Rushed to the Altar

by Jane Feather

  The brothers were making the whole situation seem surreal with their light amusement, but Clarissa felt the nightmarish terror receding. They might have seemed to treat the situation superficially as a jest, but she was in no doubt as to the deadly seriousness of their intent. It was clear as day in the set of their mouths, in the fierce determination in their eyes. Sebastian was as fair as Jasper was dark, but the family resemblance was there, and never more so than at this moment.

  Jasper sensed the tension gradually leave her and was well satisfied. As he’d held her he’d felt her terror and could only guess at this point at what she’d gone through since her disappearance twenty-four hours ago. His deliberately humorous attitude was an instinctive attempt to restore and reassure her, and he could see the wildness begin to leave her eyes.

  “So, where’s the uncle?”

  “Upstairs.” She paused, hugging her arms across her chest. “I hope I have killed him. He was going to have me committed to Bedlam.”

  Jasper lost all ability to make light of anything. His face went white. “What?”

  She nodded bleakly. “He’s my guardian. He can do whatever he wants.”

  “Let’s get him.” Sebastian drew his sword and started up the stairs.

  Jasper followed suit. “Wait outside if you’d prefer, Clarissa.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m coming.” She followed them up and into the salon. Luke was slumped in a chair, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. A great lump was forming on his temple. His face was reddened by the hot coffee, and his clothes dripped with it. The pot itself lay on its side on the floor.

  “Did you throw the coffeepot at him as well, Clarissa?” Sebastian asked with some awe.

  Clarissa was standing with her arms folded tight across her chest, looking down at the man who a few short minutes ago had terrified her with his power to harm her. “Yes,” she said. “I hope it scalded him. I don’t seem to have killed him.”

  “No,” agreed Jasper. He stretched out his sword arm and pressed the tip of the weapon against the unconscious man’s throat. Blood welled, and Luke’s eyes flew open.

  He stared blankly up into cold flat black eyes. His gaze flickered, and he saw Clarissa standing behind the man whose sword was pressed to his throat. He put a hand to his throat. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” His voice was a croak.

  “I came to see if you were alive, and if you were to remedy the situation,” Jasper said amiably. “I understand you had some rather unpleasant ideas about this lady’s future.” He cast an illustrative glance at Clarissa.

  “She’s my ward, in my guardianship until she gains her majority.” Luke’s voice gained strength. “There’s not a justice in the land who would dispute my right to make what arrangements I see fit for my wards.”

  The sword point pressed a little deeper, and Luke sank back into the chair as if he could thus avoid the point. Jasper continued conversationally. “Well, there’s one small matter you’ve omitted to mention. Or perhaps you didn’t know it. The lady is no longer your ward. She is now my wife, the Countess of Blackwater, and as such lives under my authority, not yours.”

  Luke’s eyes darted wildly around the room. “She hasn’t the right to marry without my consent.”

  “Maybe not, but she has done so, and it is a fait accompli. If you attempted to challenge it, I would challenge the right of a guardian to commit his perfectly sane ward to a lunatic asylum, and I’d lay odds you would find yourself facing some very serious unpleasantness. The only question that interests me now is what to do with such a loathsome piece of human flotsam.”

  Clarissa’s mind was reeling. Jasper had just told a barefaced lie, without so much as the quiver of an eyelash. She glanced at Sebastian, expecting to see shock on his face. He knew quite well she was his brother’s mistress. But he seemed perfectly sanguine, as if he’d heard nothing at all surprising.

  “So, Clarissa, what do you want done with this relative of yours?” Jasper looked over at Clarissa without moving his sword point.

  “He put Francis out with a baby farmer, expecting him to die of infection and starvation in a few months,” she said slowly. “If Francis dies, Luke will inherit everything.”

  “Then I think we had best ensure that under no circumstances can he inherit anything. What d’you think, Sebastian?”

  “Without a doubt.” Sebastian stepped forward. His own sword point pressed into Luke’s belly and the man gave a strangled scream.

  Clarissa closed her eyes. She couldn’t let them do this, and yet with every primitive instinct she possessed she wanted revenge for what had been done to Francis, and for what Luke would have done to her. A slow and wretched death for both of them.

  “I don’t think he deserves a quick death,” she said. “He was not prepared to give that to either Francis or myself.”

  “How true.” Jasper nodded. “Now, my dear, I suggest you go downstairs and leave Sebastian and myself to our own devices. You may rest assured we will enact a biblical vengeance, precise in every detail.”

  Luke moaned and his eyes closed again. Clarissa looked thoughtfully at Jasper, wondering if he was really capable of the kind of savagery he was implying. But when he said softly, “Go, Clarissa,” she turned and left. She walked out into the crisp afternoon and breathed deeply.

  Jasper waited until he heard the front door close, then he leaned over his victim. “Listen to me very carefully. My brother is going to escort you to the coast, where he will find you passage on some craft heading a very long way from here to a place as barbaric as you. You will be quite at home. And if ever I see you within the borders of this land again, there will be no limit to my vengeance. Do I make myself clear?” His sword point moved in a leisurely stroke across the man’s throat, leaving a fine line of blood in its wake.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  Luke nodded, trying to keep his Adam’s apple still.

  “Good.” Jasper raised his sword and sheathed it. “Seb, hold him here until I send my coach with Plunkett. He could hold this louse down with one hand, so between you, you should have no trouble getting him to Dover.”

  Sebastian nodded with a grin. Jasper’s coachman was an erstwhile prizefighter and more than capable of dealing with the scrawny figure of Luke Astley. “Never fear, Jasper. We’ll have our friend on the high seas by dawn tomorrow.”

  “Look for a ship sailing for the Indies. They should be big enough and inhospitable enough to hold him.” Jasper raised a hand in farewell and left. He found Clarissa on the street, stroking his horses, while Tom stood phlegmatic as always at their heads.

  Clarissa turned her cheek against an animal’s silky neck as Jasper emerged from the house. “Is he dead?”

  “He will soon wish he were.” He stroked her hair back from her forehead, smoothing the deep frown lines with his finger. “But, forgive me, my love, killing him out of hand could make my life a little awkward, and I also thought you might have regrets at such a drastic vengeance when matters had settled down, and since such a vengeance would be so very final . . .” He gave an expressive shrug.

  Clarissa smiled. “I was already having regrets. But if he stays alive, he will be a threat to Francis until I gain my majority and my brother passes into my guardianship.”

  “You have no need to worry. Your uncle will be far away for the next ten months. And Francis will be with us.”

  “Oh, yes.” She remembered and was astonished she could have forgotten even for a moment. “That was an amazing lie, my lord, even bigger than the ones I’ve been telling.”

  “Oh, I very much doubt that,” he said with a dry smile. “However, my particular lie is about to be made truth.” He lifted her unceremoniously and deposited her in the curricle, jumping up beside her.

  “I don’t understand.” She grabbed the side of the curricle as the horses sprang forward, racing down the street. “Jasper, if this turns over, we’ll all break our necks.”

  “Oh, ye of little
faith,” he scoffed. “It makes a change for you not to understand. I’ve been existing in confusion ever since I first met you. However, that is about to be remedied. But first, I have a special license and two witnesses back at Half Moon Street, so we shall make a lie the truth.”

  “I thought it had to be a Catholic ceremony to fulfill the terms of your uncle’s will.”

  “Oh, we shall have that afterwards, for the benefit of the family. For now I am interested only in making this union legal; it seems the only way I can be sure of keeping hold of you.” He glanced sideways at her, and his expression was wiped clear of all amusement. “I can only ask your pardon for my harshness, for words that I have regretted every minute since I spoke them, but why, Clarissa? Why couldn’t you trust me?”

  She looked down at her lap, feeling for the words. “I don’t know . . . it wasn’t so much that I thought I couldn’t, but there was so much at stake I couldn’t see how I could rely on anyone but myself. I’m accustomed to helping myself. Francis is my responsibility, and I knew how important it was for you to fulfill the terms of the viscount’s will, and I know how honorable you are, and I was afraid that if you knew I wasn’t a whore, you’d feel you would be cheating again if you went through with a marriage to someone who didn’t qualify.” She gave a tiny laugh. “My mother was the daughter of an earl, and my father was a wealthy squire, Master of Hounds, Justice of the Peace. I was a virgin. How could I possibly fit the viscount’s criteria?”

  “You couldn’t. I’ve known that from our first night together. Did you really imagine you could hide your virginity from me, you absurd creature?” He shook his head in reproach.

  “You knew?” She stared at him. “Always. You’ve known always?”

  “Always from that night.”

  “Oh.” She plaited her fingers in her lap. “I’m not very experienced in these matters.”

  “That would appear to be the case,” he responded drily. “But I do think you might have given me a little more credit all around.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “And I ask your pardon. But if you’d told me what you suspected, it might have helped a little too.”

  He smiled. “I think we both need pardon, and I give mine freely.”

  “And I mine.”

  He drew rein abruptly, turning on the bench to take her in his arms, his mouth finding hers. He kissed her cut and swollen mouth gently, in benediction and in promise, as he murmured, “I love you, Clarissa. I will always love you.”

  “And I you, Jasper. For all time.”

  It was hard to believe the long nightmare was over, but it was. Francis was safe now. He’d take their father’s place and fill the squire’s shoes admirably. And she . . . ah, well . . . she could see nothing but roses in her future.

  Epilogue

  Viscount Bradley was dozing before the fire one evening three months later when the sound of laughter and merriment, most unusual in this drearily massive mausoleum, reached him from the antechamber to his bedchamber. He opened his eyes and directed a jaundiced glare at the group of gaily dressed revelers who came into the room.

  His three nephews accompanied a beautiful young woman. All three were in court dress, the young woman in a ball gown of ivory damask embroidered with seed pearls, her hair powdered and arranged in a most elaborate coiffure, adorned with two ostrich plumes. The Blackwater diamonds sparked blue fire in the candlelight.

  “Well, well,” the viscount muttered. “So he finally made an honest woman of you, my lady. You’ve made your curtsy to good Queen Charlotte. You are to be congratulated.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Clarissa curtsied as she had done to the queen a few hours past, expertly handling her long train, dipping her head so that the ostrich feathers seemed to dip and curtsy in imitation.

  The viscount chuckled, and for once his amusement lacked malice. “Nicely done, my dear. Nicely done. No one would ever believe you had once been a whore.” As he said this his gaze flicked to his oldest nephew.

  Jasper smiled and took out his snuffbox. “As you say, sir.” He took a leisurely pinch before dropping the emerald-encrusted gold box back into the deep pocket of his emerald-green coat. A massive emerald winked on his finger, its twin nestled in the froth of Mechlin lace at his throat.

  “Who presented the girl?” the viscount demanded.

  “Our cousin, sir. Lady Hester Graham. It is only right and proper that my wife should be presented under the auspices of the family, wouldn’t you agree?” Jasper’s smile was smooth, his tone suave, and it was clear to the old man that his nephew was enjoying this little interview. The viscount had insisted that the family that had labeled him their black sheep and cast him beyond the family pale embrace an erstwhile whore as the wife of the family’s head. Presenting her at court was the ultimate sign of acceptance.

  Jasper had fulfilled the terms of the will to the nth degree.

  Or had he? The viscount looked at his nephew’s lovely bride again. He would never know, but he would always suspect.