Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  The talk turned to Hudson, to speculation on whether the man ought to be jailed for fraud and misuse of funds. Hunter had long ago distanced himself from the Railway King, had looked on the man and his investors as fools, as standard-bearers for calamity. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And would fall again.

  “What more could we have expected from a man like George Hudson?” Meath stuffed his pipe from the humidor. “That’s what comes of putting one’s trust in the likes of a linen draper.”

  “A linen draper!” The Compte de Auriville snorted. “The man’s of common stock, to be sure. A lucky sod with a bit too much cash in his shallow pockets. It was bound to happen.”

  A tradesman? How much greater would their disgust be when they learned that fifteen years ago, Hunter Claybourne had been picking their fat pockets on Threadneedle Street?

  He had always alluded to a Canadian father and a beautiful English mother, tutors, travel, breaking from his father’s export business when the man died. It had served as a vague but believable cover for his private fortune. And no one had ever questioned it. But now he would forever listen for the murmur as he entered a room, fearing that the next rumor of outrage and insolvency would be about him.

  His life had become a waiting game.

  Lady Meath’s glasshouse was humid and close, and prickly with idle chatter about bamboo and orchids. Felicity didn’t want to be there. She wanted to grab Hunter by the ear and drag him home with her.

  Blast that book for falling out of her shawl!

  She tried to keep up her end of the conversation, which only seemed to make her the center of attention among the women. They were all ladies with proper lineage, and it didn’t seem to matter that she wasn’t. Hunter could certainly learn something from them.

  Lady Meath finally led them back into the parlor to join the men, and Felicity gave up her shawl to the butler, along with the evidence against Hunter. Lady Meath preened over the chorus of praise from the other women and stood beside Felicity as if they were fast friends.

  Felicity chanced a look at Hunter. He made a solitary and sullen figure at the hearth. His profile was rugged and unchanged, but she longed for the warmth of his gaze, was afraid of the cold disgust she would find there. It made her heart ache that he didn’t trust her. They had come so far—

  “Mrs. Claybourne was telling us about some of the unique gardens she has seen in her travels. Come sit here, dear.”

  Lady Meath led Felicity to the chair nearest Hunter. She could feel his gaze on her as she sat down.

  “Cottage gardens mostly,” Felicity replied, trying her best to look casual. “And castle grounds and the occasional private estate. My father was a railway engineer. Phillip Mayfield”

  Lord Meath perked up. “I say!”

  Then Felicity had to tell them of her father’s career, all the while watching her husband out of the corner of her eye. The hand that raised his glass of port was steady as stone, unless she looked closely. His movements were deliberate and pained. She wished they could leave.

  “Mrs. Claybourne writes those travel stories in Hearth and Heath.” The other women nodded to each other as though they envied her activities.

  Lady Meath put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “I think I might go with her on one of her treks. What would you think of that, Randolph?”

  Lord Meath knotted his brows, then nodded. “I don’t see why not. A delightful notion, Elizabeth. You’ll take a proper staff with you, of course.”

  “Of course!”

  Felicity smiled and shook her head gently, trying to do what was best for Hunter. “I don’t think I shall be traveling any time soon, Lady Meath, at least not to see gardens and the like. But the very next time I do, I would be delighted to have you along. You and your staff.”

  “Well, of course, marriage to a man like Mr. Claybourne must keep you very busy. And how very proud he must be of your charity work.”

  Felicity looked right at Hunter, but his eyes were cast down to his shoes. “He is patient with my whims, and generous to a fault.”

  Lord Meath grunted and stood up. “The Meath family has always contributed regularly to the Hermitage Tract Society.”

  “Oh, but Mrs. Claybourne doesn’t just collect castoff clothing, dear,” Lady Meath said. “She actually visits the slums, teaches at a school for beggars.”

  Felicity blushed for Hunter, who still hadn’t said a word or met her gaze.

  Lady Oswin seemed especially taken with her charity work. “How brave you are, my dear, to stay more than a minute among those wretched people.”

  “They’re not wretched, Lady Oswin; they’re just poor. And frankly, it takes far more courage to leave the school at the end of the day than it would for me to stay.”

  “How is that?” Lady Meath asked.

  Felicity felt her blood begin to boil at this idle, parlor-game curiosity. “Imagine a room filled with children—and this room is dark and damp, and it stinks of the sewer that flows beneath it.”

  “Dear me …” Lady Meath put a hand to her mouth and looked around to the other women.

  Felicity saw Hunter shift his stance, centering himself on his heels as if ready to run. Perhaps she was going too far, but an urge had come on her to set these people straight—these scions of Britain, as Hunter had called them.

  “And the children aren’t plump and pretty, but bone-thin, and their clothes are ragged, unlaundered. Their cheeks aren’t pink, but hollow and gray; and their eyes don’t sparkle, and they speak in tiny voices.”

  “Poor little things.” Lady Oswin’s eyes had grown large.

  “And they hold your hand and cling to your neck, and listen to stories of places where happy children romp through play yards and the air is fresh. And then it’s time to leave the school, to shake off their clinging hands and the sorrowful looks—to set them all aside. And then you return to your enormous home which has rooms that will never be slept in because there are too many; you eat a huge supper of pork and pudding and then slip under a clean sheet and a warm counterpane. But you can’t sleep because you wonder if little Amy has gone to bed hungry again, if she’s cold, her family turned out into the streets … .”

  Felicity had seen the growing looks of horror on the faces of her hosts and their guests, but couldn’t seem to stop talking. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. And Lady Meath was weeping into her silk hankie. She was terrified of even glancing Hunter’s way.

  “How simply awful!” Lady Meath uttered.

  “So you see, Lady Meath, that’s why leaving the school every day is far more difficult than staying.”

  “Those poor children,” Lady Meath said, touching the kerchief to the corner of her eyes. “Imagine growing up under such circumstances!”

  “Poppycock!” Lord Meath blustered. “A useless lot!”

  Lord Spurling laughed. “I agree, Meath. The only thing they seem to be good at producing is more of their own kind.”

  Felicity was fuming. But Hunter stood like a statue, still holding his brandy in both hands, staring into some far distance—not lost in thought, only waiting. He was waiting for her to betray him.

  Well, you’ll wait out your whole lifetime, Mr. Claybourne, before that will happen.

  “Excuse me, Lord Meath,” Felicity said firmly. “Some people escape their ill-fortune. If we teach them the methods, and supply the means, most will escape to a better life. And that’s why I spend my time at the Beggar’s Academy.”

  Lord Meath dismissed her with a wave of his hand and a tolerant look at Hunter.

  Lady Oswin sniffled loudly. “Do you, by any chance, ever need another hand, Mrs. Claybourne? I would like very much to feel that I’ve done my part.”

  “And me!” Lady Meath said.

  “Elizabeth, really!”

  Felicity looked from Lord to Lady Meath and tried to picture the woman picking her way through the muck in the streets of Bethnal Green, her pink face pinched and her arm clutched against her chest for fear of
contamination.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, your ladyships, but I’ll say what a wise man once told me: that charity is self-serving if it’s done to make you feel good.”

  “Oh.” Lady Meath looked thoughtful for a moment, but Lady Oswin nodded eagerly.

  Lord Meath grunted. “Damn foolish sentiment!”

  Felicity could feel Hunter’s gaze on her, but now was not the time to meet it.

  “Don’t be a such a prig, Randolph!” Lady Meath took Felicity’s hand. “Perhaps I could give the school a try, then?”

  Felicity smiled and felt triumphant. “Very well.”

  The room exploded in conversation about the Poor Laws and the recent potato famine. Hunter kept himself purposely out of the discussion, not trusting his views any more than the steadfastness of his temper.

  Soon the guests were playing word games and Lady Oswin was singing to Lady Spurling’s pianoforte, and the evening wore on until he felt he would burst with the waiting.

  But his wife was oddly peaceful in her dealings with him, a hand to his elbow, a shuttered gaze. He wondered what she was thinking, what she had whispered to the other women to draw them into her scheme of righting the wrongs of Bethnal Green.

  Meath shook Hunter’s hand as the evening ended. “I’ll be out of town for a few weeks, Claybourne, but you and I will get together before the final selection. There are others on the Board who have additional names to submit, but we will sway their numbers, and you will be our next Commissioner of Railways.”

  “I am honored, sir.”

  “My pleasure, son, and a good night to you, Mrs. Claybourne. Your views on the poor are positively erroneous, but you were the delight of the evening.”

  Hunter watched Felicity’s face grow crimson as she murmured her farewells. He helped her into her damnable shawl, then into the carriage, but didn’t enter himself.

  “I’ll find my own way home,” he said.

  “You worried for nothing, Hunter. I said nothing. I will say nothing—”

  “Good night, wife.”

  He watched the carriage fade into the dark street, and started walking blindly along the crescented perimeter of Regent’s Park. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was certain that any road he took—from this moment onward—would lead him inexorably back to Bethnal Green.

  Chapter 20

  Felicity couldn’t sleep, knowing that Hunter was out there somewhere, stumbling around in his dark mood. She had upbraided herself so often since seeing the book fall from her shawl that she was now weary of it. The whole exercise of “curse and what-if” was useless anyway.

  Hunter was a grown man, no matter where he’d sprung from. He should know better than to brood— but she loved the rogue, and now she would have to patch it up with him, and convince him that she was no threat to his name or to his fortune.

  How like a man to be so much a little boy!

  She had changed from her evening gown to her nightgown, and then had felt restless and had changed into the button-fronted shirt and tieback skirt that she wore when she was working around the house. Hunter’s book was now in her skirt pocket, where it would be safe until she could get rid of it while he was witness to it, so that he had no doubt the threat was gone from his life forever.

  She found herself in one of the downstairs parlors, sorting through folds of fabric she had been collecting for her newest project. She had recently uncrated three of the newfangled sewing machines and was determined to start a small factory here at the house, where mothers of the slum children could make clothes for their families and then sell the rest to aid the family income.

  The clatter of hooves and gravel in the drive sent her racing to the window, and her heart into her throat. It was Hunter, riding beyond the house toward the stable.

  He was home and safe! She listened for his footsteps, but they never came. After fifteen minutes, she slipped her cloak over her shoulders, lit a lamp, and headed for the stables.

  It was quiet inside, and the horse that Hunter had ridden was curried and put up for the night. She could hear the snores of the stable lads from the loft above her head. But where the devil was Hunter?

  In the distance, echoing softly across the vale, she heard a ringing thump, and then another, and then nothing for a time until the sounds repeated themselves.

  She followed the thumps into the woods until the sound turned to thwacks, and at last resolved to the solid stroke of an ax blade against wood.

  A lamp burned in a small clearing, just beyond the stream where Hunter had rinsed her skirts of the stink of Bethnal Green. Dear God, if she’d only known then… But tonight was new and the air was clear and sweet and starry, and she doused her light, feeling bold enough and enchanted enough to steal the moment and spy on her husband.

  So this was what he had been doing at night, before, when he would stalk off into the woods and return coatless and sweating. He was standing in profile to her, his shirt and coat hanging in the crook of a tree, an ax resting across his naked, sweat-slick shoulder. He was intent on his work—frowning, probably cursing her under his breath, but he was magnificent, and she felt a rush of love and admiration that made tears swim in her eyes.

  She brushed them aside as he stood a wedge of oak upright on a large tree stump. He swung the long-handled ax over his head, gave a mighty grunt, and drove the blade downward. One piece of oak magically became two. Then he picked up another wedge.

  The ax came down with another of his grunts, and then she had had quite enough of rippling muscle and glistening sinew.

  “Good evening, Hunter.”

  He started, then looked up toward her voice, blinded by his own lamp hanging on the branch between them.

  “Damn it, woman. What do you want?”

  He sounded utterly disgusted. She would have to change his mood. “Just a little of your time, Hunter.”

  “Go away.” He set another wedge on the stump.

  “It’s after two in the morning. I’ve been waiting up for you. We need to talk.”

  “I’m finished talking. Leave me.”

  Every finely fashioned muscle above his waist flexed and glistened as he took the next swing. The wood split cleanly.

  “You may be finished talking, Hunter, but I’m not.” She threw off her cloak and entered the circle of light, aware of his anger and his impatience, and entirely taken by the tethered power in his arms as he leaned one hand against the ax handle.

  “Go back to the house, Felicity. It’s dangerous here. One never knows where the chips will fly.”

  Hunter watched and fumed as the irritatingly distracting wood nymph who haunted his thoughts ignored his threat and knelt near his lamp, gathering twigs and sticks and putting them in a pile. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m here to convince you that your secret is safe with me.”

  “You can’t possibly.” Her hair was alive in the light breeze, wispy tendrils that tempted his fingers and reached out for him. But he needed to keep his distance while he calculated the damage she had caused with her meddling.

  “I haven’t been plotting your downfall, Hunter.”

  “We have nothing more to say to each other.”

  “Did I ever tell you that my great-grandfather was a viscount?” She stuck a twig into the lamp’s flame and held it there until the end of it flared.

  “I don’t care if your great-grandfather was George the First.”

  “A third cousin, actually. Great-grandfather Horace, Lord Mayfield had estates in two counties.” She knelt down beside her heap of twigs and nursed the flame until a small fire rose from the center. “Unfortunately, disaster and bad business sense seems to run in my family. His ships sank, and his crops failed, and his mills burned to the ground, and finally his son’s gambling drove the family from a rundown manor house into a little cottage in Cheshire, where my father grew up. He, himself, never even owned a house, and now I live in train stations.”

  “You live with me. You and you
r accursed questions.”

  “And that’s the lamentable Mayfield story. I have only a wife’s interest in your past, Hunter, nothing more.” She sniffed at him and started collecting wood-chips from around the stump, intent on some distracting mischief.

  “You were snooping where you shouldn’t have been.”

  “I was minding my own business and found the book among a barrelful of others at the school. And there was your name, as big as life, and it startled me. That’s why I stopped in to see you today.”

  Sweat suddenly chilled across Hunter’s back. “You had the book with you then? You took the damned thing to the Exchange? What the hell were you going to do with it? Show it to my doorman?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t know what to do, Hunter.”

  Hunter thunked the ax into a log at the edge of the clearing. “So now you’ve come out here to make your bargain with the devil, Miss Mayfield?”

  “My name is Mrs. Claybourne. I’m your wife. And you are not the devil, Hunter.”

  The flames licked at the night air, tasting it the way Hunter wanted to taste the woman who kept adding fuel to the blaze. “What do you want here, Mrs. Claybourne?”

  “I don’t want anything. I told you that.”

  “Then go back into the house and leave me alone.”

  But she calmly and tenaciously fed her eccentric blaze until the flames were as high as her waist. Baffled by the woman, Hunter left her to her ritual and began stacking the split wood into a cart. He usually enjoyed the task, one of the few labors left in his life. Tonight he had hoped to split her out of his soul.

  But she was standing by the fire when he returned for another load of wood. And she was holding the book toward him.

  “Here, Hunter. Burn it.”

  The woman still didn’t understand. “It’s too late.”

  “Burn the evidence. Then it’s your word against mine. And since you are the great Hunter Claybourne, whose word is never doubted, and since I would rather be boiled in oil than reveal what I know, your secret will be forever safe.”