The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

  He opened his eyes. She expected him to start in surprise, perhaps even jump out of bed with an oath. Instead he gazed back at her for a long, pregnant moment before easing himself up into a sitting position.

  “Lady Welford.” His tone was cool, flat and mocking. “So you’ve heard I’m back in England.”

  “Yes. I heard two weeks ago, not that I expected it would make any difference in our domestic arrangements.”

  He looked bigger than she remembered—and decidedly more handsome too. Though she’d once considered him old, or at least too old for her, she must have been viewing him through the prism of girlhood, for despite the nearly five and a half years that had passed he was fitter and younger than she’d imagined. There wasn’t a trace of silver in his dark hair, and his face with its arresting bone structure remained unlined. But then, he was only thirty-one. Not so old at all. She’d lost sight of that, somehow, picturing him throughout the long months of her banishment.

  He raised one black eyebrow. “Well then, to what do I owe the honor of this late-night call? Have you perhaps taken some new lover you wish me to make jealous?”

  She deserved that. She’d expected no less, not from a man as cold and self-important as her husband. “I need your help.”

  His dark eyes narrowed slightly. “And why should I wish to help you?”

  She swallowed down her pride. “It’s not for my own sake. I would never come here if it were. Do you think I don’t know how much you hate me?”

  He didn’t bother to deny it. “Then what is this about?” He sat forward, a flash of concern crossing his face. “Is it Ronnie?”

  “No. Your brother is fine.”

  He leaned back again, his features resuming their former hauteur. “Half brother.”

  “Very well, then, your half brother is fine. He’s downstairs, in fact. He was good enough to provide his escort.”

  Welford frowned. “I thought my instructions were clear. He was to remain at Halewick. As were you.”

  “Your instructions are always clear, but that doesn’t make them reasonable. I understand your wish to punish me, but why you should insist on confining a restive nineteen-year-old who—”

  “You’ve said quite enough on that topic. Pray come to the point and tell me what you’re doing here.”

  Oh, God, this was hopeless. What had made her think he might have mellowed in the years since she’d last seen him? He would never forgive her, and they were better off apart.

  Except this once. This once, she needed his help. “It’s my father,” she said, a lump rising to her throat. “He’s dying.”

  For one brief moment the cool, disdainful mask slipped, and his face—her husband’s face—was the same one that had smiled down at her in church on that awful day she’d had to make good on her promise, the day she’d become Lady Welford. A caring face. A face that had made her wonder how she could have been so foolish and shortsighted.

  Too bad the caring had been mere illusion.

  “Your father is ill?”

  She nodded. “It’s his heart. He can’t even put on his vestments without pausing to catch his breath, or step into the pulpit without help. The doctors have bled him but the dropsy is only growing worse. They say he doesn’t have long left.”

  Welford ran a hand over his jaw. “What can I do?”

  He sounded sincere. So he wasn’t completely heartless, then. “He’s asked to see me one last time, and I want to go to him. But...I need you to come with me.”

  Her husband’s hand dropped to the bed. “Let me guess,” he said, his sarcastic drawl returning. “You never told him why you married me, or that we’ve been living separate lives. He’s spent the past five years convinced you’re the ideal wife.”

  “How could I tell him?” she flared hotly, stung that Welford had so quickly divined the truth. “He’s the best, kindest, most principled man in England. He’s devoted his entire life to the Church. And he loves me. It would break his heart to know—”

  “That you betrayed me from the first night of our life together?”

  She flushed. “That I made a mistake in accepting you.”

  “You ran away to another man,” Welford said with barely controlled menace, “only an hour after consummating our marriage.”

  Her hands tightened at her side. He would always be in the right, and he would never let her forget it. Never, not if she spent every day paying for her girlish stupidity, not if she lived to be a hundred, not if she died childless and alone. “That’s really what you can’t forgive, isn’t it? It’s not that I was in love with Lawrence Howe when I accepted you. It’s that I wasn’t sufficiently bowled over by your prodigious lovemaking to decide you were the better man.”

  Welford’s face darkened dangerously. “As if I care for your good opinion.” He got out of bed, and for a moment she feared he might actually do her some violence, but he made no move toward her. “Whatever selfish impulse may have pushed you to say yes, you didn’t have to go through with the wedding. Did that never occur to you?”

  Of course it had occurred to her. Accepting him had seemed like a brilliant stroke at first, in the aftershock of reading Lawrence’s letter. Welford was titled, older, and experienced, the perfect foil to make a fickle nineteen-year-old suitor regret having spurned her. She’d only half listened to Welford’s proposal, picturing the look on Lawrence’s face when he spied her wedding announcement in the papers.

  What a rash and idiotic child she’d been. She deserved a good slap.

  But she didn’t deserve a lifetime of punishment meted out by a cold, humorless tyrant who despised her, just because she’d lacked the courage to confess her folly to her father before walking down the aisle. She’d made shameful decisions, but she’d been a green girl of seventeen. On the morning following the wedding, after she’d run away and Welford, tight-lipped and furious, had caught up to her at the inn, she’d literally begged his forgiveness. She might as well have been pleading with a stone.

  “It’s too late to undo what’s done,” Caro said, watching as he drew his dressing gown on over broad shoulders, his posture ramrod-straight as always, “and dredging up old grievances won’t get us anywhere. Will you help me or not?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I want you to come with me to see my father, and as soon as possible. But more than that, I want the two of us to pretend we have a normal marriage, a good marriage, and that we’re both well and happy. Papa deserves to die in peace, not spend his final days worrying his only daughter has made a shambles of her life—”

  “Of two lives.”

  She bit back a retort. She was the supplicant here. She needed to remember that, if she hoped to win his cooperation. “Yes. Please, Welford, for my father’s sake. There’s only one gift of any value I can give him now, and that’s a peaceful passing. If he’s going to die, let him die happy.”

  Her husband rubbed the back of his neck. “And to what lengths are you prepared to go for this charade?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “I assume you’ll want to spend at least one night under your father’s roof. That means we’ll have to share a bed. It’s only to be expected, if we’re so blissfully happy together. Or hadn’t you thought of that?”

  “We’ll share a room. One of us can have the bed and the other can sleep on the floor.”

  He gave a derisive laugh. “I can already guess which one I am in that scenario.”

  “I’ll sleep on the floor.” That ought to appeal to him—an additional indignity he could inflict on her. Even now, knowing her father was dying, he made no effort to hide his loathing. It was an almost physical thing, a force that came off him in waves.

  But she hadn’t seen Papa in five and a half years—years in which she’d declined his repeated invitation
s with evasions and excuses built around the elaborate falsehood that she was with Welford in Vienna—and the combination of love, grief and guilt had left her desperate. She was willing to go to any lengths to say a proper goodbye. That she’d come here at all should be proof enough of that.

  Welford gave a tight, grudging nod. “Very well.”

  “You’ll do it? You’ll come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  She went almost limp with relief, all the tension of the carriage ride from Halewick lifting at once. “Truly? I have your word?”

  He frowned. “I’ve said I will.”

  “Yes, but do you promise to conduct yourself as if we’re happy together? Will you do that too?”

  “For your father’s sake,” he said. “Not for yours.”

  “Thank you, Welford. Truly, from the bottom of my heart.” There was an element of the ridiculous about it, rendering fervent thanks when he’d just insulted her, but she didn’t care. She’d worried it was a hopeless errand, trying to persuade him to do her this favor, but he’d agreed.

  Only now—now came the hard part. She was going to have to spend the whole of the journey in his company, and put on a convincing show of devotion once they reached her father’s side. She’d have to stomach hostility and insults, and endure his constant incivility and pointed reminders of all she’d done wrong.

  But at least she’d have Ronnie’s support. Though he was Welford’s brother, she could count on his friendship, of that much she felt sure. Welford might not like it when he learned Ronnie insisted on coming with them, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

  And there was one other piece of information she hadn’t yet shared with him. “Perhaps I should have mentioned...”

  He sighed. “What is it, Caroline?”

  He must be tired, or distracted. He never called her Caroline. His letters from Vienna had always begun Lady Welford or sometimes even Madam, and as he’d dragged her from the posting inn to his waiting carriage on the morning after their wedding he’d refused to speak to her at all. “Papa isn’t in Chelmsford. He was visiting my uncle Geoffrey when he became too ill to travel.”

  Welford eyed her coolly. “Where exactly are we going?”

  She wiped damp palms on the skirts of her rose-colored carriage dress. Chelmsford was less than forty miles away, a single day’s journey on the Great Essex Road, but this...”Kegworth. A village between Derby and Leicester.”

  “Leicester. In Leicestershire.”

  “Yes.” She swallowed nervously, pretending she couldn’t see his angry glare. “Some hundred and twenty miles away. With good weather, we should be only three days on the road.”

  Chapter Three

  Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse: and as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may often make many miserable.

  —Samuel Johnson

  The breakfast room was deserted when John came downstairs the next morning, and he spent an hour attending to the business of meeting with his banker and notifying his solicitor he would be leaving Town. It wasn’t until he returned to his town house to find the servants loading the carriage that he set eyes on his wife again. She was in the front hall, watching the door and fidgeting as if impatient to be on the road.

  It was his first chance to observe her in the light of day, and he had to admit the years hadn’t lessened her loveliness one whit. If anything, the passage of time had only added to her allure, her stylish blue carriage dress hinting at the fuller curves beneath. He’d been half hoping she’d turned pockmarked or unkempt, if only because it would have been easier to deal with her without the distraction of her extraordinary beauty. But her skin was as glowing as ever, her long dark ringlets as thick and shining, and she still had the same exquisite grace that made her every move fascinating to watch. It was a pity the inner Caroline didn’t match the outer one.

  And Ronnie was with her. It was the first time John had seen his half brother since his stepmother’s death—and the first time since he’d learned that Ronnie had been suspended from Oxford.

  It was hardly an auspicious reunion. Given the furious letters John had fired off when his brother was rusticated, he wasn’t expecting Ronnie to accompany them. He certainly wasn’t expecting Ronnie to show up rumpled, bleary-eyed and reeking so strongly of spirits that it made John’s eyes water.

  Ronnie didn’t even have the good grace to look abashed or offer an apology. No, he broke into a wide, delighted grin, his crow-black hair falling in his eyes. “John! You’re looking fit as a fiddle. Dash it if you aren’t as dark as a Barbary corsair.”

  “And you’re as drunk as a wheelbarrow. Isn’t it a bit early to be hitting the bottle, Ronnie?”

  He laughed. “Hair of the dog that bit me.”

  John would have replied, and none too gently too, but Caroline stepped in. “He’s spent the past three months cooling his heels at Halewick. I think he can be forgiven for making the most of his one night in Town.”

  “He was supposed to stay at Halewick,” John said, unmoved.

  “I was grateful for his escort on the way here, and I can’t see what harm a change of scenery will do him.”

  “Unless his tutor is with him, the harm is that he’s supposed to be preparing to re-sit his examination. I could understand having one or two papers deemed insufficient, but to fail in every subject?” Ronnie was too bright not to have passed his responsions if he’d put in even the least bit of effort. John was bound and determined he would do better when he returned for the next term.

  Ronnie flushed. “I have been preparing. Studied my Euclid the whole of the long vacation, and started brushing up my Logic last week.”

  “You might have done that before the examination.”

  “It sounds like wretchedly dull stuff to me,” Caroline said. “Surely he deserves a holiday by now.”

  Ronnie threw her a grateful look. “Thank you, Caro.”

  So that was how it was going to be, was it? The pair of them in league against him. Well, he should’ve expected as much, with his wife and his brother spending months together at Halewick. After all, Caroline was closer to Ronnie’s age than to his.

  “I’ll allow you to come along,” he told Ronnie, “but as an outrider.”

  “I don’t mind the notion of horseback, but I left Buck at Halewick so Caro wouldn’t have to sit alone in the coach.”

  “I’ll have Argos saddled for you. He can use the exercise, and Lady Welford and I have matters to discuss in private.”

  Caroline’s brow furrowed, but Ronnie broke into another inebriated grin. “Argos? Thank you, John.”

  Well, that solved that little problem. And if the enforced seclusion in the coach with Caroline grew intolerable, John would have an ally of his own to call into service. “My valet will be accompanying us, as well.”

  “I thought we had matters to discuss in private,” Caroline said.

  “Leitner can ride outside in the rumble with your maid.”

  John could almost hear the internal battle she was waging to hold her tongue, given the way he’d just run roughshod over her plans. She couldn’t afford to antagonize him, at least not until they’d put sufficient miles behind them. He might’ve been tempted to take advantage of the situation, if Ronnie weren’t present and Caroline weren’t so worried about her father.

  But she only said with a disheartened look, “My maid isn’t coming. Something she ate last night disagreed with her. She’s too ill to travel.”

  Ah, the odds tipped even more firmly in his favor. Leitner was unswervingly loyal—not to mention far better than John at maintaining his objectivity. When John had informed him of the impending journey, the news that they would be traveling with Lady Welfo
rd had shocked the normally well-mannered valet into swearing, “Sakralot! Ja, seid’s Ihr deppert?”

  “English, Leitner, English.”

  His valet had given an impeccable Austrian bow. “I humbly beg your pardon, my lord. I said it was most exciting news.”

  What he had really said was the Viennese equivalent of an exasperated Are you out of your mind? “I’m not a complete idiot, Leitner.”

  Leitner had given another bow. “Certainly not, my lord. Not complete at all.”

  And what could he say to that? John rarely spoke of his wife, but however the servants had chosen to fill in the blanks, they knew he and Lady Welford were estranged, and had been since the earliest days of their marriage. Leitner in particular seemed to have gleaned that the break had been a painful and humiliating episode John would sooner forget. Yet here he was, about to set out on a cross-country journey with Caroline. Perhaps he was out of his mind.

  Then again, whatever his feelings for his wife might be, he couldn’t very well stand between her and her dying father. Bishop Fleetwood was a good man. John’s own father had been nowhere near as good—dissolute was the first word that came to mind—yet John had genuinely mourned his passing. The bishop deserved to see his daughter one last time, and John could pay his own respects, as well.

  He tried not to think about the other reason he’d agreed to accompany Caroline, the regrettably mawkish one that had popped unbidden into his head when she’d made her request—that playing at being a happily married couple would give him the chance, however brief and illusory it might be, to know how it felt to have a faithful and affectionate wife. To have Caroline as a faithful and affectionate wife.

  Perhaps Ronnie had the right of it, and this was an undertaking better faced in a drunken haze.

  * * *

  Caro wished Ronnie hadn’t spent the night drinking. He was always a happy drunk—Ronnie was perpetually happy, for that matter—but if he’d been just a trifle less foxed, perhaps Welford wouldn’t have barred him from the carriage. Now, with her abigail ill, she’d effectively lost her only ally.