The Arrangement

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.