The Bargain Bride (31 page)

“Do not be stupid. I am no maiden to be threatened with the loss of my virtue or my good name. I am already wed, so there is nothing you can do.”

“Really? And you thought your brother-in-law was gullible. You would be surprised. After all, you did come to my home.”

“My father's home,” she insisted.

“Your father is at his bank, counting his coins, as everyone knows. And my dear mother and the brats are out with your own Lady Bainbridge, as you had to have planned. You came here, alone, to visit with a gentleman not quite related, as you are so quick to point out. You did not even bother with a maid, lest anyone carry tales of our . . . shall we call it a tryst? No? A liaison?”

“A business meeting, you swine.”

“My, my. Most ladies conduct their business in their own homes, or at their solicitors' offices. But I am sure the
ton
will be agog to hear your denials. As will your husband, when he gets back. Or perhaps Westfield won't care at all. You must have been a big disappointment to him, that he flew off so quickly after the wedding. Perhaps I am well out of it, not that your lack of expertise in bed could affect your bank balance. Warm women are easy to come by, a fortune less so.”

Her reticule's strings were in knots. “How . . . how dare you?”

“Oh, quite easily. You see, if you are disgraced, left without that social entry your sire and my mother desire so dearly, then Goldwaite will be ready to leave his fortune elsewhere. Where better than to his beloved wife and her devoted children?”

“Never. My father will never believe your lies, and he will never leave you tuppence. You are despicable.” She was out of the parlor and through the front door. Nigel was right behind her.

Her carriage driver had been walking the horses, circling the street. When he saw Lady Westfield at the door, he started to turn the coach around, to fetch her. Nigel waited until the driver's back was turned, but two other coaches were approaching, one from either direction.

“You forgot your parasol, my dear,” he called out, taking the frilly thing from his butler's hands.

When Penny turned to take it, Nigel pulled her into his arms and ground his lips into hers, in full view of the butler, two women walking a poodle between them, and the red-haired occupant of a green-painted carriage across the street.

Penny pushed him away, but the carriage had passed and the butler had gone inside and the two women scurried back the way they had come, dragging the reluctant dog. Her own coach was still some distance away.

Nigel sneered. “We'll see what your husband thinks of that. And your new friends. And your father.”

Penny wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then kept drawing that hand back, formed a fist, and punched Nigel in the face with the same force that had stunned West, the day he proposed marriage. Nigel was shorter and weaker than West, so her fist hit him in the eye, not on the chin. He fell back to the paving stones. Unfortunately, no carriages were going by to see that. On the other hand, or foot, no carriages were going by, so Penny kicked him, right where it would do the most damage. Then she broke her parasol over his head.

No one heard his moans or his curses.

“You'll pay for that, you bitch.”

She wiped her mouth again. “I already have, you bastard.”

But she did not, in the end. As soon as her nerves calmed and her knuckles stopped throbbing, Penny directed her driver to her father's bank. There she closed her accounts, every last one of them, and transferred her considerable funds to the delighted bank where West kept his money.

Nigel would not be getting anything from her—nothing but a black eye.

—By Arrangement,
a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber

 

 

 

T
he widow Beck believed that blood was thicker than water. “I heard you was looking for him,” she told West when he finally found the rough cottage where she lived. “Well, Fred's my brother, for good or for ill. You can keep looking.” She shut the door in West's face.

On the other side of the thin door, West let a trickle of coins sift through his fingers. “Did you hear there was a reward?”

Silver being thicker than blood, it seemed, Mrs. Beck opened the door and stood aside for him to enter.

The thatch-roofed dwelling was small, a square front room and one tiny bedroom in the back that West could see. The floors were dirt, the furnishings crudely hewed out of logs. The widow herself was gaunt and bent, in a faded gown and a soiled apron. A scrawny cat slept in a patch of sun from a single tiny window, hung with dingy curtains.

Mrs. Beck eyed the flashing coins in West's hands. “My brother is a good man, he is. He works hard and sends me what he can spare so's I can stay out of the workhouse.”

West did not see how the workhouse could be much worse than this. He laid one of the coins on the uneven tabletop. “Yours for speaking to me.”

The widow bobbed her head, strands of gray hair falling across her cheeks as she tucked the coin down the front of her gown. “It's the drink, you know, riding him hard. The devil owns him.”

“No, I own him now. He could have killed someone, and the horses.”

“Fred felt real bad about the horses. But none died, we heard. And the headman having a dicey heart, that's not Fred's fault. It was the devil what made him do it, I tell you. Demon rum.”

West disagreed. “Men drink. Decent men stop when they have had enough.”

“Not all men. My late husband was one what drank till he fell over. Got trampled by a herd of cattle. Never woke up, they told me.”

West did not comment.

“Will he hang?”

“I will see that he doesn't if I find him before the sheriff or the magistrate's men. They are all hungry for the reward,” he reminded her, trying to hurry her decision.

“He'll be transported, then?”

“That's better than living out his life in jail or on the prison hulks. I cannot leave him loose.”

“S'pose not. And that way he has a chance, don't he?”

West did not mention how many convicts died on the journey to Botany Bay, but men frequently died in jail, too, and always at the hangman's noose. “Yes, he has a chance to make a new life.”

“And no spirits on the ships out, I'd guess.”

“I wouldn't know.” He put another coin on the table. “I am in something of a hurry.”

“How much did you say that reward was?”

“You do not get it until Nesbitt is apprehended.”

“You don't trust me, but I am s'posed to trust you with Fred's life?”

“No, you are supposed to do the right thing, like a good citizen.”

She spit on the floor.

West handed over another coin and got what he wanted, the direction to a burned-out herdsman's shack in the woods. Before heading there, he sent a messenger to the local constable, wanting everything to be legal and aboveboard. He decided not to wait, lest the widow have second thoughts and find a way to warn her brother. Besides, the daylight was fading, and he could be on the road for London. He checked the pistol in his waistband. Bad enough that he might be late for Penny's ball; she'd be madder if he was killed . . . before she had that pleasure.

“You ain't going to shoot him, are you?”

“Not unless he resists.”

“He won't. He ain't had nothing but my dandelion wine.”

 

Nesbitt hadn't had a bath, either. The smell alone almost knocked West out when he crept up to the charred shack through the brush, not knowing if the man was armed.

“Come on out, Nesbitt. I know you are in there. You aren't going to hang.”

Nesbitt called back, “The dandelion wine almost did me in anyway. And m'sister's cooking. No wonder her husband cocked up his toes.”

“That is not the issue here. Come on out. You cannot hide forever. And I have places to go. The sooner we get this over with, the easier for everyone. If I miss my appointment in London, all deals are off.”

“Come in and get me.”

“I am not a fool. I can wait here. With no food or water or heat, you'll surrender soon enough.”

“I thought you was in a hurry.”

“The constable and his men should have the place surrounded in a few minutes. No telling what they'll do, rousted from their suppers.”

They'd likely string him up from the nearest tree. “Damn.”

“You should have thought of that before you set my barn on fire.”

“I didn't mean it to go so far. I swear.”

“I believe you. But it's over now.”

Nesbitt came out, hands up. West tucked the gun back in his waistband and stepped forward. The man was a foot shorter, a stone lighter, a decade older, and unarmed. And still he took a swing at West, hitting him squarely in the eye.

Which was all the encouragement West needed to tackle the man and pummel him into the ground. His horses, his money, his wife—he threw all his frustration into his punches, then dragged the half-conscious man to his feet and shook him. “You fool, you should have come easier.”

“I got my pride. Couldn't go without a fight, now, could I? M'sister's neighbors'd think I was a coward. And who's to look after her now? I want to know.”

“She'll be better off without a bobbing-block like you. I'll see to it.”

West saw Nesbitt into the hands of the local authorities, who took their own damned time arguing that West had to sign papers, give a deposition, follow them to the lockup. West gave them another handful of coins and his Town address. Then he left. He did not send a note ahead. The only way a message could reach London before him was to be carried by a pigeon.

 

No matter the throbbing in his eye—lud, he dreaded to think what he must look like—nor the pain in his knuckles—the last hostler had kept his distance—nor the exhausting, expensive pace he was setting—damn, his own horses were faster and steadier and had more stamina—West was exulting.

Home, he was going home. He might look like the devil in disguise, but he'd be in time for Penny's ball, barring any more misfortunes. No, he would not permit any delays. If a horse threw a shoe, he vowed, he'd run to the next livery stable on foot. Rain, sleet, snow, tornado, cyclone, or earthquake, nothing was going to stop him this time.

He was going home, and Penny would be waiting there, his wife, his lover. He rolled the words around on his tongue, almost tasting her skin, her breath, the scent of her arousal. He urged the horse faster, promising extra oats.

He couldn't wait to see her at the party, all done up in silk and jewels like the elegant lady he'd known she would be, her bright hair piled high, her manners as gracious as any grande dame's. Nesbitt knew nothing of pride compared with the soaring in West's chest at the picture in his mind, Penny at the head of his stairs, welcoming their guests, his friends, the cream of London society. She'd be taking the place where his mother had stood all those years ago, when West and his brothers hung over the ballroom balcony to watch the guests arrive—and, once, toss peas on their heads. West seldom thought of his mother, but he did now, recalling how furious she had been, and how she forgave them with kisses and hugs. He thought she would approve of his bride.

He did, to his own constant astonishment. The skinny thirteen-year-old urchin with skinned knees that he'd met so long ago was now his wife, Viscountess Westfield. At the time he hadn't expected to become his father's heir. He certainly never expected his betrothed to become a diamond of the first water. He might never get used to the idea, but, oh, how he delighted in it now.

And he delighted in the woman she was. As the miles flew beneath a string of horses' hooves, his mind sped to the hours after the blasted ball, and the warm, willing wife he was going to reclaim.

He'd never thought to miss a woman so much. That is, he'd missed having a woman, but never one particular woman, not the way he missed Penny. He felt as if he'd left part of himself in London, something vital and necessary for his existence, for his happiness. That was a difference he'd never understood before. He'd always thought those married friends of his who hurried home from a mill or a horse race were simply henpecked, weaklings suffering under petticoat tyranny. Now he knew better. It was his own feelings that were drawing him back to her like the pull of a magnet, of gravity, of fate itself, not her demands. He'd never had a wife before, of course, but he'd never thought a man could be so close to a female before, either, so very bound by silken threads of want and need and—hell, he was no poet. He did not have the words to express what he felt.

Yes, he did, words he should have spoken before he left her to worry and wonder about his loyalty. He was going to tell her as soon as he walked through the door, even if the whole household heard him. He shouted it out now, for practice.

“I love you!”

The horse stumbled. A goosegirl left her flock and ran after him. A cow behind a nearby fence mooed.

“No, I love Penny. Persephone Goldwaite Westmoreland, Lady Westfield. I love her, I say, and I do not care who hears me!”

This time a swarm of sparrows took wing and a boy pulled his wagon to the side of the road, to avoid the castaway rum cove on the lathered horse. West tipped his hat and smiled. “Someday you'll understand, if you are lucky.”