Raven's Bride (24 page)

Anna was shaken to her very soul by Charlotte’s reply. “I will think on it,” she said. “Come morning, I will have an answer for you both.”

She lay awake long into the night, agonizing over her decision. On the one hand, she did not love Mr. Melcott. The thought of becoming intimate with him in the marriage bed was distasteful in the extreme. She found it difficult even to imagine what kissing him would be like, let alone the accomplishment of any more intimate act. To let him touch her as Lord Ravensbourne had done was unthinkable.

At the thought of Lord Ravensbourne’s desertion and death she shed several tears, before wiping them away almost viciously. He did not deserve to be wept over. He had been untrue to her and deserted her. She even suspected he had lied to her about his part in the squire’s murder. He had been untrue to her about his love and faithfulness. What other lies had he not also stooped to?

She did not love Mr. Melcott, so he could not break her heart. Maybe it was just as well she did not love him.

She liked him well enough, with the same daughterly affection with which she had regarded her father, though her weak and pale affection for Melcott in no way approached the deep love she had borne for her parent. As far as she could tell, Melcott had a good reputation in the village as a godly man and was strict in his religious observances. He had been kind to her in his own way.

He did not drink to excess and he did not gamble, as far as she knew. She had heard no rumor or gossip about any mistress. He had no extravagant habits—rather tending to the plain and the severe than the ornate. He was strict, but fair, to the servants.

He worked hard at his trade and did not waste his earnings on frivolities. She would never starve while he was alive.

But neither,
whispered a little voice in the back of her head,
would she know warmth, or joy, or color. He was cold and harsh and gray, and to marry him would be to condemn herself to a lifetime of only half living.

She pushed that traitorous thought aside. Her mother thought highly of him and wanted her to wed him. Should she not be obedient to her mother’s wishes, however distasteful she found them to be? Was she not being selfish in wanting to continue her refusal? Was she such an ungrateful daughter that she would refuse her mother’s last dying wish?

Prudence demanded she marry Mr. Melcott. Obedience insisted she marry him. Reason clearly pointed to marriage with him. Love, and only love, screamed a denial.

In the early hours of the morning. she reached a decision. Stifling the voice of love, she bowed to prudence, obedience and reason. She would talk to her mother one more time come morning. If her mother still asked that she marry Mr. Melcott, she would agree.

The day dawned cold and clear. Despite her lack of sleep, Anna was awake with the sun and hurried down to her mother’s chamber to re-stoke the fire, which she had kept dampened overnight with hunks of turf.

Her mother’s chamber was still warm, but her mother was warm no longer. With a cry of pain, she turned her mother’s hands over and over again in hers to heat them, but it was no use. They lay on the coverlet, cold and lifeless, as she slept the everlasting sleep of death.

Lord Ravensbourne stared in horror at his friend and sat down with a thump on the hard wooden seat that furnished his scanty apartments, cradling his wounded arm with his good hand. “What did you say? Anna is getting married? To my Uncle Melcott?” The blood rushed to his head, making the world seem black before his eyes. He cursed the evidence of his own weakness. It had been more than a fortnight since he had been wounded and left for dead, but he was still as feeble as a young child scarce out of his nurse’s arms.

Captain Daventry looked away at the foaming pint of porter in his hand, unwilling to meet his friend’s eyes. “That is what I heard in the village. I could not speak to Miss Woodleigh myself to confirm the news. Everyone spoke as it were next to done already. They are planning a quiet wedding, so it is said, as she is still in mourning for her mother, who passed away recently.”

This was another shock, and one that touched him nearly as deeply as the first had done. “Aunt Lydia is dead?”

Daventry nodded. “She wasted away from an internal complaint and died at Christmastide. I visited her grave in the churchyard and put a bouquet of flowers on it, for your sake.”

Ravensbourne acknowledged his friend’s kindness with a quick nod and a word of thanks. Daventry had a good heart. He was more sorry than he could express to hear of his aunt’s death. As a boy, he had loved her well, and as a man, he had liked and respected her. He would miss her gentle presence in his life. Poor Anna would miss her mother greatly. Life had not been kind to his young cousin, taking first her father and then her mother in quick succession, and leaving her alone in the world. He wished he could be there for her in her time of sorrow.

But Anna was no longer his to hold and comfort—she had forsaken him. He could not imagine his Anna wedded to Melcott. The idea was preposterous. Absurd. Obscene. “Anna promised to wait for me until I could return from exile. Surely there is some mistake in your report. Could it not be some other woman? Surely Melcott would not wed the affianced bride of his own nephew?”

Daventry shook his head silently. “There is no mistake, though I would, for your sake, that there were.” His eyes radiated pity for his friend.

Ravensbourne would not give up hope. He shook his head to clear his vision and tried to ignore the persistent throbbing in his arm. “Some buxom widow of forty or so with the same name as my Anna? What did Charlotte say?”

“Charlotte would not see me. I went to call on her, but she refused to admit me. Rumor has it she is betrothed as well, to a wealthy merchant from London.” The break in his voice betrayed the pain he felt.

“Charlotte betrothed?” The news of his sister’s planned marriage shook him nearly as much as that of Anna’s. She, too, had promised to remain unmarried while he was in exile and now here she was promising herself in what sounded the most unsuitable marriage he could imagine. “But I am her guardian. She may not marry without my consent. I need only petition the king to have him declare the marriage null and void.”

“She would be wedded and bedded by then. You would cause a huge scandal, and Charlotte would be left in the worst position one could imagine—neither maid, nor widow, nor wife. She would not be happy and she would hate you for interfering in her life.”

“So Charlotte has made her own choice then?”

“The betrothal was not of her own making, but of your uncle’s. She has merely agreed to accept his decision, after much persuasion, I am told.”

“You seem very well informed about my family, though you spoke neither to Anna nor to Charlotte. Did you speak to that traitor, my uncle?”

“Though Charlotte refused to see me, she could not prevent me from talking to the servants,” Daventry said, with the ghost of a smile. “I begged an almond tart off Goody Hepney, your cook, for old times’ sake, and she told me all the news. According to Goody Hepney, your Uncle Melcott arranged the marriage for her secretly, without her knowledge, and whipped her into agreement.

“
I know Charlotte would never willingly choose such a husband. Her betrothed is an old man: a stinking, miserly pinchpenny with no thoughts in his head but profits and expense. But he is worth more money than either of us will ever see in this lifetime and he paid Melcott well to deliver Charlotte up to him as his wife.”

“Melcott sold my sister?”

Daventry nodded. “So it is said. Goody Hepney says Charlotte goes around the house, pale and proud, and will not speak to her betrothed, or uncle, or to anyone else at all, except her cousin Anna. She has not singled me out by declining my company. Even Miss Georgina Perkins, her oldest friend, has been refused admittance to the house.”

Ravensbourne put his head into his hand. How could everything have gone so badly wrong without him knowing? “And my estate? My tenants and lands? Are these, at least, well-looked after by my rogue of an uncle? Or have they, too, been given away or stolen in my absence? I fear for them, as my uncle has lately sent me nothing but excuses whenever I have requested him to send me a remittance.”

He looked around him at the shabby furnishings with disgust. “My charming landlady has threatened to have me thrown out on the streets if I do not pay her some rent soon, and I am in debt to the
chirugeon
who saved my life for more than mere money. Heaven only knows when I shall ever be able to pay him what I owe.”

Daventry looked uncomfortable . “I fear your words are truer than you know. Your uncle has installed himself as the steward during your absence. Rumor has it that you are dead, and he is your only heir. Charlotte’s betrothal and Anna’s marriage lend credence to the story. The villagers all mourn you as lost to them.”

“So Melcott has stolen my lands.”

“It would seem he is endeavoring to do so.”

“And whipped my sister.”

“Goody Hepney herself made up a salve for Charlotte’s back. Her skin was raw and bleeding, and she could scarce walk for a sennight.”

“And sold her in marriage.”

“For a large, round sum, so I have been told.”

“And stole my betrothed?”

“They are to be wed in a week.”

Lord Ravensbourne sat for a moment, digesting the immensity of his betrayal. His uncle had systematically robbed him of all that he loved: the home he had grown up in, the lands he held in trust for his heirs, the sister he loved, and the woman he adored.

With sudden clarity he knew, too, who had been behind the attack that had left him wounded so grievously on the streets of Amsterdam. He had not been mistaken for another man. The mad assassin had been no crazed stranger. All along he had been deliberately targeted for death. “A week? Then there is no time to be lost.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“I will not sit in Amsterdam while in England everything I love is being taken from me. I will go and fight for what is mine.”

“You are still suffering from your wound. You are not strong enough to travel.”

“A short sea voyage will not kill me. It might even do my arm some good to be out of this stinking hellhole of a city and into the fresh sea air.”

“And if you are caught? The king has not issued you a pardon, and the sentence of death passed on you by the courts is still in force. If you are discovered, you will be hanged.”

He did not relish the thought of an ignominious death, but it was a risk he had to take. “Then I will have to endeavor not to be caught.”

Anna lay her wedding dress over a chair and smoothed out the black silk with one hand. Lord Ravensbourne had bought her that dress in Norwich in the summer. Those days seemed a world away.

Lord Ravensbourne was dead now—a sword thrust in his false heart. Her mother had gone on to join her father in their heavenly reward. And she was to be married to Mr. Melcott in the morn in her black silk dress, her dead mother’s shawl over her shoulders to banish the winter chill from her body.

Would that the chill on her heart could be so easily banished. She felt dead herself—and as cold and lifeless as if she had been in her grave for a month.

But what choice did she have other than marriage?

She had no ready money and no source of income. She had food enough for a fortnight, maybe, if she ate sparingly and hoarded her stock for as long as she could. Once she ran out, she would starve. Even the very roof over her head was loaned to her out of charity. She had no one to turn to for help.

She could eke out a miserable existence as a governess, she supposed, but without references who would employ her? Besides, she knew of no one who needed a governess and she had no one to ask to help her find a position. She would starve long before she found a situation.

A tear fell on her black dress, spreading out through the fabric to make a spot of deep, inky blackness. Indeed, she had no choice. She was lucky Mr. Melcott had offered to marry her. If he had been less good to her, she would be in a sorry state indeed. She would be reduced to sleeping in a hayrick and begging food from anyone with a kind enough heart to take pity on her. And if hearts proved hard, she would be reduced to much worse…

She shuddered. She would rather starve to death in the hedgerows than to make that ultimate sacrifice of her female honesty and pride to ensure her survival. She would never sell her body to live.

No, she had no choice,
she thought, as she rubbed the salty tear into the fabric so it would not spot and mar her dress. She would marry Mr. Melcott in the morn, as she had promised her mother’s spirit, and try to be a good wife to him. He deserved that much at least from her. She would banish all love and longing from her heart, make peace with her conscience, and find solace in doing good works and in loving the Lord.

A knock at the door made her start up from her chair. “Who’s there?” she called out, taking a lighted taper for making her way to the front door, but not drawing the latch. She was all alone in the house, without even a maidservant to keep her company, and fearful of strangers that prowled in the night. When she was married, she would ask that Mr. Melcott keep a footman for their security. Otherwise she would never again be able to sleep at night.