“Answer me. Would you deny me if our circumstances were different?”
Claire thought it an absurd question and felt safe in her answer. It was a request from a desperate and condemned man. Whatever she answered made no difference. His fate was sealed as much as hers. “No, I would not.”
“Is that a promise?”
She hesitated. Her mind spun with the importance of making such a promise. What if this man broke free? She had no doubt he was the kind of man who would hunt her down to claim what was due him. Yet his execution remained certain.
Claire held an incredible sympathy for him. A little white lie she reasoned would be a kindness to him. Besides, her nerves were overwrought. She did not have the fortitude to tell him any different. He had married her. He enabled her freedom. He had none. She owed him at least that. If mere words gave him comfort in his last hour, so be it. A twinge of guilt pawed at her breast from her insincerity. At the same time, something intangible nagged at her, warned her of the future, the price of a lie. She shook that feeling aside. This time she grasped his hand.
“A promise.”
Sir Edmund Jarvis sat in his library. Where was the little twit? Gone for hours with that goose-eyed cousin of hers and no one knew where they were. Never did he expect the damned duke to appear and demand to see his prospective bride. A growing stack of bills from the money he spent on Claire to hook a fat benefactor lay stashed in his drawer. Creditors camped on his doorstep. He swallowed hard against the pinch of his cravat and nodded a tight smile to the duke seated across from him. If his niece did not return, he’d lose everything he risked on his hated brother’s progeny. He still remained in the shadow of his handsome, intelligent, and prosperous first-born brother. It ate at him like acid. This business with Claire reminded him of all his failures. His fingers tightened on the top of his cane.
After his brother’s death, he had assumed his role as baron. His habit for women and gambling had forced him to sell off his estates in England. There was not enough to pay off his debts. His recourse was the plantation in Jamaica where he had eked out a living for the past ten years.
What luck to run into Claire on his first trip to England. Even if the clerk in the store had not called her name he would have recognized her. To think he had paid to have her dropped off in St. Giles when she was nine to get rid of her. She had been rescued by the meddlesome cook. Jarvis smirked. He had covered his trail well. No one could point a finger at him. As the affair turned out, fortune smiled for she had grown into a lovely young woman. He saw the diamond in the rough and decided to capitalize on her. How easy to enforce his guardianship. The taste of money swelled his palate.
The front door opened. Jarvis scrambled into the entry hall of his rented townhouse. The luxuriant appointments at an appropriate London address, window dressing, orchestrated to dupe a wealthy lord, forgotten for the moment. He narrowed his eyes, skewering his niece yet she maintained a benign expression as if she trumped him. How like his hated brother. Her cousin fidgeted with her spectacles. “Where have you been at this late hour? The duke demands to move up the wedding to crush the rumors of you proposing to that nobody, Sir Durham. What a mess you’ve created.”
“You can tell his Grace there will be no wedding.”
Did he hear right? The twit dared to challenge him.
“Sir Jarvis?”
Drat. The duke followed him from the library. Jarvis swallowed bile.
“I hope you can rectify this insubordination,” the duke rasped.
Rectify? He longed to beat every inch of her. Rumors insinuated the duke possessed a sadistic trait. He’d let the duke have his own fun. “Claire, you will marry the duke.” He clenched his cane but he wished it was her neck.
His niece shook her head and said calmly, “I married a felon at Newgate.”
“You what?” Jarvis choked. A coldness hit his core.
“The betrothal is off,” said the duke and hobbled to the door, his servant running to open it for him. I refuse to have my name linked with scandal.”
“Wait, your grace. There must be something we can bargain,” Jarvis cried. He gritted his teeth. How he hated groveling. At this point, he’d do anything to keep the negotiation going.
The duke turned and sniffed, studying his intended from head to toe. “How am I to know she is pure?”
His niece gasped. Jarvis rocked back on his heels. “I would have her checked even if I have to do the task myself with your lordship in full audience.”
The duke sneered apparently pleased with the prospect. “To learn obedience.”
Jarvis had him. His niece’s humiliation drew the old lecher as a leech to raw meat. Claire’s face paled. Victory smoothed like warm honey over his tongue. If he had to, he’d throw her on the hall floor and begin the inspections immediately.
Bold as brass, his niece drew herself up and moved to within inches of the duke. “The marriage is consummated.”
Jarvis’s blood pounded in his ears. The bitch. She destroyed all his hard work.
The duke’s face flushed red. “The contract is broken, Jarvis. Your niece’s conduct is offensive. My family’s name is above reproach. I won’t have malicious gossip and public disgrace bring it down.”
With Claire’s lack of maidenhead, Jarvis’s fortune vanished, perishing with the duke’s departure. The nightmare of prison loomed. He had no other option than to depart for Jamaica. By God, he’d force the girl to go with him. He could feel his blood pulsating through the veins in his throat. He raised his cane. He’d teach her to fear.
Claire took in the heavy fragrance of honeysuckle, nutmeg and logwood flower. She listened to distant seagulls and grew lulled by the steady clomping of the horses as the carriage drew along a sandy path beneath a warm tropical sun. The sharp turn of events rolled over in her mind…how she found herself in Jamaica−a God-forsaken wild outpost of the King’s realm.
A clearing of her uncle’s throat drew Claire’s attention to his disproving gaze. She could never get over his resemblance to a large toad on its hind legs.
