Strathmere's Bride

by Jacqueline Navin

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jareth’s mother got started immediately on the wedding plans, holed up with Lady Rathford to discuss all the details. He didn’t expect to be involved. It was not the sort of project he would find interesting, even under different circumstances. However, the two matrons made no pretext of consulting Helena, and this Jareth considered an insult. He told his mother this, and Helena was grudgingly included.

  He heard that Chloe was still at the inn in the village, waiting for a ship that was due in a week’s time and would take her directly to France. Jareth tried not to think of her, of how she was close enough to get to within an hour’s hard ride if he so chose.

  He still saw the children at least once every day. He had them brought down to tea or took them for strolls, to the lake, to the stables, into the woods, and tried to pretend he was still whole. They missed Chloe, too. Their somber faces pierced his heart like a thousand bayonet blades, but this he considered his just penance.

  When he entered the drawing room one evening, Lady Rathford and his mother were sitting with material swatches spread over their laps. Helena sat in a corner, face turned to the dark window. He went to join her, looking out. It was a brilliant night, a night ripe for stargazing, but he felt no such inclination.

  He wanted to make conversation, but found he had nothing to say to Helena. The elder women’s conversation reached him.

  “No, no, Charlotte. Helena looks awful in peach. Jewel tones are her best colors.”

  “But a wedding gown of jewel tones—you cannot be serious. It would be so gauche. Softer colors would suit the occasion best. Concentrate on a pastel palette.”

  His foul mood churned in disgust. “I have a novel idea, ladies,” he said, advancing on the pair of them as stealthily as a tiger. “Maybe Helena would like to have a say in what gown she wears for her wedding. Helena? Would you like to tell us what your preference is?”

  She seemed startled and mildly alarmed at his outburst. “I defer to the wishes—”

  “You must cease deferring, Helena,” he said curtly.

  She bowed her head. “Yes, your grace.”

  “No! Damn you, do you have no spirit? Look at me and defy me at once for my rudeness. Speak your mind, woman. And I demand you stop calling me your grace. Nevermore, understood?”

  “Yes, of course, sir,” she said immediately, her face registering a modicum of alarm.

  “How unnatural to address me so when I am your affianced. You will call me by my given name and no other.”

  “Strathmere,” his mother gasped, “sit down at once!”

  “I am not Strathmere!” he shouted. “My name is Jareth. It was less than a year ago that you all called me that, in this very house, this room, in fact. We sat here all together, and I was simply Jareth. Have you forgotten it so soon?”

  Gerald tried to appear helpful. “I had not forgotten.”

  Jareth stuck out his arms, palms up. “This is Strathmere. It is a place, a building. It is also my title. It is not me. I am a man. Not a building, not a title—a man. My name is Jareth Hunt.”

  His mother’s eyes flickered wildly to touch on the others. “Hush! Have you gone mad?”

  He swung on her and bared his teeth. “Yes, Mother, I believe I have.” At her blank expression, he exhaled, his sudden rage deflating. In a calmer voice, he said, “Look, Frederick is here to announce dinner. Would you like to go in?” He crooked his arm at Helena and led her into the dining room as if his outburst had never happened.

  But once seated, he still felt like shouting, stomping, smashing. He loosened his cravat and picked up his spoon, trying to concentrate on the bowl of soup before him. The walls seemed to be closing on him, stifling him. Dear God, he felt on fire! “Is it warm in here? Frederick, open the French doors.”

  The footman did as he was bidden. The ladies wrapped themselves in their shawls, not daring to voice any discomfort. They cast him wary looks. His mother shot glares that were as sharp as daggers; the others seemed merely afraid. Helena sat stiffly erect, spoon poised as she took tiny increments of the soup to her mouth. Her eyes touched him, skittered away.

  He looked down at his place setting, replete with cut crystal that shimmered brilliantly in the candlelight, beautifully pressed fine linens and bone china of the most delicate sort, rimmed in halos of gold.

  I wish I were dead.

  He jerked his head, hearing the words from Charles’s diary.

  The soup was eaten in silence. Lord Rathford, who appeared to care little for the peevish fits of a duke, commented that it was delicious, and the dowager duchess, grateful for his bravery in speaking up, agreed with enthusiasm. Gerald joined in the halting flow of conversation, always his aunt’s best and brightest sycophant.

  Sometimes I hate her.

  Jareth closed his eyes and bowed his head, willing his brain under control. A vivid thought burst into his brain—that Chloe was still near. He could see her if he chose.

  If he chose.

  How I wish I were not to be duke.

  “Your grace, you are not eating,” Lady Rathford said.

  His head snapped up, looking around at their faces, all turned toward him in expectation.

  Jareth stood. Behind him, the expensive Chippendale chair crashed into the Hepplewhite buffet and then to the floor.

  Tossing his napkin down beside his untouched soup, he said, “Please carry on without me.”

  “Strathmere? What are you doing? Sit down and eat at once.”

  He didn’t answer. Striding to the door, he almost knocked a servant out of his way. “Where are you going?” his mother demanded in a voice perilously close to emotional.

  Whirling on her, he faced them all. All of his demons, neatly assembled in one room. “To Chloe. I am going to Chloe. If she’ll have me. I have no right to ask her to forgive me. I have behaved abominably. God knows I have so much to make up to her, I don’t know where to begin. But I shall start this very night, and I shall not stop until she tells me it is enough, and even then I shall not let up because I love her. I love her to madness, do you hear me, and I cannot marry you, Helena.”

  To Helena, he said, “You deserve better than life with a man who wants someone else. We both do, Helena.”

  Lady Rathford stood, her face alarmingly red. “No! How dare you! I shall see you thrown in jail, you lying, duplicitous fiend. You cannot renege—the betrothal is sealed.”

  Lord Rathford appeared annoyed, as well, but his expression was more a mingling of exasperation and resignation. He gazed at Jareth as if to say, See what you’ve done! Now she’ll never shut up.

  What an inconvenience this would be for everyone.

  Gerald was excited, his ruddy face ruddier. As for the duchess—Jareth did not even dare venture a glance at his mother.

  But she made herself known.

  “If you do this, Strathmere,” she said, her voice as sharp as a razor, “you will be attesting before these witnesses that you are out of your head. I can have the title removed and Gerald shall inherit—”

  “Do that, Mother. Do it. I beg of you. Do you think I would dread such a thing? I can tell you I do not. But you know as well as I that Gerald will prove no easier to control. And I am a good duke, as Charles was, if I am left to myself to govern this duchy as I see fit and make my own way. But I cannot do it alone. I need Chloe—to live, to breathe. And I will have her.” He gave the duchess a cold, cold stare brimming with his determination. “I will have her.”

  She visibly faltered, seeming to deflate as she choked, “How dare you put that little tramp above me.”

  “Mother, she is worlds above all of us. That is the point.” His mother groped for the arms of her chair, sitting down with a plop.

  Jareth lifted his gaze to the others. He caught Lady Rathford’s furious eye.

  “You shall pay for this,” the woman growled at him.

  Inclining his head, he said, “I deserve your loathing, madam, for not being honest with you and y
our daughter sooner. But I shall not relent. The marriage shall not take place.” To the room in general, he said, “Now, if you will excuse me, I will take my leave of you. And please accept my apologies on my unforgivable behavior.”

  And as he walked out the door, he passed Frederick. The man smiled meaningfully and said, “Good luck, your grace.”

  Strangely, that small message—from a servant, no less—buoyed him.

  The momentousness of what he had just done was not lost on him. The future was uncertain—his and that of the Strathmere title. His mother’s threats, he knew, were not idle. If there were a way for her to punish him, she would do it. But not at the expense of the duchy. Gerald would be a disaster. He hoped she realized that fact.

  Yet he was not afraid. For the first time since his brother’s death, he was not afraid.

  He was filled with the euphoria of his emancipation. Not knowing what to do first, he went into his study and shut the door, prowled about for a moment or two like a caged beast before flinging open the glass doors and stepping onto the terrace. He strode out onto the lawn, breathing in deeply of the thick, sweet air, ripe with moisture from the mists rolling m from the direction of the sea.

  Circling, he remembered. This was where she had romped that first time he had seen her, dress muddied, making ridiculous sounds and bounding about with that unnatural grace so that her gamine movements had seemed like art in motion.

  He headed around to the back. There was her garden. He looked at it for a moment, recalling how she had danced to Helena’s song.

  Turning back to the house, he studied Strathmere, stretching wide and tall amid the wisps of cloudlike fingers snaking through the air. His home, his prison. Strathmere. It was really only a pile of stone, after all.

  Like Charles, he would rather die than belong to this place and all it represented, but unlike Charles, he would never mature, grow into acceptance of his lot.

  No.

  He gazed at it all, a single word in his mind, final, definitive, unambiguous. No.

  He went to the stables, his heart thundering in his chest. Dragging the gelding out of its stall, he saddled it himself, too impatient to rouse Daniel and have him do it. Swinging astride, he kicked in hard and pulled the reins to the right.

  In the direction of the village.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chloe did not think about Jareth while she waited for the ship to take her to France. She didn’t owe him that. He had made it perfectly clear that he did not want her affections, that they were inconvenient at best, abhorrent at worst.

  She decided he had been playing the oldest game known to man, the game of seduction. It didn’t really sit well with her. And a large part of her knew better, but it consoled her to think this rather than the possibility that he had truly loved her, that he wanted her as much as she did him, but was simply too weak. Or perhaps too strong.

  Instead, she worried over the children, thinking of that last time, when she had told them she must leave. She had resolved to be positive—no tears, no recriminations. She had sat them in their little chairs in the playroom and knelt before them, a forced smile on her face and a cheery note in her voice.

  “I have some exciting news, mes chéries. I am to return to France.” Immediately, tiny frowns appeared on their faces. Chloe had rushed to continue. “I am so happy, for I have missed my sister, Gigi, and my brother, Renaud, and my papa. I shall meet my tiny niece at last.”

  Predictably, Rebeccah’s response was sour. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “But you must think of how lonely I have been, and how much I have missed my family.”

  “Don’t you love us?”

  That almost choked her. “Of course, mes amours. Never doubt it.”

  “But who will take care of us?”

  Oh, mon Dieu! “Everything will be all right, you will see. Another nursemaid will come and she will love you. You will love her, too, and soon you shall not miss me at all.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No.”

  Rebeccah said, “I don’t want another nursemaid.” The familiar intractable look came over the elder child’s face.

  Chloe swallowed, treading carefully. “You must give her a chance, chérie.”

  “I want you to stay!”

  Sarah’s blond hair flew as she shook her head more violently. “No!”

  “There is other news, good news. Y-your uncle is to marry. Lady Helena is kind—you liked her, remember? You will be like a family again, n’est-ce pas?”

  “No!” Rebeccah said, louder this time. “No, no, no! I don’t want anyone else. I want you, Miss Chloe!”

  Helpless, Chloe had let her facade crumble. She was never good at deception, what made her think she could fool this precocious child? “I must go,” she said in a soft voice filled with her own sadness.

  Rebeccah exploded into action, hurling herself off the chair, fists flailing as she charged Chloe. “I hate you for leaving me! Why do they always leave! I hate you!”

  Chloe tried to catch the girl to her, to try to calm her, but Rebeccah flew out of the room, racing into her bedroom. From where she sat, Chloe saw her on her bed, kicking and pummeling, heard her muffled cries of frustration against her pillows.

  But for the solemn little face still before her, Chloe would have retreated to her own bedroom and followed suit. She looked at the tiny child, touching the rounded cheek, watching it blur as tears filled her own eyes.

  Sarah had simply said, “No, Chloe. Stay.”

  With Rebeccah’s tormented cries echoing around them, Sarah had turned calmly and walked into the bedroom, climbed up into her bed and curled up with Samuel.

  Chloe had stood in the doorway, clutching the frame for support. “I shall always love you, mes petites. Remember that.” She had stayed thus until Rebeccah’s wailing subsided and Sarah’s breathing deepened, lengthened, and Chloe was certain they were both asleep. Then she had found Harry and tucked him under Sarah’s arm. The cat, with its unerring instincts, had forgone his usual mischief and curled contentedly against his tiny mistress. Lady Anne proved as content in Rebeccah’s bed as on her own pillow.

  It was a small deviation from the rules, but under the circumstances…

  The following morning she had left, with only a curt note to apprise the duke of her departure. She walked all the way to the village to await her passage home.

  When the news of Jareth’s engagement reached her, she became almost frantic to flee England. Only a few more days, she told herself, settling down to bear the last of her ordeal.

  It was a few evenings later when she was seated in her small room, lost in her thoughts, that the door was pounded upon mightily. Startled, she stood up and backed against the wall, wondering who would come to her here.

  Then she heard his voice. “Chloe! Chloe, open this door, please. It is Jareth. I wish to speak to you.”

  She looked frantically about her, as if another means of exiting the room would suddenly materialize in the solid wood paneling.

  “Chloe,” he said, softer now. “I know you are in there, the owner told me.”

  Still she didn’t answer. Sidling silently to the window, she looked at the warped sash.

  What was she thinking? She would leap from a window to avoid him—why was she suddenly so afraid?

  She was, in fact, terrified.

  “Chloe. If you do not answer me or unlock this door, I shall break it down.”

  She couldn’t move. Questions screamed in her mind, deafenıng her to the pounding when it started up again.

  Why had he come?

  What did he want from her when there was nothing she could give him but her heart, something for which he had no use?

  The wood began to splinter, and somehow the sound of this destruction broke her out of her shock.

  “Go away! I do not wish to see you.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the whole room shook as he flung himself against the failing portal again.

&n
bsp; “Non! You will not do this. Go away.”

  “Chloe, get away from the door.”

  Her mouth snapped closed and her eyes flared wide at his curt command. A second later, the door— what was left of it—gave way and he came stumbling into the room.

  He stood there, looking wildly about him until his dark eyes found her. His coat was torn and there was blood, just smudges of it, up his arm where he had used his shoulder to decimate the wooden planks.

  “Chloe,” he said, and his face lost its terrible aspect. He came toward her, covering the distance in two long strides, and then he was on his knees, his hands capturing both of hers, his forehead pressed against her thigh.

  “Chloe, forgive me.”

  She waited, stunned and unmoving.

  Had he come all this way, burst in on her like a ravenous Hun, broken through a solid wood door, just to ask her forgiveness? Well, she wouldn’t. Damn him if his conscience pricked him. Let him go to a priest for absolution—she would not ease his tarnished conscience with those words he wished for.

  But her hand stole into his curls, feeling the soft texture, stroking the hair away from his sweat-soaked forehead.

  “No, do not forgive me. Not today.” Abruptly, he stood, her hands still in his. These he brought up to be kissed, each in turn. “I shall spend a lifetime asking you to forgive me every day, and when we are old and ready to sleep, you shall at last grant it, but not a moment before. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Of course you do not. Look at you, staring at me as if I were demented. I am, you know. I even admitted it to my mother when she asked me at dinner if I were mad. I have to be, do I not, to allow you to leave me?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, what a dinner it was. I am sorry you missed it. I swear it, we shall never take another meal apart again.”

  Chloe tried to pull her hands out of his. He held firm. “No, I shall not let you go—ever. Do you hear me? Ever! Chloe, marry me.”

  She grew truly angry now. “Have you grown lonesome for your cruel sport so that you had to seek me out here to play again?”