Rushed to the Altar Page 5

  The orchards had been in full bloom, the County truly earning its title of the garden of England on that afternoon when Clarissa stood by her father’s chair in the library and realized that at some point in the last hour, since she had left him peacefully reading, he had slipped away. His book had fallen to the floor and automatically she bent to pick it up. She had been expecting his death but it still stunned her and she felt winded, as if struck in the stomach. She had sensed the emptiness of the room the moment she had walked in; the presence that had been her father was no longer there, and now she stood for long minutes trying to grasp the reality. His skin was still warm, his hair still thick and lustrous as it had been in life, but she was alone in the room.

  Alone in the room and, for the first time in her twenty years on earth, on her own. No longer would she have the knowledge of her father’s strength at her back, his sometimes sardonic humor hauling her back from the more emotional flights she had taken during her childhood and young adulthood, his humorous but nonetheless powerful intercessions between the ambitions of his wife for their daughter and Clarissa’s own frequently conflicting wishes.

  Francis Astley had always been behind his daughter, his love a constant in her growing. And only now, in the great void left by his absent spirit, did she realize how much she had relied on that love, on that strength.

  Clarissa wasn’t sure how long she stood there but finally she pulled the bell by the fireplace. Hesketh, the butler, answered the summons immediately. He glanced towards his late master’s chair and with instant comprehension said he would summon the physician.

  “Yes, that would be best.” Clarissa knew she sounded vague and distant. She would deal with her own grief later, but now she had to break the news to her little brother. Francis was ten and five years earlier had lost his mother. Lady Lavinia had died giving birth to a stillborn babe, and the squire’s enduring grief had cast a pall over the little household until finally he had returned his attention to the living. The bond then between father and son had grown stronger than ever, and while Clarissa had tried to prepare the child for the squire’s imminent death once she herself recognized its inevitability, she was not convinced Francis had taken it in.

  Any more than she had, she thought. Knowing something was going to happen was one thing, the reality after the fact quite another.

  Now she left Hesketh to deal with the practicalities and went in search of her brother. She found him, as she expected and hoped, in the stables with one of his favorite people, Silas, the head groom. Silas was generally a taciturn man but he never showed any irritation or impatience with the child’s nonstop chatter and endless questions. He would be an invaluable support when it came to helping Francis come to terms with his father’s death.

  They had buried Squire Astley a week later. He had been well loved in the County where he’d served as Master of Hounds and Justice of the Peace for most of his adult life, and the church and the graveyard had been so full of mourners Clarissa had given orders that tables should be set up upon the lawns to host the crowds who came up to the house to pay their respects to the grieving family.

  That afternoon the family lawyer, another close friend of the squire’s, had solemnly read the will to the only surviving members of the family: the squire’s two children, Clarissa and Francis, and his brother, Luke.

  Luke . . . so very different from his older brother. Where the squire had been powerfully built, bluff and hearty, always straight in his dealings with his fellows, Luke was tall, thin faced, with angular features and small, deep-set eyes that never met another’s gaze. Hard and cold as little brown stones, they slithered away from all contact even as he smiled and honeyed words dripped from his lips.

  Clarissa had always disliked and distrusted him, although he had never given her overt reason. Her distaste for his company was instinctive, although her father treated his brother with the same courtesy and consideration he afforded to everyone and Luke was always a welcome visitor to the gracious redbrick manor house that had been his own childhood home. He visited rarely, however, and Clarissa was convinced he only came when he needed something from his brother, or, she suspected, when he was running away from his creditors.

  On that May afternoon the four of them had gathered in the library. Clarissa could even now hear again the sound of voices drifting in from the lawns beyond the mullioned windows that stood open to the soft air perfumed with blossom from the surrounding cherry orchards. She could feel the gentle breeze that lifted tendrils of her hair on the nape of her neck, and she could hear Lawyer Danforth’s dry tones as he read the will.

  “ ‘I, Francis Evelyn Astley, being of sound mind, do hereby leave my fortune and estate to my son and heir, Francis Charles Astley. To my daughter, Clarissa Elizabeth Astley, when she attains her majority, I leave, in addition to her inheritance from her mother, the sum of ten thousand pounds. My children will be in the guardianship of my brother Luke Victor Astley until my daughter attains her twenty-first birthday. Upon reaching her majority, my daughter will assume the guardianship of my son. Until that time my daughter is to receive the same quarterly allowance from the estate as she has hitherto.’ ”

  Clarissa could see Luke standing in front of the empty grate, his eyes on the richly hued carpet at his feet. Francis was sitting on the window seat swinging his nankeen-clad legs, his solemn little face still puffy and tearstained. When the lawyer finished reading Luke raised his eyes and cast one long speculative look at the child on the window seat, then his gaze flickered across his niece’s countenance before he resumed his examination of the carpet. He said nothing but Clarissa was aware of a stab of dismay.

  The lawyer cleared his throat and continued to read the list of minor bequests, but he’d lost the attention of his audience. Clarissa had known that she should not have been surprised at her uncle’s guardianship. On paper it was the most logical, reasonable disposition for her parent to have made. She would not gain her majority for a year and could not assume responsibility for Francis until then. But she had hoped in her heart that her father would have left his children to the nominal care of one or both of his dearest friends, the doctor and the lawyer. He had known that she was perfectly capable of looking after Francis, running the house, and even conferring with her father’s agent on estate matters. She could have looked to either of her father’s old friends for advice. But Squire Astley would not have wished to offend his brother, and such an oversight would have looked strange to the world.

  Luke returned to London almost immediately after the reading of the will, and for the next month, life continued along its usual paths. Francis began to come to terms with his father’s death, although he became very dependent on his sister, needing to know where she was at any given moment. He continued to study with his tutor in the company of the vicar’s children and Clarissa continued to run the household as she had done since her mother’s death.

  There had been no communication from Luke and Clarissa was beginning to think that the ten months remaining before her twenty-first birthday would continue unaffected by his guardianship . . . until one morning. She remembered coming downstairs, light-footed as always, ready and eager to start the day. She’d entered the breakfast parlor and all her optimistic anticipation vanished under a wash of disquiet. Luke was sitting at the breakfast table. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked thinner and paler than ever, his hand curled around a bumper of brandy, an untouched platter of sirloin in front of him.

  “Why, Uncle, this is a surprise. We weren’t expecting you.”

  His eyes slithered away from her startled gaze as he said, “I left London at dawn. I’m here to take Francis back to London with me. I’d like to leave within the next couple of hours, so could you get him ready and see to his packing?”

  Clarissa protested, trying to keep her tone courteous and reasonable. “But, Uncle, you can’t just tear a child from his home, without any warning. Francis is only just getting over Father’s death. Why would you wan
t to take him to London?”

  Luke had drunk deep of his brandy before saying, “You are forgetting, Clarissa, that I am the boy’s guardian. My brother left him to my care and it is my responsibility to honor his wishes. I can best do that by keeping Francis under my roof and supervising his education. It’s time he had a decent tutor instead of the childish lessons he gets in the vicarage schoolroom.”

  “But . . . but my father thought it was adequate,” she said, hearing how defensive she sounded.

  “Sadly my brother was too ill in his last months to make the necessary decisions for his son.” Luke’s voice had a syrupy sweetness to it. “Believe me, my dear niece, I have only the child’s best interests at heart. He is my nephew and I love him dearly.”

  A spurt of orange flame shook Clarissa free of her journey into the past. She sat up, her eyes focusing on the fire. It was dying down rapidly. She shoveled more coal onto the ashy embers and stirred it with the poker until the flame caught again, then she refilled her goblet. It was a painful journey she was making, but it was by no means done. The worst, that which had brought her to this extraordinary place, remained to be examined.

  Poor little Francis had been distraught at the prospect of leaving his beloved sister. In the ten short years of his life he had lost his mother, then his father, and now was about to lose both his home and the last loving figure in his world. Clarissa tried to comfort him, promised she would visit him soon. She fought to keep back her own tears, knowing they would only distress him further, but once the child had been bundled unceremoniously, weeping and struggling, into the carriage, the door firmly closed on his wails, her tears flowed freely. Luke had barely given the boy time to make his farewells to the people who formed his world: his nurse, the housekeeper, Silas, Hesketh. They all stood on the circular drive waving forlornly as the carriage, bearing its howling burden, disappeared through the stone gateway.

  In the next week Clarissa wrote daily to her brother, and each day passed with no answer. She wrote to her uncle then and had a letter back telling her that Francis needed time to settle down in his new home and her letters upset him too much, so they were being withheld from him.

  She found that impossible to believe but didn’t know what to do about it, until the next letter from her uncle. Luke informed her that he had placed his ward in the family of a very well-regarded tutor who was educating several other boys of Francis’s age. The boy was settling in well with his new companions and she should have no qualms.

  Clarissa felt again the sickening sense of helplessness with which she had read that letter. She wrote back instantly asking for her brother’s address. Again her uncle had responded by telling her that communication from his sister upset the boy too much and destroyed all the good that had been done. Francis was doing well, eating well, and the tutor had only good report to make of his progress.

  She remembered now the despair, the dread, that had crept over her as the days went on. Something was very badly wrong, but she was helpless to do anything about it. She could go up to London, demand her uncle take her to see her brother, but if he refused, and she knew in her heart that he would, then she had no redress. He was Francis’s legal guardian, and, indeed, hers also. He had every right to do as he saw fit. At least for the next ten months.

  She consulted her father’s friends, and although they listened in kindly sympathy they both treated her fears as the natural consequence of grief over losing first her father and then the company of her little brother. It was ridiculous to imagine some melodramatic plot of their guardian’s to cause harm to his nephew. And, of course, it was high time Francis had a more formal education in the company of his peers.

  No one mentioned that Luke would inherit if anything happened to Francis. Somehow Clarissa hadn’t felt able to point this out to her father’s old friends. They must both have been aware of it, and it was such a gothic idea, it would make her anxiety look even less credible than it already did.

  She stood up now and with sudden energy went to open the leather chest, withdrawing the letter she had been looking at earlier. She took it back to the chair by the fire and unfolded it. The lad’s bin took to a babby farm. ’E’ll not live long, they gets rid of ’em quick. Best find ’im quick.

  And that was all. She guessed that even such a brief message had been a supreme effort for the writer, but surely he could have included an address. But maybe he didn’t have one.

  Clarissa folded the letter carefully. It had been opened and refolded so many times it had almost come apart at the fold. She knew about baby farms; everyone did. They took in the unwanted babies, the illegitimate, the burdensome, whose existence threatened to ruin their mothers. No one monitored the care these children received and for the most part they died sooner or later of neglect. Disease and poor, inadequate food took their toll. But Francis was strong and healthy. He was no dependent babe. It would take a long time for him to die of neglect.

  She bit her lip hard to keep the tears at bay. She had been telling herself this for over a week now, ever since she’d received the letter. She’d left for London immediately, telling only the servants that she was going to visit her uncle and see Francis. She had deliberately refrained from confiding in anyone who might question such a journey, and had taken the mail coach from the neighboring village, stepping down in the yard of the Crown and Anchor in Southwark that evening, without the faintest idea what she was going to do next.

  The first thing was to find a bed for the night before it became dark. The coaching inn seemed like the obvious choice. She had plenty of money sewn into an inside pocket of her gown, more than enough for a private bedchamber and a decent supper.

  The landlord, reassuringly, had shown no curiosity about this lone woman traveler and merely showed her to a reasonable bedchamber and offered to have supper brought up to her if she didn’t want to eat in the Ordinary downstairs with the other customers. In the morning he had directed her to the ferry stop that would take her across the river into the city.

  After a few wrong turns and a lot of directions from passersby Clarissa found her way to Ludgate Hill. Her uncle’s house was in the shadow of St. Paul’s in a narrow street running off Ludgate Hill. It was a tall, narrow building, not particularly impressive, and Clarissa wondered whether her uncle’s circumstances were even more straitened than she had sometimes suspected. He would have had some inheritance from his parents, but as the second son it would not have been substantial; the lion’s share, as always under the laws of primogeniture, went to the oldest son. She was fairly certain her father had been more than generous with his brother when asked, but now that he was no longer there, where would Luke turn if he needed an urgent injection of funds?

  Or was he counting on a permanent solution?

  She hovered in the shadows, watching the house until she became aware that she was drawing attention to herself. A couple of unsavory characters were watching her from a doorway across the street and she realized that she must present an easy target, a well-dressed young woman loitering alone in a quiet street.

  She turned and walked briskly away, not slowing or looking behind her until she reached Ludgate’s busy thoroughfare. Ignorance of the city, and a need to find somewhere not too expensive to stay where she wouldn’t draw attention to herself, had led her to Covent Garden and a brothel on King Street. And subsequently to the Earl of Blackwater.

  Clarissa, suddenly restless, got up from her fireside chair and went to the window. The Piazza was in full night guise now, crowded with men and women in their bright colorful garments. She opened the window and leaned out. Laughter and music filled the streets; the toothsome smells of hot pies, spiced ale, and mulled wine scented the cold night air, drowning the less salubrious odors of rank bodies, ordure-filled kennels, the decaying corpses of cats and dogs. It was a carnival scene, Clarissa thought, and once again she felt that sensual vibration, the surge of energy. She wanted to be a part of it. After a lifetime of country quiet . . . of country
tedium . . . she was ready for this excitement, this edge to life.

  But that was not why she was here. She had to find Francis. She drew the window closed and turned back to the room. One thing she had learned in her fruitless search thus far: She needed help. She had visited Luke’s house every day this week and until this morning had seen nothing. And then this morning her uncle had left the house while she was watching. She’d followed him, hoping he would lead her to Francis, but then, of course, she had run headlong into the earl and had lost her quarry. So she was back to square one.

  She could, of course, simply bang on the door and ask to speak to her uncle, but wisdom—or was it cowardice?—prevented her. If he was trying to do away with Francis, he would hardly direct her to where her brother was being kept. And there was no knowing what steps he would take if he realized Clarissa’s suspicions.

  No, she needed help, and powerful protection, if she was going to tangle with Luke. Jasper St. John Sullivan could provide both the help and the protection. He wouldn’t need to know it, of course, but there could be a quid pro quo to his proposition. Once she had Francis safe, where better to keep him hidden than in London, right under her uncle’s nose? Under the unwitting protection of the Earl of Blackwater? She was to have a house of her own while she lived under the earl’s protection, and she could keep her little brother with her under that roof. Luke would never in his wildest nightmares imagine that his sheltered niece was living the life of an earl’s mistress. Even if he looked for her once he discovered she was no longer in Kent, and once he discovered that Francis was gone, as was inevitable, he would never find either of them.