The Bachelor's Bargain (14 page)

“Nonsense! You would never do such a thing. Besides, the regent had a friend deny the first marriage in the House of Commons.”

“Would it be so difficult to deny a marriage made under these circumstances?” Ruel gestured to Anne. “A dying woman. A deathbed wedding. A marquess and a housemaid. When I elect to terminate the arrangement, surely the good vicar will be able to come up with some rule or regulation we have violated here.”

“Upon my word, Ruel, would it not be simpler just to take Miss Webster as your mistress? If you want royal example to follow, why not emulate the regent’s brother, Prince William, Duke of Clarence? He has spent twenty years with that actress.”

“Dorothea Bland?”

“Ah, yes. She is known as Mrs. Jordan, you know. Prince William’s mistress has given birth to ten children by him, and certainly no one has condemned him. Should he accede to the throne, I suspect he will ennoble every one of his illegitimate offspring. So why not take Miss Webster as a paramour?”

“The daughter of a minister? I hardly think Miss Webster would agree to that. You have met the woman, sir. She has a mind of her own and a barbed tongue to match it.”

“Ah, yes. So she does.” The duke turned his attention to Anne. He tilted forward on his cane and ran his gaze up and down her. “Going to live, are you, young lady? Well, I hope you have kept your wits through this ordeal. You will speak to the marquess as you spoke to me earlier, will you not?”

Anne managed a nod.

The duke chuckled. “Very good. Then I shall give your union my blessing, though one cannot deny this is dreadfully irregular. Dreadfully. Ruel, in spite of your ill-conceived marriage and common wife, you must promise that after you inherit, you will behave in a manner befitting your title.”

“Of course, Your Grace. I shall do my utmost to honor your name and bring fortune to your property.”

The duke glanced at Walker, who had warily backed into a corner and stood half hidden in shadow. “The Indian is responsible for Miss Webster’s improved health, is he?”

“Indeed. We owe him our gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” He pointed his cane at the blacksmith, but at that moment the vicar entered the room. As Walker quickly exited, a cluster of curious gentlemen hurried in. Ruel recognized various church and town officials, as well as several of the duke’s comrades who had been summoned earlier in the day to observe the momentous occasion of the wedding of a marquess.

Amid the hubbub, Mr. Errand called for order. Footmen rushed to bring chairs into the bedroom for the guests. Housemaids folded away blankets and put out urns of fresh flowers they had snatched from other rooms in Slocombe House. Kitchenmaids brought in silver trays laden with sweets, which Mrs. Smythe had managed to prepare upon hearing the shocking news. A lady’s maid slipped a fresh rose blossom into Anne’s hair. Another dusted scented powder on her neck. A third arranged her dress as two footmen lifted her from the bed.

“I declare it smells of garlic in here!” The Duchess of Marston waved a silk handkerchief across her nose as her younger son escorted her into the room. “Someone fetch my smelling salts lest I swoon again.”

“Mother.” Ruel stepped away from his valet, who was attempting to tie on a fresh cravat. He could hardly believe she had come. Like a child surprised by an unexpected pat on the head, he took the woman’s arm. “May I show you to a chair, Your Grace?”

“Leave me be, Ruel.” She swatted his hand with her fan. “Alex, do tell your brother to attend to the matter at hand. I understand he has come up with yet another way to vex me.”

Ruel’s jaw tightened as Alexander led their mother to a wide settee. She patted her hair, waved her fan beneath her chin, and fussed at the maid who was arranging her skirt. Nothing had changed. Ruel covered the familiar hurt with grim determination and turned away.

“Let us begin.” He strode to the settee where Anne had been seated and took his place at her side.

Leaning back against the velvet cushions, Anne tried to make sense of the unreality before her eyes. Somehow she had gotten herself into a private bedroom with the Duke and Duchess of Marston, their two sons, the vicar of Tiverton, and at least a dozen other people. Gentlemen sipped from delicate glasses and nibbled at cakes. The sweet scent of perfume mingled with the pungent smell of garlic—and both seemed to be emanating from her own body.

It was worse than a nightmare. Most confusing of all had been the snippets of conversation that now played a game of chase inside her head:

“Miss Webster will do us little good without her leg, and no
good at all dead. If I am to make use of her, I shall need her
whole and healthy. . . .”

“You make an engagement of marriage with this woman who
is so far beneath you as to bring ridicule upon your name. . . .”

“I actually like the woman. She is a minister’s daughter, did
you know? He has bequeathed her quite a wicked tongue. . . .”

“There should be no greater love than that between marriage
partners. . . .”

“I do not believe in such drivel. I have been taught by my parents’
example to desire wealth and prestige, not love.”

Anne searched the room for the source of the words she remembered. The duke, there by the fire. The duchess, fanning herself on a settee. The healer, gone.

“Dearly beloved . . . ,” the vicar of Tiverton began.

A wedding. Her own wedding.

A tall man with dark, curly hair took her hand. She shut her eyes, confused. For what seemed like hours, she had listened to the Marquess of Blackthorne hold forth. The man was full of himself, vain and obnoxious. He had not the slightest concern for others. Could not believe in love. Enjoyed using people. Cogs in a machine.

“Anne?” That deep voice again. So near. So gentle and warm.

She opened her eyes. Ruel. Sitting beside her, his black hair in a tumble over his brow. How kind he was. Protecting her. Bringing that dark-eyed physician to heal her. Ruel had saved her life. Just as he had promised.

“Ruel . . .” She looked into his gray eyes. She thought . . . hoped . . . prayed . . . the man she was marrying was Ruel . . . but she had the terrible feeling he might be the Marquess of Blackthorne after all.

Seven

Whatever the name of the man Anne had married, he did not show himself again after the wedding. She was told he had gone to London on business. In place of a husband, the black-haired physician came every morning to the large, drafty bedroom to tend her. He changed the garlic poultice— which sent Prudence Watson and all the other attendants scampering from the room—bathed the bullet wound with calendula lotion and sage tea, and then replaced the bandage with a clean garlic-paste poultice.

Within a week, the man—who called himself Walker and claimed to be an Indian from America—began washing Anne’s injury with diluted calendula tincture and peach-pit tea. He made a fresh goldenseal, plantain, and comfrey ointment and packed the wound. By the end of the second week, the wounds where the ball had entered and exited Anne’s thigh had closed. Any sign of the bits of fabric the bullet had driven into her flesh finally vanished.

She began to walk about the bedroom, exercising her leg. Then she began to explore the corridors. In the third week, she asked to be taken to the garden. Walker volunteered to escort her, and Prudence insisted on attending Anne as well. They made their way down countless flights of stairs, through two drawing rooms, and finally out a pair of tall glass-paned doors onto a paved terrace. Anne took a deep breath of the fresh spring air and looked around her.

“I am alive, Miss Watson,” she said softly.

“Yes, you are, Lady Blackthorne.” The golden-haired young woman never flinched at calling her former maid by this new title, but it annoyed Anne to no end. “I must tell you the truth. I never thought you would live to walk outside again.”

“Nor did I.” Thankful for life but confused at the turn it had taken, she took the arm of the tall Indian for support. “You saved me, Mr. Walker, and I am grateful. At the same time, I cannot think how I am to go on.”

“Breathe air, drink water, sleep at night, find work for your hands. Life cannot be so difficult for the wife of a marquess, can it?”

She sighed. “That is just the problem.”

As her need for laudanum had eased during the past three weeks, Anne could no longer deny that she had, indeed, married the marquess. She was now the Marchioness of Blackthorne. Kitchenmaids dipped curtsies when she passed them, and housemaids scurried to tend her before she even requested help. Mrs. Davies, the housekeeper, assigned Anne a lady’s maid of her own, and she was bathed, dressed, and perfumed in a manner befitting the aristocracy to which she now belonged.

Anne could hardly keep up with the changes. Not only did the household staff wait on her hand and foot, but seamstresses traveled from London to measure her, milliners came to fit her with bonnets and hats, and shoemakers arrived to design slippers and boots. Prudence Watson considered this turn of events the most delightful experience of her life, and she came out of her gloominess and anxiety altogether. She and Mrs. Davies spent every afternoon instructing Anne on the manners and etiquette befitting a marchioness. Even Mr. Errand came in once or twice to give his new mistress charts of the Chouteau family’s ancestry and to explain everyone’s titles and how she was to address them.

Her meals could have fed the entire Webster family in Nottingham, who had learned to make do on dark bread, butter, shriveled potatoes, and strong tea. At breakfast Anne faced veal-and-ham pies, mackerel, dried haddock, mutton chops, broiled sheep’s kidneys, sausages, bacon, poached eggs, toast, marmalade, butter, and fresh fruit. At luncheon she met with hashed meats, bread, cheese, biscuits, and puddings. At dinner she encountered oxtail soup, crimped salmon, croquettes of chicken, mutton cutlets, roast filet of veal, boiled capon, lobster salad, raspberry jam tartlets, and plum pudding. No wonder the duchess’s middle had expanded and the duke puffed when he climbed the stairs.

Since her wedding day, Anne had seen neither of those esteemed noble relations, nor had she laid eyes on the marquess or his brother. In fact, her world continued to be oddly dreamlike, as though she had stepped behind a green baize curtain in a dark corridor and into another existence. Now she could not remember how to get back.

“I feel lost,” she said softly. “I do not know where to turn.”

“You have been handed the whole world, my lady,” Prudence told her. “You remind me of my dear sister Sarah. You know that when her husband and our father died, she was left with a title and a fortune for which she had never been properly prepared. While I urged her to use the money to purchase a lovely country house, you remember what she chose to do with all that money.”

Anne smiled. “Yes, I remember it well. She believed that God wished her to give away her fortune.”

Prudence sighed. “Can you imagine? She sailed off to the Orient and did her very best to bankrupt herself by funding orphanages and schools for blind girls. Everyone thought her quite mad. But of course, you were working at Trenton House when she returned, and you are well familiar with the astonishing events that led to her marriage to Mr. Charles Locke. Oh, I do miss them both!”

“I long for my family, as well.”

“But you can do anything you like now, my lady. You can go anywhere. See anyone. What do you want?”

“Only my family. I have no idea what has become of my father.” She touched the white linen of her friend’s sleeve. “The marquess never returned my lace, did he?”

“You do not need that scrap of lace,” Prudence said. “As his wife, you have all the money you like. Why not send a letter to your mother on the mail coach? In the desk in your bedroom are enough pens, ink, and paper to write a hundred books if you like. Or why not dispatch a footman to inquire at the rectory in Nottingham? You could have your mother, sisters, and brother transported to Tiverton and put up in a good house.”

“You say I have money, Prudence. Where is it? Am I to knock on the duke’s library door and ask him for a thousand pounds? Am I to go into the duchess’s bedroom and rifle through her bags?”

“Inquire of Mr. Errand how you are to get at your fortune. He certainly knows everything else you are meant to do.”

Anne tugged her shawl more closely around her shoulders. She might be the Marchioness of Blackthorne, but she still felt like Anne Webster. The thought of demanding anything of the formidable butler sent a knot into her stomach.

If, as Prudence claimed, she could do anything she liked, she wanted to go home. In Nottingham the long hedgerows would be in full bloom—cow parsley, hawthorn, and hogweed dancing with white blossoms. Violets and yellow primroses shyly showing their faces. Ferns beginning to unfurl their green fronds. Kestrels and wood pigeons soaring on cool spring breezes as farmers turned over the rich soil.

In contrast to the wild exuberance of her beloved Midlands, the Slocombe garden was crisscrossed by narrow brick paths, twelve-foot walls covered in ivy, and hedges pruned into sharp boxes or perfect orbs. Roses had been forced over metal arches; daffodils marched in straight, even rows. They looked as confined as she felt.

“I should like to go home,” she declared, almost to herself.

Walker stopped in the path. Turning to Anne, he gazed down at her. “You
are
home, Lady Blackthorne. This England, this Devon, this patch of soil near the sea, is your home. It is my home. Forces more powerful than you and I have made it so. Nothing can change that.”