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He sighed. “All right, Kathryn. I’ll do it, but I want something for my trouble.”
“Anything!” she promised, and then obviously thought better of the offer. “What?”
“Six thousand pounds,” he stated baldly.
Kathryn’s mouth worked soundlessly. She looked irate.
Jon tried to explain, “It’s not so mercenary as it sounds. I’ll never ask you for another groat, and I’ll pay you back with interest before year’s end. Five percent. My word on it.”
She looked doubtful, considered in silence for a few moments. “Eight percent,” she countered.
“Six.”
She bobbed her head once. “Done.”
Jon held out his hand, and she gave it a firm shake. He tried to disregard the disappointment in her eyes.
“Come with me,” he said. “I’ve a friend in Lakesend who’ll perform the ceremony without the banns. He owes me a favor. It’s probably best if I stand proxy for Pip.”
Kathryn hesitated, tugging her hand away from his and remaining where she stood for the moment. “Well, I suppose that would do. Are you certain that will be legal?”
“Binding as a hangman’s noose. Sure you really want to do this, Kathryn? Pip’s not exactly every lass’s dream come true.”
“I think it’s the only solution,” she said with a sigh.
“We’d best get on with it, then,” he said, ushering her toward her mare and providing a boost up. “If we hurry the ceremony, I can still make the Turkingtons’ do by nine o’clock, and you can put your bridegroom to bed by ten. Let’s ride.”
All the way to Lakesend Jon watched her with a wary eye. She could call the whole thing off at any second. He prayed. He promised whatever gods were watching that he would make this up to her. He would face her wrath when she discovered what he had done, and give her her freedom whenever she asked for it. And, in the meantime, Pip would be the most docile, undemanding husband any woman ever had. No, Kathryn would never suffer because of this night’s events. She would be saved from the machinations of that avaricious uncle, and Jon could pay off Bunrich. A perfect scheme.
Kathryn was right. This was the only way.
Darkness had fallen and the full moon risen by the time they arrived. “You wait outside and let me talk to the vicar first,” Jon suggested as they reached the outskirts of the village. The old stone chapel snuggled comfortably at the edge of Lakesend Common. Unthreatening moon shadows bathed the churchyard that flanked the parsonage. A weak light shone through the window signaling the presence of Reverend Carl Lockhart. Thank God Carl was home tonight. Jon thought it a good omen.
He dismounted and looped his reins over the spiky wrought-iron fence. “I’ll be back in a few moments,” he promised with a pat on her knee.
Lockhart answered immediately, and after a perfunctory greeting, Jon stated his case. “Carl, I need a hasty wedding performed. The lady outside doesn’t know she’s to be a countess, and I’d as soon you didn’t make any reference to it. For my sake, just do the pretty and say only what’s necessary, will you?”
Duplicity didn’t sit well with the good reverend. “I don’t know, Jonathan. Doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
If you only knew, Jon thought with a grimace. He lounged negligently on the corner of the parson’s desk. “Why? She needn’t know just yet about my title. She’s perfectly willing to marry me thinking I’m Nathan Chadwick Lyham, a simple musician. If she knew the rest, she’d balk. Her attitude toward the nobility could make this marriage impossible, and then I’d be done right out of my heir. The chit has no notion how difficult it would be to rear a bastard. Her parents will throw her out. No telling what she might do then. Best we marry and have done with it. I promise I will tell her the rest when the time’s right.”
The vicar shot him a suspicious look and began to shake his head.
Jon held up a gloved hand to forestall any denial. “Bear with me on this, Carl. We were fast friends as children. Still are, eh? Didn’t I see that Edward gave you the living here when your father died?”
Lockhart snorted. “Such as it is. You’re a sporadic landlord, at best. Better than Edward was, but still...”
Jon brightened. “Well, you’ve the best music in three counties, haven’t you? Draws ’em in like flies. We’ll build that school of yours by next summer, too. Things are looking up.”
“Sounds like bribery, milord,” Lockhart replied with an infectious grin.
“We always did understand each other, Carl,” Jon said. “You fix the papers. I’ll get the bride.” He turned on the way out. “Don’t mention the child. She’s dreadfully embarrassed about it.” Again he paused. “And thank you, friend. I won’t forget this.”
Kathryn took the whole thing rather well, Jon thought with relief. The words were said in a rush, witnessed by Carl’s sleepy housekeeper and the resident gravedigger. Jon punctuated the ceremony with a brief kiss he dared not prolong.
The taste of her soft lips lingered in his mind as he handed her the pen to sign her name on the church register. When she had done so, he handed her the marriage lines. She pored over the document for a moment and then scratched her name with a flourish.
Her eyes rested on his hand as he boldly wrote J. Nathan Chadwick. dropped down a space and wrote Lyham a little to the right. He handed her the paper. She looked at him then, with a helpless little smile, as though she’d only just realized what Pip’s real name was. No mistake there, Jon thought with a wry twist of his lips, only a few letters missing. A lie of omission.
He waited until Carl drew her away to congratulate her and then turned back to the church register. Jonathan Chadwick, Fifth Earl of Lyham, he wrote clearly beneath Kathryn’s signature and quickly closed the book.
God help him, it was done. He had wed Kathryn Wainwright for her wealth, an act of desperation and wicked deception. Hell was too good for him, but at least he had postponed that destination for a while. Ah, well, he’d march along the path of survival, as out of step as ever, and hope one day to find the rhythm that always eluded him. This was only another stumble.
“We must away now, Reverend. Our thanks to you,” Jon said with a nod to the housekeeper and the gravedigger. “Come, my dear, and leave these good people to their rest.”
Kathryn laid her hand on his arm and preceded him through the door. “What now?” she asked as they reached their mounts. She placed her tiny boot in his hand and let him boost her up.
“I’ll ride back with you as far as the Hare’s Foot Inn, and then you’re on your own. Say what you will to Pip, but see he gets to bed at a decent hour. If I don’t show at Turkington’s affair tonight, he’ll let his stork of a daughter sing. The whole county will heave up its supper, and they’ll be blaming me for it.”
She laughed hard, leaning forward in the saddle and almost unseating herself. Jon grinned up at her, wishing it was him she would be putting to bed later on. Actually it would be, but certainly not in the manner he fantasized. Curse his luck.
As soon as they reached the village inn, Jon blew Kathryn a kiss and waved goodbye. He kicked Imp to a gallop and cut through the woods to the manor. Old Turkington would have to hum for his guests tonight. There were only moments to spare before his wife arrived at the house, expecting a wedding night of some sort. He supposed music would have to suffice.
Kathryn took her time approaching Timberoak Manor. Moonlight did nothing to disguise the ragged condition of her new home. Half-dead vines hugged the stones as far up as the second-floor windows. The ivy appeared to be all that was holding the place together. Paint-peeled shutters hung precariously, threatening to drop to the ground with the first strong breeze. Knee-high grasses probably concealed all manner of debris around the weed-infested gravel of the driveway. Still, one could clearly see the ghost of former grandeur. Perhaps, with care and a hefty portion of her inheritance, she could resurrect that ghost.
Kathryn clung to the newly realized ambition. Such as it was, she now had a home to call her own. She had always craved a home, a family and a husband. Timberoak, Jon Chadwick and Pip weren’t exactly what she’d had in mind during all those wishing sessions, but at the advanced age of almost twenty-five, she could hardly hope for much more.
After she located the stable and fed Mabel, Kathryn walked around front again. The heavy door swung open at a touch. She strode down the entrance hall and entered the littered ballroom with forced confidence and determined hope. She had always heard it was best to begin as one meant to go.
Pip sat on the floor with his back to her, humming along with the small harp he strummed. His tattered green robe was bunched around his hips, and his outstretched legs were bare. “Pip,” she called softly, afraid she would startle him. “It’s Kathryn.”
He turned with a wide, vacant smile. Simply beautiful, she thought with a catch in her breath. And beautifully simple. Regret and sympathy streaked through her, leaving in their wake a need to do something, anything, to improve the quality of his life.
“May I join you?” she asked as she knelt beside him.
“Want to play?” Pip handed her the child’s harp.
She pushed it back into his arms. “I don’t know how, dear.”
“I play. You sing,” he ordered, and began to pluck a folk tune she vaguely remembered from childhood.
“‘Winnowing Away,”’ she remarked as the title came to her. Her mother had sung it to her when she was little. Before...
“I don’t sing. Ever,” she said. The words came out more sharply than she had meant them to. His mouth drew down in a pout.
Before she thought what she was doing, Kathryn reached up and brushed his hair back, uncovering the dark bruise on his temple. He had scrubbed it nearly raw. The whole of his face and neck looked freshly washed, his sun-kissed hair still damp around it.
She wondered whether he shaved his own face. Perhaps Jon or Grandy did it for him. At least he made some attempt at cleanliness on his own. She caught a faint whiff of cologne and smiled. He must have dabbled in Jon’s things out of curiosity.
“Sing to me,” he mumbled, stroking the harp strings.
Kathryn sighed. She hadn’t sung in thirteen years. The last time had gained her the only beating her father ever gave her. After that, even humming had drawn dark scowls from him.
“My mother used to sing,” she said, almost to herself and noticed Pip’s head cock to one side as though he were interested.
Kathryn realized then that she now had a confidant. Pip could listen to all her woes and would promptly forget them. She had talked to her cat when she was small and had no one else to listen. Whiskers had probably saved her sanity after Mother left and Father grew morose and distant. Come to think of it, Pip’s curious expression had a certain similarity to her feline friend’s.
She smiled and clasped her hands together in her lap. “Mother sang like a nightingale, Pip. Still does, I expect.”
“Mother died,” Pip said bluntly, catching a bass string with one fingernail. The note bonged and then faded to silence.
“Your mother died? Mine went away. Sad, isn’t it?” Kathryn leaned against his shoulder, and Pip grunted softly in assent.
He began to play again, this time a piece she didn’t know—one of his own, she suspected. The soft music soothed as a maternal caress was meant to. Perhaps Pip had invented his own consolation for the loss of his mother and was sharing it with her. What a lovely thought that, despite his disability, he possessed such sensitivity, such natural goodness.
She lay back on the chilly floor and covered her eyes with one arm. Pip’s sweet, comforting sounds enfolded her, warmed her, and eventually lulled her to sleep.
Chapter Five
Strong sunlight and the smell of coffee greeted Kathryn when she woke. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, groaning as her corset bit into her rib cage.
She was in Pip’s room. Or at least the one she had assigned him when she saw the pigsty he usually occupied. The covers lay tangled half about her, half on the floor. Otherwise, the place looked much as it had the last time she was in it. The dust was more evident, and the furnishings seemed a bit more faded than she recalled. How in the world had she gotten here?
Searching her memory, Kathryn vaguely remembered strong arms beneath her, the shifting movements of being carried like a child. She lay back and sighed. So Pip was looking after her. The future didn’t look half so bleak as she had expected it would this morning.
Once she had her money, she would restore his home and make it livable. Maybe even as beautiful as it had been in its glory days. And she would give him a life of comfort and ease. Her Pip would have no worries at all other than what note to play next. Her Pip. Nathan. She remembered the name Jon had written on the marriage certificate, but she could never think of Pip as Nathan. He probably wouldn’t answer to that name, anyway.
So what if Pip wasn’t her ideal husband? Not likely she would ever have found the man she’d envisioned anyway. She had imagined a somewhat older fellow. Handsome, naturally. Virile and experienced, worldly, sure of himself, the master of all situations. And rich. Well, now she didn’t require a rich man. Love had never been on her wish list. She’d seen what love did to her father when he lost it. She wasn’t even certain what love meant; passion, supposedly, coupled with obsession. She would gladly settle for a different, safer kind of affection with Pip.
She couldn’t deny that she felt a strong physical attraction to her brother-in-law, Chadwick. But then, she had experienced a stirring toward Pip that proved nearly as strong. The failing was one she’d have to combat until she got over it. Desire might be new and unsettling, but she could deal with it until she got used to the near proximity of two extremely handsome men. Once they became familiar in a family setting, she would surely come to think of both in .a sisterly way.
They could live a pleasant life here at Timberoak. Jon would come periodically, of course, to get the music Pip wrote. They would make him welcome and be a real family. Even old Grandy might fit in, once Kathryn set her straight about showing Pip the respect he was due. Just because a childhood accident had stolen some of his reason, that gave the woman no call to grump at him the way she did. Everything would work out beautifully. Kathryn meant to see that it did. They were all her responsibility now.
She listened to the steady thump of footsteps on the stairs and the firm knock at her bedroom door. “Come in,” she called, fully expecting Pip.
“Good morning, Kathryn,” Jon said as he entered. “You slept well, I trust?”
Kathryn shifted uncomfortably in her wrinkled riding habit. He looked too wonderfully decadent, still in his evening clothes. Powder lay thick on his face, its pallor interrupted only by his dark brows and lashes, and the natural color of his expressive mouth. Most of his dark, wavy hair had escaped from its scarlet thong, as though the wind had pulled it free. Was he just coming in from last evening’s affair at the Turkingtons’ or leaving for another? The night had passed, but she had no idea what time of day it was.
Or did he never allow anyone to see him without this ridiculous mask of his? One would think he was hiding something. Scars, perhaps? La, men could be more vain than women!
His appearance ought to have set her teeth on edge, and in a way it did just that. It was as though he were daring anyone to challenge his eccentricity. He wore his trappings like a badge. Kathryn stifled a sudden urge to rip away the pretense and discover the real man underneath. She supposed most women felt that way, and that it was precisely what Jon intended.
“You have a performance today?” she asked, assuming the coolest voice she could manage.
He handed her a mug of steaming coffee. “Actually, no. I thought we might go into the city and announce the marriage.”
“And collect the money,” she said acerbically.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” At least he had the grace to look embarrassed.
Kathryn shrugged, took a sip of the over-sweetened brew, and shivered with disgust before she answered. “I told you I can’t have it until I’m twenty-five.”
“But you said a husband would make all the difference. You said...”
Kathryn saw where this was going. “I said no such thing. I still can’t get the money until my twenty-fifth birthday. Nor can anyone else. Why do you think my uncle waited this long? If I could have collected merely by taking a husband, I’d be long married by now, with my brain pickled in laudanum syrup. You’ll just have to wait along with me, I’m afraid.” She finished the coffee in two swallows and winced again at the sugary taste.
Even under the pallor of his powder, Kathryn imagined, Jon looked ashen. He just stood there wearing one of Pip’s blank expressions. Odd, aside from their hair color, she hadn’t realized just how close their resemblance was until now. She had a strange urge to reassure him, the same urge she usually felt toward his brother. “Don’t worry, Jon. My birthday’s in two months.”
“You’ll be twenty-five?” he asked, visibly shaking off whatever troubled him. “I’d thought you much younger.”
“Thank you. The blush is off, though.” She flashed him a quick grin. “At least I’m no longer an old maid.”
His eyes registered surprise at her sally, and then resignation. “No, no, I suppose not.” He stepped back toward the doorway, stumbling a bit on the edge of the rug. “Well, then... Well, I’ll be off to town. If you don’t need anything else, that is.”
“Where is Pip today?” she asked as she stood up and placed her coffee mug on the bedside table.
“Uh...he goes down to the lake most mornings. Sometimes the woods. Look, Kathryn, I have to leave now.”
“Wait awhile, if you’re going into the city. I’d like you to take a message to my uncle. Even if I can’t collect the money yet, I’d like to make at least one announcement.”
He shook his head and looked eager to be on his way. “I’m afraid I haven’t time to wait.”
“Oh, I promise you it will be short and to the point,” she assured him.
When he stood back, she preceded him down the stairs and into the ballroom. Amid the scatter of music sheets, she located a blank page and sat down on the floor to write.
Dear Uncle, On Tuesday night, the fifth of September, I was married to Mr. Nathan Lyham. We are residing at his country house until my birthday. Your niece, Kathryn
Jon peered over her shoulder until she had finished. He cleared his throat and rocked back on his heels when she looked up. “Is that all?”
“It ought to do the trick. His plans are definitely foiled. Will you post it for me?” She folded it in thirds and handed it up.
“I shall have it delivered. Will he come looking for you, do you think?”
Kathryn laughed as she took his hand to get up from the floor. “He won’t know where to look, now will he?”
Jon crouched and picked up the little harp Pip had played the night before. He stuffed her letter in his pocket and tucked the harp under his arm as he rose.
“Won’t Pip mind if you take away one of his ladies?” she asked.
“He will weep buckets, Kathryn, but there’s no help for it.” The look on his face was pure grief. She knew then that he felt the same affinity for the instrument that Pip did.
Kathryn took his free hand in hers. “You will sell it? Are we really so desperate for funds, Jon?”
