by Jo Beverley
She was in a chair and he was gone before she could protest. She put a hand over her face, expecting tears, but this agony lay too deep for that. A rock of pain was lodged in her heart.
She held out unsteady hands to the fire, aware as if from a distance of her mind scrabbling for an excuse to keep her secrets. To enjoy the bed, where the handles of two warming pans stuck out invitingly from under the covers.
Simon returned, smiling. “It’ll be here in a moment. And I’ve ordered baths.”
Heaven alone knew what he saw in her face, but his smile faded.
“What is it? You look terrified.”
He turned as the maid brought in a bowl of punch and glasses and put them on the table near the fire. When she’d left, he poured a glass and cradled her hands around it. “Drown your sorrows and trust me, darling. Everything will be all right.”
Jancy sipped to lubricate her throat, distantly appreciating that the drink was delicious, tasting of lemon, sugar, spices, and rum. “Thank you.”
“Better now?”
Though she heard the deeper question, she said, “Yes,” then quickly blurted out, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
He sat, considering her. “You’re with child? No, it can’t be.”
“No, not that.”
“If you’re about to tell me you’re McArthur’s ally . . . ?”
He was joking and she managed a smile. “No. Please just listen. This is going to be very hard.”
She watched his features still.
“I’m not sure where to start or how to put this, but I want to say that if you don’t want to be married to me that will be all right. No, not all right. Not at all. But right. I won’t . . . Oh, I don’t know.”
“Jancy, for heaven’s sake. We are married, to hell and back.”
She was going to have to just spit it out. “I’m not Jane Otterburn. Or wasn’t. I mean, I am not Isaiah Trewitt’s niece.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
It seemed easier now, as if a stone blocking a stream had been forced out of the way. “I’m the person known as Nan Otterburn, Jane Otterburn’s cousin. Jane died on board ship and I took her identity.”
His skin seemed to tighten on his bones. “Why?”
She looked away, looked down. Saw that her hands were tight around the punch glass. Saw his wedding ring. Should she take it off?
“It’s hard to know why now.” She’d mumbled it, so she swallowed and spoke more clearly. “I wasn’t well. I’d been very sick, and then I’d nursed Jane, but she died. I felt so alone in the world. I was alone. And frightened. I was traveling to a strange, wild land and a strange man.”
She looked up. “Isaiah was a wonderful man, but I didn’t know that then. He was a stranger and no relative of mine. He loomed like a monster. I imagined him turning me from his door to survive in a wilderness full of wild animals. Or,” she whispered, “doing worse.”
“A surprising awareness for a girl raised quietly in a small town.”
The cold suspicion in his voice struck her like a dagger, but she tried to respond calmly. “Small towns are not free of sin.”
“I suppose not.”
He stood and turned away from her. Tears rose, stinging her eyes and clogging her throat.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m tempted to ask if you’re sure, but you’d hardly make this up. And it does explain some things.” He turned back. “Once you knew Isaiah, why not tell him the truth?”
He was blurred by her tears. “I kept putting it off. I feared to lose the refuge I’d found. Without him, I had no one. No one in the world. Perhaps . . . I think in a way I slid into believing it was true, and that if I lived quietly and virtuously and worked hard, it would be true. That I could carry on that way forever.”
She looked straight into his guarded eyes. “But of course my behavior caused all the disasters.”
He didn’t deny it.
“And we’re not really married. We—”
He raised a hand to silence her. “I need to think, Jane. Nan . . . What the hell do I call you?”
The swearing startled them both.
“Jancy?” she offered. “It truly was my childhood name.”
In a childhood I still haven’t confessed. With despair she recognized that she’d reached the limit of her endurance. She simply couldn’t throw the Hasketts at him now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, appearing almost a stranger with his stark features. “I have to go. Just for a while. To think.” He fixed her with a look. “You will stay here?”
“Where could I go?”
“I was falling into theatrical imaginings of you running away into the night, or even into the sea.”
“If I’d wanted to drown myself, I’ve had many better opportunities.”
He looked as if he’d respond to the dry humor of that, but left.
After a still moment, Jancy pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose. Running away into the night or even into the sea had a certain grim appeal, but she was too practical for such gestures. Hasketts no more abandoned life than did a cornered rat. She poured herself another glass of punch and sipped at it.
He hadn’t immediately cast her off.
Did that allow hope?
Should she hope? He’d be better off free of her, but she loved him so much, as he did her. Didn’t that count for something?
She sighed. She couldn’t let him carry on with the marriage without telling him that she was a Haskett, and if she did, he’d certainly want to be rid of her then. She bounced from thought to thought like a fly trying frantically to escape a bottle.
She refilled her cup, wondering why it was so hard to know the right thing to do. Books of moral advice and preachers in their pulpits made it all seem so easy, but it never turned out that way for her.
She rose, needing to move as she struggled for answers, but the room whirled. She still didn’t have her land legs. But as she clutched the back of the chair, she realized the horrible truth. She was drunk!
Her mind rocked at memories of her mother and other Hasketts staggering around, laughing at their own garbled wit, falling all over one another, often ending up sprawled snoring, clothes askew.
A tisket, a tasket,
Your mother was a Haskett.
She eyed the bed and lurched her way over to it. As she lowered herself carefully onto it, she fumbled her skirts decently over her legs and then sank her spiraling head on the pillow.
Better. And in a little while she’d be recovered.
In a little while . . .
Simon returned to the bedroom because there was nowhere else to go. The public rooms of the inn were busy and he knew of no private ones he could use. He could only lurk in the corridors for so long without becoming an object of curiosity. Outside, it was raining. Catching his death would hardly help matters.
He was tempted to go to Hal, but until he worked out what to do, the fewer people to know, the better.
He was trying to persuade himself that Jane . . . Jancy . . . his wife—maybe—was suffering some form of dementia. Some malady caused by being on dry land after weeks at sea. Strange to want her to be mad, but it wouldn’t wash. Bizarre though her story was, it held the ring of truth. It explained so much of her strange behavior, including the fear Hal had noticed when Dacre said he’d attended the Otterburn school.
Dacre had recalled the name Janey, not Jancy. The initials on the drawings, JAO, had indeed stood for Jane Anne Otterburn, not Nan. His Jancy wasn’t the artist. In a year, he hadn’t seen her draw anything. Moreover, if she had such a talent, his Jancy wouldn’t mark her work with a tiny, self-abasing monogram.
His Jancy.
The woman he loved. Who was breath and blood to him.
It was as if a telescope twisted into focus. Whoever she was, he loved Jancy St. Bride and would not let her go. So what the devil did he do?
The only way to sort this out was to return
and talk to her. The rising tempo of his heart told him that was what he wanted more than anything in the world.
He entered the room, unsure what to expect. She wasn’t in the chair. For a frightening moment he thought she had run away, but instead she was on the bed. On top of the covers, laid out as neat as a corpse.
He dashed over, his heart missing beats, but saw that she was simply asleep. She’d tossed that missile at him then gone to sleep, damn her?
He headed for the punch bowl—and saw how little was left. Despite everything, his lips twitched. His wicked, lying wife was passed out drunk. He scooped out what was left and went back to lean against one of the oaken bedposts and studied her as he sipped.
The voyage, and perhaps other stresses and strains, had thinned her face, making her look older than her years, but the sea air hadn’t darkened that wondrous alabaster skin. Freckles still dotted it with gold, the same burnished gold as her long lashes and the hair that straggled in wisps around her face.
In her plain, stained gown she looked like a pauper, but that gown outlined her shape, the shape he’d explored and delighted in. Not nearly as often as he wished. He wanted to run his hand over breast and hip now.
Not until he’d decided what to do.
She was his wife. His brave, resourceful wife. If he could swap her for shy, artistic Jane Anne Otterburn, he wouldn’t. He wanted this one—Nan, Jancy, whoever she was. He wanted the woman who’d charged in to stop a duel. Who’d fought the doctor to save his arm. Who’d laughed with him in the madness of a storm, and kissed him as if lightning ran through her blood.
The woman he was lightning-struck in love with.
He could even appreciate the courage it had taken to tell him the truth.
But if what she’d said was true, then she was right—by the strictest letter of the law they were not married. She had been impersonating someone else.
They were married by intent, however; by body, by heart, and by a minister of the church according to the prayer book. If he didn’t make any difficulties, and she didn’t, who would ever know? A leap within told him that was what he wanted.
He wished she’d trusted him sooner. He needed her to trust him.
But then he remembered how young she was. She was still eighteen. She’d been just seventeen when she’d faced tragedy on the seas when still shattered by the recent death of the woman who’d raised her and the loss of her home and country. No wonder she’d been terrified into a mistake.
Everything became clear.
She was his beloved Jancy, and he would take care of her. She would never again be alone or afraid. He would take her home to Brideswell and wrap her in the loving warmth of his family. Somehow, he’d find a way to make her identity secure.
Tenderly he eased off her shoes and maneuvered her so he could pull down the covers, extract the warming pans, and tuck her in. He put the pans outside the door, stripped to his shirt and drawers, and got into bed to take his wife into his arms.
It was the devil of a mess, but Jancy St. Bride was his precious wife, and the world would spin out of its orbit before he would let anyone tear them apart.
Chapter Thirty
Jancy woke, strangely light-headed, snuggled up against Simon in a big soft bed. Wonderful . . .
Then she remembered. She jerked away. It was pitch-dark, but she felt when he awoke.
“Headache?” he asked calmly.
She thought about it. “No.”
“Good. Do you want to talk?”
She wished she could see his expression. “If you wish.”
His warm hand linked with hers. “Let’s deal with the important point first. Do you want to remain my wife?”
Jancy breathed, exploring every nuance of the question. “Not if it will harm you.”
“Do you love me?”
“You’d believe me if I said yes?”
“Yes.”
She turned toward him, even though she still couldn’t see anything more than shadows. “Then yes, I love you, Simon St. Bride.”
“And I love you.” He drew them together in the sagging middle of the bed. “I think that settles it.”
He kissed her, but she turned her head away and tried to hold him off. “No, it doesn’t. What happens if someone finds out? You must think about that, Simon. It could be a horrible scandal.”
“How likely is it?” His lips returned to brush where they could. Her temple, her cheek and, when she turned back, her lips.
“Stop it. Pay attention!”
“Oh, I am,” he murmured, amusement in his voice. “From the drawings, it’s obvious you and your cousin were very alike, and my impression is that you lived very quietly in Carlisle. So who is going to shout the accusation?”
“We had friends. We went to church. And there was the shop. The customers.”
He ceased his teasing kisses. “A very small shop, I gather. Weren’t the customers local women?”
“Yes.”
“Simple people?”
“People like us,” she pointed out.
“And you aren’t simple. I apologize. But are your customers likely to turn up at Brideswell, or in London?”
“No, but occasionally grander ladies would come in to see the wares.”
How hard it was to be firm and rational when he was stroking her shoulder and back.
“Consider, love. If a passing lady entered the shop to look at ribbons, and you assisted her, would she now know if she had encountered Jane or Nan?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“So we can dismiss that fear.”
“But our friends and many of the congregation would,” she pointed out.
It felt insane to be fighting so hard against what she wanted so much.
“What church did you attend?” he asked, steady as a rock.
“The Episcopalian chapel.”
“Not a hub of Carlisle society, I assume.”
“No, and the minister died last year. He used to come to dinner every week. . . . But many people knew Jane and me. Knew which was which.”
A silence marked his thought and she feared she’d won, even though his hand moved on her still, declaring a connection he seemed determined not to break.
“It’s over a year since you left Carlisle. If we avoid the north, you may never meet any of those people again, especially as you’ll be moving in very different circles. Thus if you do encounter any of them, it could be years from now.”
“But—”
“Hush. Listen. You’ve changed since arriving in York. Your figure has filled out, but your face has changed, too, blurring any differences. Then consider fashion. You are beautiful as you are, but you will be changing in other ways.”
His fingers moved up into her still-plaited hair. “I hate to lose a single strand, but the current style seems to require curls around the face. That will make you look very different. It will hide, for example, your lovely high forehead.” He kissed it. “Your brows,” he added, tracing them with his lips, “could be thinned and arched a little more. And simply, time will blur any differences.”
He could be right. Jancy wondered why this didn’t seem heavenly. And then she knew. “I had hoped to be able to stop lying, Simon, to stop living in fear.”
His cherishing fingers stilled. “More than you want to remain with me?”
She turned closer, pressed closer. “No.”
“Then surrender.” He rolled over her. “I will not lose you, Jancy. I will not. We’ll fight the hounds of hell if we have to, but we will never be torn apart.”
His kiss seared her, as did his words, and she was helpless to resist. Even as voices clamored that she shouldn’t, she kissed him back, tore at his clothes as he was tearing at hers. Then they simply pushed them up, aside, down until he was between her thighs, until they were slickly, wonderfully joined.
Her bodice was apart, so he could kiss a breast. She’d dragged his shirt loose so she could knead his back. Stockinged legs tangled as they soar
ed into passion, gasping love and desire until they ended, sated, in a tangle of skirts and sheets that threatened to knot them together for eternity.
What could be more perfect than that?
“You are mine,” he said in a voice that was almost a growl. “Nothing will part us. Nothing. Trust me. Trust me always, my wife, my jewel, my heart.”
Jancy closed her eyes and breathed.
You are mine.
What could be more perfect, and if Simon said it would be so, surely it would be. He knew his world better than she. She would believe.
A knock at the door woke Jancy, and she found it was bright daylight. Simon muttered but got out of bed. Or tried to. They were still knotted. “Wait a moment!” he called as they pushed and pulled.
Jancy smothered laughter, but it bubbled up anyway from a heart full of joy. It was a new day, and they need not part.
“It’s Hal. I’m about to leave.”
Simon gave up the struggle. “Safe journey, then. We’ll see you in London.” As footsteps receded he lay back, smiling at Jancy. “He’s going to find Stephen Ball. If he’s at Ancross, he’ll let us know. If not, he’ll go on to London.” He traced her forehead, cheek, and lips. “You look like sunrise.”
She didn’t resist as he kissed her or hold back as he swept her into bliss.
Much later he said, “We should rise and breakfast if we’re to travel today.”
“True, but we still haven’t had our precious baths.”
He laughed. “Are you suggesting, wife of mine, that we’re not fit for good company? Strange how a person can become accustomed to squalor. Very well, I’ll order them.” He traced her lips. “Much though I’d love to teach you all about the Order of the Bath, I suspect the Antelope has only tiny tubs and we have a lot of scrubbing to do.”
He climbed out of bed stark naked, and she unashamedly ogled him. He took some fresh clothes from a valise but grimaced as he pulled them on. “Hal was to leave his men here with the papers. I’ll send Treadwell to buy something fresh for us both.”
He left in only shirt and breeches, careless of decorum. Jancy lay back to go over their situation again, seeking traps by light of day. Her mind wouldn’t cooperate. It danced around like the dust motes in the sunbeam.