Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1. Louise Allen

have a headache.’ As she reached the door she turned back. ‘And however lightly you take that debt, I am not going to forget it. Somehow it will have to be paid back, however long it takes. I might be reduced to marrying a highwayman, but I am not going to be a thief.’

      The man they called Black Jack stood blinking in the morning light of the Assistant Governor’s office and wondered if bad food and water were making him hallucinate. Had he really agreed yesterday to marry some foolish spinster because she wanted to escape her debts? It seemed he had or he wouldn’t be here. Goodness knows why, unless it was the instinctive reaction that any woman saddled with that dandipratt of a brother deserved some kind of help. And it passed the time more interestingly than sitting in his cell day and night and reflecting on his past sins. Of course, there was the other benefit that the young lawyer had drawn delicately to his attention. Or perhaps it would not prove to be a benefit; he would wait and see.

      The more intelligent of the two young men who had made the proposition to him, the lawyer, was speaking to Mr Rawlings. The Assistant Governor frowned, then nodded. ‘Very well, we will have the leg irons off him, no need to alarm Miss Cunningham, but the hand shackles stay.’ There was further hurried speech. ‘A bath and a shave? I think not, Mr Brigham!’ More muttering. ‘Er, yes, there is that. I had set aside one of the better cells; Mr Wiggens left it only yesterday, having cleared his debts. But it will have to be after the ceremony, I cannot detain the chaplain any longer than necessary.’

      The dark man caught sight of his own reflection in a mirror hanging in one corner of the office and grimaced. The blushing bride would probably scream and run at the sight of him; he had not realised just how bad he looked and doubtless the smell was worse.

      ‘Ah, Miss Cunningham, do come in.’ Mr Rawlings was ushering in a tall, slender woman in grey, heavily veiled. A trim maid, wide-eyed with apprehension, was at her back. The woman lifted a hand and put back her veil and the dark man felt the impact as a catch in his throat. She was beautiful.

      Huge brown eyes, wide cheekbones tapering to a pointed chin, a mass of dark blonde hair just visible under her bonnet—lovely, terrified, brave.

      Katherine sent one searching look around the office and fixed on the man in chains at its centre with almost painful attention. It was hard to look at anyone or anything else. He was tall, broad shouldered, dark, with eyes that looked black. It was difficult to see the rest of his face under a heavy growth of untrimmed beard, but what she could see had a fading tan. She noticed with a strange pang that the skin under his eyes was pale: he was not well.

      His hands were filthy and his wrists red raw where the shackles had chaffed. His clothes were quite simply appalling: a torn frieze jacket, buckskin breeches and a pair of muddy boots. If he was wearing a shirt, it appeared to be collarless and a ragged neckcloth, red with white spots, filled in the gap at his throat. She could smell him from across the room. Sweat and the smell of the prison that seeped into everything. She realised it was part of the air of this place.

      Then his eyes met hers and he was quite simply a man in desperate trouble, a fellow human being that she and Philip were using for their own convenience.

      ‘I wish to speak to Mr Standon privately.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally calm to her own ears.

      ‘I am not sure that is wise, ma’am.’

      ‘I will speak to him,’ she insisted, walking forward past the highwayman and into the far corner of the room. ‘Mr Standon, please.’ Her legs shook.

      He followed her, stood with his back to the room, shielding her, and raised one eyebrow interrogatively. ‘Yes, Miss Cunningham?’

      Katherine regarded him, startled. He was so well spoken! A gentleman turned highwayman? It happened, she had heard of cases. ‘I want to know why you have agreed to this,’ she said impetuously, keeping her voice low. ‘What possible benefit to you can there be in it?’

      The dark eyes held hers and laughter lines crinkled at the corners. ‘It is an improvement on sitting in a dark cell for twenty-four hours a day.’

      ‘That cannot be all,’ she said impatiently. ‘If you had some dependents I could promise to take care of, I would do my best by them, despite my circumstances—but my brother says you have no one.’

      ‘I have no one who needs your help,’ he confirmed and she wondered at the sudden grimness in his voice.

      ‘Then why?’ She was not going to be fobbed off—suddenly it was important to know why this condemned man should put himself out in any way for her.

      The laughter lines were back, and with them a new note in the soft, deep voice. ‘I have to admit that the prospect of tonight was a powerful incentive, Miss Cunningham. Once I had seen you.’

      ‘What do you mean—“tonight”?’ Her heart was beginning to thud. He could not mean …? No, surely not.

      ‘A legal marriage requires two things Miss Cunningham. A wedding ceremony and the consummation of the union.’

      Katherine felt the blood draining out of her face and the room began to swim. She staggered and his hand was under her arm. She blinked, steadied herself and withdrew from him. ‘I must speak to my brother.’ Turning, Katherine stalked across the room and took Philip firmly by the arm. ‘Outside, please, and you too, Arthur. Excuse us, Mr Rawlings, Reverend.’

      The corridor outside the office was deserted. Katherine turned on the two men, her voice shaking with outrage. ‘You did not tell me this wedding would have to be consummated! What are you thinking of? How can I possibly give myself to a man I do not know, a convicted criminal? Am I supposed to retire to his filthy cell for the night? Is that what you expect? Because if that is the case, let me tell you, you are far and away out!’

      ‘Katherine, please calm down.’ Arthur took her hand. Furiously Katherine swatted him away. ‘The moneylenders will have their spies in here. This is not an uncommon occurrence. If they can find grounds to contest the marriage and pursue their money, believe me they will.’

      ‘And they promised me he will have a bath and a shave first,’ Philip added, flinching at the look his sister sent him. ‘And a nice cell …’

      ‘A nice cell? And what does that consist of, pray?’ She had to keep her anger fuelled or otherwise she was going to give way under the wave of fear and embarrassment that threatened to swamp her. ‘House-trained rats and tasteful sackcloth hangings?’

      ‘No, it is a proper room, Katy, like a room in a good inn, I promise you. It has just been vacated by one of the better-off debtors.’

      Katherine took a few hurried steps away from them until she could rest her forehead against a bookcase that stood in the corridor. Behind her she heard Arthur say, ‘Leave her for a moment.’

      The tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them back, but not before two escaped and ran down her cheeks. She scrubbed them away and tried to think. What was the alternative? To end up in this place herself with no prospect of release? Put like that, the choice seemed relatively simple.

      She supposed a young lady should be prepared to die rather than surrender her virtue in such circumstances, but was it so very different from the young girls whose families married them off to men old enough to be their fathers, or to some dissolute rake for money or dynastic reasons? Like them, she would be married. And, for some reason she could not define, the condemned man in the other room made her feel ridiculously safe.

      ‘Very well.’ Do it now, an inner voice urged. Do it while you have the courage of your anger. Without looking at the two young men, she threw open the door into the office and went in to find herself in the middle of an argument between the prisoner and a very flustered chaplain.

      ‘The name on the licence is incorrect, I cannot proceed.’

      ‘That is my name.’

      ‘Your name is Jack or John Standon.’

      ‘That is what they call me.’ The prisoner reached out a hand, fetters clanking, and laid it