It was too much for a saint to bear. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth!" she cried.
"As far as you're concerned, my dear Judith, that's exactly what I am," he announced aridly. "The first and last man you will know, in the fullest sense of that word."
White-faced, Judith stood up in the cart and whipped at the horse with the reins. The animal plunged forward with a snort, catching Marcus off guard. He stumbled, still holding the bit as the horse lunged. He regained his balance just in time and released the bit before he was dragged forward by the now caracoling animal. He grabbed the side of the cart and sprang upward, seizing the reins from her. The horse shot off as if a bee were lodged beneath his tail.
"Monsieur… monsieur…" came the outraged screams of the innkeeper's wife behind them.
Judith looked over her shoulder. Madame Berthoid was pounding up the road in their wake, waving a skillet at them, her apron flapping into her face. Her cap flew off into the ditch but her charge continued regardless.
"I think you forgot to pay your shot," Judith said on a strangled gasp, an almost hysterical laughter suddenly taking the place of her rage.
"Damnation!" Marcus hauled back on the reins, and the near-demented horse reared to a snorting halt. He turned to look at Judith, who was now doubled over, weeping with laughter. His lip quivered and his shoulders began to shake at the absurdity of the scene. He glanced over his shoulder to where Madame Berthoid still pounded, panting, toward them.
"One of these days, I really will wallop you," he commented to the gasping Judith, as he reached into his pocket for his billfold. "You nearly had me taken up for a thief." Leaning down to the red-faced, indignant Madame Berthoid, he gave her his most charming smile and poured forth a flood of apologies, blaming the urgency of the moment for his forgetfulness.
Madame was appeased with a handful of sovereigns that more than compensated for her hospitality, and stood breathless and perspiring in the road as Marcus started the cart again.
"Now, where were we?" he said.
Judith had finally stopped laughing and leaned back against the rough wooden seat back. "On the road to Quatre Bras. Where we're both going against the traffic."
"So it would seem. We'll find a priest there."
"There must be some other way," she said, biting her lip. But she couldn't think of one that wouldn't ruin everything. How could Sebastian ever forgive her for destroying months and months of planning in the willful pursuit of passion?
"I took your maidenhead and we were discovered in a situation that would ruin you. In such a circumstance, there is no honorable alternative." He stated the facts bluntly, without inflection.
"But have you forgotten, my lord, that I am a card-sharping, horse-thieving, disreputable hussy, living on the fringes of Society, in the shadow of the gaming tables?" Her voice thickened and she swallowed crossly.
"No, I haven't forgotten. I'll just have to wean you away from your undesirable pursuits."
"And if I am not to be weaned, my lord?"
He shrugged. "It's not a matter for jest, Judith. As my wife, you will have responsibilities to my name and my honor. You'll accept those responsibilities as your part of the bargain."
Bargain? Judith turned away from him, trying to sort out the maelstrom raging in her head. Marriage to the Marquis of Carrington would work beautifully for both herself and Sebastian. Installed as the Marchioness of Carrington, she would have immediate and natural access to the circles frequented by Gracemere, as would Sebastian as the marquis's brother-in-law. Their position in Society would be assured and their present funds would be more than ample to set Sebastian up as a bachelor in London. He would need fashionable rooms instead of a house; one servant instead of a houseful. Their accumulated money would go much farther. It would mean they could begin to enact their revenge so much sooner than they'd anticipated. And when it was over,
Sebastian would be established in his own right. This card had been dealt to her hand; only a fool would refuse out of scruple to play it.
But Marcus mustn't know anything of that. There was a lifetime of secrets he couldn't know. So how could she fulfill her side of this bargain?
"I know nothing of you," she said aloud. "Why have you never married?"
There was silence. Marcus stared across the past and contemplated the truth… and the half-truth that had become the truth. Honor still bound him to the half-truth, for all that the one who could be most damaged by the whole story had been in her grave these many years past. The full truth was known now only to himself and one other. But it was a fair question.
"It's a plain and unremarkable tale, but pride is a devilish thing, and I have more than my fair share. Ten years ago I was to be married. A woman your antithesis in every way. I had known her since childhood and it didn't occur to me to woo her. She was a sweet, meek soul who I assumed would make me a compliant and exemplary wife. Instead, she fell wildly in love with a fortune-hunting gamester, who most skillfully swept her off her feet. She cried off."
His voice was perfectly level, almost bland as he continued. "The role of jilted fiance was a hard and humiliating one for me. I was rather young to face such public mortification with equanimity. I decided then that a man could live in perfect contentment without a wife."
"Did she marry the fortune hunter?"
What choice had she had…? Poor little dupe. Marcus closed his eyes on the memory of Martha's battered face, closed his ears to the sound of her broken whimpers. An untamed lynx would never get herself into such a predicament. An unprincipled adventuress would arrange matters to suit herself. Had she heard those voices on the stairs? Had she known who was in the taproom before she'd walked in, her clothes almost disheveled, the aura of a satisfied woman clinging to every curve and line of her body? Had she contrived this? But even if she had, a man of honor had no choice.
"Yes, she married him," he said, "and died in childbed nine months later, leaving him to game away her fortune." He shook his head in a dismissive gesture. "I don't wish to talk of Martha ever again. You and she are so different, one could almost believe you to be different species."
She wanted to ask him if he believed he could be happy married to her, but deep in her soul she knew the answer. His hand had been forced; he was making that clear with every word and intonation.
If it wasn't for Gracemere, it would be easy to let him off the hook. She'd be able to say that in her circles, reputation didn't matter, that she'd be perfectly happy to be his lover for as long as it suited them both. But she wasn't going to say any of those things. She was a gamester and she'd been dealt a perfect hand.
She turned her head and met his cool gaze. "We have a bargain, then, my lord Carrington," she said simply. Marcus nodded in brief affirmation and returned his attention to the road.
Judith closed her eyes, listening to the roar of cannon growing ever closer. The road was thronged with columns of soldiers, horses and limbers, fleeing civilians mingling with the detritus of a retreating army. Suddenly all thought of passion and revenge seemed trivial in the midst of an event that would obliterate thousands of lives and shape the future of their world.
7
The village of Quatre Bras stood at a crossroads. To Judith's eyes it was a village out of Dante. The battle still raged and a heavy pall of gunsmoke hung over the shattered cottages and farmhouses along the road. The dead and the wounded lay anywhere a spare place could be found for them, and from the surgeons' field hospital, the sounds of agony rose, pitiable, on the evening air.
The main street of the village was clogged with men and horses; a wounded horse struggled in the traces of an overturned limber, screaming like a banshee as a group of soldiers fought to cut the traces and right the cannon.