A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (34 page)

“How much money did you take from him, Mama?”

“It was all necessary. There were new clothes that needed to be bought in London. And let me tell you, London dressmakers do not come cheap.”

“How much?”

“There were other expenses, as well—vails to be given to Lady Barrington’s servants—”

Antigone was past the point of being able to listen to her mother’s increasingly far-fetched justifications. “How much?”

“Five thousand pounds.”

Antigone nearly choked. There was that kick in the chest, as if the stuffing had just been knocked out of her. It was an enormous sum.

“You must have some left. Even you could not have spent so much on clothes. We have not been here long enough.”

“Don’t be ridiculous The five thousand was for Cassandra’s fortune.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.” Mama was growing impatient with Antigone’s questions and anxious to return to the drawing room where she might collect her share of the congratulations.

“Let me rightly understand you, Mama. The fortune you are offering for Cassie is a total of five thousand pounds?”

“Yes, I told you so already.”

“And since you already had five hundred from Papa’s will, Lord Aldridge was kind enough to supply you with the further four thousand five hundred, to bring the total to five thousand.”

“No. He will give the full five thousand. Once the settlements with Viscount Jeffrey and the Earl Sanderson are agreed upon, Lord Aldridge will make the sum available to them in whatever way men do such things.”

Antigone heard one salient fact in that narration. “So the money has not yet been given?”

“No, but it has been promised, which to a gentleman is the same thing as done.”

How interesting that her mother was so invested in others’ promises, but could not put any energy into keeping her own.

What she said was, “That is very bad mathematics. Papa would not approve at all. The equation is entirely unbalanced.”

“Just so long as you understand that your place is to finish up with Lord Aldridge.”

She would not say it again. She would not waste her breath to explain one more time. She would not. She turned back toward the drawing room. She needed to speak to Viscount Jeffrey. She needed to explain to him their dire predicament. She would take the chance that he loved Cassie enough to refuse the five thousand now that he knew.

“Where are you going? Antigone? I know that look in your eyes. What are you going to do?” Her mother clutched at her arm to stop her. “You must think of the benefits. You will have Thornhill. And Aldridge is old. He’ll likely die soon. It’s not too late to—”

“Mama. It’s already too late.”

Her mother stopped her at the door. “Have you lain with him?”

“With Lord Aldridge? Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing short of febrile amnesia and a clout on the head would—”

“No. Commander Jellicoe.”

Another shock, another kick in the chest, knocking the breath from her lungs. “Commander Jellicoe?”

“Don’t be coy, Antigone. It doesn’t suit you. Yes, Commander Jellicoe. I am not stupid, and I have eyes. I saw him at Downpark. I saw the way he looked at you when he thought no one was watching. And I saw the way you looked at him. I’m not a fool.”

Antigone said nothing. Anything else and she would crumble into a thousand broken pieces of regret.

But Mama was as clever as they came in her own way. She stared at Antigone for the longest moment before she came to the fullness of her realization. “Oh, dear God. You have lain with him.”

It was accusation and fact all pressed neatly into one nasty parcel.

Antigone closed her eyes briefly to shut out the sight of her mother’s hatred and anger, to close her mind to the vicious disbelief evident on her mother’s face. But in the next moment she felt the livid pain of a stinging slap across her face.

The sound of the blow bounced eerily off the low ceiling of the small room. Antigone somehow managed not to flinch too much, though pain was ricocheting through her head from her neck to her temple. She held her ground though her face stung and her jaw ached, and her chest and throat were aching with the effort to breathe. But something deep inside her, the last vestige of family love and feeling, broke irretrievably.

But it was right that she should feel it. It was necessary for her to understand that her mother had gone so far down this path of her own choosing, that there could be no turning back. That she was completely and totally on her own.

“Don’t touch me,” she said calmly through the stinging pain. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

Chapter Twenty

“You stupid, stupid girl.” Mama paid Antigone no heed, and continued venting her smoldering anger. “And what has that got you? Has Commander Jellicoe proposed? Has
he
offered you a home? What’s to become of you if Lord Aldridge finds out about him? When he finds you’re no longer a virgin? How could you be so stupid? Don’t think that I’ll have you back in my house after such behavior.”

Her mother’s anger and disdain could not surprise Antigone, but they still burned like an ember embedded against her skin. “Do you think that if you leave me nowhere else to go, I will be forced to choose Lord Aldridge? Do you think to make him the most palatable alternative? It will not work, Mama. You cannot know what he is. He is a monster of the lowest sort who preys on children. You cannot want me to be with such a man.”

“Why not? It isn’t as if you’re a child any longer, though I’ve worked hard to make him think you are.”

Antigone did not think she was capable of feeling any more shock, or of distinguishing any different degree of fear. But she was wrong. A jagged uneasiness scratched across the surface of her skin. Her mother could not mean what she just said. She couldn’t. “You don’t understand, Mama. Lord Aldridge comes to London to go to places like Covent Garden to find young male prostitutes, Mama—children who have no choice but to go with him. Or he finds stable boys in his employment, who risk their jobs and their very livelihood if they disobey or defy him.”

“Of course I understand. I’ve always understood. I’m not stupid, Antigone, even if I’m not a mathematician. It took no great understanding to figure out what the man was about when he first offered for you, all those years ago. And I’ve heard the rumors.”

“Years ago? How long have you—” God could not be so cruel. He could not make it any worse. “Was Papa a part of this? Did he—”

“Lord Aldridge offered for you first when you were twelve. You were tall for your age—a long, spare, boyish girl—but he wanted you. He’s become obsessed with you over the years, stupid man.”

Antigone felt as if she had been slapped again. Her ears rang with the words and her entire body burned with the hideous shame. But still her mind ground inexorably on. “That was years ago. Before Papa died.” The realizations kept mounting up inside her head. “You knew the rumors, and you engaged me to him anyway?”

“What do you think would have happened if I had given you to him at twelve? Or even at seventeen, when he asked again? And he offered us money—more money at twelve than at seventeen, but enough money to keep us comfortably, in meat and coal and clothes, for quite a long while. But at twelve, he would have used you up like a candle and been done with you, and the scandal would have ruined us all.”

“But clearly the shame won’t.” Her mother’s acidic words were eating through her like lye, leaving
her
just as bitterly hollow and empty inside as Mama had become. Tainting everything. Every memory of the last seven years. “Did Papa know about this?”

Mama made another dismissive flick of her wrist. “Your precious papa couldn’t be bothered to think about money and meat and coal. But someone had to think ahead and plan for the future, especially after he died, and that someone was me.”

Antigone was so overwhelmed by the enormity of what her mother was telling her that she was shaking now. She couldn’t stop the tremors that started deep in her belly and spread outward until she had to hug herself to keep from falling apart. But she knew she needed to understand all of it. Every ugly part of this very ugly truth.

“You should be flattered that he didn’t give up. That he was willing to wait all these years. Your father wouldn’t hear of it when you were twelve, nor at seventeen, either, when Lord Aldridge offered again. But when your father died, his lordship was back with his offer. And we couldn’t afford to pass it up. The money and the opportunity—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Antigone turned away, to try and stop up her ears. “I don’t want to hear how you try to justify sacrificing me for your worthless greed.”

“Worthless? You ungrateful girl. You don’t see anything past your own bookish, selfish nose.” Her mother was at full cry now, without an ounce of shame, proud of her accomplishment. “I protected you. I was smarter. I said you were still too young at first, even though I knew that was your appeal to him. Young and raw and unformed.”

Antigone wished she could shut her ears, could close her mind to the unending litany of horror. “That’s not protection. That’s—” She had no words to give voice to the disgust and loss and grief and wrenching betrayal roiling within. “That’s monstrous.”

Her mother was entirely dismissive. “Would you rather I had given you to him at twelve?”

“No.” Antigone had no other answer. There was no logic that was going to break down the wall of self-deception her mother had built to protect herself from guilt. “No.”

But her mother had not only built a wall, she had lost all proper feeling in doing so. Instead of being burdened by guilt, she was anxious to trumpet her
triumph
. “It’s been a difficult game these last few months. I’ve had to use you before you outgrew your attraction and usefulness to him. You’ll soon be too old for his taste, and his interest might move elsewhere, to some other child bride. So I said yes, because I knew we would have to wait through our mourning. But that would gain us time. All you had to do was sit quietly for my plan to unfold. But you could not manage to do even that.” She was back to disdain. “I work and plan and explain it to you over and over, and still you manage to ruin everything. Why? For a worthless second son, for Commander Jellicoe, who has offered you nothing. Why could you not be happy with what you had?”

It was too unkind and too bloody unfair. “Why can’t
you
?” Antigone didn’t care if she was almost shouting.

“That’s not the point.” Mama had grown as impervious to censure as Antigone had once thought herself.

“That is the
only
point. How can you not want me to be as happy as Cassie? How can you not want as much for me? You had Papa. He
loved
you. He loved
us
. He made you laugh and smile. And that was enough. It was more than enough—it was everything.” Scalding heat was creeping up her throat. But she would not cry. She couldn’t. The disgust and hurt was draining away until all that was left was a seething sea of anger. “
You
are the one who wasn’t happy with what she had.
You
are the one who had to jeopardize everything.
You
are the one who made this wretched devil’s bargain.”

“How dare you speak to me like that.” Her mother was the one shouting now. “You are not the only person in the world. I must live, and so must your sister live. We all must have food and clothes and comfort if we are to survive.”

“We were surviving, even without Papa. There was no reason for you to despair or panic, and think you needed to do such things. But you would not be counseled.”

“We had nothing for the future. What would have become of us if we had stayed sitting quietly in Wealdgate? Who would have come to Redhill? Whom would Cassandra have ever married? The butcher? Some penniless curate? There was no one. And no chance to go anywhere else. Your father liked his quiet contented life, but it was not enough. We might as well all have been walled in his tomb with him when he died, for all that we could have gone on. There was no future in it.”

There was no future for Antigone, now. “But to use me so. Without my knowledge or consent. To put me like a baited lure in front of
such
a man.” It was a wonder she was sitting still. It was a wonder she hadn’t felt the need to hit her mother back, to slap her with the hard force of her anger. But Antigone couldn’t do that. If she did she would be as bad as her mother, as bad as Aldridge himself.

Her mother dismissed her own culpability with a wave. “Aldridge would have found some other way to have you, by foul or by fair. He is a man, and he will do as he pleases. You should know enough of life by now to know that.”

She did know that now. Aldridge had said as much to her last night.

But the knowledge cut deeply, leaving her bleeding for all the sharp truths and dull rusty lies. “You’re my mother, you’re supposed to love and protect me.”

Her mother saw it all so very, very differently. “I’m supposed to prepare you for the world. And I have done so. Why can you not see the benefit?”

Because the benefits and the cost were unequal—the equation could not be balanced. Because the evil was simply too great. “Because it is wrong, Mama. For all your supposed benefits, if I agreed to marry him, knowing what I know, I would become his accomplice. I would be just as responsible for those children as he. And if I do that, then I will have sold my soul.”

And the trouble was that Lord Evelyn Aldridge thought he had already bought it.

*   *   *

The weather was obligingly filthy to match Will’s sullen, overcast mood. The night sky had done nothing but pour rain all evening. And a miserable evening it had been.

He had taken dinner with George Allen at his home in Prescott Street near Little Tower Hill, in order to finalize his entry into the India trade, but found little pleasure in it. The East India Company, for all that it might make him a decadently rich man, was nothing compared to His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Employment wasn’t exactly the same thing as true purpose.

Without purpose, he began to think Preston was right. He began to think he was simply running away.