The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

  A steady drizzle fell as they slogged up the rise. More than once Caroline’s feet slipped in the mud, and she would have fallen if John hadn’t supported her.

  What a miserable day. John had known this journey would have its challenges, but he hadn’t expected outright disaster. Having to shoot one of the carriage horses was bad enough, but that was nothing to Barnes’s injury.

  The coachman’s accident had been sheer happenstance, the circumstances beyond John’s control. Better to blame the team or the weather. Any one of their party might have been hurt or even killed when the horses bolted, himself included. Yet he couldn’t help but feel responsible. They’d been traveling on his schedule, in his carriage, on his orders. If he’d been more careful of the weather or the horses, they’d be safe and dry right now, and Barnes wouldn’t be in danger of losing an arm.

  Thunder rumbled, more distant now. “It isn’t much farther,” he said.

  “G-good.” Caro’s chattering teeth turned the word into two syllables.

  And that was another disaster—less serious, assuredly, but troubling just the same. He’d intended for them to stay at The Three Swans. It would’ve been clean and cozy, and they could’ve had roast beef with freshly baked bread for dinner. He’d hoped he might extend an olive branch in the wake of realizing how idiotic he’d been to ask her about their wedding night. But now it seemed they were to have no dinner at all, and precious little comfort.

  They topped the rise and picked their way carefully down the other side of the slope. Caroline hadn’t complained once about the cold or wet, though with her clinging to his arm, John could feel her shiver with every fresh gust of wind. As determined as he was to get her out of the cold, the tight hold she kept on him and the way her soft curves pressed against him each time she slipped was certainly raising his temperature.

  The hunting box stood dark and deserted. “I’ll stable the carriage horses,” Ronnie volunteered.

  “I’d appreciate it. I’m eager to get Caroline inside.”

  The wet gravel made for safer footing, and she let go of his arm as they approached the house.

  John rapped on the front door. No one answered. He tried the latch, but the door was locked. “Stand back.”

  With one booted foot aimed strategically below the latch, he kicked in the door. It flew back on its hinges with a crash.

  He glanced at Caroline. She was gazing at him with an unfamiliar look of respect in her eyes.

  He gestured her inside. “After you.”

  She stepped past him, only to trip on the uneven threshold.

  John caught her by the elbow, saving her from stumbling. “Careful.”

  Leaning into him, she raised her face to his, her teeth still chattering. “I’m not usually so c-clumsy. I can’t even blame the mud that time.”

  “You’re half-frozen.” Her cheeks were pink with the cold, and beneath her bonnet her normally smooth hair curled in damp, unruly corkscrews. He had an almost overpowering urge to wrap his arms around her and kiss her.

  Ronnie entered behind them. “Lord, look at this place. Rugs rolled up, furniture under Holland covers, cobwebs in the hearth...”

  Caroline straightened with a self-conscious look. “At least it’s dry.”

  It was dry enough, but not one whit warmer than the outdoors, and she looked chilled to the bone. Depositing their belongings on the nearest chair, John made a quick appraisal of the cottage—a parlor and empty kitchen downstairs, with two bedchambers above.

  “Both of you had better go up and change out of those wet clothes,” he said when he came back downstairs. “Ronnie, you take the room on the left. I’ll see to the fires before the light is completely gone.”

  He found a woodshed behind the house, full to the rafters and blessedly weather-tight. He stacked a supply of split logs high in his arms. At least they’d have enough firewood to drive the worst of the chill from the bedrooms.

  The bedrooms. Despite having passed the previous night on the floor, John felt a stir of...well, he wasn’t sure what he felt. Hope? Desire? Or was it just the thrill of uncertainty, the awareness that new possibilities might await him if he could find some way to start over with Caroline? After all, she’d seemed as unhappy as he was with the stalemate their marriage had become.

  He hadn’t taken a mistress during his years abroad, hadn’t even bedded a woman since his wedding night. Not that he had any pretensions to sainthood. He’d felt the urge often enough, and more than once he’d ventured out into the Vienna night, intending to engage some fashionable impure who’d made her availability known, an actress or an opera singer he might readily take to bed. But however compelling the need, he’d never followed through. In the end, the demireps with their too-bright rouge and daring gowns had struck him as false and more than a little depressing, reminders of his own failed marriage. They were beautiful, and they were available, but they weren’t Caroline.

  God. Either he was the most stubbornly faithful husband in Christendom, or the biggest fool.

  Firewood piled to his chin, John trudged back inside and climbed the stairs. With his arms full, he had to fumble to knock on his brother’s door.

  Ronnie answered at once, unburdening John of a liberal share of the wood he carried. “I’ll take care of the fire in here. Don’t worry about the parlor on my account. I’m turning in for the night.”

  “Already?” It might be nearly dark, but it wasn’t that late. “At least read some of your Logic before you go to sleep.”

  “I’ll try, if I can keep my eyes open,” Ronnie said with a theatrical yawn. “Caro found candles and blankets while you were out, so I’ve all I need. Tell her I said good-night.”

  Ronnie pushed the door closed, leaving a bemused John standing alone on the landing, his arms still full of firewood. Evidently, his brother was determined not to appear de trop.

  John hesitated outside the door of the second bedroom. Husband or no, he doubted Caroline would thank him for barging in while she was changing. She’d slept in most of her clothes the night before. He shifted the wood in his arms and knocked softly.

  “Come in,” she called, her voice a trifle high. And then, with greater assurance, “It isn’t locked.”

  He let himself in. The room was so starkly furnished, no one could mistake the house for anything but a bachelor establishment. There was only an oak bedstead with a feather tick, a small chest of drawers that doubled as a washstand, and a cedar chest positioned at the foot of the bed. A single candle burned atop the washstand. The windows were curtained in simple green moreen, and an old Turkey carpet covered the floor.

  Caro stood on the far side of the bed, looking pale and cold and lovely, swathed in a woolen blanket. Her long dark hair was loose around her shoulders, still slightly damp. “I was just getting out of my wet things.”

  “Do you need my help?”

  She bit her lip. “Perhaps in a moment, with my stays. But this gown fastens in the front.”

  “I can keep my back turned if you like.” It wasn’t an offer most husbands would feel compelled to make, but theirs was hardly a normal marriage.

  “You really needn’t.” Despite the words, her obvious hesitation—she was still clutching the blanket with both hands—suggested she was just as unsure how to proceed as he was.

  He shrugged. “I was going to lay the fire anyway.”

  She gave him a nervous smile. “I would’ve finished changing already, but while you were out I found linens in the chest there, and I was making up the bed.”

  Careful to appear casual, John strode to the fireplace and set down the wood, then squatted on his haunches and went to work arranging logs on the grate. “Ronnie bids you a good-night. He’s turning in early, so I’ll leave it to you whether I should start a fire in the parlor or wait until morning.”

  She c
onsidered a moment. “I don’t think we’ll need the fire tonight.”

  She didn’t want a fire downstairs? Its absence meant they’d have to spend the rest of the evening confined to this room, alone together. What did she have in mind?

  Probably nothing. John stacked the logs with a feeling of grim determination. The last time he’d made the mistake of thinking Caroline was interested in him, he’d bought himself five years of bitter disappointment. He doubted she was exactly lusting for his body.

  “Would you mind unlacing me?” she asked behind him.

  “Not at all.” He set aside the firewood and went to her.

  She still had the blanket around her, clutching it together with one hand, but she lowered it in back to reveal the lacings of her stays. With her free hand, she gathered up her long hair and held it out of his way. “Sorry to put you to so much trouble,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him.

  “It’s nothing.”

  She had an odd notion of trouble, to imagine that undressing a beautiful woman was any imposition. Beneath her stays, her damp shift clung to her skin. She had the tiniest waist. And masses of long, soft, shining hair. God, he loved women, especially when they shed the layers of petticoats and muslin that hid the best parts of them. They looked good, they smelled good. How had he gone five years without so much as touching one?

  He’d unlaced Caro the night before, but at the busy inn, in the wake of finding her alone with that lout from the taproom, somehow it hadn’t felt charged with lustful intensity the way it did now. As close as he was, he could have wrapped his arms around her, kissed the place where the curve of her neck became her shoulder, easily hauled her hips back against his.

  He didn’t. Instead he finished the job with businesslike efficiency. Merciful God, he was the king of willpower, the emperor of self-denial.

  He stepped back. “There. And in case you were worried about anyone getting in tonight, I propped a chair against the front door to compensate for the broken latch.”

  “Thank you,” she said, slanting a look at him from under thick black lashes.

  John went back to laying the fire, kneeling before the fireplace. He studiously avoided thinking about her setting the wool blanket aside, about her peeling off her wet shift and letting it fall at her feet, about the long, smooth lines of her body without a stitch on. Or did his best to.

  Trying to sleep the night before had been frustrating enough, knowing Caro was only a few feet away, but it was nothing to the kaleidoscope of conflicting urges he felt now, after discovering he’d been wrong in most of his assumptions about her. What could be more conducive to starting over than a secluded lodge on a rain-swept night?

  “I’ll have the fire burning in a moment,” he said, resolutely focusing on the task at hand. He located the tinderbox, struck a spark and coaxed it into flame.

  “You can look now.”

  He did, immediately, only to realize there was nothing suave or nonchalant in the swiftness with which he’d whipped his head about. She’d changed into a nightgown of cotton lawn. She still had the blanket around her, though this time it seemed for warmth rather than for modesty, since she held it draped loosely about her shoulders.

  “You look—much drier.” As inane as it sounded, it was the only remark he could manage, given that his blood was steadily migrating from his brain to less rational parts of his body.

  He turned back to the fire. For the love of God, he’d seen women in more alluring states, and Caroline was his wife—his estranged wife. The females of his bachelor days had stripped nude, and on his wedding night he’d explored every inch of Caroline’s lithe, perfect body. He shouldn’t have to busy himself with lighting the firewood purely to keep from going hard at a glimpse of plain white nightgown.

  There was no sense letting his imagination run away with him. They’d veered back and forth between icy civility and outright antagonism in the past two days. Just because he’d found reason to regret his harshest opinions of her didn’t mean she felt any warmer toward him.

  “There.” He sat back on his heels. “A satisfactory fire if ever I saw one.”

  “I’m impressed you did that so quickly. I would’ve thought you’d need a servant to manage it.”

  “Need?” He regarded her with one eyebrow lifted in mock-umbrage.

  “Well, I’ve never seen you lay a fire before. The chambermaid took care of it last night, and I can’t even remember if we had a fire on our wedding night.”

  “I’ll have you know that I’ve been laying fires since I was the rawest of schoolboys. When I went away to Winchester and had charge of the fire as the junior in my chamber, the quality of my fires and the quantity of hot water I boiled made me a legend in my own mind.”

  Caro laughed.

  At least his lustful impulses were subsiding. When she shivered, he stood and pushed the cedar chest from its place at the end of the bed to nearer the hearth. “You look chilled through. Come and sit by the fire.”

  “That sounds most inviting.” She kept the blanket wrapped about her as she took a seat on the wooden chest.

  There, that wasn’t the least bit provocative. Swaddled in the oversized blanket, Caroline looked more like a waif or a convalescent than an object of desire—a heartbreakingly lovely convalescent, to be sure, but hardly a temptress likely to lure him into doing something foolish. She was cold and they’d had a ghastly day and if they were to have any chance at all of coming to a better understanding, he would have to take matters one step at a time.

  Then she raised deep blue eyes to his, her blanket slipping off one white shoulder. “Do take off your clothes.”

  * * *

  John’s face went blank with surprise, though surely he must be soaked through. He’d been the first to emerge from the coach after the accident, and the last to come in for the night. “The saddlebag with your dry clothes is on the bed.”

  “Ah.” His startled expression vanished. “I suppose I ought to change.”

  “I can keep my back turned if you like.”

  He made a soft sound of amusement. “Only if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “Well, I don’t know about comfortable. But it hardly seems fair for me to look when you didn’t, does it?”

  One side of his mouth quirked upward in a smile, as rare as it was appealing. “If you’re really mad to see me without my clothes on, I’m prepared to overlook the inequality of the arrangement.”

  She kept her back turned just the same, gazing into the fire. The bed creaked behind her. She pictured him, lean and strong, tugging off his boots. They had hours and hours left until sunrise, without so much as a single book in the room to occupy them. A fresh shiver ran through her, though not from the cold.

  “I can’t help but think about the poor coachman,” she said to fill the silence. “Will he be all right, do you think?”

  “If the surgeon in Market Harborough knows his business, he should be.” When she made no reply, John said, “I’m sorry about Barnes. I should never have allowed that to happen.”

  “Allowed it to happen?” she said in surprise. If she hadn’t promised not to look, she would’ve turned his way so he could see her earnest expression. Instead she stared fixedly into the fire. “None of today was your doing, not the storm or the accident or the coachman’s injury.”

  “We shouldn’t have been on the road, not with the sky so threatening.” His voice was missing its usual undercurrent of resentment. He sounded different—somber, even, as if he genuinely blamed himself for the day’s sudden and unpredictable events.

  “I saw the same sky you did this morning, and I had no notion an actual storm was brewing. I thought we might be in for a spot of rain, but nothing more serious than that.”

  “Thank you for saying that.” After a pause, he ventured, “Caroline, I’m sorr
y I asked you today about our wedding night. It was an insulting question and I beg your pardon. I’m afraid jealousy got the better of my good judgment.”

  He was begging her pardon? Where was the pitiless autocrat she’d come to expect? And—jealousy? Jealousy implied some degree of love or at least yearning, and she’d long since abandoned hope that John was capable of either. When he’d dragged her from that inn on the morning after their wedding, anger evident in every rigid line of his body, she’d felt nothing from him except injured pride and a merciless determination to injure her in return.

  Jealousy would have been easier to bear. That, at least, would have flared hot and burned itself out quickly, and she would’ve had the consolation of knowing she’d inspired real passion in him. Instead he’d remained coldly unforgiving, meting out punishment in an endless succession of chilliness and acid remarks.

  No, John rarely showed any strong emotion at all, let alone an emotion as human as jealousy. Last night, for instance—discovering her with that horrible man outside the inn, he’d merely inquired coldly after her well-being and then proceeded to insult her. It was what she’d come to expect from him, so why had his disregard the night before left her so downcast? For that matter, why had she dawdled as she’d changed out of her clothes tonight, and even cherished a secret hope that John would turn around to look at her?

  As the rain pattered on the windowpanes, she slid her bare feet closer to the fire, letting her toes peep out from beneath the blanket. “You can call me Caro, you know. Ronnie does. And I’m not angry with you for asking about that, not really. I suppose I gave you reason enough to doubt me, after everything that happened on our wedding night.”

  “You should let me apologize,” he said on a wry note. “It’s not something I do very often.”

  She laughed. “I often wonder at your choosing diplomacy as a career, especially when you say something like that.”