The Bride Insists (2 page)

“Because the control will pass to my husband.” Clare knew that was the law. Married women couldn't own property; anything they had automatically went to their husbands as soon as the wedding vows were spoken.

“Correct,” replied Billingsley. For the first time, the young woman met and held his gaze. A startling fire blazed in those pale green eyes. Her face seemed altered, too. The visage he had marked down as merely pleasant now shone with a spirited beauty, a patent intelligence. Miss Greenough had arranged to be thoroughly underestimated, he realized, like an actor inhabiting a role wholly unlike himself. There was far more to her than he had been allowed to see at first.

Clare felt as if parts of her were springing back to life after years of dormancy, like unused rooms when the draperies are pushed back and the sun streams in. Her mind raced. Cousin Simon would do anything to thwart her. Everett Billingsley didn't begin to understand the depth of that man's enmity. She would have no real control of this amazing windfall, or of her life, until her cousin was removed from the picture. Fleetingly, Clare wondered if one could hire murderers with a great deal of money. Not that she would, of course. The idea was morally repugnant. And unlikely to succeed, for any number of reasons. She would have to explore more conventional paths. But one thing was certain—Simon would not best her this time. He would not beggar her again.

James Boleigh, seventh Baron Trehearth, lounged in a gilt chair and watched his friends play whist. He sipped from his fourth glass of champagne. Or was it the fifth? He'd lost track, as he often did, in the humiliation of knowing that he couldn't even afford to spring for the next bottle, let alone match the high stakes passing across the gaming table. Andrew and Harry wouldn't mention this lapse. They wouldn't even think of it, really; that was the amazing thing about them. They were staunch friends, better than he deserved. Since their first year together at Eton, and through all the disaster that followed, they'd stuck by him. Not like the supposed friends who offered false sympathy while they angled for juicy details. Or, even worse, the ones who approached him with real pity. Intolerable! Andrew and Harry weren't oblivious to what had happened to him. Far from it. They were just… true friends. He didn't know how to describe it any better. He did understand, though he would never say it aloud, that he would have been lost without them. Then. Now… now he was as good as lost in any case. What was he going to do?

He was getting maudlin—none of that. Jamie drank more deeply. At least he'd made no wagers tonight. He wasn't stupid enough—any longer—to imagine that he could save himself at the gaming tables.

The noise of the crowded club swirled around him, a cacophony of men making bids, setting stakes, calling for wine. Smoke from a hundred candles, and not a few cigars, fogged the air. The place reeked of wax and tobacco and the sour sweat of those who desperately needed to win. All too easily he could recall the feeling—the trembling hands that must be hidden, the burning eyes, the choking sensation when your heart was in your throat at each toss of the dice. The black despair when you lost; the hardly lesser blow when you won, because a small gain was never enough. And then, inevitably, the odds turned against you, and it all came crashing down. There were men in that state here; he recognized the signs.

Jamie's roving gaze caught in the mirror on the nearby wall. There were his friends, reflected. Harry Simpson, the big, bluff guardsman with his close-cropped red hair; people often expected Harry to be slow-witted, but a sharp mind lay behind those blue eyes. Across the table, Andrew Tate was smaller, a wiry blond whose gray eyes glinted with irony. Many a fool feared his quick tongue. Few knew what boundless kindness lay behind his quips.

And there, just a little separated from them, was his own reflection, like the ghost at the feast. Hair, black; eyes, nearly so; skin tanned because he preferred the outdoors. Like his late lamented mother, he was dark as a gypsy. Like his dead father, he was tall and rangy, with angled cheekbones and a mouth that naturally turned down. Spirits only too prone to darkness as well; his father had certainly demonstrated that. Lolling back in the chair, watching his friends lay down their cards, the fellow in the mirror looked as if he hadn't a care in the world. He raised his glass to him, congratulating himself on a successful deception. Drink muted the pressure of a multitude of ills.

“Jamie?” Andrew's half smile acknowledged the raised goblet. Jamie lowered it.

The hand of cards had ended. “More champagne,” called one of the other players, gesturing for a waiter. “Trehearth here is sponging it all off us.”

Rage surged through Jamie at the taunt. He sprang up and had to catch his balance. It must have been five glasses after all. “I'll get it.”

“He was jok—” began Harry.

“I'm getting it!” Jamie turned his back and stalked away. He would order two bottles; no, three, and be damned to it. What did it matter? All too soon, this life would be over, everything lost. He'd staved off ruin for as long as he could. His creditors were out of patience. The home that he loved so much that he could no longer bear to be there would be taken from him. The cost of a few bottles of wine would make no difference, except to silence the jibes of that bloody fool at the table. He could still manage that, at least. By God, he'd order a round dozen!

***

The evening played out as they so often did. Andrew and Harry, longtime partners at whist, won modestly. Jamie kept drinking. It was nearly two by the time the trio made its way back to Andrew's rooms on Duke Street, and no one showed much inclination to go to bed. Harry had no duty the next day and no requirement to return to barracks. Andrew was naturally a night owl, and Jamie, his houseguest, was plagued by dark thoughts. He could hardly down enough wine to sleep well these days. They cracked a bottle of brandy, dropped into chairs in Andrew's comfortable sitting room, and let the crackling fire warm them.

“Why the glower, Jamie?” asked Andrew. “Taking up Byron's posturing now he's off in Greece?”

Jamie frowned into his liquor. With these old friends, he needed to finally tell the truth. “It's all over for me. I'm rolled up.”

Andrew and Harry exchanged glances. Jamie was prone to black moods, but this seemed darker than usual. Harry tried a jovial tone. “You know what I always say, get yourself leg shackled to an heiress. When the season starts up—”

“It'll be too late by then,” Jamie interrupted. He drank deeply. “And even if it weren't, you know I can't get near an heiress. Their mothers have me marked down as a damned bad bargain. Remember last season? The Laramys' ball? I tried to ask Annie Fitzgerald to dance, and her mother marched up and ordered me off.”

“You were half sprung,” Harry pointed out. “Doubt you could have kept your feet on the dance floor.”

“I was not!” Jamie drank again.

“And you called her mother a hatchet-faced crone,” remembered Andrew. “For everyone to hear. That wasn't exactly helpful.”

“I wouldn't have done if she hadn't insulted me.” Jamie emptied his glass at the burning memory of that walk across the ballroom after he'd been dismissed. The sniggering and whispers. “She is hatchet-faced, and mean as a snake,” he added as he refilled his glass. With brandy on top of the champagne, he'd feel like hell eventually. But devil take it; he felt like hell now. When would the liquor drown the thoughts circling in his brain?

“I've heard it's easier to meet heiresses in Bath—” began Harry.

“I'm telling you, I'm out of time,” Jamie interrupted. “I don't have another season. I don't have another month. The banks are taking Trehearth.” His home, the wellspring of his name, would go to some well-heeled stranger. Money would purchase his heritage. He'd become one of those threadbare hangers-on, clinging to the edges of society, reminding people he was titled, if no longer landed. No, he wouldn't. He would never sink so low as that.

“Could you really claim to love a woman when all you wanted was her money?” wondered Andrew.

Harry slouched lower in the armchair, his long legs propped on a Turkish ottoman. “Well, it wouldn't be as stark as that, would it?” Brandy generally made Harry philosophical. He held up one finger. “We all mean to marry, yes? Duty to the line and all.” He didn't wait for his friends' nods, but raised a second finger. “And we'd rather not disappoint our moth… families by getting riveted to some unacceptable female.” Harry provided his own nod this time. “So…” His third finger joined the other two digits. “We have a certain…” A belch broke this sentence. “…field of operations. Why not set our sights on… er, targets with plenty of juice? Nothing says we can't discover one we like well enough.”

“Only make up to women with money?” said Andrew. “Ridiculous. Taking that line, I would never have become acquainted with Alice.”

“Eh, that would have been a tragedy,” murmured Harry. Jamie threw him a look. They'd both suffered through Andrew's infatuation with Alice Whitsett last season. It had been appalling to see their intelligent, witty friend reduced to one single topic of conversation—his perfect love. A smile from the chit threw him into truly embarrassing transports; an imagined slight turned him so morose he snapped your head off. He'd even written a ghastly poem to his “heart's princess.” “Hair like raven silk,” or some such drivel, Jamie remembered with a grimace. And then Alice had gone and married another. That had been an excruciating month or two.

The groom's subsequent complaints about Alice's foul temper and extravagance had taken some of the wind out of Andrew's melancholy sails. The tide had turned when the fellow declared at the club that Alice was exactly like her mother. Jamie and Harry had seen Andrew's eyes bulge, and a shudder go through him, and known they were nearly home free. The mystery of the whole affair was—Alice had always seemed to them just an ordinary girl. Pretty enough, Jamie supposed, but by no means a beauty, and certainly not interesting to talk to. Thinking she might actually become his friend's wife, he'd tried. He could never see why she'd reduced his clever friend to maundering idiocy. What Andrew insisted was love seemed to Jamie sheer lunacy.

“There's got to be a way,” said Harry. “You could marry Lily.”

“No more brandy for you, my friend,” said Andrew.

“You sh… saying I'm foxed? What's wrong with my sister?”

“She's still in the schoolroom?”

“She's making her debut this year,” Harry pointed out.

But, thought Jamie, though she would bring a substantial portion to her marriage, it wouldn't be nearly enough, even if he would consider such a thing. Harry had no idea of the sums needed to restore Trehearth. And why should he? It wasn't his burden to bear. Of course Jamie would never make such use of Lily even if she had a larger dowry. Would he? “Thank you, Harry, but Lily deserves better. I have to face reality now. I have people to provide for. I can't postpone the inevitable any longer.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Andrew.

“Finish the legalities. Cut the strings.” Regret lanced through Jamie. “And look for some kind of employment.”

“Employment?” Harry gazed owlishly at him. “What sort of employment could you…?” He closed his lips on the end of this potentially insulting sentence.

“I thought I could manage some large estate.”

“Manage?”

“There are people buying properties these days who have no experience caring for them.” Successful tradesmen, grasping nabobs. The brandy curdled in Jamie's stomach at the thought of submitting to such men.

“You'd be some city mushroom's steward?” said Harry.

“It's the only thing I know how to do.”

Jamie's bleak tone silenced the others. But it couldn't mask the mixture of disbelief and sympathy on their faces. Reaching for the bottle, Jamie poured another brandy.

***

Clare Greenough sat in the neat offices of the agency that had provided her last two posts as governess, in a small chamber set aside for interviews. Farnham and Hicks was considered the best source for the more superior sort of governesses, companions, and high-nosed dressers, those who were several steps up from lady's maid. They had certainly treated her well over the years. Clare trusted Mrs. Hicks as she did few other people in the world.

She'd made her requirements very clear, and the first two women she'd spoken with had been distinct possibilities. But somehow not quite right. Clare couldn't say precisely why, but she wanted to make the perfect choice. And so, she waited for a third candidate, forcing herself to be patient when all she wanted was to rush into action.

During the last two weeks, she had called at Everett Billingsley's chambers and signed the documents finalizing her legacy. It was only then, reading through the pages of legal jargon and seeing the ornate seals of officials in far-off India, that she had truly believed it was real. She'd given her notice and left her position at the Bensons, a step that had been as rancorous as she'd expected. Edwina Benson had seemed to take Clare's new financial status as a personal affront, expressly designed to belittle and inconvenience her. Should Clare ever need a reference… But she wouldn't. Never again. Clare took a deep breath. She'd engaged rooms at Mivart's Hotel on Brook Street, and now she was here at the agency, ready to make the next move in her plan.

Mrs. Hicks opened the door and looked in. At a nod from Clare, she ushered another woman into the room. “This is Mrs. Selina Newton,” she said. “Mrs. Newton, Miss Clare Greenough.”

“Good morning.” Clare remembered to smile as she indicated a chair opposite. The room was set up as a parlor to make these sorts of meetings more comfortable. The newcomer sat down, and Mrs. Hicks retreated, leaving them together.

Clare examined the other woman. She knew from the list of particulars Mrs. Hicks had provided that Selina Newton was forty-seven years old. She didn't look it. Her dark brown hair showed no hint of gray, and her round face only a few lines. These seemed to have been engraved by smiles rather than scowls, which was a good sign. Her hazel eyes held a promising warmth. She was neatly dressed, more fashionably than Clare actually, and comfortably attractive. “Could you tell me a bit about yourself?” She wanted to get the woman's story in her own voice, not from a piece of paper.

Selina surveyed the very badly dressed young woman before her. Her fingers itched to unpick the seams of that drab, baggy gown and turn it into something more flattering to Miss Greenough's slender figure. Mrs. Hicks had been vague about the nature of this post, only saying that she thought it might suit Selina. So the interview was more difficult than usual. Selina settled for the customary combination of openness and omission. One shared enough history to establish trust and secure the position, while withholding the more personal details that no one else needed to know.

“Certainly,” Selina began. “I married quite young, a Navy man, and was widowed after eight years.” There was no need to add what she'd realized within a month of the wedding—that Ronald had married her only to gain a caretaker for his invalid mother. Or that he had been away at sea for the greater part of their marriage and might as well have been away when he was at home. Selina had nursed his mother through her final illness the year after Ronald was lost off the Australian coast, and found herself penniless when old Mrs. Newton died.