Marry the Man Today Page 17

  The glass was cracked beyond the bars and filthy. But she could still make out a single star through a wedge of open sky, could smell the velvety moonlight pouring in on the chilly air.

  Freedom. It seemed so terribly remote just now. So very precious.

  “Disturbing the peace, madam?”

  “Blakestone!” she whispered. Her heart took a soaring leap as she whirled around on the bench.

  He was standing at the door, in the same place he’d been the very first time she’d seen him. Every inch as large, now a profound presence in her life, a warmth in her belly.

  And more thunderously angry than she’d ever seen him.

  “Bank fraud?” The charge blustered from him, rattling the iron fittings and the stone flags that stretched out between them.

  “Good evening, my lord.” Her voice had gone as creaky as her joints.

  “Distributing salacious materials? By God, woman!” He was bellowing now like a bull elephant in full rut as he dragged a cowering policeman into view from behind him. “Dammit, officer, open this bloody door immediately!”

  “What are you thinking, Blakestone?” She ran to the door. “No, officer, don’t listen to him!”

  She didn’t know what she wanted just now, but it wasn’t to be rescued by this bear of a man with dark fire spitting from his eyes.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The timid young man was reaching for the lock with the huge ring of keys in his quaking hands. “Orders from the Lord Mayor. I’m to release you to your husband here.”

  “The Lord Mayor? My what?”

  Husband?

  The door clanked open and she backed away as Blakestone came through it like a war wagon. “When I get you home, wife, I’m going to paddle you good.”

  Wife?

  “Paddle me? Like hell you are, Blakestone! Don’t you come a step closer!” Elizabeth dodged out of his long reach, leaping back onto the bench and pressing herself against the cold stone wall.

  Which only gave him better access to her to break her out of jail!

  “There’s a lesson in all this, lad,” the blackguard earl said to the officer, ignoring her protests and her battering hands as he wrapped his arms around her hips and flung her over his shoulder like a sack. “If you want a happy home, keep your woman barefoot in the kitchen, and large with child.”

  “Oh,yessir!”

  “How dare you! I’m not your wife, Blakestone!” She kicked out at him and squirmed. But he had clamped one arm over her backside, and was holding her legs flat against his chest with the other, leaving her to look backward into the face of the policeman. “He’s not my husband!”

  “There you go sassing at me again, woman!” Blackstone swatted her bottom with the gentlest hand, then held it there, his fingers spread possessively, intimately. “Give your wife a sniff of freedom, lad, and she’s likely to start disowning you in public.”

  “Cor, I’ll remember that, sir!” The officer was trailing eagerly after them, staring up at Elizabeth perched on Blakestone’s shoulder, his eyes wide with admiring awe at the domineering treatment she was receiving from her conquering warlord.

  “And I’ll remember this outrage, Blakestone!” she said, whipping back to him.

  “I should hope so, wife.”

  Wife, again!

  “Damn you, I’m not your wife! Don’t believe him, officer! Now let me go!”

  But the lout was already stomping down the stairs into the courtyard, leaving the young officer waving at them from the stoop, defying the law!

  “Keep still, madam, or I’ll leave you right here in jail where you belong!” He stood her for an instant on the carriage step then pressed her backward into the darkness and onto the upholstered seat.

  “Then please leave me here, Blakestone! I have to stay!”

  “No, you don’t.” He slammed the door shut.

  “You just broke me out of jail!”

  “You’re welcome, madam.” He knocked on the side of the carriage and it plunged forward.

  “Don’t you understand, Blakestone? Thanks to you, I’m now a fugitive from Scotland Yard!” Hoping for a chance to right this horrible gaff, she waited until he turned to take the bench opposite before she reached across to grab the door latch. But he was there first, his hand a vise around hers.

  “You’re staying here with me, madam.” He removed her hand and drew her back onto the bench beside him, then wrapped his arms around her, holding her fast, hip-to-hip, her back fit against his chest. “Now, sit still and behave yourself.”

  “Me behave myself? What about you? You just told that gullible young officer a bold-faced lie and then snatched me from the custody of the Metropolitan Police under false pretenses.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.” He was staring out the window in the carriage door, watching for something, his chin raised and squared off in his resolve.

  “Are you mad, Blakestone?” She twisted in his arms and glared up at him, still stunned that the law-abiding earl would have actually broken her out of jail. “I’ve been charged with three serious felonies.”

  “Yes, I know, love.”

  “When Captain Robins learns that I skipped out in the middle of the night with an accomplice who claimed that I was his wife, and that the Lord Mayor had ordered my release into your care, they’ll come looking for me. And when they find me, they’re going to throw away the key.”

  He dropped his gaze to hers, his mouth wolfish as he turned her chin toward him with the end of his finger. “No one will come looking for you, Elizabeth, because the charges have been dropped.”

  Her heart went racing like the wind, riding a miracle. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”

  “I know because I arranged your release with the Lord Mayor.”

  “You did … oh, you blackguard!” She ought to be throwing herself around his neck and kissing him for the relief that flooded her. Instead she wanted to throttle him! “You think you can just walk into my life and sweep up after me!”

  “Believe me, it badly needed sweeping!”

  “Then I will do it.”

  “Actually, madam, the deed has been done. Or will be done before the night is over. Come hell, high water, or an ill-tempered suffragist.”

  “What do you mean by that?” The man had tangled his fingers in the ends of her hair, was looking at her with a good deal of heat and hunger. “Do you and the Lord Mayor plan to hang me in secret before dawn?”

  “We considered it.”

  “But you’d rather humiliate me instead.” Then something in the unusual rocking of the carriage made her struggle out of his arms and put her face to the window. “Wait a minute! This isn’t the way to the Adams.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “And that was St. Paul’s Cathedral.” She whirled back to him. “Where are you taking me?”

  He smiled. “To a wedding.”

  “A what? A wedding?” She pressed her nose against the window, just to prove the darkness to herself. “But it’s after midnight!”

  She turned back to find him smiling at her with a lift of that rascal brow. “Rather last minute, I admit. But it’s a special wedding.”

  But that was impossible. “But I can’t attend a wedding, Blakestone. I’m not dressed for it.” She held up the skirt of her kitchen apron, with its huge pockets and blotches of blackberry stains. “Just look at me!”

  “Oh, I am.” He was leaning casually against the carriage wall, studying her.

  “I’m sure the bride won’t appreciate me showing up dressed like a rag doll.”

  That made him laugh heartily and sit forward as the carriage slowed and turned a final corner before it came to a stop in front of a huge building. “Believe me, the bride won’t even notice.”

  The carriage door popped open and, before she could get a good look at the attendant’s livery, Blakestone leaped down the steps.

  “Then she’s not much of a bride.” Elizabeth stepped forward into the carriage doorway as he reached up
to encircle her waist with his huge, hot hands. “After all, who gets married in the middle of the night?”

  He stopped. Held her there suspended in time, his eyes glinting as they searched her face until he said finally, softly, “Indeed, madam, who?”

  But there seemed to be so much more to his evasive answer, an inference in his dark eyes. Something he seemed to have decided in that instant to hold back from her. That set her heart knocking around between her ears.

  “Come, love, the Lord Mayor’s waiting.” He lifted her out of the carriage and set her on her feet, then caught her hand inside his elbow and started toward a set of stairs at the side entrance to this imposing building.

  “The Lord Mayor!” Dear God, that’s where they were! At Mansion House, the Lord Mayor’s residence.

  For a wedding?

  An impossible image wobbled through her head: the Lord Mayor getting married in the middle of the night. A clandestine, candlelit ceremony, a mysterious bride, and a sea of attending policemen.

  And a man who had just called her love.

  Possibly a symptom of a sudden madness.

  Perhaps the madness was hers. Her pulse was feathery and fast, and she’d begun to imagine even more impossible things.

  Another wedding.

  Hers.

  To him.

  But before she could sort through that terrifying absurdity, her inscrutable earl was leading her up the steps, past two liveried guards and right on into the Court of Justice.

  “Blast it all, Blakestone! You and the Lord Mayor have proven your point. I am thoroughly rebuked. I don’t need to see the man in person.”

  “It’s the only way, my dear.”

  “The only way to what?” He wasn’t making any sense, but she followed him on her unstrung legs, over the marble floor and down a dimly lighted corridor toward some unknown fate that had something to do with a wedding. “Please take me home.”

  “You’re not going home, Elizabeth. It’s too late for that.”

  “Then it’s certainly too late for a wedding.”

  “Unfortunately for both of us, a wedding is the only way to keep you out of prison for the next twelve years of your life.”

  How could her attending a wedding keep her out of prison? She planted her heels against the slick marble floor, but Blakestone’s momentum merely skated her along behind him. “Are you mad, Blakestone?”

  “Probably. But for some bloody reason that I can’t fathom, I’ve decided to save you from yourself. At great cost to myself.”

  To himself? “You needn’t bother, my lord, I don’t need saving.”

  “Bloody hell!” He stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor and turned her around to face the brunt of his fury. A roiling heat that had filled his eyes with a dark alarm, that rattled in his throat as he spoke. “Don’t you understand?”

  “I do.” At least she thought she did. “And I’m very grateful that you—”

  “Listen to me, Elizabeth. The Bank of England—the most formidable financial institution the world has ever known—has charged you with fraudulently opening an account with them. Do you know what that means?”

  Possibly. If she only knew which account they were questioning. Her very large, very legitimate portfolio that she kept in her own name in the Bank of England? Or all those little accounts she’d helped women like Lady Ellis open against their husbands’ wishes?

  Dear God, was that what this was all about? The warrant hadn’t been specific. And if they knew that, then what else did the authorities know?

  “I’m sorry, Blakestone.” She tried to look past his outrage, tried to shrug off his disturbing alarm. “I don’t know what the bank is talking about.”

  He pulled her closer, glaring into her eyes. “Who is Adelaide Chiswick?”

  Adelaide? “Oh, Adelaide!” She gulped back a deep sigh of relief. Maybe she could talk them out of that charge after all. The Bank and Scotland Yard and Ross Carrington, the powerful Earl of Blakestone whose breath was dancing warmly, deliciously, against her mouth.

  “Who is she?”

  “Well, my lord, she’s … me. Sort of. It’s my account.”

  He grunted and wheeled her backward onto a wooden bench and then stared at her from just inches away. “You opened a bank account in the name of Adelaide Chiswick?”

  She tried to wet her lips, but her mouth had dried up on the blatant lie she was about to tell to the man who was only trying to protect her from her own risky affairs. “It was last Christmas.”

  “Why?” The word came out like a growl.

  “I was …” It had seemed like a fine idea at the time. A test of her skill at deception. A way to see if she could pass herself off as an elderly widow and open a little account in the completely false name of Adelaide Chiswick.

  Because if she could do it, then she could help other apparent elderly widows do the same thing.

  Like Lady Ellis and her alter ego, the widowed Althea Moore.

  But she couldn’t confess that little ruse to Blakestone. There were too many of her innocent followers to protect. And besides, the Bank only seemed interested in Adelaide.

  Still, she would have to think fast to come up with a suitable explanation for the man who was still glaring at her.

  “It all began, my lord, when a young woman came to work for me when I was getting the Adams ready to open. A very sad case, very poor. She lived with her old mum and eight siblings somewhere in the Seven Dials.” This was going well for an instant story. Though she couldn’t let it take on too much of the penny dreadful.

  “Tragic, Elizabeth, but what has this to do with the Bank of England?”

  “Her name was Addie Chiswick. And I felt sorry for her and her family. I tried to help her out with some extra money, but she said she wouldn’t take charity. So I opened the account for her, in her name, thinking that I would send a solicitor to her home a few months later to tell her that she had inherited a few pounds. And to give her the bank book. But, sadly, Addie quit working for me after a few weeks, and when I sent off the solicitor, he couldn’t find the house or any sign of Addie or her family.”

  The lout blinked at her, skepticism dripping from his reply, “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, my lord, and to this day the account sits unused, waiting for the solicitor to find Addie.” She offered him her most saintly smile, pleased with her little fabrication. But not sure that he believed her.

  He chewed on his cheek for a while, assessing her from every angle, then shook his head. “You’re either lying, Miss Dunaway, or a damned fool. And I’ve known you long enough to know that you are no fool.”

  “And I’m not a criminal. I didn’t defraud anyone. It’s my money. I’m not trying to steal anything. Who cares what name I use on my account?”

  “That’s not the point, madam.” He knelt in front of her and wrapped his huge hands around hers, frightening her with the clarity of his concern. “You can’t confound the Bank of England like that and expect not to be punished for your insolence.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  No, my dear Elizabeth, because you terrify them.

  Because the woman couldn’t help herself. Because her heart was filled up with a restlessness he knew only too well. That he’d had to learn to manage in his own life.

  “Because you’re an upstart, my dear. You’re not playing by their rules and that makes them spiteful.” Willing to put this bright, uncompromising woman in jail.

  She harrumped and leaned back against the bench. “Which is the very reason I’ve also been charged with disturbing the queen’s peace.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Because I’m a woman. And I’ve dared to inform the emperor that he has no clothes. That his laws have no place in the natural order of life.” She stood and paced away from him to the opposite wall, bringing him to his feet, making him want to follow after her. “That charge against me is completely unfair. Our march down Whitehall was peaceful. And that ballyhoo in Parliament
the other day wasn’t our fault.”

  “I’m aware of that, Elizabeth.” And newly aware of the injustice she was battling against, of his own growing sense of outrage on her behalf. “However, the worst of the charges against you are undeniable.”

  “By that you mean my printing and distributing salacious material.”

  “That’s how the warrant reads.”

  “It’s wrong.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, plumping them above her bodice, causing havoc in his groin and blowing up a fire in his chest. ” Unbridled Embraces is not salacious, nor is it meant to be, as you well know!”

  “In fact, my dear, should I ever be asked the question in a court of law, I would have to state that I highly approved of Miss Dunaway’s unbridled embraces.”

  “There, you see!”

  But she obviously didn’t. Couldn’t see the effect she was having on him, on her freedom.

  “However, Elizabeth, according to the solicitor I consulted on your behalf, the law deems that the publication of your little booklet constitutes a threat to public safety.”

  “Suggesting that a wife make herself attractive to her husband is a threat to public safety? That’s absurd.”

  Bloody shortsighted. “But it’s the letter of the law. And that’s all the courts know.”

  “But you know differently, Blakestone. You know my intentions. You can testify in my defense. They’ll believe you; you’re a man.”

  To the marrow. He could feel the pulse of her spirit thrumming through his veins. A new brightness in his soul.

  “And I’ve learned to play by their rules when it suits me to do so.”

  “Like breaking me out of jail.”

  He was finished listening to her debate, more sure than ever that he had made the right decision. For the both of them.

  “I told you, my dear, I’ve had the charges against you dropped.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  Braced for the mother of all battles, Ross put himself between Elizabeth and the door. “Because, madam, there is one condition to your release.”

  She narrowed her brow up at him. “That we attend a midnight wedding?”

  Indeed. “A simple accord that I reached with the Lord Mayor.”