Strathmere's Bride (23 page)

J
areth’s mother got started immediately on the wedding plans, holed up with Lady Rathford to discuss all the details. He didn’t expect to be involved. It was not the sort of project he would find interesting, even under different circumstances. However, the two matrons made no pretext of consulting Helena, and this Jareth considered an insult. He told his mother this, and Helena was grudgingly included.

He heard that Chloe was still at the inn in the village, waiting for a ship that was due in a week’s time and would take her directly to France. Jareth tried not to think of her, of how she was close enough to get to within an hour’s hard ride if he so chose.

He still saw the children at least once every day. He had them brought down to tea or took them for strolls, to the lake, to the stables, into the woods, and tried to pretend he was still whole. They missed Chloe, too. Their somber faces pierced his heart like a thousand bayonet blades, but this he considered his just penance.

When he entered the drawing room one evening, Lady Rathford and his mother were sitting with material
swatches spread over their laps. Helena sat in a corner, face turned to the dark window. He went to join her, looking out. It was a brilliant night, a night ripe for stargazing, but he felt no such inclination.

He wanted to make conversation, but found he had nothing to say to Helena. The elder women’s conversation reached him.

“No, no, Charlotte. Helena looks awful in peach. Jewel tones are her best colors.”

“But a wedding gown of jewel tones—you cannot be serious. It would be so gauche. Softer colors would suit the occasion best. Concentrate on a pastel palette.”

His foul mood churned in disgust. “I have a novel idea, ladies,” he said, advancing on the pair of them as stealthily as a tiger. “Maybe Helena would like to have a say in what gown she wears for her wedding. Helena? Would you like to tell us what your preference is?”

She seemed startled and mildly alarmed at his outburst. “I defer to the wishes—”

“You must cease deferring, Helena,” he said curtly.

She bowed her head. “Yes, your grace.”

“No! Damn you, do you have no spirit? Look at me and defy me at once for my rudeness. Speak your mind, woman. And I demand you stop calling me your grace. Nevermore, understood?”

“Yes, of course, sir,” she said immediately, her face registering a modicum of alarm.

“How unnatural to address me so when I am your affianced. You will call me by my given name and no other.”

“Strathmere,” his mother gasped, “sit down at once!”

“I am not Strathmere!” he shouted. “My name is Jareth. It was less than a year ago that you all called me that, in this very house, this room, in fact. We sat here all together, and I was simply Jareth. Have you forgotten it so soon?”

Gerald tried to appear helpful. “I had not forgotten.”

Jareth stuck out his arms, palms up.
“This
is Strathmere. It is a place, a building. It is also my title. It is not
me. I
am a man. Not a building, not a title—a man. My name is Jareth Hunt.”

His mother’s eyes flickered wildly to touch on the others. “Hush! Have you gone mad?”

He swung on her and bared his teeth. “Yes, Mother, I believe I have.” At her blank expression, he exhaled, his sudden rage deflating. In a calmer voice, he said, “Look, Frederick is here to announce dinner. Would you like to go in?” He crooked his arm at Helena and led her into the dining room as if his outburst had never happened.

But once seated, he still felt like shouting, stomping, smashing. He loosened his cravat and picked up his spoon, trying to concentrate on the bowl of soup before him. The walls seemed to be closing on him, stifling him. Dear God, he felt on fire! “Is it warm in here? Frederick, open the French doors.”

The footman did as he was bidden. The ladies wrapped themselves in their shawls, not daring to voice any discomfort. They cast him wary looks. His mother shot glares that were as sharp as daggers; the others seemed merely afraid. Helena sat stiffly erect,
spoon poised as she took tiny increments of the soup to her mouth. Her eyes touched him, skittered away.

He looked down at his place setting, replete with cut crystal that shimmered brilliantly in the candlelight, beautifully pressed fine linens and bone china of the most delicate sort, rimmed in halos of gold.

I wish I were dead.

He jerked his head, hearing the words from Charles’s diary.

The soup was eaten in silence. Lord Rathford, who appeared to care little for the peevish fits of a duke, commented that it was delicious, and the dowager duchess, grateful for his bravery in speaking up, agreed with enthusiasm. Gerald joined in the halting flow of conversation, always his aunt’s best and brightest sycophant.

Sometimes I hate her.

Jareth closed his eyes and bowed his head, willing his brain under control. A vivid thought burst into his brain—that Chloe was still near. He could see her if he chose.

If he chose.

How I wish I were not to be duke.

“Your grace, you are not eating,” Lady Rathford said.

His head snapped up, looking around at their faces, all turned toward him in expectation.

Jareth stood. Behind him, the expensive Chippendale chair crashed into the Hepplewhite buffet and then to the floor.

Tossing his napkin down beside his untouched soup, he said, “Please carry on without me.”

“Strathmere? What are you doing? Sit down and eat at once.”

He didn’t answer. Striding to the door, he almost knocked a servant out of his way. “Where are you going?” his mother demanded in a voice perilously close to
emotional.

Whirling on her, he faced them all. All of his demons, neatly assembled in one room. “To Chloe. I am going to Chloe. If she’ll have me. I have no right to ask her to forgive me. I have behaved abominably. God knows I have so much to make up to her, I don’t know where to begin. But I shall start this very night, and I shall not stop until she tells me it is enough, and even then I shall not let up because I love her. I love her to madness, do you hear me, and I cannot marry you, Helena.”

To Helena, he said, “You deserve better than life with a man who wants someone else. We both do, Helena.”

Lady Rathford stood, her face alarmingly red. “No! How dare you! I shall see you thrown in jail, you lying, duplicitous fiend. You cannot renege—the betrothal is sealed.”

Lord Rathford appeared annoyed, as well, but his expression was more a mingling of exasperation and resignation. He gazed at Jareth as if to say,
See what you’ve done! Now she’ll never shut up.

What an inconvenience this would be for everyone.

Gerald was excited, his ruddy face ruddier. As for the duchess—Jareth did not even dare venture a glance at his mother.

But she made herself known.

“If you do this, Strathmere,” she said, her voice as sharp as a razor, “you will be attesting before
these witnesses that you are out of your head. I can have the title removed and Gerald shall inherit—”

“Do that, Mother. Do it. I beg of you. Do you think I would dread such a thing? I can tell you I do not. But you know as well as I that Gerald will prove no easier to control. And I am a good duke, as Charles was, if I am left to myself to govern this duchy as I see fit and make my own way. But I cannot do it alone. I need Chloe—to live, to breathe. And I will have her.” He gave the duchess a cold, cold stare brimming with his determination. “I
will
have her.”

She visibly faltered, seeming to deflate as she choked, “How dare you put that little tramp above me.”

“Mother, she is worlds above all of us. That is the point.” His mother groped for the arms of her chair, sitting down with a plop.

Jareth lifted his gaze to the others. He caught Lady Rathford’s furious eye.

“You shall pay for this,” the woman growled at him.

Inclining his head, he said, “I deserve your loathing, madam, for not being honest with you and your daughter sooner. But I shall not relent. The marriage shall not take place.” To the room in general, he said, “Now, if you will excuse me, I will take my leave of you. And please accept my apologies on my unforgivable behavior.”

And as he walked out the door, he passed Frederick. The man smiled meaningfully and said, “Good luck, your grace.”

Strangely, that small message—from a servant, no less—buoyed him.

The momentousness of what he had just done was not lost on him. The future was uncertain—his and that of the Strathmere title. His mother’s threats, he knew, were not idle. If there were a way for her to punish him, she would do it. But not at the expense of the duchy. Gerald would be a disaster. He hoped she realized that fact.

Yet he was not afraid. For the first time since his brother’s death, he was not afraid.

He was filled with the euphoria of his emancipation. Not knowing what to do first, he went into his study and shut the door, prowled about for a moment or two like a caged beast before flinging open the glass doors and stepping onto the terrace. He strode out onto the lawn, breathing in deeply of the thick, sweet air, ripe with moisture from the mists rolling m from the direction of the sea.

Circling, he remembered. This was where she had romped that first time he had seen her, dress muddied, making ridiculous sounds and bounding about with that unnatural grace so that her gamine movements had seemed like art in motion.

He headed around to the back. There was her garden. He looked at it for a moment, recalling how she had danced to Helena’s song.

Turning back to the house, he studied Strathmere, stretching wide and tall amid the wisps of cloudlike fingers snaking through the air. His home, his prison. Strathmere. It was really only a pile of stone, after all.

Like Charles, he would rather die than belong to this place and all it represented, but unlike Charles, he would never mature, grow into acceptance of his lot.

No.

He gazed at it all, a single word in his mind, final, definitive, unambiguous.
No.

He went to the stables, his heart thundering in his chest. Dragging the gelding out of its stall, he saddled it himself, too impatient to rouse Daniel and have him do it. Swinging astride, he kicked in hard and pulled the reins to the right.

In the direction of the village.

C
hloe did not think about Jareth while she waited for the ship to take her to France. She didn’t owe him that. He had made it perfectly clear that he did not want her affections, that they were
inconvenient
at best, abhorrent at worst.

She decided he had been playing the oldest game known to man, the game of seduction. It didn’t really sit well with her. And a large part of her knew better, but it consoled her to think this rather than the possibility that he had truly loved her, that he wanted her as much as she did him, but was simply too weak. Or perhaps too strong.

Instead, she worried over the children, thinking of that last time, when she had told them she must leave. She had resolved to be positive—no tears, no recriminations. She had sat them in their little chairs in the playroom and knelt before them, a forced smile on her face and a cheery note in her voice.

“I have some exciting news,
mes chéries.
I am to return to France.” Immediately, tiny frowns appeared on their faces. Chloe had rushed to continue. “I am so happy, for I have missed my sister, Gigi,
and my brother, Renaud, and my papa. I shall meet my tiny niece at last.”

Predictably, Rebeccah’s response was sour. “I don’t want you to go.”

“But you must think of how lonely I have been, and how much I have missed my family.”

“Don’t you love us?”

That almost choked her. “Of course,
mes amours.
Never doubt it.”

“But who will take care of us?”

Oh, mon Dieu!
“Everything will be all right, you will see. Another nursemaid will come and she will love you. You will love her, too, and soon you shall not miss me at all.”

Sarah shook her head. “No.”

Rebeccah said, “I don’t want another nursemaid.” The familiar intractable look came over the elder child’s face.

Chloe swallowed, treading carefully. “You must give her a chance,
chérie.”

“I want you to stay!”

Sarah’s blond hair flew as she shook her head more violently. “No!”

“There is other news, good news. Y-your uncle is to marry. Lady Helena is kind—you liked her, remember? You will be like a family again,
n’est-ce pas?”

“No!” Rebeccah said, louder this time. “No, no, no! I don’t want anyone else. I want you, Miss Chloe!”

Helpless, Chloe had let her facade crumble. She was never good at deception, what made her think she could fool this precocious child? “I must go,” she said in a soft voice filled with her own sadness.

Rebeccah exploded into action, hurling herself off the chair, fists flailing as she charged Chloe. “I hate you for leaving me! Why do they always leave! I hate you!”

Chloe tried to catch the girl to her, to try to calm her, but Rebeccah flew out of the room, racing into her bedroom. From where she sat, Chloe saw her on her bed, kicking and pummeling, heard her muffled cries of frustration against her pillows.

But for the solemn little face still before her, Chloe would have retreated to her own bedroom and followed suit. She looked at the tiny child, touching the rounded cheek, watching it blur as tears filled her own eyes.

Sarah had simply said, “No, Chloe. Stay.”

With Rebeccah’s tormented cries echoing around them, Sarah had turned calmly and walked into the bedroom, climbed up into her bed and curled up with Samuel.

Chloe had stood in the doorway, clutching the frame for support. “I shall always love you,
mes petites.
Remember that.” She had stayed thus until Rebeccah’s wailing subsided and Sarah’s breathing deepened, lengthened, and Chloe was certain they were both asleep. Then she had found Harry and tucked him under Sarah’s arm. The cat, with its unerring instincts, had forgone his usual mischief and curled contentedly against his tiny mistress. Lady Anne proved as content in Rebeccah’s bed as on her own pillow.

It was a small deviation from the rules, but under the circumstances…

The following morning she had left, with only a curt note to apprise the duke of her departure. She
walked all the way to the village to await her passage home.

When the news of Jareth’s engagement reached her, she became almost frantic to flee England. Only a few more days, she told herself, settling down to bear the last of her ordeal.

It was a few evenings later when she was seated in her small room, lost in her thoughts, that the door was pounded upon mightily. Startled, she stood up and backed against the wall, wondering who would come to her here.

Then she heard his voice. “Chloe! Chloe, open this door, please. It is Jareth. I wish to speak to you.”

She looked frantically about her, as if another means of exiting the room would suddenly materialize in the solid wood paneling.

“Chloe,” he said, softer now. “I know you are in there, the owner told me.”

Still she didn’t answer. Sidling silently to the window, she looked at the warped sash.

What was she thinking? She would leap from a window to avoid him—why was she suddenly so afraid?

She was, in fact, terrified.

“Chloe. If you do not answer me or unlock this door, I shall break it down.”

She couldn’t move. Questions screamed in her mind, deafenıng her to the pounding when it started up again.

Why had he come?

What did he want from her when there was nothing she could give him but her heart, something for which he had no use?

The wood began to splinter, and somehow the sound of this destruction broke her out of her shock.

“Go away! I do not wish to see you.”

There was a moment of silence, then the whole room shook as he flung himself against the failing portal again.

“
Non!
You will not do this. Go away.”

“Chloe, get away from the door.”

Her mouth snapped closed and her eyes flared wide at his curt command. A second later, the door— what was left of it—gave way and he came stumbling into the room.

He stood there, looking wildly about him until his dark eyes found her. His coat was torn and there was blood, just smudges of it, up his arm where he had used his shoulder to decimate the wooden planks.

“Chloe,” he said, and his face lost its terrible aspect. He came toward her, covering the distance in two long strides, and then he was on his knees, his hands capturing both of hers, his forehead pressed against her thigh.

“Chloe, forgive me.”

She waited, stunned and unmoving.

Had he come all this way, burst in on her like a ravenous Hun, broken through a solid wood door, just to ask her forgiveness? Well, she wouldn’t. Damn him if his conscience pricked him. Let him go to a priest for absolution—she would not ease his tarnished conscience with those words he wished for.

But her hand stole into his curls, feeling the soft texture, stroking the hair away from his sweat-soaked forehead.

“No, do not forgive me. Not today.” Abruptly, he stood, her hands still in his. These he brought up to
be kissed, each in turn. “I shall spend a lifetime asking you to forgive me every day, and when we are old and ready to sleep, you shall at last grant it, but not a moment before. Do you understand?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Of course you do not. Look at you, staring at me as if I were demented. I am, you know. I even admitted it to my mother when she asked me at dinner if I were mad. I have to be, do I not, to allow you to leave me?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, what a dinner it was. I am sorry you missed it. I swear it, we shall never take another meal apart again.”

Chloe tried to pull her hands out of his. He held firm. “No, I shall not let you go—ever. Do you hear me? Ever! Chloe, marry me.”

She grew truly angry now. “Have you grown lonesome for your cruel sport so that you had to seek me out here to play again?”

“What—sport? No, no. Listen to me, you little fool. I love you. I adore you. You are my life, you sweet idiot, and I cannot live without you.”

“You love me,” she repeated flatly.

“Oh, Chloe, if it were only love, I might have made it through all of this without having to toss everything else aside, but you have more than my heart. I am soulless without you, nothing without you. Just these last days, seeing all of my life stretch out before me without that spectacular smile of yours or the way you walk into a room like a prima ballerina entering center stage, or the ridiculous mess your hair is always ın, or the storm caught in your eyes when you are angry—if none of those things I can ever see again, then I don’t want anything else.
Chloe, I told them I wasn’t going to do it—marry Helena, I mean. I told my mother that I was bringing you back and we are going to be wed—if you will allow it after all the ill I’ve done you—and that
you
were the one to whom I belonged, not the title, not the house, but to myself, and so I give all of it gladly to you.”

She was speechless, breathless, confused.

“Please, Chloe,” he said, coming closer, cradling her face in his hands. “Take me back into your heart. I’ve come on a terrible journey, from far, far away, and I have finally made it to your side. Take me as your husband, I am begging you.”

A single sob escaped her before his lips closed over hers. And then, like a miracle, he was kissing her, holding her, and she flung her arms around his neck and held on as tight as she could.

To her dismay, he cut the kiss short and shoved her away. “Oh, blast!” he exclaimed, patting his thighs and his chest as if searching his pockets for something. He suddenly looked apoplectic. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Chloe demanded.

“The ring. My family’s betrothal ring. Helena still has it.”

“Does it matter?”

He grinned. “Does it matter to you?”

“Of course not, you dolt. What would I want with a ring?”

“Well, you shall be a duchess, you know.”

She gave him a haughty look. “I have not accepted your rather
unconventional
proposal.”

He sobered. “No, you have not. Will you, Chloe? Will you give me the chance to make it up to you?”

“No, I shall not. I wish our marriage to be done with all of the past. None of this nonsense of forgiveness and such—”

“Is that a yes?”

She was exasperated. “Of course. Why is it you never understand what I am saying?”

He chuckled, throwing his head back. “I shall learn, love, I surely shall.”

“And I do not know what sort of duchess you expect me to be, but I shall certainly not emulate your mother.”

His lips jerked as he fought a smile. “Of course not.”

“And I am not going to dress in heavy brocades and prance about with my hair piled up so high that I cannot turn my head for fear of tipping over.”

“I should not think so.”

“And how will I ever get used to everyone bowing and scraping to me, and calling me your grace and laughing at my jokes when they are not at all funny, and—”

“And lying beside me every night, making love with me and bearing my children and looking upon a face each and every day that adores you,” he whispered. “I do not know how you will bear it.”

His words had been successful in melting her. “Oh, Jareth,” she sighed, and reached up to kiss him.

In the instant before his lips touched hers, a thunderous explosion shattered their joyous calm.

“Jareth—what was that?” she cried.

He only looked at her, all traces of their earlier amusement gone.

“Jareth?”

Slowly, he slumped forward, landing heavily in her arms. She staggered under his weight as the acrid smell of gunpowder filled her nostrils.

Slick stickiness met her right hand where it grasped his back. He sank to the floor and Chloe went with him, not understanding until she looked up to see Lady Rathford standing in the doorway.

In her hand was a pistol pointed straight ahead, a slow curl of smoke drifting lazily from the muzzle.

“And now for you,” she said, raising a pistol in her other hand.

“Mother!” another voice shrieked. “Mother!”

The gun went off. The roar of it seemed to Chloe to come from a long way off. More immediate was the brittle pop of the window frame inches from her head as the ball burrowed harmlessly in the wood.

“Blast!” Lady Rathford shouted.

Helena ran into the room, breathless and wild, her eyes wide as she cast her frantic gaze about the room. She saw Jareth on the floor, Chloe hunkered down over
him
as if she could stop the deadly balls from ripping into his flesh. The blood. The blood was everywhere.

She looked at her mother, dazed. “Mother?”

“Helena! Get out of here. How did you follow me?”

“I thought…Oh God, I hoped I was wrong.” She looked back at Jareth, horrified as the full weight of what she had found descended on her brain. “Oh, dear Lord, dear sweet Lord, what have you done to the duke?”

Chloe stayed crouched, frozen, aware of nothing more than Jareth collapsed before her. She could feel his blood on her hands.

Lady Rathford snarled, “I killed him, and I’m going to kill his whore.” Shoving one of the empty guns at her daughter, she barked, “Load this in case he is not dead. I may have to shoot him again.”

“Mama, no!” Helena declared, recoiling from the weapon held out to her.

Lady Rathford shook the empty pistol at her. “I have already done it. I only need to finish it.”

Helena looked about her with a frenzied expression on her normally placid face. “They will hear you downstairs. They must be coming now. We must leave.”

Jareth lay unmoving, pale. Chloe felt frantically for a pulse. Nothing.

Lady Rathford scoffed, “‘Do you think this is the first time a gun has been discharged in this establishment, because I can assure you it is a frequent occurrence. No one will pay any mind. Besides, I know this place, I used to meet that idiot, Henken, here sometimes. I can get us out of here unseen. Now load that gun, Helena. Watch me. Take the powder…that’s right. Now the ball. Shove it in good, make it nice and tight…good.”

The world had ceased making sense to Chloe. While Helena followed her mother’s instruction—blind obedience born out of years of subservience—Chloe could only think of the way Jareth’s chest seemed so still…