From Waif to Gentleman's Wife

by Julia Justiss

  Ned reached for her hand and kissed the fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘My beautiful Joanna.’

  ‘I should rather thank you, my wonderful…inventive…skilful…untiring Ned,’ she replied, delighting as his expression changed from surprise to pleasure to an embarrassed pride at her praise.

  He assisted her to her feet and walked her towards the door. ‘I must go to town this morning and see about arranging Barksdale’s arraignment, then question as many as possible of the witnesses. The Assizes are to meet shortly, but I’ll send word to see if I can speed up the process by having a judge come here immediately to conduct a hearing. The men of Blenhem and Hazelwick are respectful of the law, but I don’t want to test their patience by keeping the villain too long in gaol—or allow any of his cohorts to slip away. Though I hope all the danger has passed, will you indulge me and stay here today?’

  ‘Will you indulge me?’

  ‘If I can,’ he answered, a tenderness in his face that sent a soaring thrill of delight through her as he halted beside her on the threshold.

  ‘Kiss me, then!’ she demanded.

  Readily he bent his head. As he cupped her face in his hands, she prolonged what had begun as a sweetly tender exchange by slipping her tongue between his pliant lips and thrusting deep inside. After a startled instant, his hands clenched, then slipped down to grasp her shoulders, as his tongue met hers, sliding, suckling, tasting, until her blood fired to boiling and she pressed herself against him, exulting at the hardness straining against his breeches.

  With a groan, he gently pushed her away. ‘Vixen! If I don’t stop immediately, I’ll be lost, and I must go to Hazelwick…though all I want to do is carry you back to my chamber and resume what we discontinued in the early light of dawn.’

  ‘Why don’t we?’ she suggested with a wicked smile as she trailed a finger down his chest.

  With another groan, he captured her finger before it could descend to its ultimate destination. ‘You’ll be the death of me, you heartless wench!’ he scolded her with a chuckle. ‘And I must warn you, I shall punish very severely tonight…several times over. Little as I wish it, though, to Hazelwick I must go.’

  She knew it was naughty of her to tease him…yet her heart exulted at the regret evident in his voice. It was quite obvious that, despite the serious obligations calling him, he was finding choosing duty over pleasure extremely difficult.

  But he wouldn’t be her darling, wonderful, honourable Ned if he weren’t guaranteed always to place duty first, regardless of his own desires.

  ‘Besides,’ he continued, giving her fingertips another kiss before releasing them, ‘I’m trying mightily to maintain at least a semblance of discretion. When Myles sniggered as I walked into the breakfast room this morning, my first thought was I must have tied my neckcloth awry—a very great possibility, since my thoughts were so occupied by memories of a certain lady that I was scarcely aware of putting on my garments.’ With a wry grimace, Ned sighed. ‘He laughed outright when I checked it in the glass. I fear he suspects our attachment.’

  ‘He gave me a knowing wink,’ she admitted.

  Ned’s face sobered. ‘That concerns me. I shall be most displeased if any of the staff says or does anything slighting towards you because of my…imprudence last night.’

  ‘It wasn’t imprudent,’ she said at once. ‘It was wonderful.’

  That half-pleased, half-embarrassed smile lit his face again, touching her heart with how greedily he soaked up her praise. Obviously no lady had ever voiced appreciation for his lover’s skills as eloquently as she should have!

  Joanna was thrilled the task had fallen to her—and it would, she vowed to herself, henceforth remain hers alone, now and forever!

  Unless, after a few weeks or months of an agreeable liaison, he sent her away. Once again she rejected the thought, firmly refusing to allow anything to dim today’s joy.

  Meanwhile, Ned repeated, ‘I must go now, I’m afraid. I hope to uncover enough evidence to guarantee a conviction against Barksdale, not just for holding you captive, but for plotting, if not himself setting, the mill fire and for being the leader of the Spencean group at the Hart and Hare.’

  ‘I wish you the best of luck. If my testimony can assist in that effort, I shall be happy to offer it.’

  He gave her hand another squeeze. ‘Thank you. I expect to be back by late afternoon. And if all unfolds as I hope it will, I shall have something very important to tell you. Something even more important to ask. Will you wait for me?’

  Could he mean what she thought he meant? Bubbles of joy and excitement fizzled in her veins like champagne uncorked. She bobbed her head eagerly, not minding the pain such an action set off. ‘I will wait forever,’ she vowed.

  He chuckled. ‘Both I, and my very overheated imagination, sincerely hope it won’t take that long.’ Darting a look down the hallway to make sure none of the household was in view, he planted a quick kiss on her cheek. ‘Until later, then—my sweet darling.’

  He gave her a broad smile and strode off.

  Smiling too, she watched him walk down the hallway to the front door. With a giggle, she hurried to the morning room to give him a little wave from the window when he turned towards the house before accepting the groom’s leg up on his horse. She continued to watch until he rode out of sight, before wandering back into the hallway.

  Where she stopped abruptly after almost colliding with Mrs Winston.

  ‘I was coming to see how my patient did.’ Looking her up and down, the older lady smiled. ‘I can see you are doing quite well. No matter how much that head might hurt!’

  Though Joanna blushed, she was too bursting with happiness to mind that the housekeeper obviously knew about her liaison. ‘I’m very well indeed, thank you!’ Then to the housekeeper’s surprise, she grabbed the woman’s hands, laughing, and twirled her in a circle.

  Shaking her head at her, Mrs Winston pulled her hands away. ‘Goodness, you’ll make me dizzy! As he made you, I see.’ With an arch smile, she murmured, ‘A fine, big, strapping lad, is he? Made the stars fall for you all night, I’ll wager!’

  ‘You cannot imagine!’ Joanna affirmed with a sigh.

  Mrs Winston laughed. ‘Though ’tis years since I lost my man and took up housekeeping, I can still imagine. Go on with you into the morning room. I promised Mr Greaves I’d brew you some herbal tea and check your bruises…though I suspect he’s already provided the best possible medicine a woman could wish for to cure a bump on the head, eh?’

  Wrapping her arms around herself, Joanna smiled after the departing housekeeper. She was Ned’s lady now and apparently everyone knew it. Though in the back of her mind, the remnants of her genteel upbringing fretted at the fact that their relationship was already so widely known, she couldn’t, wouldn’t regret last night. Better to concentrate on the much more exciting question of what Ned was coming back to tell—and ask—her.

  Might he solicit her hand in marriage?

  ‘Twas what she desired above all things—but she would never push him to it. Still, Ned Greaves was an honourable man through and through. One who’d already expressed his concern about her reputation among the staff, a man who was unlikely to trifle with a woman whom he knew had earned the respect of her fellows and the whole community. One who was to become the schoolteacher for that community.

  Though she could do little now to advance his career, perhaps it was possible that an ambitious young man of vast talents might still consider it advantageous to wed a woman who’d been a gentleman’s daughter and a gentleman’s wife. Though her exalted former in-laws—and her even more exalted cousin Lord Englemere—would probably look down on her for allying herself with a man they and their society would unquestionably view as vastly beneath them.

  She shrugged. Since her in-laws had done nothing to enable their son’s widow to maintain her status, she wasn’t about to start worrying about their opinion—nor that of the ton. Despite their link
by blood, she’d never belonged to the exclusive social world that embraced Lord Englemere.

  Not for the first time, she wondered exactly what was the social background of the man she could so easily envision marrying. He’d told her nothing of his past, which led her to suspect it was far from exalted.

  Perhaps he showed such a ready sympathy for Davie because he, too, was an orphan. Given his placement in Lord Englemere’s service, he might even be the illegitimate son of a lord, who’d educated his by-blow and sent him off with references to work for the class to which he was connected by blood, but could never enter.

  What would her vicar father think of her allying herself to such a man? Reproving herself for the unexpected flash of dismay engendered by the thought, she told herself tartly that Papa would receive it better than the intelligence that his daughter had lured a man to lie with her out of wedlock.

  But what did it matter what her family or society thought, as long as they were both happy? For herself, she knew without doubt she could happily spend the rest of her days as Ned Greaves’s wife.

  How easily she could picture their life together. She, teaching and nurturing children at school. Him, rebuilding the stocking mill, helping farmers tend their fields through the autumn, then gathering in perhaps the best harvest Blenhem had seen in many years. Obtaining a good price for their crops, guaranteeing a bounty to last through the winter.

  Working with Davie too, who, she felt sure, would learn quickly. By next autumn he might even be ready to obtain a tutor to prepare him for university, if Ned could persuade his lofty patron Lord Englemere to sponsor the boy. Which, of course, he would. Her amazing, sensual, wonderful Ned could do anything!

  Ah, to think of reuniting after a hard day’s work every night to kiss and touch and love, greedily drowning in the exquisite sensations he created in her.

  Only one cloud obscured her vision of bliss. Though her condition had allowed her to boldly seduce Ned without worry of consequences, if they wed and the doctors in India were correct, she would never be able to give him a son.

  But she’d not think of that now, any more than she would listen to the vile whispers of doubt that hinted the information he wished to share and the question he meant to ask would have nothing to do with marriage.

  She couldn’t bear to consider it…because even if he dashed her hopes and offered her carte blanche, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to refuse him.

  So she simply wouldn’t consider it. Hugging her joy close, she danced down the hall to the morning room.

  Chapter Eighteen

  L ate that evening, over a tankard of the Hart and Hare’s finest ale, Ned sat at the desk in a small upstairs bedchamber, reviewing notes taken during the day. It had helped his quest for information that news of Barksdale’s imprisonment had spread rapidly, leading many townspeople and local farmers to come peer through the bars at the prisoner, as if he were a beast in the Tower of London.

  Though the analogy ended there. Unlike those rather pathetic, caged animals who had lost the instincts of the wild, even in confinement, Barksdale remained dangerous.Many of the visitors, informed by the constable that Ned was gathering testimony, had subsequently come to visit him at the Hart and Hare. While understanding their honesty might lead them into difficulties, shocked by the mill fire and the subsequent attack upon Mrs Merrill, a gratifying number of men involved in the radical group had come forward to testify.

  Barksdale himself, since his original outburst at the schoolhouse, had maintained an aloof silence, making no reply to the gawkers who questioned or taunted him. Given the damning evidence he’d gathered from the witnesses, Ned hoped perhaps to extract a confession from the man his Nottingham and Manchester allies had unanimously described as the planner and fomenter of local unrest. Though as evidence of Barksdale’s ruthless character continued to build, Ned realised such a hardened villain was unlikely to oblige.

  However, so many witnesses had been eager to speak that by late afternoon Ned realised he would need to remain overnight at the Hart and Hare if he wished to record all of it, a decision reinforced when he received a reply to the urgent missive he’d sent early that morning. Rather to Ned’s relief, since he held such a low opinion of the man, Squire Abernathy, the local magistrate, was away in London. Given the gravity of the offenses alleged against Barksdale and the fact that some of them had taken place in other parishes, a magistrate from the adjacent county had agreed to ride over and conduct a hearing on the morrow.

  His last conference with an unemployed mill worker had ended just half an hour previous. Confident now that Barksdale would not be able to escape the tightening noose of incriminating evidence the man himself had fashioned, Ned at last let his thoughts return to the tantalising object that, despite the urgency of his task, had been teasing at the edges of his mind all day—Joanna.

  He’d felt gloriously, rapturously happy as he rode off this morning after returning Joanna one last wave. He’d given his frisky mount his head, letting the animal gallop and laughing in joyous abandon as the horse cleared the fence into the front pasture, then the stone wall by the gatehouse to the Hazelwick Lane. He could hardly wait to finish this business and return to Joanna—his beautiful, witty, sensual Joanna.

  He’d begun his interrogations on fire with enthusiasm to track down every witness to the incidents at the mill and the school, then to closely question the Nottingham journeyman and all the men Mary had tagged as members of the group that met at Hart and Hare. His excitement and impatience had only heightened after he learned the hearing would be held tomorrow. Perhaps by noon, he could see this business finished for good and all.

  Ned certainly hoped so. He felt as if he’d been marking time all his life, waiting to find Joanna and begin anew, embarking together into a future filled with more richness and delight than he’d dared believe possible.

  As he envisioned her lovely face, his heart swelled in his chest with the same exuberant impatience his mount had shown in taking the obstacles. How he longed to see her again!

  But he’d have to wait until tomorrow. After realising he would need to remain in town overnight, Ned had penned the household a hasty note informing them of the delay and requesting that they come to Hazelwick in the morning for the hearing—and bring Davie. He’d need Joanna to describe how she’d been detained against her will and threatened at pistol-point. Though Davie was not of age to give evidence, Ned wished him to be available if the magistrate wanted to question him about the events Tanner and the other witnesses would present.

  He longed for her, but as he looked around the small bare inn chamber, he also felt a small measure of relief. Now that he had tasted her sweetness, it would be difficult indeed to restrain himself. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to resist the temptation of spending the night in Joanna’s bed if he’d returned to Blenhem. She’d proved last night how easily her allure could crumble his will to resist.

  He was serious about his concern in exposing her to gossip and possible censure. Despite his parting remark this morning, he intended to stiffen his resolve and refrain from dallying with her again until she was legally his wife.

  Oh, that it might be soon! Especially after last night, he couldn’t wait to reveal all he’d been forced to hide and proceed with her on an honest footing.

  Still, an underlying uneasiness stirred at the prospect. She was bound to be incensed at first that he’d kept the truth from her for so long. Still, surely after he laid all the facts before her, she’d understand why he’d felt the deception had been necessary?

  At least, he hoped so. If she remained angry, he’d simply have to find some way to allay her disapproval. He would not even entertain the thought of what he would do if the unthinkable happened and she refused him. After she’d fulfilled his most extravagant fantasies last night, he couldn’t envision a life without her wit, competence and industry at his side by day and her sensual fire in his arms by night.

  Once Barksdale had b
een arraigned and bound over for trial—please heaven, let it be tomorrow!—he could take the first steps on the road to claiming that life.

  Despite his lack of sleep the previous night and the anticipation of settling the business of Barksdale on the morrow, Ned slept poorly. Finally, after tossing and turning most of night, pale light illumined the windows, announcing the dawn of what would probably be the most important day of his life.The common room at the inn being the largest public space in Hazelwick, the hearing was to be held there. Going downstairs for an early breakfast, Ned discovered a crowd was already gathering. Turning away cordially the volley of questions and speculations fired at him, he invited all interested parties to stay for the hearing, where they might hear the witnesses speak and watch the evidence presented.

  By the time he returned after going up to his chamber to gather his notes, the makeshift courtroom was full to overflowing. Among the assembly he saw Mary, Jesse protectively at her side, and nodded. He’d already assured her yesterday he did not intend to call on her unless absolutely necessary.

  As his pocket watch ticked closer to the hour they could expect the magistrate to arrive, Ned saw Davie escorting Joanna into the room. Ned had time only to send her a brilliant smile of greeting before, in a sudden silence broken by a few jeers and mutterings, the constable led Barksdale in.

  The prisoner seemed neither cowed by the hostile reception nor as coolly impassive as he’d been yesterday. Indeed, to Ned’s surprise, he raised his bound hands and waved for silence, his expression genial.

  ‘Hear me, good people,’ he called out, his resonant voice easily carrying through the packed room.

  ‘Hear you gag at the end of a rope!’ someone shouted.

  ‘If that is my fate, so be it,’ he called again, ‘but let me speak now.’ Again he held out his hands for silence, radiating such a sense of confidence and authority that, startled, reluctant, the assembly fell into an uneasy quiet broken only by a few mutters.