A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (33 page)

“Haven’t I? Ask your mother, if you do not care to believe me. Ask her where the money for your sister’s clothes, and your sister’s London Season, came from. Ask yourself how your sister could have managed to raise a dowry suitable to attract the likes of the Earl Sanderson’s heir without some very considerable financial assistance.”

Antigone barely kept herself from groaning out loud. What else had her mother done? Every time she thought it could not possibly get any worse, she found herself more hopelessly ensnared. “And
you
gave her that financial assistance? You loaned her the money?”

“I
gave
her the money. In exchange for you. Nothing could be easier. I told you everything could be purchased. I have bought you just as assuredly as I would have purchased an African slave in a market. You are mine. Do not think that our arrangement will be altered just because you’ve developed fanciful romantical ideas.”

“This is the year eighteen and fifteen, sir, and not the Dark Ages. You cannot compel me to marry without my consent. It is the law.”

“Don’t think to tell me about the law.” He manacled her wrist and yanked her toward him. His voice was a snarl of elegant menace, a smooth well-honed weapon. “I told you everyone can be managed. Everything can be bought. You have been bought, and a clergyman can be bought. London is littered with parsons who would be happy to sell their signature for a few bob. A few well-placed guineas should get me a deaf bishop along with my special license.”

His long bony fingers dug into her wrist. “You’re hurting me.” Antigone tried to enunciate the words clearly to stave off the creeping touch of fear.

“Perhaps I am. And perhaps you should get used to it if you cannot compel yourself into proper compliance. I’m not a patient man, Antigone, and you have tried the last of my forbearance.”

“I’ll remember that.” Oh, yes, she’d remember that. She leaned in closer, bringing herself nearer to him, gaining a much-needed shot of Dutch courage when he flinched back. “And I’ll remember that’s what you like. I’ve heard of men like you. Can’t take any pleasure unless you’re causing pain, or have someone groveling before you. How predictable.” She gave him the full measure of her own contemptuous disdain.

He let go of her wrist and stood back, fixing that frozen smile on his face, rigid in his carefully controlled rage. “You won’t be so mouthy when you’re the one doing the groveling.”

He was frightening her now. She felt it leach through her skin and fill her up, like poison. She let it drip down into her bones, and make her reckless and heedless and vicious. She all but bared her teeth at him. “Is that so?”

He threw the words back at her in challenge. “It is. You’ll do as you are told, or you’ll never see that mare again.”

He was a bastard as well as a monster. And he was the one who deserved to be frightened. “It won’t do to threaten me, your lordship. I’m a big”—she stepped fractionally closer on every word, driving him back—“strong girl. You’ve seen me out on the downs. You’ve seen what I can do. Do you think I can’t handle a little pain from the likes of you? Remember what happened to Mr. Stubbs-Haye? And I barely knew him enough to dislike him. For you, I’m sure I can manufacture real hate to put behind my fists.”

Antigone almost took another step toward him to unleash the full strength of her rage and hatred, to give herself the satisfaction of watching him flinch away, of making him step back for fear she would punch his daylights out, or knee him in the cods.

But she didn’t. She held the violence within her back, just enough so he could see the threat within her. “Don’t threaten me ever again.”

She backed slowly away, keeping her eyes on him, careful with her footing on the icy slick cobbles, until she passed into the darkness and out of his sight. And then, and only then, did she allow herself to run.

She tore out of the Clarges Mews as if the devil himself were on her heels, and pelted down Bolton Row and all the way on to Hayhill, trying to outrun the hammering pace of her heart. But it wasn’t far enough to Dover Street to outrace the demons that came with her. She was too restless, too unhappy and disgusted and heartsick to pass under the yoke of Lady Barrington’s arched doorway, so she kept running until she got to Picadilly before she turned round and walked slowly back, pacing up and down the sidewalks for another hour, letting the rage and the fear work their way out of her blood. Trying to figure her way out. Trying to find a way to solve the equation.

But she was so tired. So tired of it all. She was like that juggler in the Jolly Drover, tossing plates into the air. But she couldn’t seem to catch them. They were all coming crashing down around her, one after the other.

It was impossible. She would have to endure. She would have to make sure that Cassie was safe. She would have to trust that somehow, someway, Viscount Jeffrey would not disappoint them all, and pull down their bloody house of cards to tumble into the gutter.

*   *   *

The answer to her prayers came at two o’clock the following afternoon, presenting his card to Lady Barrington’s haughty butler with a flick of his impeccably well groomed wrist, and asking to be shown in to Mrs. Preston.

At the sound of his carriage, Cassie had come running in to fetch her, and together they watched and listened to him enter the house from the sharp crease of the open bay windows that ran three stories up the front of Lady Barrington’s Dover Street mansion, both of them sending their own silent petitions to whatever saints were kind enough to listen.

Antigone took her sister’s hand to lead her away from the window. Cassie was cold and nervous with anticipation, so despite her own agitation and worry, Antigone brought her sister to sit with her before the small fire, and set herself to dispelling her sister’s worries. “Cassie, there is no cause for worry. Not if you truly like him. Do you? Like him for himself, and for yourself, and not for Mama?”

Her sister’s voice was low and hushed, but her answer was immediate. “Yes. I like him very, very much. So very, very much.”

“Then you must not worry. Viscount Jeffrey would not have come here to speak with Mama if it were not the best possible news.”

Still, Cassie’s face was pale and drawn with worry that did not abate when footsteps could be heard rushing up the stairs, and a maid appeared at the door. “Viscount Jeffrey to see you, Miss Preston.”

“Come with me, Annie,” Cassandra begged.

“Never. My darling girl, your young man will need some privacy to declare his love for you. He will not want your spinster sister hanging about—that will put him right off his troth, and we cannot have that. You will have to be brave, and face his eternal devotion alone.” She kissed Cassie’s cheek, and whispered, “Courage.”

And so Cassie went, and Antigone was left to wait, ticking off the minutes in anxious anticipation, hoping and praying that at last something would go right. Pleading with God, and making bargains with the devil, so that even if nothing else went right for her, this one wish might be granted.

It was twenty-five long minutes later, when Antigone was on pins and needles of anticipation, and had almost determined to go down to the drawing room herself to find out what was going on, that Cassie’s decorous, measured footsteps came back up the two flights to the room.

Antigone could guess nothing from her sister’s face—Cassie looked her usual pale, luminous self.

“Well?” Antigone could feel her own tremulous pulse throttling in her throat.

“He loves me,” Cassie whispered, still too shocked, still too enervated to give way to her feelings.

“And?”

“And we are to be married.”

Antigone let out a whoop of delight and relief and pure unadulterated happiness that was sure to be heard all the way down to Green Park, and enveloped her sister in a crushing hug. “Oh, my darling dear. At last. Everything is going to be all right at last.”

“Yes. Finally.” Cassandra wiped the tears from her eyes. “You must come down and see him and wish him happy. Mama left the drawing room on some pretext, to give us a moment alone, but I came to you first—you who have done so much for me. But I must go to her now. Oh, she will be so happy. Finally, she will be happy with me.”

The tattered and frayed remnants of Antigone’s heart tore anew at her sister’s inadvertent admission. “Oh, my love. Never say that. It is her grief that makes her like this, that makes her so unhappy with herself. It is she who makes herself unhappy, not you. Never you.”

Cassie nodded dutifully. “Well, she will be happy today.”

“Yes, she will. We are all happy, but only if you are.” Antigone was happier than even her mother could be, or would be when she brought Mama her decision in the wake of Cassie’s. But she would not interrupt their happiness just yet. She would not let her selfishness intrude into the joy of the day.

And joy there was. Both Mama and Lady Barrington were effusive in their praise and thanksgiving, and allowed themselves a special tot of sherry to calm nerves agitated by their ascent into ecstasy.

Lord Aldridge, who was normally a fixture at his sister’s house, was thankfully conspicuous in his absence. It was almost enough to make a girl hope. Almost.

But fate could not possibly be so kind. Most likely the old bastard was only out shopping for a special license and a deaf bishop.

“I’m glad that something has finally put a smile upon your face.” Mama appeared at her side where she stood to one side of the room.

Antigone pointed with her chin to her sister. “It’s lovely to see Cassie so incandescently happy. Look at her. She truly glows.”

“I’m glad to see you are still thinking of her.”

“Mama.” Antigone didn’t bother to hide the note of complaint in her tone. Nor did she want to. This refrain of Mama’s had long grown old and tedious. “Of course I am. I have participated in your charade to just this particular end. And if Cassie is happy with Viscount Jeffrey, then it will have been worth it. But now that they have at last become engaged, I am very glad I can finally end my association with Lord Aldridge.”

“No.”

Antigone rolled her eyes at the ceiling and endeavored to keep her voice down. “What do you mean, no? If you recall, Mama, you promised—
promised
—that if, after all, I still felt we did not suit, I could end it. We do not suit. And I
will
end it.” If she had to say those words to her mother one more time, she was going to scream.

“No.” Her mother did not look at her, but she shook her head, like a bird pulling at a worm. “It is impossible. I had to sign the marriage settlement papers. To back out now would risk a breach of suit.”

“Mama, I am not afraid of Lord Aldridge,” she lied. In point of fact, she was very afraid of him. But she was more afraid of what would happen to her, of whom she would become if she let him pull her into his tangled web. “People end engagements all the time without recourse to breach-of-promise suits.”

Still her mother continued to shake her head, but gave no other answer. Mama pretended not to hear Antigone’s question and, indeed, would have moved away if Antigone had not laid a hand on her arm. “Mama. I know there is more to it. Lord Aldridge has already told me most. Come. You had best make a clean breast of it.”

“The settlements have been signed. There is no point in belaboring that which cannot be changed.” Her mother sniffed. “You must content yourself with your lot.”

“Please listen to me and believe me, Mama. I will
never
content myself with Lord Aldridge. Never. It will be all I can do to extend my engagement longer if you must have time to repay the damned leech his debt.”

“Repay?”

“Yes, Mama. Repay. You cannot simply take money from a man like Lord Aldridge and not expect to repay it.”

“I have no thought of repaying it. Indeed, where do you think I am to find such a sum?”

Talking to her mother had become like pulling weeds—no matter where she pulled one up, another cropped up in its stead. “Mama, I think you had better tell me exactly what the sum of money is.”

Mama cast her gaze around the room, at Lady Barrington and the servants surrounding them. “Not here,” she hissed.

“Then come outside, or come find a room. I won’t be fobbed off with excuses any longer.” She took her mother’s arm and led her toward the back of the house, in strange mirror of the way Mama had hustled her out of Lady Barrington’s ballroom. She found them a quiet corner in the empty breakfast room. “Now,” she said as she closed the door. “Tell me all. Cassie is secure in her viscount, and I have done my part faithfully. At the very least you owe me the truth.”

“The truth is that the money was necessary. Necessary to secure Lord Jeffrey for Cassandra.”

“No.” Of this, at least, Antigone was sure. “Papa’s will left her amply provided for. Both of us were to have five hundred pounds, Mama. I read the will myself.”

“Five hundred pounds.” Her mother’s voice was full of subdued scorn. “What is
that
? That is not enough for a man like Viscount Jeffrey.”

“Then she can have my five hundred, as well, as I will not need it, because I shan’t be marrying Lord Aldridge. That will give her a fortune of a thousand pounds. That is enough for any man, especially a young man as rich as Viscount Jeffrey.”

Her mother did not even have the good grace to be mortified by her actions. “Yours is already given to Lord Aldridge, and there is no getting it back now. That is what I have been telling you, if you would but listen. And a thousand pounds is not enough.”

“Of course it is. Lord Jeffrey loves Cassie. He’ll marry her whatever her fortune.”

“He might. But will his father? Dynasties and fortunes like the Earl Sanderson’s don’t happen by being blinded by anything so ridiculous as
love,
” she scoffed. “Is that a chance you want to take?”

“It seems it is a chance
you
were not willing to take.” It simply could not get any worse.

“Exactly.” Mama did not see where she could be at fault. Antigone could see now that she had lost her moral bearing somewhere along the slippery slope to Thornhill Hall.