Pleasures of the Night by Heather Boyd

Chapter 16

“Devil take it, it’s true,” Wharton cursed, shaking off her grip to walk away from her.

“It’s not possible,” she whispered, staring after him.

Wharton spun about, his eyes ablaze with anger. “But you do know this man.”

“Have a care how you speak to my lady, my lord,” the stranger warned, clearly believing he had the right to defend her. “I won’t have anyone shouting at my wife.”

“Be quiet, sir,” Wharton ground out. “I will have the truth from her own lips. Well, Eugenia? Do you know this man or not?”

Eugenia studied the stranger. “Perhaps, but…”

“Well, there is no doubt in my mind that you do recognize his face, and also clearly do not want to admit it,” Wharton said in a deathly cold voice. “How could you not tell us that you were married, Eugenia?”

“Because Robert is dead!” she cried as she stumbled back, tripping over her own feet in her haste. She fell hard and cried out in shock, aghast at her own clumsiness in front of a stranger.

Aurora burst into the room just as the man bearing the passing resemblance to her late husband, Robert Bagshaw, reached for her hands.

Eugenia slapped him away. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

“I only want to look after you, blossom.”

Aurora helped her stand.

“And don’t call me blossom, either. Ever.”

“Yes, my dear,” he said, lowering his head but smiling softly. “Anything you say, my love.”

Submissiveness had not been the nature of the Robert Bagshaw Eugenia had known and married years ago. He had changed.

She stared at the man she felt was a stranger, confused by him. If they’d passed on the street, she’d never have looked at him twice.

Aurora smoothed a hand down her back. “What happened?”

“I tripped over my own skirts,” Eugenia admitted to her cousin. “I am not hurt.”

“I apologize if my outburst of temper had anything to do with your fall,” Wharton said quietly. “I did not mean to seem so intimidating that you might fear I’d strike you.”

“Forgiven, my lord,” she promised, because she felt he really meant it. He was in as much shock as she. He might shout out his opinions sometimes, but he’d never struck her as a violent man.

The stranger looked on, wearing Robert’s face, albeit looking more than four years older than when she’d last seen him, and smiling as if all was perfectly normal for him to have returned from the grave.

But it wasn’t. Her husband could not be alive and be so changed.

Aurora turned her away from the men to whisper, “I heard it all from the hall. Why did you not tell us?”

“It’s a long story,” Eugenia muttered, embarrassed by her fall and the fact that her cousin had discovered her long-held secret. Her greatest disappointment and loss.

How had it taken her so long to recognize the stranger as Robert? Did she really remember the man she’d fallen in love with and impulsively married so little after all these years?

But it was impossible to her that he could be Robert, back from the dead. She’d been told of his demise from a reliable source she’d never doubted. “I need to sit.”

Aurora guided her to a chair, warning off the stranger who came forward to solicitously be of service to the woman he seemed to think was his wife.

Wharton held the stranger back, murmuring for the man to be patient.

“My dear, you shouldn’t upset yourself that you didn’t recognize me,” the fellow started, then fell silent as she glared daggers at him for daring to speak with her. “Too much excitement is not good for your nerves.”

The warning also rang false in her head. Robert had liked her excited. He’d have laughed and encouraged her to exert herself when he’d been alive. Even the day she’d nicked his chin in her frustration with her overgrown garden, he’d laughed off the injury and told her to try again. Although he had stepped back much farther than the first time she’d swung the scythe.

Whoever this man was, he was no one she’d ever met before.

“Summon the watch, my lord. This man is an imposter.”

Sylvia burst into the chamber then, looking frantic. “What’s going on?”

Eugenia stared between her cousins, still at a loss for words to explain that she’d once had a husband and that he’d died.

Wharton came close to his future bride and placed a gentle hand on Sylvia’s shoulder. “It appears your cousin is a married woman.”

“No!” Sylvia’s eyes were wide with shock when they locked on Eugenia’s face, and she felt very small and terrible for not having told the truth long ago. Why hadn’t she?

“Not to him,” Eugenia promised. “I was married, but he died. Drowned.”

“I’m hardly dead now, am I, my dear,” the stranger murmured. An oily smile she didn’t trust appeared on the stranger’s face as he approached Sylvia with his hand outstretched. “Mr. Robert Bagshaw, of Dover.”

Eugenia closed her eyes. Robbie had come from Dover, too. “You lie,” she insisted.

“Now, now. Let us not quarrel at our reunion after so many years apart. I’ve returned to do my duty as I promised in my letters. I’ve kept all of yours by my side all these years. His lordship has them as proof of our intimate connection.”

Sylvia gasped. “You really were married?”

Eugenia winced, ducking her head a little. “A long time ago.”

“I will require additional proof,” Wharton announced, his jaw set in a hard line.

“I’ve given you everything necessary,” the fellow answered. “The love letters, proof of the marriage. She is my wife, and no man may come between us, or so the church and law promise.”

Wharton seemed to pause. “Indeed, it does.”

Eugenia gripped the arm of the chair for support—and for reassurance that she wasn’t trapped in the most dreadful dream. He had her love letters to Robert and the marriage license, but she couldn’t be married to such a man.

Aurora’s arm slipped around her back and was too familiar to doubt she was in anything but a waking nightmare. She put her head in her hand to hide her flaming face. “That cannot be my Robbie.”

“Yet he swears he is. You recognize him, don’t you?” Sylvia whispered as she crowded close to her side.

“A similar face,” she argued. “While I admit a resemblance is there, my husband died.”

Sylvia exhaled slowly. “When were you married?”

Eugenia met her cousin’s gaze. “Just before you wrote to me, suggesting we pool our resources and live together.”

“A happy day our marriage was for both of us, eh, Mrs. Bagshaw?” the imposter interrupted. “We were both so impatient for the banns to be called and, of course, to have our wedding night. I remember… Well, that is best for us to talk about another time.”

Eugenia shuddered at the thought of being a wife to a man she barely recognized.

Sylvia, in uncommonly firm fashion, spoke to the stranger. “If you don’t mind, sir, I am speaking with my cousin. Kindly do not interrupt us again.”

Wharton took that as a sign to draw the imposter away from them.

“Thank you,” Sylvia said to Wharton. Then she grasped Eugenia’s hand tightly and whispered, “I wrote when I heard your brother had died. Did he know Mr. Bagshaw?”

“No. We met a little after his death. I was three and twenty, and alone, but suddenly found myself very much in love.”

“To Mr. Robert Bagshaw?” Aurora queried, as she seemed to study the man now speaking with Wharton across the room and craning his neck to see them still. “Do you love Robert still?”

“I have always felt so much sadness for what might have been,” she promised. But as Eugenia searched her feelings, the deepest recesses of her heart, she found no bright spark of recognition or yearning in her for the gentleman standing across the chamber claiming to be her spouse. “He might wear my beloved’s face, but I do not love that man.”

“That is good enough for me,” Aurora promised. “You have always been guided by your intuition, and it has never failed you before.”

“Perhaps you’ve merely forgotten your feelings,” Sylvia murmured, but there was an edge to her tone that she suggested she disbelieved her own words.

“I forget nothing.” Eugenia had never forgotten the bright moment of love she’d experienced as a young woman in Hastings when a dashing young man had charmed his way into her heart, despite her grief for her brother’s passing. Her first and only true love. Her secret loss all these years. She’d been swept off her feet and agreed to a marriage almost immediately with Robbie Bagshaw from far off Dover. Back then, he’d seemed almost worldly compared to her.

But now, looking at a man who resembled her departed love, albeit wearing an older version of the face she’d once thought so handsome, she keenly felt the absence of any tender feeling.

Robbie was gone. Dead nearly four years.

The man claiming to be Robert Bagshaw had no effect on her emotions other than revulsion for the charade he was perpetuating.

The imposter suddenly bowed to Eugenia and abruptly took his leave of them, robbing her of the chance to question him further.

Wharton waited a beat to make sure he was gone before he rushed to join them. He pulled a chair closer, so they all sat in a circle. “Bagshaw will return tomorrow. I convinced him that his arrival has been a great shock to you, Eugenia, and that you need time to compose yourself before speaking with him again.”

“Shock doesn’t begin to explain my feelings,” she warned. “I’m outraged that creature is masquerading as my late husband. It isn’t right!”

Wharton pulled papers from his pocket. “He gave me these, claiming to have written them to his mother. And I did try to confirm the handwriting was his, but he’s broken a bone in his arm since and now uses his other arm. Barely understood a word he wrote.”

One was a letter from her old parish in Hastings, confirming that there had been a marriage between herself and Robert James Bagshaw. It had been a small wedding, the few who’d attended had been elderly neighbors of hers. There were also letters in her hand, letters written during her brief courtship with Robert. Back then, she’d been a woman overwhelmed by love. At her age, well beyond the first flush of youth and beauty, she’d nearly given up on love and marriage and having a family. Children, too.

Another letter was written in Robert’s bold hand. She ran her finger over his penmanship, remembering the thrill of finding similar notes had been slipped under her front door overnight during their courtship.

But she blinked back tears as she read the words on the page. In this, as in so many others, Robert spoke of his love but repeated his promise to return to her as soon as he could.

That was meant to be four years ago…not now.

She glanced at the page from Robert again. “I never saw this before. It is not franked.”

“Yes, I noticed that too,” Wharton murmured. “Odd, that.”

She took a deep breath. “I will not deny that I was married once. The vicar who signed the letter is the same man that married me to Robert.”

“Then you are married still,” Wharton insisted.

“I am a widow of Robert Bagshaw,” she repeated. “That man is not him.”

“But you have never been known as a wife or widow by your own family,” Wharton chided. “Tell us about that? Why did you keep it from us? Did you think he would be an embarrassment to your wider family?”

“No.” Eugenia exhaled angrily. “I married Robbie Bagshaw, a rushed decision perhaps. I had little to recommend me, no fortune or connections in the district. I was alone, and I was smitten with him from the moment we met.”

“He took advantage of you?”

“No, I will never believe that. The day after we wed, my husband left by packet ship to return to his mother, whose health had been delicate. I’d known of his plan to break the news to her in person from the day the banns had been called, and arranged passage with an honest ship’s captain who I knew working out of Hastings. Since he was sailing to Dover and back on the same ship, he should have returned within a month. But two weeks after his departure, the captain came to see me and gave me the news Robert was dead. He was very sorry for me. I grieved for Robert like any wife would.”

“Did you see his body?”

“The ship was closer to Dover than Hastings. He was buried there. Miles and miles from me. I couldn’t stomach looking at the sea from that day on.”

Sylvia and Aurora grasped her hands tightly.

“And so, you just decided to forget you were married?”

“I did not mean to.” She winced. “When Sylvia’s letter came out of the blue, proposing we live together, I was grieving for two men—my brother and a husband she didn’t yet know about. I had nothing to stay in Hastings for. Afraid every moment for how I would go on alone.”

“You answered my letter as Miss Hillcrest, not as Mrs. Bagshaw,” Sylvia whispered.

“I must have automatically written my maiden name in the reply and not realized. I never even noticed until the moment you introduced me to your friends as Miss Hillcrest. I wasn’t myself. I decided not to correct you.” She sighed. “I had only lived with my husband for one night, after all. It seemed easier to make a fresh start rather than revisit so brief and tragic a past.”

She glanced down at her bare fingers. “I didn’t even have a ring or a copy of the marriage license as proof of it. Robbie had taken the latter with him to show his mother.”

“If you married Robbie at three and twenty, and you’re just turned seven and twenty years now, where has he been these past four years?” Sylvia asked.

Aurora snorted. “That is a good question, and I wish he was still here to answer it now.”

“His absence seems odd,” Sylvia agreed. “Did he offer any explanation for why he didn’t return to her, Alexander?”

“I asked about that, and he said he would only explain to his wife and seek her forgiveness in private later, when they were alone.” Wharton sighed.

“Don’t leave me alone with him. I might scratch out his eyes and his lying tongue,” she warned.

“I will need to hear those answers myself before I am comfortable with settling any funds on you.”

Eugenia glanced at Wharton sharply. “Don’t. What need do I have for a dowry if I’m supposed to be already married?”

That gave Wharton pause, but he recovered quickly. “But I could not in good conscience allow you to leave this house without knowing your husband can keep you in the style you deserve. If he cannot, I will settle funds on you.”

“No amount of funds will ever make living with him comfortable.” Eugenia’s stomach churned with dread at the thought. “You cannot expect me to go off and live with a man I barely recognize.”

“Talk to him tomorrow. Find out where he’s been all these years,” Wharton suggested.

“Pretending not to be married, by the way, too,” Aurora noted harshly and folded her arms across her chest as she glared at Wharton. “It’s hardly Eugenia’s fault that she pretended not to be married when he has done the same for years. I say he’s an imposter.”

Wharton held up his hands, palms out. “I did not say I am comfortable with the notion that he might be playing us false, Aurora. Did you quarrel with Robert, Eugenia?”

Eugenia shook her head. “We were not married long enough for that.”

“Quarreling can happen before marriage,” Wharton muttered, glancing sideways at Sylvia with a wry smile.

“I’m sure that is true for some, but not in our case,” she said. “I fell in love with him and he with me. We were happy, and he was excited to come and live in Hastings. He’d planned to close his shop in Dover and open one and resume his trade in Hastings. He was a cabinet maker.”

“Yes, that fellow said he was born with sawdust in his veins,” Wharton said slowly. “I look forward to hearing his excuses as to why he abandoned his lawful wife when he comes back. There might be legal grounds to pursue in a claim for your upkeep as well.”

All three of them stared at Wharton in shock, but it was Sylvia who looked at her future husband as if she’d never seen him before. “You would extort funds from my cousin’s false husband for her upkeep?”

“Well, if he is playing us false, it is unlikely he’d pay up. A demand of compensation due might just send an imposter packing,” Wharton reasoned and then reached for Sylvia’s hand. “Never fear, my love, I’d never go through with the threat in truth. It’s just a ploy to judge this fellow’s attachment to the scheme to take Eugenia off with him.”

“He had better go off alone, and fast too,” Aurora added sourly.

Eugenia stared at Wharton. He was usually a good judge of character. Surely, he could see through the fellow’s lies. “What do you think of him?”

“If he is your husband, then I imagine I would eventually think well of him for choosing to marry you,” he said carefully.

“And if he’s proved an imposter?”

“I hope you’ll grant me the pleasure of dealing with him for you.” A vicious smile appeared on Wharton’s face and then disappeared just as quickly. Wharton put his hands on his knees and stood. “We’ll hear what he has to say for himself tomorrow. Excuse me, I’ll leave you ladies to talk amongst yourselves.”

He kissed Sylvia’s cheek and rushed off, disappearing toward his study.

Sylvia leaned against Eugenia when he was gone. “I hope he’s about to arrange for Mr. Bagshaw to be thoroughly investigated.”

Eugenia put her head back into her hand. “This is intolerable.”

Her cousins rubbed her back. “You could have told us.”

“And what would you have done? Looked upon me with pity for becoming a widow so soon after I married?”

“Gracious no,” Aurora promised, giving her a little shake. “But think of all we could have accomplished with our widowed cousin as our chaperone these past years.”

“I would have been a severe chaperone,” Eugenia warned, though she saw little amusing in the discussion.

“Many things would have been very different, I imagine,” Sylvia murmured. “You could have taken discreet lovers and worn tokens of affection from them proudly,” she suggested.

Eugenia put her hand to her waist over Thaddeus’ gift of a chain as she studied her cousins in turn. They were taking the news of her marriage well. Better than she’d ever dreamed they might. She had feared they would be angry instead of accepting. But how would Thaddeus feel? If she was married, she couldn’t be his lover anymore. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Not to her, either.

I can’t lose Thaddeus! Not when I’m falling for him!

She gulped back her despair at the realization. Thaddeus was very much against participating in adultery, and she might just be guilty of that same immoral sin. He might never want anything to do with her again. She flicked her fingers over the chain, encountering the charm with her initials engraved upon it. She’d have to give it back now. “I never accepted a gift from a lover before today.”

“Today?” Sylvia frowned and drew back. “Was that what you were doing last night? Meeting a lover?”

She nodded sadly. “Probably for the last time unless I can prove the imposter a liar.”

Sylvia gaped and then stared hard at Aurora. “Have you one, too?”

“A lover?” Aurora shrugged. “Not right now, but I’m always hopeful of inquiries.”

Sylvia wet her lips, frowning at them. “We really are good at keeping secrets from each other. I had no idea you were sneaking off to meet someone special.”

“She’s exceptionally good unless we admire the same man,” Aurora noted and then laughed. “We really should decide if we will ever trust each other not to keep secrets from each other after all this is settled.”

“I do trust you both, but we’ve had a lot on our minds and little time to talk frankly of late, especially here. I swear to you both now, that man is not my husband,” Eugenia insisted again because it was comforting to say it out loud. “I know this in my heart, because I don’t want to be intimate with him. The very idea is revolting. I couldn’t wait for Robbie to touch me when he was alive, before I even knew what I craved was natural and right. So, it cannot be him, can it? It just can’t.”

Sylvia hugged her. “We believe you. He’s not your husband, but however are we to prove it before word spreads? That’s the man who’s been banging on all doors in Cavendish Square looking for his missing woman.

Aurora gasped. “But remember, his story was always different depending on whom he spoke to.”

“I never even saw him.” Eugenia blinked. “I cannot live as that man’s wife. I’d rather die than give up my life.”

Aurora gasped. “He could claim all your funds as his own. Move into Albemarle Street and sleep in your bed.”

“Wharton leases Albemarle Street for us now,” she reminded Aurora.

“That man could force you to share your bed anywhere,” Sylvia whispered in a horrified tone.

Eugenia considered casting up her accounts then and there.