The Rogue's Return

by Jo Beverley

  Her brow wrinkled. “Won’t people think that strange?”

  “How are they to know?”

  “Two sets of sheets sent to the laundry woman. Two rooms still in use.”

  He wanted to say that was no one’s business, but he knew that such things were talked of. “Many married couples use separate bedchambers.”

  “Do they? And surely not rooms at either end of the house.”

  What was she saying? That she wanted to share his bed tonight? Despite his awareness of her as a woman, he couldn’t bear the thought.

  Then she added, “At least no one will think it strange for us to keep to our usual arrangement tonight.” She spoke so calmly, he wondered if she understood the physical implications of marriage at all.

  But he knew she did. By some instinct he was sure she wasn’t that kind of protected innocent, and he was grateful for it. Remembering the comfort they’d found in each other’s arms, he drew her close. She tensed for a moment, perhaps thinking he meant to kiss her, but then relaxed.

  He had meant only to comfort her, but he found comfort for himself. She was a sweet armful, neither too angular nor too soft, too large or too small, and she carried the soothing aroma of a bakery.

  He rested his head against her hair, more at ease now with his mild stirrings of desire. They offered hope that when the time was right, their marriage bed would be natural and pleasurable for both of them.

  Chapter Four

  The new Mrs. Simon St. Bride rested against her husband’s chest thinking miserably that one should be careful what one wished for.

  How many nights had she dreamed of being in Simon’s arms? Dreamed even of becoming Simon’s bride, bride to the most wonderful man she’d ever met.

  To her, he was perfectly handsome, with his lean, vigorous body, his ready smile, and his deep-set hazel eyes that came alive with every vivid emotion. She had often had to resist an urge to touch his thick dark hair that shot fire in the light.

  Presumably a wife was allowed to do that. But not an unwanted wife. Simon hadn’t wanted to marry her, which was hardly surprising. And she hadn’t wanted to marry him. Because if he ever learned the truth about her, he would hate her.

  Oh, Lord, what was she to do?

  Move, for a start, so she did, separating them.

  He adjusted her cloak, a slight smile in his eyes, or at least a look of pleasure.

  If only, if only . . .

  She pushed straggling hair off her face. “I must look a mess.”

  “Somewhat, but it’s a pleasure to see your hair. It’s lovely.”

  For some reason that seemed threatening. She turned quickly to lead the way into the house. She didn’t want him to come upstairs with her—to the bedrooms—so in the hall she said, “I believe I can make my way to my room without help.”

  “If you wish to lie down for a while, it will be all right.”

  “No, I’ll be back soon.”

  As she climbed the stairs she reflected on how easy it was to act a part. Once in her room, however, she collapsed back against the door, her knuckles in her mouth.

  This was her first real solitude since she’d heard the boom of the shot. The memory of finding Isaiah on the floor, clutching his belly, blood already welling between his fingers, made her bite down to conquer a howl.

  She hadn’t screamed then, however, and she would not do so now. Life, dreadful life, must go on.

  Her hair. She hurried to her dressing table, but as soon as she saw herself she groaned. It clung tangled to her forehead and cheeks, and flour and mud marked her gown. She looked like a vagrant.

  Like a Haskett.

  She ripped off the ribbon and attacked the mess, looking anywhere but at her reflection as she untangled and brushed. Her image stayed in her mind, however. She’d looked like that for her wedding!

  So many times she had imagined the perfect wedding. It would be summer. She’d walk to the church in the company of friends and family. There would be flowers and a handsome groom. . . .

  She opened her eyes and inhaled. She had the handsome groom, that was for sure, but he thought he’d married Jane Otterburn, and he hadn’t.

  She was an impostor. She was Nan Otterburn, Archibald Otterburn’s misbegotten child taken in by his widow out of charity and raised as Jane Otterburn’s foster sister.

  She turned to the mirror again, seeing swollen eyes that at least were honest. She’d come to love Isaiah Trewitt, even if he was no true uncle of hers. That had led her to agree to this terrible situation, but what was she to do?

  It was as if two parts of her argued.

  You truly are Jane St. Bride. You married Simon.

  In a lie. It’s probably not even legal.

  You were married as Jane Anne Otterburn, daughter of Archibald Otterburn, deceased schoolmaster. That’s all true, isn’t it?

  It was. Martha Otterburn had made sure that Jane Anne Otterburn was her legal name. But she’d been the result of an encounter between Archibald Otterburn and Tillie Haskett and had spent the first nine years of her life as Jancy Haskett, part of a tribe of itinerant farm laborers. In Cumberland, “Haskett” was a byword for sinners and petty thieves. She’d sometimes heard people say, “He’s as bad as a Haskett.”

  They’d had a home of sorts—a run-down farm on the bleak edge of Carrock Fell—but if anyone had ever been able to survive on that land, the Hasketts couldn’t, so from spring to autumn they wandered like Gypsies. They worked where they could, begged when they dared, and stole whenever they could get away with it.

  The women weren’t whores, but there’d been nothing strange about Jancy being an outsider’s child. Jancy hadn’t given a thought about who her true father might be, but when the Hasketts arrived in Carlisle for the annual horse fair in 1806, her bold, brown-haired mother had told her.

  “Archibald Otterburn, our Jancy, a gentleman born. A schoolmaster, no less, here in Carlisle. But I hear he’s dead, so we’re going to see his widow.”

  “Why, Ma?”

  “Because you’re the very image of yer da, ma pretty. You wait and see. There’ll be caylo in this at least.”

  Later, Jancy had remembered that “at least.”

  The next day, Tillie had led Jancy down Abbey Street, the sort of quiet, respectable street Hasketts avoided. She’d enjoyed the new experience and looked forward to earning “caylo,” or money, for the family. She was already good for pennies at a market because her pale skin and red-gold hair made her stand out among the swarthy Hasketts.

  Her “Can you spare a penny, kind sir?” often produced one. It sometimes produced questions, too.

  “Who are your parents, dear?”

  “Have you always lived with these people?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Do you need help?”

  This had puzzled her, but Tillie had explained that people thought she might have been stolen. “Though why, I can’t imagine, chick, babbies being easy enough to come by.”

  Hasketts didn’t steal babies, but they’d steal just about anything else and didn’t like people paying them too much attention. Jancy had thought later that might have had something to do with Tillie’s taking her to Martha Trewitt’s house.

  That and Uncle Lemuel Haskett. He’d taken to treating Jancy in a funny way. Liking to take her on his knee when she was too old for that. Asking her to kiss him on the mouth. Tillie had warned her not to be alone with him.

  These thoughts had come later, however. That September day, she’d skipped along, seeing the outing as a treat. She’d approached the green-painted door of the small house ready to do her begging act to earn some caylo and please her mother.

  It hadn’t been like that. When the stern woman dressed in deepest black opened the door, Tillie said, “I’ve come t’talk to you about me daughter, ma’am.” There’d been none of the usual cheek or whine.

  The woman had looked at Jancy almost without expression, but all the same Jancy had wanted to slide behind her mother
. But then they were in the house, in a narrow corridor that seemed frighteningly tight and smelled awful.

  She’d come to know the smells as the ones considered clean—vinegar, camphor, lavender, and beeswax—but on that day they’d wrinkled her nose. She’d also been terrified of spoiling something. The polished floor looked too clean to walk on, especially in the boots that felt heavy because she went barefoot most of the time.

  Martha Otterburn had listened in silence, glancing at Jancy now and then but asking no questions. Jancy understood why when a girl her own age came into the corridor. Tillie had a mirror, and the girl in a pretty white dress with a black sash, a black ribbon in her hair, could almost have been herself.

  “What is it, Mama?” the girl asked.

  “Go back to the kitchen, Jane, dear.”

  After one wide-eyed look, Jane Otterburn had obeyed, but that look had fixed in astonishment on Jancy, clearly seeing the same resemblance.

  “Well, now, ma’am,” Tillie said. “You see how it is, and me and me family come often to Carlisle. I’m afeared people might notice me daughter’s resemblance—to your husband, and to your own child. Takes after him, don’t they? Both of them.”

  With a beggar’s fine instinct, she’d waited.

  Jancy had felt as she did when a magistrate or beadle questioned the Hasketts about missing tools and missing sheep. She’d wanted to curl into a ball like a hedgehog and pretend she wasn’t there.

  Then Martha said, “If my husband had known, he would have wanted the child to be raised in a decent home. Leave her with me and she will be treated as my daughter. But there must be no further contact with you and your family.”

  Jancy had still been trying to take this in when Tillie turned to her. “There, chick. That’s a fine offer. You’re a very lucky girl.” She kissed her and gave her the wink that said this was a plan that would do the Hasketts proud. “You be good, our Jancy.”

  Then Jancy had been alone in the stinky corridor with the dark, stern woman, who’d said, “First, a bath.”

  She shuddered now to think that she’d been infested. Her hair had been so full of lice that Martha had cut it short, apologizing and promising it would grow again, prettier than ever. Jancy supposed she’d been crying or even screaming, but she couldn’t remember. She remembered crying a lot in the next days and weeks, desperately missing the rough-and-tumble of Haskett life and wishing her mother would hurry up and come back for her.

  Even her name had to change.

  “Such a common name,” Martha said. “And of course you can’t be Jane. You will be Nan. And you will forget all about Hasketts, child. Never mention them again. When you’re fit for polite company we will say you are an orphan from Mr. Otterburn’s family. From Argyll. That’s a wild enough place to explain some of your flaws, but if anyone asks, try to be vague. Say you lived in many places. That you passed from person to person. We can only pray that it will hold.

  “Haskett,” she’d added with a shudder, and perhaps that had been the greatest force in getting Martha Otterburn to take her husband’s bastard into her house. Bad enough for anyone to discover that Archibald Otterburn had sinned. But with a Haskett?

  So what was Simon St. Bride going to think if he ever discovered he’d married a Haskett?

  She should tell him the truth before this went any further.

  But a little voice counseled against that in tones that reminded Jancy of her mother.

  It wouldn’t be right to do anything now, though, would it, chick? This is the time for mourning that good man Isaiah Trewitt and seeing him decently into his grave.

  Right or not, she couldn’t face anything else.

  Her dirty dress was easy to remove. She’d arrived with a few gowns hastily dyed black, which were beyond hope after the voyage. As she wasn’t used to servants she’d made new ones in a crossover design that let her dress without help. Beneath she wore a soft bodice instead of a corset.

  She still had her best black, however; the one made for Martha’s funeral. She’d worn it here for church a few times in the early days. She took it out of the clothespress and shook it. She’d stopped wearing it because it had become tight in the chest and deep black hadn’t been necessary. She wanted to wear full mourning for Isaiah, however, so prayed she could still fit into it.

  Fortunately it was a simple design with a drawstring waist, and her soft bodice allowed her breasts to squash. It was long sleeved and high necked, and when she faced the mirror again she nodded. That was more like it. Funereal propriety.

  She dragged her thick wavy hair back, twisted it, and then pinned it up. When she put on the black cap, the one with the mourning drapes on either side, it hid all her hair.

  She was Jane St. Bride, grieving lady.

  Nothing else.

  Simon watched Jane go upstairs, but then Ross came to say that all was ready. He went with some reluctance to the dining room, made gloomy by drawn curtains. The glossy coffin sat on a heavy black cloth. The lid was off, so he went to look at Isaiah, still hardly able to believe that he was dead.

  Perhaps undertakers used pads in the cheeks or some other trick, because Isaiah looked much as he had the last time Simon had seen him alive. But he was undeniably dead, spirit gone, hopefully to a place where he was young and healthy again.

  Ross was standing by, so Simon said, “Excellent. Thank you.”

  “You will want mourning bands, sir.” He gestured to an assistant, who came forward to put one around Simon’s sleeve.

  “I will put one around your hat, sir,” the young man said before he and Ross left Simon with the corpse.

  “This marriage is your doing, you old Rogue, so be our guardian angel.” He couldn’t help but smile. “No matter how unlikely an image that is.”

  He stood there, trying to pray, but he didn’t think Isaiah needed many prayers. Instead he let his mind turn to the practicalities of traveling home, which seemed particularly precious now. He had passage booked but had not expected to take much with him. Would Jane want to take many of Isaiah’s possessions? He doubted there was much worth the cost, but if she wished to . . .

  He heard footsteps and turned as Jane entered the room.

  How different she seemed from when he’d seen her last. Different, too, from the Jane he’d grown accustomed to. That Jane had been sober. This one was severe.

  He vaguely remembered the long-sleeved, high-necked plain black dress from her early days here. He didn’t think he’d seen the nunlike black headdress before. Despite newly reddened eyes, in this frame her delicate pallor glowed like lamplit alabaster, illuminating sky-blue eyes and rose-pink lips. The effect was as shocking as a work of art suddenly lit by a shaft of sunlight. He wished it shadowed again.

  He wanted her back in her ordinary clothes. No, in fashionable ones. If she was dressed in a flounced gown of yellow or green with a beribboned bonnet on her head, surely she’d be just another pretty girl. He could deal with pretty girls.

  She walked to the coffin and bowed her head.

  “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked. “Or would you rather be alone?”

  She didn’t look up. “Alone, thank you.”

  Perhaps he should stay anyway, but he took her at her word. There was a great deal to be done and not much time in which to do it.

  When he went to the parlor, Hal said, “I found some coins and these snuffboxes and miniatures. A few old letters, as well. Nothing else, unless you treasure broken clay pipes, assorted buttons, and balls of string.”

  “Isaiah thought anything might come in useful. Probably because of his early years. He arrived in Canada with hardly a penny. The snuffboxes might be left to someone. I need to read the will.”

  He unfolded a letter to find it dated 1809. “I hope he answered these.”

  The three miniatures showed a heavy-jawed officer, a solemn young woman with dark hair, and an infant. “I don’t even know who these people are. Jane might, but from the fashions, they look decades o
ld.”

  “I think the woman might be the one in the drawing. Her mother.”

  Simon compared the miniature to the sketch. “You could be right. I wonder if the child is Jane. The coloring’s right, but she looks so . . . reserved. Of course, yesterday that wouldn’t have struck me as strange.” He put them down. “I need to start on the business papers, though I don’t relish returning to the office.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  As they crossed the hall, Simon asked, “When do you plan to leave?”

  “When you do.”

  Simon stopped. “Thank you. I apologize for this mess, but by God, Hal, you’re a godsend.”

  He was uncomfortably aware that some of his relief was because Hal being here meant less time alone with Jane. And that would extend to the six weeks or more it would take to travel back to England.

  “Onward to the paperwork,” Hal said, “though I warn you, it’s not my forte.”

  “It’s not mine, either. I’ve had nothing to do with Isaiah’s business dealings.”

  Simon entered the office braced for unpleasantness, but Ross and his people had done their work well. It looked as always except that the carpet had been taken away. And that a small stain on the wood showed where blood had seeped through.

  Perhaps his nose detected blood and other odors of death, but the fire crackled merrily, filling the room with that pleasant, tangy smell, and someone had uncovered Jane’s potpourri.

  Looked at with an executor’s eye, the room was a daunting jumble. Shelves were crammed with books, ledgers, and boxes, but he also saw a riding whip, a saber, and more pipes. Drawers doubtless concealed yet more chaos. Isaiah had known where things were, but he’d not been the most organized of men.

  “I’ll start on the desk,” Simon said. “Perhaps you can flip through the books. He was always tucking papers and even money into them.”

  Too late, he wondered if Hal could do such a thing, but he could hardly imply now that he couldn’t. Damnation, he thought, gathering the papers on top of the desk into one pile, why is everything so complicated today?