Christine Merrill - Two Wrongs Make a Marriage

‘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.’