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‘Thank you, Lady Banester,’ he replied, remembering not to be too flattered. ‘And your daughter has done nothing in need of forgiveness.’
‘But it is plain that she wishes to see her new home. And you gentleman have things you must discuss.’
‘Mother.’ The single word from his wife was clearly a warning, although damned if Jack knew what it meant. The air between the two women crackled with tension. Occupying the space between them was like being caught in a battle of sirens.
‘I am only trying to help.’ Lady Banester pouted and Jack felt an illogical desire to agree to whatever she might suggest. ‘And I have a suggestion that will please you both. While you and Sir William talk, I will escort Thea to your home, so that she might prepare herself for your arrival.’
‘You will part me from my husband on our wedding day?’
He turned back to his wife with what he hoped was a firm but benevolent smile. ‘Only for an hour, dearest. And then I shall return to you and we might continue our celebration.’
In bed. By then, he would have money in the bank and a promise of continued support for the lovely Cyn, in exchange for the use of various Stayne properties and the prestigious connection with one of the oldest families in Britain. Sir William was nothing more than a humble baronet. But since he lived like the plumpest pigeon in London, Jack assumed the level of gratitude would be substantial.
Between the equally generous rewards he would receive from Stayne and the fringe benefits of a buxom and affectionate wife, John de Warde, Lord Kenton, was proving to be the nicest role Jack had ever played. He would be sad when the farce had to end.
It had been more than an hour. More than two. And at last, more than three. In fact, it was nearly time to dress for bed, which was quite ridiculous. Thea had donned the négligée her mother had pressed upon her at half past one in the afternoon. It was getting rather chilly.
Her mother had assured her she would be well out of the thing by now. Thea had allowed the final scraps of embarrassing advice, because she had assumed that they would be just that. Final. No matter what occurred between her and Kenton, it would not have to be coached, described or dissected by a too-curious female parent. It could be a secret, between her husband and herself.
If Father had ruffled his feathers with precipitate demands for funds, there might be more than an unusual number of secrets to keep. While she knew more than a maiden should about the activities of the marriage bed, she lacked the experience to be a seducer. But she was prepared to be as willing and enthusiastic a pupil as a disgruntled husband might wish.
As soon as Kenton came home, at any rate.
How much had Father demanded of him? And how long could it take to write a bank draft? Thea had a mortifying fancy of treasure caskets changing hands. Or, worse yet, sheep and goats. Somewhere in London, her worth was defined in livestock and chattel. She must hope that her value was sufficient to fix the mess they were in.
From somewhere down the hallway, outside the closed bedroom door, she heard a thump. And then another and another. As the sounds came closer, they formed an irregular pattern. Booted footsteps? Perhaps if the visitor had a wooden leg. There was something not quite right about them.
The door to her room burst open, slamming against the opposite wall to reveal her husband leaning lopsidedly in the door frame.
‘Kenton?’ It was him, she was sure. But judging by the noxious stench accompanying him, he was disguised by gin. A quick examination of his boots revealed the reason for his uneven gate. At some point during their wedding afternoon, his champagne-polished Hessians had been abused to the point where one heel was missing. He had walked halfway out of the other and had been staggering along on the calf, trying to free himself as he walked. As she watched, he gave a final kick and the offending footwear sailed across the room to land beside the bed.
‘Kenton. John. Jack.’ She tried to settle on a name for him that best suited the situation. ‘Shall I call your valet?’
‘No, thank you,’ he said, and, for a moment, he sounded almost like the man she’d expected. His voice was beautiful, as it always was. Clear, resonant and compelling. It was the sort of voice to melt hearts and reservations. And if they could get this difficulty behind them, she would happily listen to it for the rest of her life.
‘Do you wish me to help you?’ She crawled towards the edge of the bed, the silk of her nightdress billowing about her. ‘You appear to need some assistance.’
He threw a hand dramatically in front of his eyes. ‘Do not help me, you … succubus. Do not help me ever again.’ He seized his remaining boot, hopping about a bit before managing to free himself of it and then tossing it after its mate.
‘I do not understand.’ She sank back on the bed, painfully sure that her last statement had been a lie.
‘Don’t you, now.’ He struggled out of his jacket and pulled a bundle of papers from the pocket before dropping it on the floor. ‘And you knew nothing of these, I suppose, when you decided it was urgent that you marry the first man stupid enough to be trapped by you.’ He dropped the familiar invoices on the mattress beside her.
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said, hoping that she looked sufficiently guileless.
‘Then I will tell you. These are a wedding gift. From your father. Your settlement. The one he promised to give to me, after we were wed.’
‘Oh.’ Now the storm would break for sure. And no amount of transparent silk would hold it back.
‘Of course, foolish man that I am, I went to him, imagining it would be something akin to a small estate, or a rather large bank draft. Instead, I find—’ he brandished the first paper ‘—the bill for the wedding breakfast. And here is another, for your wedding clothes and your mother’s as well. Tailor’s bills, grocer’s bills. Butcher’s bills, for God’s sake. And they are a month old. Am I expected to pay for chops that I have not tasted?’
‘Recently, there have been difficulties,’ she said. It was a huge understatement.
‘Difficulties?’ There was a slightly hysterical edge to her new husband’s lovely voice that took her by surprise.
‘Well, yes. My mother has always been prone to extravagances. But of late, a miscalculation on the part of my father has led to misfortune.’
‘Misfortune?’ The tone of this, if possible, was even higher than the last statement had been.
‘But I am sure that they are nothing that you cannot handle, as heir to Lord Stayne.’
‘Ahhhh.’ And this was the strangest sound of all. One-part confirmation, and two-parts wordless oath, followed by a sharp slap to his own temple and a collapse into the nearest chair. ‘I see it all now. The ease with which it was possible to catch you. Your sudden, devoted interest in me, which my own vanity made me want to believe. And damn me for a fool in that. Stayne will have my neck back in the noose as sure as your eyes are green.’
‘Noose?’
‘Where were my eyes? Where was my brain? And why, Lord, why must it be so easy for a ginger-haired girl with a magnificent bosom to trick a trickster?’
‘A trickster.’ He was hardly speaking to her any more. But since all he’d spoken before appeared to be lies, it was just as well. The last little speech had been so full of information that she could hardly take it all in. He was a trickster. He feared hanging and he feared Stayne.
Apparently, he admired her eyes and certain other portions of her anatomy. It was nice, but not germane.
‘Why would your own father want to see your neck in a noose?’ But he’d said, back in a noose. ‘And why was it ever there in the first place?’
Lord Kenton stared back at her with a bitter grin. ‘I have no idea what my father would want. I’ve never met the man.’ He reached for a flask in his pocket, opened it and took a healthy gulp of the contents.
It was her turn to sit down suddenly on the nearest surface, collapsing back on the bed and hugging a pillow to her chest to conceal everything she had meant to display. ‘But that means that you’re …’
‘A bastard,’ he replied cheerfully and offered her the flask.
She waved it away. ‘Then you cannot be Stayne’s heir.’
‘I am not even his natural son,’ Jack replied. ‘At least, I do not think I am. My mother was none too clear on the identity of my sire. I did not press her on the subject.’
‘And I married a man of no birth, no consequence …’
‘And no fortune,’ he added, taking another drink. ‘And there you are, hoisted upon your own petard. Since I married an heiress with no fortune, I have no sympathy for you.’ He stood, walked to the fireplace and tossed her father’s bills one by one into the flames.
‘You cannot,’ she said, dropping the pillow and hurrying across the room to retrieve them.
‘You are clearly unaccustomed to having debts. These are but first requests. They will send others. I speak from experience.’
‘A bastard with unpaid debts.’ She folded her hands across her chest, trying to draw the spider’s web she was wearing into some semblance of modesty.
‘And do not forget the near hanging,’ he said, wagging a finger at her and taking another drink.
‘I cannot forget something that I know nothing about.’
‘It is a very interesting story,’ he said.
‘I imagine it is. Would you share it with me?’ Your wife. Who would not have been such had she heard any of this a scant day ago. She glared at him.
Her anger had no more effect than her near nudity was having, for he was lost in drink and the story he told. ‘While it might be possible to dodge a London tailor, some of the more provincial innkeepers are less forgiving. When I elected to leave an establishment suddenly, by a window at the first light of dawn, the ostler caught me and had me up on charges of theft. When Stayne found me with his interesting proposition, I was on my way to the gallows.’
‘As well you should have been. You were stealing from the innkeeper.’
‘As was he from me. I should think the stirring performance of Shakespeare’s better soliloquies was worth the price of a room and a dinner. He hinted at such before I began. But when I had finished, he claimed he did not care for tragedy and presented me with the bill.’
‘A bastard, a thief and an actor!’ The last was the worst news of all. She grabbed for the pillow and swung it at his head, and kept swinging until the leading edge was trailing feathers.
He dodged the final blow with a bow worthy of Covent Garden, then straightened, seized the pillow and thrust it back into her arms. ‘At your service, miss. Or shall I say madam. You are a married lady now, after all.’
‘I am most certainly not. I cannot be held to a marriage entered into under such fraudulent circumstances.’
‘Fraud?’ He pointed an accusing finger at her. ‘You dress in silk and have not a feather to fly with.’
‘That is merely money,’ she said waving a dismissive hand.
‘The words of someone who is used to having it,’ he countered.
‘It is nothing, compared to the lies you told. I thought, when I agreed to marry you, that I knew who your family was. Now it appears that you do not know them either. There must be a law that covers this.’
‘You have but to make this disgrace public and find out,’ he offered with an expansive gesture towards the door. ‘Perhaps you can tell the next fellow you trap that this marriage does not matter. Here, take the licence with you.’ He tossed a mud-spattered scrap of paper at her. Their signatures were still legible through the many bootprints that marked it. ‘But I doubt another man will be as stupid as I was, once the story of this mistake gets around.’
It was a horrible truth and one she had not yet considered. Once the truth was known, she would have no choice but to take de Warde’s despicable offer that she repair her father’s fortune with her virtue. ‘You’ve ruined me!’ she shouted, throwing the pillow back at his head.
He caught it easily. ‘You’ve ruined yourself, darling. Do not expect me to feel sorry for you. Spayne hired me to do a spot of play-acting. I was to find a rich wife, bring her and her fortune back to Essex. My very life depended on success. What is to become of me now?’
‘If he does not hang you, then I will. I will be a widow,’ she said with narrowed eyes. ‘That suits me well.’
‘I was planning to give you just such a wedding gift before we discovered the truth about each other.’ He gazed off at an imaginary and happier horizon. ‘When all the settlements were made and your non-existent fortune was in the earl’s bank, I was to meet with a tragic accident. Punting, perhaps. Although the water is too shallow to do the job right.’ He framed the scene with his hands. ‘Sailing. My boat would be found, dashed against the rocks. But alas, no body would be recovered. My father? Heartbroken. And you, the beautiful, young, rich widow, would weep openly over the empty coffin.’
‘That will never happen,’ she said, mouth set in a grim line.
‘After how I meant to treat you in the months before the tragedy, I dare say you would have.’ He gave her a long hot look that said she’d have been on her back by now and he seemed to think she’d have enjoyed the process. ‘You would wear black for a year.’
‘Six months at most.’
‘Followed by half-mourning,’ he insisted. ‘I see you in lavender, wan, fragile and appealing.
‘I see myself in red, dancing on your grave,’ she said. ‘You meant to bed me, cheat me and leave me a bigamist.’
‘Spayne would have taken care of you. For all his idiosyncrasies, the man is a gallant gentleman at heart. He’d have seen to it that you were re-launched, remarried and none the worse for the experience.’
‘But that happy future will not come to pass until you have the courtesy to die,’ she said. ‘I suggest you get about it.’
‘Without your fortune, the earl has nothing to offer you. Adding two ciphers does not make an appreciable sum. If I were to die now, you would be a poor widow on the morrow.’ He held his hands out again and pulled a frown. ‘I see you in shabby black, tinged with the green of hard wearing. Perhaps you will take in sewing and live on the charity of the church.’
‘I will not!’ she shouted back at him. ‘I could not make nearly enough by sewing,’ she added softly, resigned. Then a thought occurred to her. ‘I don’t suppose there is a real Lord Kenton somewhere. Perhaps I am not married to you at all.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Died as a child along with his mother on a trip abroad. Spayne kept the illusion alive because he did not want to be troubled by his family to produce an heir. But the foolish deception has gone on too long and, of late, his brother was clamouring to see the prodigal son.’
‘Henry de Warde,’ Thea announced bitterly.
‘You know of him?’
‘Only because he is the reason for my family’s poverty. He sold my father a certain …’ What would be an appropriate description? ‘A fraudulent artefact,’ she decided.
‘That your father was willing to spend the whole of the family fortune to gain?’ Her faux husband was eyeing her with suspicion, waiting for the rest of a story she had no intention of telling.
She ignored the unstated request for detail. ‘It was no more unwise then Spayne’s mythical son.’
‘Probably true,’ Jack admitted.
‘I spoke to de Warde about it. I pleaded with him for mercy.’
‘And he suggested that you work off the debt on your back.’
It had been the single most revolting moment of her life. But now that she had destroyed herself, it was likely to be the first of many. ‘How did you know?’
Jack was staring at her with something almost like sympathy. ‘Because it’s what any sane man would have done.’
Now he seemed to be assessing her value and she wondered if he would have behaved the same, had he been de Warde. A glance at her reflection in a nearby cheval glass told her that it was too late to protect her modesty from him. A single pillow could not have hidden enough. ‘I refused him. But now …’ she looked at the man in front of her and resorted to complete honesty, which her teacher, Miss Pennyworth, had assured her was the shield and bulwark of any virtuous young girl ‘… I don’t know what I shall do.’
He continued to stare. ‘Suppose I were to suggest another way.’
‘Anything.’ She’d spoken too quickly. This was a man willing to steal from innkeepers, trick her into wedding him and fake his own death. He had made no mention of seeking a marriage in name only, at any time in his plans. There was no telling what scheme he intended now. ‘Anything within reason,’ she amended.
‘I do not know how reasonable my plans are,’ he admitted. ‘But recent actions proved that we are both willing to consider unreasonable options to gain success. The kidnapping was an admirable twist,’ he added, nodding with approval.
‘Thank you.’ She frowned. ‘I did not think it would work.’
‘A more timid tactic might not have got me. And you were not the most convincing actress I have seen. But the combination of beauty and risk was irresistible.’ He paused dramatically. ‘As I suppose my performance was to you.’
Silently, she cursed all actors and their perpetual need for approval. ‘Actually, it was your relationship to de Warde that attracted me. Any man would have done.’
‘I see.’ She watched as his excessive pride deflated. Then he rallied. ‘It makes me wonder what we might achieve by working together against a common enemy. There is more to Spayne’s story than I have told you. And you are still keeping secrets as well.’
‘I?’ She tried to look guileless.
‘You,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘And why did I not see it before? But it is clear that Henry de Warde is at the crux of both troubles.’
‘What do you think you can do about him?’ It was unlikely that the man before her had a simple solution to her problem, but a forlorn hope was better than no chance at all.
‘I will not appeal to his better nature, that’s for certain. I doubt he has one. If we are to get anywhere with the man, we must do it in the same way he’s got one over on us, using base trickery, lies and chicanery.’ He walked past her to the bed, undoing the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘But the details can wait until after we have spoken to Spayne. If we must travel tomorrow, an early night is in order.’ He stretched out upon the mattress and patted the space at his side.
‘Certainly not,’ she said. Then she remembered what her mother had said about the transparency of nightwear and did her best to move out of the firelight.
He smiled invitingly and his voice, though slurred, was still as soothing as warm honey. ‘You were not so ungenerous this morning.’
‘That was when you were Kenton.’
‘And you mean to hold out for nothing less than a viscount.’ He sighed. ‘My loss, I suppose. But you are wise to have standards.’ He picked up the pillow she had thrown and tossed it back to her. ‘I suggest you remove yourself from the vicinity of my bed, before I forget what you have done to me and take advantage.’
‘And where am I supposed to sleep?’
‘The house is large. Call a servant. They will find you a place.’
‘They will know that we did not …’
‘Then take the couch on the other side of the room.’
She glared at him. ‘A true gentleman would leave me the bed.’
‘As we have established, I am not a gentleman,’ he said with a smile. ‘But at least I have my wits. I have survived on those and little else for thirty years. If you wish me to apply it to this situation, I will need to be well rested. Good night, my dear.’ And with that, he rolled so that his back was to her and closed his eyes.
Chapter Four
In the company of her new husband, the imposter Jack Briggs, the ride to Essex was proving intolerable. Instead of the sweet afterglow of a honeymoon, the day after Thea’s marriage was rather like waking with a bad head from too much wine. Her brain ached from trying to comprehend what had happened to her. Her body was stiff and sore from a night spent without sleep on the hard couch in her husband’s room, muscles rigid and teeth clenched with anger and frustration. The Kenton carriage was well sprung and roomy, but she might as well have been travelling in an open dog cart for all the comfort it gained her.
It was precisely the condition that the false Lord Kenton should have been experiencing. He had snored his way through the night, wrapped in a cloud of cheap spirits and the monogrammed linens of one of the finest families in England. Instead of waking the worse for drink and racked with guilt at how he had treated Thea and her family, the morning found him happy, relaxed and quite pleased with the way the day was going. When she had pressed him for an explanation, he had been unwilling to share the reason for his good mood. He acted as if lying about his life and identity, marrying some unsuspecting girl and being sorely disappointed in the result was an activity that happened every day.
Perhaps, to him, it did. The idea that she might be one of a string of similar Lady Kentons was more than disturbing. He did not seem the sort to travel from town to town, ruining innocents and stealing fortunes. But until last night, she’d have sworn that such a thing as had already happened was quite impossible. How could she be sure?
And he was whistling. Thea could not identify the tune. But she suspected, judging by the look in his eyes, that the lyrics were inappropriate for female ears.
She glared at him. ‘Stop that incessant noise.’
Jack stared back at her, all innocence. The whistle paused. ‘You do not like music?’
‘That is not music. It is precisely the opposite. If you had any manners …’
‘And the kind of breeding and education …’ he said, in a pompous tone, waving a hand. ‘We have already established that I do not. You were the one who wished to marry me. Now you must learn to make do.’ He went back to whistling.
‘It is vulgar,’ she said with desperation.
‘And so am I.’ His eyes were narrowed, as though it had been possible to hurt him with a statement of truth.
‘I have no doubt that you are vulgar, after your comments of the previous evening. But it is all the more reason for you to stop. You should aspire to be something better than you are.’
‘As you do?’ He folded his arms across his chest, waiting for an answer. His cheerful manner disappeared. He was looking at her, for all the world, as though he were the one who had been wronged by her scheming.
‘Is this some veiled reference to my willingness to—’ her mouth puckered in revulsion as she parroted his words back to him ‘—hold out for a man of sufficient rank?’ It was as if he thought her no better than a whore for marrying him. ‘There is nothing wrong with seeking a decent future through marriage.’
‘For a woman, perhaps,’ he said.
‘You were quick enough to do it yourself.’
‘I was doing it in service to another,’ he said firmly.
As was she. Her family would have seen the benefit, had her plan worked as expected. But his comment rankled. ‘You are little better than a servant to Spayne, then? If so, I order you to stop whistling.’
‘I may be a servant to Spayne. But to you?’ He grinned. ‘I am a husband. And humble though I might be, it is not your place to command anything of me. As I remember, it was you who promised to obey.’
‘But not to obey you. I said the words when I thought you were Kenton. I promised loyalty to a man who does not exist.’
‘The majority of women who marry would say the same thing. I fail to see why I owe an alteration of my behaviour to you, if you were not aware of the fact that marriage changes everything between us. Now hush, woman, and cease your nagging. I am trying to think.’ He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes with a blissful smile upon his face.