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Authors: Kate Moore

BOOK: To Tempt a Saint
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“Very good.”
“Mr. Norwood, excuse me, may I know the reason for these questions?”
“Of course.” He put down his pen and leaned back. “How shall I put it? Your uncle strongly objects to the circumstances of your marriage. He suspects that there may be fraud involved, a deliberate conspiracy to deceive the bank. He’s going to lob some shots across our bows, legally, so to speak, and we want to be ready for him.”
“Mr. Norwood, as I am of age, and the money in question is my money, by marrying I have done all that’s required to gain access to it, have I not?”
“To be sure, Lady Jones. However, if the London Consistory Court determines that the marriage is a mere stratagem, a ruse for obtaining money, you could be liable to serious criminal charges, even prison or transportation.”
Cleo found she could not breathe. She could not go to jail. What would happen to Charlie? Xander Jones had hinted at such consequences. He had realized, even if she had not, how serious a risk a mere imposture would be. But they had made their vows in a church. Their marriage was legal. What happened between them was private, was it not? She turned to Xander, trying to penetrate his cool mask. Whatever his true motives were, he wanted that money, wanted his gasworks. She could count on him to push forward with their bargain.
“Lady Jones?” Norwood called her back to attention. “May we proceed?”
Cleo nodded. She needed to keep her wits about her.
“Has there been consummation, penetration, and ejaculation?”
“You can ask that?”
“The court will,” Norwood assured her. “Consistory Court is a panel of lay and clerical judges who can determine the validity of a marriage.”
Cleo glanced at her husband again. His slate-colored eyes were at their stoniest. He had known the question was coming. “You may take my word for it, Norwood,” he said.
Norwood did not look up. “I will need the lady’s word as well.”
“You have it, then,” said Cleo. She hoped the lie sounded convincing.
“Good, good.” Norwood stopped writing and put aside his pen.
“Now what?” Cleo needed to know.
“Now we make sure the world sees you as Xander’s wife while we wait for the hearing.” Norwood sanded his notes, shook the paper dry, and tucked his glasses into his waistcoat pocket.
“When is the hearing to be?”
“We’ll delay as much as we can, but likely within the month if March has his way. He has retained Dr. Lushington, and the man’s no fool. He’s trying the church court first to see whether he can block Xander from exercising his conjugal rights. And he’ll try the King’s Bench if he suspects perjury. I must warn you that he’s likely to go after your curate.” Norwood looked to Xander. “How susceptible is this Tucker to the lure of money?”
“His coats are threadbare.”
“Well, it might be wise to warn him that he could be suspended and fined for solemnizing a clandestine wedding.”
“Surely,
clandestine
is not the proper term,” Cleo pointed out. “We didn’t have a large celebration, but it was hardly a secret in Woford.”
“Nevertheless, with few witnesses and one of them a minor, March can contest the validity.”
“But other people knew of the event,” Cleo insisted.
Norwood paused in putting away his notes. “Other witnesses would be good. Did you have someone bake the cake? Can you name the fellows who rang the bells?”
“No cake. No bells.” Xander shoved away from the mantel and came to stand beside Cleo.
“I purchased a gown. A wedding breakfast was ordered.” Cleo realized she was showing every bit of the dismay she felt. The thought of Mr. Tucker facing Uncle March was not encouraging.
“There’s one last worry, Lady Jones.” Norwood reached out and patted her hand. “Your uncle has made statements about your mental state. Nothing of record, of course, just rumors. We don’t want to land in Chancery Court, however.”
The court that settled the affairs of lunatics.
It was a warning, politely made, but it told Cleo that both her husband and his barrister had heard Uncle March’s mad-girl story. She would be watched for any sign of instability.
Norwood stuffed his notes into the case, pulled the straps closed, and tucked it under his arm. He rose to leave.
“Is my money available to me at present?” Cleo asked him.
“It is, unless and until the Consistory Court investigators rule against the validity of your marriage.”
“Norwood, you’ve hardly consoled Lady Jones. She needs a strategy.”
“Well then.” Norwood’s blue eyes twinkled. “Here it is. Be a good wife. Present a picture of wedded bliss to the world. Give a few dinners, go about town, leave your cards, have your at-home days, that sort of thing.” Norwood shook Xander’s hand, bowed over Cleo’s, and turned for the door. There he paused and turned back to them, tapping his broad chin. “I forgot. There is one sure way to gain the advantage over March,” he said, looking at Cleo. “Is there any chance that you are already in a family way, Lady Jones?”
Cleo noted that the question caught Xander off guard for once. He flashed her a dark, warning look, but she could see that he didn’t know how to answer. She did. She would do anything to break March’s hold on her life and Charlie’s. She lowered her gaze to her hands folded demurely in her lap and managed the needed syllable. “Yes.”
Norwood broke into a broad grin. “Excellent. That’ll do it. The Consistory Court will regard a child as a sign of a valid marriage. Have you had a physician conduct an examination?”
Xander stepped behind Cleo, and his hands settled on her shoulders. She felt the tension in them, a clear signal to remain silent. “Norwood, Lady Jones and I must ask you to keep our happy news in confidence for the present.”
Norwood looked puzzled, but he nodded. “Yes, well, until our court date, perhaps. Congratulations, then, on your marriage. Time enough to get a good sawbones on our side, and then we’ll drink to your other news.”
The door closed behind him, and Cleo felt the weight of those hard hands on her shoulders. Her husband was seriously displeased. “You promised not to strangle me.”
“I did,” came the deep voice from above her, “but that still leaves shooting, drowning, beheading, or dismemberment, all of which seem reasonable at the moment, unless you are, in fact, pregnant.” He released her shoulders and came around to stand in front of her.
“Of course not.”
He would prefer that she had a lover?
“You lied.”
Cleo stood. She did not like the way he towered over her. “You lied first. I merely followed your lead. Consummation? Penetration? Ejaculation? On the church steps perhaps?” She threw up her hands. “Besides, how hard can it be to make the lie true? I rather thought the difficulty was to avoid getting in a family way.”
“You did not seem eager for carnal embraces when we made our bargain.” He was not looking at her.
“That was before your own legal advisor mentioned criminal prosecution. Apparently, if we want to avoid jail, we must indulge. Surely, whatever our inclinations, the act itself need be no more disagreeable than an application of leeches or a session of blistering.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “I will keep that in mind.” He moved to the door, walking out on her.
“You were willing to get Miss Finsbury with child.”
He paused and turned that flat, impenetrable gaze on her. “Miss Finsbury’s father is a grazier.”
“My father was a peer? That’s your objection to sexual congress with me?” She did not understand him. How could
he
object to her birth? More likely he believed the mad-girl story her uncle had told about her. She wanted it out in the open, whatever it was.
He went still, as still as he had in the bank when Miss Finsbury had called him a bastard. He was definitely keeping something from her.
His face had its stone look. The man who had kissed her in the church was somewhere behind that flat, fixed gaze. “You have access to your money and a chance to do all you wanted for your brother. That was our bargain. Norwood will keep March tied up in court for months if need be.”
She had not understood him in time, and now he thought she would tamely accept the risk he was taking, a man arranging her fate, like her uncle, like the lawyers. He would use banks and courts to his advantage. Before them she was the beggar. A cold rage took hold of her. “I will not leave my brother alone in the world.”
He stiffened, but he did not turn. “My man Amos will show you which rooms are yours. His brother Isaiah tends the horses, and their cousin Alice will be your maid. Cook has a supper ready. I’ll be out this evening.”
The door closed, and Cleo began to shiver. In a minute she was shaking hard. On wobbly legs she sought the fire, standing as close as she could, feeling the burn of it through her thin skirts. She had returned to a London she thought she knew, but it was as if she had taken a wrong turn down an unfamiliar street and couldn’t get her bearings.
Charlie. She had to think about him. He would be her compass. He was the reason she had made this mad marriage. She looked at his pig-sticking knife, and a painful laugh escaped her tight throat. She reached down and scooped it up. Apparently, she would not need it to hold off an over-amorous spouse, but maybe she could use it to drive her reluctant groom into bed.
Chapter Six
X
ANDER Jones’s silent man Amos led Cleo up more stairs to the back of the house, where dozens of candles illuminated a room so pretty it made her breath catch. She never imagined his house could possess such a room. It was another contradiction about him.
Pale yellow walls like butter in winter, a pair of honey-suckle chintz chairs by a glowing fire, and a bed like a wedding gown, all creamy crocheted lace, piled high with plump pillows. French doors with gauzy drapery led to a small balcony overlooking the dark garden. Miss Finsbury with her quivering bows would have been right at home.
The room had not been made pretty for Cleo. It had existed long before Xander Jones found her at Fernhill Farm and made his proposal. She need not be pleased that he had put her here. He meant to keep her out of his way; no adjoining bedrooms for them.
“And your master’s room?” she asked the servant as he bowed his way out the door.
“Front west, ma’am.”
As far from her as the architecture of a London town house permitted.
Cleo told herself not to feel wounded by Xander Jones’s reluctance to bed her. She had no more pretensions to beauty or dancing eyes, and he certainly had heard the mad-girl story. But, she discovered, a tiny ember of vanity still smoldered in her heart. Her husband’s willingness to bed Miss Finsbury stirred the hot coal to envious life, and it burned. She wanted him to want her. How satisfying it would be to the turn the tables on him.
She put Charlie’s pig-sticking knife on the table by the bed. At least there were no restraints attached to the bedstead. Her husband might believe the rumors her uncle March spread about her, but he hadn’t consigned her to an attic or tied her up. Yet.
Cleo opened the doors of the narrow balcony and stepped out into the night. The restless hum of London sounded in her ears, familiar and yet strange after the country. Below her in the garden the bare branches of two plane trees tossed fretfully in the October wind, shaking loose their last leaves, making a dry rattle like scurrying footsteps. Light pouring from every window of Xander Jones’s house made a flickering pattern of shadows on the ground below.
She tried to think what her reluctant bridegroom might have heard about her. March had claimed that her father’s sudden death had deranged her. He had accused her of starving herself and finally of turning on him with a fireplace poker. There was some truth in the story. She had been bone-thin with grief in those days, but Uncle March never mentioned that she picked up the poker when he wakened her in her bed in the midst of spreading her hair upon her pillows. He claimed she was susceptible to delusions.
Her case had been less sensational than Caro Lamb’s, but society’s tolerance for Caro’s outbursts years earlier worked against Cleo. Her cousins cut her off immediately. Lady Jersey did not hesitate to remove her name from the list at Almack’s, a laughable attack, as if Cleo could have danced in those days of grief. The only advantage to Uncle March’s story had been that it made her flight easy. She had left town in the company of Miss Hester Britt without arousing anyone’s suspicions, and the farm had swallowed them up for four years. Only Miss Hester Britt’s passing had brought Uncle March down on them again. She blinked hard against a sudden pang of loss for her old friend and for the farm.

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