Читать книгу Deceived - Nicola Cornick, Nicola Cornick - Страница 10

IT WAS A HELL OF A PLACE to look for a husband.

Most discerning females, given a choice of marriage mart, would prefer the genteel familiarity of Almack’s any day to the rather more dubious qualifications of the Fleet Prison.

Princess Isabella Di Cassilis did not have that luxury. Princess Isabella was desperate.

She had explained to the jailer that her requirements were very specific. She needed to marry a man who owed so much money that to take on her twenty-thousand-pound liability would be a mere drop in the ocean of his debt. She needed a pauper—a strong one, since she did not want him dying on her and leaving her heir to his debts as well as her own—and she needed him now.

It was of no consequence to Isabella that she would be ruined if this escapade ever came to light. She was beyond ruin already. The more fastidious members of the Ton closed their doors to her, so what harm could a little more scandal do? She might even accomplish the remarkable success of being ruined twice over in one lifetime. It would be a considerable achievement for a lady of only nine and twenty.

Isabella Standish had not been born to be the princess of a European country, not even an insignificant one such as Cassilis. Her father had been a minor member of the Ton who’d aspired to be important but had never quite achieved his ambitions. Her grandfather had been fishmonger to King George III, ennobled by the monarch in one of his bouts of madness after he had partaken of a particularly tasty piece of rainbow trout. The family title was therefore not only newly created but also the butt of some hilarity, to the great mortification of the second Lord Standish, Isabella’s father.

It had been Isabella’s misfortune that at the age of seventeen she had been walking down Bond Street the day before her wedding and had caught the roving eye of the jaded Prince Ernest Rudolph Christian Ludwig Di Cassilis, who had been charmed by her prettiness and her unspoiled manners. Prince Ernest had immediately made a counteroffer for her hand in marriage. It was an offer that her father was not minded to refuse, as he was about to be bankrupted by his extravagance. Prince Ernest’s arrival was most timely, for Lord Standish if not for his daughter. The wedding that took place a few days later was not the one that Isabella had intended.

It was also entirely Prince Ernest’s fault that a widowed Princess Isabella, some twelve years later, was following a turnkey down the narrow stone corridor into the depths of the Fleet Prison. Ernest had died most inconveniently in the arms of his mistress, leaving his widow nothing but debts and a tarnished name. When she’d returned home to England, Isabella had discovered that her late husband’s infidelity had been financial as well as physical. He had run up debts in her name. He had used her to fund his debauches and she had been so happy to be on a different continent from him that she had not even noticed. So now she was driven to desperate measures of her own to extract herself from the disaster Ernest had brought on her.

Isabella shrank within her black cloak and pulled the hood more closely about her face. All her senses were under assault. It was almost as dark as night inside the prison. The air was thick with heat and the smoke of tobacco, but the scent did nothing to mask the deeper, more noxious smell of hundreds of fetid bodies pressed close. Raucous voices were raised in endless uproar, mingling with the scrape of iron fetters on stone and the wailing of babies and children in forlorn chorus. The floor was greasy and the walls ran with damp, even in the summer heat. Hands grasped blindly at the folds of Isabella’s cloak as she passed. She could feel the despair of the place like a living thing. It seeped from the walls and wrapped her about with misery. Shock and compassion thickened her throat until the hairs rose on the back of her neck and she shivered with horror. Before she had entered this hellhole she had thought that she was in desperate straits. She had not even known what desperation was. And yet the distance between her situation and this was perilously short. A man—or woman—could slip once from their comfortable path and end up forgotten and unlamented in this pit.

She paused at the corner of the corridor and fumbled in her reticule for her small collection of coins. She could not really afford to part with them, but there were some whose need was greater than hers. She thrust the money toward the jailer.

“Here…Take these for the mothers and their babies.”

The jailer shook his head. He did not take the money, for he still had a tiny shred of decency left. In the faint light his face betrayed pity but Isabella could not tell if it was for his charges or for her naiveté.

“With all due respect, ma’am, it would do no good. The mothers would spend it on gin and the babes would starve anyway.”

Isabella hesitated, instinct prompting her to scatter the coins in the darkness and pray that some good would come of it. Then she saw the eyes watching her greedily from out of the shadows—insatiable eyes, full of hate and cupidity. The strong would trample the weak in their attempts to get to the money first and it would all be for nothing.

The turnkey took her arm, drawing her on. “Not far now.” Then, with a rough attempt at comfort as he felt her shiver, he added, “We keep a better class of prisoner in the Warden’s House, madam. Nothing to fear.”

Nothing to fear.

The words repeated over and over in her head as she shivered.

She had but three alternatives, Mr. Churchward had said with bluntness unusual in a lawyer. Marriage, or exile, or the debtor’s prison. None of these options had been in any way appealing.

They had been sitting in the drawing room of her house in Brunswick Gardens when Churchward had broken the news of Ernest’s debts. For all his frankness, the lawyer had spoken to her with compassion, as though such delicate matters were unfit for a lady’s ears. Isabella had appreciated his thoughtfulness, and when she had neither fainted nor indulged in a fit of the vapors, Churchward had looked infinitely relieved.

A torch flared at the end of the passageway. The jailer opened a heavy door and it scraped across the floor with a protesting creak, as though there was seldom cause to use it. He stood back to allow Isabella to precede him. The air was fresher here, though it still carried the smells of tobacco, sweat and stale food.

The jailer stopped in front of a cell door, spat on the ground, then hastily wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as a concession to the fact that he was addressing a lady. “Here we are, madam. I have just the man for you. John Ellis. A gentleman by birth, healthy, very poor, so I’m told.”

Somewhere in the depths of the jail, someone screamed. It was a sound unearthly and terrifying. Isabella shuddered and forced herself to concentrate. She knew that there were questions she should ask. If only she did not feel so callous and calculating. This was a man’s life she was purchasing with the remains of her money. She bought her liberty at the price of his incarceration.

The plan had seemed quite neat in theory. Tidy, albeit ruthless. She would pay a prisoner to take on her debts. He would be behind bars. She would be free. Now that it suddenly involved a real person, the plan seemed grotesque. Nevertheless, it was his life or hers….

“Does he…have any family or friends?” She asked.

The jailer smirked. He understood what she needed to know. “No, madam. There is no one to buy him out of here and I am sure he could be persuaded to take your debts on into the bargain. He has nothing to lose by it.”

“How long has he been here?” Now that she was on the point of committing herself, Isabella found that she was hesitating, looking for opportunities to put off the moment.

“Three months, near enough, and set fair to be here for the rest of his time, so I understand.” The jailer cocked his head as he looked at her. “You’d not be wanting it any other way, ma’am?”

“No, thank you,” Isabella said. “A permanently absent husband is precisely what I require.”

The jailer touched the crisp banknotes that were nestling in his pocket. He had seen a number of ladies come to the Fleet in search of husbands. Some were looking for a father, no matter how belatedly, for an infant that was about to make its appearance in the world. Others were looking to escape a repugnant match. A few, like this lady, were trying to evade a crushing debt by marrying a man who was already in jail and could take on his wife’s obligations as well as his own without it making a ha’porth of difference to him. There were plenty of men in the Fleet who would have been willing to take her on for the price of a bottle of gin, but the lady’s requirements were precise. She was Quality, and she needed a man who was a gentleman by birth, but desperate enough not to be too scrupulous. Fortunately he knew plenty who fit the bill.

There was quality and then there was Quality with a capital Q, the jailer mused. No amount of clothing borrowed from a maid could conceal the fact that this was a lady, possibly even a countess. She vibrated with a kind of despair that he had seen many times before when a person was about to make a pact with the devil. The jailer had little pity left in him. Sentiment was dangerous in his job. He fingered the money once again. Countess, duchess, it mattered nothing to him. He would find a match for the queen herself if she paid him enough. And he would ask no questions.

The door of the cell crashed open and another turnkey tumbled out, slipping on the greasy floor and spilling the contents of the tray he carried. He was swearing under his breath. The thin stew slid off the plate and splattered Isabella’s cloak.

“And don’t come back until you have something edible to offer me,” a masculine voice said from within the cell. It was a pleasant voice but it was edged with a distinct undertone of menace.

“Is that your Mr. Ellis?” Isabella said dryly, as something thudded against the cell door as though to emphasize the words further. “It sounds as though he has the devil’s own temper.”

“Aye, a surly fellow is John Ellis,” the jailer confirmed. “Not that you need trouble yourself over that, ma’am.”

“I imagine that I would be bad tempered were I incarcerated in here,” Isabella said. She looked about her and shivered. “Best to get it over with, then.”

The cell was dark, lit only by one small barred window high in the wall. The first thing that shocked Isabella was that this better class of gentleman did not even possess the means to purchase a room of his own. He must be poor indeed. Her second thought was that this was not the more spacious and airy accommodation of the higher reaches of the Warden’s House, but a dim chamber where the air was almost as fetid as in the stews. She felt sick with nerves and disgust.

Three men were crouching on the floor playing a game with dice and counters. They barely looked up as the door opened, so intense was their concentration. Only pennies were being wagered but the world could have ended and they would not have broken up the game.

Another man squatted in a far corner where the water ran down the walls and soaked his shirt. He appeared not to notice it. He was rocking on his heels and crooning softly to himself, and he looked at Isabella with incurious eyes. She looked back with grief and pity, remembering the times when she had been in a position actually to aid such poor unfortunates rather than look at them with such helplessness.

The thought recollected her to her current situation and she looked around for Mr. John Ellis, her unlikely savior.

At first she could not discern him at all, other than as a shadowed figure seated at the rough table with his back to the light. Then he moved, and she saw that he had been reading, for he still had a book in his hand.

Despite the jailer’s description of him as surly, Isabella saw humor and vitality in his expression before it was quenched like a blown candle, leaving nothing but a grim austerity. In the dim light his face was hard, all clear-cut planes and angles beneath a dark tan that spoke of much time spent in hotter climates. His jaw was strong and square, and the uncompromising lines of his face were too harsh to be described as conventionally handsome. That seemed too soft a word. He emanated an attraction far more primitive and compelling than mere good looks. It was an attraction to take the breath away. Isabella had met many handsome men, men of charm and address. A princess tended to have such privileges. None of them, however, had driven the sense from her mind and the breath from her body in a way that made her feel slightly faint.

John Ellis placed the book on the table in front of him and looked up at her for a very long moment. There was a stillness about him that was striking. He did not say a word.

“Stand up when a lady enters the room,” the turnkey snapped at him.

The gentleman allowed his gaze to travel very slowly and insolently down Isabella’s entire body, from the peak of her hood to the tips of her shoes. Then, with equal deliberation, he removed his booted feet from the table and sat up a little straighter, but still he did not stand. There was an insolent appraisal in his eyes that brought the blood to Isabella’s face and her chin up in haughty defiance. His gaze fixed on her face and he did not look away for a single instant. His eyes were hard, his expression that of a man who has seen and done too much and will never again feel any emotion stronger than indifference.

Recognition, shocking and instantaneous, hit Isabella in the stomach. The world closed in around her. She felt seventeen again and a heedless debutante, barely more than a child. She remembered how her eyes had met those of this gentleman, not across some romantically crowded ballroom, but prosaically, over the teacups in her aunt’s shabby drawing room at Salterton.

“Who is that young man?” she had asked her aunt, Lady Jane Southern, and Jane had smiled and replied:

“His name is Marcus Stockhaven, my dear, and he is a lieutenant in the navy.” Jane had frowned a little as she’d watched Isabella’s expressive face. “Do not develop a tendre for him, Bella, for your mama would never allow the match. He is a nobody.”

She had spoken too late, of course. The tendre had blossomed instantly as Isabella had sat there, her gaze locked with the direct dark one of the man in the doorway. She had felt excited and faint and deliciously helpless to fight against her fate.

“He has no money and no expectations and your mama wishes you to marry well,” Jane had reminded her crisply, but her words of warning had been like an echo fading in the dark. Isabella had paid them no heed and had rushed headlong into first love. It had been a love that was going to end, quite properly, in a wedding. But then she had been obliged to marry Prince Ernest and everything had gone wrong….

Now, as her gaze met and held that of Marcus Stockhaven in much the same way as it had done in that faded drawing room twelve years before, Isabella felt a stunning sense of awareness and loss. A longing seared through her that made both the love and the heartbreak feel sharp and alive, as though all the feelings she had thought were dead had merely been sleeping and were awoken to instant life.

Then Stockhaven spoke, and the shackles of the past were broken.

“A lady,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze still resting on her. “I think you mistake. What possible reason could a lady have for coming here?”

One of the gamesters looked up and made a remark so coarse that Isabella winced. She raised a hand to stop the swelling indignation of the turnkey.

“Thank you,” she said crisply. “I will deal with this. Please show…Mr. Ellis…and myself to a room where we may speak alone.”

Her request caused some consternation. Evidently the jailer had not anticipated that she would require a private conversation and there were few facilities to deal with such an eventuality.

Marcus Stockhaven got to his feet. “You wish to speak privately with me, madam?”

“I do,” Isabella said.

Stockhaven’s voice was smooth and cold and its tone was mocking. “Surely you are aware that the price of privacy is higher than rubies in a place like this, madam?”

“It is fortunate then that I have brought my emeralds with me,” Isabella said, with composure. “Their price is higher than that of rubies.”

She put her hand in her reticule and withdrew the emerald bracelet that Ernest had given her when their daughter was born. He had told her that had the child been a boy then the bracelet would have been of diamonds. The emeralds were second best, like her marriage. She had never quite measured up to Ernest’s expectations, but at least his gift would come in useful at last.

In the dark light of the cell, the jewels glimmered with a deep radiance. The gamblers paused; one swore with awe and avarice.

“A private room,” Isabella repeated to the jailer. “At once.”

“At once, madam,” the jailer repeated, adjusting his assessment of her from countess to duchess. He had not considered the possibility of a foreign princess because she sounded so English.

An empty cell was found in short order. It was bare but for a moldy mattress, one hard chair, a table and a slop bucket. It was also cold. The jailer grabbed the bracelet from Isabella’s outstretched hand and it disappeared into his pocket quicker than a mouse down the throat of a snake. Marcus Stockhaven tucked his book beneath his arm and followed her from the one prison cell into the next with as little concern as though he were taking a walk in the park. Isabella admired his nerve at a time when her own feelings were in tatters. Her nerves were trembling; the conflict inside her echoed by a telltale quiver through her body.

The door scraped closed. There was a long silence, which Stockhaven did not break. He did not offer her the chair but took it himself, sitting watching her, his head at a slight slant, a quizzical look in his dark eyes. Isabella found it deeply unsettling. But then, he had always been able to disturb her with a mere glance.

“Well?”

Isabella jumped at the authoritative tone. Already it felt as though the balance of power in the interview was tilting away from her and that was all wrong. She needed to keep control of this. It was imperative that she dictate the terms. She struggled to regain the initiative.

“I—” Suddenly the words stuck in her throat. It was inconvenient to be troubled by scruples now. After she met with Churchward, she had gone straight out to the Doctors Commons to procure the special license. From there she had gone to the Fleet to purchase a husband. Desperation had kept her going and prevented her from questioning her actions too deeply. Whenever doubts had surfaced, she had fixed on the grim prospect of prison, and that had blotted out all else. But now, under the pitiless dark stare of Marcus Stockhaven, she was lost for words.

Stockhaven raised one black brow sardonically. “I have all the time in the world,” he said, “but I would prefer you to state your business as soon as possible, madam. It is a surprise to see you after all this time, and not a particularly welcome one. So…” He shrugged, and said, “Say your piece and let me get back to my book.”

Isabella swallowed hard. So he was not going to greet her with open arms. Of course not. How foolish of her to expect it when she had jilted him in the most painful and humiliating way imaginable. The shreds of their past passion mocked her.

“I thought that it was you,” she said slowly. “I recognized your voice.”

“How very flattering, after all these years,” Stockhaven said dryly. He leaned his chin on his hand. “What are you doing here?”

Isabella glanced toward the door, where she imagined that the turnkey’s ear was welded to the grille. There could be no names exchanged now if she wanted to preserve her anonymity, as presumably he wished to preserve his.

“I was looking for someone,” she said.

“But not me, I assume.” Stockhaven came to his feet with a compact grace. He was tall and broad-shouldered and his presence seemed to dominate the shabby cell. There was latent power in every line of his body—power that the stuffy confines of the room could not stifle. Isabella found that she was instinctively backing away, though he made no move toward her. She took a deep breath and forced herself to hold her ground.

“No, I was not looking for you specifically,” she said, “but now that I have found you—” She paused. Could she come out with the proposal now? No, that was a little too blunt, even for her. Besides, there were things that she wished to know.

“More to the point,” she said, “what are you doing here, sir, under the name of John Ellis?”

She saw his dark gaze narrow on her acutely, and although his expression was blank a few seconds later, she read his feelings clearly enough. This mattered to him. He did not want her to give his true identity away and he would certainly have preferred that she had not stumbled across him in the Fleet of all places.

“Forgive me, but that is none of your business.” His tone was clipped.

“I think it might be.” Isabella took a step farther into the cell. There were a hundred and one doubts and reasons hammering in her mind, telling her that it was the worst possible idea in the world to petition Marcus Stockhaven to marry her. She ignored them. She had been offered a chance, the possibility of a bargain, and she was going to take it.

“I have a proposition for you, sir,” she said, once again careful not to address Stockhaven by name. “Help me and I will…help you. At the least, I will hold my tongue and tell no one that I have seen you.”

Marcus Stockhaven did not speak. There was a quality in his silence that intimidated her. She hurried on. “I do not suppose that anyone knows that you are here?”

Still he did not reply.

“I do not suppose that you wish anyone to know that you are here?” Isabella pursued.

This time she saw that her words had penetrated his silence. He gave an involuntary movement. Again that hard, dark gaze raked her. “Perhaps not.”

“The disgrace of the debtor’s prison—”

“Quite so,” he interrupted her. “Are you seeking to blackmail me, madam?” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “I regret I cannot pay.”

“I do not want your money,” Isabella said. “I need a favor.”

“A favor from me?” Stockhaven’s smile deepened. “You must be desperate indeed to even think of asking.”

“Perhaps so. As you must be to be here in the first place.”

Stockhaven acknowledged the hit with an inclination of the head. “So? In what way may we be…mutually…helpful?”

There was an element in his tone that brought color to Isabella’s cheeks. There had always been something about this man that cut straight through her defenses and made them as thin as parchment. She felt astonishingly vulnerable, deeply disturbed by his presence and the memories he stirred. She sought to disguise her nervousness.

She looked around the filthy cell, from the water seeping through the walls to the bare mattress boasting a single dirty blanket.

“In return for a favor from you, I will not only hold my tongue but I am prepared to make your stay here more comfortable,” she said. “A room of your own, clean linen, good food and wine—” she looked at the book he had placed on the table “—more books to read…”

Isabella saw his gaze narrow on her thoughtfully. She took a step closer to him in silent appeal. For a moment Marcus Stockhaven was silent. She could feel herself trembling as she waited for his response.

“How generous,” he said. “So what is it that you want?” His tone was even but his dark eyes were very cold.

Isabella took a deep breath. For a moment she was poised on the brink and then there was no return.

“I want you to marry me,” she said.