The Wedding Page 5

  She had been born and bred to wealth and privilege, and the moment Crispin had lost his money he had lost her as well, and he knew it. He couldn’t picture her in rented rooms with him, stirring a pot of soup. The notion was obscene. She was a fine lady who couldn’t begin to imagine the world he must now enter. Charlotte wouldn’t believe how he had earned the few coins in his pocket now, and if he had told her, she would have been appalled. Poverty didn’t exist for such a rare and beautiful creature. It was first her father’s and then her husband’s duty to see that the thought of it never intruded upon her. A poor man should have no place in her life.

  The only time a lady might even notice a man without money was after long years of marriage to a gentleman of fortune. That was when she might find a handsome footman or groom interesting company in the night. But otherwise, a man without funds was not a man to her. Crispin couldn’t blame her for that any more than he could blame the sun for rising. It was the nature of things. But that didn’t stop the pain.

  “Say, then, that when I lost my fortune I called off the engagement and refused to let you make the sacrifice of staying with me,” he said.

  “Oh, pooh, and who will believe that?”

  “Why, but it is so,” he said softly.

  “Well, of course. You’re a gentleman. I know that. But it’s what they’ll say about my letting you do it that’s the problem.”

  He desperately wanted this interview to be over and done with so that he could remember how they used to flirt and joke together, how she constantly watched his face for his approval. “Say, then,” he said with sudden inspiration, “that I told you I was leaving the country and wouldn’t take you with me.”

  “Why, that should suffice,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, that will do it, even if you don’t leave. Thank you, Crispin. But,” she said staring at him for a long moment, regret clear in her eyes, “are you entirely sure, my dear? Because I…I wasn’t fibbing when I said I set my sights on you when I first saw you. Remember? Years ago, that afternoon party, at the Stantons’?”

  “With you not out yet, but with all the airs of a great lady. I knew you would be a handful,” he said, laughing, remembering. Then his eyes grew bleak and all the laughter was gone as he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m very certain.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. “Do you—do you have enough funds to get by until the sale? I have some money from my allowance and…”

  He had never seen the self-assured Lady Charlotte blush. “No,” he said, before he saw more than he wanted to see, “but thank you. And good-bye.”

  He turned and blindly sought the door. But before he reached it he heard her wail, “Oh, Crispin!” He turned to find her in his arms, her lips seeking his. She’d never kissed him with such fire. Her embraces were always like her chatter, full of charm and teasing. But now she clung to him and kissed him as a woman might. Her mouth was warm and clinging. He answered her kiss with his whole heart, even though he knew he should not. He had been cold and lost for so long that he kept promising himself another minute until all thought fled his mind.

  She was the one reluctantly who ended the kiss. When she drew away, she was shaking, but she was smiling and her eyes were filled with wisdom. She touched his lips with one finger and smiled a tremulous smile.

  “So handsome,” she whispered. “Such a mouth. Someday we will be together,” she said fervently, “and in not so long a time, not really. You’ll see, Crispin. You and I are fated, you know. Everyone said what a fine couple we’d make, and still we shall. Someday when I’ve done my duty and fulfilled my vows, we’ll be together, I promise.”

  He blinked. “Do you mean to poison your new husband, love?”

  She gave him a tearful, trembling smile, but it was the new wisdom in her eyes that bothered him. “Silly—no. I mean that I intend to live my own life someday, come what may.”

  “You mean, someday when you’ve married someone else and had his children, and are free to play?” he asked, beginning to understand, and not liking what he was hearing.

  He didn’t know why her words should disturb him so much. Such affairs were commonplace, but he had never thought of such behavior in terms of himself or anyone he really loved. Infidelity was a thing he’d always expected would come after marriage, and in the way of such things, like old age and death, he supposed it was something he thought would never happen to him.

  “Of course,” she said. “Oh, but it won’t be long. Not really. I’m only nineteen. It could be”—she closed her eyes and calculated, then opened them, and excitement shone in their blue depths—“in as little as ten years. It sounds like a lifetime, and I suppose in some ways it is, but I’ll still be young. And so will you—at least relatively so. And if I accept Prendergast,” she said with sudden inspiration, “perhaps even in three years, because he’s a widower who already has his heirs, you know, and so should only require one babe of me. Oh, famous!” she said, her eyes glowing.

  “And if you had married me,” he asked, cocking his head as he gazed at her, “would you have taken someone else as your lover after, say, ten years?”

  “Oh, who can say?” she said impatiently. “Likely, I suppose. That’s how long it takes for the bloom to wear off the rose, isn’t it? Why, just look at my own mama and papa. It happens. C’est la vie.” She shrugged.

  “Not with my parents,” he said quietly.

  “Ah, but they had financial problems, did they not? And lived in the countryside. Oh, what a face! You could curdle milk! Don’t tell me you’re a moralist, Crispin, for I shan’t believe it,” she cried gaily. “I know of several opera dancers who will deny it, you know. And Lady Walton and Lady Stanton and… Oh, I’ll spare your blushes. But I know,” she said, making the wise little face that had always made him laugh.

  He didn’t smile.

  “Come. Really,” she said with a hint of annoyance. “You didn’t ask for my fidelity when you proposed marriage, did you?”

  “I did not think to,” he admitted.

  “And rightly so, not wishing to ask me for a promise you’d no intention of keeping yourself. Really, Crispin,” she said, stamping her foot in vexation. “Are we bourgeois little shopkeepers or Bible pounders or the like? No. I know the way of the ton and of the gentlemen in it. What are we to do when you fine gents start eyeing the chambermaids?” she asked flirtatiously. She took a step away from him and pointed her fan at him in mock accusation.

  “We females can expect passion from you for a fivemonth, then restlessness while we poor creatures breed. Then you men dandle a tot or two on your knee and stifle a yawn in our beds not long after. That’s the way of it. Then one day we go to the opera and see you already there with an interesting companion, or plans for one, after. The next time, we sit in our box with an attentive companion of our own, and you sit in the orchestra with your choice for the evening. You’ve seen it a dozen times. It doesn’t even require speaking of. Very civilized and satisfying, I understand. I look the other way, and so then do you. Sauce for the goose, my dear.

  “We cannot wed,” she said firmly, snapping her fan closed, all teasing gone from her voice, “but we will have each other, when we can, when I can—you first, and you only, for so long as you wish. That I do promise you.” She laid her hand on his heart. “I must go to my husband a virgin. He must be sure my first child is his. After that I can and will make my own life. Oh, please smile, Crispin. At least come kiss me. What more can I offer you?” she asked sadly.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  He knew she spoke the truth. And she had promised him whatever love she could offer in the future. He could ask no more of her. Indeed, he knew he ought to be grateful, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t think of pleasure ten years in the future, and he was not inclined to contemplate leftovers. Not when he wondered how he would be able to eat in ten days. Not when he thought of how she would have to pass the next years in her lawful husband’s bed.

  “Good-bye,
my love,” he said, and didn’t kiss her or let her embrace him. He knew he had no right.

  *

  “You’re sure you want me to take them, Crispin?” Andrew Moffit said anxiously, eyeing the horses standing in the paddock before them. “They’re very fine animals.”

  “So they are,” Crispin said, “and believe me I’m grateful that my horses aren’t included in the entail. They, my carriages, and a collection of tin soldiers I found in the attics are about the only things that aren’t,” he mused as his old friend and neighbor looked at him and swallowed hard.

  “What about Wrede?” Andrew said. “He’s your oldest friend, and rolling in gold. Wouldn’t he want them?”

  The earl of Wrede wouldn’t want them. But he’d buy them out of kindness to his friend, Crispin thought, even though Wrede had given enough already.

  “No,” Crispin said with amusement he didn’t feel, “Wrede’s stable is well stocked with horses, believe me. As are those of my other friends.”

  “You could get a fortune for them in London,” his neighbor persisted, though he couldn’t take his gaze from the horses.

  “Not quite a fortune,” Crispin said dryly, and then laughed. “Oh, take them, man. You’ve coveted them forever, and fine as they are, still you’ve given me a price so near to charity, I almost refused it. Almost—but not quite. Go on, Drew, I mean it,” he said gently. “They’re sound beasts, and I know you’ll treat them well. I’d be grateful if you’d take the dogs too. They’ll eat too much, and they won’t contribute much to the hunt but noise, but the staff I’ve left here are on pensions, and I don’t want them doing without so that those foolish hounds can be fed.”

  His servants knew of his love for the dogs, and his old butler had offered to keep the hounds. Crispin chuckled with genuine humor. “Can you see old Mansfield fighting for a soupbone with Sounder? You keep them, Drew.”

  “Of course I’ll take them, and glad to do so,” Drew said at once. “I only wish you’d let me do more. But, Crispin, if you’ve sold the carriages, and I’m taking your horses, how will you get to London?”

  “There are coaches for hire, you know,” Crispin said gently. His friend looked at him in horror, and he laughed. He didn’t mention that he intended to buy an outside seat on the mail, not because gents did that sometimes for sport but because it was the cheapest way to ride.

  He soon found out why it was so cheap, and why every coachman he’d ever seen had a nose as red as the side lanterns of his coach on foggy nights. Nothing but raw rum staved off the chill of a damp windy night, and certainly nothing else was strong enough to keep a man hanging on to his precarious perch high atop a rocking coach as it bumped and rattled along the long road to London. Crispin had never known how many ruts the roads had, or how ridiculously easy it was for frozen fingers to lose their grip after a few hours aloft. After only a few dark, cold hours sitting atop the coach, a man grew weary. Incredibly enough, in all his frigid misery, Crispin even grew sleepy—at least sleepy enough to forget that the only thing between him and the road he was being jounced over was eight feet of air.

  So, too, must exhausted sailors droop in their high seats in the masts and come to imagine the billowing sea below as a comforting pillow, he thought the first time the rhythm of the road lulled him to careless drowsiness. But the thought of the turbulent, treacherous sea woke him to bitter reality. That, and another offer of rum and the singing of his fellow sufferers high atop the coach.

  None sang so loud, however, as the handsome young gent with the starry eyes. Everyone agreed that it was peculiar how a fellow with such a fine voice insisted on singing sea chanties as if they were dirges, how his rendition of that usually rousing ditty, “I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing, Oh!” was so filled with grief and mournfulness that it reduced even the heartiest lads among them to easy tears.

  *

  “I’ve found rooms!” Dulcie announced as soon as she entered her father’s cell and regained enough breath to speak. “Only two, but then, there are only two of us, aren’t there?” She giggled, ignoring the ever-visiting Jerome Snode, not caring if she sounded foolish. She’d come to pack up her papa’s things and to take them, and him, back to those two blessed rooms with her at last.

  “They’re not much,” she admitted as she dropped the huge carpetbag she’d wrestled up the long stairs, “but at least they’re nowhere near here. You can’t see the Fleet from the windows even if you stick your head out. And we’ll be on the fourth floor. It’s high, I know,” she said hastily, “but at least it’s not beneath the roof. The landlady said there are public cookstoves not three doors down the street—two of them. Just think! No more bought meals for you, my dear sir. I shall do the cooking!”

  She’d do the washing on the banks of the Thames if she had to, and smile about it. Because her father was free, and if she could take him from here and help him find a decent job of work, there might be a chance for them yet. They’d try here, and if not here, then there. She’d heard of lands across the sea where penniless people went. Places where strong men and women could make new lives for themselves. Disgruntled Puritans had gone there, and adventurers were going there too. And paupers. It was true that many such places were filled with savages and strange beasts, but accounts she’d read said some of those places were very like England itself had been a few hundred years ago. That might appeal to her father. He was very proud of their ancestors, after all.

  The Blessings weren’t of the nobility, but Papa always bragged that his ancestors had been here to fight William the Conqueror when he came. The fact that they had lost didn’t matter. They were here first. Her father also claimed that he had a distant cousin who was remotely related to a baron. Papa’s own father had been a landowner, but soon after Dulcie was born, Philip had lost the farm and acreage in an ill-fated complexion cream scheme that hadn’t removed pimples so much as it had removed complexions.

  But her papa could read and write and had an education that almost equipped him for a great many things. He was such a persuasive speaker that she was sure he could acquire a job as a clerk or a salesman, if he would only apply himself—and stay far from evil companions. She glared at Jerome Snode.

  Jerome was a medium-sized man in his twenties or thirties or forties. He had straight brown hair and small features on his smooth face. He looked like half the men in any crowd. He was so instantly forgettable, in fact, that if he’d any grace at all he would have been a wonderful pickpocket. His hands were his only distinguishing feature —almost all palm, very broad, and short-fingered. His hands and his smile were the most noticeable things about him, Dulcie thought. And they were both unexpected and unpleasant. Jerome, too, was in jail for debt. He claimed it was all a misunderstanding, which would be righted when he received certain letters from home. Privately Dulcie thought he meant to say it would be righted when he found the right victim far from home.

  She was as relieved that her father was free now as she was that he had no money to lose. She knew that her father admired Jerome, and she suspected Jerome dealt in disreputable schemes. At least her father truly believed each of his schemes would be the salvation of mankind. She knew Jerome was only after his own comfort—and her father’s gratitude.

  It was Jerome who had arranged for her to take on her father’s creditors and transfer his debts to her name. He was the one who set up interviews with their creditors and produced false papers to show them that she would soon be gainfully employed and capable of paying off the debts. When the only position she could find was in a millinery shop, and that at such staggeringly poor wages that she estimated she might be able to pay off the debts in a century or two, he was the one who had proposed the false wedding. And arranged it. The fact that he could so easily pick false documents out of the air and devise such schemes spoke volumes to her. But not to her father.

  She wished Jerome would say or do one thing to verify her belief that he had villainous designs on her, just so her father could see it. But although
Jerome’s bland blue eyes often watched her with unnerving concentration, he was never anything but polite to her. He never made a lecherous move, but he never ceased to watch her, either. She feared him more than the men belowstairs who howled like the brutes they were when she hurried past their cells. At least her father knew what they were, and would protect her, and himself, from them.

  “Well, then, this is good-bye, dear friend,” her father told Jerome, putting out his hand for Jerome to take in his own broad one.

  “Only for now, dear fellow,” Jerome said smoothly. “I shall soon be calling upon you for tea, my friend.”

  Dulcie repressed a snort and hurriedly placed her father’s neatly folded clothes to her bag.

  “And upon our dear viscountess as well,” Jerome added, with a side look to Dulcie.

  Her father laughed at Dulcie’s puzzled expression. “Guess what, my dear? It transpires that the gentleman who `wed’ you was a gentleman indeed. Jerome vows he was no less than a viscount.”

  Dulcie’s hands stilled on a coat she held. That would explain his gentility, his soft, cultured, comforting voice that still calmed her broken dreams in the night. But, she thought, getting on with her packing, it meant nothing to her.

  “Poor fellow,” her father continued.

  “Poor indeed, to have to stoop to such employment,” she said harshly.

  “Still, to be a noblewoman… ” Jerome persisted.

  “And still to be impoverished? What use is a title when there’s not a cent in it? A man can’t eat honors and titles. Noblemen have to eat as well as we poor common folk do.”

  “Ah, yes, too true,” Jerome said, flashing one of those smiles she detested. “But a viscountess,” he persisted. “Something could be made of that, surely.”

  “By his mother, or perhaps his wife. Not by me,” she said as she packed the last of her father’s few garments. “Although what gain there is in a title with no money for anyone, I cannot say.”