Married to a Perfect Stranger
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Authors: Jane Ashford
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Copyright © 2015 by Jane LeCompte
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Cover art by Paul Stinson
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Also by Jane Ashford
Once Again a Bride
Man of Honour
The Three Graces
The Marriage Wager
The Bride Insists
The Bargain
The Marchington Scandal
The Headstrong Ward
John Bexley stood at the rail of the HMS
Alceste
and watched the gray water race by. Foam streaked the waves under an overcast sky. The sails belled out in a fresh wind, and the current in these narrowing straits, halfway across the world from England and home, pushed them even faster. It wasn't a full-fledged storm, but the weather was certainly what the navy men called “lively.” And the roll and heeling of the ship made the small cabin he shared below feel like a cage being shaken by gigantic hands. Far better to brace yourself on deck, endure the salt spray and the roar, feel the full thrill of their swift progress. It was like flying.
He tightened his grip on the rigging as a gust tilted the ship farther toward the sea. Rushing water gurgled and hissed along the timbers. The exultation of this run before the wind was a scrap of compensation for the failure of their mission. They were heading home with nothing accomplished, due to the intransigence of the Chinese emperor. As a junior clerk on the diplomatic mission, he'd had no great role to play in their thwarted attempt to sway the monarch. Still, he'd seen and experienced things he would never have been able to imagine. His mind teemed with new ideas. John grinned in the teeth of the wind. The huge expanse and buffeting energy of sea and sky matched his mood. He had the oddest sense that something had come to life inside him on this long voyage.
There was a crack like a cannon shot. The ship shuddered all along its length and stopped dead in the water, throwing John to his knees. Then the vessel slewed around until it wallowed broadside in the waves, sails snapping like pistol fire. John sprang up and looked wildly around for the source of the attack. The masts shook. There was a grating splintering sound, as of tortured wood. They'd hit something in the sea.
Clinging to rail and ropes, John peered over the side. Foam sucked and surged over a rock just below the surface. The wind pushed at the sails and shoved them harder against it. He could see that the hull was breached, water pouring in. They must have veered out of the channel through the straits. He straightened. Sailors swarmed the deck, some getting in each other's way. Where was the captain? The first mate? Someone should do something, give orders.
He remembered that the senior officers were dining with Lord Amherst and the top members of the diplomatic group. But why hadn't they come up on deck? John looked to the helmsman. He was leaning against the big ship's wheel. The impact had apparently stunned him.
The prow of the ship sagged and dipped. They were sinking. He was going to die thousands of miles from home, his fate unknown to his family and friends for weeks. And Mary. He and his newlywed wife were just beginning to get acquainted when they'd been separated by this voyage. Now, pulled down into these cold foreign seas, he would leave her a widow. John clutched the rigging so tight his nails dug into his palms.
By God, he was not! Denial rose in John, fierce and fiery, along with a surge of confidence stronger than any he'd ever felt before. He knew what to do. The
Lyra
was following not far behind them. It could pick them up. “Ready the dinghies,” he shouted to the nearest sailors. “Everyone must get off the ship. We're going down.”
Some of the crew had already gone to the pulleys. At his command, others joined them. John ran for the hatch to see what was keeping Lord Amherst and the others.
The moment he entered the narrow gangway, his fellow clerk Edmund Fordyce careened into him. “Where is Lord Amherst?” John asked.
“How the devil would I know?” replied Fordyce. He pushed John against the wall, trying to get by him. “Get out of my way, you idiot. There's water pouring into my cabin.”
“We've struck a rock. We have to find the⦔
“All I'm finding is a way off this crate.” Fordyce shoved harder, squeezing past John and heading for the hatch.
“Fordyce! We need to⦔
“
I
need to not risk my neck.
You
can do as you like.” His tone suggested that he thought John was a fool. Fordyce staggered as the ship leaned, and then he lunged out onto the deck. The hatch slammed shut behind him.
John pushed off the wall and moved farther into the ship. Timbers groaned, and the floor heaved under his feet. Water sloshed out of a cabin on the left. At the end of the corridor, the door to the captain's cabin was shut. A long sliver of wood had somehow become jammed under it, John saw, preventing it from opening. Fists pounded on the inside. A chorus of voices shouted for aid. A knife jabbed through the boards at shoulder height, once, and again.
“Wait a moment,” he called. He bent and yanked at the piece of wood. At first, it wouldn't shift, but when he kicked it, it moved and finally came loose. John jerked it free and pushed at the door.
The panels burst open. The captain surged out first, cursing. His first mate and other crewmen were right behind him. Then came Lord Amherst and the senior diplomatic staff. En masse, they jostled toward the hatch. “We hit a rock,” John said. He wasn't sure whether anyone heard.
When the knot of men had rushed past, John followed. Water coursed over the toes of his boots. As he went, he checked quickly inside the cabins that lined the corridor. All were empty except the last. Reynolds, one of the troopers accompanying their group, was there, dazed and bleeding from a knock on the head. John put an arm around him and helped him up to the deck.
The scene there had become a more organized chaos. The captain was shouting orders. The helmsman had recovered. The ship's dinghies were being lowered into the thrashing sea. John saw Lord Amherst climbing down into one. The deck was listing badly now, the stern rising as water filled the front holds. John helped Reynolds across the shuddering planks. The grating of timber on rock was even louder now, audible even over the confused shouting.
A crewman gave him a hand with Reynolds. And then John was sliding down a rope into a heaving longboat. He could see their sister ship, the
Lyra
, standing off not far away, waiting to take them aboard. Dinghies dotted the waves, rowing toward her. He grabbed an oar himself as the last men dropped into the boat, and they pulled hard toward rescue. Curiously, along with relief, John felt a rising excitement. He was intensely aware of the pull of his muscles as he rowed, the lash of spray, salty on his lips, the whistle of the wind. Had he ever felt this alive, this clear and certain? All his senses united to tell him there would be no turning back from this profound moment. From now on, everything was different.
Minutes later, they made it to the
Lyra
. Crewmen reached down to help them climb to safety. John vaulted over the rail and turned to look back at the
Alceste
. The ship that had carried them from England to the ports of China, and partway back again, was going down. Most of his possessions, including gifts he'd purchased for people back home, were going with it. Waves washed over the foredeck. Spars and coils of rope floated free. The prow went under. The hull tipped and seemed to hesitate and then slipped beneath the surging sea. It seemed fitting to bow his head briefly, as if saying farewell to a friend.
“Well, I had to see to it that we got everyone off, sir,” said a voice behind him. “Couldn't leave anyone behind.”
John turned and discovered Fordyce, speaking to Lord Amherst.
“One has to do one's duty, whatever the risk,” added his fellow clerk.
Lord Amherst nodded, eyes on the spot where the
Alceste
had disappeared. John stared at Fordyce, amazed at the man's effrontery. Surely someone had seen him, rushing to the dinghies ahead of everyone else?
As if sensing his gaze, Fordyce's pale blue eyes flicked at John and then away. “I suppose it's just bred in the bone, sir,” he said to Lord Amherst. “Family tradition and all that.”
John didn't hear what Amherst murmured in response. He was distracted by the captain of the
Lyra
, ordering his helmsman to steer well away from the hidden shoals.
* * *
The small Somerset manor house lazed under the June sun, its red brick mellow with age, its bow windows and ruddy chimney pots aglow. Bees hummed in the garden, where summer blooms perfumed the air. Foliage hung heavy in the small park; lawns glowed green.
But in a pleasant parlor at the back of the house, Mary Fleming Bexley felt far from peaceful. Though she had asked her mother to come, indeed insisted that she must, the visit was not going well. “I've been living with Aunt Lavinia for eighteen months, Mama,” she said. “I know what she⦔
“Well, we had to put you somewhere,” said her mother indulgently. “Married a month, and then your husband goes haring off to China.” She said it as if the mission that had taken John away was Mary's fault somehow.
What would she have answered, Mary wondered, if John had said, “Will you marry me and then go live with your great-aunt for months and months while I sail off on an important diplomatic journey to China?” Her reply might have been a bit more complicated than “yes.” She'd had less than a month as a wife, actually, and then he was gone to the other side of the world and she was packed off to Somerset.
Packed off; there was the crux of it. It seemed she was always being packed off in one way or another. As if she was a misaddressed parcel or a stray shawl left behind at the end of a house party. “I'm twenty-four years old,” she began. “A married woman⦔
“At last,” interrupted her mother. “Thanks to me. Well, and Mrs. Bexley, of course.”
Of course, thought Mary. Their families had come up with the match and pushed for it in a united front. Mary understood now, as she hadn't then, that the Flemings and the Bexleys saw their offspring as two of a kind. She, the least promising of five sisters, short on common sense. John, overshadowed by his three brothers' loud accomplishments, stuck in a junior position at the Foreign Office. Mary had actually overheard her mother and John's discussing their similar shortcomings, not long after he'd departed on his voyage. That had been when they were deciding what to “do” with her. She and John had been hustled into marriage like backward children being sent off to school. Why had she let that happen? “Aunt Lavinia is not herself,” she tried.
“Really? Who is she then?” Her mother laughed. “Do you remember how your father used to compare her to a frigate under full sailââprow jutting well out, a nose fit for cleaving waves.' I had to scold him so. I was afraid one of you children would repeat it.”
Mary did remember. Her four sisters had feared Lavinia when she visited, sweeping in like a scudding ship, shedding pronouncements and odd gifts and errant barks of laughter. Mary alone had been fascinated, trailing in the older woman's wake like an inquisitive seabird. But sadly, this was not the Great-Aunt Lavinia she'd found when she arrived to stay here. “She's older,” Mary said. “Andâ¦confused.” Worse than confusedâuncharacteristically anxious, a shell of her former, formidable self.
Her mother frowned. “Confused about what? She seemed fine to me. A bit tired, perhaps, but as you say, she's nearly eighty. I'm sure her nap will restore her.”
Aunt Lavinia had been having a good day. Mary could not regret this, though it did make it harder to convince her mother.
“Really, Mary, don't you think you're the one who's confused? You call me here at a moment's notice, saying I must come, and I still have no idea why. I'm quite busy at home, you know.”
Her mother was always busy. She descended like a striking hawk whenever the least disorder threatened. Mary searched for the right words. But in the face of Mama's all-too-familiar impatience, she couldn't find them. “Let me show you something.” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for her sketch pad.
“Oh, Mary.” Her mother sighed and shook her head. “I don't have the time to look at drawings. Please tell me you did not drag me thirty miles over bumpy roads to show me a book of sketches. It's all very well for a
child
to be slow and dreamy and lose herself in fancies, but⦔ She rubbed her forehead.
Mary felt an old despair. She couldn't stop drawing, any more than she could stop eating. Her mother would never understand this; Mary had given up arguing with her about it years ago. She started to put the sketchbook away. But no. Then her mother would leave without agreeing to her plan. And what would become of Great-Aunt Lavinia when Mary left this house? John had to come home
sometime
. “Please, Mama, if you would just look.”
Her mother's tone grew sharper. “Mary, as you have pointed out, you are grown up. You must stop wasting time on such stuff and settle down to more useful pursuits.”
Part of her wanted to wilt and slink away, hide the drawings, hide herself, as she had so often done back home. Then, from somewhere, rose a determination that would not be denied. Mary had learned something important in these last chaotic months. In fact, her enforced sojourn in Somerset had brought her a revelation. She'd finally understood that in order to truly understand a situation, she had to draw the people involved. Drawing was her key to understanding the world. Only then did she see the truth of things. Only then could she figure out what to do and find the proper words to communicate it.
She'd known that her drawings captured emotion as well as appearances, through contrast perhaps, or juxtaposition. She couldn't explain how it happened. Sometimes, she had a hint about the feelings already. Other times, she had no idea until the drawing was done. For some reason, she learned subtle things with her hands, as they moved. Not through books, or lectures. No matter how hard she tried, words slipped out of her mind, while shapes and shadows illuminated it. Her mother, her sisters, could look and grasp and comprehend words all in a moment. They could remember all they read with ease. Her sisters found her inability to do so hilarious. Her mother just found it irritating. She looked vastly irritated now. But though Mary trembled under that well-known glare, she had to take the leap. “No, you must look.”