Bianca stood straighter, deliberately grasping her mother’s wrist and pulling her hand away from her face. “So what you’re saying is that I do not have your protection,” she said, feeling oddly powerful. “You’re saying that without a title and money, life could not possibly be happy.”
Her mother let out a frustrated breath and shook her head, pressing her hands to her temples. “I’m saying—”
“No.” Bianca stopped her. “You’ve said quite enough.”
Without waiting for the battle to continue, she picked up her skirts and turned to march out of the room.
It would have been wonderful if her act of defiance could have lasted and given her a sense of courage for more than thirty seconds. She hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs and into the foyer before one of the maids came running after her with combs and hairpins. Instead of striding boldly to the church to marry Jack, Bianca had to sit on a stool in the front parlor while the solemn maid worked her hair into the latest fashion.
She suffered further indignation after that when she caught the hem of her gown on part of the carriage and ripped it as she climbed inside. Worse still, the ride was bumpy and uncomfortable with her mother and Natalia stuffed into the carriage with her, none of them talking to each other, anger ricocheting off the walls. Worst of all, when they reached the church, Bianca’s stomach was in such poor shape that as soon as her feet hit the ground, she doubled over and heaved up nothing but bile.
At least a dozen members of the aristocracy—friends of her mother’s and Lord Malcolm’s mostly—who had been invited to the impossibly hasty wedding, stared at her in surprise and distaste once she straightened. They weren’t the only ones there to stare, though. Behind the nobs, as Jack so accurately called them, were at least a dozen more faces that she recognized from Clerkenwell. They’d cleaned up as best they could, but there was no mistaking the painted faces and revealing dress of the Farringdon Street whores.
“What in heaven’s name,” Bianca’s mother began as she stepped down from the carriage behind her.
Bianca had no idea which of the legion of oddities her mother was referring to. She ignored her, ignored everything, and stood straighter, moving away from the carriage and her family, unsmiling.
“Not exactly the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen,” one of the whores muttered as Bianca shook out her skirts.
A handful of them snickered and laughed behind their hands. Misery welled up in Bianca’s heart that was far more sickening than anything her stomach could feel. Her mother’s high-born friends moved on into the church, her mother and Natalia going with them, probably to ensure that everything was ready, leaving her standing face to face with the cluster of whores.
“To think that our Jack traded any one of us for this sorry sight,” another of the whores sniffed, turning her nose up.
“Be nice, Claire.” Ida—whose name Bianca was surprised she remembered—scolded her laughing friends. “She’s obviously in a bad way.”
“And that’s another thing,” Claire went on, planting her hands on her hips. “What right has she to be in a bad way when she’s about to marry the best man any of us has ever known?”
“It’s an insult,” one of the others agreed.
“Takin’ the very best away from the likes of us,” a third whore grumbled. “He could have lifted some girl to a better life, but instead, he ends up with you.”
Bianca’s chest squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. Was it fair for her to take Jack away from someone whose life could have been changed for the better if he’d loved them? Guilt added itself to the pile of painful emotions that had tears stinging the back of Bianca’s eyes.
“Shut it, Dora. You’re just jealous.”
Help came from the most unlikely corner as Nanette elbowed her way through the cluster of whores staring at Bianca. Jack’s pseudo-sister held a small nosegay and looked almost presentable in her shabby but modest gown with her hair tied up in a clean, blue bow.
“You can’t help who you fall in love with,” Nanette went on, speaking directly to Bianca. She broke into a sheepish grin. “Sorry I had a go at you the other day,” she mumbled. “If I’d’ve known….”
Bianca couldn’t imagine what she’d have done or what she knew. “No hard feelings,” she sighed, not knowing what else to do.
Nanette thrust the nosegay toward her. “Here,” she said. “It’s not much, but I don’t see no one else handing you flowers.”
In fact, Natalia had just stumbled out of the church with an enormous bouquet of hothouse flowers. She skittered to a stop at the sight of Bianca surrounded by whores, her mouth dropping open.
Bianca took one look at her sister, then turned back to Nanette, a stoic sort of confidence growing within her.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the nosegay from Nanette. She sniffed the pitiful collections of pansies and violets. It was a surprise how sweet they smelled, and it made her smile. She glanced to her traitorous sister again then said, “Nanette, I have a job for you.”
“For me?” Nanette’s brow rose.
Bianca turned fully to her. “I find myself in need of a reliable maid of honor.”
Natalia squeaked, but that was the only protest she uttered.
“Maid of honor?” Nanette blinked. “Me?”
Bianca blew out a breath, her shoulders dropping and her energy draining once again. “You’re Jack’s sister. Well, almost. Which means you’ll be my sister too. And since the one I have sees no problem in gossiping about my personal business, I could use someone standing beside me who understands what I’m going through.”
Nanette burst into a smile and her eyes went watery. She blinked back her tears and said, “I’d be honored to stand up with you, Lady Bianca.”
“It’s not Lady—” Bianca paused and shook her head. “Well, I suppose a baroness is still a lady. But I want you to call me Bianca.”
“Law,” Nanette said with a rush of breath. The other whores seemed impressed with the extension of friendship as well, though Claire and her lot weren’t swayed.
“What is taking so long out here?” Bianca’s mother appeared in the church door. “The organist has already started the wedding march. He’s had to stop and start again. Come along.”
Bianca gulped, pressing a hand to her stomach, and turned to march up the steps to the church. Nanette followed behind her. Natalia slipped up to her side and whispered a few quick words of instruction to her.
It would have been wonderful if stepping into the church had changed everything and made the farce Bianca was walking through more of a romance, but the church was undecorated and only half filled, the nobs who turned to look at her as she started up the aisle were certainly not smiling, and the song that the organist played sounded much more like a funeral march than a wedding procession. Henrietta sat near the front of the church on the bride’s side, her son, Lord Ricky, staring curiously around at the odd affair. Lord O’Shea’s wheeled chair was parked at the end of the front aisle on the groom’s side, but he’d either been carried or managed to move himself to the pew. Either way, he stared at Henrietta instead of Bianca, for which Bianca was strangely grateful.
The only thing that made the whole mess even slightly bearable was the sight of Jack waiting for her at the front of the church. He wore a fine, new suit that made him look as regal as any of the aristocrats in the room. Lord Malcolm had taken him for a haircut—a haircut to Lord Malcolm’s specifications—the day before, and clean-shaven as he was, Jack was breathtakingly handsome. He stood with his shoulders squared and his back straight, unsmiling. Although his eyes softened to appreciation and sympathy when they locked with Bianca’s. She wasn’t smiling either, so she didn’t blame him for his dourness. Especially not when Lord Malcolm and Rupert stood on either side of him, like guards determined to make certain he stayed the course.
Which was ridiculous and prompted Bianca into a renewed fury. Jack wanted to marry her. That was the one thing that had remained
constant throughout the entire hurricane of a week. He wasn’t about to back down from the altar any more than he would shave all his hair off. And when he took her hand as she finally reached the altar, Bianca knew that she had one ally, that it was still the two of them against the world.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God….”
“Nanette?” Jack leaned closer to whisper in Bianca’s ear as the minister began the ceremony.
Bianca peeked over her shoulder to where Nanette stood, looking like a witness to a hanging.
“She was the only one who seemed to care about me today,” she said, glancing down to the nosegay she still held.
Jack seemed to understand. At last, a half-smile tilted up the corners of his mouth. He nodded to Nanette, then squeezed Bianca’s hand.
The minister cleared his throat, evidently aware that neither of them were paying attention to him. When both Bianca and Jack glared at him, he went on.
It should have been the happiest moment of Bianca’s life. She knew the words and progression of the marriage ceremony well, but instead of filling her with joy, the whole thing left her buzzing with irritation. She had only one moment of satisfaction in the whole thing.
When the minister turned to her and asked, “Do you, Bianca Anastasia Marlowe, take this man, John Craig, to be your lawfully wedded husband,” and all the other tagalongs to the vow, Bianca answered, “I, Bianca Anastasia Marlowe, take thee, Jack Craig, to be my husband.”
The minister frowned. Behind her, Bianca’s mother cleared her throat. Lord Malcolm narrowed his eyes at her. But Jack smiled, and that was all that mattered.
Then it was done. The minister pronounced them married, everyone in the church breathed a collective sigh of relief that the moral order of things had, at last, been restored, and the organist began a spritely recessional.
“Thank God that’s over,” Jack muttered as he took Bianca’s arm and escorted her back down the aisle.
Bianca wanted to laugh. It was the most paradoxical reaction she could have had to her new husband thanking the Almighty that their wedding had ended, but it made her heart light all the same. She even broke into a smile, though she refused to direct it to anyone but Jack. Certainly not her sanctimonious family. Although she did manage to smile at Jack’s friends and so-called family, who were all crammed into the last few pews at the back of the church.
“What now?” Jack asked once they were outside in the frigid, December sunlight.
“There’s the wedding breakfast,” Bianca said. Even saying it made her stomach turn. “And that will likely bleed into a long reception, if my mother has anything to do about it.”
“And where is all this taking place?” Jack asked as the driver manning one of the Campbell carriages held open the door for the two of them.
“Marlowe House,” Bianca sighed as Jack helped her into the carriage.
“Right,” Jack said. He backed out of the carriage long enough to stare the driver dead in the eye and murmur, “Take us to St. John’s Wood, and if you so much as think of dragging us to any fucking nob parties in Mayfair, I’ll rip your balls out and mail them to your sweetheart in a velvet box.”
The driver blanched and stammered, “Yes, sir,” as Jack hopped back into the carriage.
He settled next to Bianca with a grin as the carriage bobbed and lurched as the driver climbed up to the seat and drove on.
“That’ll show them,” he said, sliding his arm around Bianca’s back.
“Serves them right,” Bianca added, snuggling against Jack’s side.
She was still angry with him, she reminded herself. He’d been just as heavy-handed as her family, in a way. He’d left out so many parts of his life in all the years they’d known each other. But as soon as she rested her head against his shoulder, her eyelids grew heavy. Every ounce of the tension she’d been holding to so tightly for the past week seemed to unravel all at once. She felt herself slide deeper into his arms as it all became too much for her. The warmth of his embrace was undeniable.
She would be the best wife to him that she could be. The thought peeked around the edges of sleep as it overcame her. She didn’t know how to be a wife, much less a middle-class wife. That was what she was now, though. She would have to learn to cook and clean and do all the domestic chores that had always been done for her. If that was what it took to show her family that they may have won the battle, but they hadn’t won the war, then so be it.
“It’ll be all right,” Jack sighed, his words settling over her as he stroked her arm. “We’ll figure this new life out somehow. We’ve got a baby to look forward to, and as soon as I can, I’m buying us a different house. And I don’t care what Sir Edmund says, I’m continuing with my investigations.”
A sharp thought stuck into the fuzzy edges of Bianca’s consciousness, like a thorn caught in a scarf. There was something she had to tell Jack, something she’d been meaning to tell him for a week but that had been completely blown from her mind. Blown, like an explosion. Brickman and Kensington High Street. It was too late, though. Exhaustion won out, and she fell asleep, hoping that when she woke up, everything would return to normal.
Chapter 14
It did not return to normal. Not even close.
“Tell me again why I’m bothering with this foul-smelling mixture?” Bianca asked Nanette more than a fortnight later as she stirred the pungent, soapy goop she was about to use to scrub the flat’s walls, of all things.
“Because you and Jack ain’t got them fancy new electric lights,” Nanette answered from the rough table they’d set up next to the flat’s tiny stove to serve as a kitchen counter.
“No one has Mr. Edison’s electric lights yet. At least, not private homes,” Bianca said, sullenly staring at her soap mixture.
She glanced over her shoulder into the main room of the flat. There was no denying the walls had grown dingy over the gas lamps that lit the room. In her life up to that point, walls had magically cleared themselves of soot, and dust had swept itself away. Or rather, servants had always quietly done the jobs for her.
“Right, set that aside for a moment,” Nanette interrupted her thoughts, if they could even be called thoughts, gesturing for her to come to the stove. “The oil’s nice an’ hot and we’re ready to fry the cakes.”
Bianca gratefully left her soap and walked to the stove, brushing damp tendrils of hair away from her face. Her stomach protested at the scent of hot oil, but she managed to keep her breakfast down. Her morning sickness hadn’t completely subsided, but as soon as she’d been able to put the stress and misery of her unforgiving family behind her to settle into her new position in life, it had lessened.
“Take the ladle like this,” Nanette said, scooping a generous portion of batter from the bowl she’d mixed ingredients in and bringing it to the pan of hot oil. “And just pour it like so.”
She poured batter into a perfect circle in the pan. The whole thing hissed and bubbled, and the delicious scent of sugar and cinnamon filled the air as the cake began to cook.
Bianca pressed a hand to her mouth and swallowed, irritated that something she knew smelled good could revolt her so much.
Nanette sent her a sympathetic, sideways smile as she handed over the ladle. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Being sick is normal when you’re that way. It should pass soon enough.”
“If you say so,” Bianca said in a thick voice. She was determined to learn the basics of cookery, though. There was no telling what the future held for her and Jack. Like as not, they wouldn’t even be able to afford Nanette’s help as the consequences of her fall continued to ripple through every aspect of her and Jack’s lives.
She pushed those dreary thoughts aside and dipped the ladle back into the batter to pour her own cake. It came out as a lopsided mess that splashed hot oil over the sides of the stove.
“Careful, now,” Nanette said, taking the ladle from Bianca as though she were about to cause a fire. “Finesse. That’
s what it takes. Like this.”
She demonstrated again, then handed the ladle to Bianca once more. Her second attempt was better than the first, but it wasn’t anything to be proud of.
“Now we turn them over,” Nanette went on.
Bianca tried her best not to sigh as Nanette showed her how, then let her do the rest. She should be grateful, all things considered. The day after the wedding, on Jack’s suggestion, she’d sent for Nanette, begging her pseudo sister-in-law to take up a position as maid at the St. John’s Wood flat. Thank God Nanette had agreed, or Bianca didn’t know what she would have done.
As satisfying as it had been to abandon her family after the altar, the move had infuriated her mother. She’d sent one of Marlowe House’s footmen to fetch them from the St. John’s Wood flat less than an hour after the wedding. Jack had turned the poor young man away and given him an earful to take back to her mother and Lord Malcolm. But Bianca had felt too ill and defeated to revel in the victory, or to do any of the things newlyweds were supposed to do. She couldn’t stomach the idea of Jack touching her, quite literally. But the two of them were satisfied to simply shut the world out and go to bed with the intention of doing nothing but sleeping off the exhaustion of their whirlwind week.
That was all well and good, but when Bianca had attempted to call on her mother two days later, she’d been told Lady Katya was not at home. Which was a blatant lie, but Bianca had gotten the point. She hadn’t tried to visit her mother again. She’d stiffened her spine and vowed that she would not need to approach her mother for anything ever again.
“Why does no one tell us how difficult the basics of daily life are?” she sighed as Nanette showed her how to transfer the finished cakes onto an old towel so that the excess oil could drain off. There were still walls to wash and floors to scrub as well. Not to mention Christmas decorations to hang, if she ever had the time for it. Though the season didn’t feel as festive as it usually did, not by a long shot. At least she’d been able to send their laundry out for washing.
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