The Secret Marriage Pact

‘Unless you have bodies for the anatomists stacked in there, I very much doubt it. Even then, I could probably do something with them.’

‘I don’t doubt you could.’ He shot her an appreciative smile as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. ‘But I’m not a resurrectionist.’

‘Good, it’s a rather smelly business.’ She strode through the small door set beside the larger one used to load and unload freight.

He joined her in the darkness of the warehouse, drawing the door closed behind them. Slivers of moonlight fell in through the high windows at the top and the few cracks in the wooden walls, illuminating the dust kicked up by their entrance. The warehouse was nearly empty except for a few paintings in large, gilded frames leaning against a far wall. They were kept company by an overly ornate set of bergère chairs, a few crates and a wide but dismantled four-poster bed. ‘Shouldn’t there be more here? It seems a waste to pay rent to store so little.’

‘They’re the last of what I brought back from America. I sold the rest. Besides, storage isn’t the only thing I use this building for, as you’re about to see. Come along.’ He led her through a narrow door at the far end, past empty crates without their lids and bits of straw littering the floor around them.

Beneath the steady cadence of his boots, Jane caught the dim sound of laughter and footsteps from somewhere overhead. She thought she was imagining it until Jasper opened another door to reveal a narrow staircase. More laughter and voices drifted down from upstairs. ‘Are you having a gathering in a warehouse?’

‘You could say that.’ He avoided her eyes as he slid the keys back in his pocket.

‘Jasper Charton, are you running a house of ill repute?’

His head jerked up. ‘No, at least not the kind you’re imagining. Even if I was, don’t appear so excited. It isn’t right for you to be so thrilled at the idea.’

‘It isn’t right for me to be in a warehouse with a single man in the middle of the night either...’ she threw open her arms ‘...and yet here I am.’

‘Yes, here you are.’ He pulled his lips to one side in displeasure, as if his plan wasn’t unfolding quite as he’d imagined. Good. It’d be a welcome change to have someone else’s plans go awry instead of hers.

‘Well, are you going to show me?’

‘I’m debating it.’

‘The time for that has passed.’

‘I suppose it has. Come on then.’ Jasper took her hand, his fingers tight around hers as he started up the stairs. She held on to him, the pressure of his skin against hers making her a touch dizzy as they climbed to the first floor. Her curiosity increased with each step as she tried to guess what he’d brought her here to see. She hoped it wasn’t just warehousemen relaxing over cards after a long day. She was tired of disappointments. There’d been too many of them lately.

They stepped into the hall and stopped before a closed door. Light slipped out from under it along with muffled conversation and the faint aroma of pipe smoke. She studied the light beneath the wood, noting how it dimmed and brightened as someone on the other side passed between the source and the door. She waited anxiously for him to open it and reveal what was on the other side, but instead he led her past it to the far end of the hall. She could see the dark recess of an opening and the top of another, much wider, staircase leading back down to the ground floor and the front of the building. It was quiet here, the sounds drifting out of the other room muffled more than they should be in an old place like this. There was also nothing here except a lantern on a metal hook breaking up the endless line of knotted planked wall. She wondered if he meant to lead her back into the warehouse when he reached up and pushed aside the wide plate connecting the metal base to the lamp. It exposed a brass ring hidden behind it.

Now he really had her attention.

He pulled the ring and a portion of the planked wall popped open, revealing a door concealed by the wood and the darkness.

‘Impressive,’ Jane conceded, jealous. As children, they’d dreamed of having a secret room of their own. The empty space beneath the stairs in the Charton house was the closest they’d come, but every adult had known about it, along with every servant who used to check there first whenever they couldn’t find them.

‘Don’t compliment me yet.’ He unlocked the door and led her into an office far more opulent than Philip’s. Gilt-framed paintings adorned the far wall and an elaborate peacock inkwell punctuated the lustrous blotter. Sumptuous leather furniture complemented the narrow-legged burled-wood desk and added to the gaudy wealth of the decor.

‘Are you sure you’re not running a house of ill repute because your office is decorated like one.’

‘This came from my uncle’s house in Savannah. He had a penchant for gaudy furniture. I sold the worst of it a while back.’

She hated to think what the rest of it looked like if this was the most conservative. She was about to say so when he faced her, as serious as a bailiff. ‘Promise me, no matter what happens between us, you won’t reveal to anyone what I’m about to show you.’

She didn’t share his sense of gravitas. ‘Your accounting books?’

He ignored her humour and took her hands. His eyes bored into hers with a severity she’d only seen the morning they’d laid her parents to rest. It turned her as serious as him. ‘I brought you here because I can trust you, I always could, and I need someone to confide in. I thought I could do it with Milton, but he’s proven himself unworthy.’ A stricken look crossed his face, reminiscent of the one Philip had worn the morning Arabella, his first wife, had died after giving birth to their son Thomas. ‘Promise me.’

She imagined the loss of his closeness with Milton might be to blame for the darkness colouring his eyes, yet deep down she suspected it wasn’t. ‘I promise.’

He let go of her and went to a painting of a large house with tall columns hanging on the wall. He swung it aside to reveal a peephole. ‘Come look.’

* * *

Jasper held his breath as Jane rose on her tiptoes and pressed her face to the hole. The light spilling out of the room beyond spread over her fine nose and high cheeks, and he caught something of the mischievous imp he’d begun to love before his parents had sent him to America. Except it wasn’t their past captivating him tonight, it was the present. She was so stunning and innocent and he longed to draw her close instead of pushing her away. He couldn’t because she deserved better than a damaged and deceitful man, and it was already too late. There was no stopping Jane from being disgusted by what he was showing her and no way of preventing her from telling everyone if she decided to betray him.

She won’t. It was the old bond they’d shared in childhood when they used to sneak away from lessons with the bird-like tutor to go and play. It continued to connect them, despite the years they’d spent apart. ‘This is how I make my living.’

‘You’re running a gambling hell.’ She pressed her hands against the wall and leaned in closer to the hole.

He rested her painting on a small hook, then slid aside the portrait of a dog beside hers to view the tables full of men playing cards across the green baize. The cut-crystal lamps hanging over each table cast circles of light to surround them. Men recruited from the nearby slums who’d demonstrated even a modicum of manners moved between the guests to refill brandy glasses and light cigars, and, most importantly, extend credit. ‘Not only do I own the Company Gaming Room, I’m the house bank. The players bet against me and most of the time they lose.’

A loud cheer went up from across the room as Mr Portland, a rotund man with a long face, threw up his hands in victory. ‘Sometimes, they win.’

Mr Bronson, a lanky gentleman in a fine suit and a bright red waistcoat, Jasper’s partner in this affair, approached the winner to offer congratulations and payment.

Jane studied him, but he continued to observe the room, bracing himself for the sneer of disgust he was sure was coming. They’d both been raised to detest gambling as man after man had approached their fathers and brothers for money to cover their debts and save the businesses they were throwing away with the dice. Jasper was contributing to the very thing which had ruined so many, including him.

‘Why, Jasper Charton, I never thought you had it in you to be a rogue.’ He turned to face her, stunned to discover her blue eyes, illuminated by the candlelight concentrated through the hole, open wide in amazement.

‘You’re not supposed to be impressed.’ He set the dog painting over the hole and then reached past her face to return the house painting back to its original position.

‘I admit it’s a bit shady, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what you’ve done and how much you’ve accomplished in a matter of months.’

‘It’s a gambling hell, not a cotton-import business.’ He pressed his knuckles into his hips. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected and yet he couldn’t help but smile. This was exactly like something she would do. ‘I thought your brother raised you to detest gambling?’

‘I thought your father did the same. It seems it didn’t stick for either of us.’ She cocked her thumb at the wall. ‘I assume he doesn’t know about this.’

‘No one in the family does. Can I trust you not to tell them or use this against me in your matrimonial pursuit?’

‘Of course. I’m not low enough to blackmail a person.’ Jane crossed her arms beneath her round breasts. ‘But I don’t see how you’ll keep it from them for ever. Isn’t this illegal?’

‘No, but it’s not entirely legal either, rather a grey area, which is why I don’t draw much attention to it.’

‘And no one around here has noticed so much coming and going at night?’

‘Drunks are the only people in this area after dark and a dram here and there keeps them quiet. It, and the front and back entrances, are why I chose this building.’

‘Impressive.’ Despite himself, he basked in her compliment before her next questions dissolved it. ‘Did you do this in Savannah?’

Guilt struck him as hard as shame. ‘I did.’

‘What did your uncle think of it?’

He strode to the fireplace, debating whether or not to take her deeper into his confidence, but the freedom to finally speak about this part of his life muted his usual caution. He’d brought Jane this far, there was little harm in taking her a touch further. ‘He’s the one who taught me to do it.’

‘He was a gambler, too?’ She rushed to join him at the ornately carved marble mantel.

‘He never gambled and neither do I. It isn’t wise.’

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t a cotton merchant, was he?’

‘Maybe when he first went to America, but he couldn’t tell the difference between Egyptian cotton and South Carolina cotton by the time I joined him. I was as stunned as you are when I learned of his true trade.’ Stunned and in awe. To a young man of fifteen who’d thought he’d been banished from his family and consigned to a colonial backwater, the vice-filled rooms and the income they gave him had been a scintillating temptation. He’d embraced the life, even when its darkness had shown itself in the haggard faces of losers at the Hazard table. ‘Pretending to my mother to be a cotton merchant was Uncle Patrick’s way of explaining the source of his wealth without offending anyone’s sensibilities.’

‘And your mother never suspected the truth?’

‘She’s quick, but Savannah is a long way from London.’ The distance was the most enticing aspect of coming home, but not even an entire ocean could separate him from his past failures. ‘She loved her brother, but my father wasn’t as enamoured of him. Father would’ve despised him if he’d known the real source of his income.’

‘And he wouldn’t have sent you to him.’

A sense of lost days flitted between them. He wished he’d never left, then all the horror he’d witnessed, and all the sins he’d committed, might not have happened and he’d be worthy of accepting Jane’s hand. ‘Uncle Patrick built a fortune on merchants, sea captains with prize money, cotton traders and tobacco planters looking for more respectable entertainment than the seedy dives by the docks, a way to fill the time between when they saw their wares off and when they returned to their rural homes or ruined themselves at our tables.’

‘If they were stupid enough to gamble, then they got what they deserved,’ Jane pronounced.

‘I used to think so, too.’ Until Mr Robillard. He stared into the fire, watching the flames dance the way they had in the biers scattered throughout Savannah to try to drive off the miasma sickening the city. It hadn’t worked. ‘I’ve learned a little more compassion since then and I have rules about limits. The men who play here know I won’t allow them to end up drunk and broke in the gutter.’

It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way, one his uncle certainly hadn’t taught him. If he’d learned it sooner, many men and their families might have been saved from destitution. Try as Jasper might to atone for his sins in London, he couldn’t make up for the many he’d committed in Georgia.

‘How do you keep this a secret? I recognise most of the men in there from their dealings with Philip. They must recognise you.’

‘They’ve never seen me in there. The man in the red waistcoat who spoke to the winner is Mr Bronson. He was Uncle Patrick’s long-time employee in Savannah. After my uncle died...’ Jasper took a deep breath, forcing back the memories ‘...I offered him the chance to be more than a servant and to share in a good amount of the profits. He’s the face of the Company Gaming Room, the one clients approach with troubles and concerns, then he comes to me. It hides my involvement in the club.’ It was one of the many façades he’d adopted since coming home. ‘My clients are merchants, businessmen, or foreigners with a taste for English gambling who’d never be admitted to one of the more fashionable clubs.’

‘You don’t cater to toffs? They’d be more lucrative.’

‘And troublesome. Their titled fathers would wreak havoc if their progeny lost the family estate to a mere merchant. The toffs also find my wager limits repugnant. They can afford to throw away their fortunes. Most merchants can’t.’

‘Then why is Captain Christiansen in there?’ She pointed to the wall, beyond which sat a lanky gentleman with his long fingers tight on a fan of cards, who Jasper knew sat at his usual table with more empty drink glasses than chips in front of him.

‘He’s a second son and he’s losing the money he earns from captured ships, not his father’s wealth, otherwise Lord Fenton would be in here putting a stop to it at once.’ Jasper motioned for her to sit on the leather sofa behind her. He took a box of fine sweets off the corner of his desk and held them out to her. ‘I also allow him to play here because he offers the other patrons information about oversees interests and ports they can’t obtain elsewhere.’

‘A wise decision.’ She selected one round confection dusted with sugar, pausing to look up at him through her thick lashes. ‘If this is the source of your income, then why did you want a building in the heart of the Fleet? It’d be hard for you to hide your activities there.’

She bit into the treat, as perceptive and tempting as ever. He tossed the box on his desk, then sat on the leather chair across from hers. ‘Many men come here for more than cards; they want to discuss contracts, stocks and markets in a space more conducive to sensitive deals than a coffee house. It’s the edge my establishment offers, the one I wish to cultivate and turn into a respectable business. The building would’ve been the perfect place for it.’

‘You could have the Fleet Street building if you agree to my terms.’ Her tongue slid over her bottom lip to lick off a bit of confectioner’s sugar clinging there. The gesture almost made Jasper slide across the gap and take care of the sweetness for her. Instead, he threw his hands up over the back of the leather’s curving edge. Not only should she not be here, but he shouldn’t be reacting to her like this. It wasn’t right and still he couldn’t dampen the heat rising inside him.

‘You know I can’t.’ It was time to think with his mind and not parts lower down. ‘I’m not an honest merchant like Milton or my sisters’ husbands.’

‘Good, I’m glad.’

‘Don’t be.’ He’d been naive about the dangers and temptations which could rob a man of his worth. He was too familiar with them now and didn’t want to visit them on her. ‘It isn’t easy being up all night, sleeping in the day, and lying to everyone about everything.’

She leaned forward with the same determination she’d used to approach him this afternoon. ‘Then let me help you become respectable again. We can establish the club together, secure more patrons and devise many means of making money off them, either through wine and cigars or expensive baubles for their wives sold at inflated prices.’

Jasper rubbed his eyes with his fingers. ‘Jane, be sensible.’

‘I am being sensible. A busy man must placate his wife and jewellery is an excellent way to do it. By selling ready-made pieces at the club we can save merchants a trip to the jewellers.’

Jasper peered at her through his fingers. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Fine stationary for their contracts would also be good and the services of a private solicitor to keep things confidential.’

Jasper rubbed his chin. ‘Property agents might not be a bad idea, either, and we could take a cut of their sales.’

She laid her hands smugly on her knees. ‘See, I can help you.’

He snapped out of his interest. He was supposed to be putting her off him, not being drawn into a potential partnership. ‘No, you can’t.’

‘I can and you’ll see it and change your mind.’

He leaned forward, one elbow on his knee. ‘I promise you, I won’t.’

She matched his position, bringing her face close to his. ‘I promise you, you will.’

They stared at one another in challenge, so close together he could see each curling lash rimming her eyes. The temptation to kiss her again gripped him and he was certain she would allow it, but he held firm against the desire to lean in and claim her lips. He was here to discourage her, not trifle with her. The rattle of dice and conversation from the adjacent room drifted in despite the thick padding he’d paid builders to add to the walls. Her small breaths glided over the back of his hand where it hung between his knees, the need to resist her beginning to lose its urgency. He’d expected her to loathe him, not go along with him as if he’d invited her to a box at Drury Lane Theatre. Maybe allying himself with her wouldn’t be as dangerous as he’d first believed. She could help him and in deeper ways than mere negotiations and sales.

He sat back, putting distance between her and temptation. Revealing his involvement in a gambling hell was one thing, but he wouldn’t entice her into this life the way his uncle had enticed him. ‘I think it’s time to get you home.’

‘But we haven’t resolved anything.’

‘We’ll discuss the rest in the carriage.’ He checked the glass peephole hidden in a knot in the door to make sure the hallway was clear, then tugged it open. ‘We don’t want your brother to discover you missing and make you Sister Mary Saint Jane.’

She wagged one finger at him. ‘Don’t think you’ll put me off so easily.’

She strode past him and into the hallway, her confidence as alluring as her perfume.

* * *

Jane allowed Jasper to lead her out the way they’d come in and to hand her into the waiting carriage. The night chill made her shiver as she settled against the fine leather seats. She could pull the rug up over her knees, but the bracing air kept her on guard to continue her fight. Warmth might lull her into cosiness and make her forget what she needed to do on the ride home, her last real chance to change Jasper’s mind. She’d seen his determination waver when she’d made the suggestion about the jewellery and the solicitor, and again when they’d faced one another. He might outwardly protest, but inside he was weakening.

He settled across from her and with a knock on the roof set the conveyance in motion. They rode in silence as the carriage came around the building and passed the front entrance of the hell where a few vehicles waited for their riders while another pulled up to the front door to let off a new arrival. Then the building faded into the distance and the warehouses gave way to narrow streets and dark, ramshackle buildings. After a street or two, Jasper covered a large yawn with the back of his hand.

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