Ben nodded. “It is very lonely to feel you have no place.”
There was a row of tents close ahead of them now with streamers flying from the pitched roofs.
“Lord Wellington For Ever,” Catherine read. She laughed. “One cannot argue with that!”
“They are mostly drinking shops,” Ben said. He smiled at her. “Would you care for a glass of wine with spices, Kate? It would keep you warm.”
“It is more likely to make me drunk,” Catherine said. Just the fumes floating on the frosty air were making her light-headed. “Even so, it sounds rather nice.”
They found their way into the dark interior of the Lord Wellington. A few rickety tables and chairs had been placed on the ice, around a brazier whose smoke rose straight through a gap in the top of the tent. Catherine took off her gloves and warmed her hands on the glowing coals. The landlord brought a glass of spiced wine for her and a pint of ale for Ben. She took a tentative sip and felt her eyes water as the spirits hit the back of her throat.
“Oh! It has gin in it!”
“How on earth would you know that?” Ben inquired. “I thought debutantes were permitted only lemonade.”
“I daresay,” Catherine said, “my grandfather—”
“Of course.” Ben took a long drink of the ale. “The sainted Sir Jack. What a dreadful influence he has been on you.”
Catherine giggled. “I had school to teach me how to be a debutante,” she said. “My grandfather taught me things he thought would be useful.”
“Like drinking gin?”
“He said that people would try to tell me what to do, what to eat and drink, what to say, what to wear,” Catherine said, remembering with a jolt of nostalgia that was half pain, half pleasure. “And he told me that the true Kate Fenton should be a real person who could think for herself, not a creature fashioned by someone else.”
Ben took her hand. “Then he would be proud of what you have become, Kate.”
Catherine smiled. “Thank you, my lord.”
“Call me Ben,” Ben said. “If we are to be betrothed—”
“When we are betrothed I will call you by your name,” Catherine said severely. She sipped more of her wine and felt its warmth spread through her limbs. “I imagined,” she added, “that you were never a man who sought to wed unless it was for money.”
There was a silence. Ben’s hand was warm in hers and suddenly she was very aware of his touch.
“That is absolutely true,” Ben said, “much as it pains me to admit it so bluntly.”
Catherine gave him a very direct look. “Why should it pain you? You have not hesitated to tell the truth before now.”
Ben raised her hand to his cheek. She could feel the roughness of his stubble against her fingers. “Because it does not reflect well on me, does it, Kate? And although I do not usually care what men think of me, I find that with you…” He hesitated. “It is the most damnable thing, but I want you to see the best in me. I want to be better for you.”
The brazier hissed and crackled in a sudden gust of icy air. Around them the voices of the other drinkers rose and fell but Catherine did not hear them. She was trapped by Ben’s words and the look in his eyes. She knew it was the closest thing to a declaration of love that she was ever likely to get from him.
She drained her glass, suddenly reckless. “Then you had better show me what you are good at and win me a prize in the shooting gallery!” She dragged him to his feet. “Come on!”
Maybe it was the wine, but as they stepped out of the tent, the night seemed brighter and more vivid than before. There were stilt walkers teetering past, and fire-eaters, jugglers and sword swallowers. Ben bought her a bag of hot roasted chestnuts that tasted sweet and smelled delicious, and some gingerbread that melted in the mouth. He tried to tempt her to ride on the boat-shaped swing called the high flyer but Catherine was content to stand and watch and listen to the screams of those who were braver than she. True to his promise, Ben shot the bull’s eyes on the archery butts and won a small carved wooden sheep with Lapland Mutton inscribed on a board about its neck. When he presented it formally to her, Catherine threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He tasted of chestnuts, and she sensed in him a hesitation before he put his arms about her and kissed her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing away, puzzled.
They stood looking at one another in the middle of the shining river. Ben shook his head slightly.
“I am the one who should apologize. It is simply that I had sworn not to touch you unless it was your desire.” He looked very grave.
“Well,” Catherine said, feeling a little reckless, “I would have thought that you would realize from my actions that it was.” She saw his lips curve into a smile and then she was in his arms again and he was kissing her very thoroughly indeed. She could feel from his hands and the way that he held her that he wanted her very much. And when he let her go his words echoed that thought.
“I do not take a great deal of persuasion, do I?” Ben said, and she thought he sounded rather rueful. He caught her hand and drew her close to his body again but he did not kiss her. “I do want you rather a lot, Catherine,” he said. “You must know that by now. And you also know most of my faults.”
“I know your virtues as well,” Catherine said, “although perhaps to call them virtues is putting it a little strongly.”
“What could those possibly be?” Ben asked.
“That you are honest about the things that matter,” Catherine said thoughtfully, “and that there are people you do care about, no matter what you pretend.”
“You are thinking of Clarencieux,” Ben said, and there was an odd note in his voice.
“Not entirely,” Catherine said. Her eyes were fixed on the sign above the Lord Wellington. “You were an officer in the army. You must have taken responsibility for your men, shown them leadership. I have heard that you were very courageous.”
“Reckless, more like,” Ben said. He sounded bitter. “And I did not lead my men. I was a maverick. I think they sent me away on the most dangerous missions in order to keep me from leading anyone else into my sort of madness.”
Catherine frowned. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
“No. Not deliberately. But I did not care whether I did or not.”
The faint, plaintive music from a fiddle came to them on the night air. Over in one of the frozen boats, couples were dancing a reel. They started to move toward it, walking slowly.
“But despite that,” Ben said, “I think the army was the place where I most felt I belonged. When my father died and I had to come back to England to prove my right to inherit, it almost broke my heart.”
“Why did you do it?” Catherine asked.
“For myself I did not care,” Ben said. There was anger edging his voice now. “They could have called me bastard to the end of my days and I would only have laughed at them. And there was nothing to inherit but the title. My father had drunk all his substance away years ago.”
“Your mother,” Catherine said, suddenly understanding.
“Yes,” Ben said. His hand tightened on hers so much it almost hurt. “I had waited twenty-seven years to prove that she was not just a lord’s mistress, to be taken and discarded at his whim. I had to do it for her.”
Catherine felt shaken at the passion in his eyes. So there had been one person in his life that Ben Hawksmoor had loved and he had lost her. She looked across at Angel Alley, glowing white in the moonlight, and thought of the little boy growing up with a mother who was driven to go out to work all night just to keep the two of them from starving. She tried to imagine all the things Ben must have had to do to keep body and soul together and wondered if she would ever dare to ask him to tell her about it.
“You went to court,” she said, remembering the legal reports in the papers from several years back. “It must have cost a fortune.”
Ben smiled suddenly. “It cost every penny I earned, Kate, from all those du
bious ventures that the papers are always reporting.”
“The portraits you model for and the places where you eat and the goods you endorse…” Catherine looked at him. “It always seemed most singular to me that the tailors would pay you to wear their clothes rather than vice versa!”
“I seldom have to pay for any of the things I wear,” Ben said. His smile was lopsided. “I have sold my very soul, Kate, to pay for my legitimacy.”
“No,” Catherine said. “You have paid to have that legitimacy recognized. You said yourself that you did not care what people said of you, only of your mother. So you have paid the highest price for her.”
“It seemed the least that I could do,” Ben said, “when she died to keep me alive.” He slanted a look down at her. “And I am not so altruistic, Kate. Do not give me credit for that. The fact that I now have the title and the notoriety makes me a far more bankable property. Everything can be turned to making more money.”
Catherine shook her head. “It all seems madness to me. And were we to wed everything would be different for you—”
Ben made a slight movement and she held him at arm’s length. “No, wait! I said if that were to be the case, what would you do then? If you were rich and had no need to make money anymore?”
“I do not know,” Ben said. He sounded vaguely surprised, as though he had not even thought about it. He smiled. “I could turn to politics, I suppose, take up my place in the Lords…”
Catherine smothered a laugh. “I would give my fortune just to see their lordships’ faces!”
Ben stopped, looked at her. “What would you like our life to be, Catherine?”
“I do not know either,” Catherine said honestly. “I have always wanted to travel, or perhaps to live in the country. But,” she added, “I do know one thing and that is that our future would not include Lady Paris de Moine.”
Ben drew her close and laid his cold cheek against hers. “One day I will tell you about Paris, Kate, but I do not want it to be now. I never loved her. She was never my mistress. I swear it. Can that be enough for you now?”
“I do not know,” Catherine said again. She felt tired and heartsore all of a sudden, and her feet were turning ice-cold. Whatever Ben said, Paris had been a part of his life, an important part, and that could never be changed. She was human enough not to wish to live with that and yet if she wanted Ben, if she loved him, then she had to accept this, too.
They walked on, arm in arm, along the City Road, as the Thames highway had been named. Ben bought her a hot mutton pie and another mug of spiced wine and they drank and talked and danced the reels until the stars spun overhead and Catherine’s head spun, too.
“Almacks was never so much fun,” Catherine said at the end of the last dance, when exhausted and glowing, she collapsed into Ben’s arms. “What do we do now?”
“We get married,” Ben said.
Catherine turned. There behind them, stood a little church made from blocks of ice. Father Frost’s Chapel, the name on the signboard said. Beside it was a printing press.
“For the marriage certificates,” Ben said.
Catherine laughed. “Father Frost looks like a hedge priest,” she said, pointing to the benign-looking individual in a dirty surplice who stood at the door, nodding as though in an extreme state of inebriation. “I’ll wager he is no priest at all, or if he is, that the church defrocked him years ago! This cannot be legal.”
“Then,” Ben said, “you need have no concerns over plighting your troth to me.”
Catherine stared at him. “You mean it,” she whispered.
Ben’s smile was wicked. “Do you dare?”
Catherine straightened her spine. She was aware that she was rather drunk herself, not unlike the benignly smiling priest.
“Of course I dare! It would only be in jest!”
Ben raised his brows quizzically. He held out a hand. “Then come with me.”
The tiny chapel was lit by lanterns and glowed warm. There was a slab of ice for an altar with a rather fine bronze cross upon it. The men who worked the printing press doubled as witnesses.
“I know who you are,” one of them said squinting at Ben in the dim light. “You’re that Ben Hawksmoor, you are. Better be careful, mate.” He jerked his thumb at the priest. “You’ll be leg-shackled right enough. He’s the genuine article. Curate of Southwark, making some money on the side.”
Catherine could not decide if the priest was illiterate or not. Certainly he recited the entire marriage service from memory and did not use a prayer book once. When the moment came for someone to give the bride away, Tom, one of the printers, nipped around to Catherine’s side while Jim, the other one, acted as groomsman. At the end they both signed the register.
“You may now kiss the bride,” the priest said, smiling gently.
“Thank you,” Ben said. For a moment he looked at her, smiling, and then he pulled her close and kissed her until she was dizzy.
The printers applauded enthusiastically.
“Let’s go home,” Ben whispered.
They stumbled out of the ice chapel, arms entwined, the good wishes of the printers and the priest ringing in their ears. Outside the cold air stung Catherine’s cheeks and she shivered within her velvet cloak.
“If I had had no money,” she said suddenly, “would you still have wanted to marry me?”
As soon as the words were out she wished she could un-say them, wished with all her heart that the ice would crack and swallow her so she need not hear either Ben’s lies or the truth. Her cheeks burned with the horror of what she had just done. She waited, nerves tensed, for his reply.
“Since you are an heiress,” he said, “the question need never arise.”
And that was all.
He loosed her and stood back and she could see in his face the regret and the pity she had hoped never to see again. The marriage certificate crackled in her pocket, nestling beside the carved sheep. She told herself it did not matter. It was not legal, the priest had probably been defrocked if he had ever been a priest at all. She could go home and pretend it had never happened.
She turned away. “Let us find another ale tent before we leave,” she said. “I turn cold and maudlin with it.”
They went back to the Lord Wellington but they did not sit down this time. It felt like time to go. The fiddler still played as wildly as ever, the high flyer still swung through the silver night and the skaters still whirled and spun, but for Catherine the light had gone out of the night. She drained her second beaker of wine and placed it down on the counter a little regretfully.
“I must find the equivalent of a ladies’ withdrawing room before we go back,” she said. “If there is one.”
Ben pointed. “There is a tent over there. They will probably demand several pence!”
Catherine looked at the little tent and the huge woman who stood guard pugnaciously in front of it. “I will not argue,” she said.
“I’ll wait here,” Ben said. He pushed his ale away and watched her walk away across the ice. He knew now how this night would end. He would take Catherine back to Guilford Street like the most irreproachably well-behaved suitor, kiss her cheek and wish her a good-night as though the hedge marriage had never happened. And then he would lie awake suffering the twin torment of wanting her and fearing that she would never now be his. For in his honesty that night lay the seeds of his own downfall. And yet how could he have been anything other than honest with Kate? He wished now that he had lied and told her he loved her. But she deserved to know him exactly as he was, with all his failings and precious few virtues.
He waited. A minute went by, then another. The pugnacious woman at the front of the booth stood with arms crossed, unmoving. How long, Ben wondered, did it take a young lady to visit the withdrawing tent? Five minutes? Ten? Surely not, on such a cold night. He paid the landlord and started to stroll across the ice toward the tent. The huge woman shifted from one foot to the other. She had a brazier in front of he
r but she looked as though she were carved from a block of ice.
“Gents is over there,” she said, jerking her head.
“I am waiting for the young lady,” Ben said.
“Wait away,” the woman said indifferently. “It makes no odds to me.”
The brazier flickered. The cold seemed to be seeping into every cell of Ben’s body now, working its way up from his feet like a slow poison. Surely Catherine would come out in a moment? Surely she had not run from him here, now, knowing she could not make a future with him and never wanting to see him again? He would have seen if she had left the tent for it had been in his view for the whole time. She could not have run away unless she had crept out the back….
Muffling a curse, he sprinted around the back of the tent, his feet slipping on the ice in his hurry. The canvas had been cut. He stood still, fingering the jagged line where a knife had run all the way down the panels. And then he heard the muffled scream. Away across the river, where the ice piled up beneath the span of Blackfriars Bridge, he could see Catherine. And she was not alone.
At first Ben could not see the identity of her abductor but then the shadows shifted and the moonlight fell on the face of the man who held her. Algernon Withers. The fear clawed at Ben’s throat as he started to run, slipping, scrambling, falling so hard he winded himself, entangling himself with the skaters, who shouted with annoyance and alarm, picking himself up, driving himself on as he saw Withers drawing closer and closer to the Queenhithe steps. The fear pounded through his body with every beat of his heart.
“Catherine!”
He had been intending to shout Withers’s name but it was Catherine’s that came out, a half-strangled gasp that nevertheless was enough to cause Withers to check slightly and glance over his shoulder. Ben was inexpressibly relieved to see that Catherine was conscious and she was making it very difficult for her captor, hampering his every step with her struggles. She did not scream again and Ben could see that Withers had one hand clamped over her mouth as he dragged her on.
Lord of Scandal Page 24