by Jo Beverley
Something made Simon think that Hal had realized this was their wedding night. He was tempted to laugh.
“I thank you for your help. Will we be able to impose on you tomorrow?”
“Certainly, and all the morrows.”
When Simon returned from showing Hal out, Jane was still working through papers. He drew her to her feet. “Enough of that. You’ll wear out your eyes.”
“The writing is beginning to swim.”
“Come on, then. It’s been a long and difficult day.”
Simon locked the room. He had no reason to think anyone would pry or steal, but all these things were his responsibility now. Then he was unsure what to do next. As Jane had said, no one would expect them to treat this as a normal wedding night, but without rituals, what did one do?
Then Mrs. Gunn marched into the hall, strange to his eyes in a good dress, black bonnet, and gloves. “If you don’t mind, sir, ma’am, I’ll pay my respects to Mr. Trewitt for a while. I put a plain supper in your room, sir, so you take your wife up there and have some peace and quiet.”
An unlikely guiding light, but it didn’t sound like a bad idea. There were matters to talk of. Simon thanked the cook, took Jane’s hand, and drew her up the stairs. He felt her reluctance. “We need to talk, and then we can go to our separate beds.”
“You must think me silly.”
“Not to want to consummate such a marriage on such a day? Not at all. There’s no hurry, after all. Come along.”
His room lay at the far end of the corridor, so they had to pass Isaiah’s door. Simon stopped. It seemed impossible that his friend wouldn’t emerge with a genial smile and a cheery comment. “He’ll never sleep there again.”
“And everything in there has to be dealt with,” she wearily pointed out.
All Isaiah’s little treasures. He’d kept the horn buttons from the coat in which he’d arrived in Canada, and some rough whittled figures a friend had made up in the north. There were eagle feathers, a beaded belt, corn husk dolls, a scarred knife with a carved bone handle . . .
“I want to bury them with him,” Simon abruptly said.
Jane’s eyes met his, bright—with tears, he thought, but also with approval. “I’ll get a candle.”
She returned in a moment and they entered the room. The bed was still disordered from Isaiah’s rising, and his nightshirt lay over a chair. The whole room spoke of a person leaving it who intended to return. Death could strike like a scythe into grass on a sunlit day.
Simon went to the chest of drawers and mantelpiece where the treasures sat. Jane picked up a porcupine quill basket and he put the items in. She added Isaiah’s favorite ivory snuffbox, a new pipe, and some tobacco.
“The rest still has to be dealt with,” Simon said, “but I’ll be glad to send him on his way with these things for his journey.”
They shared a smile and left the chilly room to go on to his bright, warm one. The fire had been built up and the promised food set on a small table between the two comfortable chairs. The curtains were discreetly drawn across the alcove bed. Tactful Mrs. Gunn.
Simon seated Jane in one chair and served her with food and wine. She took it, but didn’t eat or drink. When he sat in the other chair, he said, “Wine settles the nerves. Try some.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I keep thinking that we should have found a decent way to avoid this marriage. Is there any way to escape it now?”
Simon was surprisingly hurt by the word “escape.” “I’ll look into it, but I don’t think so. Am I really so intolerable to you?”
She looked up, those blue eyes huge. “No, but you can’t want it. I’m not a suitable bride for you.”
“I assure you, I could have had a suitable bride anytime I wished, here and in England, there being a remote chance I’ll be an earl one day.”
It was something he often joked about, but from her reaction, she hadn’t believed it.
“That’s not true, is it?”
“Well, yes.”
She looked as if he’d announced he had the plague.
“It’s not quite a fate worse than death.” His light tone misfired, so he spoke plainly. “Jane, don’t be a goose. My father is a distant connection of the Earl of Marlowe, and yes, he does stand in line. But for him to inherit, the earl’s current heir, Viscount Austrey, would have to die without a son. Austrey’s only fifteen years older than I, and last I heard his young wife had given him a couple of daughters. There’s bound to be a boy or two soon.”
“But if there isn’t, you’ll be an earl?”
“Yes, but far, far in the future. If Austrey doesn’t sire a son, he’ll still likely live another thirty or forty years. We St. Brides have staying power. His father’s nearly ninety. So when doom descends on our heads, we’ll be too old to care.”
She didn’t look much comforted, so he added, “If he dies sooner, my father’s in the predicament, not me. And Father’s a hale and hearty fifty-one without any interest in risky activities like hunting.” He decided not to bother her with the detail that if his father did inherit the earldom, he would then have the heir’s title, Viscount Austrey.
“If you don’t care for the idea,” he added, “you’ll be a kindred spirit to my parents. The thought of having to leave Brideswell would keep them awake at nights, if they thought it was a remote possibility.”
“You think me silly.”
“No.”
“You do, and with reason. But this is your world, Simon, not mine. It makes sense to you, but not to me. I won’t know how to behave, how to fit in.”
“Of course you will.”
“I’ll be an outcast.”
“You’ll be my wife,” he said firmly.
“I’m a shopkeeper’s daughter. I helped in the shop!”
“You certainly won’t fit in if you keep throwing that like a handful of dung!”
A horrible silence gripped them, and then she looked down, biting her lip.
“Jane, I’m sorry, but truly, it doesn’t matter.”
That was a lie, and they both knew it. Simon felt mentally exhausted, without any capacity to deal with this now, but he must try. “Listen, Hal isn’t treating you like a peasant, is he?”
“No, but he doesn’t know.”
“I’ll tell him tomorrow. It won’t matter.”
“He’ll hide it, but it will,” she insisted. “I’ve avoided York society, but I know the finest here consider such as I a lower species of animal, no matter how graciously they condescend.”
That startled him. Did the village women in Monkton St. Brides feel like a lower species when his mother and sisters stopped to talk to them? Did they feel condescension?
Did he make people feel that way? He didn’t consider himself a higher being—but yes, sometimes he felt he was doing someone a kindness merely by taking an interest.
Hell.
“Drink some wine.” When she’d mutinously obeyed, he said, “You’ve heard me mention the Company of Rogues.”
She nodded warily. “Your school-day friends.”
“Hal’s one. Some of them are married now, and not to particularly highborn women. Your father was a schoolmaster. The Marquess of Arden married a schoolteacher. That’s no higher, and he’s the heir to the Duke of Belcraven. I very much doubt that anyone’s making Beth Arden feel like a lower species. Lucien would gut them.”
“But she’s a marchioness.”
“Eat some cake,” he said, heartened by the story himself. “Lee, the Earl of Charrington, married the impoverished widow of a poet, and if I remember aright, she had been a curate’s daughter before her first marriage. I don’t think a curate rates higher than a schoolmaster, does he?”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m merely showing that your fears are overblown.”
She fired a look at him. “Then why say I should keep the shop a secret?”
“Oh, dammit, talk about it if you want. Open a shop if you bloody well want.�
� He inhaled. “I apologize.”
She was scarlet, with mortification or anger.
He raised her from her chair, carrying her hands to his lips. “Forgive me. We’re insane to try to talk about this now. It will all sort out, I promise. In a couple of months we’ll be back in England and you’ll see that your sordid origins will not matter.”
He’d meant “sordid” as a joke, but she burst into tears. After a helpless moment, he pulled her into his arms and patted her back. “Come, come now. I didn’t mean it. There’s nothing sordid in your birth. Even Isaiah’s family are respectable people.”
She went on weeping in such a deeply anguished way, he was at a loss. He backed into his chair and took her on his knee, where he rocked her as he would a disconsolate child. He could understand the need to weep, but he didn’t understand the trigger.
“Jane, Jane, even if the whole world discovers that your widowed mother made ends meet by selling ribbon and lace, and that you helped in her shop, only the most particular will mind, and who cares about them? Is it being a countess?” he asked desperately. “Truly, it can’t happen for decades.”
Oh, shut up, you idiot. This was exhaustion and grief over Isaiah. He could almost weep himself. He remembered then that Jane had found Isaiah and then been forced into a marriage. And dammit, perhaps the prospect of meeting marquesses and earls was terrifying for her.
He rubbed her back, silently begging her to calm.
What were the grounds for annulling a marriage? Insanity, he thought. Fraud. If a person pretended to be someone they weren’t. One of the parties being under twenty-one. But Isaiah had been Jane’s legal guardian and he’d clearly given his consent in front of a room full of witnesses.
There’d been no banns or license, but he knew that here, where ministers and churches were scarce, the laws were relaxed. A prayer book marriage freely entered into in front of so many and presided over by the parish clergyman was probably ironclad.
Her sobs subsided, so he eased her straighter and looked into her blotched and swollen-eyed face. The crying had marred her looks, but that only made him feel more protective. If there was a way out of this, and if she truly wanted it, he’d find it.
“Jane, for now, think of me as your brother. I have four sisters, so I’m highly experienced at the job. If my sisters were here I’m sure they’d give me excellent references. You shall have my protection, guidance, and care.” He risked a joke again. “All I require in return is that you kneel three times a day and bow down before me as if I were the Grand Panjandrum himself.”
This time his humor worked. The reference to the nonsensical potentate brought a weak smile. “ ‘With the little round button a-top,” ’ she quoted, sitting up straighter and pulling out a handkerchief to wipe her face. “I’ve made a terrible mess of your jacket.”
“A sister’s privilege. Though I’d say my jacket has made a terrible mess of your face.” He touched her cheek. “I see a clear impression of a button.”
She rubbed the spot and struggled off his knees to stand. “I’m so very sorry. For everything.” She looked at him with intent seriousness. “There could be a way out of this marriage—”
“Hush.” He rose and put a finger on her lips. “If there is, we can’t do anything yet. Wisely or not, I let it be known that we intended to marry. We can’t go back on that without reviving scandal. Let’s cope with the immediate and consider the rest later.”
Her fingers tangled in the damp handkerchief. “What if McArthur comes back before we leave? Oh, I wish women were allowed to issue challenges!”
“Can you handle a pistol?”
“I could learn.”
“I’m sure you could.”
Despite her conventional middle-class upbringing, he meant it. He saw her again, charging across a rough field and yelling scathing commands, hair flying loose.
Knowing it to be unwise, he untied the laces beneath her chin and pulled off her mourning cap. It took very little work to remove pins so that her hair fell heavily down her back.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, lips parted.
Kissable.
“Why do you keep it hidden?”
But his soul knew why. So her hair wouldn’t drive men mad as it threatened to do to him. He wanted to gather it in his hands like an avaricious thief clutching guineas.
She grabbed it on one side—like a miser guarding guineas. As if she knew. “I’ve been in mourning.”
Mourning didn’t require a woman to hide her hair. Another puzzle, but this was no time to badger her with questions. He escorted her to her bedroom and then returned to his own room, wanting to tear things apart.
He couldn’t sort out whether he wanted to be married to Jane or not, but he certainly wanted her. Perhaps he’d lusted after her for months, but her position here and, yes, her quiet manner and sober clothes, had put her out of bounds.
But now she was his wife. Taking off her cap and releasing her hair had been his right. He could strip her naked with the same holy blessing, kiss her, touch her, and handle her in any way he wished. . . .
His thoughts disgusted him even as his animal side growled with desire.
He poured and drank a glass of wine. Even if his honor didn’t forbid him to behave like a brute, he absolutely must not take away Jane’s chance to free herself. Surely consummating a marriage made it harder to break. It would certainly make it impossible for him to let her go. What if there was a child?
He’d talk to Baldwin tomorrow and to Stephen Ball when they reached England, but he strongly suspected that they were tied for life. And despite all the problems he saw now and in the future, he couldn’t regret that.
Guilt and grief kept Jancy awake for most of the night, and she had to drag herself out of bed the next morning. In her mirror, she looked sallow and heavy-eyed, but she supposed no one would be surprised by that. Not even if they thought she and Simon had had a wedding night.
She dropped her hairbrush to cover her face with her hands. She had to free him from this marriage, and the fact that she didn’t want to was more reason, not less. She was a wicked, deceitful sinner and she carried disaster with her like a contagion.
Martha had died.
Jane had died.
Isaiah had died.
She knew the strange code by which gentlemen lived meant that Simon would feel honor bound to meet McArthur if the man insisted on it. So he might die. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear it.
If telling him the truth would avoid the duel, she’d do it immediately. But it wouldn’t. She’d gone around and around that in the night. No matter what the original trigger, the duel had ended up being over McArthur’s misuse of funds. Her confession wouldn’t change that, and here and now it would complicate things horribly.
Weighed down by misery, she completed her dressing and went to sit in final vigil by Isaiah’s coffin.
Simon urged her to eat, but she shook her head, unable to imagine touching food. At least he didn’t persist and he looked as drawn as she felt. Isaiah’s friends and business associates began to arrive, each murmuring condolences. The only other woman present was Mrs. Gunn, who took a place by her side.
Jancy smiled slightly at the old woman in thanks and Mrs. Gunn patted her hand. In some ways she reminded Jancy of Martha, and the kitchen had become a favorite haven. She’d often wished she could confide the truth to her.
Reverend Strachan read the service and then Ross put the lid on the coffin and nailed it shut. Even though Jancy did truly believe that a corpse was merely a shell, each blow hammered her heart. When Simon put his arm around her, she leaned.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said softly.
“I need to be.”
He had to leave her to be one of the coffin bearers, and Jane was grateful for Mrs. Gunn’s support during the procession over to the churchyard.
Through tear-blurred eyes, the sunny day was a crazy quilt of blue, green, brown, and orange. The trees were turning, heral
ding winter, as did the touch of ice in the air. Jancy was glad of the fur-lined muff Isaiah had given her for Christmas, but also of the cold. It would be wrong for nature to be too pleasant today.
Reverend Strachan began the graveside service, but Jancy said prayers of her own.
Dear God, You know what a good man this is. Welcome him into heaven. Make him young and strong again, and give him seas to sail, lands to explore, and rivers to travel through the glories of Your creation.
But then her focus turned from God to Isaiah.
Dear Uncle Isaiah, by now you know the truth. Are you able to forgive me? I wish I’d found the courage to confess. I know now that you would have understood.
When Jane died, I was so frightened. I was on the seas and we’d both been terribly sick. I’d thought I’d die, but then Jane did. I was alone in the world, going to a wilderness. Aunt Martha always said that you lived where there were bears at the door and savages in the streets. And I’d be going into the power of a stranger who was no relative of mine.
I imagined you turning me from the door. Or even having me thrown in jail for using Jane’s money to survive on, for I’d not enough of my own.
So I switched. No one on board knew us well, and we looked a lot alike.
I’m so very sorry I didn’t trust you. Especially as then you’d not have made Simon marry me. Oh, I wish you hadn’t. I wish I’d refused.
You have to help me make everything right. Guide me, Uncle. You don’t mind me calling you that still, do you? Guide me as to how to behave, and how and when to tell him the truth. About the switch from Nan to Jane, that is. I’ll never tell him or anyone that I’m a Haskett. . . .
“Jane?”
Jancy started and found Simon beside her. People were beginning to move away from the grave, back toward the house for the wake.
“Do you want to throw dirt on the coffin?”
She shuddered. “Why do people do that?”
“I don’t know.”
Instead she took out her black-edged handkerchief, damp with her tears, and let it flutter down into the porcupine quill basket that sat on the coffin. “Good-bye, Uncle Isaiah. Happy journey.”
Simon linked arms and led her back to the house. “We only have to survive the wake and the worst will be over.”