The Wild Marquis

by Miranda Neville

  The landlord and a couple of elderly rustics, who formed the afternoon population of the taproom, regarded the late Mr. Fitterbourne as at best quite mad, at worst criminal.

  “Spent everything on books, he did,” said one old fellow, whose perfectly bald pate contrasted comically with a bushy white beard.

  All three of them shook their heads in disbelief.

  “Not a penny piece went to the land or the cottages,” said the other customer, mumbling through the one remaining tooth that could be seen in the front of his mouth. “Those were bad times in Fernley.”

  “What of his family? His wife?” Cain asked. “Did he not have a daughter?”

  “His lady died when the girl was but a child,” said the landlord. “Miss Cassandra, a pretty young lady. She died too, must be she was twenty-two, twenty-three years old.”

  “Did she marry?”

  The landlord avoided meeting Cain’s eye. “No,” he said without elaboration.

  “So Mr. Fitterbourne lost his family. That’s hard on a man.”

  Cain’s companions were unimpressed. “Made no difference, far as I could see,” said One Tooth. “He were no better before.”

  “There was the girl,” contributed the bearded bald one.

  The other two looked embarrassed. “We don’t talk about that,” the landlord said. But White Beard merely drained his tankard and gave Cain an expectant look. Cain nodded, and not a man refused his refill.

  “The girl?” he asked.

  “Aye. Came to live at the Court.” A significant pause.

  “Who was she?”

  “That’s what we don’t rightly know.” The man winked, waggling an eyebrow as bushy as his beard. “Came just after Miss Cassandra died. Only a babe she were. Never saw her much save on Sundays at St. Peter’s.”

  “Kept her out of sight of decent people,” the landlord said, “except in church. Don’t know why the vicar allowed it.”

  Cain swore there and then he would apologize to Juliana for ever doubting her. There was no question the local people of Fernley had the same interpretation of her parentage as she. He also felt like hitting the publican. He’d better move on to the real reason for his inquiries, before he lost his temper at the cruelty of men who would despise a helpless child for the accident of her birth.

  “What of the new Mr. Fitterbourne? What manner of man is he?”

  His informant snorted, sending flecks of beer into his beard. “Turned the little bastard out of the house right away. Powerful proper gentleman, he be.”

  Cain gritted his teeth and kept his hands at his side. “Is he a good landlord?”

  The three of them, after some discussion, allowed that Mr. Frederick Fitterbourne was an improvement on his predecessor. After three years the Fernley estate showed signs of renewed prosperity.

  “A close man with a shilling, but fair.” The publican’s final comment expressed the unanimous opinion.

  He was also, Cain established, now in residence, along with his wife and family of five promising children.

  It was odd to be in Salisbury again, a scant five miles from where she’d passed most of her life. Not that Juliana knew the city well. It hadn’t been her own choice, but she’d grown up as much of a recluse as her grandfather.

  Yet there was something in the air of the cathedral town that was familiar and homelike. And her husband had lived here for several years before they married and moved to London. Joseph’s family came from the North of England, otherwise he wouldn’t have been staying in an inn when he made that last visit.

  She and Cain occupied a comfortable suite of rooms at the White Hart, close to the cathedral. Cain had left her behind under strict orders to stay in the room and lock the door.

  He was slightly irrational on the subject. If someone wanted to cause her physical harm there had been numerous opportunities, even since she acquired the dubious protection of the bulldog Quarto. Hiding the stolen book in her shop, then spreading a rumor to send eager book collectors to find it, was the work of a subtle schemer, not the kind of man to attack her in the street. Besides, all that had happened in London and she was in Salisbury.

  So she decided to go out.

  The soaring spire was a constant presence even before she reached the close and was treated to the full effect of the great cathedral. She’d been confirmed there; even Mr. Fitterbourne’s eccentricity didn’t extend to ignoring the forms of religious observance.

  Passing through the medieval High Street Gate, she spared a glance at Mr. Birch’s bookshop. Her old friend was dead and his sister’s son now ran the business. Joseph had had ambitions to take over when his employer retired, but the nephew wanted it. That’s why Joseph had married her and her thousand pounds.

  The High Street was lined with shops, including a drapery she remembered as a treasure trove of wonders. She’d had a governess for a few years. As she approached womanhood Miss Beeston attempted to teach her some of the more conventional skills of young ladies, such as how to dress attractively. The bolts of silk and muslin, spools of ribbon in every conceivable color, marvelous buttons in silver, ivory, and pearl, fascinated the fourteen-year-old Juliana and, for a time, replaced her passion for printed pages. For a very short time.

  When Mr. Fitterbourne discovered how much these fripperies cost he’d remonstrated with her. Surely, he demanded, she’d rather have a first edition of Locke than a new gown? Meekly she agreed and won back her guardian’s approval. Miss Beeston departed, and that was the end of Juliana’s formal education and her brief flirtation with vanity.

  The trouble was, it occurred to her now, she never got the first edition of Locke. Like every book on which her grandfather had lavished his fortune, it was sold to Tarleton.

  The medieval Poultry Cross lay ahead of her. Beyond it stood a largish building, its half timbers and irregular construction proclaiming its vintage. The Haunch of Venison was Salisbury’s most venerable hostelry, perhaps as old as the cathedral itself. Without consciously knowing it, Juliana had decided to visit the spot where her husband met his demise, exactly one year ago from tomorrow.

  The landlord, Mr. Phillips, greeted her with deference, sympathy, and a touch of defensiveness. She supposed he’d sooner forget the anniversary of an ugly crime on his premises. Since it was currently unoccupied, he agreed to show her the room.

  The narrow stairs and corridors of the ancient building wound up to the third floor. Mr. Phillips used a key and opened a door to reveal an attic room with a narrow dormer window overlooking the market square. Not much of a place to end your time on earth, but Joseph had always been frugal and would have taken one of the cheapest rooms available.

  “It must have been hard carrying all those books upstairs,” she mused.

  “Didn’t have to,” Phillips replied. “Miss Combe’s servant carried them in for him. I remember because she died the same day. Or maybe the next. I don’t rightly recall. She was an old lady, and ailing.”

  So the old woman hadn’t even lived to enjoy the proceeds of selling her wretched books.

  Juliana tried to imagine her husband’s last hours. She didn’t know when he’d been killed, only that it was nighttime and he’d been found in the morning.

  “Was it market day?” she asked.

  “Aye.”

  “It would have been noisy.”

  “That it was,” agreed the landlord. “We’re always busy on market days.”

  “Did my husband dine in the tavern that evening? But perhaps you don’t remember.”

  “Well, normally I wouldn’t, but I had to answer a whole lot of questions the next day. So I can tell you we served a nice steak and kidney pudding, and Mr. Merton enjoyed a good meal.”

  “I’m glad. That was his favorite dinner.” Joseph wasn’t particularly interested in food but sometimes, to celebrate a particularly profitable sale, they dined at a chophouse in Leicester Square. That was the dish he always ordered.

  “Did he linger in the taproom after dinne
r?” She asked.

  “Not late. He told me he wanted to catch the early mail coach to London, asked me how early he could break his fast. That’s how I came to find him. I went to his room the next morning. Reckoned he’d slept longer than he meant and I’d better give him a call.”

  “That was good of you.”

  “Well,” said the landlord gruffly, “we take care of our customers.” He seemed to be struggling with a long-held resentment. “The magistrate, he wanted to know how I’d let a villain in to do murder. How am I supposed to know every soul that comes in with the inn full to bursting? Not to mention them that come in just to wet their whistles. Twenty-five years I’ve run this inn, and my father before me just as long. And we’ve never had such a thing happen. A bit of a brawl or fisticuffs in the taproom, that’s one thing. But murder and robbery? Never! There was blood all over the room.”

  Juliana felt sick. Her own feelings threatened to overset her composure. Extracting herself from the landlord’s indignation at the insult to his house, she fled back onto the street.

  She’d never properly mourned Joseph. Shock at his death had been rapidly superseded by the necessity of working for her own survival. And when she’d discovered how hard it was to make a living on her own, her resentment toward the world had extended to her late husband. She’d always felt he hadn’t appreciated her own knowledge and talent but married her for her money. Finding that most of the book world she wished to inhabit regarded her as of little account without him only increased her anger.

  Anger. Yes, she realized, as she strode along at the fastest pace her annoyingly short legs would carry her. She’d been angry with Joseph.

  Yet their two years of marriage hadn’t been all bad. They’d endlessly talked about books, their mutual passion. They’d shared triumphs and failures. They’d lived together. They’d shared a bed.

  He hadn’t loved her and she hadn’t loved him, but Joseph Merton and she had been partners and friends. Like any human being he deserved to have his passing mourned.

  So Juliana walked through the streets of Salisbury with her eyes blinded by tears. She wept for Joseph’s short life, for the waste of his youth and knowledge and ambition, for his sordid, painful death in a cheap, noisy room.

  She cried until there were no more tears to fall, and it seemed entirely fitting that, as she approached the White Hart Inn, the heavens themselves opened. She stopped and loosened her bonnet strings, pushing the headgear back and ignoring those who looked at her askance as they rushed to reach shelter. She raised her face to the sky and let the cool rain rinse away her grief.

  Cain was still angry when he returned to Salisbury and the rooms at the White Hart taken by “Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.” Little wonder that Juliana could be a little prickly at times. Beyond taking care not to add to their number, Cain had never given a great deal of thought to the lives of those born out of wedlock. The scorn shown by a trio of rustics toward a young child, just because her parents hadn’t been married, shocked him. Living as he had among the demimonde and those sunk even lower, he thought he’d seen meaningless hardship and brutality. But the cruelties of life in London’s rougher areas had, at least, the excuse of poverty and desperation.

  Juliana had grown up the ward and unacknowledged granddaughter of a man of property. Cain had failed to appreciate just how much her shadowy birth placed her outside of the range of society’s tolerance.

  She’d understood of course. She’d lived with it. And seen at once why she couldn’t marry him.

  Cain should know better than anyone that noble birth and great wealth didn’t guarantee happiness. His own family history was stark proof of that. He had, he supposed, thought it peculiar, imagined that every other prosperous, wellborn family was a happy one. But when it came down to it, his own grievances were nothing compared to Juliana’s, for he had the hope and possibility of redress. Nothing could correct the stigma of illegitimacy. Except proving her birth otherwise.

  Cain swore there and then he’d leave no stone unturned, no parish register unscrutinized. If Cassandra Fitterbourne had married her beloved Julian, Cain would find the proof.

  And he’d take personal pleasure in forcing it down the throat of every inhabitant of the village of Fernley in Wiltshire, starting with Mr. Frederick Fitterbourne.

  The sitting room of their suite of rooms was empty. Juliana must be taking a nap. He knocked softly on the door of the bedchamber.

  No answer.

  He knocked louder.

  She couldn’t be sleeping that deeply at four in the afternoon. He banged on the door.

  My God, he thought. Her husband had been murdered in the room of an inn in Salisbury. Not the same inn, but still. He should never have left her alone.

  Abandoning niceties, he wrenched open the door. Their portmanteaux stood undisturbed on the floor. Of Juliana herself there was no sign. Gripped by panic, Cain rushed into the dressing room, empty save for a washstand and a small bed.

  Why had she gone out? He should never have left her alone when some murderous villain, perhaps the same one who’d killed Joseph Merton, was at large. He was trying to think calmly about where to begin a search, when he heard someone enter the bedchamber.

  Her pelisse exuded the scent of damp wool. She’d removed her bonnet, which she now dropped onto the floor, and her tawny golden hair hung in damp hanks about her shoulders. Her face shone with water.

  She looked better than a five-course meal to a starving man.

  “Where have you been?” he shouted, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.

  “I went for a walk.”

  “Are you mad? When there may be an assassin out there waiting to attack you?”

  “Nothing happened.” Her voice was quite without expression. She sounded almost dazed.

  “For God’s sake, let’s get you out of that coat before you take a chill and die.”

  She said nothing, merely staring at him with a look of wonder in her face, as though she’d never truly seen him before.

  His fingers trembled as he worked the buttons of the pelisse and ended up ripping one clean out of the fabric before he was able to throw the garment to the floor.

  “Your shoes and stockings are soaked,” he scolded. “Off with them.” Down on one knee he unbuttoned her half boots, tugged them off, and threw them over his shoulder. Her hosiery suffered the same fate. He didn’t ask himself why her exposure to a simple rain shower urged him to such frenzied action. As a lifelong resident of England she’d survived many such wettings. Instead he snatched a towel from the washstand in the corner and used it to give her head a vigorous rub. And all the time she merely stood, acquiescent, watching him, not uttering a single word.

  Then, easing off his attention to her wet hair, he stared back into her face and noticed something for the first time.

  “You’ve been crying.” The hitch in his voice matched a jog in his heartbeat. He examined her face intently, running his thumbs gently over the soft, slightly swollen skin beneath her eyes. “Did someone frighten you?”

  She parted her lips, and his gaze was captivated by the perfectly formed raspberry pink bow. Instead of answering him with words the mouth parted further. Her eyes changed from cool green moss to smoldering golden embers. She reached up, grasped his head between small, capable hands, and pulled it down to kiss.

  All thoughts of murder, injustice, or the dangers posed by a head cold fled his mind.

  He tasted cool rain and warm honey on lips that clung to his with a force echoing the strength of his own desire.

  At last. He’d been waiting for this forever.

  Mouths and tongues clashed in voracious kisses. His arms enclosed her slight body; hands clasped her behind through her skirts and tugged her against him. The evidence of his desire had reached rigidity with a speed that recalled, but didn’t surpass, his most desperate adolescent fantasies.

  Only a few feet behind them was a bed, a large, tall, and comfortable bed. To Cain’s great joy he
had no need to push Juliana in that direction. He was pulled. Her hands dropped to his shoulders and, without releasing him from their kiss, she stepped backward, taking him with her, until she hit the mattress.

  Acting by instinct he grasped her hips and lifted her to sit on the edge. Cain was sure he’d never needed anyone or anything as much as he needed Juliana at this moment. Miraculously her fervor seemed to match his own. Even as her mouth and tongue clashed and melded with his, her hands shoved at his coat, fruitlessly since his arms were firmly around her, his expert fingers unhooking the back of her gown. She gave up and clasped his head instead as though she’d never let him go, never stop kissing him.

  Her legs parted and, as much as was possible when covered with slightly damp skirts and petticoats, wrapped themselves around his hips. She rubbed herself against him in a frenzy of desire he was only too eager to satisfy.

  “To hell with it,” he growled, abandoning his bedroom manners and forgetting all about undressing or foreplay. Instead he wrenched at her skirts in a manner that made up in force what it lacked in finesse.

  She encouraged him with noises from the back of her throat, perhaps some coherent words that he was too excited to make out, and by shifting her weight to assist him in lifting her gown and pulling off her drawers. And as she perched on the edge of the mattress, her sex in its nest of golden curls sweetly exposed to him, her fingers plucked at the buttons of his breeches.

  “Hey,” he managed to say, half desperate with lust, half laughing at her impatience. “Are you sure you don’t want to take just a little time about this?”

  “No,” she said, and undid the last button. His breeches fell and she reached for his cock.

  Grasping her firmly by the bottom, he entered her in one smooth thrust.

  With the force of their union, they fell backward onto the bed, and the soft feather tick fluffed up on either side of them. Their legs still hung over the side. To prevent their sliding off he grabbed hold of her hands and stretched them up over her head, then seized her lips in a fervent kiss, thrusting tongue echoing the movement of his loins. She groaned her pleasure, sucking on his tongue and folding her legs about him so he felt the cool skin of her calves against his buttocks, even through the fine linen of his drawers.