Nicola Cornick - Deceived

“You should not have—” she began.

His expression was hard. “It needed to be done.”

“Time to go,” the jailer said from behind them. He fingered the money in his pocket suggestively. “Unless you would prefer to stay a while longer, madam? A cozy cell for the two of you to celebrate wedlock?”

Wedlock. It sounded very final.

Marcus raised an eyebrow in inquiry. Isabella wrenched her gaze away from him. “No,” she said. “No, thank you.”

Marcus turned away from her without a further word and fell into step before the jailer. He did not look back. Isabella listened as their footsteps faded away and the door of the chapel swung silently closed behind them. For one mad moment, she wanted to run after Marcus and drag him back, make him stay with her. But he had gone. That was it. It was all over.

The priest touched her arm.

“You will be wanting to be away from this place, ma’am. Allow me to escort you out.”

Isabella followed him in something of a daze through the warren of shadowed corridors and out into the daylight. The door clanged shut, leaving her out on the street. The air was bright and the afternoon was loud with the vibrant noises of the city. She felt very odd, light-headed and confused, as though she had awoken from a vivid dream, a dream laced with sensuality and long-buried desires. Except that this had been no dream. She was legally married to Marcus Stockhaven—or perhaps illegally, given the circumstances of their wedding. The thought made her heart clench with emotion.

His signet ring felt heavy and unfamiliar on her finger. She wondered why he had not pawned it to buy himself more comfort. But a man’s pride was a delicate thing and maybe selling off the family’s arms was a step too far, even for a debtor in dire straits. He could scarce be said to have graced the Stockhaven name with his behavior.

He had not sold his signet ring but he had given it to her. Isabella felt a passing regret for the fact that she could not wear it. Nevertheless, she would keep it safe, and once the marriage had been annulled she would send it back to him. No matter that he had said they would meet again. She knew it would be better—safer—never to see him.

She could feel the marriage certificate stiff in the reticule beneath her arm. She was free and she was secure from arrest, and surely that had to be the most important matter. Yet as she walked quickly out of the labyrinth of alleys that snaked about the Fleet, a deep feeling of disquiet possessed her. She wondered why she was so anxious. After all, Marcus was locked up in debtor’s prison and she was at liberty to carry on as though nothing had happened. She had exactly what she wanted.

For a moment she contemplated what might happen if Marcus were to regain his freedom and a shiver of apprehension shook her. With Marcus imprisoned, she felt safely in control of the situation. Marcus at liberty would be a very different matter. There was no way one could control a man like that. He was too strong, too forceful.

She turned her face up to the sunshine for comfort and told herself that it was impossible that Marcus would ever be free. Her debts would be dismissed, her inheritance would be proved and then she could pay for an annulment. She had no cause ever to see him again.

Nevertheless, she felt afraid.

MARCUS WAS LYING on the mattress in the empty cell, which was now his own, the book about naval architecture lying untouched by his elbow and a bottle of wine almost as untouched beside it. The cell looked exactly as it had when he had stepped in there in the weak light of morning. There was nothing to show that Isabella Di Cassilis had ever been there and in doing so had changed his life. There was no sign of her, yet her presence lingered in the air and wrapped itself about him so that it was impossible to think of anything else.

During the preceding twelve years he had thought about Isabella sometimes, but he would dispute that he had ever pined for her. His mouth twisted in bitter amusement. He was not a man to dwell on those things that might have been. He was not cut out to be a martyr. Bur while he had always believed that he had put the entire matter of his ill-fated, youthful love affair behind him, he now knew that was not so. Now he knew he wanted Isabella and he wanted a reckoning.

Marcus rubbed a hand across his eyes. He had tried very hard to shut Isabella out of his mind and his life, but he had not been able to ignore the tales entirely. Her husband’s name had been a byword for depravity, especially in his later years when he had traveled through Europe trailing a raffish court behind him like a wayward comet and taking with him a wife whose name was inevitably ruined by association with his debauchery. Marcus thought of Isabella and the crippling blow that her late husband had dealt her. Twenty thousand pounds was an immense debt to burden her with, but no doubt the feckless Prince Ernest had cared as little for that as he was reputed to have cared for his wife. And one could argue that it was only just that Isabella, who had married for money, should in her widowhood be crippled by debt.

Marcus shifted, trying to achieve a more comfortable position on the hopelessly uncomfortable mattress. Isabella had chosen to marry Prince Ernest and she was now reaping the consequences of that decision. She had jilted Marcus heartlessly to marry a rich and titled man. That was the simple truth. Marcus had fallen for the charms of an adventuress.

He had not wanted to feel anything for Isabella Di Cassilis when he met her again. He had wanted to look at her and feel nothing—no love, no hatred and certainly no desire. He had failed singularly. It had taken him all of ten seconds to realize that he still wanted her and, when she had trembled under the onslaught of his kiss, he had forgotten the grim surroundings of the Fleet and ached to take her there and then on the cold stone floor of the chapel.

No indeed, indifference was the last emotion on his mind.

Marcus got to his feet and walked over to the small grille that covered the window. Tantalizing brightness flooded in, promising all the things that he had given up—light and liberty and the freedom to do whatever he wished. He had gone voluntarily into the Fleet for a most particular purpose and Isabella’s assumptions about his financial state, while logical, could not have been further from the truth. He could buy up her debts three times over and not notice the difference.

He paused, staring at the small square of light. What did he want from Isabella Di Cassilis? She had chosen him for no more reason than that he was a convenient husband in the same way that she had made a calculated decision to marry Prince Ernest all those years before. Marcus had given her the freedom to escape her debts. He owed her nothing more. But she…she owed him an explanation of the past as well as a reckoning for the present. When he paid off her creditors, she would owe him a great deal more.

His work here was almost complete. He had been intending to call for his release in a week’s time anyway, but that could easily be brought forward by a few days. It was probably preferable to leave now anyway. Isabella’s visit, and her largesse, had made him a figure of curiosity and that he could not afford. Already there was a buzz in the air, talk of his wife’s beauty and speculation about her true identity. Secrets could not be kept in a place like this.

Marcus stared up at the small blue square of sky above his head. He did not deceive himself that Isabella would be pleased to see him at liberty. If there was one thing he had learned from their interview, it was that Princess Isabella Di Cassilis—or more accurately, the new Countess of Stockhaven—did not wish for a husband in anything more than name.