The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

He swore and sat down on the bed.

  “Oh, that’s fine language,” she said, hands on her hips. “As if you have the slightest reason to be angry. I was trying to be friendly—declare a truce—but you’re so incapable of ordinary warmth, you can’t conceive of any reason why a woman might be civil to you unless she was desperate to couple with you.”

  “A truce? You chose an interesting method, wiggling your backside against my cock. I can’t think why Bonaparte didn’t try it with Wellington.”

  “Don’t be crude.”

  “I’ll be crude if I damn well please. It’s the only halfway satisfying experience I’m going to enjoy tonight.”

  A flicker of something—doubt? interest? excitement?—flashed in her eyes, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. “If you refuse to behave like a gentleman, you can go to Ronnie’s room and spend the night with him.”

  “At least Ronnie knows better than to lure me into bed, grind his rump against me and then screech like a tortured barn owl. I hope.” God, he didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He reached for his breeches and yanked them back on. “Call it foolish pride, but I’d rather not advertise to my brother that I made the mistake of marrying a coquette. I’ll sleep downstairs.”

  She looked as if she’d been about to counter with a scathing retort, but at his last three words, her face went blank with surprise. “In the parlor? But you’ll freeze.”

  “Even without a fire, it’s bound to be more agreeable down there than it is in here.”

  She tossed up her hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She stalked to the bed and lay down on it, flat on her back. “Very well, then. Do it.”

  Her abrupt change of attitude left him momentarily confounded. “What?”

  “Do it. Go ahead,” she said without looking at him. “I’m not going to have you throwing tonight in my face every time you’re in a temper. This time I’m going to be the one in the right.”

  He stared. “You mean do it now?”

  She sat up, fire in her eyes. “Yes, why not? If it’s of such almighty importance to you, then what’s stopping you? It’s your right, isn’t it? You’re my husband. So do it.”

  “For God’s sake,” he said, incredulous. “No. Not if you’re—”

  “So,” she said, pouncing on his refusal like a barrister seizing on an admission of guilt, “it’s not that important after all, is it? It’s quite possible to be tired, or cross, or not in the mood. You’re kicking up a gigantic fuss over essentially nothing.”

  His anger came rushing back, full force. “It’s not nothing. And it is important. You’d see that, if you had any notion at all of what a marriage can be. Ought to be.”

  “Oh yes, because you know everything. We’d have the perfect marriage if only I’d listen to you, wait upon you, please you in all things.”

  “Pleasing me in just one thing would be a good start.”

  She flopped down on her back again. “Then do it. Do it, or be quiet about it. Just get it over with. Now.”

  He was so angry, so frustrated, that—God forgive him—he did. He tried to pick up where he’d left off.

  He couldn’t remember, later, whether he drew her nightgown up around her hips or she did. He rather thought it was Caro, though in all likelihood she simply meant to discourage needless touching. It was definitely his own hand that freed him from his smallclothes as he knelt beside her on the bed.

  She stared up stonily at the ceiling—welcoming from the waist down, her long legs parted, but supremely unconcerned above. Heaven only knew how he managed to stay hard in the face of her indifference. Maybe it was just that he’d been so aroused a short while before, when she’d lain spooned against him.

  Through some baffling trick of physiology, she was readier than he expected, his fingers coming away slick when he slipped a hand between her thighs. Did the reason matter? Part of him said yes. He hesitated.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said in a tone of either boredom or defiance.

  “I don’t want to hurt—”

  “Just hurry up.”

  It was her tone that goaded him, more taunt than invitation. Still, he didn’t know why he actually went through with it—why he entered her when she insisted on remaining motionless, why he didn’t stop after the first unsatisfying thrust. Perhaps he still felt some remnant of real desire, and hoped she might feel the same. Perhaps he sensed this was as good as it was ever going to get, his penance for marrying a woman who didn’t love him. And there was a third, even uglier possibility, that the entire business was simply a cold exercise in proving himself right.

  But if he hoped to show Caro that sexual closeness mattered, she seemed equally determined to prove that she felt nothing, that it meant nothing, that she might just as well be entirely absent. And, this time at least, she was winning the argument. She lay completely still, her cheeks flushed, refusing even to look at him.

  Damn it, he was going to get something out of this. He closed his eyes and conjured up the most stirring visions he could imagine—Caro’s silken body on their wedding night, Caro nude and raising her eyes to his as she traced a finger around one rosy nipple, Caro moaning his name, Caro gasping and tightening around him in ecstasy as he took her from behind...

  Her rapid breathing sounded almost like passion. A few more thrusts, and he was struggling purposefully toward climax.

  Then it was over, and he felt not one whit better.

  In fact, he felt slightly ill. She’d ruined it. Ruined it. The isolation, the storm raging outside, the warm bed—they’d had the perfect opportunity to transform their marriage into something new and good, to find pleasure in each other at last, and she’d turned it into offal. Or let him turn it into offal, he wasn’t sure which.

  Why had he gone through with it? He wanted to vomit.

  Lying on his back beside her, he remembered a scrap of Latin from his university days, something the physician Galen had written. Post coitum omne animal triste—After sex, all animals are sad.

  Old Galen hadn’t known the half of it.

  “Well,” Caro said in a curiously husky voice, “satisfied now?”

  God. He couldn’t take it anymore—couldn’t take being tied to a woman who had no affection for him at all, couldn’t take her jeering question, couldn’t take knowing he’d come so close to finding happiness five years before only to have it slip through his fingers.

  He got up, wordlessly buttoned his breeches and started for the door.

  Caro propped herself up on her elbows. “Where are you going?”

  “Downstairs. I told you, it’s bound to be more agreeable down there than it is in here.”

  Her brows rose in a look of astonishment. “But Welford, we just—”

  He went storming out, to spend a long, regretful night on the lumpy haircloth sofa while she luxuriated in the big feather bed.

  Chapter Nine

  In things which are not immediately subject to religious or moral consideration, it is dangerous to be too long or too rigidly in the right.

  —Samuel Johnson

  The next morning, Caro awoke from such a sound sleep, it took her several seconds to recall where she was and how she’d come to be there. She didn’t recognize the hunting box at first, or understand why the maid hadn’t come in to tend the fire.

  Then it all came back to her, and her heart sank. Oh, yes. John was unhappy with her again.

  And not only that, but it was a new kind of unhappiness. Caro had seen him hostile before, with both the tight-lipped fury he’d displayed after catching up to her on their wedding night and the cold resentment he’d shown for the past five years. But she’d never known him to resort to vulgar language before, or stomp about as if he wanted to kick something, or treat her little better than a lightskirt.

&n
bsp; And that wasn’t the strangest part. The strangest part was that she’d enjoyed it. Not everything, of course—she wished he hadn’t stormed off afterward. But she’d enjoyed seeing him in an undeniable passion about something, even an angry passion, and she’d enjoyed knowing she was behind that loss of self-control. It had fascinated her—no, excited her, making her pulse quicken. She’d even enjoyed the sexual act, despite her perverse determination to remain aloof.

  As to why she’d remained aloof, she wasn’t entirely certain. After five years of John’s disapproval and punishment, perhaps she’d simply felt he deserved a little punishment in return. How many evenings had she sat alone at Halewick, staring forlornly into the fire and praying for his forgiveness? How many times had she opened his letters with shaking hands, hoping he’d changed his mind and was asking her to join him in Vienna? Feigning indifference in bed had been a selfish impulse, one she wasn’t at all proud of, but he’d been so cold to her for so long, and he’d made her feel so disappointing and blameworthy, pretending she felt nothing had seemed like the best chance at reprisal she was ever going to have.

  Slipping out of the warm bed, she crossed to the hearth and checked the clothes she’d spread over the blanket chest to dry. Her pelisse was only slightly damp at the seams, and her stockings had dried completely. She went to the window and drew aside the drapery. The sun was already coming up. She must have slept longer than she’d realized.

  But at least the rain had stopped, and the day looked clear. With any luck, the roads would soon be passable.

  She wasn’t foolish enough to imagine John would return to offer his help, so she struggled into her stays and the change of clothes she’d brought in the saddlebag, a long-sleeved gown of plum-colored wool. Rolling on her stockings and stepping into her half boots, she ventured out of the bedchamber. She hoped Ronnie had already risen and gone downstairs, and she wasn’t going to have to face John alone.

  Ronnie wasn’t downstairs. John was staring into the crackling parlor fire—he must have gone outside for more firewood—but, hearing her footsteps on the stairs, he glanced at her, a positively resentful look on his face. “Madam.”

  So she was back to being Madam again. She was sorry the apologetic, rumpled John who’d stripped off his wet clothes the night before was gone, but she knew that was her fault. “Good morning.”

  “I trust you slept well?”

  He addressed the question to the fire, not really to her, but she answered anyway. “Quite well. And you?”

  “Shall I give you the polite answer or the honest one?”

  She held in a sigh. She deserved that, and he had a right to his nasty mood. She hadn’t meant to encourage his attentions the night before, but wiggling against him in bed had clearly sent a message she hadn’t intended, just as she’d unwittingly invited the attentions of the man in the taproom at The George by smiling at him.

  And then she’d not only overreacted to John’s advance, but also stuck to her initial defiance even after his uncharacteristic show of emotion had brought on a stir of desire. He was her husband. It had been foolish of her to leap out of bed the instant he tried something, and even more foolish to goad him into going through with it when he’d been ready to walk away. Having goaded him, she certainly shouldn’t have been so stubbornly determined to appear cold and detached.

  Feigning indifference had been sheer obstinacy on her part, and cutting off her nose to spite her face. She wished now she’d abandoned her stance, and admitted that she’d changed her mind about refusing him. Then she could’ve given in to the urges she’d felt, sighing and moaning and answering John’s exertions with her own. If she’d secretly enjoyed the experience despite affecting not to, how much better might it have been if she’d actually joined in? It had been only the second such encounter of her life, but she could scarcely remember the first and she’d utterly wasted the second.

  Besides, once they reached Kegworth, she was going to need his help to persuade her father they were happily married. She’d been remarkably shortsighted, punishing John for wanting her when that was the very impression she hoped to create. “I realize I wasn’t very obliging last night, but I—”

  A rap sounded on the door.

  “That will be Leitner,” John said, looking not at all sorry to have their conversation interrupted.

  Caro readied a stiff smile as John removed the chair he’d propped against the front door and admitted his valet.

  Despite his black eye and the heavy leather bag he wore across one shoulder, Leitner looked almost as dapper and elegant as he had on the first day of their journey. “Good morning, my lord,” he greeted John in his strange accent, bowing at the waist. Spying Caro behind him, he added a second bow, this one even lower. “And to you also a good morning, my lady. I trust you were not discommoded too much by your night in this most humble setting?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked past her. “But where is young Mr. Ronald? I have brought a fine English breakfast, sausage and eggs and beans and herring, with both the butter and the jam for your toast.”

  “I’ll run up and wake him,” Caro said.

  It took Ronnie longer than it should have to answer her knock. When his bedroom door swung open, he stared out at her, coatless and with a blanket over his shoulders, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. His hair only added to his disheveled appearance. He must have gone to bed with it still wet, for the straight shocks seemed to grow in five directions at once. “‘Morning, Caro,” he slurred.

  Her spirits plunged still further. “Oh, Ronnie,” she said in an undertone. “Drinking already?” Through the doorway, she spied an empty bottle of brandy on the windowsill behind him. “Where did you get that bottle?”

  “I went exploring downstairs after John brought in the firewood last night, and found it forgotten in the back of a cupboard.” He’d left his coat lying on the bed, but he reached for it and pulled his flask from the breast pocket. “Refilled this too.”

  Her eyes swept over the room. He hadn’t troubled to spread out his wet clothes from the night before to dry, for they lay in a sodden heap on the floor. She was beginning to think John had been right, and Ronnie would’ve been better off with his tutor at Halewick. “Must you drink so much?”

  He frowned. “Don’t be a scold, Caro. It was cold last night. Besides, I was bored. And hungry. And alone, which is more than you and John can say.”

  He made to lift his flask to his lips, but she caught hold of his wrist, stopping him. “I think you’ve had enough. You have to sit a horse today, remember? John will be furious if he realizes you’re disguised. Not just furious with you, either, but furious with me too, because it was my idea that you come with us.”

  “I’m not that foxed.”

  “You’d better not be, because you need to pass for sober in front of John.”

  “Calm down, Caro. I just had a little to drink. I didn’t steal the crown jewels.”

  His words felt uncomfortably familiar, for she could remember thinking when Welford had chided her for lying to the serving boy at The George that it wasn’t as if she’d cheated the boy out of his life savings. Had she been as heedless as Ronnie seemed, making light of her fib?

  “You may see it that way,” she told him, “but John won’t. If you won’t mind for your own sake, then mind for mine.”

  “All right, but I tell you, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  She reached up to comb his hair into some semblance of order with her fingers. “I came to fetch you because John’s valet is back, and he’s brought breakfast. When you go downstairs, please, please don’t let on that you’ve been drinking. Keep a few feet away from John so he can’t smell the liquor on your breath. Say as little as possible. And whatever you do, don’t take out your flask or mention the brandy you found.” She bit her lip, thinking. “We’ll tell him your eyes are red because th
e chimney in this room smokes.”

  Ronnie laughed. “If you aren’t a complete hand!”

  He meant it as a compliment, but it only made her feel worse. She could still sense a faint stickiness between her legs, still feel a pleasant ache in her inner thighs from stretching muscles that hadn’t been used in ages. John had found them shelter the night before and laid the fires and promised he’d get her to Kegworth even if he had to carry her there himself, and for his thanks she’d put on a humiliating show of indifference in bed. She suspected the sexual advance he’d made had been his idea of extending an olive branch. It didn’t feel right, somehow, conspiring now with his brother to keep him from learning the truth.

  “On second thought, we won’t say anything about the chimney unless he asks why your eyes are red,” Caro decided. “But please, try not to call attention to yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ronnie said with a mock salute. He donned his coat, and Caro led the way out.

  John was talking with his valet as they came down the stairs.

  “I was able to hire a hack post-chaise,” Leitner was saying in his clipped English. “It is to meet us in one hour near where we left the road yesterday, to collect our luggage before we continue our journey. The ostler from The Three Swans will look after the team we engaged in Brixworth.”

  “And our coachman?” John asked.

  “I am afraid we were not wrong about his arm. But the surgeon was quick, and when I left him Barnes was pale but composed. The surgeon is a skilled man, the innkeeper informed me, and his patients usually make a good recovery.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Yes, my lord. I left money for Barnes’s keeping just as you instructed, and information on how to reach your man of business in London if it should become necessary. He is being well attended to.”

  On that reassuring note, Caro and Ronnie swept in to join them for breakfast. Soon they were all tucking into beans and herring while Leitner cracked eggs into a frying pan, cooking them over the fire with the sausage. While the eggs sizzled in the pan, they took turns toasting bread, using the poker as a makeshift toasting fork.