After the Wedding

by Courtney Milan

  He took a step forward. “This has been enough. I was here, too; it happened precisely as she said. She’s in tears. Have a little human kindness.”

  A silence swirled through the room.

  “So,” the rector said. There was a pregnant expectancy in the way he drew out the syllables. “You’re willing to make it right?”

  “Your pardon?” Adrian said in further confusion. “Make what right?”

  “We’ll discuss this in my office,” the rector said. “Kitty, conduct Camilla upstairs and lock her in the servants’ quarters until her future is decided. As for you…”

  He gestured at Adrian. None of this made sense. Everything was off. Adrian knew Camilla hadn’t locked the door, that he hadn’t been in this room for the hour that they claimed.

  What on earth was happening?

  Then, behind the rector, he saw Bishop Lassiter. Adrian had been sent here to spy on the man for his uncle; that small, self-satisfied smile that touched the bishop’s lips froze Adrian’s blood.

  It was the only explanation he could think of: The bishop knew what Adrian was trying to do.

  He had tried to be careful; he hadn’t contacted his uncle at all. But Adrian was a terrible liar. Somehow, Lassiter must have found out that Adrian was working on his uncle’s behalf. The two bishops hated one another. His uncle was willing to spy on Lassiter. Why had he not realized that Lassiter would retaliate?

  It made perfect sense. Lassiter had planned this whole bloody thing just to discredit Adrian and any testimony he dredged up. Now, if necessary, he could provide witnesses showing that Adrian was an immoral fellow.

  A second thought slotted into Adrian’s head.

  He should have listened to Miss Winters. She lived in this household; she knew what it was like. She had told him it was time to panic, and she had been right.

  Unless…

  It was possible that she was a part of this whole play. Somehow. Maybe not likely, but it was possible. She was either a very good actor, or he’d just watched them try to ruin her life simply to hurt him.

  “Come,” Rector Miles said, gesturing, and Adrian followed. Bishop Lassiter didn’t quite smirk as Adrian went past. Maybe it was his imagination, but he still felt a certain self-satisfied air to the man.

  Adrian had come here at his uncle’s behest to try to bring Lassiter down. He’d hated the idea. He’d hated being in service. He’d hated the very underhandedness of the scheme. He’d been reluctant, to say the least.

  Now?

  Adrian knew he should be angry. Likely he would be, when he had a moment to think matters through.

  But as he left Bishop Lassiter behind, what he actually felt was pity. If Lassiter thought a farce of this magnitude was necessary to cover up whatever it was he was hiding?

  He’d done something wrong.

  He was going to be ruined. Adrian felt sorry for the man.

  Chapter Six

  The conversation that followed had played out precisely as Adrian had expected—farcically. He sat in the rector’s office, in a high-backed wooden chair, bracketed between the bishop and the rector, refusing to perform the part they’d assigned to him.

  His uncle had taught him how men like this thought. They expected him to be overawed by them.

  The fact that he wasn’t? It left them baffled and a little angry.

  Of course he had been sacked. Good; hopefully the bishop would have all the joy of his mustard-stained linen without Adrian.

  He’d just met the bishop’s eyes. “Just as well.” He had shrugged. “I could not work for you, knowing what you are.”

  The man had reacted in surprise. “What am I?”

  Information was currency, and talking needlessly would erode any advantage Adrian held. Lassiter no doubt thought him some hired pawn. They had no idea who Adrian really was or what he wanted, and he’d best keep it that way.

  “You’re beneath me,” Adrian said. “Both of you—you’re liars and undeserving of your offices.”

  He watched the men color at the insult.

  “You’ll get no letter of reference from me,” the bishop hissed.

  “No harm in that.” Adrian folded his arms. “A reference from a man with no character would be meaningless.”

  They gave up trying to make him feel ashamed.

  “Of course you’ll marry the girl,” Rector Miles said.

  “Of course I would, if I felt honor bound to do so. As I did nothing that requires such an act, I won’t.”

  “Have you no thought for her reputation?”

  They were trying to appeal to his emotion, to distract him from the logic of the situation. Adrian just gave the two men a scornful look. “Don’t pretend that either of you care about that. If you did, you’d have believed her the moment the door opened. You’d have apologized already. If you had insisted there was no problem from the beginning, she wouldn’t be facing repercussions. My actions haven’t hurt her. Yours have.”

  Two hours of resistance on his part, and the men were flummoxed.

  They had expected him to bow and scrape and apologize and give in, and his refusal to do so when he should have been begging for mercy was outside their comprehension.

  Eventually, they withdrew to a corner of a room and held a whispered conference.

  “We’ll leave you to consider the ramifications of your decisions,” they said, before conducting him to a basement cellar. The door was locked behind him; the high window was barred, preventing escape.

  Adrian passed the time thinking of the sketches Mr. Alabi had sent from Harvil. Bears, ornate buildings, and bright designs. It was less than a week now until he had said he would be back. He had no time to be locked in basements. He thought of those sketches. He imagined possibilities for the plates that seemed impossibly far away and watched the shadows lengthen across the floor. The room was full dark by the time they came for him.

  “Come along.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s no more argument,” Lassiter said. “We’re going to your wedding.”

  Nothing fit together. If they had wanted an excuse to sack him because he was getting close, they could have just used the mustard.

  Forcing him to marry served no purpose that he could see…except spite, perhaps?

  Spite was a real purpose.

  Or maybe…

  “There will be no wedding,” he said, because he insisted on being a person even if they didn’t see him as one.

  “On the contrary. There will be no more arguments,” the rector replied, lifting a pistol.

  Adrian’s mouth went dry and rational thought fled. Looking down the barrel of a gun did something to his logical ability, choking it into nothing but the tarnished glint of moonlight on metal.

  For a moment, he floundered.

  “We can’t marry,” he finally remembered. “There were no banns read. We’d need a special license.”

  “We’ve had one sent up.”

  It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. But Adrian had never had a gun held on him before and it did something to his brain. All that he could think was that he couldn’t die by pistol. Not now. His mother had lost three sons to war and gunshot. Grayson had watched at least one of his brothers die in his arms.

  They could not lose Adrian, too. Not this way. He could not do this to his family.

  Adrian tried to gather his thoughts on the way to the church. They didn’t know who Adrian really was. They couldn’t; they’d never treat him with such cavalier disregard if they knew his uncle was Bishop Denmore, that he was the grandson of a duke. They thought him a valet, a servant—ignorant of all proper church procedures. They no doubt thought him a hired mercenary.

  But he’d served as his uncle’s amanuensis on and off for years. He’d read ecclesiastical texts; he still had some in his library.

  Lassiter and Miles didn’t know the truth, but Adrian did. They could hold a pistol to his head and make him say yes, but it wouldn’t be real. W
ith a gun held on him, it wouldn’t count as consent.

  He was brought into the nave of the church, then conducted to the front. The way was lit only by flickering candlelight.

  Miss Winters followed shortly. Her breathing was shallow and shaky. Her hands stretched and clenched, stretched and clenched. She seemed particularly pale, still in the gown she’d been wearing that afternoon.

  It occurred to Adrian to wonder what Grayson would say of the affair.

  You see? I told you’re too trusting.

  Well. With a pistol trained on him, now might be a good time to admit that was true.

  He’d trusted that a bishop of the Church of England wouldn’t force him to marry at gunpoint. That had seemed a perfectly reasonable supposition, honestly. He’d never heard of it happening before. And of course there was a first time for everything, he supposed, but why did he have to be the one to demonstrate the maxim?

  He’d trusted that his uncle wouldn’t let him get into such a situation.

  Probably his uncle had not known what might result.

  Even now, standing in a church with the bewildering events of the day behind him, Adrian was still trusting that Miss Winters wasn’t a part of this plot.

  He contemplated it now, eyeing her. If they suspected he was working with Bishop Denmore, maybe they’d thought to marry him off in order to have her report back what he knew, in which case…

  The gun waved in her direction, and she gasped shallowly.

  No. That was too untrusting. This wasn’t her fault.

  “I do not consent,” he told them in place of his wedding vows. He needed that to be clear, for the sake of his own conscience. For the sake of his future.

  The pistol waved in his direction.

  He would give no wedding vows. He wasn’t married; he refused to be. Still, he made promises as he stood there.

  He was not the sort to take pleasure in anyone’s downfall. This time, though? He refused to think of these wedding vows as binding, but he committed himself nonetheless. He promised his brother that there would be no cause to worry. He promised himself that he’d untangle himself from this ugly marriage.

  As for Miss Winters… They’d judged her expendable, and they’d done their best to make her feel like she was worth nothing for one little mistake.

  Adrian wouldn’t be her husband. He wouldn’t keep any of the promises they forced upon him—not in sickness, not in health, not for better, not for worse.

  He made her his own promise, though, as they stood in the hall.

  They thought we were expendable. They were wrong. Before we’re done, they’ll know that.

  “Say it,” the rector said.

  They don’t know who I am, but before I’m finished, they will.

  “Say it.”

  “I do,” Adrian said. And he would.

  Chapter Seven

  After the wedding, there was nothing to do but leave. Adrian and his new non-bride weren’t offered so much as a room for the night—no surprise there, Adrian supposed—just directions to an inn and their things, already packed for them.

  The inn was miles away and it was already dark.

  The night air was cold, and Adrian fell into a rhythm, walking and thinking, trying to decide on his plan of attack.

  When he had been young, he’d visited his father’s family in Maine, where he’d met his great-great-uncle.

  His great-great-uncle John had been born into slavery and had lived to see it undone. He lived still—or had the last time Adrian had heard.

  He had sailed around the world. Nowadays, he stayed home, tending his garden, with great-great-uncle Henry.

  There is no point getting angry at a bad hand, he had used to say. Especially if the dealer cheated when distributing the cards. Anger leads to mistakes.

  Don’t get angry; that’s what they want. Get calm. They’ll never expect you to do that.

  Don’t get angry; get creative. Take the hand you have and see whether you might not be holding something your enemy has overlooked.

  Don’t get angry at the cards; get the dealer out of the game.

  Easy to say when it was something other than the entire rest of his life at stake. All the more important to remember it now, when calm, creative plans seemed as distant as his parents, back in Maine with John and Henry.

  Adrian had always found walking calming; he focused on it now, one step after another claiming the road until he felt his fury bleeding into resolve. Until the anger clenching his heart slowly started to loosen and he could feel the cold of the wind against the back of his neck.

  Then he remembered that he had to return to Harvil in five days, that the designs for the china plates were unfinished, and that he was now married and stuck in a tangle with no easy way out.

  He stopped walking. “Fuck.” That was when he became aware of something else—footsteps behind him. That noise, that swift scuffle and slide behind him, was Miss Winters. If he could call her that any longer.

  He always walked fast; being angry had made him swifter still. He had a good eight inches on Miss Winters, and he had only a small satchel.

  He’d been so angry he’d not really thought of her, scrambling after him with her luggage. She must have been half-jogging to keep up.

  He stopped in the road and turned to the woman who had been forcibly joined to him in holy matrimony. In his anger, he’d allowed himself to look at her as a thing that had happened to him, but her eyes darted to his, then looked down the road. She wasn’t a thing, and this was why he hated being angry.

  She was breathing heavily, and he didn’t think it was from just the exertion. This couldn’t be any easier for her than it was for him. In some ways, it might be worse. No matter how she felt, he seriously doubted she had wanted to be married at gunpoint.

  Don’t get mad at the cards, he reminded himself. Miss Winters was no doubt a card, one who hadn’t wanted to be dealt in such a cavalier fashion.

  “Mr. Hunter?” she asked. He could hear the query in her voice.

  Well. He wasn’t going to pretend he was happy. “I suppose this…is what it is. We’ll have to figure this mess out.”

  She said nothing to that, but her jaw worked.

  “Do you need any help carrying that?”

  Her hands clutched tightly around the handle of her valise. “No, thank you. I can manage on my own.”

  Her shoulders were trembling.

  “Are you certain?” he asked dubiously. “Because—”

  “It’s no trouble at all.” She laughed unconvincingly. “Really, I’m very strong. I don’t intend to be a burden on you, not ever, and certainly not right from the start. I promise.”

  “Not to contradict you,” Adrian said slowly, “but you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. You are already a burden on me.”

  She winced. The moon overhead flirted with a ragged cloud; the dim light flickered patchily across her face. Her head bowed. “Of course you’re right.” Her voice trembled almost as much as her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking when I spoke. I meant only that I didn’t wish to be more of a burden on you. I’m sure you must be worrying about that.”

  He reached out and took the handle of her valise. “That’s not what I meant. I had been thinking we were equally a burden on each other.”

  Their eyes met for an instant, and he wondered what she was thinking. They were married—not really; he would have to explain—and he had no idea what she expected. Did she think they were going to become husband and wife immediately? Did she expect them to fall into bed? Did she think that she would have to pretend joy for such a consummation when they scarcely knew one another? When she’d been forced as well as him?

  She was pretty and he’d liked talking to her, but that would be unthinkable. He felt sick for them both.

  Miss Winters looked away first. “That’s very kind of you, but we both know there is no equality here. You had a prestigious position as a valet with a highly respected member of soci
ety. I interrupted your employment.”

  He didn’t think she was lying. He didn’t think she wished him ill. Grayson would say he was being too trusting again, but the entire point of this exercise had been to demonstrate that trust was warranted. No. If Adrian had failed here, it was by not trusting enough. Just look at what he had thought to himself before—that it was no business of his if maids received full pay, that he’d finish his matters and move on, and never mind what that meant for Miss Winters.

  He’d ignored the stirrings of his conscience. Look where that had brought him—to this moment on the road, the two of them not watching each other, not knowing what was going on.

  This mess wasn’t going to resolve itself in the next minute. “Have you eaten?”

  “There’s no need to worry about that. I’m not hungry.”

  “That’s not an answer. I was locked in the basement after the events of this morning with nothing to eat. I’m utterly famished. Did they give you anything?”

  A long pause.

  “That’s a no, then. Well.” Adrian spoke with a cheeriness he did not feel. “That makes the next hour easy. You can’t make battle plans on an empty stomach, not unless you want to end up attacking a bakery instead of your intended target.”

  Her lips twitched in a fleeting smile. “Battle plans? Are we at war, then?”

  Too trusting?

  No. Grayson had it wrong.

  Adrian had not been trusting enough.

  “Yes.” He pulled her valise toward him. “I have been for a while, actually. Bishop Lassiter and Rector Miles are our enemies. I’ll explain everything over supper. There’s an inn not far from here.”

  She did not let go of the handle. “I—I can’t. My funds are limited, to say the least. I have tried to be careful with my coin, but…”

  “But Rector Miles has been underpaying you,” Adrian finished for her, “and you’re only human, and you need shoes and the occasional biscuit and hair ribbon.”

  She blinked, and in that moment her grip on the valise loosened.

  “I told you he was the enemy.” Adrian eased the luggage from her grasp. “Money is not our problem.” He set her bag down long enough to dig in his waistcoat pocket. “Here.”