The Matrimonial Advertisement

by Mimi Matthews

  Jenny pursed her lips. “You should retire as well, Helena. You’re burnt to the socket.”

  Helena shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

  “At least change out of your evening dress. You can’t spend all night in a corset and crinoline.” Jenny caught at her hand. “Come up to your room. I’ll unpin your hair and brush it out for you. You’ll feel better afterward.”

  Helena reluctantly did as Jenny bid her. A short while later, she returned to the parlor alone, her flannel dressing gown knotted snugly at her waist and her hair in its evening plait. She curled up on the chintz sofa. The house was quiet, the only sounds the rhythmic ticking of the clock and the rustle of hot coals in the grate. She closed her eyes for a brief moment.

  The next thing she knew, the clock was chiming three. Her eyes opened blearily. Botheration! She must have fallen asleep. She sat upright on the sofa and listened. There was no sound of anyone else in the house, but outside she could hear the faint rattle and clip-clop of a hansom cab departing.

  She ran down the stairs, the voluminous skirts of her robe floating behind her. Mr. Jarrow had been waiting on a straight-backed chair in the hall all night. He was still there, but now he was on his feet, unbolting the front door.

  Justin and Mr. Finchley entered. Their hats and coats were gone, their hair disheveled, and their shirts and trousers in a despicable state. Had Helena not known better, she’d have suspected they were intoxicated. But as she swiftly descended the stairs, she saw Justin’s face illuminated in the gaslight.

  Her hand flew to her mouth, barely stifling her gasp of horror.

  Justin’s gaze shot to hers. “Ah hell,” he muttered.

  “What’s happened?” she cried. “Who did this to you?”

  “It looks worse than it is,” Justin said as Mr. Jarrow shut the door behind them.

  She crossed the hall, reaching out to him with fluttering hands only to draw back in uncertainty. “You’re covered in blood!”

  “Head wounds always bleed a great deal,” Mr. Finchley said helpfully.

  She cast him a quelling glance. “Don’t pretend it isn’t serious. He’s obviously been severely beaten.”

  “Quite severely,” Mr. Finchley agreed. “Only look at the damage Glyde has done to his fists.”

  The irony in Mr. Finchley’s voice escaped her. She caught one of Justin’s hands in both of hers. His knuckles were torn and bleeding. “Oh Justin,” she breathed. “Did you fight him?”

  “My lady?” Mrs. Jarrow appeared in the hall. She was in her nightcap and slippers, clutching her dressing gown up to her chin. “Do you have need of me?”

  Helena inhaled a steadying breath. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She refused to be that person anymore. “Indeed, Mrs. Jarrow. Will you bring hot water and linens to my bedroom? And a bottle of brandy, as well.”

  “Right away, ma’am.”

  Justin scowled down at her. At least, it looked like a scowl. It was hard to tell through all of the blood and swelling. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

  “While you were out in the dark somewhere risking your life?” She took hold of his arm and directed him to the stairs. “If that’s what you thought, sir, then you don’t know me at all.”

  Mr. Finchley backed toward the door. “As my presence is no longer required…”

  “Wait,” Helena commanded. “We may yet need you to summon a doctor.”

  “No we won’t.” Justin paused at the foot of the stairs to look back at Mr. Finchley. “Go home, Tom. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Mr. Finchley flashed him a grin. “It’s already tomorrow,” he replied before taking his leave.

  Mr. Jarrow shut and bolted the door after him. “Will you be needing anything else, my lady?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. Jarrow. That will be all.”

  Mr. Jarrow sketched a tired bow and departed the hall.

  And then Helena and Justin were alone.

  She looked up at his battered face. “Why did you do it?”

  “He deserved it.”

  “But look at you,” she said softly. “Your poor face. He can’t have been worth it.”

  Justin gazed steadily back at her. “No. But you are.”

  Helena dipped another linen in the basin of bloody water and brought it to Justin’s face. She’d rinsed away most of the dried blood from his face and hands, revealing a haphazard collection of jagged cuts and scrapes, none of which appeared to be life threatening.

  Justin held himself immobile as she tended him, enduring her attentions in stoic silence. He was seated on the edge of her bed with his booted feet on the floor. She stood between his legs, reaching up to dab at a wound on his temple. She felt his eyes on her as she worked.

  “Did you think that’s what I wanted? To have you engage in fisticuffs with that great lummox?” She smoothed back a wayward lock of hair from his forehead in order to clean the wound beneath. “I would never have asked you to fight him on my behalf. Never.”

  Justin allowed her to rail at him, unchecked. He offered not a word of explanation.

  “How do you think I felt this evening? Never knowing from one minute to the next if you were safe or if you’d been murdered and thrown in the Thames?” She dropped the linen into the blood-tinged water in the basin and reached to unfasten the buttons at the collar of his shirt.

  He caught at her hand. “What are you doing?”

  “You must take this off,” she said.

  “I have no injuries under my shirt.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Unless you’d prefer I summon a doctor?”

  He set his jaw. And then he released her hand, allowing her to unfasten his collar. When she’d finished, he quickly stripped his shirt off over his head.

  Her gaze dropped down. There were abrasions on his chest and what looked to be bruises blooming along his ribs, but that wasn’t what made her heart stutter and her mouth go dry. No. It was the sight of him, so shockingly, gloriously masculine.

  She’d never seen a gentleman’s naked chest before, except in books with pictures from classical antiquity. She remembered one such book with a plate depicting a statue of Prometheus chained to a rock. The Greek Titan had been partially unclothed, the lean muscles of his arms and chest well defined. Justin’s bare arms and torso were shaped along the same lines as that statue. Indeed, the hard planes and grooves of his muscles might have been chiseled from stone.

  But unlike the marble Prometheus, Justin’s chest was lightly covered in a mat of black hair which tapered down in a narrow line, disappearing beneath his woolen trousers.

  It was also covered with scars.

  Along each of his upper arms and layered on both of his sides were burns. The same size and shape as the burn scars that marred his face and neck. They were puckered red, falling in thick lines one over the other. A hot poker, he’d said. They held it in the fire and then they held it against me.

  Helena moistened her lips. Justin was looking at her, his expression inscrutable as ever. She was painfully aware of the intensity of his regard. Did he think she’d cringe away from the sight of him? She didn’t feel much like cringing. Rather the opposite. She wanted to touch him. To trace her fingers over every hollow and groove of his muscled chest.

  She reached for a fresh linen, her hands suddenly unsteady as she soaked it in the water and wrung it out. “Could he have broken your ribs?” She pressed it to a minor cut below his right shoulder.

  He sucked in his breath. “No.”

  “Does that hurt?” She swabbed the wet linen very lightly over his chest.

  “No,” he rasped again.

  “You sound as if it does.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  Helena frowned at him. Were all gentlemen so difficult when they were injured? Giles hadn’t been. Then again, she couldn’t re
member Giles having ever engaged in a bout of fisticuffs with a man of Mr. Glyde’s dimensions.

  She tossed the scrap of linen back into the basin and then carried the whole of it to the chiffonier and set it down. Mrs. Jarrow had brought up a jar of salve along with the linens. Helena twisted off the lid and gave it a delicate sniff. Satisfied, she went back to stand between Justin’s legs.

  “What’s that?” he asked gruffly.

  “Salve of some kind. It smells of beeswax and honey.” She touched her fingers to his chin, tipping his face up so that she could apply a dollop of it to one of his cuts. “Where is Mr. Glyde now? Has he gone back to my uncle?”

  “No. He’s not with your uncle.” Justin closed his eyes as she dabbed salve on the cuts over his brow. “He’s at the London docks.”

  “What in heaven is he doing there?”

  “At present? He’s trussed up in the bottom of a ship.”

  “What?”

  Justin’s eyes opened again. For the first time since his return, she saw something like humor in his gaze. “Glyde said that terrorizing you was a job to him, nothing more. So…” He shrugged. “I found him a new position.”

  Helena stared at him, openmouthed. “A new position?” She was both fascinated and appalled. “Where?”

  “In the West Indies. He sails with the morning tide.”

  “He’s gone? He’s left London?” She pressed a hand to her midriff. “Is he going to come back?”

  “No,” Justin said, his voice softening. “He won’t come back.”

  Helena was scarcely able to accept it. Mr. Glyde was gone? He’d never hurt her again?

  The jar of salve clattered to the floor as she flung her arms around Justin’s neck. She was beyond words. Beyond anything. All she could manage was to hold him tight, hoping against hope that he understood how profoundly grateful she was for what he’d done for her.

  Justin brought an arm around her waist. He slowly drew back to look at her. “I don’t want your gratitude. I didn’t do it for that.”

  “You have it anyway,” she said. “And so much more.”

  Afterward, she would wonder if he’d moved his head of his own accord or if it was she who’d urged him to her with an insistent press of her hand. She very much feared it was the latter.

  Whoever instigated the movement, it led to her mouth finding his in a warm, passionate kiss.

  He didn’t rebuff her. Not at first. For the briefest moment, he returned her kiss with the same tenderness he’d shown her at the Stanhope Hotel. And then—

  “No,” he said gently “No.” He touched her cheek. “It’s not a good idea.”

  Helena went rigid with embarrassment as he pulled away from her. A swell of overwhelming humiliation tightened her throat. “You’re right.”

  But she didn’t know what she was agreeing to. She was too mortified to think. Too ashamed to meet his eyes. If only a hole in the floor would open up, she would gladly leap into it.

  Good gracious, she had kissed him. And now—

  He was rejecting her.

  “It will only confuse things,” Justin said.

  “I see.” She backed away from him. “Forgive me, I thought— But you’re quite right. I was mistaken.”

  “Helena—”

  She took another backward step toward the door. “It’s clear as day. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it before.”

  He moved to rise from the bed. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “You can’t get past it. The lies I told you. The way I tricked you into marriage.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not why—” He broke off with a low growl of frustration. “Good God, Helena, we’ve already been over this. You didn’t lie to me. I knew you had secrets. I wanted you anyway.”

  “You don’t want me. You can’t.” Her cheeks burned. “When someone has wronged you, you’re incapable of forgiving them.”

  A spasm of emotion passed over Justin’s face. “Not you. Never you.”

  “Why not? It would be fair, in my case. What I did is unforgiveable. It was stupid of me to think—to expect—” She swallowed. “After what I kept from you, I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

  A bleak look of resignation flickered in Justin’s eyes. It was there a moment and then gone, snuffed out like a candle flame as his expression hardened into firm resolve. “Would you like to know what’s unforgiveable?” he asked. “The things I’ve kept from you.”

  “Nothing could be worse than this.”

  “You think not?” He looked at her. “The day we met at the King’s Arm, you asked me which general I served under in Cawnpore. You wanted to know if it was Major General Hugh Wheeler or if I’d arrived later, as part of the relieving forces under Brigadier General Neill.”

  Helena stared at him, her embarrassment at his rejection temporarily receding. “You said it wasn’t General Neill. That you didn’t take part in the…” She couldn’t bring herself to mention rape. “In the…pillaging…engaged in by his men.”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “But if I’d capably performed my duties, there would have been no need for Neill to ride in with his troops and retake the city.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Because of me, more than two hundred women and children were slaughtered in Cawnpore. British women and children. All captured and killed in the most violent manner. Yet I survived. I. Who was supposed to be protecting them. Is that not unforgivable?”

  A cold, cloying sense of uneasiness seeped into Helena’s blood. More than two hundred British women and children? Good lord. He couldn’t mean… “The Cawnpore Massacre,” she whispered.

  She knew about it. Everyone did. It had only happened two years before and had been in all the papers. Early reports had described the atrocities in graphic detail. It had outraged the British public.

  And it had galvanized the relieving forces.

  Under the command of Brigadier General Neill, they had exacted a brutal vengeance against those deemed responsible. Many innocent Indians had been casualties of their wrath.

  Justin sank back down on the edge of the bed. “The British garrison at Cawnpore was under siege. We couldn’t last much longer. We hadn’t the resources. After three weeks, General Wheeler had no choice but to negotiate with the rebels. In exchange for his surrender, he made their leader—a rebel rajah called Nana Sahib—promise to grant the women and children safe passage out of the city.”

  Helena moved closer to him as he spoke, her arms folded across her midsection.

  “I was one of the soldiers escorting the women and children to the River Ganges. There were boats there that would have taken them to safety.” Justin’s throat convulsed in a swallow. “But when we arrived at Sati Chaura Ghat—when we began to board the boats—”

  “The sepoys attacked,” she said.

  “They killed most of the soldiers. My batman, as well. I’ll spare you the details. As for the women and children…”

  “They captured them and imprisoned them in a little house near a well. I read about it in the newspapers.”

  “They weren’t just imprisoned there, Helena. They were slaughtered.”

  “I know,” she acknowledged softly. The newspapers had printed reports of what British soldiers had found when they’d finally arrived to rescue the women. It had been unspeakable. A gruesome, senseless tragedy the likes of which Helena couldn’t even imagine. “Oh, but Justin…that wasn’t your fault. How could it have been?”

  “Because I sympathized with them,” he said with sudden fierceness. “I never thought we should be in India. Who could blame them for hating us? We disrespected them. Treated them like animals.” One of his fists clenched. “I had friends among them. Decent men and women. I did business with them. Even invested some of my earnings. When all hell broke loose, my judgment was
called into question. And when I was tasked with escorting the women and children prisoners to safety…” His face contorted.

  “But that’s…” Helena was horrified. “Surely no one could have thought…”

  “That I didn’t fight as hard as I could have? That I didn’t do my utmost to protect them from harm?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His fingers raked through his already disheveled hair. “They did more than think it. Some of them said it. Though rarely to my face.”

  “How could they even suggest such a thing? You were captured and tortured!”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I wasn’t killed.” He looked up at her, his mouth twisted into a bitter rictus of a smile. “Unlike the other prisoners, my captors let me live.”

  Justin rose abruptly from the bed and crossed the room to the marble-topped chiffonier. Mrs. Jarrow had brought up a bottle of brandy. There were no glasses. He supposed Helena had meant to pour it on his wounds or some such thing. But he didn’t really care what it was meant for. He uncorked it with his teeth and took a long drink directly from the bottle.

  He was dreadfully conscious of his half-clothed state. With his scarred chest and arms exposed to Helena’s view, he felt oddly vulnerable. Like a raw lad with his first woman. But such feelings paled in comparison to the sense of hopeless despair that had descended over him as he’d recounted what had taken place in Cawnpore.

  Helena stood near the bed, watching him as he drank. Her hair was bound up in a long braid, secured over the front of one shoulder with a black silk ribbon. He could see spots of blood on her dressing gown from when she’d cleaned his wounds.

  There was something startlingly intimate about the two of them together in her bedroom, each in a state of undress. It’s what he’d always imagined married life would be like. A level of comfort with a woman. A sense that she accepted him. All of him.

  Even so, he hadn’t planned to tell her anything about the massacre. Not now. Possibly not ever. It was a source of shame to him. A failure which had resulted in the deaths of countless people.