An Unsuitable Bride (46 page)

“Leave me the longer one,” Alexandra instructed. “That stub won’t last the night.”

“Twopence more,” he demanded.

She debated for only a moment. She knew that a night in the pitch darkness inhabited by those ghastly sounds would drive her out of her mind. She felt for two pennies in her purse and silently held them out to him along with the half sovereign. He replaced the candle
stub with his own and left her. She heard the key turn in the lock and his steps receding down the corridor. She heard the bang of the door to the outdoors slam, heard the heavy bar drop into place outside, and fought the growing sense of desperation.

Was she truly helpless?

Here, alone in the dim flicker of the tallow candle, she knew she was. Until the judge arrived to conduct the assizes, when they would bring her out of the dark prison and into the courtroom above, she was invisible.

The night passed somehow. In the windowless cell, she couldn’t distinguish between day and night, and with no timepiece, Alexandra had no way of telling the time. She tried to sleep and then gave up all attempts and sat up, shivering despite the blanket and her thick cloak, on the cold stone bench in her cell. The beadle did not appear again, but at some point—morning, she assumed—his place was taken by an elderly, toothless man in ragged breeches and jerkin, armed with a heavy wooden club. Half a sovereign bought her a fresh candle, a flagon of wine, and a tepid bowl of indefinable soup. A hunk of stale bread and a cup of water had also been provided—prison rations, she gathered. Around her, the noises continued, and occasionally she caught snatches of conversation, but for the most part, she seemed to be existing in a dim circle of light surrounded by the whispering darkness.

She grew grimier and hungrier as the hours passed, and her sense of helplessness at times threatened to
overwhelm her. What was going on beyond the walls of her prison? People were leading their ordinary lives, performing their accustomed tasks. Combe Abbey would be running along its accustomed course. Did anyone wonder about the disgraced librarian? Or had she come and gone as such an insubstantial presence that once out of sight, she was out of mind altogether?

She had no idea what time it was when the door to her cell opened and the beadle appeared. For one glorious moment, she thought that perhaps he had come to say that Sir Stephen had withdrawn the charges and she was free, but one look at his expression banished such a forlorn hope.

“Just takin’ a look at ye. Justice likes a report on the prisoners every day or so.”

“Would you tell Sir Stephen I’d like to talk to him?” It was another forlorn hope, she was certain, but nothing ventured . . .

The beadle shook his head. “Bless you, woman, he don’t come down ’ere. Too afraid of catchin’ summat, if ye asks me. Doubt he’ll be back in town until the assizes. Ye’d best save your talk till then, when y’are brought up afore the judge.”

Alexandra sighed, swallowing her disappointment, blinking back a surge of tears. She realized she had still been nurturing the tiniest hope that her cousin would reconsider. And now there was nothing left. She would rot in this filthy hole until the assizes. And if no one
knew she was there, there would be no one to speak up for her to the judge, and once she was sentenced and condemned, there would be nothing anyone could do to help her. She turned her face to the wall, and after a moment, the beadle went out. The key grated in the lock, and the heavy bar came down with a crash.

Chapter Twenty-two

Peregrine awoke one morning after another tormented night and realized that it had been over a week since Alexandra had left. Just what was she doing at this moment? Sitting at breakfast with the poisonous Maude or already at work in the library, creatively moving sums of money from one account to another?

He found to his surprise that the thought brought familiar exasperation but not the cold, despairing anger of the last days. Perhaps it just wasn’t possible to maintain such fury for any length of time; it was far too debilitating. He went to the window and looked out upon a bright, crisp day. And the blood once more stirred in his veins. He’d done enough sitting around and moping for a lifetime. He’d deal with Alexandra when the time came.

He went down to the breakfast parlor, telling Bart in the hall to go to the mews and bring Sam around. The horse had been eating his head off for more than a week and would be chafing at the bit. Serena and Sebastian were already at breakfast when he went in. They both
looked at him with shrewdly assessing glances that he now realized had been their habitual expressions for the last week.

“Good morning,” he greeted them. “A fine one, it looks.”

“You noticed?” Sebastian said with a quirked eyebrow.

“Yes, finally,” his twin agreed, examining the offerings on the sideboard. “I have it in mind to ride in Windsor Park this morning, get rid of the fidgets. D’you care to join me?”

“I wish,” Sebastian said with a mock groan and a grimace at his wife. “But Serena insists I must look at two houses with her, as she can’t make up her mind between them. My wife is being unusually indecisive.”

“Well, you do have to live there, too,” Serena pointed out. “You’re looking more yourself, Perry?”

“I am a little less enraged,” he conceded. “I still don’t know what to do for the best, but there’s nothing I can do about the wretched woman at present, so I’ll take my life back for now.”

“Good.” Sebastian’s smile was relieved.

Perry gave him a rueful smile of his own. “I’m sure I’ve been very difficult to live with.”

“No, just not really here,” his twin said, burying his nose in his tankard.

Peregrine left soon after, riding Sam through the still quiet streets of fashionable London and out into the countryside towards Windsor Castle and its parkland.
He was glad his brother had declined his invitation; it was good to be alone in the fresh air, feeling Sam’s easy stride beneath him, feeling the dusty, tangled web of his thoughts clearing. He still couldn’t forgive her for leaving him without a word, and yet finally, he could feel some compassion. She had been abandoned, betrayed by a father she had trusted; maybe it was to be expected that she would need time to trust another man again.

He still intended to make his point more than forcefully when . . .
if
. . . she returned to him. Melancholy loomed again, and he urged Sam into a gallop along a broad ride along the river, letting the horse have his head until the animal slowed of his own accord, and his own melancholy was expunged under the sheer exhilaration of the exercise.

It was mid-afternoon when he was once more in the city, Sam picking his way wearily over the cobbled streets, Perry’s own body aching pleasurably. He left the horse in the mews and walked around to Stratton Street. Just as he reached his door, it opened, and Marcus Crofton stepped out into the street.

“Oh, Perry, I’ve been looking all over for you. No one’s seen you in days, and your brother and his wife are not at home.”

“Good to see you, Marcus. Now you’ve found me, will you come in, take a glass of wine?”

“Gladly. I’ve some news that might interest you.”
Marcus turned back to the house, his host moving ahead of him into the hall.

An icy shaft of apprehension ran down Perry’s spine. He tossed his hat and whip onto the bench by the door and shrugged out of his riding cloak as he opened the door to the parlor, ushering his guest into the warmth.

“Sherry or claret, Marcus?”

“Claret, thank you.” Marcus sat down, crossing one elegantly booted foot over the other. He took the glass with a nod and sipped appreciatively.

“So? News?” Perry prompted when he had sat down with his own glass.

“Oh, yes . . . I had a letter from my mother this morning. ’Tis the damnedest thing . . . Mistress Hathaway, your pet librarian, if you remember?”

“I remember,” Perry said, his gaze fixed steadily on his guest, his expression like stone.

“Well, it seems she’s been thieving bits and pieces of the library all the while,” Marcus said. “Some precious volume . . . Chaucer, I think they said . . . and no one knows what else has gone, because only she knew what was there in the first place.”

Peregrine had been living with this possibility for so long that he felt no shock, not even surprise, just an icy clarity. He needed help at this point, and he couldn’t wait for Sebastian to return. Besides, Marcus was connected to the whole mess, albeit without his knowledge. “Let me tell you a few things in the strictest confidence,
Marcus.” Quickly, he told Marcus everything about his friend’s stepsisters and their circumstances.

Marcus blinked, shook his head as if to clear his mind, drained his glass, and said, “Good God in heaven . . . that’s appalling. How could such a miscarriage of justice go unnoticed?”

“Because there was no one who cared to notice it,” Perry pointed out. “Alexandra decided to reset the scales of justice. And this is where it’s led her.”

“To Dorchester jail and the assizes,” Marcus stated, setting aside his glass. “If we take my curricle, change horses every couple of hours through the night, we can be in Dorchester by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Perry said, setting aside his own glass.

“Well, of course I would,” Marcus declared forcefully. “These are my stepsisters, and I feel a responsibility to right what wrongs have been done them by the fact of my mother’s marriage.” He was on his feet. “I’ll fetch you here in half an hour.”

Peregrine knew he could not get to Dorchester on horseback in that time. He stood up. “I’ll be ready.” He went into the hall to let out his guest. “Do you know when the Dorchester assizes are to be held, Marcus?”

“The first Monday of the month . . . the day after tomorrow,” Marcus said as he stepped out into the street. “Half an hour, Perry.”

Once Alexandra was in the dock, all hope would be lost. They had to get there by tomorrow. Peregrine
took the stairs two at a time. They would change horses and share the driving. Barring highway accidents, they could do it . . . just.

The next morning, just after dawn, they were on the coastal road into Dorset as a pale sun broke through the clouds, warming the air a little but not enough to combat the sharp sea breeze. It was a relief to turn inland, away from the gray green sea with its white-capped waves surging onto the pebble beaches below the cliff. They were both tired. They had kept up such a pace that it had been difficult to catch a few minutes’ sleep when the other was driving. They had changed horses, courtesy of Marcus’s purse, every couple of hours, so the animals were still fresh.

They drove into the town of Dorchester soon after noon. As they passed the stone building of Shire Hall, Perry averted his gaze. He didn’t want to be distracted now by worry for Alexandra, by wondering what was happening to her in the dungeons below. Marcus was driving as they turned into the yard of the Red Lion.

Perry jumped down from the curricle. “I’ll go in and order some food, Marcus. We’re famished.” Every moment’s delay hurt, but he knew he could be no good to Alexandra if he was fainting from fatigue and hunger.

The landlord greeted him jovially. “Aye, I can give you a good pot of rabbit stew, sir. Good job you’ll not be wantin’ a chamber, mind. The assizes start tomorrow, and there’s not a chamber free in town. Such a to-do as ’tis, wi’ all the folks ’ereabouts come to watch
the felons sentenced. There’ll be a public ’anging a few days after. O’ course,” he confided as he ushered Perry into the taproom, “depends on the judge. We likes the ’angin’ judges around ’ere. Some of ’em prefer sendin’ criminals to the hulks or to that there ’Merica place. What’s the fun in that, I ask you?”

“None, I daresay, for anyone,” Perry observed drily.

A few hundred yards away, Alexandra nibbled a hard crust of bread and watched her candle flicker and die. The jailer had not appeared since that morning, and she had no way of replenishing her light. Once the flame guttered, she would be in that peopled darkness, with nothing to distract her from the sounds. But somehow, she had achieved a strange kind of resignation. She no longer felt hope or purpose, and without those, there was really nothing to fear. She was lost, the world was lost to her, and she slipped into a void, a dark place empty of all emotion, aware only of physical sensations, of the cold and the damp, hunger and thirst. Her only thoughts now were how to alleviate those discomforts. They seemed the only things of any importance now.