Rushed to the Altar (6 page)

“On what grounds? It is to be a Catholic ceremony, as I understand it. There are no acceptable grounds.”

“Non-consummation,” he informed her drily. “That is generally sufficient.”

Clarissa felt herself blush a little, much to her annoyance. “Just how would you go about this charade?”

“Quite simply.” Jasper rose and brought over the decanter. He filled Clarissa’s glass and she was too absorbed in the wild tangle of her thoughts to stop him. He filled his own and sat down again. “We will begin in the usual way. I will become one of your clients, and will request of Mistress Griffiths your exclusive services. This will involve a contract to which all three of us will append our signatures.”

She ought to interrupt, to tell him he was laboring
under a terrible misunderstanding, but somehow the words would not come to her lips. She looked down at her clasped hands in her lap and let the earl’s plan take shape around her.

“And then I will set you up in a house of your own and you will become my public mistress. We will be seen at the theatre, dining in the most select venues, and eventually you will be introduced to society. Once society has accepted you, then the marriage can take place and the conditions of my uncle’s will satisfied.”

He leaned back and regarded her with a questioningly raised eyebrow. “So, what do you say, Mistress Clarissa?”

“Is society likely to accept a known harlot as one of its own?”

“It’s been done before. Courtesans have become the acknowledged mistresses of princes of the blood and on occasion the wives of aristocrats. You have the requisite beauty, and I will provide the necessary training in the courtly arts to ensure that your previous existence will cease to be relevant.”

Oh, will you?
Clarissa lowered her eyes so that he wouldn’t see their flash of scornful indignation.
What right had he to assume she lacked such an education?
But then she had to admit that her present circumstances probably gave him, if not the right, at least the excuse to assume so. Whereas in fact she had had a rigorous education in all such matters at the hands of a mother who based her own station in life on her position as the
third daughter of an earl, whose marriage to a country squire, albeit a wealthy one, had been something of a comedown. It had been a love match, and remained so throughout her mother’s life, but Lady Lavinia Astley had decided that her daughter should form a union that reflected her maternal lineage and had educated her accordingly.

Lady Lavinia would be turning in her grave if she could see her only daughter now, discussing such a proposition in the parlor of a Covent Garden brothel. Or would she? The proposition would make a countess of her daughter. Suddenly the absurdity of the paradox was too much. Clarissa began to laugh and once she’d begun she couldn’t stop.

Jasper stared at her, wondering if he had a hysterical woman on his hands. He was about to summon Nan with smelling salts and water when the paroxysms ceased and she leaned back in her chair, his handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

“I fail to see what’s so amusing.” He took a sip of wine, unable to disguise his annoyance and what he had to admit was chagrin. “I offer you an opportunity any other woman in your position would give her right hand for, and it sends you into whoops of laughter.”

“I do beg your pardon,” she managed to gasp after a moment. “It was most unmannerly of me. But I happened to think of something and it just set me off.”

“Enlighten me, pray.”

She glanced across and saw that she had seriously offended
him. Short of putting him right as to her position there was little she could do about it. “Something you said made me remember something from long ago, something I’d forgotten all about. I’m truly sorry. It was very discourteous.”

Jasper frowned at her. Once again he had the unmistakable impression that all was not what it seemed with this Titian-haired, dewy-eyed beauty. “Well, do you have an answer for me?” he demanded.

Clarissa realized that she did have an answer. Somewhere during this extraordinary hour or so she had come to half a conclusion, and it was by no means one she’d expected to reach. “I would ask for a little time to consider, my lord.” She rose from her chair. “Will you grant me that?”

“If I must.” He rose with her. “I will return at noon tomorrow . . . oh, no, that will be too early for you, of course. You’ll be unlikely to seek your bed before dawn.”

“No . . . no, that will be a fine time. I do not anticipate a busy night,” she said with a smile, amazed at herself. “I’m expecting no regular clients tonight.”
It was true,
she told herself firmly.

“Then at noon tomorrow.” He bowed as she moved to the door. “I bid you farewell, Mistress Clarissa.”

“And I you, my lord.” She curtsied and slipped from the room.

Nan Griffiths materialized in the hall the minute Clarissa had closed the door behind her. “Well, my dear.
What was his lordship’s proposition?” Her shrewd eyes scrutinized the girl’s countenance looking for clues.

“Perhaps he should explain that to you himself, ma’am.” Clarissa moved to the stairs.

“And did you accept it?” Her voice sharpened.

“Not as yet. I asked for time to consider. His lordship will come for his answer at noon tomorrow.”

“I see.” Nan looked thoughtful. “Is there anything you need this evening, my dear, to help you make your decision?”

Clarissa didn’t stop to think. It was almost evening already and she’d eaten two oysters since her dawn breakfast. “I own I am very hungry, ma’am, and thirsty. I have much to think of and would prefer not to go out to find my supper.”

“I shall have supper brought up to you, my dear. And maybe you’d care for a bit of fire in the grate . . . the evenings are drawing in.”

“That would be lovely, ma’am. I’m most grateful.”

“Oh, don’t give it another thought. Go along upstairs and it’ll be taken care of immediately.”

Clarissa ran up the stairs, astonished at herself. She seemed to be becoming someone she didn’t know at all. In the quiet of her own chamber she closed the door and went to the window. As dusk fell over the city the night sounds of Covent Garden grew ever livelier as the hummums in the Little Piazza opened their doors and music and laughter poured forth from the taverns and bawdy houses of the Great Piazza.

She was filled with a strange energy, almost a vibration of the senses, as if she stood on the brink of some life-altering experience. A knock at the door startled her from her intense reverie.

A manservant came in with a laden tray followed by a girl, little more than a child, struggling with a scuttle of coal. The child laid the fire and produced flint and tinder from her apron pocket, while the manservant set the tray on the dresser.

“That be all, miss?” The man looked sourly at her, obviously unaccustomed to waiting upon young women in the servants’ garret.

“Thank you.” Clarissa smiled warmly, turning to the girl. “And thank you, too, my dear. The fire is doing well.”

They left her and she examined the contents of the tray. Roast chicken with a compote of mushrooms, crusty bread, cheese, and an almond tart would certainly compensate for her missed venison pie, and the flagon of burgundy would go some way to compensate for the loss of the fine burgundy in the Angel.

She filled a goblet from the flagon, then took that and her platter to the small chair beside the now cheerful glow of the fire. She ate with relish and, finally replete, put her platter on the floor, took up the goblet, and stretched her feet to the fire. Now it was time to think as clearly as she had ever thought in her life.

Chapter Three
 

It had been a glorious May day when Clarissa’s father died. He had been sick since the beginning of the year, but in his usual stalwart fashion had refused to acknowledge it. His old friend, the village doctor, had given him physics that he’d refused to take, had advised rest that he’d refused to take, had forbidden riding to hounds, to no avail. For as long as the ground was soft enough, the hounds eager, and his hunters champing at the bit, Squire Astley would not miss a day’s hunting across the glorious Kent countryside.

The orchards had been in full bloom, the County truly earning its title of the garden of England on that afternoon when Clarissa stood by her father’s chair in the library and realized that at some point in the last hour, since she had left him peacefully reading, he had slipped away. His book had fallen to the floor and automatically she bent to pick it up. She had been expecting his death but it still stunned her and she felt winded, as if struck in the stomach. She had sensed the emptiness of the room
the moment she had walked in; the presence that had been her father was no longer there, and now she stood for long minutes trying to grasp the reality. His skin was still warm, his hair still thick and lustrous as it had been in life, but she was alone in the room.

Alone in the room and, for the first time in her twenty years on earth, on her own. No longer would she have the knowledge of her father’s strength at her back, his sometimes sardonic humor hauling her back from the more emotional flights she had taken during her childhood and young adulthood, his humorous but nonetheless powerful intercessions between the ambitions of his wife for their daughter and Clarissa’s own frequently conflicting wishes.

Francis Astley had always been behind his daughter, his love a constant in her growing. And only now, in the great void left by his absent spirit, did she realize how much she had relied on that love, on that strength.

Clarissa wasn’t sure how long she stood there but finally she pulled the bell by the fireplace. Hesketh, the butler, answered the summons immediately. He glanced towards his late master’s chair and with instant comprehension said he would summon the physician.

“Yes, that would be best.” Clarissa knew she sounded vague and distant. She would deal with her own grief later, but now she had to break the news to her little brother. Francis was ten and five years earlier had lost his mother. Lady Lavinia had died giving birth to a stillborn babe, and the squire’s enduring grief had
cast a pall over the little household until finally he had returned his attention to the living. The bond then between father and son had grown stronger than ever, and while Clarissa had tried to prepare the child for the squire’s imminent death once she herself recognized its inevitability, she was not convinced Francis had taken it in.

Any more than she had, she thought. Knowing something was going to happen was one thing, the reality after the fact quite another.

Now she left Hesketh to deal with the practicalities and went in search of her brother. She found him, as she expected and hoped, in the stables with one of his favorite people, Silas, the head groom. Silas was generally a taciturn man but he never showed any irritation or impatience with the child’s nonstop chatter and endless questions. He would be an invaluable support when it came to helping Francis come to terms with his father’s death.

They had buried Squire Astley a week later. He had been well loved in the County where he’d served as Master of Hounds and Justice of the Peace for most of his adult life, and the church and the graveyard had been so full of mourners Clarissa had given orders that tables should be set up upon the lawns to host the crowds who came up to the house to pay their respects to the grieving family.

That afternoon the family lawyer, another close friend of the squire’s, had solemnly read the will to
the only surviving members of the family: the squire’s two children, Clarissa and Francis, and his brother, Luke.

Luke . . . so very different from his older brother. Where the squire had been powerfully built, bluff and hearty, always straight in his dealings with his fellows, Luke was tall, thin faced, with angular features and small, deep-set eyes that never met another’s gaze. Hard and cold as little brown stones, they slithered away from all contact even as he smiled and honeyed words dripped from his lips.

Clarissa had always disliked and distrusted him, although he had never given her overt reason. Her distaste for his company was instinctive, although her father treated his brother with the same courtesy and consideration he afforded to everyone and Luke was always a welcome visitor to the gracious redbrick manor house that had been his own childhood home. He visited rarely, however, and Clarissa was convinced he only came when he needed something from his brother, or, she suspected, when he was running away from his creditors.

On that May afternoon the four of them had gathered in the library. Clarissa could even now hear again the sound of voices drifting in from the lawns beyond the mullioned windows that stood open to the soft air perfumed with blossom from the surrounding cherry orchards. She could feel the gentle breeze that lifted tendrils of her hair on the nape of her neck, and she
could hear Lawyer Danforth’s dry tones as he read the will.

“ ‘I, Francis Evelyn Astley, being of sound mind, do hereby leave my fortune and estate to my son and heir, Francis Charles Astley. To my daughter, Clarissa Elizabeth Astley, when she attains her majority, I leave, in addition to her inheritance from her mother, the sum of ten thousand pounds. My children will be in the guardianship of my brother Luke Victor Astley until my daughter attains her twenty-first birthday. Upon reaching her majority, my daughter will assume the guardianship of my son. Until that time my daughter is to receive the same quarterly allowance from the estate as she has hitherto.’ ”