Rushed to the Altar

by Jane Feather

  Clarissa sat down and then stood up, nervous now and unsure how she wanted to present herself. She heard the door knocker and the earl’s composed tones greeting the steward. Then the door opened and the earl came in with Mistress Griffiths. He bowed to Clarissa, smiled, his black gaze sweeping over her.

  “Good morning, Mistress Clarissa.”

  She curtsied. “Good morning, my lord.”

  He laid his hat and cane on a pier table beside the door and extended his hands to her in invitation. “You have an answer for me.”

  Clarissa dampened her suddenly dry lips. She glanced at Mistress Griffiths. “Madam, I wish to talk with his lordship alone. Afterwards I will leave you to do business as you see fit, but there are some things I wish to discuss first that concern only Lord Blackwater and myself.”

  Nan looked astounded, put out, and was about to expostulate, when she remembered that this lodger was not one of her usual girls. She was neither destitute nor seemingly experienced in the ways of whoredom. It would do no good to badger her when she could simply walk out of the house if she chose.

  She looked at Jasper and shrugged. He nodded. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to leave us, Nan.”

  Nan glanced once at Clarissa, then with another shrug left them alone.

  “So, what is it that we must discuss?” Jasper sat down, smiling amiably. “Mistress Griffiths is not accustomed to being excluded from these delicate matters.”

  “No, I daresay she’s not. Sherry or Madeira?” She lifted the decanters in turn, suddenly more sure of herself now that she was alone with the earl.

  “Sherry, please.” He took the glass, and a mushroom tartlet, and leaned back in his chair regarding her with a wary amusement. She seemed different now, older than she had previously, strangely determined. “So, let’s hear it.”

  Clarissa kept her back to him as she took a quick fortifying gulp of sherry. Then she said, “You want me to play a part in a charade. I would like it agreed between us that that is all I will do. I will play the part of your mistress, but I will not be your mistress in any real sense.” She felt her cheeks warm as she said this. She’d never had such an awkward conversation with anyone before.

  Jasper frowned at her averted back. He hadn’t really given much thought to the physical aspects of this contract, but it had never occurred to him to question his right to whatever he wished in that area. He certainly found her physically appealing, and at the back of his mind had lurked a degree of anticipation at the prospect of bedding her. Now she was laying down conditions that caused him puzzled chagrin.

  “I’m not sure I understand. You will play my mistress, but you won’t be my mistress?”

  “Exactly. No one will know except you and me, but we will not have a . . . a physical arrangement.” The words seem to stick in her dry throat. How could she expect him to agree to such a condition? He believed her a whore.

  “May I ask why?”

  “I . . . I would like a respite from . . . from all this.” She gestured vaguely at her surroundings. “Is that so difficult to understand, sir?”

  He considered. “No . . . no, I suppose it’s not.”

  “I believe you said you would wish for my exclusive services. If I restrict those services to the one you really want from me, then we both get what we wish for.”

  Still she didn’t look at him and didn’t hear him come up behind her, soft footed on the thick Aubusson carpet. She gave a startled gasp when he put his hands on her shoulders from behind, moving his fingers up the deep groove of her neck in a strangely soothing gesture. She could feel the heat of his body against her back and trembled.

  “I would find that quite a sacrifice,” Jasper murmured, lifting a ringlet, twisting it around his finger. His breath was warm against her ear. “It seems a somewhat uneven bargain, to buy services that will not be available to me.”

  She remained motionless, almost rigid with a paradoxical mixture of apprehension and anticipation. “I will perform the service you want from me. I will enable you to inherit your uncle’s fortune. Can you not think of me purely as an actor, someone you pay to play a part?”

  “But how convincingly can either of us play that part if we are not sharing the pleasures that are essential to our roles?” After not giving the matter much thought, he found that he now cared very much about this issue. She was a whore whom he had offered to rescue from a harlot’s life and instead of gratitude she was making insulting conditions.

  “Believe me, my lord, you will have no cause for complaint.” Her voice shook a little.

  He turned her to face him and she forced herself to meet his frowning gaze. “I am going to pay Nan Griffiths for your exclusive services. It seems to me that I have the right to dictate those services.”

  Clarissa looked him in the eye. “You offer me the means to get out of this life, sir; as I understood it that was the incentive for me to join with you in this charade, but you still want to keep me in whoredom, for your benefit. Illogical, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”

  He pressed finger and thumb against the bridge of his nose as he frowned at her. She was right, of course, but it had never occurred to him Mistress Clarissa would consider she had the right to dictate terms. “That may be if you look at it from a certain perspective. But it could also be said that until you are finally free to take charge of your own life, you must continue to do what you are accustomed to doing to earn your bread. I need a whore for this task and I fail to see why you would refuse to undertake all aspects of the task. Unless, of course, you find me repulsive?” An eyebrow lifted in question.

  That would be an easy way out, but for some reason it wasn’t one Clarissa could imagine taking. “No . . . no . . . it’s not that,” she said hastily. “I don’t find you repulsive. But I would like a respite from this life. I don’t know why that is so difficult to understand.”

  He threw up his hands. “Let us leave it at that for the moment. I will complete negotiations with Mistress Griffiths, and then we will pay a visit together.” He went to the bell rope by the fireplace and pulled it. “The sooner we start, the sooner we will finish.”

  And that, thought Clarissa, sounded like a most heartfelt wish. But how could she blame him? The man was paying for something that he wasn’t going to get. Although the caveat for the moment wasn’t too reassuring. It didn’t sound as if he was resigned to such a condition at all. But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. It occurred to her that there were rather a lot of bridges she was leaving to be crossed when she came to them.

  Nan came in almost before the sound of the bell had faded, and Clarissa guessed she had been waiting outside the door. “So, my lord, are we ready to do business?” She spoke to the earl but her sharp gaze was on Clarissa.

  “I believe we are.” Jasper nodded and his own gaze flicked to Clarissa standing still and silent by the window. Puzzlement lurked in his dark eyes. “The usual terms apply, I assume, Nan?”

  “Unless you have any unusual requests, my lord.” Nan set out a sheet of parchment on the secretaire and smoothed it with her palm. “There is no need for you to remain, Clarissa. I’ll ring for you when we’re ready for your signature.”

  “You are all consideration, ma’am, but I believe I’ll stay.” Clarissa sat down with an air of composure that she didn’t feel. “I am, after all, most nearly concerned in the business.”

  Nan looked as if she was about to protest but Jasper said, “Indeed you are, Mistress Clarissa. I have no objections to your presence. Let us continue, Nan.”

  Clarissa listened in silence as she was bought and sold. It was the most extraordinary sensation to hear herself, her worth, discussed like some kind of commodity. Nan drove a hard bargain in the interests of her commodity, and listening to her demands Clarissa understood what Emily and Maddy had meant when they’d said Mother Griffiths looked after her own.

  Nan considered Mistress Clarissa to be worth a house in Half Moon Street, with a cook-housekeeper and maid. In addit
ion she was to have a quarterly dress allowance, and the unlimited use of a sedan chair and carriage. In return, the Earl of Blackwater was to have her exclusive services.

  Jasper made little demur to the list of requirements and for the most part listened in silence, with the occasional nod of agreement.

  “And my commission is as usual, my lord,” Nan finished briskly, sanding the parchment on which she’d been writing the contract.

  Clarissa longed to ask what the whore mistress expected as her usual commission. She’d done little to earn this particular one, short of a moment’s kindness in renting a servant’s garret to a naïve country chit.

  “As always.” The earl sounded impatient, as if he wished to be done with the formalities. He rose from his chair and went to the secretaire, taking the quill from its pot and signing the sheet. He inverted a candle and dropped wax below his signature, then pressed his signet ring into the soft wax. “You now, Clarissa.” He spoke over his shoulder.

  Clarissa went over and took the quill. She glanced down at the closely written sheet. Nan Griffiths had signed above the earl. She hesitated, suddenly terrified that she was about to sign her life away. Could she really expect to be a match for these two sophisticated city people? What would be the penalty for breaking this contract? Because in ten months whether the agreed marriage had taken place or not, she was going to break it, there were no two ways about that. Could she be accused of theft, even if she took nothing with her when she left? Would she be a fugitive for the rest of her life? But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t important enough for these two to give a damn about her. They’d be annoyed and the earl might demand his money back from Mistress Griffiths, but surely it wouldn’t be the first time a contracted whore had broken her contract.

  “What are you waiting for, girl?” Nan’s voice was sharp and Clarissa had an inkling of what it would be like to run afoul of the whore mistress. She knew she’d better make certain she was far, far away when Nan discovered her perfidy.

  Slowly she dipped the pen in the inkpot and carefully signed: Clarissa Ordway. At least she could keep her real name unknown as an elementary precaution. She sanded the wet ink and stepped back, feeling oddly light-headed. “So, what now, my lord?” Her voice seemed to come from very far away.

  Jasper turned to look at her, and there was something about this scrutiny that was quite unlike any other look he had given her. It was possessive, as if he was sizing up a recent purchase. As, indeed, he was. “I need you to dress in a manner a little more indicative of your profession,” he said slowly. “At least for the visit we will be paying this morning. I’d like you to change into one of the gowns you wear for entertaining your clients in the evening. Something a little more revealing, if you please.”

  Clarissa glanced at Mistress Griffiths, who said swiftly, “Of course, my lord. Come, Clarissa.” She beckoned imperatively as she went to the door. “We will be but a few minutes, Lord Blackwater.”

  Clarissa followed her, feeling as if she was being escorted to the steps of the gallows.

  Chapter Five

  “You should have heeded me earlier, Clarissa,” Nan scolded her as she preceded Clarissa upstairs. “I told you to wear the sprigged muslin then. Believe me, I know what our gentlemen like in their girls.”

  Clarissa said nothing. She’d signed away her right to insist on the modesty of her own wardrobe. If the Earl of Blackwater wanted an exposed bosom, then an exposed bosom is what he would get. She would learn to become accustomed as she would learn to act her part in the charade.

  She moved to the attic stairway and was surprised when Nan said, “No, this way. I’ve had your chamber changed. Now that you’re one of us, for as long as you remain under this roof, you will sleep on this floor with the others. I expect it will take several weeks for his lordship to make arrangements for a house for you.”

  She opened the door onto a large and very comfortably furnished chamber. “Should his lordship wish you to entertain him in the house, then this is where you may bring him. The servants will bring you anything either of you desires. You may dine or bathe à deux, if that is his lordship’s wish. The gentlemen frequently like to watch their ladies in the bath; for some reason it stimulates desire.”

  Nan shrugged as if there was no accounting for taste as she hurried to the substantial armoire. She flung it open and reached for the sprig muslin gown that hung there in lonely splendor beside Clarissa’s two other countrified gowns. “You’ll have no need for those others,” she declared with a dismissive gesture. “I daresay his lordship will have the milliner and the seamstress visit you here to have your wardrobe made up. But in the meantime we must contrive as best we can.” She laid the sprig muslin over the back of the daybed. “Now, make haste and take off that gown.”

  Resigned, Clarissa unlaced the bronze muslin and hung it up in the armoire. She was not prepared to have her own clothes dismissed with such contumely and she was equally determined that they would follow her to Half Moon Street. Unfashionably prim and proper though they may have been, the material was good and the workmanship as fine and delicate as the most expensive garment from a London dressmaker.

  Nan laced her tightly into the sprigged muslin, then adjusted the décolletage with little tugs and twitches that served to reveal even more of her breasts than earlier. She arranged the ringlets artfully over Clarissa’s shoulders, then stepped back to examine her handiwork. “Yes, very pretty, very enticing. His lordship will be pleased. You had better hurry down to him now.”

  Clarissa dropped an ironic curtsy, fairly confident that the whore mistress would fail to detect the irony, and returned to the parlor. The earl was standing with his back to the door as she entered and turned swiftly. She offered the same ironic curtsy and saw from the quick flash in his eye that he had not missed the slight tilt of her head, the challenge in her eye that turned the courtesy into a parody.

  He looked her over deliberately. “Much better but still not enough” was his eventual pronouncement. “I need you to look the part. My uncle is expecting a whore, and I would give him one.” He rang the bell again and when Nan reappeared instructed, “Powder and rouge, a touch on the lips, oh . . . and on the nipples.”

  Clarissa gasped, looking down at her bosom. Instinctively she put her hands over her breasts. “No,” she protested. “I won’t have it.”

  “You will do whatever pleases your benefactor,” Nan stated. “I will fetch the paint box.” She hastened away, leaving the door ajar.

  Jasper regarded Clarissa with a quizzically raised eyebrow, a question in his eye. “I confess that in general I don’t care for paint either, but you are surely accustomed to men who do?”

  “I have not been in London for many weeks,” she improvised, “and the men who seem to find me appealing seem to prefer at least an assumption of innocence.” Clarissa was astonished at how easily the fabrication tripped off her tongue.

  Jasper inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I can see how that would be, but we are going to visit my uncle and if he is to be persuaded of the importance of your conversion he must see how far you have fallen from chastity’s tree. The more you look like a harlot now, the more impressed will he be by the eventual transformation.”

  It’s just a charade, Clarissa told herself. No different from the charades they played at Christmas house parties. She had loved playacting for as long as she could remember. As far back as her nursery days she remembered co-opting the nursery maid and anyone else on the staff willing to act in her elaborate reconstructions of nursery rhymes. Later she’d tried her hand at writing her own plays, encouraged by her governess and rather less ably assisted by her schoolroom companions. She’d always felt Lawyer Danforth’s and Doctor Alsop’s children lacked a proper imagination.

  Nan returned with a box of rouge, powder and brushes, and a small bowl of water. She set to with brisk efficiency, brushing white powder on Clarissa’s cheeks and then dabbing a piece of cotton into the water before dipping it into
the rouge. She applied the red paste on the cotton to Clarissa’s cheekbones and then lifted her nipples from the décolletage with a finger and painted them dark red, before arranging the neckline so that they were clearly visible above the lace edging. As a final touch she took a stick of rouge from the box and traced the line of Clarissa’s lips.

  “Will that do, my lord?” She stepped away from her subject so that the earl could take a look.

  “Admirably.” He lifted a ringlet from one creamy bare shoulder. “I didn’t think your hair could be improved upon, but the ringlets are delightful.”

  Clarissa was too conscious of the cold air on her exposed breasts to be flattered by the compliment. She’d seen enough painted and powdered ladies in the Piazza to make a fair guess at what her face must look like, dead white with two deep red patches and a shining red mouth. Utterly hideous; he couldn’t possibly be expecting her to walk the streets like this. “I cannot go out without a cloak.”

  “A shawl, certainly,” he agreed. “There’s a chill wind.”

  “I’ll fetch my cloak.”

  She turned to leave but Nan forestalled her. “I have the perfect shawl, my dear. Just in the cupboard in the hall, no need to go upstairs.” She went out as she spoke and returned almost immediately with a shawl of Indian figured muslin. She draped it carefully over Clarissa’s shoulders, still managing to leave most of her neckline bare. “There, that will keep the wind off.”

  It was better than nothing, Clarissa reckoned, but if she’d had her way she’d have been smothered head to toe in her own woolen cloak, the hood pulled close around her face. But it was clear that she was not going to have her way at present, at least not while Nan Griffiths was around. Nan knew whores and as far as she was concerned she had one in Clarissa. But as soon as they were out of the house she would draw the shawl tightly across her chest.

  “I have a present for you, Clarissa.” Jasper was smiling as he reached into the deep pocket of his full-skirted coat. “A small gift to seal our compact.” He handed her a slim silk-wrapped packet.