Rushed to the Altar (13 page)

“And what was their conversation?” he inquired, draping the shawl across her shoulders before taking his hat and cane from the bench.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, just chat between brothers, I suppose.”

He looked at her with narrowed eyes but let it go. “It’s long past noon, and I for one am hungry. I suggest we return to the Angel and see if we can reproduce yesterday’s dinner, which we so abruptly abandoned.”

Was it only yesterday?
So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Clarissa wasn’t sure she was still the same person, but she was sure she was hungry and her present appearance would draw no attention in the Piazza, so, with a nod, she acceded.

Louis returned slightly out of breath. “Chair’s outside, m’lord.”

The chair stood before the door, two sturdy chairmen at the poles. Jasper handed Clarissa in and then walked beside the chair as the chairmen trotted back to Covent Garden.

The deserted quiet of the morning was a mere memory, and the Piazza was as crowded as ever, business being transacted on every street corner and behind every colonnade. Raucous voices floated on the steam billowing from the bathhouses and outside a tavern a man was selling his wife. He had set the woman on a rickety table,
a rope around her neck, as he called out the bidding to the crowd of jeering carousers surrounding them. The woman’s expression was one of desolate desperation.

Clarissa closed her eyes, feeling sick. She unfurled her fan and plied it vigorously, trying to shut out the noise and the image. Jasper glanced into the chair and frowned. “Are you unwell? You’re very pale suddenly.” Indeed, even beneath the white powder, her pallor was noticeable.

“No . . . no.” She waved her fan at him but still didn’t open her eyes. He looked around, wondering what had affected her. He could see nothing out of the ordinary.

The chair stopped outside the Angel and Jasper handed her down. The tavern was thronged but the tavern wench recognized the earl immediately and came over to them. “You want that special burgundy now, sir? ’Cause if ’n you do, Jake says as ’ow you should ’ave it in the back room.” She jerked her head towards a door at the rear of the taproom. “Can’t ’ave everyone after it. We’ve a good mutton stew to go with it, and as many oysters as you can eat.”

“Then lead the way.” They followed the girl into a small deserted chamber behind the bar warmed by a fire in an inglenook hearth.

“I’ll bring oysters then, shall I?”

“And a flask of Rhenish.” Jasper tossed his hat and cane onto the pine bench beneath the small window. “Come to the fire, Clarissa.”

She obeyed, huddling into her shawl, trying to rid
herself of the chill that had struck deep at the sight of the wife sale in the Piazza. Jasper frowned at her crouched figure, bending to the fire, hands outstretched. The bright red spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out as if she were in the grip of a fever.

He went to the door and beckoned to the wench, who was filling a flagon with Rhenish wine at the bar. “Bring a towel and a bowl of water, girl.”

“Aye, sir.” She set the flagon on the bar and went to satisfy this strange requirement. She set them down on the deal table against the wall. “I’ll bring the Rhenish and the oysters now, sir.”

He nodded, intent on the task at hand. He dipped the towel in the bowl and came over to Clarissa. “Let me get this stuff off your face, you’ve no need of it now.” He tilted her chin and scrubbed vigorously at the rouge on her cheeks. It came off with some difficulty, then he soaked the cloth again, but before he could apply it to her lips, Clarissa took it from him.

“Thank you, my lord, but I can wash my own face.”

She sounded much stronger, so much more like herself that he relinquished the cloth and went to pour the wine that the tavern wench had just brought.

Clarissa was scrubbing at her nipples, an expression of such acute distaste on her face that Jasper was startled. There were women all around them dressed and painted as Clarissa had been. But it wouldn’t be necessary again, he decided. He certainly didn’t care for it, particularly on a woman as youthful and fresh faced as she was. She
was right to dislike it, to know that it didn’t suit her. But it had served its purpose.

Clarissa became aware of his gaze as she scrubbed at her bare breasts and realized with a shock that she had thought nothing of washing her nipples in front of him. What was happening to her? She seemed to be changing into someone else without volition. Hastily she tucked her breasts back into the gown, pulling up the neckline, then swathing herself in the shawl. Instantly she felt more like herself.

“Oysters?” Jasper inquired, having watched this hasty readjustment with interest. He gestured to the table.

Clarissa sat down and took an oyster. She picked up the oyster fork and caught his quick glance. Her eyes went to the bruise on his hand. “You wouldn’t let me go.” She speared an oyster and popped it into her mouth.

“No, I suppose that’s true.” He speared one himself. “So, can we agree to bury that lamentable incident far in the past, and start a new chapter?”

Clarissa sipped her wine, rolling the golden flowery liquid around her tongue. It warmed her and she felt some of the tension slide away, a tension that had been a part of her since Luke had appeared in the breakfast room at Astley Hall that dreadful morning.

“When will I move to the house on Half Moon Street?” The question was sufficient answer to his question.

It was, however, a slightly awkward question for Jasper. His present mistress was still in situ. Their understanding
had been drawing to an acrimonious close for some weeks now as his suspicion that she was sharing her favors with rather more than himself alone became undeniable fact. But as a matter of courtesy he needed to confront her before evicting her. “It will take me a few days to have it refurbished for you,” he temporized.

Clarissa speared another oyster. “I’m sure I don’t need a newly refurbished house, sir. My tastes are simple. Isn’t it important that we begin this charade as soon as possible?”

Jasper thought of the house as Gwendolyn had it furnished. It was an ornate muddle of opulent swags, gilded furniture, a bed so deep in feathers he felt he was drowning whenever he joined her in it, and he had regretted giving her carte blanche with it from the moment he had first walked through the front door, although in the early days of their lustful passion he had deliberately ignored his reservations.

But lust had faded as it so often did, and his own sense of obligation to his mistress had ended abruptly when it had become abundantly clear to him that she had not the same sense of loyalty to her protector. He had dismissed the early whispers as malicious gossip, and somehow, probably because of his apparently nonchalant understanding, Gwendolyn had decided that he was a blind fool, to be used and manipulated as she chose. From then on the vulgar opulence of his so-called love nest had irritated him beyond bearing. Thus far, indolence had stopped him from confronting
his mistress and dealing with the resulting unpleasantness. He had had no mistress to put in Gwendolyn’s place, so it didn’t really matter, but now the situation was very different.

Half Moon Street would become a love nest that would suit Clarissa Ordway, a woman so unlike Gwendolyn Mallory it was almost impossible to imagine them in the same room.

“It is important,” he agreed. “But before I establish you there are other steps to be taken. First your wardrobe . . . you need clothes, fashionable clothes that don’t smack of the nunnery, if society is to accept you. Nothing too modest, of course, nothing like that bronze muslin or the gown you were wearing yesterday, but—” He broke off as the tavern maid came in with a cauldron, which she set on the table. She lifted the lid and fragrant steam rose from the contents.

They didn’t resume the conversation until she’d ceremoniously set a crusted bottle of burgundy on the table with two goblets, which she wiped over on her grimy apron; bowls; and utensils. “There y’are then. That’ll do you, I reckon.”

“It will, thank you.” Jasper gave her a nod of dismissal, then lifted the ladle. “Pass your bowl.”

Clarissa did so, wondering how many elegantly dressed earls ladled mutton stew from tavern cauldrons as a matter of course. Jasper St. John Sullivan certainly seemed to know his way around a ladle and a mutton stew. He filled her bowl, selecting choice pieces of
meat and vegetables, and discarded anything with fat or gristle. He passed the bowl back and then helped himself.

Clarissa took a small spoonful, watching with a degree of amusement as he ate with relish, breaking bread into the gravy and eschewing all the finer points of table manners. Although there was nothing distasteful about his table manners, they were just the straightforward, hungry conduct of a man at a country table. She’d seen her own father eat with such enjoyment after a day hunting or in the fields with his tenants. And it made her instantly comfortable. She dipped again into her bowl and gave herself up to the sheer pleasure of good plain food.

Until she remembered Francis. Her spoon drifted down to her bowl and she crumbled her bread between her fingers, fighting back tears.

“What is it, Clarissa?” He leaned over the table. “You look stricken, what is it?”

She bit her lip. “A memory, a bad memory. Forgive me, my lord. It intruded.” She gave a tiny unconvincing laugh. “They do, on occasion.”

“Certainly they do.” He looked at her closely. “Will you not tell me what it is?”

It was too soon, too soon even to give him the fabrication she had finally developed of her own child lost in childbirth. “A piece of history,” she said lightly. “Nothing to concern us.” She forked a piece of mutton and smiled at him.

Jasper was unconvinced, but he was also convinced that at this point he had no right to probe. Of course the woman had a past, of course she had complications in her life; everyone did. He didn’t need to know them, understand them, or attempt to solve them. He was paying her to perform one part; everything else about her was of no interest, unless it interfered with her ability to perform satisfactorily.

“As you say,” he conceded, refilling his glass. “And to get back to your wardrobe . . . after we’ve eaten I will escort you to a milliner I know, a very skilled woman with a good eye. She’ll know what to do for you.”

“It’s just possible, my lord, that I will know what to do for myself,” she said, her tone sharp. “I haven’t lived my life in a byre.”

“No, of course you haven’t, I never intended to imply such a thing,” he denied, somewhat startled by her vehemence. “But you cannot know anything much about prevailing town fashion; it’s not as if you’ve been frequenting fashionable London these last weeks. What is appropriate for the Piazza will not do in society’s salons and drawing rooms.”

Clarissa flushed with annoyance. “I am well aware of that, sir. Credit me with some sense.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Enough said. We will go and visit Madame Hortense and you may share your views with her.”

Clarissa frowned. “Must it be this afternoon?”

“I see little point in delay. Why, do you have something
else, something more important, to do this afternoon?” He raised an interrogative eyebrow as he leaned over to refill her wineglass.

He sounded as if it was impossible that she should have. Clarissa, still frowning, stared into the ruby contents of her glass. He’d want to know what it was that was so important she couldn’t spend the afternoon in his company, and she could hardly tell him she was impersonating a Bow Street Runner whenever she wasn’t impersonating a prostitute. But to let a day slide by without furthering her search for Francis seemed like the worst betrayal. “I’m rather fatigued,” she said finally. “I would like to rest this afternoon.”

Jasper regarded her for a moment, wondering why he was unconvinced by such an excuse. It was not unreasonable; her life had turned topsy-turvy since the moment she had run into him the previous day. She probably needed some time to herself. And yet he had the feeling she was not telling him the truth. However he merely nodded. “As you wish. I’ll send a carriage for you in the morning to take you to Madame Hortense’s establishment.”

“Thank you.” Clarissa set down her spoon. “If you’ll excuse me now, my lord, I would return to King Street. I have no need of an escort. It’s just around the corner.” She pushed back her stool.

Jasper rose to his feet, observing drily, “You seem to have the habit of unceremonious departures from the
dinner table, Clarissa. But I do insist that I accompany you to your door. Wait here while I settle up with mine host.”

“I would not take you from your dinner, sir.”

He dismissed her protest with a brusque gesture and went into the taproom. Clarissa grimaced; she couldn’t really blame him for being annoyed. But in truth she didn’t think she could face another mouthful of food or another moment of inaction. She wrapped herself in her shawl and went into the taproom.

Jasper turned from the bar counter, where he was talking with the landlord. “Come along then.” He ushered her through the noisy crowd and out into the Piazza. His displeasure was obvious and he walked so fast that she almost had to trot to keep up with him. At the house he sounded the knocker and waited, tapping his foot until the door was opened by the steward. “Until tomorrow then,” he said with a curt nod, then turned on his heel and left her on the doorstep.

Clarissa took a half step after him, then thought better of it. He was angry and entitled to be so by her discourteous haste to be rid of him. On the morrow she would try to make amends. She waited until he had disappeared around the corner onto Bedford Street, then entered the house, intending to fetch her cloak and coin purse before setting out for Ludgate Hill.