Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “Come to face the music, Claybourne?”

  Hunter swung around, half-expecting to find a damp-faced magistrate bearing down on him. The urge to bolt into the afternoon throng dissipated slowly, and left a searing hole in his chest.

  It was Meath, alighting from his carriage, and an impulse came over Hunter to lift the man’s wallet. His fingertips itched with a long-dormant memory of a proud young man and his determination to prosper, but he turned his back on Threadneedle and started up the lofty steps of the Bank.

  “Come, Meath. You don’t want to be late for the bloody spectacle.”

  “This is a catastrophe, Claybourne! When a man of Lord Meath’s stature is jeopardized by such scandal, so is each one of us in this chamber. Mark me, you will pay for this!” Lanford sat at the distant end of the polished table, presiding over the council like a king over his court. Meath sat beside him, bending the man’s ear in a hissing whisper.

  Hunter steadied his anger and looked around at the sea of granite faces glaring back at him from their overstuffed, high-backed chairs. He was disgusted with himself and with this unholy commerce. But he stood steadfastly, refusing to buckle under their pressure. He had made the fortunes of half the men in this chamber, and could unmake them with a flick of his pen. But such a reprisal wouldn’t serve his own fortune—and that was the purpose of his life.

  “Well, say something, Claybourne!” Meath bellowed as he leaned forward on his elbows. “You saw the Times this morning.”

  The headline had been impossible to miss. “‘Slop-shop Scandal.’ Yes, I saw it, Meath.”

  “And, sir?” Lanford sat forward, too, his thick fingers wrapped around the handle of his gavel.

  “And, as usual,” Hunter said, evenly, “the press have got hold of a stinking bone and they will shake it until another comes along to distract them.”

  Meath jumped to his feet and pointed at Hunter. “It is my ankle they have hold of, Claybourne. Not yours. And all because of your wife’s outrageous slander.”

  His wife. Felicity. His ruthless champion. Hunter could feel her hand in his even now, her lips upon his brow, urging him to be brave, to find the best way. His heart began to pound, and he unclenched his fist to rid himself of her memory.

  “Slander, my lord Meath, implies the spreading of falsehoods. I’ll grant the woman’s impulses were foolish, and she has paid dearly for them, but she reported the facts as they stand.”

  The chamber roared to life then; the truth set free of its hive to sting wherever it found a home. Nearly every man here was guilty of the same kind of legal immorality as Meath, yet each now denied it with a righteous fury. Lanford banged his gavel repeatedly on the table.

  And Meath was shouting over it all, “Facts without proof, Claybourne!”

  “Without proof?” Hunter stalked toward Meath, stood over the man and his sweat-smeared spectacles as the chamber grew still. Bile rose into his throat. “Perhaps we should adjourn from these chambers to meet in your apprentice school, Meath; to see the crooked-limbed children for ourselves. Would their sunken cheeks and broken fingers serve as proof enough?”

  “Enough, Claybourne!” Lanford said.

  “And you, Lanford, ought to look to your own woolen mills. What sort of foulness would the Times discover at the Broadworks, I wonder?”

  “Are you threatening me, Claybourne?” Lanford’s veined jowls shook.

  “I’m trying to save our collective hides.” Hunter stilled the quaking in his hands and opened his attaché. “And if you cannot recognize that, if you persist in trying to destroy me, then you can take your business elsewhere. As it is, I see two dozen stubborn men whose grand plan is to crawl into a stinking hole, and pull the dirt down on top of them. Is that what all of you want? Do you want your critics to win?”

  Hunter scanned the faces at the table; each had gone damply crimson, or had paled to chalk. Lords and Commons, members of the Privy Council, and the Board of Trade—each and every man squirming in their seats. Cowards.

  Sir John Eagan rose on his gouty legs, and every eye turned to the man. “What do you suggest we do, Mr. Claybourne?”

  Hunter tasted the first stirrings of triumph, and a dizzying brush with his past: Sir John sat on the Queen’s Bench—a strict magistrate, and a name Hunter remembered from his youth. If the man knew whose help he was requesting—

  Hunter scrubbed that terror from his thoughts. He would walk from this chamber the same man who entered; no one would know of the street urchin that still lived inside him. “First of all, Sir John, we must all agree that there is great profit to be had in cheap labor.”

  They grumbled their ascent as a body, Meath among them, hunkered over a glass of brandy.

  “And,” Hunter continued, knowing his next statement would rankle, “that we are a contemptible breed.”

  The grumbling rose and then fell back on itself as Sir John sat down quietly. “Go on, Mr. Claybourne.”

  Hunter knew he was dancing dangerously on the edge of a very sharp blade. He turned and felt every eye on his back as he went to the window that looked down onto Threadneedle Street.

  “We are the power in England. Financiers, industrialists, demigods. We lay the railways and telegraph wire, erect the factories; we tear down unprofitable rookeries to rebuild and collect higher rents; and we do it all on the backs of people who live and who work under the most appalling conditions—”

  “Damnation, Claybourne!” Meath was on his feet behind Hunter. “It isn’t our business who these people arc—

  “They are children, Meath, and mothers, and hardworking fathers.” And Felicity was their champion, his champion.

  “I can’t help that they breed like rabbits, Claybourne. I didn’t bring them into this world. To hell with you and your opinions and your bloody-minded wife! You have been censured here, sir. And I, for one, will enjoy seeing the Claybourne Exchange slide into the muck of the Thames.”

  Hunter held his breath and fixed his focus on the watery windowpane. “That will never happen, Meath. Not while I’m alive. I have given each of you my word to protect your interests, and I am here to deliver on that promise.”

  “Ballocks!” Meath was at Hunter’s back. “You’re a traitor, Claybourne. A bloody traitor to your class.”

  Traitor. Hunter swallowed back the knot in his throat and stared out onto Threadneedle Street. It looked as it always had, absorbed in itself and prosperous, tolerating thieves and tycoons in equal numbers. He had been both in his time, and now he was neither. A stranger even to himself.

  Damn you, Felicity.

  He would play their game because he must, and because he’d forgotten how to play any other. He’d tried to explain to her the practical balance of business, but she wouldn’t listen.

  Then her hand was in his again, as tangible and warm as if she stood beside him. They will know compassion, Hunter, and will reach out gladly— Irrational little fool. She’d deluded herself into thinking that he was a respectable man, a good man.

  “Gentlemen,” Hunter said, his voice remarkably steady as he turned from the window and the woman he loved, to face his accusers. “I am prepared to offer you absolution.”

  “How?” Lanford stood beside his chair, his face a mask of indignity. “How do we repair this kind of damage?”

  “By confessing your part in it.”

  “What’s that?” Meath staggered backward a step, his balance stolen by too many brandies.

  “By confessing your horror and revulsion at finding such loathsome, disgusting activity going on at your own apprentice schools and at your factories.”

  “Have you gone mad?” Now Sir John was on his feet again.

  “No, my lord. You will deny prior knowledge of any such villainy. And vow to rid your holding companies of the men who have violated your personal code of ethics. You will set up a charitable foundation to remedy the situation immediately. Publicly voice your concerns for the wretched poor, for the crippled children.” Hunter knew then,
that if he’d ever had a soul, it was lost to him now. “Gentlemen, you’ll emerge from this filthy pit as patrons of the poor, not rogue capitalists. I will begin by pledging thirty thousand pounds of my own.”

  The noise in the chamber rose swiftly as one man turned to the next with sudden smiles, the peace of divine clemency in their eyes.

  Lanford was at Hunter’s side, pumping his arm and calling him brilliant. Meath even offered him a grudging nod.

  And Hunter’s head reeled. He closed his eyes and she was there inside him, whispering her own kind of absolution, complete and absolutely calamitous.

  You’re a good man, Hunter—far better than you know.

  Damn the woman!

  She’d given him back his name, and he’d worn it into battle as his shield, only to find that it no longer fit, that it pinched and offended him.

  Damn you, Felicity!

  Chapter 23

  “‘And so the good Robin Hood let fly his arrow and split the sheriff’s bolt in twain.’”

  Felicity looked up from the storybook, across the eager faces and shiny cheeks. Gran was sitting in the upholstered armchair beside her, her lap overflowing with snuggling children. How dearly she loved the old woman.

  Lady Meath was at the back of the room, contentedly combing Betts’s hair. She admired the woman for her courage; for ignoring Lord Meath’s prohibition against returning to the school. Lady Oswin was washing up one of the endless piles of dishes, something she knew the woman had never done at home. These ladies of delicate sensibilities seemed as ruggedly committed to the Beggar’s Academy as she was.

  Indeed, there were miracles left in the world.

  “Please, please read it again, miss.” Andy pried the book open to the page she had just turned. “Here! Where Robin Hood beats the sheriff.”

  Now the other children were calling out for the same, and Felicity resigned herself to a third go-round for the archery tournament.

  She was grateful for the distraction. Anything to keep her thoughts off Hunter. He’d been so cold that afternoon, so unlike the man she’d come to love and respect. She cleared her throat of her tears and began to read again.

  “‘There came the day when the bandits of Sherwood Forest…’”

  Hunter had Branson drive him directly from the Claybourne Exchange to Shoreditch Road. He stepped down from the carriage into a caustic evening fog. He clutched his breast pocket and found the document in place, the ink barely dried, and his heart raging inside his chest.

  He was doing the best thing he knew how. His business with his wife would be quick. A simple signature, and he would be done with it, made whole again.

  Shoreditch was clogged with rattling carts and gravel-voiced costermongers, people shoving and pressing their way home. The alleyways feeding onto it sluiced their foulness into the brew.

  “I’ll wait here, Mr. Claybourne.”

  Hunter raised an unsteady hand to Branson and took a last unadulterated breath before he started through the stream of foot traffic.

  He hesitated at the mouth of the alleyway, holding back taking his first breath, fearing the black, blinding headache that would surely swamp him. He dizzied for lack of air, caught hold of the green-slick wall, then hung his head and let his lungs fill to bursting.

  He gagged as the decay and the hot memories washed over him. The pounding came to his head in a surging rush, drawing bile high into his throat, spilling its scalding bitterness into his mouth, and sending him whirling back to his boyhood.

  She had done this to him. Forced him to remember it all: the scurrying between piles of refuse; the bitterness of a withered turnip, sauced in whatever muck he’d found it in. She’d brought him back here to face his torment, to name it, to grind it into his skin, into his nostrils.

  He spat the bile from his mouth and stumbled forward into the dimness, cursing the dry heaves that racked him and his water-shot eyes that blurred and disoriented him. He crashed into a stack of crates and a man cursed him.

  He dodged the flying cudgel that would have felled him, disgusted with the strength of his native-born instinct that pulled him deeper into the alley, following a foul, ghastly memory so deeply rooted he could track the twisting course without sight.

  All this because of her, his wife. Felicity. She was his beacon, and his abyss. His past and his future. And he wanted to be done with all the misery.

  He broke out of the stifling alley onto a tightly spoked intersection of five streets, ill-lit and hostile.

  But he knew the place. It was seventeen years gone from his life, and yet nothing had changed. Not the smell or the taste, or the empty faces.

  Two more lanes and he was standing in front of the Beggar’s Academy, a boy again, frightened and sweating, knowing there were better dreams for him somewhere else.

  Knowing that he had to go inside to find them.

  Something prickled Felicity’s spine and made her raise her eyes to the door.

  It was Hunter. Her pulse took off and left her breathless.

  He was huge, and filled the small, sagging portal like a mountain, his fingers white-knuckled and seized-up around the doorframe. His eyes were damp and darkly shadowed, unreadable in the wobbling light of the candles. His coat hung askew, and he was breathing as if he’d run all the way from Cornhill Street.

  But he said nothing, so Felicity went back to her reading, stumbling over familiar words and smearing the tears with her fist as they fell upon the page. When he finally moved from the doorway, she watched him from under her lashes, followed the sound of his uncertain footfalls as he skirted the room and came to stand behind her.

  “May I see you?” he asked, his voice craggy and deep and tugging at her.

  She stood up and turned to him, aware of her every nerve, every breath between them.

  “What is it you want, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “Your signature,” he said in that flat, fiscal tone of his. He was stern-faced and still winded as he lifted a document from an inside pocket and handed it to her.

  The bound paper was folded thickly and tied off in red ribbon, coldly official. Separation papers, no doubt. She had expected his solicitor, not him. And not quite so soon.

  “What is this, Mr. Claybourne?” Angry that he would take precious time from the children to serve these on her, she finally looked up at him, ready to chasten him.

  But his eyes were soft and red-rimmed. His lower lip was damp and chaffed. “It’s a transfer of title, Mrs. Claybourne.”

  A strange name for separation papers. But leave it to Hunter to equate the end of a marriage with the transfer of property. If he’d come to punish her, he’d found his way.

  “I’ll only be a moment, children,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. They wouldn’t understand at all if she broke down and wept. Their dark eyes were fastened on the stranger beside her, their mouths agape, and Robin Hood forgotten.

  For all but Giles. He had fit his fingers through hers, and he was watching her face with a stern countenance. “You don’t have to go with him, miss. I’m here, y’ know.”

  “I know that, lad.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll be all right. Will you keep reading for me, Giles? Come, Mr. Claybourne. I will sign your document.”

  Choosing not to look up at Hunter, Felicity touched Gran’s shoulder to gain a measure of strength, then stepped away to find a more private corner. Giles brusquely took up the story of Robin Hood.

  She reached the table and turned, only to find Hunter still standing where she’d left him, looking almost forlorn. He was scanning the room, his eyes never resting on anything for more than a moment.

  The Beggar’s Academy—

  She’d forgotten entirely that this had been his school, the place he had reviled and then forsaken. His gaze was unyielding as he studied the room, frowning as if he remembered each plank and every post and was paralyzed by the memory. She could almost see the boy again, a tender spirit, so easily and so often wounded.

  Tears we
lled in her eyes for the scarred man he’d become, and she wanted him gone from here.

  “Please, Mr. Claybourne,” she said, in her most efficient voice. “You can see that I’m busy.”

  But then she saw his gaze meet with Lady Meath’s. He reared back in surprise, shaken from his reverie. He looked ready to bolt, but then offered both women a half-smile.

  “Good evening, Lady Meath, Lady Oswin.” His voice sounded raw, but steady.

  “It’s very good to see you here, Mr. Claybourne. You ought to come more often.” Lady Meath nodded and then whispered something to Lady Oswin that drew girlish giggles from them both.

  The pallor was gone from Hunter’s face, and his color had risen dark against his crisply stiff collar. But he was breathing like a charging horse.

  And Giles was still attempting to read, although his audience’s attention was fixed on Hunter.

  “Who’s that man standing behind you, Giles?” Jonathan was on his knees pointing at Hunter.

  Giles stopped his reading and scowled deeply at Jonathan. “He’s—”

  “I’m Mr. Claybourne,” Hunter said, swallowing hard to keep the unrelenting sob from escaping his throat.

  The room and all its vile memories had nearly swamped him at the door. He’d nearly ran away. But she’d been sitting there among the children, his remarkable wife, blessing them with her love, healing them of their cares, and so he had stayed. He cleared his throat, then raised his voice and spoke to the children sitting on the floor beneath him.

  “I am Mrs. Claybourne’s husband.”

  Felicity’s suspicious, sea-green eyes were on him as he stood rooted to this very painful and electrifying brink. She was frowning, and must have thought him a lunatic. He doubted his own sanity as he teetered here between his past and his future. One more step, and he would be free.

  Did these children know how fortunate they were to have her looking after them? Fresh paint, sunlight, new windows, her soft hands cooling a fevered brow. She had gifted him unselfishly, and yet he had scorned her.

  Oh, patient love. He’d returned to this foul place looking to buy back his honor, to win back a wife, and instead he’d found his heart, right here where he’d left it.