“Whatever rumor this is, it appears dire,” he said. “They sound like they’re ready to do murder in there.”
Cassandra cocked her head to the side. “I’m tempted to let them, but we can’t risk it until Marcus and that little mouse of his are finally married. Let us go and see what sort of disaster awaits us.”
As they neared the library door, the shouting grew worse. Barrett was screeching so as to be nearly insensible. Throwing open the door, Cassandra marched in with all the regality of queen. Charles took a moment to admire her and then quickly followed behind her.
“What is the meaning of this? I will remind you, Mr. Barrett, that my husband is in poor health! I would also remind you that, contrary to your current behavior, you are supposed to be a gentleman! How dare you shout and carry on in here as if you were little better than a dock worker!”
Barrett turned on her then. “How dare I? I will tell you how I dare, madam! Your stepson is a fraud! An imposter… little better than a confidence man courting my daughter to get access to my fortune!”
“You’re being utterly ridiculous, Barrett!” the duke snapped. “He’s my son, isn’t he? I’d know my own son!”
“Hardly,” Barrett retorted. “You had little enough to do with the boy before he left! And as your wife said, you are in poor health. We all know that fit of apoplexy has affected your mind, your grace! What’s to stop someone from challenging his claim to the title? I’ll not see her wed to someone and then disgraced!”
“With all due respect, Mr. Barrett,” Charles interrupted. “I am the only person who would be entitled to challenge his claim to the title, and I have no desire to do so.” There was no point in adding that it was easier to let him ascend to the title and eliminate him than to go through legal channels.
Barrett’s eyes were flashing daggers at him. “You and your plans and schemes! Where is my daughter now?”
Charles shrugged. “I can’t say precisely other than that she is with Marcus. You wished her to be compromised to force the marriage and so she has.”
Cassandra placed a staying hand on his arm. “They ‘eloped’ albeit with some assistance from us during the intermission at the theater… in full view of most of those in attendance. Whether he is the heir or not, she’d be more disgraced now by not marrying him. You cannot stop it now, Mr. Barrett, not without doing irreparable harm to her reputation.”
Barrett glared at them both as he growled. “I’m going after them and you, Balfour, are going with me. We’ll see about this elopement. It can still be salvaged.”
“To what end?”
Barrett shrugged. “It might not be a duke, but there are enough desperate nobles out there with crumbling estates that I can still get her wed to a title… virtuous or not.”
When Barrett stormed out, the duke collapsed back in his wheeled chair. His face was still purple with rage but it was clear that the exchange had overly taxed him. His hands trembled and the palsy that affected him was significantly worsened.
“My dear,” Cassandra said, “I’m having the footmen take you straight up to bed. You need to rest.”
“That man! For nearly a decade, he’s hounded me to get them married off and now suddenly he wants to call a halt! I’ve never dealt with a more infernal and fickle creature in my life than William Barrett!” the duke groused.
As Charles looked on, Cassandra crossed the distance between them and petted him much the same way one would soothe a child. “It’ll be fine, darling. Charles will take care of everything. I promise.”
The old man nodded and was quickly whisked away by the footmen that she’d rang for. When they were alone, Charles asked pointedly, “What are we to do about Barrett?”
“Delay him, mislead him, lay false trails… whatever is necessary, but do not allow him to interfere. If they do not marry, all is lost. When all is said and done, he will not seek a divorce or annulment because that would render her utterly useless to him.”
“And if he will not be put off?” Charles demanded.
Cassandra shrugged. “The contracts are signed. It would be more complicated for the conditions of it to be fulfilled with Barrett dead… but not impossible. Do what must be done, Charles, whatever it is.”
And that was why he loved her, he thought. She had the ability to see through to the heart of every situation and boil it down to the most necessary course of action. “Whatever it takes, then. I’ll get our horses readied.”
*
The interior of the cottage was quite dark. The windows were shuttered so tightly that the pale moonlight had no hope of penetrating. Jane paused inside the door.
“I can’t even see my hand in front of my face,” she muttered.
“Wait here. There’s a tinderbox at the hearth with candles or a lamp… always. I’ll get that going and then work on the fire. You’re half-frozen,” Marcus replied.
She was. The muslin gown she wore had once been a pale pink but had been dyed the most alarming shade of drab gray. It had been the only gown in her meager wardrobe fit for an outing to the theater in spite of that. It was not, however, fit for traveling through a cold night in a carriage with only a thin wrap for warmth. The cold had penetrated so deeply that she no longer even felt it.
When the lamp on the mantel flared to life, she could finally see the interior of the cottage. It wasn’t so bad, though it was hardly luxurious. There were several wooden chairs around a somewhat rickety table. Pots and kettles hung from timbers above on hooks along with bunches of dried herbs. In the far corner was a bed draped with patched coverlets and a trunk. It was not grand by any means, but had its own kind of charm.
“You said the gamekeeper uses this cottage?” she asked, somewhat puzzled.
“It used to belong to an old woman whom my father was just superstitious enough to fear. They’d called her a witch when he was a boy and he wasn’t taking chances. When she died,” Marcus explained, “he made it over into a camp for the gamekeeper so that he might have a better chance at catching any poachers who dared set foot on the estate.”
“And did he catch the poachers?”
Marcus shrugged as he retrieved several logs from a stack beside the hearth. “I couldn’t say. He had not prior to my leaving for the army but it’s anyone’s guess what has happened here in my absence.”
“It is rather fine for a gamekeeper, isn’t it? Velvet coverlets, even if they are worn and patched, are hardly what one would expect to find here,” she pointed out. In truth, the cottage’s description tended more toward cozy than utilitarian, hinting at being used for far more than simply a gamekeeper’s stopover.
Marcus shrugged. “I have little doubt that either my father or perhaps my stepmother has been making use of this place for some time. They often spend months at Whitehaven in the autumn, I believe. My father, prior to his recent illness, has never been faithful in any of his three marriages and I doubt very seriously that my stepmother is under the illusion that she owes fidelity to a broken down old man.”
Fidelity amongst the nobility was never a question of absolutes. She had learned during her time as a gossip columnist that many couples had their own definition of fidelity, such as not taking on the friends of one’s husband as a lover, or avoiding siring children outside of the marriage. Her own parents had been no exception. She had no illusions about the relationship between her own father and mother. He’d never been faithful. Jane also wasn’t foolish enough to think that, even as beautiful as her vicious stepmother undeniably was, that he had changed his philandering ways. Mrs. Barrett’s fidelity wasn’t an issue. The woman was colder than ice and likely encouraged him to seek such comforts elsewhere. Shuddering at the thought, she moved toward the fireplace and the low blaze that had finally ignited there.
“I’ll get you a chair,” Marcus offered and crossed the room to the small kitchen. He returned with two of the wooden chairs.
When Jane was seated before the fire, soaking up the warmth from it like a sponge, he moved
toward the bed and retrieved one of the blankets piled there and brought it back for her. With it draped about her shoulders, she wasn’t exactly warm yet, but she was certainly more comfortable than she had been since leaving the theater.
“What happens now?” The uncomfortable question hung between them for a moment. So long, in fact, that Jane almost regretted asking it.
Finally, Marcus answered after a heavy sigh. “We marry. If either one of us refused at this point—well, I don’t have to tell you how unkind gossip can be or how unforgiving our society is.”
“So we go back to London and proceed as planned, then?”
Marcus shook his head. “No. We’ve been playing by their rules. We’ve been doing what they wanted and living under their roofs for far too long. My father has used this estate for years, but it isn’t his. Whitehaven belongs to me. While it may be small, it is profitable—something many of his estates are not. My father has largely been living off the money earned by the few small estates that I have inherited. His own estates are a shambles.”
“How have your estates remained in such good standing when his have not?”
Marcus smiled. “My father may make use of the estates as he pleases, but the running of the estates is entirely off limits to him. I have a man of business who sees to everything for me… someone I trust implicitly and whom my father has no wish to deal with at all.”
“Oh,” Jane said. “I didn’t realize. Even in your absence they were well cared for?”
“Better than I could have done myself,” he admitted. “The ledgers were delivered by courier to me just yesterday. I am not wealthy by any means… but I am not impoverished at least.”
“Well, that’s something to celebrate I suppose.”
“I only mention this to say that we can live here at Whitehaven instead of Thornwood Hall. As far as I’m concerned he, Charles and your father are not welcome here. Here, I would have the authority to enforce that more so than at the family seat.”
Could she really do that? Could she honestly cut ties with her family entirely? The thought of it should have been terrifying but, instead, it gave her the first glimpse of true freedom she’d ever had in her life. “Will we marry here?”
“We’ll stop at Whitehaven so that I can get the necessary funds and we’ll travel to Scotland. They wanted an elopement and so we’ll give them one. Straight to Gretna Green and if they dislike the scandal then they can bloody well hang,” he answered angrily. “This isn’t how I would have done things, but if it gets both of us out of their clutches, so be it.”
“We do this thing that they’ve forced us into and then that’s it… we’re free of them? What about the money? Your father has always insisted that the marriage contracts had to be upheld because of the financial aspects of it,” Jane mused. “How will we live?”
“The money is ours, Jane. My father has labored under the false pretense that I will allow him to continue living in the manner to which he has allowed himself to become accustomed… and I will not. He and my stepmother can retire to a country estate and live off what that estate earns. I’ll happily supply him with a skilled steward who can make the estate more profitable, but I’m done with him. This, what he and your father have done to us here, taking the very last vestiges of choice from either one of us—that is unforgivable to me.”
So many things were unforgivable in her eyes. The way her father had destroyed her mother, little by little and day by day, the way he’d stood by as her stepmother attempted to do the same to her, the fact that he’d told her throughout her life that the only use he ever had for her was to help him attach himself to a more well connected family via the husband he’d purchased for her—those things were unforgivable. In truth, what they’d done that night wasn’t so different from any other. But if it meant she could live her life free of her father and stepmother, free of social obligation to the current Duke and Duchess of Elsingham, did it matter?
“It will create a scandal. If we break from them entirely, especially after an elopement such as this—are you prepared for that?” Jane asked.
“I’ve been presumed dead for five years, Jane. Everything I do is a scandal,” he replied.
Jane’s lips quirked of their own volition. “And I probably haven’t helped on that front… insinuating so boldly that you are, in fact, not the Marquess of Althorn but some imposter. You don’t think that will be problematic do you? If you deny your father’s requests for money, he could disavow you… claim that you are not his son.”
“He could, but he will not. I will develop a plan to pay his debts, but only those he already has. I will not allow him to accrue more… and with the creditors hounding him, that is the best he can hope for. Are you willing to see this through, Jane? To marry me, live here in the country, rarely go to London and rarely, if ever, see my family or yours?”
“It seems wrong somehow to run headlong into marriage just to escape my father and stepmother… yet I find myself tempted to do just that,” Jane mused.
“It wouldn’t be the only reason,” he said.
There was something in his tone that alerted her, some undercurrent that flowed between them as they sat there in the darkness broken only by the dancing light of the fire. Jane met his gaze then, noting the tension between them and the way that he looked at her as if she were beautiful. It wasn’t self-pity to acknowledge that she wasn’t a beautiful woman. Attractive enough, yes, passably pretty, without a doubt—but not beautiful. But she felt it in that moment. Beautiful, desirable, all the things that she’d read about in novels that had seemed so incredibly far-fetched for a girl like her now seemed to be perfectly within her grasp.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” The question wasn’t censorious but simply curious. It would be too humiliating by far to misread the situation.
“Because I enjoy looking at you, Jane. Surely you must know that by now?”
She could feel herself blushing. “I never imagined—that is, when I was younger, I never imagined that you would see me as anything more than an inconvenience… an unattractive heiress with no rank or circumstance to lend cache to your already esteemed line.”
His lips firmed into a hard line. “If I ever made you feel that way, I assure you it was not my intent. I was young, stubborn and, frankly, rebellious… I did resent being betrothed to you, but never because it was you. I simply resented the intrusion of my family into a choice that I thought I ought to be able to make for myself.”
“And now?”
He sighed but it wasn’t a long-suffering sound as much as a rueful one. “Now, I have to concede that my father may finally have, if inadvertently, acted in my best interests.”
“I didn’t think that I would ever want to marry you… I honestly didn’t think I’d ever like you overmuch, to be completely forthcoming on the matter,” she admitted.
“And now?” he challenged her with her own question.
“Now, I’m willing to admit that I may have been hasty in my judgement. Of course, it no longer signifies. Whether we wished to marry or not, now we must,” she admitted.
“It doesn’t have to be a chore, Jane… not unless we choose to make it one. I, for one, am eager to be married to you.”
“Eager?” Her tone was incredulous. “Willing, I understand. Eager seems a bit overdone!”
“I concede that we haven’t had time to form the kind of attachment you would wish before going into a marriage… but I cannot and will not deny that I have feelings for you, that I am beyond simply attracted to you, Jane. I have wanted you from the moment I walked back into my father’s house.”
There was no mistaking his earnestness in the admission. There was also no denying her immediate response to it. Her pulse raced and blood rushed in her veins as she considered the implications of what he’d said. She had always found him attractive. As a young girl, she’d woven hundreds of fantasies, albeit innocent ones, about him. As a woman grown, when he’d walked back into her life, those fan
tasies had taken a far different turn. Even more so after he’d kissed her.
Emboldened by his admission, by the stark realization that her reputation was in ruins even if her virtue was intact, Jane made a choice that only days ago would have shocked her to her core. “We are already the most scandalous couple in London… you a dead man, me a bluestocking, both of us eloping to Gretna Green from the steps of the theater in full view of all of society.”
He nodded rather sagely. “So we are. Quite wicked, in fact.”
“We could be more wicked still,” she uttered softly. With far more courage than she’d ever realized she possessed, Jane made the most improper of offers. “As I am ruined in name, why should I not be ruined in deed, as well?”
Chapter Thirteen
Marcus felt his blood heating at the mere thought of it. Temptation was an ugly thing clawing at him, testing his morals and his honor.
“You’ve no idea what you are suggesting,” he replied, half-hoping that he was wrong.
“Really? I thought I was suggesting that you should make love to me. But if you interpreted it in some other manner, please allow me to clarify. I may never have experienced that activity myself but I am quite well aware of what occurs.” Even in the dim glow of the fire, the blush that stained her cheeks was plainly visible.
She’d effectively eliminated every single halfhearted argument he possessed. Left with only one, he said, “I would not have you regret this. Some things about our union could at least happen in the proper way and order.”
She laughed at that. “Why on earth should they? Nothing else about the way this has occurred has even been remotely proper or normal. Arranged marriages are out of fashion, so we have one. Child brides are out of fashion, so your father tried to procure one for you. You returned from the dead, Marcus… impatience in consummating our union would be the most normal thing about it.”
The Missing Marquess of Althorn (The Lost Lords Book 3) Page 15
