The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

Except for the clatter of the rain, silence fell.

  “Are you all right?” two voices demanded at once—Ronnie and Welford.

  She wasn’t sure whom they were asking, but she immediately answered, “I’m all right.”

  “I’m all right too,” Ronnie said.

  “Leitner?” Welford asked.

  From the other side of Ronnie, her husband’s valet answered, “I am uninjured, my lord.”

  Caro sat up and looked around her, the men doing likewise. The carriage had tipped over, resting now on its right side, but they were all in one piece. She drew a deep, shaking breath and straightened her bonnet.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” Welford asked, tipping her head back with a finger crooked under her chin. His eyes searched her face.

  She nodded mutely.

  “Thank God,” he muttered, the fervency of the words surprising her. He climbed to his feet and reached up to unlatch the door, now overhead. He threw it open and rain came pelting in from above. “Barnes?” he called out to the coachman.

  There was no answer.

  “Stay here while I have a look at the damage,” Welford told the three of them. He hoisted himself up and out of the doorway. Caro watched as his long legs disappeared through the opening. Once outside, he shut out the rain, though she could hear him calling the coachman’s name.

  She looked at his brother. “Oh, Ronnie! Your nose is bleeding.”

  “Is it?” He touched it gingerly. “I don’t think it’s broken. Just landed face-first, that’s all.”

  The door reopened, and a very wet Welford peered down at them from above. “I can’t see or hear any sign of our coachman. We’re off the main road and our right front wheel is broken, along with the axle.” He looked to his valet. “Leitner, there’s a pistol in the compartment under the seat where my brother was sitting. Kindly hand it up to me.”

  The valet retrieved the weapon and passed it to Welford.

  “Ronnie, I could use your help unhitching the horses. Yours too, Leitner.”

  “Right you are,” Ronnie said. He clambered out through the doorway, thunder rumbling, and the valet followed.

  “What about me?” Caro called up.

  “You stay inside where it’s dry,” Welford said, and closed the door.

  She seated herself on the floor of the carriage—really the window—and wished fleetingly she were a man. Though it would mean getting soaked to the skin outside with the others, at least she might be of some use. Besides, working in the lashing rain would be far more exciting than sitting by herself in the overturned carriage.

  Muffled voices mixed with the drum of the rain, and now and then the harness creaked as the men went about their business. What would they do now? If they’d left the main road there seemed little chance other travelers would happen by, especially in such a storm.

  She supposed they would have to abandon the carriage and walk through the cold and rain. It shouldn’t be hard to find the road to Market Harborough again, not when their wheels were sure to have left tracks in the mud, but they would have to lead the carriage horses. Or perhaps one of the men would go back for the saddle horse Ronnie had tethered and ride for help. How far was the nearest village? Surely there must be a farmhouse—

  She started at the deafening report of a pistol.

  “Welford?” She jumped to her feet in alarm.

  Ronnie opened the carriage door overhead, his crow-black hair plastered down with rain. “It’s all right. We had to put down one of the wheelers. The pole broke and...well, it was suffering.”

  “Oh.” The news was bad enough, and she felt a pang for the poor horse, but at the same time she was relieved. When she’d jumped at the pistol crack, her first, frightened imagining had been that they’d been accosted by highwaymen, and Welford had been shot. Any disaster seemed possible now.

  “I’ll come and keep you company as soon as I’ve seen to the horses,” Ronnie said. “John means to find how far it is to the nearest shelter while his valet goes back to look for the coachman.”

  “Your nose is still bleeding.”

  He grinned. “I know, and Leitner is developing a black eye any prizefighter would envy. Not exactly the way you expected to spend the evening, eh?”

  He shut the door and was gone. Caro sat down again, brushing the raindrops from her pelisse.

  A violent storm, a wrecked carriage, assorted injuries and a dead horse. No, this was hardly how she’d expected to spend the evening. But then, this reunion with her husband was turning out rather differently than she’d imagined too.

  Could Welford have meant what he’d said to her earlier? I thought I was in love with you. For years now, she’d viewed him as a cold fish. Even when he’d proposed, he’d seemed more interested in taking a suitable bride before leaving for his diplomatic posting than in marrying for love. Throughout his long absence, she’d received only the most basic communication from him. She’d never expected such a powerful flash of emotion.

  Oh, what did it matter? He wanted three things from her—affection, loyalty and respect—and not one of them bore the faintest whiff of passion about it. Besides, if he had loved her once, he’d long since switched to implacable resentment. There was no point in wondering what he might have felt long ago.

  Only—she was quite sure he’d saved her from injury when the horses bolted, shielding her as the carriage was being thrown about. Why would he do such a thing if he truly felt nothing for her but contempt?

  She sighed. Knowing Welford, it was probably just an obligatory chivalry, another way to ensure he held the moral high ground.

  Ronnie opened the door above her. “I’ve finished walking the horses. The storm’s let up, at least for the present.” He extended a hand. “Care to join me out here to stretch your legs until the others get back?”

  Caro emerged to find the rain had slowed to a mist, though the sky remained dark. She averted her eyes from the front of the overturned coach to avoid seeing the horse they’d put down, but the three surviving animals huddled a little distance away. At the back of the carriage the men had unloaded the luggage, and it now stood in a forlorn pile on the high ground overlooking a puddle.

  She went to sit on her trunk, and Ronnie joined her, drawing his flask from his coat pocket. “What do you suppose happened to our coachman?” he asked.

  “Could he have jumped when the team bolted? Perhaps he took the horse you tethered and went to bring help.”

  Ronnie made a doubtful face.

  Caro sighed. “You’re right. That was a witless thing to say. He would’ve come after the carriage if he were in any position to lend a hand.”

  Ronnie took a pull from his flask. “Who do you think will get back first, John or his valet?”

  “I don’t know, but I hope it’s soon.” Her pelisse and her bonnet were more stylish than practical, and it was growing colder by the minute.

  Her brother-in-law peered up at the sky. “I’d say we have another hour of daylight at best, and then it’s going to get dark. Very dark. With these clouds we won’t have a scrap of moonlight.”

  “Any idea where we are?”

  He shrugged. “Off the main road, somewhere between Brixworth and Market Harborough. In other words, the middle of nowhere.”

  Caro looked around her—at the wrecked carriage, the dripping trees and spreading puddles, the spent horses, Ronnie’s wet hair and sodden clothes. They were closer than ever to reaching her father now, yet so far away. “We have to get to Kegworth.”

  “Don’t worry. John will put things to rights.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “You have a good deal of faith in him.”

  “Well, don’t you? There’s no one more able or even-tempered than John.”

  “Your brother, even-tempered?” If anyone had as mu
ch cause as she did to complain of Welford’s ill humor, it was Ronnie.

  “I grant you he has his share of crotchets now and then, but if you’d seen what he had to put up with when my parents were alive...”

  She crossed her arms. “What did he have to put up with?”

  “Oh, you know...” Ronnie said, waving one hand in a vague gesture. “My mother always flying into the boughs over nothing, Papa berating John for upsetting her, the two of them treating him as if he wasn’t welcome at Halewick when everyone knew it was going to be his one day.” He uncapped the flask again, though it was clear he’d already had enough. “I got the new clothes and the compliments and the kisses, and John got the cold shoulder. I used to feel guilty about the way Mama always favored me at his expense, until John told me he knew it wasn’t my fault.”

  His mother petted and cosseted him when she was alive, John had said of Ronnie on the way to St. Albans. At the time she’d dismissed it as another of John’s ill-tempered criticisms, but now here was Ronnie, telling her the same thing. “Surely she wasn’t as hard on him as all that.”

  “Oh, yes she was. It drove my mother mad, that he was the heir and I wasn’t—not that I’ve ever minded, but she certainly did.” He took a quick swig of brandy and shook his head. “And the gambling...Gad! Papa gambled because he couldn’t help himself, but I sometimes think Mama only did it because she knew how much it upset John.”

  “But most young gentlemen go through a stage in which they clash with their parents, don’t they?” Caro could remember her own brothers, despite her father’s inexhaustible patience, pushing for more freedom and fewer rules.

  “I suppose, but John was never the rebellious sort. He just tried harder to please, and that never worked. Mama used to call him Lickspittle John, because he swallowed every insult.”

  Caro was silent. So that was what less than fond of me meant.

  “Don’t mistake me,” Ronnie said, holding up his right hand in drunken disavowal, “my mother was a fine woman. She just had a blind spot when it came to John. She loved my father and she loved me, but John and his mother got there first, and that never sat well with her.” He tucked the flask back inside his coat. “After Papa died and John became my guardian, vexing him seemed to be the only thing that gave her any pleasure.”

  Caro was silent, hugging herself against the wet and cold. The three things Welford had requested from her—affection, loyalty and respect—were taking on a different light. They no longer seemed like an unreasonable, one-sided demand. Now they felt small and a bit sad.

  Ronnie said, “I see him.”

  She glanced back up the path. Her husband’s tall, handsome figure was striding toward them. His normally immaculate boots were spattered with mud and his dark hair was wet, but he looked capable and robust, and at the sight of him, Caro’s heart lifted.

  She smiled, hoping he would smile back as he closed the distance, but instead his brows came down in a scowl. “What are you doing out of the carriage? Ronnie, she’s going to freeze.”

  “I’m just as warm out here,” she fibbed, despite the wind and the wet.

  “Then why are your lips blue?” She opened her mouth to make some excuse, but he cut her off. “Never mind. You shouldn’t be out in this weather. It’s another five miles at least to Market Harborough, but there’s a small hunting box over the next hill.”

  “Oh, good,” she said with relief.

  “I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high. The barn looks dry enough, but the house is shut up and there doesn’t appear to be a caretaker in residence. Still, it’ll have to do for the night. Show me your shoes.”

  “What?”

  “Your shoes. Let me have a look at what you’re wearing.”

  She lifted the hem of her pelisse to reveal her trim kid half boots.

  “Hmm. Are those the sturdiest boots you have with you, or did you pack others?”

  “There’s another pair in my trunk, but they’re not much different than these. I wasn’t expecting to have to walk in the rain.”

  “Those might do for a stroll in the park, but they’re not going to be much use in the mud.”

  It was strange how a crisis could bring people together. Before the carriage accident, John’s opinion of her half boots would have seemed like just another instance of his dissatisfaction with her, but in the aftermath of the crash, amid the heightened tensions of being stranded in the cold and rain, his comment felt more solicitous than disapproving.

  “What about the luggage?” Ronnie asked him.

  “We’ll see to it in the morning. If there’s anything you’ll need before then, you’d best get it now. Did you bring any of that Logic you’re supposed to be studying?”

  “I made him pack all his books,” Caro spoke up.

  “Good. Bring the Logic, Ronnie. It should give you something to do while we’re waiting for the weather to clear. Leitner hasn’t returned yet?”

  Ronnie shook his head. “No, not yet. We—”

  He broke off as they caught sight of a horse and rider.

  “Ah, there he is,” Welford said. “And he’s brought Argos. At least Caroline won’t have to trudge through the mud in those boots.”

  Caro had never been a great horsewoman, and her thirst for excitement deserted her at the prospect of perching atop the imposing stallion. “But your mount is saddled for a man, and even if he weren’t, I could never manage him.”

  “You can ride pillion with me.” This time Welford did smile, giving her a look that almost drove the cold from her bones—though why he should seem so pleased with her craven objections, she had no notion.

  The horse and rider drew closer, and Welford’s smile faded as he took in his valet’s somber expression. “Out with it, Leitner. Did you find Barnes? Is he badly injured?”

  “I found him, my lord, most assuredly.” The valet dismounted, passing the horse’s reins to his master with a woeful look. “I am sorry to report the news is not good.”

  Chapter Seven

  Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

  —Samuel Johnson

  “What’s wrong?” John asked with a sinking feeling. “He’s dead?”

  “No, my lord, not dead. He hit his head, and he was in a daze, but that is not the worst of it. I brought him most of the way on Argos, and left him a little distance away. I did not want to alarm Lady Welford. His arm—it is broken.” He glanced in Caroline’s direction and switched to German. “Der Knochen hat die Haut durchbohrt. Ich glaube, das muss amputiert werden.”

  John hoped Barnes’s arm wouldn’t really need to be amputated, but that was often the case when the bone pierced the skin. He wondered whether the coachman had lost much blood. “Hat er viel Blut verloren?”

  “No, my lord. Some, but it is not a danger.”

  “I’d better see for myself.” John called to his brother, “Ronnie, wait here with Caroline while I check on our coachman.” He added for Caroline’s benefit, “I won’t be long.”

  He followed Leitner, leading Argos a short distance through the woods to where Barnes sat huddled against a tree trunk, protected from the worst of the elements by his oilskin coat and his low-crowned beaver hat. The coachman tried to stand when he saw John, but John stopped him with an outstretched hand. “Never mind that now, Barnes.”

  The coachman glanced at his upper arm, to where the shattered bone could be seen through his torn sleeve. “It’s bad, isn’t it, my lord? Right bad.”

  John crouched down on his haunches to get a better look at the man’s injury. “It’s not good. But we’ll get you to a surgeon, and by this time tomorrow, you should be on the mend.”

  “I don’t know as I’ll be driving for you anymore, my lord.”

  “I’m afraid that will be for the surgeon to decide,” John said
regretfully. “But don’t worry. You’ll still have a job if you want one, and even if the worst should come to the worst, I’ll see that you’re provided for. If Leitner leads the horse while you ride, can you find the way to Market Harborough?”

  “Oh, aye.”

  “It will be dark.”

  “I’ve eyes like an owl, my lord.”

  “Good man.”

  John stood again and addressed Leitner. “The temperature’s falling, and Lady Welford isn’t dressed for this cold. I need to get her to shelter, and quickly. There’s a hunting box over the hill just beyond the accident, and we’ll spend the night there. You take Argos, and once you’ve conducted Barnes to the nearest surgeon, arrange for the repair of the carriage and hire a new conveyance.” He counted out a generous sum and handed the coins to Leitner. “Find yourself lodging in Market Harborough, and leave whatever funds remain for Barnes’s keeping while he recovers. And when you return in the morning, whatever you do, bring food.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Leitner nodded and tucked the money into his pocket. “I shall return with the sunrise.” With John’s help, he assisted Barnes into the saddle.

  John waved them off. “Good luck.”

  He started back to the scene of the accident. Thank God Leitner had a good head on his shoulders. John had engaged him during his first months in Vienna, after his previous valet had given notice following a family crisis. At the time, Leitner’s chief recommendation had been that his English was slightly better than John’s German—Leitner was the younger son of an innkeeper who catered to a largely British clientele—but John had never had cause to regret the decision.

  He found Caroline and Ronnie seated side by side on her trunk, Caroline shivering so hard it was impossible to miss.

  “Leitner is seeing our coachman to the nearest doctor,” he told them. “I wish we had another saddle horse, or at least a saddle and bridle for one of the carriage horses, but I’m afraid we’ll have to walk to the hunting box. It isn’t far.”

  John wouldn’t have blamed his brother or his wife if they’d given him reproachful looks, but they both rose without complaint. He picked up the saddlebag they’d packed with the belongings they would need overnight, and gave Caro his arm. They set off, Ronnie leading the three carriage horses.