Rushed to the Altar (30 page)

Sally opened the door almost immediately. She opened her mouth on a greeting, but the words didn’t come. She stared at Clarissa’s companion. Francis stood holding his sister’s hand tightly, and dropped his eyes, squirming closer to Clarissa, trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Clarissa stepped into the hall, bringing Francis up beside her. “Sally, this is a lad I found on the street. He says his name’s Frank. He was being abused most horribly by his master because he wouldn’t go up the chimneys. I thought perhaps we could use him to help out Sammy.”

Sally looked at the boy, eyebrows raised. “A bit scrawny, isn’t he?”

“He won’t be, once we fatten him up.”

“Please, ma’am, I’m hungry,” Francis murmured, gazing up with liquid brown eyes. “Me belly’s rattlin’ somefink awful.”

Sally’s face softened. “Well, we can fix that easily enough. Looks like he could do with a bath, though.”

“Yes, in my chamber, Sally. Then he won’t be in Mistress Newby’s way in the kitchen. Could we find him some fresh clothes though? The rags he’s wearing wouldn’t keep out a summer breeze.”

Sally regarded him with her head on one side. “I’ve a little brother about his size. Maybe me mam could spare his second-best suit.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to pay for a new suit for your brother.” Clarissa began to wonder how much longer she would be able to survive without the earl’s promised allowance. “Just so that we can get this boy warm and respectable again quickly.”

“I’ll fetch up the bath first, ma’am, then I’ll run over to me mam’s. It won’t take but an hour an’ his lordship’s not expected before dinner.”

“Then do it, Sally. Come along, Frank.” She hustled him up the stairs and into her own chamber. “That was quick thinking, love. Can you talk like that all the time?”

“Course,” he said somewhat scornfully. “Just like the lads in the stables at home, an’ just like they all talked in that horrible place.”

“Good, well try not to let it slip except when you’re alone with me. Let’s get you out of those filthy clothes.”

It was hard not to weep at the sight of her little brother’s half-starved body, where grime was ingrained into every crease and fold. Francis splashed happily in the hip bath and didn’t object even when his sister pulled a fine-tooth
comb through his hair, looking for lice. Amazingly she didn’t find any. Once bathed and swamped in her chamber robe, sitting beside her fire, he ate a bowl of bread and milk, a plate of coddled eggs and toasted bread, and a thick slice of fruitcake. Mistress Newby had responded to the tale of the rescued chimney sweep with motherly concern, and after one look at the child in the bath had professed herself disgusted and disappeared to her kitchen to set about the process of remedying the situation.

Clarissa, curled in her chair by the fire, felt the last strains of the terror that had accompanied her ever since she had learned of her little brother’s fate slide away from her as she watched him eat, watched his cheeks almost visibly plump out under the effects of good food and warmth. She would never let him be taken from her again. Luke would have to kill her first. It occurred to her that that was probably not beyond his capabilities, but she found she could almost smile at the thought.

This was the scene that met Jasper’s eyes when he entered his mistress’s bedchamber at three o’clock. He was already put out by the lack of ceremony that had greeted his early arrival. Neither Clarissa nor Sally had come down to his cheerful hail from the hall and he’d been left to make his own way upstairs. There was no sign of Clarissa in the drawing room, where he’d expected to find her, fresh and eager, dressed to please him.

Instead this. His eyebrows crawled into his scalp. There was a small child wrapped in a chamber robe,
sitting by the fire consuming an enormous piece of fruitcake, a milk mustache adorning his upper lip. And Clarissa, the earl’s mistress, was ensconced cozily in the chair opposite, watching the boy with a possessive fondness that made the hairs on Jasper’s neck prickle.

“What the devil is this?”

Chapter Fifteen
 

Clarissa jumped, her eyes darting to the clock on the mantel. “Oh, my lord . . . Jasper . . . I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

“No,” he agreed aridly. “So it would seem. Who’s this?”

Francis, from the folds of his sister’s chamber robe, regarded the new arrival with wide-eyed curiosity and a hint of anxiety. The man didn’t seem very happy to see him.

“He’s just a child I found on the street.” Clarissa uncurled herself from the chair and stood up, feeling that she would be more in control of the situation on her feet. “He’d run away from his master, a chimney sweep who had abused him most dreadfully. Poor little thing is afraid to go up the chimney because of the rats . . . I couldn’t leave him to that man’s fists. For heaven’s sake, he’s only a child. He can’t stand up for himself. He’s half-starved into the bargain. Look how thin he is.”

Jasper frowned at this impassioned speech. “That
may be so, but you can’t take a legal apprentice from his master.”

This struck Clarissa as as heartless as it was absurd. “Maybe
you
couldn’t, my lord, but I most certainly can,” she declared. “Anyway, how can you know it was a legal apprenticeship? I’ve heard these chimney sweeps just take children off the streets, anywhere they find them. I’m sure that’s what happened to Frank.”

Jasper shook his head. “What do you intend doing with him?”

“Feed him up, for a start. Stand up, Frank.” She took his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Just look at how thin he is, Jasper.” She unwrapped the folds of the chamber robe. Francis shivered as the air hit his naked body, but he made no sound, gazing stoically at the earl, keeping his skinny arms at his sides. It seemed important that this man feel sorry for him.

Jasper’s frown deepened. It was no surprise to him that children in this state of neglect were loose in the city, but the actual reality of a child so thin you could count every rib and knob of his spine did shake his equanimity somewhat. He shook his head again. “For God’s sake, wrap him up, before he catches his death.”

Clarissa did so and installed him in the chair again. He curled up in the swaddling robe and resumed his consumption of fruitcake. “Sally’s gone to fetch him some clothes, her brother’s second-best suit.”

“I see. I can assume then that my entire household is
involved in the care and nurturing of this pathetic scrap of humanity?”

Clarissa’s jade eyes burned, and her voice was frigid. “You can assume, sir, that this household has a degree of human compassion that you so conspicuously lack. Would you throw him back on the street?”

Jasper held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I didn’t say that, Clarissa. If you want to keep the boy, then do so. I can afford to feed and house him, I suppose, and he should be able to make himself useful. As long as his master doesn’t bring the beadle to the door.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said sharply. “How could his master even know where he is?”

“I hope you’re right. And I hope you know what you’re doing. The boy’s probably a thief.”

“I ain’t,” Francis declared with indignation through a mouthful of cake.

Jasper quelled him with a look before turning back to Clarissa, who was struggling to master her own indignation. “If things start disappearing you’ll know where to look.”

“I see,” she said furiously. “Judged and sentenced out of hand. Well, my lord, I beg leave to tell you that I don’t think much of your sense of justice.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Clarissa, be realistic. It stands to reason the only way the child’s survived thus far is by stealing. I’m not blaming him for that, but I am saying that old habits die hard. But on your own head be it.”
He turned away and left the chamber, going into the drawing room.

He poured himself a glass of Madeira and went to the fire, standing with one foot on the andiron, one arm braced against the mantel, as he stared into the flames trying to master his irritation. If he hadn’t just spent the best part of the day in a state of mental turmoil he probably wouldn’t have been so irritated at Clarissa’s philanthropic rescue of a starving waif. In fact, if he weren’t so thoroughly put out already, he probably would have applauded it. But he needed his mistress to himself this evening, and he needed all her attention.

He’d left her bed in the early hours of the morning, not knowing what course of action to take. The startling revelation that the so-called whore he’d just made love to was as virgin as on the day of her birth had shaken him to his core. But oddly enough not as much as the idea that Clarissa herself thought she could deceive him about something so vitally important. The naïvety of such an idea was laughable. Did she really imagine that an experienced man would not know instantly that he was making love to a virgin? There had been no maidenhead to breach, certainly, but no other man had touched her body in the ways of love, no other man had entered that tight virginal sheath.

It seemed that everything she had presented to him about herself had been a lie. He had become convinced she was not what she seemed, and it had intrigued him, but he hadn’t considered the extent of her deception.
And for a few moments he had found himself doubting her passionate response to his lovemaking. Had that also been a lie? But in his heart he knew that she had responded with true passion; no one, however expert a whore, could counterfeit such a response. And whatever else she was, Clarissa Ordway, if indeed that was her name, was no whore. Or hadn’t been until he bought her services. He had already asked himself what had turned a seemingly gently bred young woman into a denizen of a Covent Garden nunnery, and now he couldn’t begin to untangle his confusion. If she wasn’t working for Nan, why was the tough-hearted businesswoman giving her shelter? And
what
in the name of all that was good lay behind this elaborate charade?

He had been a poor companion all day, distracted enough to lose two bouts at the fencing salon and to cause his friends in his club to abandon him with good-humored mockery when it was clear he had no interest in either conversation or cards. And he was no nearer now to solving the conundrum.

Clarissa spoke softly behind him. “I’m sorry to have discommoded you, Jasper. I didn’t think a small child under your roof would upset you so much.”

He turned away from the fire. She stood by the door, her expression composed, her eyes glowing with only the embers of their earlier angry fire. Her hair hung loose, held back from her face with a band of velvet ribbon. “There’s really no reason for you even to notice him.”

He took a sip from his glass, regarding her over the
lip. “As long as you promise not to fill the house with waifs and strays, I daresay that’s true.” He set down his glass and held out his arms. “Come here.”

She came readily enough. He grasped her head between his hands, his fingers twisting in the red-gold hair, and he realized as he kissed her that despite his confusion, his irritation, or perhaps because of it, he wanted, no, needed to reassert a sense of exclusive possession. Somehow that sense had been shaken by the child’s presence, by the way Clarissa had been looking at the boy, the atmosphere of easy, settled companionship that surrounded them. Where had it come from?

Clarissa responded to the fierceness of the kiss with her own need. The intensity of the kiss was a burning brand against her lips; his tongue was savagely possessive in her mouth, fencing with her own, establishing its presence within her. She could sense the residue of his anger as she could sense her own, and the kiss became a battleground of sorts, scouring their shared ill feeling in the heat of passion.

At last the fierce grip on her face eased and his hands moved down her back to hold her hips. His lips softened against hers, and his tongue explored her mouth gently, no longer invading. When he raised his head, his eyes held a rueful smile as he stroked her swollen lips with a fingertip.

“I don’t know quite what that was,” he said softly. “But I have been thinking of you all day.” Which was entirely true, he reflected wryly, although his thoughts had not been particularly loving.

She leaned into him, resting her head for a moment on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. Somehow she seemed to draw strength from his closeness. “I have missed you all day.” Only as she said it did she realize how true it was. Even though she had been completely absorbed with Francis, at the back of her mind had been the sense of unease she had felt when he had left her that morning . . . a need to see him again, to reassure herself that things had not changed between them.

“When you weren’t rescuing stray chimney sweeps,” he said lightly, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. “Where’s the boy now?”

“Still in my bedchamber. I’m going to make up a bed for him in the dressing room.”

“Oh, no, that is not going to happen,” Jasper stated firmly. “You may hurl accusations of brutality at my head if you wish, but I will not have that child—any child—sleeping in the room adjoining the bedchamber. He can sleep in the servants’ quarters. They’re comfortable enough, and I’m sure he’ll think them a palace compared to any bed he has slept in hitherto.”