The Secret Marriage Pact

Beneath the steady cadence of his boots, Jane caught the dim sound of laughter and footsteps from somewhere overhead. She thought she was imagining it until Jasper opened another door to reveal a narrow staircase. More laughter and voices drifted down from upstairs. ‘Are you having a gathering in a warehouse?’

‘You could say that.’ He avoided her eyes as he slid the keys back in his pocket.

‘Jasper Charton, are you running a house of ill repute?’

His head jerked up. ‘No, at least not the kind you’re imagining. Even if I was, don’t appear so excited. It isn’t right for you to be so thrilled at the idea.’

‘It isn’t right for me to be in a warehouse with a single man in the middle of the night either...’ she threw open her arms ‘...and yet here I am.’

‘Yes, here you are.’ He pulled his lips to one side in displeasure, as if his plan wasn’t unfolding quite as he’d imagined. Good. It’d be a welcome change to have someone else’s plans go awry instead of hers.

‘Well, are you going to show me?’

‘I’m debating it.’

‘The time for that has passed.’

‘I suppose it has. Come on then.’ Jasper took her hand, his fingers tight around hers as he started up the stairs. She held on to him, the pressure of his skin against hers making her a touch dizzy as they climbed to the first floor. Her curiosity increased with each step as she tried to guess what he’d brought her here to see. She hoped it wasn’t just warehousemen relaxing over cards after a long day. She was tired of disappointments. There’d been too many of them lately.

They stepped into the hall and stopped before a closed door. Light slipped out from under it along with muffled conversation and the faint aroma of pipe smoke. She studied the light beneath the wood, noting how it dimmed and brightened as someone on the other side passed between the source and the door. She waited anxiously for him to open it and reveal what was on the other side, but instead he led her past it to the far end of the hall. She could see the dark recess of an opening and the top of another, much wider, staircase leading back down to the ground floor and the front of the building. It was quiet here, the sounds drifting out of the other room muffled more than they should be in an old place like this. There was also nothing here except a lantern on a metal hook breaking up the endless line of knotted planked wall. She wondered if he meant to lead her back into the warehouse when he reached up and pushed aside the wide plate connecting the metal base to the lamp. It exposed a brass ring hidden behind it.

Now he really had her attention.

He pulled the ring and a portion of the planked wall popped open, revealing a door concealed by the wood and the darkness.

‘Impressive,’ Jane conceded, jealous. As children, they’d dreamed of having a secret room of their own. The empty space beneath the stairs in the Charton house was the closest they’d come, but every adult had known about it, along with every servant who used to check there first whenever they couldn’t find them.

‘Don’t compliment me yet.’ He unlocked the door and led her into an office far more opulent than Philip’s. Gilt-framed paintings adorned the far wall and an elaborate peacock inkwell punctuated the lustrous blotter. Sumptuous leather furniture complemented the narrow-legged burled-wood desk and added to the gaudy wealth of the decor.

‘Are you sure you’re not running a house of ill repute because your office is decorated like one.’

‘This came from my uncle’s house in Savannah. He had a penchant for gaudy furniture. I sold the worst of it a while back.’

She hated to think what the rest of it looked like if this was the most conservative. She was about to say so when he faced her, as serious as a bailiff. ‘Promise me, no matter what happens between us, you won’t reveal to anyone what I’m about to show you.’

She didn’t share his sense of gravitas. ‘Your accounting books?’

He ignored her humour and took her hands. His eyes bored into hers with a severity she’d only seen the morning they’d laid her parents to rest. It turned her as serious as him. ‘I brought you here because I can trust you, I always could, and I need someone to confide in. I thought I could do it with Milton, but he’s proven himself unworthy.’ A stricken look crossed his face, reminiscent of the one Philip had worn the morning Arabella, his first wife, had died after giving birth to their son Thomas. ‘Promise me.’

She imagined the loss of his closeness with Milton might be to blame for the darkness colouring his eyes, yet deep down she suspected it wasn’t. ‘I promise.’

He let go of her and went to a painting of a large house with tall columns hanging on the wall. He swung it aside to reveal a peephole. ‘Come look.’

* * *

Jasper held his breath as Jane rose on her tiptoes and pressed her face to the hole. The light spilling out of the room beyond spread over her fine nose and high cheeks, and he caught something of the mischievous imp he’d begun to love before his parents had sent him to America. Except it wasn’t their past captivating him tonight, it was the present. She was so stunning and innocent and he longed to draw her close instead of pushing her away. He couldn’t because she deserved better than a damaged and deceitful man, and it was already too late. There was no stopping Jane from being disgusted by what he was showing her and no way of preventing her from telling everyone if she decided to betray him.

She won’t. It was the old bond they’d shared in childhood when they used to sneak away from lessons with the bird-like tutor to go and play. It continued to connect them, despite the years they’d spent apart. ‘This is how I make my living.’

‘You’re running a gambling hell.’ She pressed her hands against the wall and leaned in closer to the hole.

He rested her painting on a small hook, then slid aside the portrait of a dog beside hers to view the tables full of men playing cards across the green baize. The cut-crystal lamps hanging over each table cast circles of light to surround them. Men recruited from the nearby slums who’d demonstrated even a modicum of manners moved between the guests to refill brandy glasses and light cigars, and, most importantly, extend credit. ‘Not only do I own the Company Gaming Room, I’m the house bank. The players bet against me and most of the time they lose.’

A loud cheer went up from across the room as Mr Portland, a rotund man with a long face, threw up his hands in victory. ‘Sometimes, they win.’

Mr Bronson, a lanky gentleman in a fine suit and a bright red waistcoat, Jasper’s partner in this affair, approached the winner to offer congratulations and payment.

Jane studied him, but he continued to observe the room, bracing himself for the sneer of disgust he was sure was coming. They’d both been raised to detest gambling as man after man had approached their fathers and brothers for money to cover their debts and save the businesses they were throwing away with the dice. Jasper was contributing to the very thing which had ruined so many, including him.

‘Why, Jasper Charton, I never thought you had it in you to be a rogue.’ He turned to face her, stunned to discover her blue eyes, illuminated by the candlelight concentrated through the hole, open wide in amazement.

‘You’re not supposed to be impressed.’ He set the dog painting over the hole and then reached past her face to return the house painting back to its original position.

‘I admit it’s a bit shady, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what you’ve done and how much you’ve accomplished in a matter of months.’

‘It’s a gambling hell, not a cotton-import business.’ He pressed his knuckles into his hips. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected and yet he couldn’t help but smile. This was exactly like something she would do. ‘I thought your brother raised you to detest gambling?’

‘I thought your father did the same. It seems it didn’t stick for either of us.’ She cocked her thumb at the wall. ‘I assume he doesn’t know about this.’

‘No one in the family does. Can I trust you not to tell them or use this against me in your matrimonial pursuit?’

‘Of course. I’m not low enough to blackmail a person.’ Jane crossed her arms beneath her round breasts. ‘But I don’t see how you’ll keep it from them for ever. Isn’t this illegal?’

‘No, but it’s not entirely legal either, rather a grey area, which is why I don’t draw much attention to it.’

‘And no one around here has noticed so much coming and going at night?’

‘Drunks are the only people in this area after dark and a dram here and there keeps them quiet. It, and the front and back entrances, are why I chose this building.’

‘Impressive.’ Despite himself, he basked in her compliment before her next questions dissolved it. ‘Did you do this in Savannah?’

Guilt struck him as hard as shame. ‘I did.’

‘What did your uncle think of it?’

He strode to the fireplace, debating whether or not to take her deeper into his confidence, but the freedom to finally speak about this part of his life muted his usual caution. He’d brought Jane this far, there was little harm in taking her a touch further. ‘He’s the one who taught me to do it.’

‘He was a gambler, too?’ She rushed to join him at the ornately carved marble mantel.

‘He never gambled and neither do I. It isn’t wise.’

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t a cotton merchant, was he?’

‘Maybe when he first went to America, but he couldn’t tell the difference between Egyptian cotton and South Carolina cotton by the time I joined him. I was as stunned as you are when I learned of his true trade.’ Stunned and in awe. To a young man of fifteen who’d thought he’d been banished from his family and consigned to a colonial backwater, the vice-filled rooms and the income they gave him had been a scintillating temptation. He’d embraced the life, even when its darkness had shown itself in the haggard faces of losers at the Hazard table. ‘Pretending to my mother to be a cotton merchant was Uncle Patrick’s way of explaining the source of his wealth without offending anyone’s sensibilities.’

‘And your mother never suspected the truth?’

‘She’s quick, but Savannah is a long way from London.’ The distance was the most enticing aspect of coming home, but not even an entire ocean could separate him from his past failures. ‘She loved her brother, but my father wasn’t as enamoured of him. Father would’ve despised him if he’d known the real source of his income.’