The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

  “The first rule of diplomacy is to avoid situations that might end in a need to apologize.” It was a simple enough remark, neither personal nor romantic, but his voice had a confiding pitch that made her feel as if he was letting her in on a closely guarded secret. “You might call me John now and then, when you’re so inclined.”

  She was beginning to thaw, the blood returning to her stiff fingers and cold toes. The flames from the hearth cast an orange glow, warming her, making the events of the past few hours recede to an unwelcome memory. She was snug and dry now, with a roof over her head and a feather bed to sleep in. So why did she feel so skittish? Was it because she was alone with her husband? She’d been alone with him the night before. Then again, the night before she hadn’t literally clung to him for support in a storm, or felt the hard muscles beneath his clothes.

  “There,” John said behind her. “It’s safe to look.”

  She stood and faced him, ignoring his teasing tone. Her breasts tightened, and a fluttering sensation took hold of her. He’d changed into a dry shirt and breeches, and his black hair stood in rumpled, towel-dried spikes. She liked this John—not a stone-faced model of impeccable posture, but relaxed and with a humorous gleam in his dark eyes. In his shirtsleeves, there was no mistaking his broad shoulders and lean, flat abdomen.

  “We should hang our wet clothes up to dry,” he said.

  “I was planning to spread mine out in front of the fire. I’ll add yours, if you’ll pass them to me.”

  He gave her his wet clothes. “Thank you.”

  Still clutching the woolen blanket about her with her left hand, she draped her damp stockings alongside his sodden coat. “Is there any chance we can still reach Kegworth tomorrow?”

  “That will depend on the weather. The repairs to our carriage may take some time, but Leitner has orders to hire a hack chaise and four. It can’t be above forty miles now, so as long as the roads are passable we should be able to cover the distance in a single day.”

  “Oh, I hope we can manage it. I worry that poor Papa...” She trailed off, afraid to finish the sentence. “What about our coachman? Will he be all right, convalescing in Market Harborough?”

  “I gave Leitner enough blunt to ensure Barnes should be able to live like a king while we press on to Kegworth. We can collect him on our return, and by then he should be healed enough to travel.”

  “What if there’s no post-chaise available for hire?”

  “Never fear, once the weather clears, there’s sure to be a mail coach or a stage running to Derby. One way or another, I’ll make sure you reach your father’s side, even if I have to carry you there myself. You have my word.”

  He sounded so reassuring. Ronnie had been right—Welford was good in a crisis.

  Caro gathered her courage and asked, “And you will keep your promise, won’t you? I couldn’t bear for Papa to find out the truth about our marriage now, when he has so little time left.”

  She half expected Welford to stiffen up and remind her in his usual frosty tone that he wasn’t in the habit of breaking his promises. Instead he stepped closer and said with surprising kindness, “Don’t worry. I’ll follow your lead.”

  Her imperious husband, following her lead? The thought was too strange to contemplate. But then, everything about this night felt strange. Welford was rumpled, coatless, and so close she could smell the rain on his skin. They were in an unfamiliar house in the middle of nowhere, while the wind howled outside. Their coachman might even now be under the surgeon’s knife, and soon her father might be dead—perhaps he was already dead, while this wretched storm kept her from reaching his side.

  And John was being so kind she scarcely recognized him. She was tired of fighting, tired right down to her bones. Surely it was time one of them made an effort to mend the rift between them.

  Impulsively, she said, “John, I don’t want you to sleep on the floor tonight.”

  His brows drew together. “I told you, I’m not going to take the bed when—”

  “No, I know what you said. But I’d rather not sleep on the floor either.” She smiled uncertainly. “Why don’t we share the bed?”

  Chapter Eight

  It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

  —Samuel Johnson

  A jolt of raw desire shot through him. Caro was inviting him into her bed?

  Wait—he was getting ahead of himself. She hadn’t said anything about the marriage act, only that they should share the feather tick. More than likely she meant for them to pass the night chastely, like the couple in that long German poem who’d slept with the hero’s sword between them. He was letting the storm and the sense of isolation put ideas in his head, as if five years of acrimony had never happened.

  Then again...that talk they’d had in the inn the night before might mean she was ready to end their standoff. What if she did want a normal marriage? In that case, he’d be a fool to hesitate when it was what he wanted too—and not just for the sexual payoff, though God knew he’d gone long enough without that.

  “Are you sure?” he asked carefully, hoping her answer might shed some light on the nature of her invitation.

  “There’s a good deal to be said for sharing body heat.”

  That sounded promising. But he’d made the mistake before of misinterpreting her feelings toward him. After all their bitterness and recriminations, he had no intention of doing the same thing again.

  He’d go slowly, and wait for her to make it clear what she really wanted. If she kept to the edge of the bed, as far from his side as possible, he’d know she wasn’t looking for anything more than a good night’s sleep on a feather mattress.

  * * *

  Caro watched as John snuffed out the candle with his fingers and climbed between the sheets.

  She lay waiting, expecting him to move closer, but he kept to his side of the bed.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. Would you mind if I—that is, do you think we could lie a little nearer each other? At least until the chill wears off.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She moved closer. He did likewise, meeting her in the middle of the bed. She turned on her side, spooning against him with her back to his chest. He was bigger and heavier than she was, and the weight of his body created its own gravitational field, the dip in the mattress pulling her in. He gave off so much heat, it was like sinking into a warm bath.

  She closed her eyes. After all the trying events of the past few hours, the day was ending at last. Unless she was much mistaken, Welford was beginning to thaw toward her. He’d smiled and teased and even apologized, and now here they were, sharing a bed, actually snuggled together. She sighed.

  “Was that a contented sigh or a troubled one?” he asked in the darkness. His voice was low and intimate.

  “A little of both.”

  His arm came around her, holding her close. It was a reassuring weight, making her feel safe. “Comfortable?” he asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She’d shared a bed with Welford like this once before—but only once. It had been her wedding night, the night she’d run away. She tried to recall the feeling, but unfortunately very little about that night made sense to her, and her memories consisted of little more than scattered bits and pieces.

  Her first dinner with Welford, at least, remained clear. After leaving the wedding breakfast they’d driven the twenty-odd miles to Halewick. Following a quick tour of her new husband’s comfortable, rambling country house, she’d sat down to dinner with him. In his evening clothes, at ease and self-assured in his own home, Welford had seemed even older than he had before.

  She, on the other hand, had spent the meal restless with anxiety,
feeling helplessly torn in two, her thoughts in turmoil. Half of her yearned to be with Lawrence, while the other half recognized that having said “I will” at the altar was, as the words of the wedding ceremony made clear, not to be taken lightly.

  Was it already too late for her? Did she really belong with Welford now—not for a night or a month or a year, but forever?

  He must have sensed her distress, for he took the opened magnum bottle from the silver cooler at his elbow and refilled her glass. “Have some champagne,” he said gently. “It will take the edge off your nerves.”

  “I’ve already had one glass. I’m liable to become tipsy.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps a trifle, but that might not be such a bad thing.”

  His voice was kind, and she wanted to feel something for him. But she sensed he was speaking from experience, and that made him seem older still. Everything that was new and exciting to her was already familiar to him. Why, he was only a few years short of thirty, too old for flirting or dancing or going to Astley’s, too old for romance and adventure and fun, too old for all the many things she’d dreamed of sharing with Lawrence.

  She drank the second glass of champagne to please him, but when her anxiety eased just as he’d promised, she asked shyly for a third. There wasn’t much left in the bottle after that, so it seemed only right to finish it off before they retired for the evening.

  She was dizzy as she climbed the stairs and turned the corner to her new bedroom, but at least the hopeless, beleaguered feeling no longer had her in its grip. Instead her thoughts meandered in a contented, champagne-clouded fog.

  As her maid helped her to undress, Caro reflected on her options. What if she ran away? If she went to Lawrence, surely he would understand the misguided impulse that had driven her to accept Welford. Lawrence would see that she loved him, and he’d regret his earlier coldness and beg her to stay forever. And when Welford realized she and Lawrence were meant for each other, naturally he would want to do the right thing, and offer to step aside. Together, she and Welford would find a way to undo the tangle their wedding had created. Perhaps she could insist she’d been delirious with fever during the ceremony and therefore not in her right mind. Or if they couldn’t get an annulment, Welford could procure a bill of divorcement. He’d have to prove she’d committed adultery, and it would cost a great deal of money and create a dreadful scandal, but eventually it would all work out...somehow.

  When Welford knocked on her bedroom door a quarter of an hour later, she hadn’t yet decided whether to run away or not, but she was still floating, intoxicated, on a cloud of serenity. She gave him a brilliant smile as he entered.

  That was where her memories went fuzzy.

  From that point on, she couldn’t string her recollections together into a coherent whole. There were only bits and pieces. At one point, Welford called her beautiful, and looked at her with eyes as dark as sloe, and untied the laces at the neck of her chemise. A startlingly pleasurable feeling, a squeeze of longing, shot right to the core of her. She thought more than once, I’ll stop him before we go too far. But the things he did felt good—so good she never did summon up the presence of mind to stop him.

  There was one detail she remembered with crystal clarity—the thrill of his kisses that night. On the day he’d proposed, his kiss had been a tame and bloodless thing, nothing like the feverish embraces Lawrence had pressed on her, and it had left her distinctly unimpressed. But on their wedding night—well, that night she wondered if she’d married an entirely different man. His kisses were slow and sensual, stirring up desires even Lawrence hadn’t elicited.

  “Kiss me some more,” she remembered saying to Welford, early on. “It’s making me feel all tingly inside.”

  He’d laughed and obliged her.

  Everything else was a confused jumble of impressions, a blissful haze, up to the moment she was lying in bed beside him, dizzy and replete with satisfaction. She was no longer a maiden, and he’d fallen fast asleep. She should have been content to stay just where she was. But as the bolstering effect of the champagne gradually faded, an inexplicable shift took place. She went from feeling serenely happy to sinking slowly into a bleak hole of overwhelming sentimentality. She began to think of all the broken hearts in the world, and how there was so much desperate unhappiness everywhere one turned, and how so few people were truly loved. Regret and longing seized her, leaving her with the distressing certainty that if she didn’t leave that night, that very hour, she would never see Lawrence Howe again. Lawrence, the man she was mad for, the whole reason she’d accepted Welford’s proposal...

  Now she snuggled even closer to Welford, tucking her bottom securely against his lap. She’d been a fool that night, to leave the warm, safe place at his side to run to Lieutenant Howe.

  As she pressed up against him, Welford sucked in his breath in a soft sound of surprise. In the same instant she felt something prodding her backside.

  She realized immediately what it was. She might not remember much about her first time with him, but she recalled every detail of the talk her sister-in-law Philippa had given her, advising her what she could expect on her wedding night. That warm, hard length along her bottom, really right between her legs, could be only one thing.

  She wasn’t sure how to react. She wanted to start over with Welford and work toward a normal marriage, one that included marital relations—eventually. But here, now? It would be a huge leap to go from insult to intimacy in a single day, especially a day as exhausting and bewildering as this one had been. It astonished her that Welford even had the energy for it.

  Perhaps if she ignored it, his erection would go away.

  The wind blew rain against the bedroom window, and thunder rumbled in the distance. She waited, but the hard length along her backside remained right where it was. It felt rather nice, to be honest, nudging her in a particularly pleasant spot.

  Perhaps he couldn’t help it. Besides, the hem of her nightgown was still down around her ankles, and John was in his smallclothes as well, so there were two layers of material between them. Which was as it should be, since one day of relative peace couldn’t begin to make up for the nearly two thousand in which he’d treated her with complete disdain. Tonight was supposed to be a step in the right direction, nothing more.

  She kept as still as possible, but between the softness of the mattress and the reassuring warmth of his body heat, her eyes grew heavier. Soon she was drifting toward sleep. Lying on her side, she’d pinned her elbow beneath her. She was going to develop pins and needles in her arm if she didn’t move it. Only half-awake, she shifted her weight to get more comfortable.

  Too late, she realized what she’d done—inadvertently wiggled against John. She held her breath, wondering what he would do.

  A moment later she had her answer. In a single motion he moved from behind her to over her, rolling her onto her back and half covering her body with his. The hard length of him strained against her thigh. “Caro,” he breathed before capturing her mouth in a kiss, his right hand fondling her breast.

  She was so astonished it took her a moment to react. Then she shoved him away and leaped out of bed. “Welford!”

  * * *

  It was the most abrupt end to a sexual overture John had ever experienced. One second Caro was tucked against him—soft, sweet-smelling, warm—and the next she was leaping out of bed and shouting at him.

  He sat up. “For God’s sake, keep your voice down.”

  “Keep my voice down? You were poking me with your—”

  He struck a spark and lit the bedside candle before climbing out of bed, adjusting himself in his smallclothes as best he could. He was still half hard, but that wouldn’t last, not with the look she was giving him. “I know what I was doing, but it was your idea to share the bed, and we’re alone here.”

  “Yes, in a cold, spider-infested hun
ting box you said yourself I shouldn’t get my hopes up about. Good God! We could have died today, and I’m sick with worry about my father. What on earth would make you think I’d want—want—” speechless, she screwed her face into an expression of revulsion and gestured at the bed “—that?”

  He was momentarily stymied. Caro had been in his arms, sighing. She’d pressed herself against him. Somehow amid the rising tide of desire he’d forgotten, however momentarily, that Barnes was injured and her father was gravely ill. He’d forgotten everything but the perfumed scent of her hair and the agonizing sweetness of her soft curves molded against him. “You’re my wife,” he said, stung by her look of distaste. “I have a right—”

  “Oh, I see. A right,” she scoffed. “By all means, then, let me get on my back so you can exercise your legal prerogative. I’m sure I can pass the time planning my father’s funeral while you finish.”

  His brows came down in a scowl. Did she have to make him sound so selfish? “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, really?” She skewered him with a look. “Then what did you mean?”

  “I meant...” He didn’t know what he’d meant. His brain wasn’t working at full capacity. “Damn it, it’s been five years. Haven’t I been patient enough? I feed you and clothe you and furnish you with a roof over your head—”

  “And now you expect me to provide the services you’ve paid for, like some lightskirt you can buy in the streets.”

  How had he become the villain here? Five years of marriage, and he’d made love to her—his wife—exactly once. He’d hungered for her, dreamed about her, and tonight she’d invited him to share her bed. She’d cuddled up half-naked against him, grinding her bottom firmly into his groin. Of course he’d responded. Did she think he was made of stone?

  He’d taken pains not to rush his fences, holding her patiently, waiting to see whether she moved in or pulled away. She’d made the first move—he was absolutely certain of that. And now she was playing the outraged maiden?