An Infamous Marriage (2 page)

Chapter One

Selyhaugh, Northumberland, five years earlier

Never before had Jack been so glad to escape from his mother’s presence, not even in the aftermath of the worst scrapes he’d got himself into as a boy. She was far more ill and forgetful than he’d been led to expect by Giles’s and Elting’s letters—though in fairness to his childhood friend and the village apothecary, they’d written them almost a year ago. It had taken much too long for the messages to reach him. He’d been living in the Indiana Territory among the Shawnee, disguised as a fur trader, attempting to court the Indians to the British side in the event of another war with the Americans. Slipping back over the border into Canada, reporting in to General Brock and securing passage back to England hadn’t been the work of an instant either.

He wished he’d been nearer—if his regiment had been on the Iberian Peninsula with Lord Wellington, he could’ve been at his mother’s side within two months of the apoplexy that had set in motion her mind’s decay. She hadn’t been so far gone at first, the servants told him. Eight or even six months ago she still would’ve recognized him, and he would’ve been able to bid her farewell while she remained almost herself.

Yet he couldn’t manage to wish himself out of the army. He supposed a better son would have stayed home to farm the land and breed horses as his father had before him. But by the time his older brother died and left him sole heir to Westerby Grange, he’d set his heart and soul on the army career Uncle Richard had designed him for from boyhood.

The army, after all, provided him an escape. He’d never wanted to live out his life in Selyhaugh. And now, as much as Mama might need him, he couldn’t stay long. He had a fortnight’s leave remaining to set her affairs in order and arrange proper measures for her care before he must return to Canada.

After a single day in Mama’s presence, he invented an excuse to escape for a few hours. At first she’d mistaken him for Uncle Richard, whom she’d always disliked, and then, painfully, for his own father, whom she’d adored. Sometimes she remembered she had a son named Jack, but that Jack was an infant in her mind, or at best a schoolboy. As it was, his baffling presence only seemed to agitate her, so he persuaded himself it was for her good as much as his when he left the house, had Penelope, his dapple gray hunter, saddled and took her out for a gallop.

Once he and the mare had burned off their wild, fresh edge in a glorious run across the fields, he slowed her to a decorous canter and turned her toward Selyhaugh proper. He decided to call on Giles and his new bride. Perhaps he should’ve sent word ahead, but surely even as a newlywed, Giles wouldn’t expect him to stand on ceremony.

His friend’s marriage had taken Jack by surprise, though he supposed it shouldn’t have done so. They were thirty now, more than old enough to embrace the wedded state. But Giles was far poorer than Jack. For years he’d scraped his living as a tutor in York, and now he was curate of the Selyhaugh parish church. How could he afford to keep a wife?

But marry he had. Jack had sent letters to both Giles and Elting as soon as he arrived in London to assure them he would ride north as soon as he’d met with the commanders at Horse Guards on General Brock’s behalf. Giles had written back by return post, lamenting that if only the winds had sped Jack’s crossing of the Atlantic by even a week, he would’ve been in time for Giles’s wedding.

You must call on us as soon as your duties to your mother allow,
he had written.
I can hardly wait for you to meet Elizabeth. She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld when she smiles, and she has the most wondrous eyes.

The company of an old friend and a beautiful woman to admire, however chastely, would be a welcome respite from the ordeal this visit home had been so far. He reined Penelope to a halt in front of the rented cottage Giles had described, a tiny, cozy place conveniently near the ancient village church. Jack frowned as he dismounted and tethered Penelope to the gatepost. The cottage seemed too still, somehow—empty and dead, with nothing of the honeymoon about it. He shook his head and gave the mare a parting pat. He was being fanciful and absurd. It was February, and the cottage’s shutters needed a fresh coat of paint, that was all. What did he expect, birdsong and blooming flowers?

Hat tucked under one arm, he rapped on the front door. After a long pause, long enough that Jack almost concluded the house had looked dead to him because it was empty, the door swung open.

A thin, ordinary-looking woman of about five-and-twenty blinked up at him out of bloodshot, muddy brown eyes. Jack blinked back in confusion. Was this the mistress or the maid-of-all-work? She had the air of a gentlewoman, but this wasn’t the beauteous, fine-eyed new Mrs. Hamilton Giles’s letter had led him to expect.

“Good day, ma’am,” he ventured as the silence began to stretch between them. “I understand that this is Giles Hamilton’s house?”

She bit her lip—her lips looked chapped, as though she was in the habit of worrying at them. “It is,” she said shortly. “I am his wife.”

Something was wrong here, but Jack fell back on commonplaces. “Then I’m delighted to meet you. I’m Jack Armstrong. Perhaps he’s spoken of me? I wrote him about a week ago to say I was coming north. I know I should’ve sent word first, but I wanted to call right away.”

She swallowed and attempted a patently false smile. “That’s quite all right, Colonel Armstrong, but I—I’m afraid Giles is ill.”

That explained the reddened eyes and obvious misery, at least. Poor girl, to find herself suddenly transformed from bride to nurse. He smiled reassurance. Though nothing could cure his mother, surely he could help Giles. “I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am. I’ll not disturb you any longer. I should be in Selyhaugh for at least a sennight, so perhaps I may call again once he’s feeling more the thing? In the meantime, I’d be glad to send anyone or anything from the Grange that may be of assistance to you. I believe Mrs. Purvis is a skilled nurse, and there should be some good apples in the cellar yet.”

“I think he’s dying,” Mrs. Hamilton blurted.

For a moment, Jack couldn’t speak. “Surely not,” he heard himself say. Giles dying? It couldn’t be. He had always been healthy, and that last letter of his had brimmed with life and happiness.

“That’s what I kept telling myself,” she said. “But today he keeps growing weaker and weaker, and—and I’m so afraid.” Her voice broke, and Jack wondered what he was supposed to do with a sobbing woman on her own doorstep. To his unspeakable relief, she swallowed and mastered herself. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I should not be burdening you.”

This he knew how to answer. “Nonsense, ma’am. Giles is my oldest friend, so he could never be a burden. May I come in?”

She stepped back with a distracted gesture of welcome. “Of course.”

* * *

Elizabeth had never seen a healthier specimen of a man than Giles’s friend, the lieutenant-colonel. Everything about him, from his brightly dark eyes and the thick, close-cropped brown curls atop his head to the brisk, firm steps of his booted feet, spoke of strength and vitality. A week earlier she would have admired him for it, but now it almost appalled her that anyone could be so vividly alive while her own beloved lay upstairs fighting for each breath.

“Will you take me to him?” he asked as soon as he’d shut the door behind him.

She studied him for a moment. So many visitors had come since Giles had fallen ill, and she’d kept almost all of them out of the sickroom, accepting their offerings of food and medicine and sending them on their way. But this man had been Giles’s closest friend as a boy, and it had been years since they had seen each other. Surely she ought to make this one exception, and perhaps it would strengthen her husband to see his old friend again.

“Yes,” she said. “He was looking forward to seeing you, after we got your letter. It may hearten him.” Immediately she began leading him toward the stairs. Part of her hoped that Colonel Armstrong could somehow lend Giles some of his strength, even as the little Fordham children had passed their illness to him.

No. Health wasn’t catching, but dying was. She halted abruptly just short of the staircase, and her guest almost barreled into her.

She turned to face him. They stood uncomfortably close for strangers. She could feel the heat from his body—good, warm heat, not a burning fever like Giles had suffered for the past five days—and breathe in his scent, a sweet, out-of-doors, horsey sort of aroma. She couldn’t put him at risk.

He took a step back. She would’ve done the same, but the lowest step of the stairs already pressed her skirts against her calves. “I must ask,” she said. “You have had the chicken pox, haven’t you, sir?”

“Of course, when I was nine.” He frowned at her and shook his head in bafflement. “Never say Giles is dying of chicken pox.”

She supposed it did sound absurd. She and Giles had laughed at first, when the clear blisters appeared and they’d realized he’d caught a child’s illness at such an advanced age. But from that hour on, no matter how often Mr. Elting bled him or what medicines they tried, he’d only grown weaker and more ill.

A hot tear slipped down her cheek, and she swiped it angrily away. How could she have any tears left in her? “I never wished to say it, but it is true. I suppose it might be more precise to say he is dying of pneumonia, since it has settled in his lungs, but chicken pox began this.”

She turned her back on him and began to mount the stairs, even in her anger and grief taking care to tread lightly.

“Wait, ma’am.”

She halted and looked over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry for speaking hastily. I know well how dangerous any fever can be. Has anyone been called? Dr. Adams in Alnwick is a fine physician. If money is a difficulty, I’d be happy to cover his fee. I owe your husband a great deal, you see, for his friendship when we were boys.”

Money
was
a difficulty, but she hadn’t let that stop her. “He was here yesterday, and Mr. Elting has come every day. They bleed him and leave me with medicines and poultices, but nothing helps.” She swallowed hard. “Nothing helps.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “More sorry than I can say.”

She nodded tightly and continued upstairs.

She winced at how the steps creaked under his tread, but she knew he couldn’t help it. He was a big man, almost as tall as Giles and more sturdily built. The stairs were noisy, that was all.

The bedroom door creaked, too, despite all the care she took to open it slowly and softly. It was strange how all the cottage’s little quirks, which had charmed her when it was only their
first
home, their place of newly wedded bliss, now added to her despair as she kept death watch.

Giles had been asleep when she left him to answer the door, but now he stared at them and tried to push himself up on one elbow. Elizabeth hurried to his side, yet not before she heard Colonel Armstrong’s sharp intake of breath. It shocked her too. Seven days ago Giles had been well. They’d lain in this bed together, skin to skin in a lovers’ embrace, talking of the future, planning names for the son or daughter they hoped they’d already begun together, just a week into their marriage. She’d traced his face—the smooth skin of his high, noble forehead, his straight Grecian nose, the faint rasp of beard stubble along his jaw. He had been beautiful.

Now all that was gone, buried under the blisters and sores of the worst case of chicken pox she’d ever seen. And he was so weak—how could it be that the man who had carried her so effortlessly to that very bed now lacked the strength to sit unaided?

She helped him, propping him up with pillows. “Look, Giles,” she said. “It’s your friend, Colonel Armstrong.”

“I know,” he murmured with a faint hint of his old gentle smile. “Jack, do come in and let me—” His words ended abruptly in a coughing fit. “Water, my dear.”

Elizabeth handed him a glass of water blended with a concoction Dr. Adams swore would relieve his pain. He took a tiny sip and pushed it back to her with the most strength she’d seen him muster today. “Not that vile medicine, plain water.”

With a sigh, she poured him an unmixed glass from the ewer on the little table by the bed. He drank deeply, then turned to Colonel Armstrong, who had taken up a post on the opposite side of the bed. “Our letters found you, I see.”

“Eventually.”

“So—so glad you’re here.” Giles tried for a deep breath, horrible and gurgling, then coughed again. Elizabeth saw flecks of blood on the handkerchief when he was done. That had begun just last night, and terrified her more than all his other symptoms combined.

“I’m sorry to see you in such a case, old fellow.” Colonel Armstrong had just the right sickroom voice, Elizabeth noted with approval, low yet hearty.

“Not as sorry as I am.” Giles choked back yet another coughing fit, tossing his head from side to side.

Oh, this wasn’t helping, not at all! If anything, his friend’s presence was only tiring him. Elizabeth pressed him to drink more water. Surely it wasn’t too late, if he was only careful. He
had
to recover. She couldn’t go on without him. “My dear, you must save your strength.”

Giles shook his head insistently. “No. Nothing to save it for. Must...must use it while I still have it.” He handed the glass to her and reached a shaking hand toward Colonel Armstrong.

The colonel took it between his own. Elizabeth bit her lip and blinked hard. Giles’s hand looked so frail now, so white, clasped between Colonel Armstrong’s square, strong hands.

“Glad you’re here.” Elizabeth saw Giles’s hand spasm, attempting a stronger grip. “Just the man I wanted... Will you promise me something?”

“Anything.” The colonel sounded so fervent, so sure, before he even knew what Giles was going to ask. Elizabeth knew Colonel Armstrong had been Giles’s closest boyhood friend, though she hadn’t understood the strength of their bond before. But what was her husband going to ask? He had no family left living, no fortune to oversee. All he had was...her.

“Good.” Giles coughed, took a careful breath and stared hard at his friend. Elizabeth had never seen him half so fierce. “Marry Elizabeth when I’m gone.”