It Happened One Night

by Stephanie Laurens

  She hated her helplessness. It seemed to her that she had always been helpless. Though she had fought it once in her life—one glorious, short-lived act of defiance and freedom. And even in recent years she had refused to be dependent. She had refused to allow her brother to support her but had taken employment instead. She must not be too harsh on herself. But she felt so helpless.

  She reached for her bonnet and her valise.

  “You had better stay here,” he said, his voice brisk and impersonal. “It is just for the rest of the day and tonight. You might as well be safe here. And you will be quite safe. I have no wish to repeat our wedding night—or evening, to be more precise. It was really quite forgettable, was it not?”

  The words, she believed, were meant to insult and hurt. They did both.

  “So much so,” she said, looking up at him, “that until you reminded me, I had long forgotten—as you apparently had not. But you are quite right. I believe it really did happen. It was very forgettable.”

  There was a gleam in his eyes for a moment—a gleam of pure amusement, surely. Again, it was an achingly familiar expression. Why should so much about him be familiar? She had not set eyes on him for ten years. And she had spent every day of those years forgetting him.

  Richard.

  So briefly her husband. And then not.

  “It is May Day,” he said. “And it looks as if this village is all set to celebrate the holiday in style. The maypole is up and there are booths all about the village green. And the sun is shining. It feels almost like a summer’s day. Let’s go outside, Nora, and enjoy the fair. We have to fill in the hours of this day somehow.”

  “Together?” she asked him.

  He shrugged.

  “Wimbury is not a large village, is it?” he said. “We would have a hard time avoiding each other even if we tried. And it would look odd if we did so, as if we had quarreled. We would draw more attention to ourselves than either of us would welcome, I believe. It would be easier if we stayed together. Besides, you never did answer my question. Is your purse quite empty?”

  “That,” she said sharply, “is none of your business.”

  He nodded. “I thought so,” he said. “You are going to need to eat and drink again today. We will stay together.”

  She hesitated. But everything he had said made sense. There was going to be no avoiding him for the rest of the day, she supposed. And tonight they were going to be here together in this room—a thought she did not wish to dwell upon. She might as well spend the day in his presence, too, even if only to curb gossip.

  “Very well,” she said. “But this is all your fault, Richard. If you had not hailed me downstairs with your ridiculous claim, we would not now find ourselves in this predicament.”

  “If you had not tricked me into eloping with you ten years ago, Nora,” he retorted, “that ridiculous claim would not even have occurred, would it? I could merely have played Sir Galahad and offered my room to an old acquaintance while I betook myself to a billet elsewhere.”

  Tricked!

  If you had not tricked me.

  She felt almost blinded by hurt as her fingers fumbled to tie the ribbons of her bonnet.

  Chapter Four

  Was the keeping up of appearances so important to him, then? Richard wondered as they left the inn together. The sun warmed them immediately.

  Or did he really feel responsible for her? But that was ridiculous. He had not set eyes on her for ten years, and surely he had not thought about her, wondered about her, worried about her for every day of those years. Or had he?

  Or was it just that he felt sorry for her? She had come as far down in the world as he had gone up. Farther, in fact.

  “Shall we stroll about the green and see what the fair has to offer?” he suggested.

  It all looked very inviting. Booths shaded with striped awnings circled the green, the thatch-roofed and whitewashed cottages of the village beyond them. And in the center of it all the maypole awaited the dancers. It struck Richard that if he had to be stranded for a whole day, he might have been landed in a far worse place and at a far worse time.

  But what bizarre type of fate had stranded Nora here, too?

  “Yes, let’s,” she said, and they set off on a clockwise circuit of the fair. He did not offer his arm, and she made no attempt to take it.

  There was a large crowd out already—though of course it must be close to noon by now. All the villagers and people from the surrounding countryside for miles around must have turned out for the occasion. Young and old were dressed in their Sunday best, and all seemed to be in a festive mood for this rare treat of a holiday.

  He did not go unnoticed, as he had hoped he might. Neither did Nora. Several strangers stopped to ask them how they did, to assure them that the accident had not been their fault, to welcome them to the village celebrations, to exhort them to enjoy the day.

  But how could they even begin to do that? They were silent and awkward together. They both smiled and spoke to strangers yet did neither to each other. The day stretched endlessly ahead. And the night…Well, he would think of the night when it came. Had he really told her she could take the floor? He resented the fact that she had aroused such spiteful bad manners in him.

  Nora! He could still scarcely believe it was really she at his side. He turned his head to look at her and was surprised that he had even recognized her. She was no longer pretty and sparkling with exuberance. She was…But he did not want to think of her as beautiful. His jaw hardened, and he looked away.

  She stopped to examine the embroidery and lace the ladies of the church had made to raise funds for repairs to the bell tower while he talked with the ladies. He bought a linen handkerchief that just happened to have his initial embroidered in one corner, and he bought a lace-edged handkerchief for Nora despite her look of alarm and assurance that she did not need it.

  The ladies, though, smiled from one to the other of them, clearly charmed.

  “You take it, love,” one of them said. “When your husband wants to buy you gifts, you take them and run.”

  Both Richard and Nora joined the laughter of the ladies.

  “You really ought not to have done that,” she said softly but sharply as they moved away. “I do not want anything from you.”

  “It was not a gift for you,” he said curtly. “It is a gift for them. They have put a great deal of time and effort into producing beautiful items that will benefit only the church.”

  “You might have made a simple donation, then,” she told him.

  “But that would not have been the point at all,” he said.

  She folded the handkerchief and put it into her reticule without another word—not even a thank-you—while he frowned in irritation at the top of her bonnet. And then both of them lifted their heads to smile at an elderly couple who hoped they had not sustained any injuries in this morning’s accident.

  At another stall Richard hurled balls at a large cabbage precariously balanced on a stand, failed to knock it down with the first set of three, succeeded with the second ball of the next set, and presented the prize length of ribbon to a small girl who was standing beside him, clapping her hands and laughing.

  Nora was doing the same two things, he noticed when it was already too late to give the ribbon to her.

  “Oh, that was good of you,” she said as the child went darting off with her treasure. “She was thrilled.”

  “I had no personal use for the ribbon,” he told her. “Though I might, I suppose, have tied it about my hat and beneath my chin to prevent it from blowing away in the wind.”

  “It would have looked a mite eccentric,” she said. “Especially as it was pink.”

  “And there is no wind,” he added.

  For an unguarded moment they smiled into each other’s eyes as they shared the silly joke. And for that same moment he saw traces of the old Nora in her face. And then they both sobered and turned away in what he guessed was mutual embarrassment.
/>   They paused at the booth of an artist who was sketching portraits in charcoal and doing quite a passable job of it.

  “And you, too, ma’am?” he said, looking up at Nora and then at Richard. “Let me sketch your lovely lady, sir. It will be something you will treasure for a lifetime, I promise you.”

  “Oh no, really—” Nora turned away.

  “Oh, go on, mum,” someone else urged. “It will be something to remember Wimbury by.”

  “The day both of you might have got yourselves killed but didn’t,” someone else added.

  Other people lent their voices to persuade her, all of them good-natured and jocular. She looked at Richard, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

  “I think,” he said, opening his purse again, “you had better sit for your portrait.”

  “Take your bonnet off, if you will, ma’am,” the artist said. “Your hair is too lovely to hide.”

  Her fair hair gleamed smooth in the sunlight as she sat very still and self-conscious—though she did relax somewhat after a while as the crowd gathered about spoke with her and teased first a smile and then a laugh from her.

  Richard watched in silence. She was indeed lovely. Perhaps lovelier than she had been. It was an odd feeling, gazing at a stranger and yet feeling the pull of familiarity—and hurt and resentment and even hatred. He had thought all those sharp, negative feelings long gone. But they had come rushing back at the mere sight of her, as if the old wounds had not healed at all but had merely festered beneath the surface of his consciousness.

  Everyone had to gather about the finished portrait and give an opinion as to whether it was a good likeness or not. Most agreed that it was. Finally the artist handed it to Richard.

  Her smile fairly lit up the paper. She looked younger. She looked like the Nora he had known ten years ago.

  “It is nothing like me,” she said after they had moved out of earshot of the artist, who was busy persuading someone else to pay his fee. “It grossly flatters me, as of course it is meant to do. He cannot have his subjects demanding their money back, after all, can he?”

  “It does not flatter you,” he said as he rolled up the picture and clasped it in his hand. “It considerably underestimates you, in fact.”

  She looked up into his face, startled. But he had spoken curtly, even coldly, he realized. If she had been fishing for a compliment from him, she had had it. The leftover smile from her sitting faded, and she turned away. And he felt badly. There had been no need for that tone of voice. She had not asked to have her portrait done.

  “You must find somewhere to dispose of it,” she said. “You wasted your money.”

  “That is for me to decide,” he said. “It was my money to waste.”

  “So it was,” she said.

  They were like a couple of children, irritable and squabbling over nothing.

  They moved on to watch a fast-talking man perform a series of tricks with a deck of cards that looked as greasy as his hair. But he was good.

  “Oh, how did he do that?” Nora asked after one particularly clever sleight of hand. And when she looked up at Richard, he could see that her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the sun despite the shade of her bonnet brim.

  She looked as if she were actually enjoying herself, he thought. And he? The festive atmosphere was admittedly hard to resist. He would have enjoyed the day thoroughly if he had been stranded here alone. Or would he? Would he even be out here in the sunshine, participating in all the absurd pleasures of a country fair, if he were alone?

  His fingers closed a little more tightly about the charcoal drawing.

  When they moved on she laughed outright at the antics of a juggler dressed like a medieval jester. So did everyone else who was crowded about the man. And so, despite himself, did Richard. He looked down at Nora at the very moment she looked up at him, and suddenly the sun seemed very bright and very hot. They both looked away without speaking.

  At the next booth a woman was loudly proclaiming to all who would listen that each stone in the jewelry she was selling was precious and priceless.

  “But I’ll let you have one of those for a bargain, guv,” she told Richard when Nora ran her hands through the hanging strings of brightly colored beads. “Special for today, even though they are real, genuine pearls. Every one of ’em.”

  Nora laughed. “Bright blue pearls?” she asked.

  The woman winked at Richard. “Extra rare, they are guv,” she said. “Suit your lady a treat, they will. Here, I’ll cut the price in half and take even more of a loss. They are yours for a shilling.”

  “That is eleven pence ha’penny too much,” Nora protested, still laughing.

  “One and six with the matching bracelet,” the woman said, still looking at Richard. “Two shillings for the necklace and three bracelets. You won’t get a better bargain this side of China, you won’t, guv.”

  “Richard,” Nora said in sudden alarm, though she was still laughing, “don’t.”

  But he did. Just because suddenly he wanted to.

  He took the long rope of garish royal-blue beads from the vendor’s hand after paying for them and slipped them over Nora’s bonnet while she dipped her head. He drew back to admire the effect against the serviceable dark blue of her dress. She lifted her left arm and he slipped the three bracelets over her wrist.

  He expected her to look embarrassed and annoyed, as she had with the handkerchief. Instead she waved her hand in the air so that the beads clicked against one another. And her eyes danced with merriment.

  “Everyone will see me coming from a mile away,” she said. “How silly you are, Richard.”

  “And how ravishing you look,” he said, making her a mock bow.

  “You look like a duchess wearing the crown jewels, mum,” the vendor said before turning to bargain with another customer, who was admiring a pair of priceless diamond earbobs.

  Nora tipped her head slightly to one side—the familiarity of the gesture smote him.

  “You really must not keep doing this, Richard,” she said, her eyes still bright though the laughter had faded from them. “You are spending a great deal of money.”

  “I think perhaps all of five shillings so far,” he said.

  “Five shillings can be a fortune when one does not have it,” she said, and then turned sharply away as if she had revealed too much.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  She sighed. “No.”

  He inhaled the savory aroma that was coming from a food stall. “That smells delicious,” he said. “And it is a few hours since we had breakfast.”

  “Richard,” she said, “I am not—”

  “But I am,” he said. “And I would rather not eat alone.”

  He gave her the rolled-up drawing to hold and went to buy them a meat pasty each. And he led the way to an empty plot of grass on the green, where a number of people were sitting, either eating or simply relaxing in the sunshine.

  They sat side by side, eating in silence except when one family group nodded affably at them and called across to ask about their health and the state of the curricle. Nora had her legs curled up beside her. Her back was straight, her neck arched over her food. His pasty finished, Richard reclined on one side, propped on one elbow so that he could watch all the festive activity going on around them.

  “Have you worked all these years, Nora?” he asked at last and then wished he had not. He did not really want to know about the missing years. He did not need to know.

  “Not all of them,” she said. “I stayed with Papa for two years until he died. He always believed his fortunes would come about again. I suppose I did, too. I did not understand how deeply…Well, never mind.”

  She had been a sheltered and privileged girl when he had known her, daughter of a gentleman of vast wealth and political influence—or so it had seemed. Richard had been his secretary, yet even he had not suspected that Ryder’s properties were all mortgaged to the hilt, his debts astronomical, his penchant fo
r gambling out of control. Ryder had managed to pay his wage on time most months.

  “After his death I lived with Jeremy for a year,” she said—Jeremy Ryder was her brother. “But I would not do that indefinitely especially after he married. I have had employment since then.”

  He opened his mouth to ask a question, closed it again, and then asked anyway.

  “You did not consider marriage?” he asked her.

  She did not answer for a while. She was looking toward the juggler, who had just provoked a loud cheer from the people in his vicinity.

  “No,” she said.

  “Because no one would have you?” he asked her.

  “Because I would have no one,” she said.

  “Because you were already married?”

  He was not sure she had heard. He had spoken quietly, and there was a great deal of noise and merriment going on about them.

  “I was not,” she said just as quietly after a few moments. “I have chosen not to marry because I do not wish to do so. Why have you not married?” And then she turned her head to look at him. “But perhaps you have.”

  “No,” he said. He had thought of marrying. Apart from the emotional need he had sometimes felt for one woman—a whole string of mistresses and casual amours had never satisfied that need—there was the duty of begetting an heir. But he had never been able to persuade himself that he would not be committing bigamy by marrying. Yet he had never checked, had never consulted an expert.

  They had eloped to Scotland and had married there. They had returned to their inn room and consummated the marriage. And then, five minutes after they had gone downstairs to get something to eat, her father and brother had arrived and she had gone with them. He had been left behind, unable to travel for two whole days until he had recovered somewhat from the severe beating the two men had meted out as both punishment and warning. He had been a studious young man in those days and not at all robust. Certainly he had been no match for two enraged men.

  The man who had married them and the innkeeper who had let a room to them had been paid off, he had gathered. All evidence of the marriage had been swept away.