"I have no interest in the matter one way or the other, for I care nothing about what you think of me. I have done nothing wrong. No, I merely bring the matter up because I want my lovely wife to be happy above all else. I shall do everything in my power to make her so.
"Thus I would like to establish the truth once and for all. So please, do not be shy. I am going to pose a question to you all now, and I would like the absolute truth. I assure you there will be absolutely no repercussions as the result of an honest answer. But we need get this matter resolved so that my wife Ellen’s mind is at rest at last."
By now several people were murmuring amongst themselves in confusion or shock. Some even laughed aloud at the excellent entertainment they felt sure was about to come.
How delicious. Even more scandal between the handsome young doctor and his wife. Really, those Jerome girls... And that brazen foreigner...
"So I need an honest answer. And ladies, please, don’t be shy about joining in as well. Anyone who has slept with my wife, please put up their hand."
He raised his hand high as though the proudest man on earth, while the entire ballroom erupted.
Several women fainted dead away, others’ jaws dropped open in disbelief. Ash’s mother Eswara rolled her eyes heavenward, and his step-father Martin smiled and folded his arms, thoroughly enjoying himself, and waiting to see how things would turn out.
Blake and his wife Arabella began to skirt around the crowd to the front of the room in case they should be needed one way or the other.
Several men glowered, guffawed, or exclaimed in disgruntlement or outrage over his grotesque lack of taste and respect for propriety.
"Propriety be hanged," Ash stated above the din, the picture of calm. "It’s all a sham if it allows a decent, God-fearing woman to be whispered about and made a mockery of for something she never did. Has never done.
"And why has all this come about? Because of a rejected suitor who tried to force himself upon her in the woods whilst out for a seemingly innocent carriage ride, and has done nothing but spew his venomous lies to anyone who will listen ever since."
A few people now began to look at Bridges pointedly.
"Anyway, I’m still waiting. Any show of hands? No one?" He gazed impassively at some of Bridges’ especial friends. They hunkered their shoulders and looked furtive.
"Oh dear, no one here? Not a single person in this entire room has slept with my wife except me? Well, she's not much of a whore then, is she, Bridges?" he said, with a trace of fury which he could not quite suppress.
Ellen could feel herself blush so hotly, she was sure she matched her red sari, but she could also see the tide of opinion which they had been struggling so hard against was now starting to turn in their favor.
"Well, let’s be scrupulously fair about this, shall we? Perhaps I have couched the question wrongly. Very well, I shall rephrase it. Not slept with her, but had sexual relations with Ellen?
"For I must confess that I have certainly had very little sleep since I married her. And I have always been faithful to my lovely wife. So we can discount all the nasty rumours about me gadding about with any other women right this minute as well.
"But then, I don’t give a damn what any of you think of me. I only care that some of you in this room have been party to making my wife wretched on purpose, for no reason other than sheer spite, and it is going to stop tonight. Here and now." He fixed Georgina with a look that made even that brazen girl quail.
Ellen could feel her cheeks blazing. She clutched her reticule convulsively and longed for a bolt of lightning to strike her dead. Or perhaps her husband. How did he dare?
But despite her instinctive sense of mortification at his words and being the center of such attention, she found herself actually amused by his daring, his unconventionality.
After all, it was one of the reasons she had fallen in love with him, wasn't it. His decency and forthrightness, his absolute candour, were just a few of the many qualities she had admired from the moment they had met.
She knew she could trust him no matter what. Hilarity crept in to replace shame as she saw everyone swivel their eyes to start staring daggers at Bridges.
"Very well. No one has claimed to have slept with her, or had sexual congress with her. If she is the whore that Bridges claims, she is indeed a most restrained one. She seldom ventures out of the district without me, and none of you have had her.
"Is it possible that the legion of lovers she has had laid at her door, so to speak, are not all present at the ball? We do have the pick of the County here tonight. Surely all of you swains would be the most likely candidates? Unless of course she entertains the servants and labourers in the fields?"
Once again, there were shocked gasps, but many people started to shake their heads now.
"But I don’t think that’s true, either. Ellen’s parents have brought her up decently and respectably. She has been loved and protected and not allowed to run wild or go about unchaperoned. Still, I can most certainly start a survey of every household she visits if you like."
He folded his arms and looked around him, lord of all he surveyed. "But somehow I doubt we have to take this quite so far. In fact, I am of the belief that this whole situation has gone quite far enough. Since I married Ellen, I can safely say that she has not been out of my sight since the day we said our vows.
"Therefore, is it possible that Bridges is a liar? Let’s see, shall we? Please sir, do describe for us the gory details. Does my wife have any particular birth marks or other distinguishing features on her body? Where did the supposed lovemaking between you take place, that you have been calling her whore ever since? Go on, do please tell us," he drawled, his eyes blazing.
Bridges seethed impotently as the entire crowd glared at him.
"Nothing to say?" Ash taunted.
"Damn your eyes."
"So you lied?" he asked quietly.
Bridges’s continuing red-faced fury as several of his own friends now turned on him to ask if it was true or tell him he was a damned liar was proof enough.
"Damn you! If you hadn’t butted in that day she would have married me!" he exploded in front of the entire room.
Ellen choked at his roundabout admission of guilt. "I wouldn’t have taken a second look at you if you were last man on earth. You are a debauched, degenerated despoiler of women, and a filthy liar," she hissed.
Ash’s eyes were colder now as she had ever seen them. "I have promised no retribution whatsoever for anyone admitting they had made a cuckold of me. So once and for all, I really would like to know what has passed between you of a lover-like nature, that you would bruit it abroad to anyone willing to listen, and yet still attempt to get her to give you money to keep you quiet. I think five thousand pounds was the sum you quoted at the last Assembly Ball, was it not?"
Bridges glared, but said nothing. Everyone in the room gasped.
"But the time for remaining silent for fear of damaging her reputation is clearly at an end. So now I can tell the truth to everyone here. That I saw you attack her, and had to come to her rescue, and that was how the two of us fell in love and married. Martin Jerome and his wife and their maid can testify to the bruises you left all over the girl’s arms. Just for future reference, blackmail only works if the information is true, and no one knows. Not the other way around, you contemptible little worm."
Bridges opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it as Ash gave what Ellen had come to recognise as one of his deadly smiles.
"I promised no retribution for sleeping with Ellen. But I did not say the same would hold true for the crime of willfully defaming and degrading my wife, and wounding her by making her the butt of ridicule amongst her friends and neighbours."
"Hah, you’ve done that by standing up there and parading your dirty linen in public," Bridges snorted.
Ash’s eyes glittered.
Ellen closed her eyes, dreading even more what was coming next.
"Ah,
but her linen isn't dirty. You're the soiled one here. And the only way to deal with a liar, bully and blackmailer is to stand up to him. Expose him for what he really is.
"You made her the butt of ridicule with your lies about her chastity, so that she could barely hold her head up around the district. As for dirty linen, I shall quite gladly show you our sheets from our wedding night to offer proof of my wife’s virginity on our wedding night if you’d like."
Ellen groaned. But the offer was made in such a good-natured tone that even those who had been livid at his flouting of decorum the moment before had to guffaw in surprise at the barefaced cheek of the young lad.
Ash’s eyes bored into Bridges. "And there are a few thing which I could tell them about your family, except that I don’t play dirty, and would never stoop to blackmailing anyone. No, I prefer a good clean fight, as anyone who has ever shot or fenced with me can attest.
"So I would appreciate it if you simply admitted right now that you lied, and apologise to my wife, or this Assembly Ball will be your last."
"I say, Ash, old chap, he is a blackguard of the first order, but you can’t—" his father-in-law began to protest.
Ash’s reputation as one of the best shots and swordsmen amongst the non-military men in the room decided Bridges in an instant. "All right, damn your eyes, I admit it. I lied. Surely we can resolve this without a duel."
Everyone standing in his vicinity now stepped away from Bridges as though he had the plague. Ellen let out her breath at last, which she had been holding ever since her husband had stepped up onto the dais.
Ash smiled thinly. "Of course we can. Coward that you are, you aren’t even worth a bullet. I wouldn’t even bother to dirty my sword. You are most certainly no gentleman, Mr. Bridges.
"You can go now, sir. But if I ever find you pestering my wife again, I’ll kill you with my bare hands." He looked around the assembly hall now. "And that goes for any other man here who believes that this piece of ordure’s lies are reason enough to molest or carp about my wife."
Bridges vanished like a thief in the night, but no one followed him. All were riveted on the spectacle, and dying to see what would happen next.
"As for my own reputation," Ash continued, "well, let's just say the Duke and Georgina were repeating things they had misheard and were repeating fifth-hand, and are ever so sorry to have made a mistake and got it all wrong."
"Quite right," Thomas Eltham said, nodding. "I made a terrible error in judgement believing what I heard rather than what I know about them personally. They’ve done nothing but help me and my wife, and for that I am very grateful."
"We're very grateful," Charlotte said with a smile, patting Ellen on the shoulder.
Georgina had the grace to blush and stammer and apology as well.
Blake stepped forward, and said, "I blame myself for not intervening on their behalf before all of this got out of control, and made my most able assistant feel obliged to leave the district."
"Leave?" several people gasped.
Philip Marshall now stepped forward, and declared, "Aye, they're planning to leave because of your unkindness, when all they've ever tried to do is help as part of Blake's medical practice. They've been more than kind and helpful to everyone since they joined Blake's medical practice, and this is how you repay them?
"I've never met a finer young couple in my life, but now you're driving them away as if they were foul criminals, as I once was. They want to go away to India because of all you've said and done. Well, as much as Lawrence Howard would love to have them work for him on his tea plantation there, I think it's a damned shame for such a fine, upstanding doctor and his wife to be driven from their own homes by a pack of disgusting lies. Lies even put about by Ellen's own sister, and all because she wanted to marry Ash herself and is resentful because she lost her chance."
Georgina opened her mouth to defend herself, but could see it was pointless from the way everyone was looking at her.
"Shame, shame," began to echo around the chamber. "Don't go!"
"We need you here."
"Everyone talks about how you saved the Jenkins baby."
"And how your wife saved your sister from the rabid dog," someone else piped up.
Ash could see that he had won a great victory on behalf of his wife, and bowed to the Rakehells. "Thank you for the kind words of support, your Grace, Sister, Dr. Sanderson, and Mr. Marshall. And thank you all for listening. So sorry for the interruption.
"Please, let the dancing resume. If anyone here would like to apologise to my wife, she will be waltzing with me here at the top of the room. Ellen, darling?"
She was surprised her legs were still able to hold her up, let alone propel her forward. As if in a trance she found herself at his side grasping his hand.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her with a breathtaking thoroughness which had everyone in the room laughing, applauding, or covering their eyes.
Outrage against Ash’s public resolution of his dispute turned to a collective decision to be much kinder to them from now on, and blackball Bridges at every opportunity.
Moreover, several of the men and women in the room who had been Ash’s or Ellen’s most virulent critics now decided that there was a lot more to the couple than met the eye, especially the bold young doctor.
If Blake Sanderson had taken the young chap under his wing and was happy to share his practice with him, the least they could do was give him a fair chance, or support their clinic for the poor or the fever hospital which the young man and his wife had been campaigning so hard for.
When at last Ash lifted his lips he motioned to the musicians to strike up the next dance, which turned out to be a quadrille.
He looked at her, and she smiled and nodded. He took her to the place for the top couple in the set, though by rights the Duke of Ellesmere and his wife should have claimed that spot.
They came up now to dance on Ash’s right, while Blake and Arabella and Martin and Eswara also joined them. They danced in a compact circle in front of the dais, Ash having staked his place as a member of the community, and a radical agent of change.
As soon as the music stopped several people came up to shake their hands and speak to them, starting with their closest friends.
"I say, you really do know how to shake things up wherever you go."
"Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving little swine."
"That’s the last we’ll be seeing of that odious pervert."
"So glad it’s all worked out for the two of you. One thing is for sure, your marriage will never be dull."
"We’re certainly going to miss you."
"England’s loss will be India’s gain."
Ash flashed a broad smile at the Avenels and all his other friends gathering around. "Perhaps not. My wife is the most courageous woman I’ve ever met. After all, she married me, didn’t she? So we have no intention of running away. This is our home, and here we stay. Ellen and I shall be settling here permanently," Ash said.
Ellen’s face lit up. "Oh, darling, are you sure?"
"Yes, I was always sure. I only wanted to leave because you seemed so wretched. But I tried to tell you not to ever let anyone as worthless as Bridges ruin your life. Anyone here who is our friend knows the truth. And even if you were sexually immoderate with anyone other than me," he said with a suggestive fluttering of his eyebrows that set them all giggling anew, "it is no one’s dratted business but ours.
"Just to put an end to this distasteful subject once and for all, I give everyone here in this room fair warning. I intend to keep her so busy being sexually immoderate with me and raising our children and working at my practice that she won’t have time or energy for anyone else. Fair enough?"
Several pairs of eyes bulged.
Ellen laughed and kissed him again. "I call that a wonderful bargain, my love."
"Well, now that you’ve scandalised everyone in the County, son, do you suppose we can get set up for another quadril
le?"
"Yes, of course, sorry, Mother."
"I do love you, Ash." She beamed at him.
He smiled back, his expression full of love and pride. "I know. Believe me. You and Papa and Martin and now Blake are the best parents as well as friends I could ever wish for, and Ellen the best wife."
"And you’re a wonderful lad. I admire your verve. Wish I could be more like you," Blake said with a grin.
"No, please, one madcap in the neighbourhood is bad enough," he joked.
The Duke came up now and held out his hand to shake. "I’m sorry. I have to blame myself at least in part for all the trouble you’ve had. I should never have spoken to either of you as I did, and let my jealousy get the better of me.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 68