The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

They spoke little as they inched along through the late-afternoon traffic. Then Paddington straightened, leaned toward the window, and lowered the glass to listen to something. Antonia craned her neck to see and realized he was staring at a newsboy who was barking out the headlines on a street corner. It was time for the afternoon editions, and something in one of the headlines galvanized Paddington. He whistled and waved the boy over to the carriage, tossing him a shilling and stretching down to snatch the paper. He snapped it open, and as she read over his shoulder, Antonia was hit by a sickening wave of horror. The headline read:

  EARL ARRESTED ON MORALS CHARGE!

  Gaflinger’s had not only scooped every other paper in town, it had also scooped Remington’s own legal representatives. For there, in lurid black and white, was a list of the charges against him and a version of the circumstances that had prompted them. “… charged with the corruption of public morals, a case brought from the very highest levels of Her Majesty’s government and the palace itself,” Paddington read aloud.

  As Antonia listened and stared at that obscene headline, she felt a rising fury generated by yet another distorted and sensationalized story about him—and in that despicable rag, Gaflinger’s. Trembling with impotent anger, she realized that those wretched reports and the ill will they had stirred against him had finally accumulated to an intolerable weight. And that weight had set the slow but inexorable wheels of the justice system into motion against him.

  It was the cursed newspapers! First the stories about the “Woman Wager,” then the humiliating revelations of that awful night when the Bentick husbands invaded his house, then that business of his attacking women on the streets … Her heart beat faster with the recall of every absurd but still damaging piece of scandal press. They had gleefully reported that he forced her into degrading labor, and had women demonstrating against him in the streets—which they then reported with vicious whispers of “shackles” and “male oppressor” and worse. Then, finally, came the last straw: allegations that he had wrecked numerous marriages!

  The stormy history of their courtship and the demise of his good name could both be traced in the headlines of Gaflinger’s. And because good people, well-meaning people, believed the things they read in hallowed shades of black and white, many now believed Remington was an immoral beast and a woman-abusing cad, a man determined to destroy the nation’s moral fiber by attacking its most basic institution, marriage. Why, if she didn’t know the truth, she would probably be screaming for his neck in a noose herself!

  The carriage stopped and the driver jerked open the door. Antonia felt like something of a criminal herself as she mounted those steps, knowing she was the reason Remington was locked up.

  The main hall was filled with officers in uniform and a motley consortium of people—some poor and some well-to-do; some decent and some dangerous looking; witnesses, complainants, and those accused of crimes. They approached a sergeant sitting behind a counterlike desk to ask directions, and he sent them up the stairs to a busy waiting room with yet another desk with yet another bobby in uniform. They gave their names and stated their desire to see the Earl of Landon as his legal representatives. The officer looked them over, then focused a suspicious gaze on Antonia.

  “You the wife?” he demanded.

  She reddened. “No, I am … a friend.”

  “Sure ye are.” The officer gave her a sardonic look before turning back to Sir Paddington and Herriot. “You two”—he gestured to them—“come with me.”

  She looked at them in confusion. “Wait—where do I go?”

  “Over to one o’ them chairs,” the officer said, pointing to several empty chairs on the far side of the waiting room. “You’ll have to wait for ’em here.”

  “But I came to see the earl, too,” she said emphatically, and was relieved to hear Sir Paddington affirm and support her intention. The officer wasn’t impressed.

  “Don’t let no females in to see the prisoners … except wives. If you ain’t his wife—you don’t go in. Them’s regulations.” He wheeled and strode off, and Herriot and Sir Paddington assured her they would look into it, then hurried after him.

  Her face burned as she watched them go. She felt demeaned and dismissed and, at first, too devastated by the prospect of not seeing Remington to be angry. But after a moment the anger struck. What sort of stupid regulation kept women from visiting their—their what? Lovers? Her legs felt a little weak, and she made her way to one of the straight wooden chairs that ringed the walls.

  Wives had rights. Lovers didn’t. They had legal rights—to live with a man, to have children with him, to share his name and bed and company. But in her years of widowhood she had forgotten the more subtle rights of custom that society conferred on married women: the right to be with a husband wherever he was—even in a hospital or a jail or a court—and the right to claim his welfare as her own: to see to his needs and comfort and safety. Marriage was a special claim that allowed a wife access to her husband day and night, in good circumstances and bad, in good health and illness, in times of joy and sorrow.

  And she had none of those rights with Remington. She wasn’t his wife.

  Paddington and Herriot emerged nearly an hour later, looking overheated and irritable. They collected her and hurried down the steps. “Did you see him?” she asked, her fears rising at the grim lines of their faces. “Is he all right? Tell me—”

  “He’s well enough,” Paddington said, offering her his arm. “Brought ’im up in chains, though. Nearly gave poor Herriot here a stroke.”

  “It’s a disgrace—a pure outrage,” Herriot declared with quiet fury. “Manacles on a peer of the realm, a member of the House of Lords! I’ll see a few boxes are rattled over this, I tell you.” After a moment he expelled a hard breath and calmed. “They won’t release him without an appearance before a magistrate. I’ve already sent word to Kingston Gray—he’s one of the finest barristers in London. I’m sure he’ll defend Lord Carr. But the first order of business is to get him released from this cursed place.”

  In the carriage on the way home they remembered to give her Remington’s regards and informed her that the papers had been regrettably accurate: the charges were indeed twofold. The first was that he had promulgated immoral and seditious views with the intent of undermining the accepted values of society with regard to marriage. Tied to the first charge, strengthening it, was the charge that he had contributed directly to the disruption and demise of five specific marriages.

  “Dear heaven—they’re blaming him for breaking up the marriages of Lord Woolworth and Sir Albert Everstone and the others!” she said in disbelief.

  “They’ve drawn the charges cleverly,” Herriot said solemnly. “All they have to do to prove the first is to produce copies of the articles and papers he has written and call upon the records of the Lords. He has been quite vocal in his opposition to marriage; the evidence is irrefutable. And for the second charge, I suppose they will bring witnesses.”

  “But he had nothing to do with their marital troubles,” Antonia protested. And if anyone should know the truth of the matter, she should. “How could the queen and her government bring such charges based on headlines in a scandal sheet?”

  Paddington scowled, thinking about that. “The boy hasn’t been in the queen’s good graces for some time. She hates talk of female emancipation … won’t countenance the notion of women working in trade or in the professions. Some months back she banned him from her presence because of his female politics. Didn’t seem to matter much. Nobody ever sees the old girl anyway. This nonsense in the newspapers about his breaking up marriages must have been the last straw.”

  “But a newspaper cannot testify in a …” Antonia looked anxiously at the solicitor. “Does that mean the husbands will have to testify against him in court?”

  He pulled a document halfway out of a leather briefcase he carried and scanned it. “I would assume these men—Woolworth, Everstone, Searle, Howard, and Trueblood—will be c
alled as witnesses for the Crown.”

  “Is there no way we can keep them from testifying?” Paddington asked, looking uneasy.

  “Not if they are subpoenaed by the court,” Herriot said. “And what crown prosecutor in his right mind wouldn’t order them to appear? They would make his case.” Herriot sighed and stuffed the documents back into his case.

  They fell silent for a time, until Antonia’s fears got the better of her.

  “What will they do to him if he is convicted?” she asked in a choked voice, fearing the very answer she sought.

  “Probably send him to prison for a time. Reading Gaol, or some such,” Herriot answered dismally.

  “B-but people go into Reading Gaol and never come out again,” she said. Her own words jolted her.

  Remington. The possibility that she might never have him in her arms or make love with him again was crushing. She loved him with all her heart and wanted to spend her hours, days, and years with him. Lord—why hadn’t she told him that? Why hadn’t she just thrown her arms around him the other day in her room and told him that she loved him? What if she never had another chance to say it?

  They rode the rest of the way to Herriot’s office in deep silence.

  When she arrived home, the atmosphere of Paxton House was thick with tension. Her ladies hurried from all over to hear what had happened, and their reactions ranged from indignation to despair, to righteous fury. The rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Antonia paced and wrung her hands, and her ladies and her Bentick brides waited and worried with her.

  She had never felt so helpless in her life, knowing that Remington was in trouble, knowing he needed her, and feeling there was nothing she could do about it. The thought that all of this might have been avoided if she had just agreed to let him “rescue” her was never far from her mind. Her refusal to marry him had placed him in awkward situations again and again, and now he was the one in need of rescue. And it would take much more than a marriage vow to save him.

  After a simple cold supper that evening, she came across a small gathering of her ladies in the servants’ hall, just off the kitchen. She was about to walk in on them when she heard Gertrude say: “Lady Toni’s a clever one. She turned ’is lordship around, right enough. Now she’ll think of somethin’ to help ’im.”

  The words closed around her heart like a fist. Help him. If she only could. But all afternoon she’d gone over and over it, only to reach the same despairing conclusion: she wasn’t a lawyer, and she had no power to affect his case or to change the foul opinions that wretched newspaper had sewn in the minds of people. And she couldn’t even see him to give him her support. She had never felt so powerless.

  “I jus’ wish there was somethin’ I could do to help.” Gertrude’s voice penetrated her thoughts. “I feel so bad. If I hadn’ta talked to that snake Fitch—”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Gertrude,” Eleanor’s voice reassured her. “You couldn’t have known that he’d betray your confidence like that.”

  “What confidence?” Antonia stepped through the door, surprising them. “Gertrude, you talked to Rupert Fitch?” The ample cook’s shoulders rounded.

  “Didn’t think it would do no harm.” She shook her head miserably. “He was alwus hangin’ around the kitchen door, talkin’ nineteen to th’ dozen.”

  The story came tumbling out: an offer of coffee here, a bite of pie there, a generous helping of flattery, and a slick bit of journalistic—or was it male?—guile. Soon Gertrude had let down her guard and begun to talk, revealing the developing tendre and her hopes for a match between Antonia and Remington. Then on that fateful night nearly two weeks ago, she had told Fitch about Remington leaving, and he went to Remington’s house, where he witnessed the sordid spectacle of Antonia’s humiliation.

  They sat for a moment in silence when Gertrude finished. She looked so miserable that Antonia put an arm around her. “It’s all right, Gertrude. It was Fitch, not you.”

  “Something ought to be done about that man,” Pollyanna said fiercely.

  “Somebody ought to take him down a peg or two,” Molly agreed.

  It was hard to say where the idea came from; it seemed to rise independently in several minds at once. And that simple fact seemed to destine its expression.

  “We should do somethin’ about him,” Gertrude spoke their common thought. “I’d give a month off’n my life to watch that worm wring and twist.”

  They began to talk at once, and somewhere in the midst of those deliciously vengeful suggestions for Fitch’s comeuppance, Antonia felt her heart beating faster and her spirits lifting. She was a woman who got things done, a woman who took on challenges and put actions where her beliefs were. She was a clever, contriving woman, and it was high time she began to act like it!

  The next afternoon Hermione arrived to stay with Antonia while Paddington and Herriot went to Scotland Yard to see about Remington’s release. Antonia had packed a hamper to send to Remington, and no sooner had Paddington and Hoskins lugged it out to the coach than she was already planning another. Half of the ladies of Paxton House gathered in the kitchen to help make food and treats to send to him. The activity made the waiting easier, somehow. A knock came at the kitchen door and she opened it herself, thinking it was the ice man or the boys who hauled away their refuse.

  She found herself staring at Albert Everstone and Carter Woolworth, instead. They looked harried in the extreme, and when they saw her, they paled and braced.

  “Did you hear? About Landon?” Woolworth spoke for the pair, then glanced over his shoulder and shoved Everstone into the kitchen ahead of him. Wrenching the door from Antonia, he shut it behind them.

  “Of course we’ve heard.” She eyed them irritably, stepping back.

  “The papers say that they’ve named us in the charges against him. They say we blame him for wrecking our marriages!” Woolworth declared.

  “They’re calling our marriages wrecks—it’s a nightmare!” Everstone groaned. “Our names will be splattered all over the papers—think of the scandal!”

  “It’s worse than a scandal,” Antonia said, watching their moans of self-pity with rising ire. “The prosecutors will subpoena you and demand that you testify against Remington in open court.”

  “T-testify?” Everstone said, his eyes widening. “But I don’t want to testify!”

  Woolworth looked stunned. “If they get us in the witness box, there’s no telling what they’ll demand to know about our marriages … and about Landon.” He looked at Antonia with growing alarm. “How can we explain without—good God—we’ll be finished!”

  “I agree you can’t testify,” Antonia said, folding her arms and engaging their eyes, letting them feel a bit of the Dragon’s heat. “For if you do and you help send him to prison, it might be a very long while before you get your wives back.”

  “You—you can’t do that!” Everstone bellowed. “You can’t keep them from coming home!”

  “She wouldn’t have to,” came a voice from the doorway. The men turned and found Margaret and Elizabeth standing just inside the kitchen door. “If you testify against Lord Carr, none of us would be of a mind to come home for quite a while,” Margaret said.

  “You’ll just have to refuse to bear witness against him, Carter,” Elizabeth said gravely. Both women nodded, and as the men looked around the kitchen, they spotted other brides here and there around the kitchen worktable nodding too.

  Just then Hoskins appeared in the doorway behind Elizabeth and Margaret to announce: “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am. More of them ’husbands’ at the door.”

  Taking Woolworth and Everstone in tow, she hurried up the stairs to meet them. Howard, Trueblood, and Searle were every bit as horrified at the prospect of testifying. And they brought more disturbing news: the subpoena servers were already out and about. Trueblood had nearly bumped into a pair of them hanging around his front door. He had ducked out of the way in time to keep from being seen, thinking they were probably
news writers. But they had been dressed better, and he heard one of them say something about “serving him the paper.”

  “If they can’t find you, they can’t subpoena you,” Antonia said, realizing that at last she had a way to help Remington. “What you need is a place to hide for a while.”

  She paced and thought and examined each suggestion they made. Hotels were too easy to check, their country houses and clubs were too obvious, and none of them could afford to involve their relatives. They were at a loss until Hermione, who had sat listening to it all, suggested:

  “What about Remington’s house? Paddington was just saying that he ought to look in today, to let the staff know what is happening. The house is empty except for staff. And who would think to look for Remington’s accusers in his own house?”

  It was nothing short of brilliant.

  Antonia smiled for the first time in more than two days.

  A knock came at the kitchen door of Paxton House that same night, and Gertrude crept through the half-darkened kitchen to open it. In stepped Rupert Fitch, in his natty new pin-striped coat and black bowler. “Hello, gorgeous,” he said, doffing his hat with a glint in his beady black eyes. “Got your message. Now what’s all this about ‘needin’ to see a bit of justice done’?”

  “Aw, Rupert,” Gertrude said, sniffling and looking at him as if he were the light of her life. “It’s terrible—what that man’s done to our laidy Toni. It’s jus’ one scandal after another. She’s plum heartsick.” She buried her nose in a handkerchief and took a deep, shuddering breath. A moment later she dabbed at her eyes. “Will ye help ’er, Rupert? Will ye listen to ’er side o’ the story and see its gets told straight in the newspapers?”

  “Her side, you say? Th’ whole story?” He could scarcely contain himself. “Of course, Gertrude,” he said wrapping a cozening arm around her. “You just lead me to her and I’ll see it all gets written and reported, straight ’n’ true.”

  “Oh, thank ye, Rupert!” Gertrude’s joy was utterly sincere. “I knew I could count on ye!” She looked around, searching for some way to repay his largess. “Say—have ye eaten? I’ve got a tasty stew and some berry pie, and I expect I could find a spot o’ wine.”