The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  “I haven’t exactly slept the day away,” she said flirtatiously.

  She led him into the bathroom that adjoined her bedchamber. Between kisses and playful caresses, they managed to wash and brush hair and don clothes. She was loath to let him take his trousers back, until he promised to bring her a pair of her own the next time he came.

  The next time.

  The idea lay suspended on the air, between and around them, as they finished dressing. She sat down at her dressing table and picked up her brush, looking at her glowing face in the mirror and feeling a chill stealing into her limbs. He must have seen her response, for he came up behind the bench and went down on one knee.

  “There will be a next time, and a time after that,” he said quietly. He felt her stiffen as he said, “We will have a lifetime of ‘next times’ … when we’re married.”

  “Married?” she whispered. A chill swirled through her like the draft from an open door, starting with her feet and rising. For a time she had thought only of here and now, keeping thoughts of the future and the cost of her pleasure at bay. “I didn’t say anything about marriage …”

  Disbelief mingled with irritation in his words. “Come, Antonia, don’t be stubborn. What have we been doing all morning—all day?” When she just sat, gripping her brush and looking paler by the moment, he turned her to face him on the bench. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been making love to the woman I want to marry.”

  She wanted to say that she’d been making love to the man she loved, but somehow couldn’t. To say it would be to give him rights with her, would give him power over her and her future. He wanted that power—he had already begun to claim it … assuming she would marry him because he wanted it to be so, absorbing her into his expectations and his desires. She felt herself sliding, being pulled toward something in which she would have little say, and that feeling of powerlessness frightened her the way nothing else could. Something deep in the pit of her stomach began to quiver, and dread collected in her throat to keep her from speaking.

  She was terrified of being caught up in a disastrous marriage, but just as frantic at the possibility of losing him. All her life she had dreamed of feeling this way … of loving someone with all her heart … of having someone to share her time and her ideas and her passions. The conflict in her was almost unbearable. She took a deep breath and made herself say it.

  “I don’t want to get married, Remington.”

  With an aching heart she watched the frustration turning to anger in his face.

  “Dammit, Antonia, I thought we had put what happened that night behind us. I’ve done everything I can to prove myself to you. And you even admitted that you need and want me, and even trust me—”

  “It’s not you,” she said, taking hold of his shirtsleeves, willing him to understand. “I’ll love you—every day and every night if you want. I’ll share my bed with you, my table with you, my time with you. But I don’t know if I can marry you.”

  “Good God—what do you want?” he demanded, glowering. “To be my mistress?”

  “A mistress is a kept woman—I would never be ‘kept’ any more than you would ‘keep’ me. I have my own household, my own means, and my own responsibilities. I suppose that would make me … your lover.”

  “Lover? I don’t want a lover—I want a wife! And I want a home. And babies, dammit—a whole houseful of babies. And I want it with you! I want to marry you and give you my name, and carry you home with me, and barricade the doors against the whole crazy world. Don’t you understand? I want to walk down the street with you, to make you the center of my home and my heart, to have people point to that ravishing creature with the auburn hair and say she belongs to the Earl of Landon.” He knew the instant he said it he had made a mistake.

  She blanched and shot to her feet, feeling more alarmed with each word he spoke. “Belong to you? I don’t want to belong to anyone. If you want me, Remington Carr, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for me as a lover.” When he shoved to his feet, she paced away before he could take hold of her.

  “I’m not being stubborn or vindictive, I swear to you. It’s just that I’ve seen so many marriages … and none of them good. I don’t know of any that have endured with anything akin to caring and affection and even companionship. None. Remington, don’t you see? I’m responsible for thirteen marriages—”

  “Thirteen?” He choked on the word as it came out.

  “Yes. And even as we speak, five of those women are here, under my roof. They fled marriages with men they believed they loved and thought loved them. God knows how many more of the thirteen will return to me over the next weeks.”

  She was speaking of the wives of her White’s Club victims, he realized with a start.

  “Well, for God’s sake, Antonia, send them home … back to their husbands … make them work it out!” he declared, running his hands back through his hair.

  “I can’t send them back,” she insisted. “You have no idea what wretches I matched them with. Albert Everstone is so miserly that he actually counts the pieces of bread Margaret eats … Bertrand Howard goes for days without speaking to Camille … Lord Woolworth’s vicious old mother runs his house with an iron fist and doesn’t hesitate to wield it against poor Elizabeth … and Basil Trueblood seems to think his wife isn’t a lady unless she has ice in her veins—says her kisses are too ‘warm’ to be decent. I could go on and on!” She came close, her face filled with anxiety.

  “Men change when they get married,” she said miserably. “They grow cold and distant and jealous of their time and money. They begin to think of their wives as conveniences or possessions or objects meant to decorate their lives. And I suppose women change, too—they begin to keep houses not homes, and become fixed on things and appearances and status. Marriage changes things between people, even between people who love each other.” She paced away, clasping her hands, then turned, praying he would understand.

  “I don’t want to be a possession or an object or a convenience to you, Remington.”

  He stared at her, his face dusky with frustration and his eyes glowing hot.

  “There’s no danger of your becoming a ‘convenience,’ sweetheart. You’re the damned most inconvenient woman I’ve ever known!” he bellowed. He stalked to the bed, shoved his arms into his coat, and tugged his vest down into place. With fire in his eyes he headed for the door and turned the key in the lock. Pausing in the open door, he looked back and jabbed a finger at her.

  “I’m going to marry you, Antonia Paxton, if it is the last thing I do in this life!”

  He strode down the hall and down the stairs, where he bade good evening to a wide-eyed Eleanor and shocked Pollyanna on the steps. In the entry hall he asked old Hoskins to retrieve his hat and walking stick, and saw the narrow, speculative look in the butler’s eyes. He braced as the old boy thrust his hat and cane into his hands. But as he shuffled away, Remington clearly heard him say:

  “Lucky bastard.”

  Out on the street, striding for the nearest cab stand, Remington didn’t feel like a lucky bastard. Despite a whole day of wild, unbridled passion, he was feeling twitchy and deprived and a little desperate. He had never dreamed he would find himself frantic to convince a woman that free, unencumbered, and unbridled passion wasn’t enough—that she belonged in his home, bearing his name, his children, and his adoration, as well!

  It was guilt, that was what it was. As the heat drained from his temper, he saw it all too clearly; she felt personally responsible for trapping women in marriages that hadn’t worked out. Thirteen marriages. Good Lord. Now she was terrified of a bit of celestial retribution—getting trapped exactly the way she had trapped others, in a miserable marriage. And she had five sterling examples of the dismal fate that awaited an ill-conceived marriage, right under her nose. He stopped dead in the middle of the street. Everstone, Woolworth, Howard, Trueblood, Searle …

  Those whiny, annoying bastards! They had wrecked his possibilities
with Antonia before, with their selfishness and resentment, and now they were doing it again!

  As he stood there in the street, he grew steadily more outraged. In order to marry Antonia, he would have to get those women out of her house and back home with their wretched husbands … and make them seem happy as clams. The glint of cunning entered his eye as his mind raced.

  Those miserable wretches, the ruined bachelors of White’s Club, were going to shape up and become model husbands by week’s end—or he was going to know the reason why!

  The barman at White’s stood staring at the figures draped miserably over the corner table. “Ye’d think they was planted there,” he mumbled to himself as they waved to him, ordering another bottle. He stepped out from behind the bar, empty-handed, and strolled over. The odor of stale liquor, stale cigars, and frustrated male heat was overpowering. “Beggin’ yer indulgence, sirs. But ain’t it time ye went home? Ye been here goin’ on three days. Go home to yer wives”—he winced discreetly—“and yer razors.”

  Trueblood raised bleary eyes and a stubbled face to him. “Wives? What wives? We don’t have wives … anymore.”

  “No one to go home to,” Howard said miserably, raking a hand through his hair.

  “And no supper,” Everstone added. “She fired the cook when she left.”

  “No clean shirts,” Trueblood said dolefully, giving his linen a pained sniff.

  “No lady things clutterin’ up my shaving sink,” Searle mumbled.

  “No one to talk to over supper—except Mother,” Woolworth said morosely, staring into his dwindling drink. “And a damned cold bed at night.”

  There were several murmurs of agreement with that, and the barman wagged his head in disgust and returned to his place behind the bar.

  “No reason to go home.” Howard summed it up in a whisper: “Her blue eyes won’t be there.”

  “Can’t bear to see that hot-water bottle I gave her,” Everstone mumbled.

  “No more singing. Haven’t heard a note of music since she left,” Searle moped.

  “Left her needlework,” Woolworth muttered. “I found a nightshirt she was embroidering with my family crest, for me.”

  “There you are.” A powerful voice startled them out of their doldrums.

  They looked up to see Remington Carr bearing down on them with a fierce expression. To a man they stiffened and edged back from the table. But he halted and stood staring at them from a few paces away, looking as dapper, energetic, and determined as they looked disheveled, exhausted, and dispirited.

  “Ye gods—look at you,” he said with a wince. “You’re pathetic. When was the last time you had a shave, Howard?”

  Howard thrust to his feet and shook an unsteady finger. “Well, you’re to blame—you and Lady Matrimonia. It’s a criminal offense, you know, interferin’ in a man’s marriage—I checked. A man’s home is a sacred thing … an’ a man’s wife is … is …”

  “His property?” Remington supplied with a sardonic look. But before they could agree, he continued: “His chattel, perhaps? His goods? His convenience?” His eyes glittered as he came to stand at the edge of the table. “God—no wonder they’ve left you. If I were a female, I’d have thrown myself on a Catherine wheel before I’d have let them yoke me up with the likes of you. You’re little more than savages in disguise.”

  “See here, now—” “Strong talk, Landon—” They stiffened in their chairs, outraged at his high-handed manner. He leaned over the table, into their midst, his eyes narrowing as he scalded and silenced them with the same look.

  “But this is your lucky day, gentlemen. I’m going to help you. I want your wives out of Antonia Paxton’s house and back in yours by week’s end. To that end I’m here to see that you become exemplary husbands.”

  “Exemplary husbands?” Woolworth said, offended. “What the hell do you know about being a husband, Landon?”

  “More than you, apparently. For I know that a man should never let his mother run his house, harass his wife, and ruin his marriage, Woolworth,” Remington declared with a piercing look at the young peer, who reddened and moved his jaw soundlessly.

  “And I know enough not to pinch pennies and flog pounds with a woman … keeping count of the very food she consumes, Everstone.”

  “Damn you, Landon—that’s entirely out of bounds!” the burly MP sputtered.

  “I certainly know enough not to go for days without speaking to the woman who shares my bed, Howard,” Remington continued, undaunted by their outrage.

  “It is none of your affair who I speak to—or when!” The young bureaucrat shoved to his feet again with his fists clenched.

  “And I know that a warm, affectionate woman in a man’s bed is a blessing, not an embarrassment, Trueblood.”

  “How dare you say such a thing to me?” Phlegmatic Trueblood roused himself to a tepid display of indignation. “My wife is a lady in all respects.”

  “She’s a woman first, Trueblood. They all are,” Remington said, emphatically. “You pleaded for my help the other night. Well, I’ve decided to give it to you. I’m going to help you woo and win your wives back to your sides, starting first thing tomorrow morning. You’re going to be gracious and interested and generous to a fault. You will take them chocolates and flowers and gifts.” He silenced Everstone’s grumble with a javelinlike glare of warning. “And you’re going to talk to them, and listen to them, and treat them like the women they are. With any luck you’ll have them back by week’s end, and I can get on with my own marriage.”

  Their eyes bulged and they lurched to their feet, demanding all at once: “Marriage?” “What marriage?” “You’re getting shackled?” “You—the Bastion of Bachelorhood?” “To whom?”

  “To Antonia Paxton,” he declared, smiling defiantly at the horror that bloomed on their faces. “I claimed the Dragon’s heart after all, you see. But I decided to keep it for myself.”

  * * *

  That night, as the morning edition of Gaflinger’s Gazette was put to bed and the offices finally emptied out, Rupert Fitch donned his spanking-new bowler hat and stepped out onto Fleet Street. He paused for a moment on the steps, to search his pockets for a match, intending to light a cigarette. There was a fair amount of traffic on the street, so he paid no attention to the coach slowing and stopping a dozen feet away.

  Out of that coach sprang three burly men, who seized Fitch and wrestled him toward their vehicle. His hat and cigarette went flying, and his notepad was jerked from his pocket. At the door they pounded a fist in his gut, to quiet him, then stuffed him into the coach and carried him off into the night. A moment later the street was quiet and empty … except for an unburned cigarette and a pricey bowler hat that a carriage wheel had squashed flat.

  It was a harrowing ride for the little news writer. They trussed him up and shoved him down onto the floor of the coach. In the darkness, struggling for breath, he lost track of time. It seemed forever until the rattling of the coach stopped and he was hauled out, shoved through a doorway, trundled down a hallway. In a bare room lighted by a single kerosene lamp, he found several inquisitors waiting. They shoved him down in a chair and shone the lamp in his face, temporarily blinding his dark-adjusted eyes.

  “So you’re Fitch.” A huge man with a nasty scar down the side of his face bent down to stare into his eyes. “Got a few questions for ye, Fitch.” With a wicked gleam in his eyes, he raised a sharp blade and moved it menacingly toward Fitch’s face. The news writer squealed with terror, but the steel merely slid between his skin and the cloth to cut away his gag.

  The big fellow smiled nastily and stepped away. He was replaced by a smoother, more gentlemanly looking fellow in expensively tailored clothes.

  “Here, here, Mr. Fitch. We mean you no harm. We are agents of Her Majesty’s government, and we’ve a few questions to ask you. Cooperate with me, and you won’t have to deal with Mr. Ajax, there.” Fitch saw the glint of the big fellow’s blade in the shadows and swallowed hard. But what
ever Fitch lacked in courage and scruples, he more than made up for in brass.

  “Wh-what’s in it for me?” he croaked out.

  The gentleman’s cool smile faded to a look of menacing scrutiny. “Your reward will be the satisfaction of doing your duty to your sovereign queen.”

  Fitch nodded and groveled and tried just once more. “It’s just that—I’m sure I would remember quicker, say, if I knew there was a story in it somewhere for me.” Fitch’s heart nearly pounded out of his chest as he waited for the gentleman to respond. After a look at others standing in the shadows, the gent jerked a nod of agreement and it was settled.

  “You wrote a story a day or so ago, alleging that the Earl of Landon was accosted in the street by several men,” his questioner declared. “According to your report, they claimed that he had wrecked their marriages and they demanded reparation. We want the details, Mr. Fitch. Including the names of those poor, unfortunate gentlemen.”

  In a short while Fitch told them everything he knew about the “evil earl,” naming names, fabricating and embellishing where the truth seemed a bit lackluster, weaving a tale in which truth, half truth, and lie were so skillfully intertwined that he himself forgot where one stopped and the other started.

  When he finished his inventive recounting, he quickly found himself out on the street once more—missing his change purse, his notepad, his new hat, and facing a very long walk to his lodgings.

  But despite those losses he was whistling, for he had in his possession the germ of a story that he knew would set all London on its ear.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You damned well better be right about this.” Everstone grumbled, tugging at his collar and shifting the beribboned box and the flowers he held from one sweaty hand to the other. “These cursed flowers cost me—”

  “Dammit, Everstone, I’ve warned you about this cheese paring of yours,” Remington whispered, glaring at the portly peer from the corner of his eye. “It’s what got you into trouble in the first place.”