Etiquette With The Devil

by Rebecca Paula

  “I thought to ask something while out on our walk earlier, but it was clear you didn’t want to be in my company.”

  She nervously plucked another petal free. Then, as the anger rolled over her toward Bly for having invaded her only haven, she plucked three more in quick succession. “And you believe I do now?”

  “No.” Bly paused with his hand on the doorway, his brow furrowed. He shut the door, none too quietly, and took another step. “No,” he continued, “it’s quite clear that you don’t wish to see me, but this is a matter that can’t wait.”

  “What’s so pressing? Tormenting me once today wasn’t enough?”

  “I’ve come to ask for your hand in marriage,” he said in a voice that was not quite his own.

  Clara pushed away from the desk too quickly and knocked the vase over, shattering the fine porcelain to pieces. The flowers lay heaped, their broken petals drowning in a puddle of water amongst shards of something that was once beautiful. Fitting.

  “If this is because of what I told you—”

  “No,” he said firmly. Bly cleared his throat before he continued. “Perhaps we should speak of… that.”

  “No, we will not speak of that,” Clara retorted, feeling her temper rise. “Your aunt almost robbed me of my son. I wish to never speak of it again.”

  “Pardon?”

  His confusion shortened Clara’s temper further. She had meant to keep that secret and now he knew the truth, the absolute truth, and that was perhaps worse than what she had told him in the garden.

  He walked with slumped shoulders to rest his hands over on the fire mantle. “Explain,” he said, still keeping his back to her. “Please.”

  “I said I will not speak of it further. Leave me alone.”

  “I have a right to know. If she did as you just admitted, than she almost robbed me of a child as well. I wish to know how it happened.”

  “What does it matter now?” Clara asked, wrapping her arms around herself as her voice grew louder.

  “It matters to me, Clara,” he said, striding across the room. He stopped short as she shied from his outstretched hand.

  “Don’t,” she warned, drawing back against the door. Hysteria swept through her, constricting around her heart as her lips trembled.

  “After you left, I discovered myself with child,” Clara whispered. “And when it was a certainty, I went to your aunt to resign from the post and take my leave. She guessed the reason for my hasty decision, and when she discovered I was carrying your child, she stopped her nasty name-calling and treated me kindly. She told me that I could remain and keep my post as governess. She assured me that she would offer whatever protection I needed.”

  Bly stood, his eyes locked with hers in a resolute firmness that felt as if she were a one-winged butterfly on display, broken but beautiful all the same.

  “When I took tea with her that night, I thought nothing of how she pushed me to drink. I thought nothing of how she smiled sweetly or how her ill opinion of me had changed. I thought that in your aunt I had found someone who would stand by me. Only, I found a bitter woman set on destroying your family. She poisoned me. She has confessed as much since. She poisoned me to…” Clara faltered, angry tears now running down her face. “She tried to rob me of hope. She tried to take Rhys away from me. Without him, I have nothing.”

  She pressed her body tight against the glass as he attempted to comfort her. She wouldn’t have it. The very smell of him in that instant was driving her to a brink of madness.

  “I never wanted for you to know,” she whispered. She stuck her hand in her mouth and bit down, trying to gain composure over her frayed nerves.

  “Clara, love, let me touch you.”

  “Don’t call me that. I don’t want to hear that endearment pass over your lips again.”

  “This is hard for me to hear. Come here.”

  At that, Clara laughed and brushed away her tears with a fisted hand. “Don’t you understand? To force me into marriage makes you no better than any other person in my life.”

  “I can provide for you. I can protect you.”

  “I am not looking to be bought. I want love, however foolish that idea may be for me to cling to, that is my one wish. I will fight for that choice. And how am I ever expected to love you if you take that away and force me into a union I do not wish for?”

  “In time, perhaps there could be something civil between us.”

  “You BROKE my heart!” she yelled, slamming her hand against the window. Once the roaring beat lulled in her ears, Clara lowered her voice to a shaky whisper. “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Don’t say that. I want to do what is right. I wronged you, and I wish to fix it. I want to protect you and Rhys. I want to—”

  “I am more than another obstacle for you to surmount. I am more than—” Clara stopped. She did not wish to be a means to an end, but where else was she to go if she refused? She was a fallen woman with a child and no references. “If you must,” she whispered, a sour taste swimming in her mouth.

  Bly smiled, grabbing for her hand, but she withdrew and turned back to the window.

  “I know you weren’t asking.” She pressed her forehead to the cold glass, her fingers spreading out before her, hoping to grasp a future other than the one before her.

  “No,” he answered from the door.

  “No,” she echoed, closing her eyes tight.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Two weeks later, Clara stood beside Bly to be married.

  She had been ill three times since waking up from nerves. She had smiled when Molly and Tilly helped her into the new wedding gown from London. She had laughed as Minnie and Grace danced about in their new frocks, giggling with excitement. She had even broken into tears as James and Rhys escorted her on the short walk down to the library.

  Those happy moments were only lies. Just one foot in front of the other, she had repeated to herself. She imagined that was something most brides did not think of as they saw their groom waiting for them at the end of the aisle.

  It was a short distance, but when marching toward Bly Ravensdale, it felt as though she were crossing the vast Atlantic in a rowboat. She remembered that night long ago, those days, where she had worried she would drown from having him in her life. Finally, that day had arrived.

  “Miss Dawson, perhaps you did not hear. Please repeat after me: to love, honor, and obey.”

  The vicar looked to Clara, his bushy eyebrows squished together. She gave another small smile, standing a bit straighter. She refused to say that obey to Bly. It would be like handing the world to Napoleon on a silver platter. At one time, she thought it was love. There was no honor between them, but Bly was giving their son the family name, which was honorable enough. But obey? No, Clara had to draw the line somewhere in their ridiculous charade. She would never obey Bly Ravensdale, husband or no.

  “It was no mistake. I heard you, Vicar,” she answered as demurely as possible. There was nothing polite about a public set down of the village vicar. “I will not be vowing to obey Mr. Ravensdale. Thank you nonetheless for bringing my omission to light. Please go on.”

  The vicar’s face reddened, and he adjusted the collar of his shirt. His discomfort was echoed by the shuffling of feet and soft swish of fabric belonging to the witnesses standing behind the couple.

  Clara tightened her sweaty palms around her ribbon-cinched bouquet before finally peering over to Bly.

  He stood rigid, his hands clasped in front of him. To others, he might have looked unaffected by her refusal, but Clara knew better than to believe that trick. The muscles along his jaw ticked and there was a jaded smile at his lips. Perhaps if they were not in the middle of their wedding ceremony, he would turn and counter, and they would bicker until he looked like he would kiss her and she would think of kissing him, but walk away.

  The vicar darted his eyes between the pair until Bly shrugged. The nervous knot in Clara’s stomach loosened the slightest bit, but the vicar c
leared his throat and waited for Bly to push his husbandly right to have his wife obey him. It was proper for a wife to obey her husband.

  “Please continue, Vicar,” Bly said. “Miss Dawson is free to do as she wishes as my wife.”

  If that were true, Clara thought, she would not be standing in the library of Burton Hall getting married.

  *

  It never occurred to Bly that at some point in his thirty-five years he would want to be married. He rarely thought marriages to be happy unions. He had his parents to thank for that impression. He laughed at those who, over the years, found themselves sick in love and parading after a woman’s skirts. He mocked those who gave up adventure for the dull lifestyle of a family man. Bly relentlessly teased men like Barnes who fell like the Roman Empire at the fluttering eyelashes of a charming woman.

  But he had been the biggest fool, he realized, as Clara entered through the library door in her wedding dress. She was to be his wife. Clara Dawson. The prudish, frustrating, governess of years ago. The mother of his son. She was as ever-changing to him as the as the moon.

  He was not anticipating the great wave of nerves that swept over him as he saw the gray of her eyes beneath the lace veil. Nor was he prepared for the uncomfortable tightness in his chest or the thrumming of his pulse in his throat as his gaze remained fixed on Clara in her new satin gown. He had never prepared for the situation because he never thought it to be a possibility.

  She was the guiding point on the horizon—the small burst of light in the night’s sky that would rescue the lost. Clara was his light. If only he could help her understand that fact, maybe they could grow to be comfortable being in the same room with each other.

  The vicar turned to him, Clara’s put down still ringing in Bly’s ears like a funeral dirge as they exchanged their vows.

  Did she have to ruin something he labored to make special for her? He was not entirely surprised, but it upset him nonetheless. He had paid a small fortune to have the best modiste in London alter the dress in time, and although it was only a small group, the wedding breakfast would be lavish. If only he could understand what she needed from him, he would do it, no matter the cost.

  “Please continue, Vicar,” he finally said. He swallowed, trying to dislodge whatever was stuck in his throat. Even his collar threatened to strangle him. “Miss Dawson is free to do as she wishes as my wife.”

  He cared little if she vowed to obey. That was not important to him. He wished to protect her and the children, especially in light of the news Barnes delivered. The ghosts of his past, the more violent ones, the ones that threatened torture and death—he feared those would follow him to Burton Hall and take away what he had come to hold dear, especially after leaving Graham in India.

  As he slipped the ring upon her finger, the light from the stained glass windows arced around Clara and her eyes, and for the briefest moment, they sparked green. Hope. That small hint of light gave Bly hope that her love for him would awaken like spring and come alive.

  Clara had taken his name without another protest. She had even smiled to the children as she left the library. She smiled during the small wedding breakfast and applauded as Grace and Minnie sang for the newlyweds. She smiled to everyone that day, except to her husband.

  When breakfast finished, she had hurried away to her room and remained there, even refusing dinner. Bly did not appreciate Clara’s tantrum, but he would take it in stride. He was not so much of an ass that he expected her to forgive his wrongs and submit to him on their wedding night though he wished they could share a happy marriage bed in time.

  He understood her pointed refusals after what he subjected her to the last time. But he would remain now. He would strive to be everything a husband could be to a wife. Bly would do anything to make her happy. He would move heaven and earth for her, if only she would look him in the eye and not flinch at merest suggestion of his touch.

  With a sigh, he shoved off his jacket and headed toward his dressing room, where he could enter her quarters. She needn’t share his bed, but she could acknowledge the union with a word or two. She could strive to be civil.

  *

  Clara spent her wedding day in bed, and not in the delightful way one might associate with the happy event.

  She had barely looked at the bridegroom during their breakfast. The few glimpses she had caught revealed a man who appeared happy and handsome, and that broke her heart all the more. Seeing him as such begged the question as to why she could not love Bly. It was a conflicting matter between her logical mind and her heart. She saw no clear end in sight.

  She always thought it strange when she read of heartbreak, until she experienced the condition for herself. There was truth to that illogical claim—her heart no longer worked properly. It stopped and sputtered at the strangest times. It constricted in pain whenever Clara remembered some small detail pertaining to their time together, when they had been happy, however briefly. Her heart ached for him, even as her more logical self screamed to let their connection remain an affair of the past, best left alone and forgotten, allowed to wither and die given enough time.

  Clara left before they had a chance to dance. That was some seven or eleven hours ago. The sun had set since then and darkness claimed her room. Dinner had been announced. Life continued, but she remained motionless in her wedding dress, staring out the windows opposite her new bed.

  A sound startled her from her dreary reverie. To the left of the fireplace, a hidden door opened in the wall’s paneling. So he had come to her after all—her husband. The very idea made her stomach flop.

  She pulled the bed sheets higher and sunk into bed, stilling as his silhouette came into focus in the doorway. By the dim light of the gas lamps, she caught a glimpse of his face, stern and watchful. Clara held her breath.

  Bly leaned against the doorway, kicking one leg in front of the other and crossing his arms in study. She held her tongue and waited for him to speak. Instead, he loosened the tie, still studying at her with a careful insistence.

  “You looked beautiful today,” he said in a low, guarded voice.

  She did not want him in her bed. She did not want his touch or his kiss. She barely made it through the wedding ceremony without emptying the contents of her stomach at his feet. How would they ever be a proper husband and wife if she detested him so?

  “I would have told you earlier, but you ran away.”

  She could have responded to that. The answer was there on her lips, but she remained silent. He moved as if he would take the first step into her room, but as he did so, she drew in a breath and covered herself completely with the quilt.

  “I see,” Bly breathed. He stumbled back an awkward step. “Are you hungry?”

  “No,” she answered, feeling her knuckles grow white as they grasped more tightly at the sheets. The metal band slipped around her ring finger threatened to slip off her knuckle, its fit too big for her hand. Wrong.

  “Hmm.” He closed the door firmly behind him without another word. After a few minutes passed, and it was clear he would not enter again, she scrambled out of bed and pushed the desk across the room to barricade the newly discovered door that connected their rooms.

  Clara had no desire of further visits from her husband.

  *

  “You can’t bully the woman into marriage and expect her to be warm toward you.”

  Barnes nagged like a woman. All morning he had schooled Bly on curbing his temper and approaching Clara with more finesse. The bloody confusing part of it all: Bly thought he had done just that.

  “I did no such thing.”

  “That is exactly what you did. You heard there might be someone after you and you married the poor woman as soon as she was well enough to stand. She hardly had a chance to reconcile the man who hurt her with the man you’ve become.”

  “Why did I need to wait?”

  Barnes tossed two cards down onto the pile between them, and tilted his head.

  “She can have whate
ver she wants,” Bly continued, “but she wants nothing. I paid a good price for her new rooms and the wedding. I’ve taken the steps to repair the nursery as well as acquire new clothes and toys for the children. I’ll spend all the bloody money I have if only she’ll look at me without appearing as if she would be ill.” He shuffled his cards, moving them around to make a winning hand. “And damn these cards. You’re going to win again, you bloody bastard.”

  Barnes threw his head back and laughed. “She wants you to love her.”

  Bly turned around sharply, his muscles tightening at the word love. “I can’t,” he answered. He threw the cards at Barnes from across the table, grabbed a cigar from his pocket, and paced across his office, madly puffing at his cigar.

  She needed family, she needed someone who she could confide in. “I want her mother found,” Bly said, stopping halfway across the room. “A mistress of…” he shut his eyes tight and tried to think of the register, but she had left that blank on their wedding day. “Well, find her mother. Are you writing this down?” Bly snapped. A woman must need her mother, and maybe, just maybe, that would help win over her favor.

  “That’s only one item. I believe I can manage.” Barnes tapped at his head, suggesting he would commit it to memory, but if Bly’s rage grew any stronger, Barnes would not have a head to think with.

  “Bly. Stop.”

  “You don’t see the problem.”

  “Enlighten me,” Barnes retorted, still annoyingly calm.

  “I’m a dead man. You’ve said as much yourself after meeting with Graham. Someone is hunting me down. It’s not rumor. It started then and has followed me from Cairo, to Shanghai, to Bombay. They’re looking to end it now.”

  “Then we’ll discover what they want and talk.”

  “They don’t talk, Barnes.” He bent forward, brushing away the hair at the back of his head to reveal the long, twisted scar from the brick that had brought him down in Cairo.

  Barnes let out a long, high whistle as Bly stood up and walked back to the middle of the room. “Who are they then?”