The Marriage Act (5 page)

She gasped. It was Welford. He’d slammed the blond gentleman against the brick wall of the inn and held him pinned there by the throat. “I believe the lady said you were mistaken,” her husband growled in a voice so low it made her shiver.

Caro gaped at them.

“Let me go,” the man choked, his face pale with fear. If he was trying to appear insulted and in control, he’d failed miserably. He sounded more like a defiant schoolboy.

“The only reason I haven’t snapped your miserable neck,” Welford said, every word deliberate and menacing, “is because you’re not worth the delay it would pose in my journey.”

“She made eyes at me!”

“I don’t care if she licked your damned face. You’re going to apologize and then you’re going to leave this inn as fast your legs will carry you. Understood?”

The man shot Caro a poisonous look but nodded in fearful assent.

“First the apology,” Welford said.

“I beg your pardon,” the man said, his eyes darting briefly in Caro’s direction. “I misread the situation.”

“Grievously,” Welford added.

“Yes. Grievously.”

Welford released him. The man quickly broke into a run, disappearing around the corner of the inn without a second glance.

Welford turned to her, unhurriedly straightening his coat, once again his cool, unruffled self. “Did he hurt you?” he asked in his normal tone of voice.

“No,” Caro answered, shaken. “But he was being impertinent.”

“If I may offer a piece of advice, the next time you give a man a look of invitation, strive for the discriminating air of an exclusive Cyprian rather than the ready availability of a Covent Garden lightskirt.”

“I never gave him a look of invitation,” she said angrily. The scowl that flashed quickly across Welford’s face told her it was no use denying it, not when he’d seen her with his own eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. If I took any notice of him at all, it was only meant as a game.”

“Even games have rules, and some men have a troubling tendency to expect women to play by them.”

Her cheeks burned. She felt humiliated, vexed with herself, and—despite his having saved her from heaven-knew-what vile jeopardy—even more vexed with Welford. Once again she was at fault, and once again he was making sure she knew it. He treated her as if she were a child and he were her father, except that her actual father would never have spoken to her with half so much condescension after the fright she’d just taken.

And the most infuriating part was that she couldn’t even defend herself as she longed to, because she
had
behaved like a child. What had made her give in to such a foolish impulse, trading looks with a strange man purely to annoy Welford? It had been a rash, thoughtless act of mutiny. She would’ve admitted as much, if she hadn’t known Welford would seize on her admission and use it against her like a club.

She let out her breath in a tension-laden sigh. “I’m tired, and I’d like to get an early start tomorrow. I’m going up to retire.”

“I was about to do the same.”

He accompanied her upstairs. Their room was The George’s best, boasting a cozy fire and a wide feather bed. Caro was still surveying the furnishings as Welford began to undress, stripping off his coat.

She cast a surreptitious glance his way, at his broad shoulders and lean build. What was she to do without her maid to help her? Welford might be able to manage on his own, but his clothes buttoned in the front.

Perhaps she could sleep fully dressed. No, that made no sense, not when she was going to have to wash up and change at some point. She fumbled for the back of her gown, wishing Mary were not recovering miles away.

Welford glanced in her direction and caught her struggling to unfasten her bodice. “Do you need help?”

As much as she wished to deny it, she was finding it impossible to manage alone, and she didn’t relish the idea of sleeping on a row of buttons all night. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

A moment later he was behind her, making an easy job of the task, his hands as quick and impersonal as if he were dealing cards. “There.”

How many women had he undressed in the years since their wedding? She hadn’t heard any rumors of mistresses or affairs, but then, he’d been half a continent away. She had the sense Vienna was a sophisticated, pleasure-loving city, and Welford was still young and vigorous, whatever her first impression of him had been.

Her back to him, she drew her dress off over her head, then draped it carefully over a chair. She’d be more comfortable if she took off her petticoat and stays, but she wasn’t about to strip all the way down to her shift with Welford in the room, husband or no.

He sat on the bed and tugged off his boots. “I’ll take the floor.”

“No, I’ll sleep on the floor. I said I would.”

“Whatever was said, you can’t possibly have credited I would leave my w—a lady to sleep on the floor while I occupy the bed. I’ll take the floor.”

He would enjoy that, wouldn’t he, if she went back on her word? It would be one more shortcoming he could add to the tally he kept, one more way he’d be in the right and she’d be in the wrong. “I said I would sleep on the floor, and I mean to sleep on the floor.”

He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “I’m not taking the bed.”

“Neither am I.”

He snatched up the quilted coverlet without further comment, leaving her the sheets, blanket and feather pillow. He shook out the quilt and settled it on the flagstone floor, between the bed and the door.

Not to be outdone, Caro stripped off the blanket and spread it out on the opposite side of the bed, near the window. “You can have the pillow.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

She reflected a moment and then took it. She might have promised to sleep on the floor, but the pillow had never been part of their bargain.

Across from her, Welford rolled his coat into a ball. “Leitner will have my head for treating good tailoring by Weston this way.” Still in his shirt and breeches, he stretched out on the coverlet, tucking the makeshift pillow under his head. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Caro blew out the candle and likewise got down on the floor, the bed between them. She lay on her back and wrapped the woolen blanket over her.

The flagstone floor was cold and every bit as uncomfortable as she’d feared. She was tired, but not the least bit sleepy. She closed her eyes and tried to block out all the worrisome thoughts swirling in her head—anxiety for her father, plans for the next day’s journey, the disturbing events of the past half hour, and most of all that Welford was mere feet away.

He must have been just as uncomfortable as she was, for after a few minutes of silence his voice came from the other side of the bed. “This is ridiculous. Both of us on the floor, allowing a perfectly good bed to go to waste, because you’re too stubborn to give in.”

“I’m not about to go back on my word.” Drat. She should have thought before she spoke. Now she’d opened the door for one of his acid remarks—
Ah yes
,
we both know how good you are at honoring your promises
or
I
bow to your exalted sense of right and wrong.

But he only said, “Do as you please. But if you change your mind in the middle of the night, the bed will be unoccupied.”

She wasn’t going to change her mind. Still, it was a relief he hadn’t leaped on her blunder, and a relief, too, that he wasn’t going to take the bed and then crow about how much more comfortable he was. The floor was hard enough and drafty enough without his adding to her wretchedness. Not that she’d really expected him to take the bed. Welford might be coldhearted, but he was too set in his ways to do something so ungentlemanly.

As tired as she was, sleep refused to come. Perhaps if she weren’t in her stays...But it sounded as if her husband was equally restless. Every minute or so, the rustle of his tossing and turning punctuated the silence.

“Welford,” she said into the darkness, “do you ever worry this is how we’re going to live out the rest of our lives—both of us miserable, because neither of us is willing to let the other win?”

“Win? I assure you, there’s no winning for me in this marriage.”

“I suppose
win
was the wrong word, and I meant...Oh, I don’t know what I meant.
Give in
or
forgive
or
let go of old wrongs
—”

“All of which apply to me, I notice, while glossing over your own lack of affection, loyalty and respect.”

She sighed. He really was impossible. “Very well, then, neither of us is willing to change. Is that more to your liking?”

He deliberated a moment. “I suppose.”

“Then do you never worry that this is all we have to look forward to for the rest of our days? Resenting each other, living separate lives? Unless one of us dies, you’re not going to have an heir and I’m not going to be a mother and we’re both going to remain angry and alone.”

“You could always have a baby with one of your—with another man,” he said coldly. “You must know I’d never publicly deny your child.”

“And you must know by now I’d never do such a thing. Whatever reckless choices I may have made as a girl and whatever foolish missteps I may make on occasion, we’re married and I’ve been faithful to you for more than five years.”

He was silent a moment, though she waited for his corresponding claim to faithfulness. Did his hesitation mean he’d taken mistresses?

“I do sometimes think about it,” he said as if the admission had been forced out of him. “About the years that are slipping by, the opportunities that won’t come again. They even have a word for the feeling in the German language. It’s called
Torschlusspanik
.”

“
Torschlusspanik?
” she said, the consonants discordant on her tongue.

“Translated literally, it means ‘gate-closing panic.’ It harks back to medieval times, when cities were walled, and to be caught outside the gate at night meant chancing some terrible fate—freezing to death, or falling prey to enemy marauders, or perhaps being torn limb from limb by wolves. To feel
Torschlusspanik
is to sense one’s time is running out and one’s last hope of safety and happiness may be slipping through one’s fingers.”

Caro’s heart sank. “Yes, that’s it. That’s what frightens me.”

“I think about it,” he acknowledged. “But I didn’t know you did.”

“I do,” she said in a thin voice. “All the time. If that’s what you want me to feel, if that’s the punishment you believe I deserve, then you
have
won.”

The coverlet rustled, and she had the impression he was turning to face her, propping himself up on one elbow. “That’s not what I want you to feel, Caroline.”

He sounded...concerned? That wasn’t like him. “Then what do you want from me?”

“Do I really have to spell it out? I want you to feel those things I mentioned before. Affection. Loyalty. Respect.”

Of course he would want that kind of one-sided adulation. Despite the contempt he felt for her, despite his unyielding coldness, he expected her to worship the ground he walked on. “I’ve been loyal to you for five years now, and you do have certain qualities I respect.”

He sighed—a long, slow, dissatisfied breath. “I’m afraid one and a half of my requirements isn’t enough.”

His
requirements
. “Then there’s no hope for us. The gate is going to close.”

He didn’t reply.

She stared up into the darkness. If only she hadn’t made so many mistakes that spring Welford proposed, her life might be so different now. As a girl, she’d always assumed she would end up married someday to a husband who loved her, someone who found the things she said and did delightful, not fodder for criticism. They would raise a house full of happy, spirited children, and the years would be full of laughter and good cheer. Instead she was trapped in a bad marriage to a man who didn’t want her but didn’t want anyone else to have her either.

For the next hour Caro lay awake, wishing she had the bedchamber to herself so she could have a good cry.

Chapter Six

Where
,
then
,
is the wonder
,
that they who see only a small part should judge erroneously of the whole?
or that they
,
who see different and dissimilar parts
,
should judge differently from each other?

—Samuel Johnson

The next day they set out at eight o’clock—earlier than John expected, but not as early as he’d hoped. They had a good deal of road to cover if they were to reach their goal of Market Harborough by nightfall, and the morning sky was an unpromising gray.

“It looks like rain,” Caroline observed as he handed her up into the carriage. She was wearing a broad-brimmed bonnet and a slim-fitting blue pelisse trimmed in black braid, and the shade brought out the deeper color of her eyes.

“I noticed. If it should start to fall, I’ll have Ronnie join us inside the carriage, and Leitner too. I don’t dare ask Leitner to brave the elements, since he’d only find some sly but ingenious way to repay me for it later.”

“I’d like to have a word with your valet, if he really knows of methods to make you more amenable,” she said, but it was clear from the quirk of her lips that the remark was meant as a joke.

Despite their troubling conversation of the night before and her obvious worry about her father’s health, she seemed in a better mood that morning. He had his brother to thank for that, and Ronnie’s comic descriptions of the aches and pains he was suffering after having spent the previous day in the saddle.

“I would tell you exactly where it hurts,” Ronnie had said in a rueful voice as they gathered in the inn yard, “but it might earn me a slap in the face.”

Caroline had laughed. “I have my suspicions, based on how gingerly you came down the steps at The White Lion.”

“And I thought I was hiding it well, just because I didn’t make this face.” His comically exaggerated expression of agony had drawn a full-throated giggle from Caroline.

John was in a better mood too, but not because of Ronnie’s clowning. He couldn’t stop thinking about something Caroline had said the night before—
I’ve been faithful to you for more than five years.

Could it be true? All this time he’d been imagining the worst, and the look she’d given that lout in the taproom had done nothing to ease his mind. But she’d sounded genuinely frightened when he’d come upon the two of them outside the inn, and he was quite sure he’d heard her tell the man
You’ve made a mistake.
I’m married.

Half an hour later she’d come out with
I’ve been faithful to you for more than five years
, neither flinging it at him in a mocking way nor letting it drop with a calculated purr in her voice. She’d stated it simply, flatly, as if he must know it was the truth.

Of course, she’d gone on to make it clear she felt no affection for him and precious little respect, but it had nevertheless left John wondering whether he could have been wrong about her. Caroline was incurably dishonest, and he wouldn’t trust her word as far as he could throw her, but what proof did he have she’d actually taken lovers? In all the time he’d been in Vienna, there’d been no gossip about her, no sign of pregnancy, not even a whisper of concern from Ronnie or his steward at Halewick.

They made their first change of horses at Old Stratford, where they also turned off the Holyhead Road to head north. “The route should grow thinner of traffic from here on out,” John remarked.

Caroline studied the passing landscape, her face all but pressed to the window. “I’m not very familiar with this part of England. It’s been years since I last visited my uncle’s house.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Let me see...my cousin Anne was planning to make her come-out the next year, and her sister Sophia was eleven, so I must have just turned sixteen. Between seven and eight years ago.”

“A year or two after I inherited,” he mused. “Not the easiest time in my life, but still far better than the years that came before.”

She regarded him with frank curiosity. “What was wrong with the years that came before?”

What
wasn’t
wrong with the years that came before? He’d been miserable after his father remarried. “Childhood is never particularly pleasant,” he said with a shrug. “Children have so little control over their own lives, and so few rights compared to adults.”

“Do you really think so?” Her face went blank with surprise. “I’ve always considered childhood such a carefree time. One is loved and protected, with no real responsibilities.”

Of course her childhood had been that way, growing up as Bishop Fleetwood’s daughter. She’d been fortunate. There were times John would’ve liked to strangle his own father, or at the very least imbue him with a backbone. Most of John’s trials had been his stepmother’s doing, but she would never have been able to make his life so wretched without his father’s exasperating failure to stand up for him.

“If we ever have a child—” John refrained from adding
not that such a thing is likely to happen
“—I mean to make sure he feels the way you do.”

She smiled at him. “Why, Welford, you said if
we
ever have a child, and not if
I
do or if
you
do.”

A smile, from Caroline? He smiled back. “Unless something about the process of baby-making has changed, I doubt I could manage it on my own.”

She actually laughed. “There are few things in this world I would put past your capabilities, but that happens to be one of them.”

A compliment too? It was the most favorable thing she’d said to him since their wedding night. She was even leaning closer. Emboldened, he ventured, “If I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?”

What a foolish question. If she meant to lie to him, she wasn’t likely to admit it. But she was still smiling and leaning in, and for one brief moment he had a sense the closeness between them was real.

“Of course.”

“On our wedding night—was that your first time?”

The playful spark faded from her eyes, and she sat back with a jerk, her smile vanishing. “Do you have to ask?”

“Regrettably, I do.”

Her lips thinned to a taut, angry line. “Was it yours?”

He wasn’t sure whether she meant the question as an insulting assessment of his expertise or she simply believed turnabout was fair play. If it was the latter, she wasn’t being entirely realistic. Society didn’t expect a man to wait for marriage, and besides, he’d been twenty-six, more than eight years older than she. Even so, he could’ve counted on one hand the women he’d bedded.

He stared out the carriage window. “I gather I have my answer.”

“You should have taken up the law instead of diplomacy,” she said, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. “You’re excessively skilled at condemning others on little or no evidence.”

His gaze snapped back to her. “What does that mean—that it
was
your first time?”

“Does it matter so much to you?”

“Of course it matters.”

She arched a disdainful eyebrow. “Why, because you couldn’t possibly accept a bride who wasn’t pure and untarnished?”

She made him sound closed-minded and judgmental, when surely he’d had some right to expect that the gently reared daughter of an English prelate would be what she seemed. “Go ahead, tell yourself what’s become of our marriage is my fault. Brand me a hypocrite, or a cold, unfeeling prig. Never mind that if you were a widow or a victim of ravishment, I wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn that you weren’t a virgin.”

“So I’d be acceptable, provided I’d paid for my sins by losing a beloved husband or suffering unspeakable rape.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“Am I?” she said on a skeptical note. “I notice you didn’t propose marriage to a widow or a victim of ravishment. There’s one reason husbands require a bride who’s never lain with another man, and that’s because they’re afraid they’ll suffer in the comparison.”

There was just enough truth in her speech—the first part of it, anyway—to make him seethe. But it wasn’t the whole truth, and it certainly wasn’t the reason he’d asked his question. He’d never been afraid that when it came to matters of sexual prowess, he might not measure up to her Lieutenant Howe. This wasn’t about his own pride and self-importance.

Goaded, he lunged forward and seized her by the wrist. “Damn it, madam, I didn’t propose marriage to a widow or a victim of ravishment because they weren’t
you
. God forgive me, I thought I was in love with you.”

She stared back at him, her eyes startled in the pale, perfect oval of her face.

“The reason it matters has nothing to do with your being untarnished, or with having to pay for your sins.” He gave her arm a shake. “It has to do with your being
honest
. With my wishing to believe that night meant something to you. That’s what I expected in a bride—not virginity, but closeness and honesty and trust.”

She gulped. “You’re hurting me.”

He glanced down to where he gripped her wrist, and released her at once. His fingers had left livid marks on the white skin above her glove. Shocked at himself, he lounged back against the seat. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have allowed my feelings to...I think we’ve said quite enough on this topic.”

She gaped at him as if she’d never seen him before.

He avoided her eyes, choosing instead to examine the view out the window. Why had he asked her about their wedding night? It was ancient history now. Worse yet, why had he lost his temper with her? They’d been doing so well, and he’d even begun to wonder if...

He should have left well enough alone.

Silence reigned inside the carriage. The only sounds were the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves and the creak of the coach springs. Long minutes passed while he marveled that he could have asked such a tactless question or lost his composure so completely. Normally he prided himself on his self-control. He’d sooner cut his own throat than hurt a woman.

“Welford,” Caroline said in an unsteady voice after they’d gone for some time without speaking. “I was a virgin that night. It shouldn’t matter, and you don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.”

He didn’t reply, because she was right. It shouldn’t matter.

But it was one small confidence she’d shared with him, and for that he was unaccountably grateful.

* * *

They were almost an hour past their third change of horses when the clouds burst.

The rain came down in a sudden torrent, rattling against the carriage roof. Welford had been in a funk ever since...well, ever since that strange outburst between Old Stratford and Northampton, but at the sound he opened the carriage door and leaned out. “Ronnie!” he shouted. “Tether Argos to that tree and come in out of the rain. We’ll stop until this slows.”

Caro shrank back from the rain pelting through the open door.

“You too, Leitner,” Welford called, though Caro couldn’t see his valet. He pulled his head back inside. “It’s coming down in buckets.”

She might have guessed as much, if not from the clatter on the roof then from his appearance. He hadn’t had his head outside the carriage door for more than fifteen seconds, but his black hair curled wetly against his forehead.

The carriage stopped, and a few seconds later the valet opened the door and sprang inside, shutting it quickly behind him. “Such fine English weather,” he said in his strange accent, breathless with haste and the exertion of scrambling down from the rumble. He took the seat across from her, his back to the horses, and Welford moved to join her.

Half a minute later, Ronnie burst in, drenched to the bone. Wearing a grin, he plopped down next to the valet. “It’s cats and dogs out there.”

Leitner’s brow wrinkled. “Cats and dogs?”

“
Schusterbuben
,” Welford translated.

“Ah.”

Ronnie pulled a silver flask from his coat pocket. He took a long swallow, then held it out to his brother. “Care for a nip?”

Welford eyed it askance. “No, thank you.”

“Oh, it’s not gin, it’s brandy. Good brandy. I pinched it from your house in Town.”

“Perhaps later,” her husband said.

Ronnie was about to replace the cap, but the valet threw him a look of mute appeal. Ronnie passed him the flask, and Leitner took a quick swig before returning it with his thanks.

Ronnie tucked it back in his coat pocket. “I’m not sorry to be out of the saddle. Argos is a prime goer, but enough is enough.”

“Perhaps a change will be as good as a rest,” Caro said. “Though I’ll be happy enough myself when I don’t have to sit in this carriage anymore. Some people can carry on through almost any amount of discomfort—”

“Like John,” Ronnie put in.

“—but I’ve never had that talent.”

“It’s hardly a talent,” John said. “It’s more a matter of stubborn determination.”

“You, stubborn?” Caro said with a lift of one eyebrow. “Surely you jest.” But despite her attempt at raillery, the notion that Welford was stubborn—that they
both
were—sent a cold current of melancholy through her. It reminded her of lying on the floor at the inn the night before, and the terrible sense that any hope of happiness was rapidly slipping away.

“I don’t envy our coachman, out there in this weather,” Ronnie remarked as the four of them sat listening to the drumming of rain on the roof.

“I hope this lets up soon,” Welford said. “We still have miles before we reach Market Harborough, and if the road—”

A brilliant flash of lightning lit the coach, and in the same instant a deafening crack rent the air, the loudest and nearest thunderclap Caro had ever heard.

Chaos broke loose.

The carriage lurched into motion—not the familiar speed of a measured trot over good roads, but a wild, headlong rush. The horses were bolting.

Caro clutched the edge of her seat. She let out a cry as a sudden jolt threw her to the right. Outside, tree branches thumped and scraped against the coach, the horses’ hooves thundering as they hurtled forward at breakneck speed. The carriage jounced and careened to one side. Caro struck her head against the window glass.