The Notorious Marriage

Captain Henry Luttrell grinned. ‘That’s the spirit! Knew you’d feel more the thing shortly!’

Kit sat up again, gingerly this time. The room was still swaying, but he realised that that was because he was on a ship. It was a pleasant cabin, well appointed, comfortable. The HMS Gresham, out of Southampton, just as arranged. Something had gone spectacularly wrong. He rubbed his hand across his forehead.

‘Harry. Where are we?’

Henry Luttrell’s handsome face creased into a slight frown. ‘Two days out, on the way to Ireland. I thought you knew…’

Kit shook his head slowly. ‘I went to the meet at the Feathers, but it was to pass a message to Castlereagh that I could not go…’

Now it was Luttrell’s turn to shake his head. ‘Don’t you remember, Kit? It was agreed to stage it all—the fight, the press gang…’

Kit looked at him. ‘I don’t remember a thing. What happened?’

Luttrell shifted against the bulkhead. ‘You walked in, Benson hit you, we carted you off here…It was all arranged…’

Kit groaned again. ‘Harry, I went there to tell Benson it was all off…’

‘You never got the chance, old chap,’ Luttrell pointed out. ‘Benson hit you first, no questions asked.’

Kit rubbed his head ruefully. ‘Yes, I can tell! And yes, I do remember we had agreed to stage it that way, but…devil take it, what about Nell! I only got married the day before…’

Luttrell’s eyebrows shot up into his hair. ‘Married! Thought you were keeping away from the petticoats, Kit!’

‘Well of course I was, but it just…happened!’ Kit said furiously. His head was aching more than ever now. ‘I married Eleanor the day before I went to the meet—that was why I was going to tell Benson I couldn’t make this trip!’ He put his head in his hands. ‘For God’s sake, Harry, do you hear me? I’ve just got married! I’ve left my bride all alone with no idea where I am…’

Luttrell put a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘Deuced bad luck, old fellow, but how was Benson to know? Besides, that was three days ago now…’

Kit raised his head and stared at him, his eyes wild. ‘Eleanor’s been alone with no word for three days now? Hell and the devil…’

‘You can send word when we get to Dublin,’ Luttrell suggested. ‘Besides, we’ll only be gone a few weeks, Kit. All over before you know it and no harm done. Surely your bride will understand when you explain…’

Kit shook his head, but he did not reply. There were two distinct sorts of sickness, he discovered. He had never been a good sailor but could deal with seasickness. It was purely physical. But the second…His heart ached. He remembered Eleanor, smiling at him and begging him prettily not to be gone too long…He groaned aloud. Three days ago!

Luttrell was getting to his feet. ‘I’ll bring you some hot water and something to drink,’ he said. ‘There’s food, too, if you feel up to it, though you still look a bit green, old fellow…’

Kit gave him a half-smile. ‘My thanks, Harry. Much appreciated. Is there pen and paper here?’

Luttrell gestured towards the desk. ‘Over there.’ He went out.

Kit stood up and stretched. He felt bruised all over. It must have been a hell of a blow to the head, but then he had always suspected that Benson did not like him. For all that they had worked together on various operations, he had never quite trusted the other man. Harry was a different matter, of course, dashing, devil may care, but utterly trustworthy. A true friend. If anyone could help him out of this mess…

Kit sat down at the writing desk and drew the paper slowly towards him. This was probably not the best time to write to Eleanor, when his head felt the size of a stuffed marrow, but he had to try. He would never forgive himself otherwise. Probably he would never forgive himself anyway and as for asking her pardon…Kit grimaced, momentarily wishing for a return to oblivion. It was a true nightmare and it had only just begun.

Chapter One

May 1814

Eleanor Mostyn knew that she was in trouble even before the landlord told her, with a sideways wink and a leer, that there was only one bedchamber and there would be no coaches calling until the next morning. Eleanor, following him into the tiny inn parlour, thoughtfully concluded that the signs were all there: they were miles from the nearest village, it was pouring with rain and the carriage had mysteriously lost a spar when only yards from this isolated inn. What had started out as a simple journey from Richmond to London looked set fair to turn into a tiresome attempted seduction.

It had happened to her before, of course—it was one of the penalties of having a shady reputation and no husband to protect her. However, she had never misjudged the situation as badly as this. This time, the relative youth and apparent innocence of her suitor had taken her in. Sir Charles Paulet was only two-and-twenty, and a poet. Though why poets should be considered more honourable than other men was open to question. Eleanor realised that her first mistake had been in assuming it must be so.

She knew that Sir Charles had been trying to charm his way into her bed with his bad poetry for at least a month. The baronet was a long, lanky and intense young man who laboured under the misapprehension that he was as talented as Lord Byron. Still, she had thought his attentions were a great deal more acceptable than those paid to her by some other men during the Season. He might be trying to seduce her but she had believed that the only real danger she was in was of being bored to death by his verse. That had to be mistake number two.

Eleanor removed her sodden bonnet and decided against unpinning her hair, even though it would dry more quickly that way. She had no wish to inflame Sir Charles’s desires by any actions of her own, and she knew that her long, dark brown hair was one of her best features. No doubt her hopeful seducer had written a sonnet to it already. At the moment he was out in the yard, giving instructions to his groom and coachman, but she knew that she had very little time before he joined her in the parlour, and then she would need to be quick-witted indeed. The lonely inn, the unfortunate accident, the single bedroom…And he had been dancing attendance on her for the past four weeks and she had been vain enough to be flattered…

Here Eleanor sighed as she looked at her damp reflection in the mirror. Eleanor, Lady Mostyn, passably good-looking, only nineteen years old and already infamous, having been both married and deserted within the space of a week. She could remember her come-out vividly, for it had only been the Season before. Then, she had been accorded the scrupulous courtesy due to all innocent débutantes; now she was a prey to every dubious roué and rake in town.

Her re-emergence into the Ton this Season had set all the tongues wagging once again about her notorious marriage, just as Eleanor had known it would. Not enough time had passed for the scandal to die down, but she had been foolishly determined to confront the gossips, to prove that though her husband were gone, squiring opera dancers around the Continent if the stories were true, she was not repining. She had the Trevithick pride—plenty of it—and at first it had prompted her to defiance. Let them talk—she would not regard it.

Eleanor stripped off her cloak and hung it over the back of a chair. Needless to say, she had underestimated the power of rumour. One salacious story had led to another, each more deliciously dreadful than the last. The gossips said that she had eloped with Kit Mostyn to avoid a forced match; that he had deserted her on her wedding day because he had discovered her to be no virgin; that she had told him to leave because she had discovered he was a brute and a satyr who indulged in perverted practices…Eleanor sighed. The gossip had caused a scent of disrepute that hung about her and had the rakes sniffing around and the respectable ladies withdrawing their skirts for fear of contamination. Worse, she was not blameless.

Despite her mama’s strictures that a lady always behaved with decorum, Eleanor had decided to scorn the gossips and fulfil their expectations. Just a little. At the start of the Season her off-white reputation had actually seemed rather amusing, much more entertaining than being a deadly dull débutante or a devoted wife. And in a complicated way it was a means of revenge on Kit, and she did so desperately want revenge. So she had flirted a little, encouraged some disreputable roués, even allowed a few rakes to steal a kiss or two. She had planned on taking a lover, or even two, perhaps both at the same time. The possibilities seemed endless for an abandoned bride whose husband clearly preferred to take his pleasures elsewhere.

The idea had soon palled. Eleanor had known all along that she was not cut out to be a fast matron. The liberties were disgusting, the kisses even more so. All the gentlemen who buzzed around her had the self-importance to assume that she would find them attractive and did not bother to check first. Their attentions had become immensely tedious, their invitations increasingly salacious and their attempted seductions, such as the present one, most trying. In the space of only six weeks Eleanor had had to slap several faces, place a few well-aimed kicks in the ankle or higher and even hit one persistent gentleman with the family Bible when he had tried to seduce her in the library. And she was miserably aware that it was her own fault.

Eleanor sat down by the meagre fire and tried to get warm. Now she had to deal with Sir Charles’s importunities. If she had found it difficult to decide whether to live up or down to her reputation previously, she knew now beyond a shadow of doubt that she was not cut out for some sordid intrigue. There was enough scandal already attached to her name without some indiscreet dalliance in a low tavern with a man she found boring. Besides, she inevitably compared every man she met to Kit and found them wanting. It was curious but true—he had left her alone to face the scandal of their marriage and she had not heard a word from him since, yet still she found other men lacking.

In the five months since Kit’s defection, Eleanor’s childish infatuation had turned to anger and misery. When her mother delighted in passing on another snippet of gossip about Kit that had been garnered from her acquaintance, Eleanor hardened her heart a little more each time. However, it did not prevent the memory of her husband from overshadowing every other man she knew.

But that was nothing to the purpose. Eleanor smoothed her dress thoughtfully as she tried to decide what to do. She could appeal to Sir Charles’s better nature but that was probably a waste of time as she suspected that he did not possess one. She would not be here if he did. She could play the innocent and scream the house down if matters turned nasty, or she could act the sophisticate, then run away when she had lulled Sir Charles into a false sense of security. Eleanor frowned. She was not entirely happy with either option. There was plenty of room for error.

She could hear voices getting closer—Sir Charles was quoting Shakespeare in the corridor. Oh dear, this was going to be very tiresome. The door opened. Sir Charles came in, followed by the innkeeper bearing a tray with two enormous glasses of wine. Eleanor raised her brows. That was not in the least subtle and somehow she had expected better of a poet. She really must rid herself of these false expectations.

‘There you are, my love!’ Sir Charles’s voice had already slipped from the respectful courtesy of their previous exchanges to an odious intimacy that made Eleanor’s hackles rise. ‘I hope that you are warm enough—although I shall soon have you wrapped up as cosy as can be, upstairs with me!’

The innkeeper smirked meaningfully and Eleanor looked down her nose haughtily at him. No doubt he was warmed by the size of the bribe Sir Charles must have slipped him to connive in so dubious an enterprise. She wondered whether Sir Charles had always spoken in rhyme and why on earth she had not noticed it before. It was intensely irritating.

‘The inn is adequate, I suppose,’ she said coldly, ‘but I do not anticipate staying here long, sir. Surely there is someone who could carry a message to Trevithick House? The others will be almost back by now and will be concerned to find me missing…’

‘Oh, I do not believe that you need trouble your pretty little head about that, my love,’ Sir Charles said airily. He struck a pose. ‘Why, I sense a verse coming over me!’ He smiled at her. ‘My heart leads me to wed when I spy your pretty head, as you lie in my bed…’

‘Pray, sir, restrain your imagination!’ Eleanor snapped. ‘I do not believe that an inclination to wed forms any part of your plans! As for the rest of your verse, I like it not! A work of folly and vivid imagination!’

Sir Charles did not appear one whit put out. Evidently it would take more than plain speaking to deter him. He came close to the fire, rubbing his hands together. Eleanor found herself hoping uncharitably that his ruffled sleeves would catch alight. His dress was very close to that of a macaroni, with yards of ribbons, ruffles and lace, and she was sure he would go up like a house on fire.

‘Alas, my dear Lady Mostyn, that you are married already, otherwise I would show you my affections were steady!’

Sir Charles fixed her with his plaintive dark eyes, behind which Eleanor could see more than a glimpse of calculation. ‘You must know that my love and esteem for you know no bounds—’

‘As does your effrontery, sir!’ Eleanor interrupted, before he could finish the rhyme.

Sir Charles pressed a glass of wine into her hand and downed half of his own in one gulp.

‘You know that your relatives will not reach home for a half hour at least, sweet Eleanor, and will not start to worry about you for another hour after that, by which time it will be dark…’ His eyes met Eleanor’s again, carrying the implicit message that no one would be coming to help her. Eleanor noted wryly that he could speak plainly enough when he chose. ‘But have no fear! You are safe with me here!’

Eleanor bit her lip and turned her head away, hearing the innkeeper’s laugh as he went out and closed the door behind him. There would be no help from that quarter.

Sir Charles nodded towards her wine. ‘Drink up, my love. It will fortify you.’ He suited actions to words, gulping the second half of his wine in one go, wiping the excess from his chin. ‘This is a charming opportunity for us to get to know each other a little better. Most opportune, my rose in bloom!’

‘Or most contrived!’ Eleanor said coldly. She looked straight at him, noting that he was nowhere near as good-looking as she had once imagined him to be. His pale brown eyes were too close set to look trustworthy, and taken with his long and pointed nose they gave him the appearance of a wolfhound. Who was it had told her never to trust a man who looked like a hunting dog? It could only have been her aunt, Lady Salome Trevithick, and Eleanor wished she had paid more attention.

She took a sip of her wine, if only to give herself breathing space. Damnation! How could she have been so unconscionably foolish? She had been set up like a green girl and now had very limited options. The poet was nowhere near as harmless as he pretended and her dénouement looked to be only a matter of time. She shuddered at the thought.

Sir Charles smiled at her. It was not reassuring. His lips were thin and wet-looking. Eleanor, realising suddenly that staring at his face might give quite the wrong impression of her feelings, looked hastily away.

‘How far are we from London, sir?’ she asked casually.

Sir Charles’s smile became positively vulpine. ‘At least ten miles, my lovely Lady Mostyn. We are benighted, I fear. You must simply…accept…your fate, my love, my dove.’

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. ‘The carriage—’

‘Will not be ready until tomorrow, alas.’ Sir Charles spoke contentedly. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. Here we shall stay in our pastoral heaven with only our love, the darkness to leaven…’

Eleanor, privately reflecting that Sir Charles’s poetry was the hardest thing to tolerate so far, nevertheless thought that it could be useful. If she could but flatter him…

‘Pray treat me to some more of your verse, sir,’ she gushed, with what she knew to be ghastly archness. She hoped that his vanity was greater than his intellect, or he would know at once precisely what she was doing.

Sir Charles wagged a roguish finger at her. ‘Ah, not yet, my pet! I believe our landlord is waiting to serve us a feast fit for a king…’

‘Well, let us see what he can bring,’ Eleanor finished a little grimly.

Sir Charles looked affronted. ‘No, no, my love, it does not scan!’

The door opened to admit the landlord with the dinner tray. Eleanor, who considered him a most unpleasant character, was nevertheless pleased to see him, for his arrival afforded her time to think—and time when the odious Sir Charles could not press his attentions for a space, unless he was inclined to do so over the dinner plates and with an audience. Eleanor thought this entirely possible. It seemed that Sir Charles was so in love with himself and his pretty poetry that he could not envisage rejection, and probably an audience would add to his enjoyment.

While the landlord laid out the dishes, she measured the distance to the door with her eyes, then reluctantly abandoned the idea of trying to run away. They would catch her, she was in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. How had she ever got herself into this situation? Her foolish idea of taking a lover, or even two, mocked her. Here was Sir Charles, proving another of Lady Salome’s adages, which was that reality was seldom as exciting as imagination. What folly had possessed her to accept his escort on the journey from Richmond back to London, when only five minutes before, her sister-in-law, Beth Trevithick, had looked her in the eye and told her that Sir Charles was an ill-bred philanderer who would try his luck if only given the chance? Eleanor had tossed her head in the air and allowed the baronet to hand her up into his curricle, and had not even noticed as they had fallen behind the other carriages and finally become separated altogether.

But this was not helping her to effect an escape. She allowed Sir Charles to hold a chair for her, watching under her lashes as he took the seat opposite and pressed her to accept a slice of beef, for all the world as though this were some Ton dinner rather than a squalid seduction. Eleanor accepted the beef, and some potato, wondering if either would be useful as a weapon. Probably not. The beef was too floppy and the potato too wet, though she supposed she could thrust it in his face and try to blind him with it. Her first plan, to hit Sir Charles over the head with the fire irons, had been crushed when she realised that there were none. The dinner plate would be a better option but it would probably crack, leaving him undamaged.

Eleanor sighed and tried to force down a little food. Even if she were able to escape Sir Charles for a time, she still had the landlord to contend with and she was alone and benighted in the middle of the country. All the same, there was little time for finesse in her planning. She had to come up with an idea, and quickly, and in the meantime she had to lull her seducer’s suspicions by flattering his diabolical poetry.

‘I remember a poem you wrote for me but a few days ago,’ she began, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘Something to do with beauty and the night…’

‘Ah yes!’ Sir Charles beamed, waving a piece of speared beef around on the end of his fork.

‘Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright, She walks in beauty, like the night, And brightens up my lonely sight…’

‘Yes…’ Eleanor said slowly, bending her head to hide her smile as she calculated how much the poem owed to Lord Byron and William Shakespeare. ‘How many other words rhyme with bright, Sir Charles? There must be so many to inspire you!’

‘You are so right, my brightest light!’ Sir Charles proclaimed fervently. He seized her hand. ‘Lovely Lady Mostyn, your instinctive understanding of my work persuades me that we should be as one! I know that you have your scruples, virtuous lady that you are, but if you could be persuaded to smile upon me…’

Eleanor, tolerably certain that she was being spared the second verse so that Sir Charles could get down to the real business in hand, modestly cast her eyes down.

‘Alas, Sir Charles, your sentiments flatter me, but I cannot comply. You must know that I am devoted to my absent spouse…’

Sir Charles let loose a cackle of laughter. ‘So devoted that you let Probyn and Darke and Ferris dance attendance upon you! I know your devotion, Lady Mostyn! Aye, and your reputation!’

Eleanor resisted the impulse to stick her fork into the back of his hand. Despite his ridiculous habit of talking in verse and his overweening vanity, Sir Charles would not prove easy to overcome. And all this talk of love was a hollow fiction, to dress up his lust. He was filling his wineglass for a third time now and his face had flushed an unbecoming puce.

‘Eat up, my little filly! The night is becoming chilly and I need you to warm my—’

‘Sir Charles!’ Eleanor said sharply.

The inebriated baronet had come round the table to her now. His hand was resting on her shoulder in a gesture that could have been comforting and paternalistic—for all that he was only two years her senior—but it was neither of those things. His fingers edged towards the lace that lined the neck of Eleanor’s modest dress. Her temper, subdued for so long and with difficulty, triumphed over her caution. She pushed his hand away, repulsed.

‘Kindly stand further off, sir, and avoid any inclination towards intimacy! I may be marooned here with you but I have no intention of using the occasion to further our acquaintance! Now, is that clear enough for you or must I express myself in rhyming couplets?’

The angry, dark red colour came into Sir Charles’s face. He leant over Eleanor’s chair, putting a hand on either armrest to hold her in place. His breath stank of wine and meat and his person smelled of mothballs. Eleanor flinched and tried not to sneeze.

‘Very proper, Lady Mostyn!’ Sir Charles was still smiling, his teeth bared yellow in his flushed face. ‘I suppose I should expect a show of decorum at least from one who was raised a lady but has never managed to behave as such!’

He moved suddenly, grabbing Eleanor’s upper arms, and she was sure he was about to try to kiss her. It was disgusting. She pulled herself away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. She was shaking now. It was no more or less than she had expected but the reality made her realise how hopelessly out of her depth she had become.

Into this charade walked the landlord, the pudding held high on a covered dish. There were footsteps in the corridor behind him but Eleanor did not notice, for she was too intent on a plan of escape. As the landlord came in, Sir Charles straightened up with an oath and in the same moment Eleanor stood up, swept the silver cover from the dish and swung it in an arc towards his head. It clanged and bounced off, throwing the startled baronet to the floor where he lay stunned amongst the remains of the blancmange. Eleanor staggered back, almost fell over her chair, and was steadied, astoundingly, by arms that closed around her and held her tight.

There was a moment of frozen silence. Sir Charles had sat up, the blancmange dripping down his forehead, a hunted look suddenly in his eye. Eleanor freed herself and spun around. Then the world started to spin around her. She grasped a chair back to steady herself.

‘Kit?’

It was undoubtedly her husband who was standing before her, but a strangely different Kit from the one that she remembered. His height dominated the small room and his expression made her insides quail. His fair hair had darkened to tawny bronze and his face was tanned darker still, which made the sapphire blue of his eyes gleam as hard and bright as the stones themselves. There were lines about his eyes and mouth that Eleanor did not remember and he looked older, more worn somehow, as though he had been ill. Eleanor stared, bemused, disbelieving, and unable to accept that he had appeared literally out of nowhere. She swayed again. The chair back was slippery beneath her fingers and she shivered with shock and cold.