Jerome’s blunt fingers tightened around her wrist. Julianna cast her stepbrother a sidelong glance. Unshaven and disheveled from the previous night’s debauchery, he glared back at her with eyes as black and pitiless as his conscience.
Thick lips curled in a gloating sneer. By all means, sister, he wordlessly urged her, indulge in a fit of hysterical fury. I’ll see you shackled in the bowels of Bedlam before the day is out.
Summoning every ounce of composure, Julianna fought to master her impotent rage. Her features cold and rigid as a marble effigy, she focused her answer into a scornful look. I would not give you the satisfaction, Jerome. Refusing to meet the curate’s questioning glance, she clenched her lips to imprison the words of protest she dared not utter.
A raw autumn wind keened around the church’s lofty spire, nearly drowning out the words of the wedding service. The little curate cleared his throat and pitched his delivery louder. “Dost thou, Julianna, take this man to thy lawful wedded husband...”
Reluctantly, Julianna’s gaze shifted to her bridegroom, Sir Edmund Fitzhugh. He could not have looked less like Crispin Bayard, the man she had hoped to wed. Thinking of her handsome young sweetheart, Julianna’s heart quailed. The words she must soon speak would destroy any chance of a future with Crispin.
Oh my love, her soul cried out across the miles that separated them, how could you have abandoned me to this? Even as that anguished question rang in her thoughts, a countering voice of reason objected. How could Crispin have known, when he sailed for the South Seas, that her father would shortly die bankrupt, leaving her at the mercy of her feared and despised stepbrother?
An expectant silence wrenched Julianna back to the present. Jerome prompted her with another bruising squeeze of her wrist.
“I do.” She fairly spit the words.
The curate smiled indulgently. No doubt he mistook the force of her answer for eagerness to wed a man of wealth and position.
“And dost thou, Edmund, take this woman to thy lawful wedded wife, to live together under God’s holy ordinance...”
While his attention was fixed on the clergyman, Julianna stole a look at her bridegroom. She would have guessed him a former sea captain, even without Jerome’s telling. The intrepid set of Sir Edmund’s broad shoulders and his wide stance bespoke years spent on a pitching quarterdeck. His large hands looked capable of nimbly lashing a sail or holding a tiller steady in rough seas. His firm jaw, slightly cleft chin and the stern line of his mouth all suggested a temperament resolute—even obdurate. His deep-set eyes, which seemed to search out some distant horizon, were cold and gray as the North Atlantic.
Where was the pitiful old wreck she’d expected to find at the chancel steps this morning? That had been Julianna’s desperate plan to foil her stepbrother and to keep herself unsullied for Crispin. When Jerome had demanded she take a husband immediately, she had sent her trusted cousin, Francis, to seek a bridegroom too old and decrepit to consummate their union. Since then, she’d not had a private moment to ask Francis how he’d fared. Noting his complacent manner, she’d assumed all was well.
Jerome’s derisive account of Sir Edmund’s proposal had made him sound ideal for her purpose. “We met at the Chapterhouse while I was posting my notice of the books for auction. He collects book and antiquities. Indeed, he is something of an antiquity himself. Affects to wear his own hair, mind you, though it’s sparse enough in places to excuse a good periwig.”
Antiquity? Under other circumstances the idea might have struck Julianna as amusing. Jerome had overestimated Sir Edmund’s age by more than one good year. Though perhaps not in the peak of condition, her bridegroom appeared well capable of undertaking his marital duties. So much for her pathetic plan.
“...and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, until death dost thou part?”
“I do.” The timbre of Sir Edmund’s voice was deep and resonant, with more than a hint of sharpness. Such a voice brooked no dissent from a crew, a household or a wife. And, God help her, she had promised to obey.
A blessed numbness stole over Julianna. Her budding dreams of an unconsummated marriage had died stillborn. Jerome had sold off all her worldly goods—her beloved books and even her treasured harp, insisting he needed the money to discharge her late father’s debts. Soon she would belong to this stern, forbidding man. Yet she was able to view it all calmly, as though this marriage were being perpetrated upon a stranger.
“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”
“I do,” said Jerome.
To Julianna’s ears, those two short words rang with ten years’ worth of mocking triumph. Her stomach seethed as she caught a whiff of her stepbrother’s breath, putrid with stale brandy. Raising her fan, she fluttered it to disperse the fumes.
Who gives this woman? For most brides those words were a formality. In her case they could not have been more accurate. Her stepbrother was giving her away to a total stranger, with forced consent, for promises of money. Sold, like all her late father’s possessions, to the highest bidder.
“In the name of God, I, Edmund, take thee, Julianna, to my lawful wedded wife. To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part.”
When her turn came to speak, Julianna’s lips moved but the words emerged scarcely audible even to herself. Looking past the looming silhouette of Sir Edmund Fitzhugh, she addressed her words to Crispin, vowing to keep her heart only unto him.
“I, Julianna, take thee, Edmund, to my wedded husband....”
Her words were barely a whisper, and Edmund had the uncomfortable conviction his bride was staring right through him.
How dare she look so woebegone at the prospect of marrying him? his Fitzhugh pride demanded. After all, this daft scheme had been hers in the first place. When she’d sent her timorous cousin around to advance the idea, he’d found himself with no honorable recourse but to fall in with their foolish plan.
“...in sickness and in health. Till death do us part.”
At that moment, the enormity of what he was doing boxed Edmund squarely in the stomach. Julianna Ramsay looked so very young in her ill-fitting black gown, her ruddy curls all but hidden by a fulsome cap. Though he was barely forty, Edmund had seen and done more than most men twice his age. Years of adventuring in the Tropics had taken their toll on his constitution. At the moment he wanted nothing more than to escape to the refuge of his library with a comfortable wing chair, a pipeful of rich tobacco and a familiar volume of Shakespeare or Marcus Aurelius.
“With this ring, I thee wed....” The words stuck in Edmund’s throat as he thrust the heavy gold circlet onto Julianna’s waxen finger. With effort, he managed to bark them out.
Long ago he had sworn never to marry again. Matrimony did not suit his solitary temperament. He and Amelia had made each other bitterly unhappy during the interminable months of their brief marriage. Edmund had never pretended it was all the fault of his frigid, ambitious late wife. What mad impulse had propelled him back to the altar after all these years?
Edmund stole another glance at Julianna as they knelt to receive the Eucharist The pallid light of an overcast morning filtered through the altar window, starkly illuminating the cruel marks that marred her delicate features—a livid welt on her cheek, dark bruises on her chin, a swollen lower lip. The sight of her—young, vulnerable and so obviously brutalized, called forth every protective instinct in his being. His hands itched to close around Jerome Skeldon’s thick neck. To wrest Julianna Ramsay from the power of that blackguard, he was even willing to thrust his head back into the matrimonial noose.
“Oh God, who hath consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery...look mercifully upon these thy servants.”
Edmund took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. For better or worse, the deed was