He gave a sharp, hard laugh. “No. Not yet. I want you to tell me what distressed you so much.”
She wanted that too. Concentrating on hurrying and listening for the sounds of pursuit, she went with him. They passed a startled manservant, who flattened himself against the wall.
Tom dropped a crown into his hand. “You saw nobody.”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied, but they were well advanced by then.
He brought her out into a better lit corridor, the twin of the one they had left, but in reverse. Without pause, he led her into one of the rest rooms on this side of the theater. He closed the door and locked it before he turned and pulled her into his arms. “First,” he muttered, before he kissed her.
She leaned against his shoulder and relaxed into his arms. He didn’t linger over the kiss, although he separated their lips with lingering reluctance. “Now tell me why you ran out that way. What did that man say to you?”
“I thought you were watching the play.”
He shook his head. “Strategically placed mirrors. I never took my attention away from you. I know it’s wrong to watch someone so obsessively, but I can’t help it. When you’re near, you are all I think about.”
Typical of the Dankworths to have a theater box that was more about watching people than watching the entertainment. “He’s a neighbor from Derbyshire, Sir George Seward. My mother wants me to marry him.”
He didn’t let her go. “Do you want to marry him?”
“No!” She spoke the word with such vehemence she startled herself.
“Would you have considered it before you met me?”
That was unkind of him, because it was so perspicacious. “I can’t bear the thought of anyone close to me except you. But it’s not just that.” Tears came to her eyes unbidden, but she would not give into them. “He worships my mother. If I marry him, I will be expected to remain at home with my mother for the rest of my life. Sir George will move into the Abbey and we will dance attendance on her until she dies.” She closed her eyes. “And his breath smells.” A petulant addition, but if she had to spend a lifetime with a man, she would rather not spend it with a man who had rotting teeth.
Tom’s teeth were as sharp and white as a wolf’s.
He placed a kiss on each of her closed eyelids, soft as an angel’s wing brushing against her heart. “Then don’t marry him.”
“Easy for you to say.” She opened her eyes and met his, so understanding, but not in this case. “I can refuse, but Mother will go on and on. Then she will banish me and refuse to allow me my season next spring. I will never find anyone. I’m worth a fortune, but I can touch none of it. It’s for the aggrandizement of my future husband or my family.”
“I don’t care about your inheritance. I am not on speaking terms with your mother. Marry me, Helena.”
She blinked. “How can we?”
“Easily. We may do it tonight.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock. He could only mean one thing. “A Fleet wedding?”
“Why not?”
For any number of reasons. A Fleet wedding was legal but illicit, used often by the unscrupulous adventurers who seduced or abducted valuable heiresses. Public uproar, especially from the families of the heiresses who found themselves saddled with unsuitable sons-in-law, was rising, but for now such marriages were legal.
“We cannot.”
“It’s a matter of finding a cleric and paying him. Even at this time of night that won’t take much effort.”
He cupped her cheek, and she nestled into it. She loved the way his hand encompassed the side of her face.
“I love you, Helena. I will protect you in any way I can, however I can.”
“But what about after? What then?” They would hardly be welcome in either family. She couldn’t imagine taking Tom home and introducing him as her new husband. Julius and Augustus would fight for the right to kill him.
He frowned, but only for a moment. “I have money of my own. We may buy a house wherever we wish, call ourselves whatever we like. We can make Mr. and Mrs. Fisher come to life.”
Awed, she stared at him. “How do we do that?”
“We could go abroad and live there, or go into a remote part of the country.”
She choked a cynical laugh. “My family is everywhere. All my relatives are wealthy, and they all own numerous establishments. Besides, what happens when your father dies? You must inherit.”
“We don’t have to live in exile forever. We would write to our loved ones and tell them we are well and married. When they forgive us or allow us to be together, we may emerge once more.”
“It’s a fairy tale.” Dare she believe it? “I cannot touch any of my money, and I assume yours is tied up in your estate.”
He shook his head and moved around, cupped her face in both his hands and kissed her fiercely. “I have helped my father rebuild the estate, but I did not give him everything. I have a competence of my own. It’s nothing like the fortunes your family commands, nor the Northwich title, for that matter, but it is enough to ensure that we and our children may live in comfortable obscurity.”
She sighed. “That sounds blissful.”
Could they really do it? But no. “Our families will come in pursuit of us.”
“If they can find us. They will not do so, my love.” Snatching her close, he gripped her in an embrace that knocked the breath out of her, but for all that she would have stayed there forever. He groaned, the sound rumbling through his chest. “I cannot let you go. All my life I have done what is right, what is expected of me. Only recently have I tried to break free. I want this for myself, the first time in my life I have been utterly selfish. I cannot see you married, not to a lout like Sir George or even to an exquisite who would know how to treat you. You are mine.”
“Yes.” In her heart she knew that was the absolute truth. Nothing else mattered but that they claimed each other. “Yes, I’m yours. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Whatever happened after that, she was his.
“Then come.”
Trusting him completely, she let him lead her from the room. Together they went downstairs, where, hatless and without her cloak, she let him help her into a common hackney cab. They rattled down the narrow street, down another and yet another until they reached Fleet Street.
Ladies of the evening and their clients jostled and laughed while respectable citizens looked on. Even they had more freedom than she did, but in this, she was finally herself. Braziers next to the boxes occupied by the night watchmen glowed, with urchins gathered around them. Inn doors lay open invitingly, light pouring out and people shouting and laughing, the sound passing like a wave as the carriage rocked past them.
Upper windows beamed light on to the street below, glimpses of people passing before them, or leaning out, elbows on the sill, to watch life teeming below them. All these people had their own lives, their own worries, but Helena felt none of them. Could she truly be doing this? After instructing the driver, Tom held her hand tightly but said nothing, staring out of the window for the short journey to the Fleet prison.
The Fleet took up a plot of land close to Ludgate Hill, adjacent to Doctor’s Commons, where marriage licenses could be had in the general way. The regular way. She was not fated to have one of those marriages.
They climbed out of the vehicle, and Tom threw the man double his fare and added a guinea for good measure. “You never saw us,” he said.
The driver touched his whip to the brim of his hat in salute. “Want me to wait, sir?”
“Yes.” Tom paused and glanced up at where the man perched nimbly on his precarious seat and then at the door of the prison. “I will get them up even if I have to knock the doors down.”
The Fleet was a debtor’s prison, notorious for the high charges it levied on its inmates. They owed when they went in and owed even more when they had been there a while. Some prisoners lived outside the jurisdiction of the building, and with th
e place locked up for the night, this was obviously the better course.
The huge doors under the arch were closed, but as they approached, a small door to the side opened.
A man stepped into the light, rubbing his nose and sniffing wetly. “’Ave you got business ’ere?”
“We have.” Tom handed over coins.
The man clutched them, rubbed them together but forbore to test them with his teeth. If he had any. “Who with?”
“A clergyman. The lady and I wish to be married.”
The man sniffed again. “At this hour?”
That was a cue for more money, which Tom handed over. “I’ll wager we’re not the first.”
“Nor you might be. Mr. Clegg is still up—I swear he barely sleeps two hours a night. Worries, you see, about his wife and fam’ly.”
He wore a strange collection of clothes. His coat appeared dirty and worn, its original color hard to determine, but underneath his stained waistcoat was silk, and embroidered, a costly item, or it would have been in its day. The fine buttons were gone, probably sold separately, the cheap horn ones incongruous against the once-fine background.
The man turned around and shuffled through the door. Tom guided Helena through, his hand around her waist.
Although Helena was not dressed for a ball, she appeared far too fine for this place. Her red-and-white striped gown was clean and crisp, her lace good, and her shoes fine brocade ones, not meant for the street. But they were all she had, and she would not be ashamed or afraid. Not on her wedding day.
The stink of overcooked cabbage, stale urine, and sour milk mingled with the yeasty aroma of beer wafted around her, but Helena had known worse, or so she told herself as she boldly stepped forward into the gloomy yard that lay beyond the lodge at the gates. A number of shadowy alcoves signified where doors to the lodgings were.
The man took them to the second on the left and rapped hard. “Mr. Clegg! Customers!”
Helena swallowed as the door opened.
A man in shabby clothing, but a decent appearance stood up. “I appreciate it, Mr. Jones.” A single candle glimmered inside, together with a bed covered with a rough blanket, a chair, and a rickety table.
The clergyman asked no questions, but took the money and opened the book they would sign when they had done.
They stood before him, and in a low voice, he began the ceremony.
In that room, Helena Vernon became Lady Alconbury, or more importantly, the wife of Tom Dankworth, the man she loved. She learned that his full name was Charles Thomas Maria Dankworth, which forced a smile to her face. She put her hand in his.
For a ring, she received his signet ring. Not the one with his family coat of arms on it, but a more personal one with an ancient carved ruby on the bezel. She had to crook her finger to keep it on.
The vows were as sacred here as they would have been in the family chapel at home or in a fashionable London church. They meant the same, and she meant every word. He repeated them in his turn, and to her shock added “obey” to his vows, too, giving her the crooked smile she loved as he did so.
The whole thing took less than ten minutes, start to finish. The warden and another man acted as witnesses, and they signed the book afterward. So many names lay before and after theirs she felt safe from discovery adding hers to the list.
“I will not go home tonight,” she told him. She could not bear to be separated from him on this, their wedding night.
She bought a piece of paper from the clergyman and wrote a quick note to her father, telling him that Julius had requested that she attend him and she would be home in the morning. It was a risk, but one she would willingly take.
They went outside, her hand resting on her husband’s arm.
“You’re mine now,” he said in a low, intimate voice that thrilled her to the core. “Nobody will take you away from me.”
The cab was still waiting. They stepped inside, Tom threw the man a coin, and they went to the house in Folgate Street. The house belonged to them, nobody else, and this was the only place they could be themselves.
The strangeness of entering a house that was not lit or with servants to greet them overwhelmed her for the second it took Tom to turn and take her into his arms. He buried his face in her hair, breathing deeply, as if to take in her very essence. “My wife. My love. Nobody else can have you now.”
“No. And nobody can have you.”
They belonged to each other.
When he would have kissed her, she held him off. “No, wait. If you do that I will lose every sense I have left.” She glanced down at her gown, which had now collected some of the dirt of the prison on its hem. Her shoes would be ruined. “We cannot run off tomorrow morning, can we? You will need to make preparations.”
“You may stay here if you wish,” he said. “I will find everything we need.”
She shook her head. “I’m leaving people I love. I won’t do it hugger-mugger. My brother would never stop until he found us. He deserves an explanation.”
His mouth firmed, and two lines creased the space between his dark brows. “What would you do? Confess all to your parents?”
“No,” she said, although she would prefer to do that. “I have a friend, Mary Steed, in the country. She lives in Devonshire now. I can forge her handwriting well enough. I will have her send me a letter inviting me to stay with her. Then I may pack and bring my belongings with me.”
“Will it work?”
“If it does not, I will come anyway. I want to try.”
His mouth tightened, and he paused before he spoke. “Your mother will let you go?”
“She liked Mary and she was sorry when she moved away. Mary married a wealthy gentleman who owns a fleet of ships, so my father will be glad if I visit. He has urged me to do so. I will tell my mother I wish to speak to Mary before I agree to marry anyone, or I will beg her for this one last indulgence. At any rate, she will let me go.”
“I can hardly believe that sweet Lady Helena Vernon could be so devious.” Smiling, he touched her chin, grazing his fingers along her cheek. They were trembling. So he was not unaffected by this evening’s activities. After he’d taken her from the theater, Helena had wondered at his calm, but now she realized it was his way of coping with strong emotion. She had her serene face, the one she’d practiced in the mirror until she had it right. He decided on a course of action and then went ahead and did it.
Were they truly married? The possibility hardly seemed likely, but here they were. “I’ve not finished yet. I’ll send a note to my father’s house, telling him that Julius wished me to come and help with Caroline.”
“You’re taking too much of a chance,” he said. “Let me take you back home. You may say you were taken ill at the theater.”
That was not the way she intended this evening to end. “And miss my wedding night? No, indeed, I will not do it.” She shot him a laughing grin. “This isn’t the first time I’ve played my mother off against my brother. They rarely see eye to eye on anything, and they often quarrel.”
“Ah. I do not have that problem.”
“No, you do not.” His mother had died too long ago. Going up on her toes, she kissed his cheek. “But I will do everything I can to make it up to you. Will we have children?”
“Undoubtedly.” He smiled down at her, all the warmth in his eyes for her alone. “We should perhaps make a start.” He pressed his hand to the small of her back, urging her toward the stairs. “Up with you, my lady.”
Laughing, she ran up to their room.
Tom had arranged for a maid to come in to clean. The bed was made up with fresh sheets, and the sparse furniture gleamed with polish. Struck by a thought, she turned impulsively to him. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.
“It feels as if I’m coming home,” she said softly.
“Yes it does.” He kissed her, as if in welcome. It started as a gentle kiss, but soon progressed once she parte
d her lips and let him in.
Without hesitation he took what she offered and dived in. They devoured each other, touching and fumbling for fasteners, hooks, and buttons, going as fast as they could manage, undressing themselves and each other with a speed that defied the skills of even the most skilful body servant.
He had her down to her shift before he stepped back and looked at her. His eyes glowed. “Remember our pact? In here we are nobody. We mean nothing to anyone else except each other.” He caught her hands, pressing them against his bare chest. “My love, I want to take you tonight. I want this to be a true wedding night, but I don’t want you to give me anything you might come to regret.”
“I won’t.” Her conviction shook her. They were ending this life and starting a new one, so a child would only be welcome. But if she denied him, she would regret it forever. Never to have him inside her, loving her, was too painful to think about right now. “I want everything, Tom. Please.”
“Then you shall have it.” His heart thudded against their clasped hands. “Everything I have is yours, my love. I swear you will never lack for anything, as long as we are man and wife. Which will be forever.” Drawing closer, he kissed her again.
Her fever to have him rose, so she could no longer bear to be apart from him. When she tore frantically at the fall of his breeches, he clasped her hands and drew them away.
“Not like that. Get into bed, my sweet love.”
Swallowing, Helena drew her last remaining garment over her head and tossed it aside to join the rest of her finery on the floor. Watching her closely, Tom unfastened his breeches and drew them and his underwear away. Then he joined her. His cock was boldly erect, standing proudly against his belly, and as he slid his arms around her and drew her close, it burned against her flesh. He slid his hands into hers, came over her, and pressed their joined hands against the pillow on either side of her head. “Mine,” he said, with all the confidence of a man who knew he loved and was loved in return.
“Always,” she replied. She longed to have him, but she must allow him to do this his way, because she knew it would hurt. When he had touched her most intimate places, he’d been careful not to push her there, to disturb her virginity in any way. She’d respected his choice, but it had been his choice, not hers. She had given him everything else and been well rewarded for it in terms of sweet pleasure, so why not that, too?
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