An Infamous Marriage Read online

  “It’s all right, Mama.” He sat in the chair opposite hers. “Do you remember Giles Hamilton?”

  “Of course I do,” she snapped with a hint of her old spirit. “But you don’t. He died before you were born.”

  He blinked in confusion of his own until he remembered that Giles had been named for his grandfather. “Never mind. I came to tell you I’m going to be married.”

  “Married! You’re only a boy.”

  What year was it in his mother’s mind? “I’m thirty now, Mama.”

  She stared out the window. “Jack was such a sweet boy. Not so clever as Ned, and never could keep still, but he always had a smile on his face when he was a baby. Just like his father.”

  Jack rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t conjure up a smile now. “The woman I’m marrying is named Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hamilton.”

  “Giles had no daughter.”

  “Not his daughter. His grandson’s widow. She’ll be here in a few days, and she will look after you every day when I go back to Canada.”

  “Canada!”

  “Yes, Mama. I must return. My regiment is there.”

  “Your regiment...”

  “I’m in the Forty-Ninth. A lieutenant-colonel now. You were so pleased when I got my first commission and came to show you my uniform.”

  She shook her head. “Dick Armstrong’s doing. Didn’t raise sons to be food for powder, but your uncle was always filling your head with his tales of glory. What glory? Why, we lost the colonies!”

  Jack bit his lip and looked away. Here was truth—Mama was past lying now—but she had made a convincing show of admiration fourteen years ago when he had appeared before her as a freshly made ensign glorying in the splendor of a new red coat. “I love you, Mama,” he said at last. There seemed nothing else left to say. “I’ll come again this evening.”

  He rose and summoned Metcalf, who to his relief sat sewing on the far side of the dressing room, with nothing of the air of a person who’d been listening at keyholes.

  Back in his own room, he changed from his old brown coat into the new bottle-green. No matter how little sentiment or passion was going into this marriage, surely it wasn’t right to call on his intended bride in his oldest and most horse-scented coat. He needed some token of mourning for Giles, too. After a moment’s consideration, he hurried back to his mother’s room, where Metcalf contrived a black armband from a length of ribbon. So armored, he had Penelope saddled and rode off for the village at a brisk trot as the weak winter sun fought to break through a thin layer of clouds.

  * * *

  The morning after Giles died, Elizabeth sat in the parlor with Mrs. Ilderton, the wife of Selyhaugh’s solicitor, and Miss Rafferty, an aging spinster who rented rooms from the Ildertons. She wished they would go away and leave her alone, but she could never be so rude as to suggest it. They had brought food—a loaf of fresh bread, a platter of ham and baked apples—and Miss Rafferty had made tea, saying it was the least she could do to help Elizabeth in her time of trial.

  The vicar had stopped by just after dawn to tell her the funeral would be tomorrow, bringing with him his housekeeper, a sturdy no-nonsense woman who had stayed to help Elizabeth and Mrs. Purvis prepare the body. Mr. Branley, the gentleman who owned this house and had let it to Giles on quite reasonable terms, had also called to assure her she could stay through the end of the month, which was fortunately still three weeks away. After that...well, she supposed she must find some sort of work. If only she had even a pittance of an inheritance to scrape a living from, as Miss Rafferty did.

  She supposed Colonel Armstrong would attempt to honor his promise to Giles. Yet Elizabeth intended to dissuade him even though the new marriage would have bought her safety and security. As mistress of a fine gentleman farmer’s manor like Westerby Grange she would be wealthier than she’d ever imagined herself. Still, she couldn’t ask him to tie himself for life to a woman he knew nothing of and who was not of his choosing. Surely he wouldn’t wish to marry her once he knew whose daughter she was.

  Giles had awoken briefly yesterday evening before slipping into his final sleep. He’d smiled to see her sitting by his bedside. “Pretty Elizabeth,” he’d said. “I wish I could have stayed longer...given you more.”

  She’d longed to weep and bewail the unfairness of it all, that she must lose him so soon after she had found him, but she wanted him to die in peace. “You gave me everything.”

  “For a week.” He’d smiled a little. “But you’ll be happy with Jack. I can go to my rest in comfort, knowing you’ll be with him. You’ll suit, the two of you.”

  The selfish part of her had wanted to berate him for forcing such a commitment upon her and his friend, for expecting her to marry a stranger. But no, Giles must die in peace, and when he was gone, she and Colonel Armstrong would decide that so mad a promise didn’t bind them and then agree to go their separate ways. “He’s nothing like you,” was all she’d said.

  “No. But you’ll come to love him in time. You’ll see. Good man. More clever than he seems at first, and an adventurer, as you wish to be.”

  “I don’t want to be an adventurer,” she’d protested. “I want you to stay.”

  The smile had flickered over his ruined features again. “Look at your books. Adventures.”

  She glanced at the book on the table beside the bed, which she’d been reading to Giles before the disease had settled in his lungs—an account of James Cook’s voyages. She supposed she did collect books of travels. It had been a great comfort, during her years of ostracism and toil in York, to imagine herself away to the far side of the world. But she’d never expected to have adventures of her own, and she certainly didn’t want to think of Botany Bay or Batavia now.

  “I’ll miss you so.” Her voice had broken then.

  He’d squeezed her hand with a grip turned so weak compared to the strength she’d fallen in love with. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Those had been his last words.

  Now she heard a single horse trotting down the village lane. Looking out the window, she spotted Colonel Armstrong, impeccable in a well-fitted green coat and mounted on a glossy dapple gray. He rode straight to her gate, reined the hunter to a halt and swung down from the saddle.

  “Why, there’s little Jack Armstrong,” Miss Rafferty said. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Hardly little anymore,” Mrs. Ilderton replied with open appreciation. “He and your Giles were great friends as boys.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth said. “He called yesterday. I believe he was sadly shocked to learn what was happening.” She gazed out the window again. Colonel Armstrong was securing his horse to the gatepost and murmuring into its silvery ear. There was something endearing about a man who talked to his animals, but she shut her heart to his appeal. It felt like a betrayal.

  “Perhaps your husband left a message for you to pass along to him?” Mrs. Ilderton guessed.

  “Indeed, ma’am.” Thank God she was sensitive enough to spare Elizabeth the trouble of inventing an excuse to push the ladies out her door so she could get on with spurning her unwanted suitor.

  “Then we must be going, hadn’t we, Augusta?” Mrs. Ilderton stood, smoothing her skirts.

  Miss Rafferty, still watching Colonel Armstrong from the window, started at her words. “Hm? Oh, yes. He’s turned into a fine specimen of a man, hasn’t he? I never would’ve dreamed it when he first went into the army, as short and spotty as he was. He was one of those who looked twelve when he was sixteen, and it seemed so absurd to think of him playing a man’s part and ordering great louts of soldiers about. Such a pity about his mother, don’t you think? And her not so very old.”

  She rose, too, and Elizabeth walked with them to the door, thanking them for their gifts and assuring them she would, indeed, not hesitate to call upon them if she had need.

  Colonel Armstrong stepped aside to let them pass, bowing and lifting his hat. Still clutching it in one hand, he waited opposite
her. The sun had at last broken through the clouds, and its light glinted off his dark brown hair. What business had he, had anyone, looking so alive and full of color on a day like today?

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hamilton, and my condolences.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. Won’t you come in?” She stepped back and he followed, shutting the door behind him. She sat on the more rickety of their two old Hepplewhite chairs and indicated that he should take the sturdier one opposite. He even sat like a soldier on alert, perched on the edge of his chair as if ready to spring into action at any moment. Elizabeth had never been one to admire a red coat or dream of marrying a soldier. Tears threatened, but she fought them. If she broke down before Colonel Armstrong, he would feel obliged to comfort her, and she didn’t want such intimacy when she meant to push him away.

  “I know this is all difficult,” he said in a gentle voice at odds with his martial demeanor. “It is for me, too. I miss Giles. I thought he’d always be here for me when I’m obliged—when I come back to Selyhaugh. But we must begin to make our plans. I’ve less than a fortnight before I must leave for the south if I’m to make my sailing.”

  She studied him. It wasn’t only his martial profession that made him move so briskly and sit as though he could hardly wait to escape the chair’s confinement. Jack Armstrong was restless. He didn’t enjoy his visits home—she hadn’t missed that slip of his tongue. His energy called out to the part of her that had always felt hemmed in by her restricted life as a poor relation. But that didn’t make him the right husband for her. No one could be, not now.

  “I don’t expect you to marry me,” she said steadily. “I cannot hold you to a promise made under such circumstances.”

  If possible, that made him sit even more forward in his chair. His thick eyebrows drew together and his dark eyes flashed. “You may be able to ignore a deathbed promise, madam. But I cannot.”

  His voice was cold with contempt, and Elizabeth could no longer hold back a sob and a torrent of tears.

  Thankfully he neither berated her further nor attempted to comfort her. She wasn’t sure which would have been worse. She heard his chair creak as he stood, and a gentleman’s handkerchief, large, clean and plain, entered her blurred field of vision.

  She took it, dabbed at her eyes and concentrated on nothing but breathing until she was calm enough to speak. “He shouldn’t have asked it of us,” she said. “He meant it for the best, but it wasn’t right.”

  “Perhaps he shouldn’t have done it, but he did, and we agreed to it. I consider myself bound by my honor as a gentleman and an officer to keep my word.”

  “We don’t even know each other,” Elizabeth protested.

  “A great many couples marry on a slight acquaintance. We aren’t so unusual in that.”

  “You might not like me, once you know me. You might regret it.”

  “Not as much as I’d regret it if I didn’t keep my word.”

  She took a deep breath and brought up the argument she expected to convince him, since nothing else had. “You don’t know who I am, or what my family was.”

  He sat down and looked at her, his gaze level and devoid of any emotion she could read. “You were born Elizabeth Ellershaw, and you are from York, so I take it you are some relation of the banker there whose bank failed when he...”

  His voice trailed off. Brusque and military as he was, apparently he had a little tact. “When he became a thief, and then a suicide,” she finished for him. “Yes, Charles Ellershaw was my father.” Never mind that Father had only dipped into the bank’s funds when a private investment scheme of his had gone wrong, thinking he could replace the money before anyone missed it. Theft was theft. And suicide was suicide, too, though Father’s death had been ruled an accident for Mother’s sake, so he could be buried on hallowed ground. She had joined him there only months later, having wasted away in an excess of grief and shame that had been a subtler form of self-destruction.

  “I thought you must be,” Colonel Armstrong said.

  “You already knew.”

  “I did.”

  She rubbed her forehead, which was beginning to ache. “But how? Surely Giles didn’t speak of it.”

  “No, he didn’t. Mrs. Purvis mentioned your maiden name, and I recognized it. A friend of mine, George Lang—we were lieutenants together in the Forty-Ninth at the time—lost most of what he’d had saved.”

  “Good God. I’m so sorry. I hope—that is to say...” She couldn’t finish the sentence, for it wasn’t as though she could do anything to help this man her father had harmed.

  Colonel Armstrong shook his head. “Don’t trouble yourself. It may have slowed his promotion to captain a little—he’s a major now—but he exchanged into the Fifty-First, so he’s on the Peninsula with Lord Wellington. Better for an officer to be fighting the French than to be rusticating in Canada, waiting for the Americans to decide whether they’ll try to invade.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure she agreed. At least, it seemed to her healthier for an officer to be garrisoning a border with a nation that was peaceable for now and had no Bonaparte to direct its armies should that change. But such concerns were beside the point.

  “Knowing all that,” she said. “You would still marry me?”

  “I gave my word.”

  His word meant a great deal to him. Elizabeth supposed that was a good sign. He kept his word, and he was pleasing to look upon. And, as little as she wanted to force him into this marriage, what else could she do, really? She had no money of her own and few skills to earn her bread. Even if she’d been the most accomplished musician and painter of watercolors in the world, no one would want a thief’s daughter living in their house and instructing their children as a governess. If she had any other options, she couldn’t see them.

  “Very well,” she said with a heavy heart. “We gave our words.”

  He nodded once. “It isn’t as though the benefit is all on your side, you know. Have you met my mother yet?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you know her condition. As my wife, you will be in charge of her care while I am away. While the Forty-Ninth is abroad, you’ll be on your own. When we’re in Upper Canada, it can take four months or more for even a letter to arrive from England.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I have some experience of that sort of thing. Before Giles and I—” her voice shook a little, “before we married I lived with my great-uncle. His mind was sound, but I took care of him for several years as his health failed.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Dr. Adams said it’s impossible to know how long a woman in my mother’s condition may yet live. You may have a long watch of it. You wouldn’t credit it to look at her, but she’s just sixty-six.”

  “I don’t mind the responsibility. But is there no one else, no one who could spare you having to marry a stranger to secure her care? No brothers or sisters?”

  “I’m not marrying you to secure her care. I’m marrying you because I gave my word to my oldest friend. That you have experience nursing the aged and infirm is only a fortunate coincidence.”

  That wasn’t quite true, Elizabeth thought, or Giles wouldn’t have used it as an argument to persuade his friend to agree to so mad a scheme. “Nevertheless,” she said.

  “I have no brother or sister still living. No matter what becomes of me, you’ll be mistress of Westerby Grange. Mama was the last of the Westerbys, and I suppose I’m the last of her. Not that it’s much—more a farm than an estate.”

  “It’s more than I ever expected to have.”

  “Perhaps, but we’re nothing grand, I assure you.”

  “But I’ve already heard Westerby Grange horses are the finest in the county.” Elizabeth knew little about horses, but if the splendid gray outside was a sample, they must be. “And Giles told me something about a high-and-mighty uncle of yours.”

  Colonel Armstrong smiled. He quickly sobered, but not before Elizabeth noticed his face was even more handsome and lively whe
n he looked happy. “That would be my Uncle Richard. Major-General Armstrong, who last saw service in the American war. I owe him a great deal for establishing me in my profession and assisting in my advancement, but if my mother were herself, she would tell you he’s chiefly high and mighty in his own estimation.”

  Elizabeth hid a smile of her own, appalled she could even be tempted to it with Giles dead less than a day. “I see.”

  “So it’s just Mama and Westerby Grange. Do you think you can manage that much?”

  Did he think her a child or a simpleton, or utterly unfit by birth to be mistress of his estates? “I believe I can,” she said. “At least, once all Selyhaugh gets over the shock of seeing me so suddenly established there.”

  “There’s no helping that, unfortunately. If I wasn’t obliged to leave so soon, we could wait a decent interval, but...” He huffed out a breath, managing to sound both thoughtful and impatient. “I don’t suppose... Do you know yet if you might be with child?” He looked out the window now, rather than straight at her.

  “I am not.” Much to her sorrow, her courses had begun on the third day after Giles fell ill.

  “That’s—I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  He turned to face her again, and now there was an uncertainty and vulnerability in his expression that made his dark brown eyes look like something gentler than coal or obsidian.

  “I don’t know either.”

  They stared at each other in silence for a moment. It would have been wonderful to have Giles’s child, something left of him in the world after he was gone, but bearing such a child eight months and more after marrying another man would’ve been...complicated. Elizabeth was glad she knew for certain, one way or the other. How horrible would it have been, if she hadn’t expected her courses for another week or two, to wed Colonel Armstrong, consummate the marriage—oh, God, she’d have to go to bed with him before the week was out and she hardly knew him and it was too soon—only to find herself pregnant with no idea which husband was the father?

  “How shall we manage this?” he asked at last. “There is no time for the banns, and Scotland would be quicker than a special license, unless you’re greatly opposed to anything that smells of an elopement.”