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  Mrs. Twitchen’s expression softened to one of pity. “You are not thinking clearly, child. Don’t think that because I’m old I do not know what you are feeling, the passions that are in your heart. And that is how I know that this is a time when you must rely on those older and wiser than yourself, who can see with clear eyes. Mr. Brent is a scoundrel, and will bring you nothing but unhappiness. It is too late to save you from the pain of an entanglement with him, but we can at least save you from public dishonor.”

  She had lived long enough by the rules and wishes of others. No more! “I am well past my majority. I can make up my own mind in this.”

  “Have you forgotten the engagement Mr. Brent broke in the past? Do you not think that other young woman felt as passionately as you do now?”

  “I am sure there must have been a good reason behind that.” And she was.

  “How can you know?” Mrs. Twitchen asked. “You have known Mr. Brent little more than a week. I have been with the captain nigh on two decades, and still do not know him entirely. Anyone can be charming for a week, my dear. Let his history speak to you of who he truly is.”

  Vivian shook her head and stood. “It is his very history that tells me he is a man worthy of love. You cannot dissuade me from what my heart knows is true.” She marched to the door and laid her hand upon the knob.

  “Vivian, darling.” Mrs. Twitchen rose and came toward her, hands fluttering. “Can you at least give us this one night? Can you at least sleep upon it, and let us know that you have considered fully?”

  Vivian took in Mrs. Twitchen’s frantic concern, her distress, and wavered. She let her hand fall from the knob. If waiting one night was all that the Twitchens required of her, she would be heartless not to give it. Such was not so much to ask. The bond she felt with Richard would not suffer for a handful of hours apart.

  “I will sleep upon it.”

  Mrs. Twitchen nodded and opened the door herself to go. She was through it and pulling it closed when she paused and turned, her face in the narrow space between door and jamb.

  “Forgive me, child. I do this for your own good.”

  Vivian lunged for the knob, but was too late. The door slammed, and the key turned in the lock from the other side.

  She was a prisoner once again, to another’s idea of how she should live.

  Chapter Eight

  Twelfth Night

  The few bits of Christmas greenery in her room had been taken down and were waiting now in a dried-out pile to be fed into the fire. Her hopes of a marriage to Richard Brent might as well burn along with it.

  Vivian had been locked in her room for five days now, allowed to send no letters nor receive them, and even Penelope was forbidden from visiting. Vivian saw Mrs. Twitchen daily, and suffered through her lectures and, more dangerously, the growth of the seeds of doubt that the woman planted and watered so carefully.

  Richard wanted her. She knew he did. He had offered for her, she was sure of it. Did he love her enough to continue to fight for her, whatever the obstacles?

  He had never said he loved her. But he must, he surely must! He had given her every indication. She could count her own love for him as nothing, if she could not trust that he would hold steady to his purpose and free her.

  The isolation was making her mind play tricks, and she had no biscuits or tarts with which to soothe herself. They were cold meals that were brought to her by Mrs. Twitchen, with nothing of pleasure to be found in them.

  As the days passed, her mind turned in upon itself, reluctantly treading garden rows of doubt. She pulled each plant that showed signs of green, whacked them with her hoe, scuffed them over with her shoe, but Mrs. Twitchen always came back to nurse them to health.

  Richard Brent was an honest man. He was an honorable man. He would not abandon her. She must hold tight to that truth.

  From her window she had twice seen him come to the house, and leave shortly thereafter, always pausing to gaze up at her window, where she stood with her fingers against the glass, as if she could reach through and touch him. But then Captain Twitchen would emerge from the manor and shoo Richard away, preventing any exchange of words between them.

  She had not seen him for two days now. Was he himself beginning to doubt the wisdom of pursuing this course? Had the captain convinced him that it would be better for her to marry another, that she would be happier with a man with an unsoiled reputation?

  She would not be able to bear it if it were so.

  She wished she had lain with him as a wife, there upon the library table, for all to see. There would have been no question then of what their future would be. If she ever saw him again, she knew precisely what she’d do.

  —

  He had tried reason. He had tried patience. He had put to use all his powers of persuasion, and all to no effect. He had run out of gentle options, a realization that had come to him upon receipt early yesterday of Penelope’s letter:

  Dearest Mr. Brent,

  Forgive me for writing to you so, but I feel you must be told: my cousin is being fed only crusts of bread. She has no coal to keep her warm, and is threatened with beatings if she does not give up her insistence that she be allowed to wed you. My father has threatened to send her to a Catholic convent in France, where you would never see her again. I fear for her health—nay! I fear for her very life. She will be dead of grief within a fortnight if she is not saved. I have heard many things about you, but I trust they are not true. Here is your chance to prove yourself.

  Yours Faithfully,

  P.

  Of course he knew she was exaggerating—he doubted very much that Vivian would be sent to a French convent, no matter the provocation—and he was somewhat annoyed by Penelope’s allusion to his past, but Vivian was confined to her room, that he knew. And he very much doubted that pastries and cakes would be part of the meals sent up to one suffering such a punishment.

  His Vivian, without a pudding. What misery must she be suffering! He smiled sadly at the odd thought.

  And what might she begin to think, as the days passed and he left her languishing, the only words she heard those painting him as the darkest blackguard. His smile vanished. Might she not begin to think that he had abandoned her? Might she not begin to wonder if the Twitchens were right and if their reasons were ones to which she should listen? Especially since they were so intent upon protecting her that they would lock her up?

  That sweet passion she had given him in the library might even now be dying.

  He could not let that happen. The time for diplomacy had passed, and it was now time for action. That was the reason he was now creeping toward Copley Grange in the dead of night with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a rope around the other. In a vest pocket he carried a special license to marry, which he had ridden all the way to Dorchester to obtain.

  The windows were dark at the grange, as he hoped they would be. He took a handful of gravel from the drive; such stones were the time-honored choice of swains for waking maidens in their bowers. He stood beneath Vivian’s window and tossed them at the glass, one by one, wincing at each plink of sound.

  He was only on his third stone when she appeared, a pale wraith behind the glass. She must have been awake. A moment later she opened the window.

  “Richard!” she whispered.

  “Shhh! Stand back. I’m going to toss up the end of a rope.” He wasn’t going to give her the chance to tell him to go away. He was going to rush up, sweep her off her feet, and carry her to safety. This was something he’d always wanted, and he’d finally found someone who was worth his affection. He wasn’t going to let her escape—no matter what happened.

  He coiled several lengths of his line into a loop heavy enough to throw, and when she had moved away he gave it a heave.

  And missed. The rope fell down the side of the house and into the shrubberies.

  “Damn!”

  “Where’s the rope?”

  “Shh!” He scrounged around in the bushes,
untangling the line, hoping no one in the house heard him thrashing through the branches like a deranged animal.

  Coils once again in hand, he gave them another heave, and this time they sailed through the window. He heard the thunk as they hit the floorboards, and grimaced.

  Vivian appeared again in the window. “What now?”

  “Tie it off to the leg of your bed.”

  “Right.” She disappeared, and the dangling rope jerked and swayed in the faint moonlight as she set to work. “Done,” she said, appearing again.

  He pushed through the shrubberies to the wall of the house, and gave the rope an experimental tug. It felt sound. He jumped up and grabbed as high as he could on the rope, and was rewarded with a groaning screech from above and a slow sinking back to the ground.

  “The bed! It’s moving!” Vivian whispered.

  “Damn! Is there anything heavier in the room?”

  “No, nothing. But wait, I think I can brace it.”

  He waited while she did so, flinching with each sound of dragging furniture, expecting at any moment to see the front door open and an outraged Captain Twitchen appear with pistol in hand. The man would certainly shoot him.

  “All right! I think I’ve got it, but I’m going to have to go sit on the chair.”

  He didn’t inquire what she meant, he just climbed. The rope held, sinking only a few inches, the sounds from the room mere creaks of strained wood rather than groans. His head was almost at the sill when he suddenly dropped several inches. That, and the cry from Vivian were his only warning before he began to fall.

  He caught himself by one hand on the sill, releasing the rope that snaked past him and tumbled to the ground. With a grunt of effort he pulled himself up to the window, Vivian grabbing his arm and helping him to where he could straddle the sill.

  “My knot gave out,” she said.

  “I gathered.” He released a shaky breath, peering back down at the twenty foot drop to the ground, and to the shadows where their escape route lay twisted in the dirt.

  He turned to Vivian. Her hair was down, thick and dark against the white of her nightgown. A nightgown under which, he suspected, she wore nothing at all.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She looked surprised, bewildered, and awfully pleased.

  “Penelope wrote and said you were being starved. I’ve brought you tarts and cakes.” He swung his other leg inside, then took the satchel off and opened it, holding it out for her to see.

  “You risked your life to bring me pastries?” She looked a bit sheepish, but moved closer, brushing against him, the satchel ignored. He could smell a hint of flowery soap, and under it the scent that was Vivian’s alone.

  “I came to take you away.” He dropped the sack to the floor and wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her close. Her flesh was soft and warm under his hand. “Only, I seem to be proving an inept rescuer. I don’t know how I’m going to get you safely to the ground without the rope.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He was about to say “No, I don’t,” but then she kissed him and was touching him everywhere, and suddenly there were more important things to do than talk. His other arm went around her, and they stumbled backwards, tripping over the chair laid on its back on the floor as a brace, barely making it to the bed before falling together, sinking into its deep mattress.

  Vivian was going to be his wife. If he could not take her through the window, he would take her here, on the bed. Then she would be his forever, and no one could put a door between them ever again.

  Chapter Nine

  The Feast of the Epiphany

  “It’s almost morning.”

  “It was the nightingale you heard, and not the lark,” Vivian said, and giggled at her paraphrase of Juliet’s famous words. She stretched as she lay naked against him, loving the feel of her skin touching his, then threw a leg over his thigh.

  “Perhaps you’re right.” He lay his hand on her leg, his palm gliding up to her buttock.

  “Don’t move,” she said, and slipped from beneath his hand. She found the satchel and brought it back to the bed. “I’m hungry.”

  “After what we just did, I am not surprised.”

  She dug a tart out of the satchel and handed it to him. He took it, and she found a half-crushed pastry for herself and downed it. “Heavens, that tastes good.” She found another and devoured it while he laughed.

  “I have a confession to make,” he said, as she handed him a small cake.

  She stopped chewing, her heart skipping a beat, a sudden fear taking hold of her. “What is it?” She almost didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “I seduced you for my own selfish reasons.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was afraid I might not manage to get you out of this house, so I made you mine to be certain Captain Twitchen could not separate us again.”

  She released her breath and smiled, then started to laugh.

  “What?”

  “You!” she said, her relief making her giddy.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  His frown made her laugh all the harder. Then she said, “You didn’t seduce me, I seduced you!”

  “Nonsense.”

  She leaned close, her breasts brushing against his chest, and kissed him. Five minutes later they emerged from a tangle of limbs, sheet, and satchel, hearts thumping with newly aroused passion.

  “I seduced you,” she said again.

  He shrugged, and she could see he was trying to subdue a smile. “All right. But why would you try?”

  “For the same reason you gave, and—” she started, and then cut herself off, not knowing if she should continue.

  “And what? Speak your heart, Vivian. You know you can always do that with me.”

  “And I wanted to be sure you could not be rid of me.”

  He pushed himself upright and grasped her by the shoulders. “Rid of you? I would never want to be rid of you. What could have possibly given you such an idea?”

  “Mrs. Twitchen told me about your broken engagement to that other girl,” she said weakly.

  “Oh, Vivian.” He pulled her to him and held her cradled against his chest. “I caught my fiancee pinching Sara, and calling her a little bastard. She had pretended to me that she adored the children, and I had not been wise enough to see the lie.”

  “She hurt Sara?” Vivian asked in horror, trying to look up at him and seeing only the hard line of his jaw. “How could she? How could anyone?”

  “She thought she had the right.”

  “Why then did you take the blame for breaking the engagement?”

  “Because I did break it. She would have gone through with the marriage.”

  “But the public apology…” she asked, confused.

  “I thought it easier to give them what they asked. I did not need vengeance: I just wanted to be free of her.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It was not one of the happier times of my life, and I’m afraid it has attached itself to my name. People think I have no honor.”

  She reached up and lay her hand against his cheek, coaxing him to look at her. “You are the most honorable man I have ever known.”

  He met her gaze, his dark eyes sheened with tears. “I love you,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You do not know how long I have waited to find you, Vivian Ambrose.”

  “And I you, my love.”

  And that was when the door opened, and with a gasp and a cry Mrs. Twitchen fainted to the floor.

  —

  “I think it was only that special license in Mr. Brent’s jacket that kept Papa from shooting him,” Penelope said, putting the finishing touches to Vivian’s hair. “I have never seen him so angry! And the words he used! So vulgar! I’ll have a hard time of it in London, with the way he’ll be watching me after all this, afraid I’ll come to the same bad end. I suppose I deserve it.”

  “Do you think he’ll allow you to visit me?”

  “He
’ll soften in time. Mr. Brent is, after all, a good catch once you overlook a few small details.” She paused to examine her work. “There. All done. You look like a princess, as every bride should.”

  Vivian grasped Penelope’s hand, and held it. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “It’s only a gown.”

  Vivian squeezed her hand and released it, both of them knowing that it was more than the gown that she meant.

  And yet, the gown was the gift that, from Penelope, was worth more than all the treasures of the Indies. It was her court presentation gown she had given to Vivian, in which to be wed.

  Vivian rose, and together they left the room and walked down the hall to the head of the stairs. Penelope stood to the side and nodded for Vivian to go first, sole focus of the eyes of those who waited below.

  She felt like an angel, the heavy white silk of the gown flowing round her in crystal-shimmering waves. She knew she had been blessed, for never in her life had there been a Christmas season as this, where the dearest wishes of her heart had come true.

  She descended to the earth, and to the arms of the man she loved. And her family was there to see.

  Union

  by

  Claudia Dain

  To Tom,

  who is not only an ideal husband,

  but an ideal editor.

  Chapter One

  London, December 1808

  Clarissa Walingford came down the stairs with a step that was so firm and so determined that it came perilously close to being a childish stomp. Her brothers understood both the distinctiveness of her step and the restraint that hobbled it from becoming an all-out tantrum. This evening marked her coming-out.

  Clarissa had arrived at that precise moment in a woman’s life when a husband must be obtained for her. Clarissa did not want a husband at present, but Clarissa had been well brought up and understood her duty to her family and her name. Clarissa would marry.