Carr did to me, how can you even suggest that I submit to a marriage with him? He’s ruthless and callous, treacherous, devious, and unpredictable. He cares for nothing but his bachelor cronies and his precious gentlemanly ‘honor.’ He’s the worst of the lot—the archbachelor of all times. I was wrong to go to him, it’s true, but I won’t be forced into a disastrous marriage to pay for it.”

  “I don’t believe you have a choice, Toni,” Hermione said, with genuine alarm at the apparent depth of Antonia’s conviction.

  “No choice? But of course I have a choice. No one can force me to suffer a lifetime of bondage in a hateful marriage because of one night’s indiscre—”

  She halted and her color drained. She looked from face to alarmed face, feeling the devastating insight dawning: other people had been forced. The truth rained down on her long-denied conscience like hot coals: she was the one who had forced them!

  She rushed from the drawing room and then from the house into the lamplit street, desperate to escape her thoughts and the responsibility she bore for sentencing numbers of bachelors and widows to a lifetime of marriage—for the real or apparent sin of just one night together. But their faces and the memory of their compromising situations raced with her, flashing before her eyes, one after another, after another.

  There they sat, half-naked, shocked, humiliated, desperate … trapped. And heaven help her, she had taken a vengeful pleasure in watching those men squirm and wheedle and ultimately concede to her righteous demands. With stunning clarity she now understood that what had happened to her had sprung from seeds she herself had sown. Her “victims” had turned her own strategy on her, with devastating results.

  She now knew what it was like to sit naked in a bed, under the sneers and judgmental stares of strangers—vulnerable and drenched with shame. And she knew one additional horror: what it was like to be betrayed into that humiliation by the one to whom she had opened her most private self, by the one she wanted with all her heart.

  For the first time she thought of what the marriages she had “arranged” were like now. On the surface—in the streets, over dinner tables, and in the eyes of society—they seemed to be normal, respectable, even amicable couples. But in the privacy of their homes, in the darkness of their beds at night, were their marriages anything more than cold, face-saving contracts? Was there any caring left between them? Any trust or affection?

  Were the women she had matched still grateful, or were they now bitter at having been levered into marriage with an unwilling groom? If marriage wasn’t right for her, then what about her protégées? She stumbled over a loose brick and almost fell as the possibility descended on her: what if she had sentenced them to lives of misery?

  Marriage, which had always seemed to offer women security and protection, now seemed like a trap—one she had vengefully sprung on both men and women.

  After a time she looked up to discover she was on St. James Street, mere steps from the Bentick Hotel, the scene of a number of her marriage traps. She stood on the walkway outside, staring up at the windows of the room, thinking of Daphne Elderston, Rosamund Garvey, Margaret Stevenson, Alice Butterfield, Elizabeth Audley, and Camille Adams—her Bentick Hotel brides. The sight of their faces on their wedding days rose into her mind: bright, nervous, and filled with expectation. What expressions did they wear now? Contentment or bitterness? Serenity or anger?

  She had to know.

  The do
orman of the Bentick was good enough to summon her a cab. The minute she returned home, she went straight to her rooms and closeted herself with pen and paper. And before the last candles had been snuffed for the night at Paxton House, there were thirteen letters lying on the entry-hall table, awaiting the morning post.

  The last thing Antonia might have expected the next morning was to receive a call from Lady Constance Ellingson.

  But when she responded to Hoskins’s announcement, there Constance stood, in the drawing room, dressed in impeccable morning-call attire: white gloves, a stylish, figured-silk dress, and a perky tilt-brimmed hat trimmed in peacock feathers. Grateful for a diversion from the tension in the house, Antonia greeted her warmly and would have rung for coffee, but Constance prevented her.

  “No, truly. This is not quite a social call. Is there someplace we may speak candidly?” She glanced around the empty drawing room and settled a frown on the open doors.

  “Why, yes.” Antonia closed the doors to the entry hall and instantly found herself being pulled to the settee. “What is it? What has happened?”

  “That, my dear, is something I should be asking you. You’ve touched off quite a storm.” Constance lowered her voice to a whisper. “There are ruts in my doorstep from foot traffic—everyone seems to think I have all the particulars since you made that unthinkable wager at my soiree. Half of London has paid me a call in these last two days”—she fixed a passionately expectant look on Antonia and announced—“including the Earl of Landon.”

  “The earl?” Antonia found herself edging back as her guest leaned forward.

  “Remington Carr presented himself on my doorstep yesterday evening. And you’ll never guess what he wanted.”

  Antonia didn’t trust herself to speak and shook her head to indicate she hadn’t a clue.

  “He called on me about the party I was to give Saturday. You remember—the soiree where you were to report the results of the Woman Wager? He suggested—and I quite agreed—that after the other night, carrying on with the soiree is out of the question. Then he asked me to function as his ‘second’ and call upon you.”