Lord Wyndell's Bride chapter 1

Yes, I know you want more of Rev Chaz, but it isn't happening; I guess that's what you get for an entirely 'pantsed' story without a shape or form.  This one has been fermenting away in my brain since a throwaway remark gave me the plot bunny. Warning; initial sexual abuse of a minor, and the subsequent story covers the victim dealing with it.  I will be going on to Bess, the 7 stepsisters and possibly another standalone.

Chapter 1

“Goodbye, Miss Fotherington-Thomas,” said Gareth, with a sneer. “Your plans hatched with my mother to trap me are, I’m afraid, going to fail.”

He stepped through the broken conservatory window, relying on his heavy jacket to protect him from any shards of glass, and jumped the eight feet or so to the ground.  Miss Fotherington-Thomas was just going to have to wait to be let out; Gareth was not feeling chivalrous. This last scheme of forcing him to become leg-shackled was too much.

He made a brief stop at the stables to order his phaeton set up, and then climbed the ivy to his bedroom window with the ease of long practise.  Although he had inherited the earldom of Wynddell, Gareth Wynd did not use the master bedroom.  His mother still occupied the adjoining room and Gareth had no desire to endure the hysterics if he asked her to move to a room suitable to the status of a dowager.  Moreover, his own room was more comfortable.

Gareth’s valet, Moss, jumped as his master came in the window.

“Strewth! You startled me, milord, what’s toward?  I thought you were at dinner with the latest muffin-faced moralist.”

“I was, and I let my mother talk me into showing her the conservatory; which conveniently locked itself.”

“Your mother locked you in?”

“I believe so.  She wants me to settle down.  Honestly, does she think I would settle down with a feeble creature like Jane Fotherington-Thomas? There’s no greater incentive to abandon the creature in the country and go to kick up a few larks in town with as many blowsy opera-dancers as I could fit into the room.”

“Yes, sir, I can see that.  Was this lady party to the deception?”

“Let me put it this way, Moss, she did not seem surprised and kept going on about the beauties of nature, and what a romantic place this was with the fountain and all.  I told her the fountain gave me overwhelming urges, and started to undo my trouser fall.  I swear she got excited, even if she did say ‘Oh! My lord, please do not...’.  I believe she was disappointed when she found out that my overwhelming urges were to take a piss in Mama’s favourite geraniums. I then broke a window and left.”

Moss laughed.

“So what now? You turn up and confound the dowager?”

“No, Moss, I’m leaving. I am heading out in a random direction.  Every cross roads I will toss a coin. If it is tails, I go left; heads, right. And when Mama goes to let us out in the morning she will find her dupe hungry and cross.  I doubt she can leap through the window, but she will not freeze.  The heating may not be sufficient to save the plants from the winter’s blast but it will be enough if she huddles close to the hot air outlet to preserve her life. Her comfort I do not care about.”

“No, sir, and why should you!” said Moss.

“What I want to do is to pack a couple of valises and throw out of the window; you can pack one for yourself and join me in the phaeton,” said Gareth. “Nobody is likely to stop you.”

“No, sir; I am invisible to milady,” said Moss.

Five hours later, they were in an inn, somewhere off the main North Road. Gareth had drunk more than was wise, and was nursing a hangover.  He had left orders not to be disturbed, and was therefore not happy when there was a sharp rap on the door.  This was followed by the door opening, and a girl entering.  Gareth was about to issue a blistering oath when he took in that the girl was no tavern wench, but was indeed dressed as a lady.  Her gown, pelisse and bonnet were out of date, dowdy, and had seen better days, but were unquestionably clothes belonging to a lady.  A strand of red hair escaped from the bonnet, and the eyes were big, luminous and scared in a peaked little face.

“I do apologise for disturbing you, my lord,” she said, in a voice which also unquestionably belonged to a lady, “But they tell me that you are a rake.  Are you?”

“What, the vicar’s daughter come to moralise?” he sneered.

“Oh! No,” she said. “But if you are a rake you will not mind running away with a girl like me.”

He blinked.

She did not look old enough even to be out.

“I am not a cradle snatcher,” he said.

“Would it ease your conscience to know that I have already been ... used?” she asked, bitterly.

He sat up properly.

“A chit your age?  How old are you?”

“Almost sixteen, sir,” she said.  “I ... I suppose I had better explain.” She looked down, knitting her fingers together.  “My name is Emily Elphinstone, and my father is the local squire and magistrate.”

“Have you not asked him to seek redress for your ... predicament?”

A bitter twist to her mouth made him open his eyes in sudden horror.

“Ah, I see you have divined it,” said Emily. “That makes it easier; I feared you might be naive enough not to recognise that incest is a common enough country crime, though less often amongst our class.  My mother died when I was twelve, and on my fourteenth birthday, my father informed me that I should fulfil all her duties.  We had already lost every maid and my governess, since they feared to stay where he would make advances.  I am unmarriagable, but I hoped you might find a space for me as your mistress for a while, since you have not brought one with you. I thought that a real rake who has to seduce people not just force himself on them might manage to make the act less painful, or his mistresses would not stay with him.”

“I ... I am not often left speechless,” said Gareth.  “Listen, chit!  I will go and speak to your father.”

Her shoulders slumped.

“I knew you would not take my distress seriously,” she said.

He held up a hand.

“Hear me out,” he said.  “If I take a child your age with me, even if I don’t lay a hand on you, I can be charged with abducting a minor.  However!” he added as she looked dismayed, “I plan to threaten your father into giving me permission to marry you.”

“But you can’t marry me; I’m spoiled, Father said nobody would want me, so I might as well resign myself.”

“Well, he’s wrong,” said Gareth.  “Because I’d rather be leg-shackled to a brat who at least knows her own mind, doesn’t care about my reputation and is prepared to have the bottom to run away than to one of what my man calls the muffin-faced moralists my mother keeps trying to pair me with.  I fled from her machinations when she locked me in the conservatory with one tedious wench. I have a passing sympathy for the poor girl, who must be touched in the upper works to agree to such a scheme, and had not managed conversation past ‘look at the pretty flowers’.”

“Dear me! If your mother wants you married so badly you would think she would manage to find someone of personality,” said Emily.  “Are you sure you want to marry me?  I ... he made me take herbs, and when they failed he had a man in to .... to kill the baby,” her voice shrank to a whisper. “And I don’t know if he damaged anything.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when you are old enough to take to bed and consider babies,” said Gareth. “Because I’m not going to lay a finger on you, my betrothed wife, until you ask me to do so.”

“Truly?” she brightened. “But then, what is in it for you?”

“Slighting my mother,” said Gareth, “And a quixotic  whimsy that wishes to rescue you from a most horrible fate.  I had a little sister once,” he added. “She didn’t live to grow up, but I’m sure Mama would have arranged an advantageous marriage for her to someone suitable, whether Lils liked the idea or not, and though I am head of the family it would have been deucedly awkward.  I’m planning on treating you as I would Lils, and if you want it, I will arrange for a governess for you to take up your education where it was so cruelly broken off.  I will have mistresses, of course,” he added.

“Of course,” she nodded. “If you are not taking your pleasure with me, you will need to do so elsewhere.  Am I supposed to be friends with them?”

He laughed.

“No, chit, you are not supposed to know about them, and certainly not to mention them.”

“Oh, I hoped you would tell me about them so I knew you were happy, and I would try to be friendly as they were on good terms with you.”

“You are an extraordinary chit, you know?”

“Papa says I am ugly and boring.”

“I have no very great opinion of your father’s intellect,” said Gareth, dryly.  “You ain’t dressed the way you ought to be, and you don’t eat enough, but when you fill out a bit and lose the pallor which is not a fashionable paleness but a lack of good health, you’ll be uncommonly pretty.  Besides, I have a weakness for redheads; my first mistress was a redhead, and she was kind to me and taught me a lot.”

“I am glad of that,” said Emily. “I think it must make a lot of difference if one’s first encounter with intimacy is kindly.”

“My poor child!” Gareth found his hangover dissipated in anger.  “You will stay here and I will go and see your father and I will obtain written permission from him for you to wed. He will not like the alternatives,” he said. “And then we will go on to York to find a convenient bishop for a special licence.”

“You look awfully dangerous when you are angry,” said Emily, beaming at him.

“And that is a matter of pleasure to you, chit?”

“Oh yes.  It makes me feel very safe,” said Emily.

“I will look after you,” said Gareth, flicking her cheek gently with a careless finger, ere he strode out.

“You are a loathsome, disgusting lecher, and to add incest of your young daughter to your crimes is the lowest thing I have ever heard,” said Gareth.

“Is that what she told you?  Poor child, she has these delusions.  I fear she may end up in Bedlam if she has taken to telling her lies to stranger...AWK!” he broke off perforce with Gareth’s hand at his throat.

“Just when I think nothing can be lower than what you did, you manage to lower the bar of your perfidy,” said Gareth. “Now, there will be the testimony of the maids you drove out, Miss Elphinstone’s governess, the abortioner you had in, and the male servants, who cannot be in ignorance of your actions.  I could smear your name quite thoroughly as well as proving that your daughter is not insane.  It does sit at variance with my personal desires though.” He smiled, nastily.  “If you were a man I would consider calling you out. As you are a cur, my current thoughts run to cutting off everything which has caused Miss Elphinstone any trouble, and making you eat it all, fried.” 

Elphinstone paled and swayed.  He did not doubt that the athletic young man in front of him was capable of carrying out such a threat.  And even if he then prosecuted for assault, the deed would have been done.

“You are a monster!” he croaked.

“No; you are a monster,” said Gareth.  “However, you can escape all the consequences of my ire if you write a letter which I dictate to you, confessing your crimes. This I will send to my solicitor, sealed, to be opened in the case of anything untoward happening to me.  Then you will write another letter to whom it may concern giving permission for your daughter to wed Gareth, Lord Wynddell.  That’s me, by the way.”

“M...marry?  why on earth would you want to marry a whey-faced chit, who won’t even scream when you beat her before bedding her?” said Elphinstone.

Gareth snarled.

“No wonder your poor wife died; I’m amazed she lived as long as she did. Probably to try to keep her daughter safe.  You disgust me, but I will not go back on my word. You may go and sit at your desk and write to my dictation.”

He dictated a full confession to Elphinstone and made the man seal it, and appended his own seal.  And then he dictated the letter of permission, to make sure that Elphinstone did not get any ideas about adding clauses which might be questioned.

“Good,” said Gareth.  “Do not seek out me or my bride for any reason.  Just learn to exercise your right hand, and if you must beat someone to get in the mood, learn self-flagellation.  You never know; you might enjoy it.”  And on that sneering note, he left.

Moss had made himself known to Emily when Gareth returned.

“I’ve put miss’s bandbox up with the other valises, my lord,” he said.  “But miss will be wanting a maid.”

“Are there any of your former maids who would be likely to come along, chit?” asked Gareth.

“I think they will be afraid of your reputation,” said Emily, frankly.  “But there’s Dinah, who was ruined by a gentleman some years ago, whom my father paid to come to him, up until he tried beating her and she would not come again.  I think that was when he decided I would do.  Dinah had a baby boy who died, and I think she would like the city.  She only sold her services because she couldn’t marry, and she had to do something.”

“I’m not about to be shocked, but my wife’s maid must not be promiscuous,” said Gareth.

“I don’t suppose she would want to be if she had a steady salary and somewhere to live,” said Emily.  “Do you think Moss would step round with a note if I wrote one?”

“I am sure he would,” said Gareth.

Dinah came in response to the note with her own bandbox, dressed in her best, dark brown, Sunday frock, and a linen cap.

“You’ll want me looking respectable, dearie,” she said.

“Oh, Dinah, thank you,” said Emily.  “You are good to come at the drop of a hat, and to accept what is, after all, a most unusual situation.”

“Well it has to be better than the old bastard and his odd ideas of what the two-backed mule is about,” said Dinah. “It’ll be an adventure.”

oOoOo

“The Black Swan,

York

November 2^nd.1800

Mother:

Your schemes notwithstanding, I am now able to return to town in safety from them, since I have just got married.  The appropriate notices have been sent to the newspapers, so you are unable to repudiate my choice. I am, after all, of age.

I will not be bringing my bride to meet you until you have got over the inevitable temper-tantrum you are going to throw over this matter.  The new countess will be travelling on to Wynd Garth, and if you should happen to write anything disparaging to her there, you will not like the consequences.

Your son,

Wynddell.