from horizon to horizon now, spilling inky darkness over the city. The faint autumn sunlight had been banished and it was a cold, wintry scene.
There was no escape for Julius or Sybil, and yet she had to do something to help them. Their father had entrusted them to her care. She could not fail them.
There was no way out.
Unless …
Unless she married again….
The thought slid into her mind with all the sinuous temptation of the snake in Eden. Tess screwed her eyes up tightly. She had been widowed for two years and she had promised her sister Joanna that she would make no more marriages. Joanna, Tess suspected, was embarrassed to have a much-married marchioness as a sister. But Joanna had also forgotten quite how vulnerable a widow could be.
What she needed was a marriage in name only to a man who had sufficient power and authority to tell Corwen to go hang and to provide the protection of his name for both herself and her stepchildren. Then, once she was irreproachably wed, she would need to transform herself into a reputable matron. No more climbing out of brothel windows. No more gambling. No more Jupiter Club.
No more satirical cartoons.
It would undo all her good work to be clapped in gaol. That was a position from which there really was no return.
Tess pulled a face. The thought of denying her talent for art, of deliberately turning away from the cartoons, the one thing that gave her life such passionate meaning, was almost unbearable. She had been drawing since she was a child, pouring her feelings into her sketches as a means of expression and escape. Sorrow, joy, fear and frustration had all been expressed through her pen.
Yet she could see that now she had no choice. She would have to abandon political satire and choose something blameless like watercolours or sketching, perhaps. Ladies were forever setting up their easels and capturing some idyllic rural scene. She would do the same. Drawing and painting were amongst the few feminine accomplishments she possessed.
A respectable marriage would also offer her the camouflage she needed should Lord Sidmouth’s investigators prove efficient enough as to suspect her of sedition. She needed a smoke screen, an elderly, impotent smoke screen. She needed to find a fourth husband and she needed to find him fast.
She crossed the room to the rosewood desk, took out a thick volume, settled herself again on the gold brocade sofa and started to read.
A half hour later she was still engrossed when Joanna came in accompanied by a footman with the tea tray.
“What is that you are reading?” Joanna asked, seating herself beside Tess. “The Lady’s Magazine?”
“No.” Tess felt a little shiver of apprehension. Joanna’s disapproval was not something she sought. She tilted the cover of her book towards her sister so that Joanna could see the title. “It is the new edition of The Gazetteer.”
As Tess had anticipated, vivid disappointment registered on Joanna’s face. “Oh, Tess, no!” Joanna exclaimed. “Tell me you are not planning on marrying again! When you came to stay here you promised—” Joanna broke off, biting her lip. Her tone changed. It was cool now, though still indicative of her feelings. “It is your decision, I suppose,” she said.
“I have a natural affinity with marriage,” Tess said. She could hear the apology in her tone. She did not want to remind Joanna just how insecure her situation was. Her sister knew nothing of her life, least of all her secret political affiliation to the reformers. Nor did she want to tell Joanna of Lord Corwen’s threats. Such a discussion would hold too many painful parallels with her marriage to Brokeby. She set her lips stubbornly and tried to ride down Joanna’s disapproval.
“On the contrary,” her elder sister corrected her sharply, clearly unable to keep quiet for more than a couple of seconds. “There is nothing natural about it. Your marriages have all without exception been most unnatural.”
Tess could not really dispute that. She knew that Joanna was one of the few people who had realised that she was afraid—terrified—of true intimacy, though her sister did not know the reason. Joanna had tried to discuss it with her in the past, but Tess had always refused to talk. Clothes, shoes, hats, gloves, scarves … They could chat about fashion for hours and it gave their relationship a veneer of closeness, but when Joanna tried to get Tess to talk about her marriages, Tess would feel the familiar cold horror spread through her veins like poison and she would turn Joanna’s questions away with trivial answers. She knew Joanna was asking not out of prurient curiosity but out of a real concern, and that made her feel even sadder. But there was nothing Joanna could do to help her. The damage wrought by Charles Brokeby had been done years ago and could not be undone now.
“Not everyone has the sort of marriage that you share with Alex,” she said. The words came out more harshly than she had intended, perhaps because whilst she was terrified by any thought of intimacy herself, she did at times feel a fierce jealousy of both the physical and emotional bond that Joanna and Alex shared. In public she might scorn such an unfashionable concept as a happy marriage but in reality the warmth and intimacy and shared experience was something she craved.
“Most people,” she added, “want no more than a position in society, enough money to sustain it and the promise that they will not need to see their spouse above half a dozen times a year and, if they do, that they need not speak with them above once.”
Joanna’s pretty face wrinkled into a grimace of distaste. She put down her teacup with a crack that made the delicate china shiver. “Very amusing, Tess. You forget you are talking to your sister and not to one of your casual acquaintances.” She flicked The Gazetteer with a contemptuous finger. “You hope to find such a husband in here?”
“It is the most marvellous book,” Tess said, pressing on although she could feel Joanna’s fearsome disapproval. “It gives the rank, fortune and address of every bachelor and widower in the country. It is the perfect husband-hunting guide.”
“It does not record whether or not the men are impotent,” Joanna said very drily. “That, surely, is your most important criteria.”
There was a painful silence. “It gives their ages,” Tess said at last, almost managing to conceal the crack in her voice. “That should be a fair guide.”
“But not an infallible one.” Joanna’s voice had softened into pity. She put a hand on Tess’s tensely clasped ones and Tess tried not to shudder, not from Joanna’s offered comfort but from the cold pain she felt inside.
“Tess,” Joanna said. “What happened to you? What is it that you are afraid of?”
“Nothing!” Tess said. The word seemed to come out slightly too loud. The pain twisted within her like the turn of a screw.
“Then why do you only marry sickly boys and old men?” Joanna persisted. “Robert Barstow, James Darent—”
“There was only one of each,” Tess protested, “and to be fair I did not know that Robert was going to die so young.”
“With Robert you married your best friend,” Joanna said. “There was as little passion there as in your last marriage.”
Once again the silence was taut and painful. Neither of them had mentioned her marriage to Brokeby but Tess could see the question in Joanna’s eyes. Her sister had guessed that Brokeby had hurt her; she wanted Tess to confide. Tess knew Joanna’s concern was only to help her but she did not want that help. There was nothing Joanna could do to set right the past or undo the horrific experiences she had suffered at Brokeby’s hands. There was nothing that she could do except blot out those memories and make sure that such horrors never happened again.
“If you have a fear of physical intimacy,” Joanna said suddenly, “I do not understand this obsession you have with marrying.”
“You refine too much upon it,” Tess snapped, her patience breaking under the strain. “I find myself short of funds, that is all. Marriage is