CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 17
Clarence stood before her with a glass of champagne punch in each hand and a baffled look on his face. "But we can't possibly leave now," he said. "It's barely midnight. What will people think?"
"I do not care what—" Jessalyn drew in a deep breath. "Tell them Gram has taken suddenly ill."
"If it's Caerhays, if he's insulted you, I'll demand satisfaction."
"Will you challenge him to pistols at dawn?" Jessalyn retorted, though she instantly regretted it. She pushed a great sigh out of her chest. "Oh, Clarence... we only danced."
Only danced. She didn't know why she had been left with this terrible sense of loss. She only knew she could no longer bear to be here among all the gilt and laughter and music. "Please, just take us home."
Clarence thrust the glasses of punch at a passing footman and slipped his hand beneath Jessalyn's elbow. "Very well. But I thought you understood how important it was for me to be here tonight. Aloysius Hamilton might not possess a title, but he has influence in government circles that most of your precious dukes and earls could only dream of. As my future wife you should be giving a thought, my love, to the advancement of my career in Parliament."
Jessalyn had to swallow back the need to tell him that she could never marry him now. But this wasn't the time or place to jilt the man who was, despite it all, still her dearest, her very best friend in all the world.
They had almost forced their way through the crush blocking the door when a great blasting toot slammed through the air, and silence descended in the room, sharp and sudden, like a clap of thunder.
All eyes turned toward one end of the grand ballroom, where Aloysius Hamilton stood mounted on a small dais, with a sheepish grin on his face and a brass coaching horn in his hand. "Now that I have your attention," he said, and his startled guests broke into relieved titters of laughter.
Aloysius launched into a rambling speech, most of which Jessalyn couldn't hear, but she supposed this must be the announcement of the big secret—Emily's betrothal to her title. And indeed, Emily soon joined her father on the dais. Aloysius took his daughter's hand and raised it to his lips. He kept her hand in his as he beckoned with the other to someone in a crowd of people to the left of him.
In spite of the heavy sadness pressing on her chest, Jessalyn could not help smiling as she watched her new friend, Emily Hamilton, hold out her free hand and draw a man up onto the dais with her. She was smiling still as she watched that man lift Emily's hand and kiss her fingers, before laying them on his bent arm. Smiling, smiling, smiling as a wash of pain froze her breath and blinded her.
Beside her, Jessalyn heard Clarence suck in a gasp of shock. Voices battered her ears: Betrothal... marrying an earl, Caerhays... They are all rakehells, but this one is mad. He's laying down rails from here to Cornwall, and he thinks to run iron horses... riding for a smash. And Hamilton, the bloody rich nabob, will have himself an earl's get for a grandson....
Although every eye was on him, he stood still and looked slowly around the room. His gaze stopped only when it found her. Their eyes clashed and held. She saw nothing in his face. Nothing at all.
If she had any pride at all, she would go up to him now and she would smile and wish him happy, wish them both happy, and act as if she were happy, happy, happy, without a care in the world. Oh, God...
She looked around for Clarence, but he had disappeared. She tried to push through the crowd of guests all trying to go in the opposite direction, toward the dais, to offer their congratulations. Suddenly she felt suffocated, as if all these people were a great weight crushing her, pressing her into the floor.
Someone touched her, taking her arm. It was Clarence. Oddly his face was blanched with shock, and a small tic was throbbing beneath his right eye. "He only got enough upon the betrothal to pay off his brother's gaming vowels," Clarence said, and though it made no sense to her, Jessalyn thought she heard a note of strained relief in his voice. "The rest of the settlement won't be his until after the heir is born."
Her own face felt so stiff, as if she'd been dumped in a vat of starch. She had to get away before she started cracking in a million pieces.
"Clarence, please... take us home now."
He stood within the shadows of the portico's pillars and watched her leave. The street was still clogged with carriages and swearing coachmen, for most of the guests would not depart for hours yet.
He watched until Tiltwell's scarlet town coach rolled down the street on well-oiled wheels, turned the comer, and was gone.
"Lord Caerhays?"
He turned. Emily Hamilton stood within the pool of light cast by the flickering torches. A look that was half worshipful, half fearful marred her pretty face.
"What do you want?" he demanded. Then immediately regretted the harshness of his words when he saw her flinch. They had been betrothed for three days, yet she couldn't bring herself to call him by his first name. Doubtless she would be calling him Lord Caerhays on their wedding night.
"My father wishes to speak with you, my lord." Her mouth trembled into a sweet smile that he tried, and failed, to answer.
He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't somebody else.
"I cannot imagine why you and Tiltwell wanted to attend that crush in the first place, gel," Lady Letty said as Becka opened the door to them. "But once there, the least you could have done was stay above an hour or two. Instead you insisted upon leaving just when my luck was about to turn. There is nothing for it—I am going to bed."
"I'm sorry. Good night, Gram," Jessalyn said to her grandmother's departing back. She stood unmoving, half in, half out the open door. A breeze blew in off the river, and she turned her face to it. She yearned suddenly for Cornwall and the sea. She wanted to go home.
There was such a weight of unshed tears in her chest that needed to come out. She was going to start crying soon, and when she did, she was not going to be able to stop. Her tears would flood the world until she drowned in them.
"Evenin', Mr. Tiltwell, sur," Becka said. "Ye be lookin' handsome this night. Done up to the nines ee be. 'Tes enough to set a girl's heart to fluctuatin' in her breast, just to look at ee." She giggled, then winked, then followed Lady Letty inside.
Clarence touched Jessalyn's arm. "Walk with me out on the terrace?"
"Unchaperoned?" she said, forcing a smile. "That wouldn't be proper. Think of your reputation."
Clarence didn't smile with her. As usual he had not understood her teasing. Poor Clarence, everything in his world was all so ponderously serious.
"Jessalyn, I have known you your entire life," he said. "When have I ever behaved toward you in any manner other than what is considered proper?"
She swallowed a sigh. "Never," she said. Almost never. He had kissed her twice. Once on the day she had accepted his proposal of marriage, and once before the Midsummer's Eve bonfire the summer she was sixteen. The summer she had been taught all about love, but not by him.
She allowed him to lead her toward the iron railing that faced the river. Beneath the terrace were great arched storage vaults, empty now except for the river scavengers who lived like moles within them. On calm nights she could hear the crackling of their fires and occasional snatches of drunken laughter. Tonight the river was flat and tinseled with silver ribbons from lanterns on the boats and bridges.
Clarence cleared his throat. "Jessalyn, I wonder if you have given any more thought to the idea of moving up the date of our wedding?"
"Oh, Clarence..." She spun around to face him. Then wished she hadn't, for she knew that even in the cloaking darkness he could see the dismay on her face.
"I had reason to believe that you were as anxious as I to begin our life together," he said stiffly.
"Oh, Clarence, I'm so sorry..." She laid a hand on his rigid arm. "You are my dearest friend, and I love you. But I have come to see that it is not in the way you want. In the way it should be between husband and wife. I—"
"Are you trying to tell me that you are experiencing second thoughts?"
She dragged in an aching breath. "I'm sorry."
"I see." He turned away from her. His gloved hands wrapped around the railing. He spoke into the night, his voice calm, assured. "Your debts here in London and at
Newmarket are mounting, although I know you've been trying to hide the direness of your circumstances from me and from your grandmother. But you cannot go on like this much longer, Jessalyn, and then what are your choices? To become a governess to a passel of screaming brats. Or the paid companion of a crotchety old dowager with smelly pug dogs and numerous disgusting ailments."
She thought of her silly self, riding around and around the rotunda at Vauxhall Gardens, turning somersaults in her bird mask with its wiggly beak. "I should run away and join the circus before it comes to that," she said, and a strange gurgle escaped out her tight throat.
He jerked around to glare at her. "Are you laughing at me?"
"No, I'm not. I'm sorry." That's all I seem able to say, she thought. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry... There was this thick, unrelenting ache in her chest. She tried to expel it by pushing out a sigh. But it remained, making it hard for her to breathe.
"My circumstances are not as dire as you make them out to be," she said. "We shall get by until spring, when we will go to End Cottage so that Gram can get a dose of the sea air. Then, if Blue Moon is recovered, we shall come back up to Epsom and race him in the Derby. The winning purse is a thousand pounds."
He barked a harsh laugh. "If you win it! Ah, God, Jessalyn..." His head fell back. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, then let his hand fall helplessly to his side. "I love you. I've loved you for years. All that I've done—the seat in Parliament, the house in Berkeley Square, the fortune I am building, a possible knighthood— it was all done to make myself worthy of you." He clasped her upper arms, startling her with the strength of his grip and the fierceness in his voice. "Jessalyn, I love you."
I love you.
She squeezed her eyes shut. He was her friend and she was hurting him and she couldn't bear this. "P-perhaps I just need a little more time," she said, and knew she was being a coward. But she just couldn't bear any more pain right now.
His grip tightened, hurting her. "How much? How much time does it take to decide if you want to become a man's wife?"
She opened her eyes. His face showed everything: bewilderment and despair, and the last desperate glimmerings of hope. She had known this man since she was six years old. They were friends. They were...
"Just a little more time, Clarence. Please. Give me until spring, like we planned."
McCady... Lord Caerhays would be married to his heiress by then. She would have accepted it by then. She would be used to it—oh, God, how was she ever going to get used to it?
Clarence released her, straightening his cravat and the lapels of his coat, as if he had to put himself back into order again after that uncharacteristic outburst. "I know that you will give all that I have said fair consideration, Jessalyn," he said. "You're only experiencing those nuptial eve fears that all young brides go through. They'll soon pass. You'll see if I'm not right." She heard the relief in his voice and felt ashamed.
He cupped her cheek, tilting her head back. "Just think of the life I can offer you and your grandmother. But most important, think about how much I love you."
She looked up into Clarence Tiltwell's earnest face. She could feel the cracks in her heart widening. The pain was coming now, and it was unbearable.
Great pots of golden chrysanthemums decorated the choir and high altar of St. Margaret's, Westminster. The sun shone through the stained glass window of Christ Crucified, casting red and blue and yellow patterns on the stone floor. It was, the guests all agreed, a beautiful day for a wedding.
The bride stood before the chancel rail, looking radiantly beautiful in a dress of white and silver lace and a veil weighted with hundreds of seed pearls that flowed over her arms to sweep the floor. The groom looked dashingly handsome in a blue town coat with long tails and straw-colored trousers. His hair hanging long beneath his silk top hat and the gold ring flashing in his ear gave him a piratical air that stirred the heart in more than one feminine breast.
There was to be a breakfast after the ceremony, and most of London that counted had received the engraved gilt-edged invitations. But only the Hamiltons' most intimate friends were at the church for the ceremony. They stood now within boxed pews, and the men envied the groom the dowry he was getting. The women envied the bride her groom. Fifty intimate friends invited to witness the indissoluble bond of matrimony.
And one who was not invited.
She stood to the side, half hidden behind a pillar and a pair of tall iron candlesticks. Up until this moment she had not really believed the wedding would take place. It was as if someone had told her she was about to die.
Although she had come, now she could not bear to watch it. She looked up at the twisted face of the stained glass Christ. Her eyes squeezed shut. Oh, God, I do want to die. Please, God, let me die.
The pastor's voice echoed in the stony, hollow emptiness. "By the laws of God and the British Commonwealth, I pronounce you man and wife."
McCady Trelawny, twelfth earl of Caerhays, did not look at his countess. He turned, his eyes searching, as if he sensed her presence. Across the gray shadowed church their gazes met. Her heart lurched as she saw his face change, saw it become raw and naked with despair...
As if his soul had been stolen.
She walked away from him, down the long nave, the soles of her kid slippers making no sound on the stone floor. She began to run.
She was halfway down the steps when the bells began to toll.