It Happened One Night

by Stephanie Laurens

  It quickly became apparent, however, that she was not in imminent danger of losing her ride. The stagecoach was listing at far too sharp a sideways angle to be occasioned by an obese passenger or a particularly heavy piece of luggage stowed too far to one side.

  “That thar coach must ha’ met with an accident,” Mr. Crowe remarked sagely, breaking a conversational lull of ten minutes or longer. And he drew his gig to a halt some distance away, lifted Nora’s valise out of the back, held out a massive hand to help her alight, nodded and grunted when she thanked him, and climbed in and drove off just as if he did not possess an inquisitive bone in his body.

  Nora picked up her bag and hurried forward into the noisy fray. Crowds of people, doubtless a mingling of the stagecoach passengers and curious villagers, were clustered about the gateway to the inn yard and the coach itself, most of them talking excitedly, several of them doing so at great volume and with wild, even menacing gestures.

  “What happened?” she asked the people closest to her.

  They all spoke more or less together though none of them turned their heads to look at her.

  “There has been a terrible crash. I swear my heart stopped for a whole minute when I heard it. I expected to see at least a dozen dead bodies.”

  “That coachman did not blow his yard of tin before turning into the inn yard, and he was going too fast anyway. He collided with a perfectly innocent gentleman’s vehicle that was on its way out.”

  “He did blow his horn. Are you stone deaf? It came near to deafening me. The gentleman was not paying proper attention, that was all.”

  “Thought he had the right of way just because he had a natty new curricle and pockets stuffed full with half a fortune.”

  “Three-quarters full, I would wager. Did you catch a look at his boots? He didn’t get them for ten quid or even twenty.”

  “The coachman was not looking where he was going, and see what happened as a result. It is good for him no one was killed. He would be swinging for it before the week was out. It was his fault right enough.”

  “He had his eyes peeled. It was the gentleman who was looking over his shoulder—probably at one of the chambermaids.”

  “A public vehicle has the right of way.”

  “No it don’t. Where did you get that daft idea? The carriage that is leaving gets to go first.”

  “The coachman was swearing the air blue just a minute or two ago. You should have heard him. He told that gentleman a thing or two, I am here to tell you.”

  “That’s as much as you know of the English language. The gentleman swore rings around him.”

  “The coach has lost a wheel and its axle has been badly damaged. It may not even be possible to repair it.”

  “The gentleman’s curricle has been smashed to smithereens.”

  “No, it hasn’t. It merely has a split axle. I don’t think it’s even in as bad a way as the coach.”

  “And who do they think is going to mend two broken axles and a broken wheel today of all days when everyone is on holiday? They’ll expect it, though, mark my words.”

  Beyond the group closest to her, Nora could hear the stagecoach passengers, their voices raised in appeal and outrage. What were they supposed to do until tomorrow? And what if they could not wait until tomorrow to get where they were going? How could they be sure anyway that the coach would be ready to resume its journey even then? Someone was going to hear about this. Someone was going to answer for it. Someone was going to pay.

  Nora felt slightly weak at the knees even though it did not appear that anyone had sustained any physical injury.

  What was she going to do?

  Within a few minutes everyone was beginning to drift away in the direction of the inn itself, and Nora was able to elbow her way forward until she stood before the man who must be the stagecoach driver.

  “When do you expect to be on the way again?” she asked, realizing the foolishness of her question even as she spoke. She could see the carriage more fully now.

  “Tomorrow, if I have anything to say about it, ma’am,” he said none too graciously, not even looking at her. “If you have a ticket, you are just going to have to come back tomorrow.”

  “But what am I to do today?” she asked him.

  He shrugged and scratched his head, his eyes on the damage to his vehicle. “Take a room at the inn like everyone else, I suppose,” he said. “You had better hurry, though. There aren’t going to be any left pretty soon.”

  It would not matter if there were a hundred rooms left. Nora’s mind was humming with the realization that she was well and truly stranded. With nowhere to go and without a feather to fly with.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “I can have back the price of my ticket.”

  Though that was no real solution to anything, was it? If she spent that money, then she was going to be stranded here forever and a day.

  “It’s not possible, I’m afraid, ma’am,” he said with surly impatience, bending to peer under the vehicle. “No refunds are allowed.”

  And so that was that. Somehow she was going to have to stay stranded here for a whole day—and a whole night—before she could even hope to begin the long journey to London.

  She did not know anyone here. Even though Wimbury was only five miles from Mrs. Witherspoon’s, she had not once before left the house and garden, and there had never been visitors.

  It was going to be a long, hungry day. Nora glanced up at the sky as she wandered aimlessly toward the inn entrance, where everyone else had disappeared. She stood just inside the taproom door for several minutes, undecided about what to do or where to go. Other people milled about her. All seemed to have somewhere to go and someone else to talk to.

  She felt suddenly and horribly lonely and isolated and—stranded.

  A lanky young man wearing a soiled apron and carrying a tray of empty glasses stopped close to her. He was looking slightly harried.

  “If you are another of the stranded passengers, ma’am,” he said, “you are going to have to make other arrangements for tonight. We are full, what with the May Day fair and the coach crash.”

  “I—”

  Nora was never afterward sure what she was about to say. Someone else spoke first. It was a man’s voice, soft and cultured and clearly accustomed to commanding and being obeyed.

  “The lady already has a room,” he said. “She is with me.”

  Nora, startled, looked to see to whom and about whom the gentleman was speaking. But clearly he was speaking to the waiter—and he was looking directly at her with lazy blue eyes, above which his dark eyebrows arched.

  She had a fleeting impression of tallness and broad shoulders and slender hips and well-muscled thighs, all clad in fashionable, expertly tailored clothing that looked as if it had been molded to his handsome frame. But then other thoughts intruded.

  It could not be.

  Surely—

  The light inside the taproom was dim, the windows being small and half covered with heavy curtains. It was impossible to see with any clarity after just stepping inside out of the sunlight.

  Even so…

  It could not possibly be, though.

  But it was.

  Or rather, he was.

  Richard.

  He was Richard.

  But she had missed something. He had said something else during the second or two of numb shock she had felt as she recognized him. The words were only now imprinting themselves on her hearing, like an after-echo.

  “She is my wife,” he had just said.

  “Ah, that is all right then, sir,” the waiter said as he turned away about his business.

  Chapter Two

  Richard Kemp, Lord Bourne, had made an early start on his journey. He had left Dartwood Close behind him when dawn still barely reddened the eastern sky. He was going to spend a few days with his grandmother in Hampshire before continuing on his way to London, where he would stay for the rest of the Season.

  It was a sunny m
orning with no appreciable wind—a perfect day for traveling by curricle. His carriage, with most of his baggage and his valet, was to follow him to London in a few days’ time.

  He made a stop at Wimbury for a change of horses when the morning was already quite well advanced, though he resisted the temptation to step inside the inn for refreshments. The taproom looked crowded, as was to be expected on a holiday, especially as he could see that there was to be a fair here—and the maypole was up. He would surely allow himself to be drawn into conversation if he went inside, and before he knew it an hour or more of valuable traveling time would have gone by. He would relax when he reached his destination. His grandmother would be delighted to have his company.

  But what was that old adage about more haste leading to less speed? Old adages had an annoying habit of being right, as he realized when he thought about it later.

  If he had started out from home at a more civilized hour, or if he had stopped sooner to change horses, or if he had stepped inside the taproom here for a glass of ale and a pasty, or if he had done a number of things more slowly than he had actually done them, then he would not have been pulling out through the gateway of the Crook and Staff’s yard at the exact moment a stagecoach was pulling in. And he would not have been delayed by a whole day as a result.

  But that was precisely what did happen.

  He was pulling out of the yard with full care and attention upon what he did despite the fact that the maypole with its colorful array of ribbons was directly in his line of vision, when suddenly all hell broke loose. He heard the simultaneous sounds of a horn blasting and hooves thundering and imprecations being shouted—some of them coming from his own lips—and metal and wood crashing and screeching against metal and wood and hysterical screaming. And he saw horses rearing, their eyes rolling in panic, and a florid-faced, gap-toothed coachman hauling on the ribbons from the large box of a stagecoach as it attempted to occupy the same space as his curricle in the gateway.

  All his reflexes set him to work bringing his panicked team under control and jumping from his seat before he could be pitched out of it and crushed beneath what was left of his curricle.

  He had collided with a stagecoach.

  His first coherent thought was that the driver of a stagecoach was supposed to blow his yard of tin before turning a sharp corner, not as he was doing it—at far too reckless a speed. The warning blast had been a mite useless at that point.

  There was a driver, he suspected, who was overeager for his pint of ale.

  Passengers spilled from the stagecoach as it tipped dangerously to one side, some of them involuntarily, most notably those who had been perched on the roof. The coachman, swearing horribly, was attempting to control his own horses and prevent the vehicle from tipping completely over while creating further catastrophe.

  Men were yelling. Women were screaming. The taproom was emptying of its patrons, most of them still clutching their mugs. Villagers were appearing as if from nowhere.

  Miraculously—it was Richard’s second coherent thought—there appeared to be no dead or mangled bodies lying around and no blood. He did a quick mental inventory of his own limbs and other body parts and discovered nothing more alarming than a sore ankle, which was very probably not broken or even badly sprained.

  There was not a great deal of time for thought or recollection. A score of people—at least that many—were talking or yelling or shrieking at once, most of them claiming to have been eyewitnesses, and enough blame was being slung about to do justice to a mass riot. And since the occupants of his own vehicle were in a minority of one, most of the blame was coming his way.

  His horses appeared unharmed, he noted at a quick glance. So were the stagecoach’s. Another miracle. His curricle had not fared nearly as well. It had an axle that was very probably broken, and the paintwork was horribly scratched. But nothing was beyond repair, if his guess was correct.

  He turned his attention to defending himself. Not that anyone was throwing fists or using life-threatening weapons. But the air was fairly blue with damaging language, most of it issuing from the stagecoach driver’s mouth and most of it graphic and uncomplimentary about his pedigree and that of his mother. The man’s face was so purple, Richard feared he had apoplexy and was the only real casualty of this mishap.

  Richard opened his own mouth and gave as good as he got. The first shock of the collision over with, he was beginning to feel angry. Furiously angry, actually. The curricle was no more than three months old and had been his pride and joy. He had been hoping to reach his grandmother’s tonight and was now stranded in the back of beyond—without his valet. And this stagecoach driver with his foul mouth was entirely to blame, as Richard informed him in no uncertain terms and without having to resort to inventing pedigrees.

  The ire of the passengers began to turn against their own coachman, and a fierce discussion began on when exactly that horn had been sounded and how fast exactly the coach had been going as it turned into the inn yard. The taproom patrons, who had been grinning at the coachman’s colorful language, cheered Richard’s blistering tirade, and one of them raised his glass to him. The villagers added their own opinions, entirely uninformed as they were, since it was unlikely any of them had actually witnessed the mishap—though all would probably claim to have done so for the rest of the day.

  Having had his say and noted that a couple of ostlers were freeing his horses and leading them away, Richard turned on his heel and stalked off into the inn, the innkeeper at his side assuring him that the best room in the house had already been set aside for the gentleman’s use tonight.

  The stranded passengers crowded in behind him, having just realized that they, too, would need rooms and that there might not be enough to go around. A few were loudly indignant and warned no one in particular that someone was going to pay for this. Several others were quieter and apparently resigned to the unexpected delay.

  One such person stood inside the door, making no effort to elbow her way forward to demand a room. She carried a valise and was decently dressed, but something about her drooped shoulders and downcast expression told Richard that finding a vacant room might not be her main problem.

  How many of her fellow passengers, he wondered suddenly, might not be able to afford the extra expense the crash had caused them?

  He lost sight of her for a moment as he nodded to acknowledge the innkeeper’s assurance that his bag had already been taken up to the best room in the house. He turned to follow it up. He would be glad to get out of this hubbub until everything had quieted down. He would go out later to have a good look at his curricle and see what arrangements he could make to have it repaired.

  This was all one devil of an inconvenience, he thought almost viciously.

  He glanced toward the doorway again as he turned. She was still there, that woman passenger. She must be traveling alone. She was turning her face toward the window, and the light shone on her profile.

  It was something about the nose. It was not a particularly prominent feature and it was apparently straight when viewed from the front. But there was a slight bend in it just below the bridge that gave her face character and saved her from being just conventionally pretty.

  Or so he had once told her when she had wished aloud that it was perfectly straight.

  But it could not be…

  He was forever seeing women who reminded him of her, but on closer inspection they were never anything like her at all. There was no one like her. Thank the Lord, he added silently with a tightening of the jaw.

  But he took several steps away from the staircase, frowning as he did so. He had to take a closer look, as he always did.

  She had turned her face back into the room and had raised her eyes to a waiter who was returning to the kitchen with a tray of empty glasses.

  Oh, devil take it!

  She was ten years older, and there was something very different about her. Many things, in fact. But there was no mistaking her.


  She was Nora.

  The waiter was speaking impatiently to her, telling her to leave.

  Richard, not even pausing to wonder why that fact should so annoy him, took one more step forward.

  “The lady already has a room,” he said. “She is with me.”

  Too late he thought that it might have been wiser simply to have hurried away to his room. He had spoken without even knowing what he was about to say.

  She looked startled and her eyebrows rose as she turned her gaze on him. He watched surprise turn slowly to shock as she recognized him.

  She certainly had changed. Age—she must be twenty-eight now, three years his junior—had matured her face into a perfect oval, and it had taken some of the bloom of youth from her cheeks. Her eyes, though just as blue as he remembered them, looked larger and deeper, with less sparkle. Her flaxen hair was no longer dressed in curls and ringlets to bounce about her head and face at every movement. It was drawn back smoothly beneath her bonnet and coiled at her neck. The bonnet and the rest of her clothes were serviceable and respectable. All the remembered pastel-shaded frills and flounces were gone.

  She looked like someone’s governess—and perhaps was.

  They were thoughts and impressions that flashed through his head in a second or less.

  “She is my wife,” he added.

  That satisfied the waiter, who continued on his way to the kitchen.

  There was a moment’s silence—if one discounted the din around them.

  “I am not—” she said.

  He held up a staying hand as he stepped even closer to her.

  “It might be wise not to complete that thought,” he said, his tone clipped. “I doubt there are any rooms left, and this is a respectable establishment. You had better come and share my room—as my wife.”