A Date at the Altar

by Cathy Maxwell

  No good would come from that sort of thinking.

  The lessons she’d learned from Roland had been hard ones. Her emotions had proven traitorous. Nor was she her mother and doomed to trusting one man after another. No, she guarded her trust . . .

  The coach turned down her street. Because of the rain, few were out and about to watch her arrive with such style. The Duke of Baynton even had windows of real glass in his coach. Sarah looked outside and noticed masses of wet paper all over the street.

  Paper—the lifeblood of her profession. She didn’t know why it was littering the street, but she could collect it, dry it, use it.

  “This is where I live, Your Grace.”

  She didn’t need to remind him. He had already reached up to knock on the roof, a signal for the driver to stop, and it was a good thing because she was shocked to spy her bandboxes out in front of the building where she lived.

  And the papers? They were her precious plays, scattered by the wind and the rain, the ink on them all but vanished.

  “Wait and I’ll help you out—” he started, but Sarah had already turned the handle and was climbing out almost before the coach stopped, leaving Widow on the seat.

  Her bandboxes were open and what was left of her clothes was a sodden mess. They’d been rifled through and the very best items taken. The Siren costume had been trampled into the muddy street.

  But what brought her to tears were her plays. What had not blown away still lay next to what was left of her possessions. Sarah fell to her knees in horror at the damage. She gathered the pages to her chest. Her work. All her work was ruined.

  Hot tears mixed with the rain down her cheeks.

  She sensed him before she heard him speak. He stood beside her. “Mrs. Pettijohn, Sarah, please, come back to the coach,” the duke said gently.

  “The landlord has tossed me out,” Sarah said, stating the obvious as if she could not believe it. “I was late by only a month. I’ve been later in other places . . .” Places where she’d been put out, such as her precious home on Mulberry Street.

  And then her confusion turned to anger. She was overcome with rage.

  “That building is a complete hovel. Even the rats have rats,” she shot out as if she could wound the building with words. Or as if the landlord cared what she thought.

  He didn’t. He was a miserly character who lived in the country and sent some gruesome figure named Parsons around to collect the rents.

  Sarah struggled to her feet. The duke’s hand came to her elbow to help steady her. “If I had money, do you know what I’d do?” she informed him. “I’d buy this place, burn it down and build a new one without rats and where there aren’t holes in the walls or mildew forming dark stains in the corners. And I wouldn’t let anyone rent from me who drank gin.”

  But she couldn’t buy it. She couldn’t even pay the paltry rent.

  Nor did anyone care what she thought. No one had ever cared. “Why is life so bloody hard?”

  In answer, the skies seemed to open up above them, pouring down upon her, muffling her cry.

  Rain sluiced off of the duke’s hat. “Come.”

  One word.

  Her life was spread out on the street around her, and he was asking her to leave.

  Then again, the path of her life had always been carrying her to this moment. Her mother had told her more than once that there was only one calling for women like them. She’d laughed at Sarah’s belief that she could be something more than what her mother was.

  And now Sarah conceded defeat. She didn’t have the heart to fight any longer. The hopes, the dreams, the hours she’d spent believing in herself . . . she’d never had a chance.

  Sarah let go of the wet papers. They fell to her feet. She let the duke guide her to the coach’s open door. The Widow in its leather folder still sat on the seat where she’d left it. Sarah reached for it, ready to toss it out and let it join her other plays. Her other follies.

  Baynton took it from her, held it away from her. “Let us go.”

  With a prod, he encouraged her into the coach. She was vaguely aware that she was a muddied mess and Mr. Talbert stared at her as if she was mad, and perhaps she was. Yes, this is what madness would feel like. She ignored him. He didn’t matter in her life. Nothing mattered.

  Baynton closed the door and came around to the other side of the coach. Sarah tried not to pay attention. Instead, she huddled down in her wet clothes, closed her eyes and wished she could vanish from this life. Then all her problems would be solved.

  The coach started moving. She didn’t ask where. She didn’t care. She was busy trying to disappear. Mr. Talbert sat across from her, his attention on the folders on his lap as if he, too, wished she would be gone. She ignored Baynton.

  When the coach stopped, she didn’t move. The duke and Mr. Talbert climbed out and she assumed they were at Westminster for the “vote.”

  She sat alone. She thought about opening the coach door and just leaving, but that called for more energy than she currently possessed and so she stayed where she was.

  The door opened on her side. Baynton offered his hand. Sarah took it. Since she had no will of her own, why not use his?

  He led her forward and she was fine, until she recognized the façade of the Clarendon Hotel. It was an elegant establishment, one that catered to the wealthy.

  She had no illusion about what was happening. Baynton was moving her here. Her! Wet, bedraggled, muddy. People who would see them come in together and would surely think the handsome, dashing Duke of Baynton could find a better mistress. They probably would believe her some witch from the swamp.

  The idea made her laugh but the sound came out as a sob.

  He shepherded her up the stairs and down a long hall. A hotel porter followed them, stepping in front of the duke to put the key in a door and open it.

  “This way,” Baynton said and with a gentle hand at her elbow escorted her in.

  Sarah shuffled forward into a set of rooms fit for royalty. There was a sitting room with elegant chairs for the comfort of the occupants. A desk was in front of one of the room’s many windows and there was a table and chairs.

  She did not need any help going to the bedroom. She was exhausted. Completely done in. She barely registered the soft blues and creams of the furnishings. The room was dark and she preferred it that way.

  So, here she was.

  In the place she’d vowed she’d never go—she was a kept woman.

  She remembered Baynton’s request, that he was a virgin. Well, that was about to change—and she found she didn’t care what he did to her. Her plays were destroyed. She was an empty shell.

  And that was enough, wasn’t it? Isn’t the shell all men really wanted from her anyway? All they’d ever wanted. Even Roland, her bastard of a husband.

  Should she warn Baynton how much she detested sex? No, let him find out.

  Sarah yanked at the ribbons of her cloak and let it fall to the ground. She stumbled directly to the bed and threw herself upon the coverlet, shoes and all.

  The mattress was stuffed with cotton. She’d never felt one so soft. And the pillow was of feathers, lovely, lovely down.

  Sarah buried her face in the pillow and tried to ignore the duke’s presence, and succeeded as she shut her eyes and fell into oblivion.

  Chapter Nine

  Sarah didn’t dream.

  Her sleep was that deep. She hadn’t been truly conscious of closing her eyes and even now did not wish to open them. She drew a deep breath, inhaling the scent of clean bedclothes. They carried the mix of lavender and soap. Heaven.

  She remembered falling upon the bed, so tired she’d lost the will to fight.

  Now, caught in the hazy state between sleep and waking, her thoughts went to her last happiest memory. It was when she’d lived on Mulberry Street, when Charlene had lived with her.

  Charlene. She’d loved her niece as fiercely as if she had been her own child. In truth, she would be the only child Sar
ah ever had. She’d never hold a baby in her arms . . . especially at the ripe age of four-and-thirty.

  And now Charlene was living her own life, building her own family so very far away from Sarah, because that is what one did with people they loved—they let them live their own life.

  Sarah was ready to drift back into sleep when she sensed movement. She wasn’t alone in the room. Someone quietly closed a door.

  Complete recollection returned. Sarah opened her eyes.

  She was in the room at the Clarendon. She knew without opening the bedroom drapes that it was late evening. She’d slept for several hours and she could sleep for several more.

  A lamp burned low on the table next to the bed, its yellow light highlighting the whiteness of the sheets and the graceful carving on the bedposts. The door between the bedroom and sitting room was closed.

  This is where the Duke of Baynton had brought her. She’d been evicted and her plays were gone. All of them. Everything that had mattered in her life had been treated as if it was of no consequence.

  Realizing with a touch of horror she’d been sleeping with her mouth open, Sarah closed it and pushed herself up. Her hair was a shambles and her dress, her best dress, was hopelessly wrinkled. She still wore her wet shoes.

  Sarah put her legs over the side of the bed and that is when she noticed the hip tub full of steaming water in the corner of the room. She rose and crossed to it. Someone had set a table close at hand and there was a stack of clean linen towels and soap. Finely milled soap. She picked it up and smelled it. The scent was floral, not heavy with rose or lavender but a soft mixture.

  She stood a moment, listening. She could hear no sound from the sitting room beyond the closed door—and yet she knew he was there.

  Baynton was waiting for her, and she knew why. She knew what he wanted.

  Her gaze fell upon a glass of claret wine by the lamp. How thoughtful of him. He should have left the bottle.

  She walked around the bed to the table and lifted the glass. The wine had a bite to it. She was not fond of the taste, but considering her new circumstances, anything to dull the senses was appreciated.

  As was the bath.

  Looking over to the washbasin beneath the room’s mirror, she found tooth powder and a brush for her hair. He had thought of everything.

  Running a hand through her curls, she realized that very few of the pins she’d used that morning were left. Draining the last of the wine in the glass, she set it aside and picked the remaining pins from her hair, placing them carefully next to the brush. She undressed.

  It had been months since Sarah had enjoyed a hot bath, and back then, she’d had to heat the water herself and prepare the tub. No easy task.

  She allowed herself to luxuriate in the water’s warmth a moment before lathering up the soap on a cloth. She washed as if she could remove the uncertainty and frustration from her very soul. There was a pail with water for rinsing so she washed her hair and rinsed it well.

  Not even Cleopatra could have ever enjoyed a bath the way she did this one. She could almost allow herself to forget her circumstances—until a knock sounded in the sitting room on the outside door.

  She heard the door open and the low rumble of male voices. She could not make out the words, but she smelled food. Sarah’s belly rumbled in anticipation.

  The sitting room door closed. She listened closely, expecting Baynton to interrupt her haven.

  He didn’t. And he was so quiet, she couldn’t tell what he was doing.

  Finally, it was curiosity more than hunger that brought her out of the bath.

  She dried herself off and for a moment considered putting the green dress back on. After all, it was currently the only piece of clothing she owned.

  And then she decided she’d not sully her body, all warm and smelling like a field meadow with the abused dress. Besides, if her memory of her mother’s many lovers served her correctly, mistresses rarely required clothes.

  She pulled the top sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her, fashioning it into a gown without sleeves. Her hair was beginning to dry, its heavy weight curling below her shoulders. Studying herself in the glass, she knew there was nothing she could do about the apprehension in her eyes.

  Think of the time when you loved Roland, she ordered herself. Not as it grew to be, but back in the beginning when he’d been kind and you were innocent.

  Of course, the Duke of Baynton was a far cry from her late husband who had taught her to hate the marriage bed. To hate what a man could do to a woman.

  She didn’t believe Baynton would be brutal . . . but he would expect her to submit, something she’d promised herself she would never do again.

  Her mother, once, after a beating by the hand of one of her lovers, had informed Sarah that all men could be cruel. Sarah had not wanted to believe her, until Roland had proved her mother’s words prophetic.

  Sarah placed both hands again her abdomen, there, where a baby had once grown inside her. A child she’d never stopped mourning even though she’d never held her in her arms.

  “You believed your life was destroyed then,” Sarah softly reminded her reflection. “You survived.”

  It was a good reminder. She would always survive. Look what she had managed to live through already.

  That didn’t still the tremble in her lips or ease the tension in eyes that threatened to swallow her face. Her cheekbones were very pronounced. She’d lost weight over the past several months. Perhaps she had become too thin?

  But she had not lost her spirit, her will.

  She would give Baynton what he wanted, but she would dictate the terms. Her body would not be sold cheap.

  Sarah moved to the door and opened it.

  The sitting room was ablaze with the sort of light provided by one who never worries about the cost of candles. There was no fire in the hearth but the room exuded a cheeriness Sarah was far from feeling.

  On a table was a tray with several covered serving dishes. The aroma of roasted meats and fresh baked bread almost brought her to her knees.

  She forced her attention away from those tantalizing dishes to face the man in the room, and then her mouth almost dropped open in shock.

  The duke sat in a chair at the desk. He was reading from a stack of papers. He had removed his jacket and loosened the knot on his neck cloth. A man at home with himself.

  But it was lenses connected with gold wire perched on his quite noble nose that startled her. She had come to think of him as larger than life, perpetually vital, flawless. Vain even . . . until she saw the glasses. They gave his face character and a touch of humanity.

  For his part, Baynton appeared equally stunned.

  His gaze took in every nuance of her appearance, the draping folds of the bed sheet, her curves, her hair, and then he lowered his eyes as if looking for her toes.

  Sarah found her voice first. “Wondering what else about me is naked?” she asked. She sounded bold, in control.

  “I believe I know,” he answered, a new huskiness to his voice.

  However, instead of pursuing the matter, he took off the lenses and tapped what he was reading with one of the wire temples. “This is very good.”

  Only then did Sarah see that he was reading her play. The Fitful Widow lay open in its leather folder across the desk.

  Her heart gave a wild leap. In her fit of despair, she’d thought that she had tossed it out in the rain with the others. He must have saved her from herself. She had not lost everything. This play, the one written from her heart, still existed—and with it, her dreams.

  And then a jolt of anger shot through her, a sense of violation. “I don’t remember giving you permission to read my work.”

  He dropped his glasses and raised his hand as if to gently ward her off. “I meant no insult. I was curious and there isn’t anything else to read in the room.”

  She glanced around as if confirming his words but truly to take a moment to calm herself and to regain her perspecti
ve. She was overreacting.

  “I don’t normally read plays,” he confessed, marking his place in her play and closing the folder. “Or attend the theater.”

  “Yes, I know. ‘Only the occasional Shakespeare.’” That had been what he’d told her during their chase to stop Charlene from eloping.

  He nodded, conceding her point. “I know that my opinion means little to you, but I have been entertained. Well done, Mrs. Pettijohn.”

  Her attitude toward his reading her work changed.

  “Have you reached the part where they duel over her hand?” she wondered.

  “No, I am at the section where he is in the wardrobe while the Duke of Bumble—whom I assume is the villain of the piece—”

  “He is the clown.”

  “Exactly. He comes across as a bit of a knobby know-it-all.”

  As she’d written him to be.

  And she’d put that part in the play after she’d returned from Scotland. She’d been so thoroughly annoyed with the Duke of Baynton, she’d had to use him as a character.

  Had he recognized himself?

  His level gaze told her nothing.

  She wondered what he’d thought of the description of Bumble as being unusually handsome? She’d not meant to write those words but they had flowed from her pen, and now, short of her rewriting the page, were very much a part of the story.

  “He has a tendency to want everything his way,” Sarah informed him. “The duke in the play, that is.”

  He changed the subject.

  “I didn’t know what you liked to eat so I took the liberty of ordering the best the kitchen offered.” He stood, crossed to the table, and lifted the covers of the dish nearest her. “This is hare. They do it very well here. And this,” he said, lifting the other cover, “is God’s gift to England, roast beef. The chef is French. I once tried to hire him but he prefers his kitchen here.”

  The food smelled enticing. “Your choice,” he invited. “I’m happy with either. Oh, and there is wine, or cider, if you prefer.”