Ever His Bride Read Online Free

house and became a
part of the damp London night.
    “He can’t do this to me!” Felicity said
finally, trying to shake loose the inconceivable notion of having
to tack his name onto her own. Felicity Mayfield Claybourne. The
very thought made her face heat.
    “Lock us down tight, Theda,” Cobson said,
frowning at Felicity as though she had already cost him a day’s
pay. “She’s not to get away.”
    “Yes, yes, Cobby. Go on up, now. I’ll take
care of everything.” Mrs. Cobson locked the door and stuffed the
key into her pillowy cleavage. She patted Felicity’s arm. “You’re
lucky, dearie. We’ve an empty room tonight. Cobby, I put Rawley and
Horville in the dormer.”
    Cobson turned on the stairs. “What about that
bloody draper and his whimpering family?”
    “Gone.” Mrs. Cobson grinned and shook the
purse that dangled from her sash. “His cousin paid his charges to
us, as well as his debt to Mr. Nash. Left us before supper, so we
got another day’s take without even havin’ to feed them.”
    “That’s my girl.” Cobson’s clomping boots
disappeared into the darkness abovestairs.
    “Come along to your room, Miss Mayfield.”
    “I’ll stay down here, if you please.”
Felicity pointed to the parlor, a simple room that wouldn’t feel so
much like a prison cell.
    “You heard Mr. Claybourne, same as I.
Wouldn’t be pleased at all if you were gone when he come back. He
paid extra for Cobby to fetch you in from the country. And I’ll not
be spending our own good money to fetch you back. Come along now.”
Mrs. Cobson took a fingerhold of Felicity’s sleeve.
    “He can’t make me marry him.”
    “Probably not. But, dearie, he’s a very rich
man, is Mr. Claybourne, and very powerful. A fair-enough catch for
a woman in such dire circumstances.” Mrs. Cobson took in a breath
and started up the stairs, towing Felicity behind her.
    “I’d rather go to prison.”
    “Suit yourself, m’dearie, but I’d think on
it. Five years can be a very long time in the Queen’s Bench.”
    A single night at Cobson’s Rest had seemed an
eternity. She hadn’t slept a moment and now sat on the edge of the
sagging bed, watching the early morning ooze its grayness into the
darkened corners of the tiny attic room. She had listened all night
to rats scratching their way along the baseboard inside the walls,
and to the sawtooth snoring from the rooms on either side of her.
The Knotted Mazel would have been sweet heaven compared to the
Cobson’s filthy sponging house. Yet, if even half the horror
stories she’d heard about debtors in the Queen’s Bench Prison were
true, then—
    “Uncle Foley, what have you done to me?” He
couldn’t have known what trouble his enterprise would cause her.
He’d invariably been there when her father had needed him. His
business dealings hadn’t always been sound, but without exception
he’d been honest. And his scheme to sell tools and supplies in the
gold country had been brilliant. When he’d come to her with the
idea of selling off her shares in the railway and setting aside a
thousand pounds to keep her in case of an emergency, she’d agreed
in an instant. But he couldn’t have known about the rider to
her father’s will. He wouldn’t jeopardize her freedom, her life,
would he?
    Certainly not! Uncle Foley would return in a
year, with more than enough money to repay Claybourne. Then she’d
be free of debtor’s prison without having to marry the merciless
monster in the process. Surely she could bear up in the Queen’s
Bench for a year, use her emergency funds to pay for decent
lodgings inside the prison, purchase proper food, blankets and warm
clothing from the wardens. Just one year, one whole year without
trees and meadows, without the rumble of the rails beneath her
feet, country inns, fetes and fairs. . .
    And what about the Hearth and Heath! Her readers would soon forget her entirely if she couldn’t report
regularly on the quaint places she traveled to.