Wicked Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (19 page)

      
Most unreasonable. He could have made his own way without his father's allowance, but Alex loved his parents a great deal and did not wish to hurt them by spurning what they had worked so hard all their lives to create. This last letter from his mother was wistfully sad and fretfully worried. He had to do something. But what?

      
He affirmed that it would not, most assuredly, be to saddle himself with a wife and children. That resolution made, Alex entered the dark, musty interior of the warehouse, where the exotic aromas of Chinese teas blended with the musky tang of Spanish oranges. As he wended his way through the narrow aisles between crates and bales, he pondered exactly what he could do to pacify his family and maintain his present lifestyle. No immediate solutions came to mind. When he reached the door to the business office, he expected to find crotchety old Bertie ready to scold him for ordering too large a shipment of teak furniture. He was taken aback to see Joss pacing back and forth across the bare wooden floor.

      
The moment she heard him enter the room, Joss turned and flew into his arms with a hiccuping sob. "Oh, Alex, you must book passage for me on one of your ships. I have to leave England at once!"

Chapter Ten

      
"Leave England? Joss ..." He tipped her face up and removed the eyeglasses from her red-rimmed eyes. Tears leaked down her cheeks and her complexion was ashen. As long as he had known her, Alex had never seen Jocelyn Woodbridge so distraught—almost hysterical. Even when word of her beloved father's death came, she had been incredibly self-possessed. "What is wrong?" he asked gently, guiding her through the crowded office and into another smaller room where Bertram Therlow worked.

      
"Would you mind if I spoke privately with Miss Wood- bridge, Bertie?" he asked the corpulent, elderly man who sat hunched over an account ledger.

      
"Eh? What, what?" Therlow asked, holding an ear trumpet up to an ear covered by the curls of a hideously outdated and frazzled wig. When Alex repeated his request, the old man muttered some disparagement regarding the younger generation as he scooped up his books and scuttled out into the front office.

      
Alex led Joss over to where a pair of lolling chairs sat

neglected in one corner, gathering dust. When she began to sit, he stopped her, retrieving a stack of yellowed papers from the seat, then dusting it off with a snowy white handkerchief. "Now, sit down and explain what's happened," he instructed as he handed her back her spectacles and pulled up the adjoining chair.

      
Joss squeezed her puffy eyes to blink away the last of the tears, then replaced her eyeglasses so she could see Alex's dear face. "I feel like an utter cake, barging in this way. I'm certain Mr. Therlow thought I was an escaped bedlamite when I arrived, desperate to speak with you. I could think of no place else I might hope to find you when I was told by the butler that you were not currently in residence at the Caruthers's town house." She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself.

      
"Why on earth would you wish to leave England?" he asked in bewilderment, steering her back to the topic at hand.

      
"Heaven forbid, I don't wish to leave England, Alex. I must. That or Uncle Everett"—she stressed his name with taut anger—"will force me into the most heinous misalliance ever contrived."

      
Alex watched her shiver in revulsion. "Misalliance? You mean he's trying to marry you off?" Joss would not have any reasonable prospects, which meant the old earl had offered some impoverished peer a bribe to rid himself of the girl. 'To whom?"

      
"Sir Cecil Yardley," she replied with indignantion.

      
"Yardley?" Alex echoed incredulously. The old rake was sixty if he was a day, toothless, fat and if rumor were to be believed, quite poxed, not to mention vicious-tempered and a profligate spender who had always lived well beyond the modest means of his estate.

      
"None other than that foul-smelling, mean-spirited old viscount who, according to the earl, is desperate to wed again and produce an heir before he dies. He's already outlived two wives who failed to give him a healthy child."

      
"That's because he has the syphilis, Joss. It's probably what killed his wives, too." When she paled even more, he hastened to assure her, "Don't fear. I shall never allow you to be bartered off to any man against your will."

      
She felt her nails digging into the wooden arms of the chair to keep from throwing herself at him again and embarrassing them both. His steadfast reassurance was balm for her soul, yet the problem admitted no ready solution. "Alas, you will have little to say in the matter, my friend, for the earl is my legal guardian and a powerful man. He made it quite clear to me that I had no recourse whatsoever to avoid this odious union. When I refused to wed the viscount and announced that I would find other lodgings, he laughed at me and said my father had raised an utter lackwit. He placed me under lock and key until the arrangements with Yardley are finalized."

      
"How did you get here then?" he asked.

      
"I climbed out the second-story window of my bedroom and walked over a ledge to the arbor trellises, then climbed down and slipped out the back gate," she confessed.

      
Knowing how deuced clumsy Joss could be, Alex paled. "You took a dangerous chance."

      
"I had no choice, Alex. The law is on his side. My only means of permanent escape is to flee my homeland forever—or at least until the earl is dead."

      
The thought of Joss landing in some strange port all alone was horrifying. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to think of what they might do. "I could send you to my parents in Savannah. They'd be pleased to have another daughter now that Poly is leaving the nest..."

      
"I could not impose. Besides, if I go anywhere that could be easily traced, he will find me. He knows of our friendship. That would be the first place they would look once I'm discovered missing. No, I shall go somewhere utterly untraceable—I was thinking India . .."

      
"India?" he thundered, aghast. "Do you have any idea what you're saying? Have you ever been to India?"

      
"Have you?" she countered, desperately grasping at straws to keep her hopes alive.

      
"Yes, when I stowed away aboard one of our trading vessels as a lad. It's an alien and dangerous place for a well-armed man—no place at all for a lone white woman. You'd be sold to some slaver before you could walk off the Calcutta wharf."

      
"Then perhaps somewhere in America without ties to the Blackthornes—Boston or New York. Rumors of war between our countries are rife. Heaven forbid it should come to that, but if diplomatic ties were broken ..."

      
As he leaned back in his chair, resting his chin on his fists, Alex studied Joss. An idea began to take shape in the back of his mind ... an utterly insane idea ... or was it? He turned it over as Joss rattled on about all the unlikely ports of call where she could hide. She was so thoroughly English that he had a difficult time imagining her living anywhere else, certainly not in some godforsaken hellhole such as New South Wales or Malacca, not even in Greece or Italy.

      
But she was right about the earl. The haughty old bastard resented being crossed by anyone, especially an impoverished female, and legally he could marry her off to anyone he chose ... unless she were already wed. Even considering the idea that had popped into his mind caused a fine sheen of perspiration to dampen his upper lip. Damn Drum for his incessant drivel about his friendship with Joss, he thought crossly. Still, the idea had merit.

      
Have you gone stark raving lunatic?
He chided himself. But the thought would not leave his head once formulated.

      
Joss, seeing Alex stare off into space as if in a trance, ceased her frantic discourse and sighed, reaching out gingerly to touch his arm. "Alex, are you all right? I did not mean to overburden you with my troubles. Perhaps it would be best if I simply resigned myself to the odious marriage and tried to reach some accord with Yardley. Failing all else, I could slip laudanum into his tea on our wedding night or cosh him on the head with a fireplace poker."

      
Alex leaned forward, shaking his head as he reached for her hand. "No, Joss, you won't ever have to deal with Yardley. I have an idea that might solve your problem as well as my own...."

      
Joss looked into his liquid brown eyes and felt herself drowning in their depths. Whatever did he mean? His touch sent a tingling premonition dancing up her arm straight to her heart. Her breathing hitched. "Your problem, Alex?" she queried, suddenly breathless with anticipation.

      
Well, it's now or never
, some inner voice urged him. "You know my family has been putting increasing pressure on me to marry over this past year."

      
Her heart gave a painful lurch. "You mean they've selected a young lady for you?" Visions of some wildly beautiful colonial lass filled her imagination. How could she bear it?

      
"No, Joss. My parents know better than to try that."

      
"B-but then, what is your problem if they are not forcing you into marriage—and how does it relate to my present difficulty?" Now she was the one bewildered.

      
Alex released her hand for a moment and combed his fingers through his hair with a grin. "It's sort of complicated—my problem, that is. I... oh, hell, Joss, I suppose I'm utterly incorrigible in spite of all your prayers. I like the life I lead, the freedom I have to drink and gamble and .. . er, to pursue other pleasures not appropriate to mention in a lady's presence."

      
Joss nodded, biting her lip, half in vexation, half in amusement at her Alex, her angelic rake. "Working on the docks, I'm acquainted with that profession. Bit o' muslin' is the euphemism, I believe?" she asked dryly.

      
Alex felt a sudden need to stand up and pace. "Er, well, yes, that is one. But getting back to my family," he continued doggedly, "I feel guilty about worrying them. Since Poly's gone and found herself a husband, they've turned their full attention on me. What I mean to say, is, well... I need to find a wife—not a real wife," he hastened to add, then faltered once more. "I just need to be married so that my parents will cease hounding me and fretting about the way I choose to live my life."

      
A horrible suspicion was beginning to form in Joss's mind, but it was so presumptuous, so wildly preposterous that she dared not voice it aloud. Instead she moistened her dry lips and said, "Pray continue."

      
She was not making this any easier, he thought pettishly, trying to read her expression. Those damnable thick glasses always seemed to catch the candle's light in such a way as to obscure her eyes. "Well, Joss, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I could marry you—a marriage in name only, of course," he hastened to add. "You need protection from your uncle. What better way to foil him than to turn up with a husband before he can force Yardley on you?"

      
The earth would open up and swallow her now. Surely it would. It must! Her worst suspicions were realized.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but I could marry you.
She sat frozen, not daring to breathe as Alex, her beautiful golden Alex, resumed pacing nervously across the crowded office. She clenched her hands into painful fists, and concealed them in the folds of her skirt as he warmed to his scheme, continuing to lay it out.

      
"My uncle could procure a special license. He has some very influential friends. Once the matter had been legalized and presented to the earl as a fait accompli, there would be nothing he could do about it but give over, Joss. And when I informed my parents that I had married, they'd rejoice and cease hounding me. It would serve us both handily." When she made no further response, Alex went on. "You would be free to continue your work at the hospital and school, do anything you wished." He stopped and looked directly at her for the first time in several moments.

      
Joss sat perfectly still, flummoxed over how to respond. "How would we live, Alex? Surely the Carutherses would not desire us to share their city house."
Why am I even considering this!
she railed at herself.

      
"Since I began working here I've been drawing commissions on the profits. Oddly enough, my income from honest toil nearly equals my ill-gotten gains at the tables and the track," he said with a rueful laugh. 'That has led me to consider finding my own lodgings. I can afford nice quarters, perhaps a place on Chapel Street that I inspected just last week. There are rooms upstairs that could be converted into your own private apartment. Where we live would be your choice, Joss."

      
"And you would keep the downstairs." It was not quite a question. She knew he would continue to live as he had, bringing Cyprians to share his bed while she languished in loneliness upstairs.

      
Alex grinned in that rakish, bone-melting way that made her heart stop. " 'Pon my honor, you would never be exposed to my wicked, wicked ways, Joss," he replied, holding up one bronzed hand in mock pledge.

      
And you would never have any idea that I love you
. How could she do it?

      
How could you give up your one opportunity to be with him for the rest of your life?
an inner voice tormented her. This was her one golden opportunity—if she had the courage to seize it. "I do not know, Alex ...," she replied gravely.