The Marriage Act

by Alyssa Everett

  “Yes I do, because it’s true.” She took a step closer, an eager look in her eyes. “I’ve grown up a lot in the five years since our wedding, and a good deal of that growing up has taken place in the past week. You said today that you thought I enjoyed lying because it gave me a thrill, because I could be bad but look good, but that was never why I did it. I did it because I didn’t want people to think ill of me, and it was easier to lie than to take responsibility for my mistakes. Unfortunately, escaping the responsibility meant escaping the lessons I should have learned too—for instance, that once I’d made a hash of our marriage, I should have tried harder to fix it.”

  It was a pretty apology, but it had nothing to do with love. “I made my own share of mistakes. I couldn’t see how very young you were, or how much I’d asked of you, proposing marriage when you barely knew me. I could only see my own infatuation and my rather conceited notion that I was so ambitious and so deserving, of course you must want to marry me.”

  She smiled. “But you were ambitious and deserving—and handsome and smart and funny and kind too. I was just too young and too blind to realize it at the time.”

  “But you realize it now?” he said, unable to hide his skepticism.

  At his tone, her smile vanished, and the bright, eager look faded from her eyes. “Oh, my...I must have sunk myself completely beneath reproach, if you don’t believe me even when I’m telling the truth.” She drew a deep breath, and her chin came up. “I’m done with lying now, John. My father knows everything. You know everything. And I don’t want to lie ever again.”

  She said it with what sounded like real conviction, but could he trust her? As much as he loved Caro, he didn’t think he could spend the rest of his life with any woman who was prepared to sacrifice integrity for the sake of convenience. And he wanted a future with her so badly, he could be in serious danger of blinding himself to the likelihood this was just another pretense. “That’s easily said, but—”

  “No, it isn’t easily said,” she broke in with a hollow laugh. “You of all people should know how stubborn and how craven I can be. I should’ve been more forthcoming with you about Sophia, especially after that talk we had about keeping secrets, but I was too afraid of what you might do.” She shook her head. “And now the worst has happened, and the truth is out—but the curious thing is, owning up to my mistakes isn’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined. In fact, I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’ve finally realized it’s better to face the consequences of my actions and move ahead with a clear conscience than to live every day guilty, preoccupied and terrified I’m about to be exposed.” Her gaze locked with his. “And then there’s what lying has done to our marriage. I hate seeing doubt and mistrust in your eyes when you look at me. Lies and evasions have already cost us five good years, and I refuse to give them one more minute.”

  The hope that had died down to nothing but ashes inside him flickered faintly back to life. If she really felt even the smallest fondness for him—if there was any chance at all for their marriage—well, he was almost afraid to consider the possibility.

  “My opinion hasn’t always mattered so much to you,” he said hesitantly.

  “That’s just it—it always did matter, more than I knew, only you disapproved of me and I was sure that would never change. But now...” She stopped in midsentence and regarded him solemnly. “Those things you said to my father—about how you weren’t pretending, and you love me. Did you mean them?”

  “Let me see if I have this right.” He broke into a faint, reluctant smile. “You are questioning my honesty.”

  She laughed. “Don’t tease me, John. Not now.”

  To his surprise, her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. Had she been telling the truth, then, when she’d claimed she loved him?

  “Did I mean them...?” He took Sophia’s letter out of his coat pocket. “I’d like to show you something, Caro. This is your cousin’s letter to me. Since you were generous enough not to read it, I won’t embarrass her by going into the particulars, but suffice it to say it paints me in a very flattering light.” Transferring the letter to his left hand, he took out his pocketbook and went through the banknotes until he came to a folded sheet of paper. “And this,” he said, holding up the tattered square, “is your note to me, informing me on our wedding night that you’d run away.”

  Her face fell. “Don’t tell me you kept it—”

  “I kept it.” He unfolded the note and showed her. “It says, among other things, that you’re in love with Lieutenant Howe, that you only accepted me to make him jealous, and that you would willingly bear any disgrace in return for a divorce.”

  She wore an anguished expression. “I’m so sorry, John. If I still need to say it, I don’t feel that way now.”

  “Observe.” John turned to the fire, a letter in either hand. “Your cousin’s letter pays me nothing but compliments, the kind of acceptance and admiration I’ve spent most of my life wishing to hear. Yours is an insult. There’s only one of them I can burn without a second thought.”

  He tossed Sophia’s letter on the fire.

  * * *

  Caro watched as the flames licked at the paper and her cousin’s letter blackened and curled. She was relieved to see the evidence of Sophia’s folly destroyed, but at a loss to understand why John hadn’t burned her own note as soon as he received it. “Why would you want to keep that dreadful message from our wedding night? It’s one of my greatest regrets.”

  “Because you wrote it, Caro. Insulting or not, it was all I had of you when I was in Vienna, my only remembrance of the one night we’d spent together before I left. For that reason alone, I could never part with it.”

  He’d kept it all this time—through dragging her back from the inn after she’d run away, through leaving England, through years of separation and three days of constant bickering on the road? Not just kept it, but treasured it.

  “I can’t believe I ran away, with nothing but that dreadful letter as explanation,” she said. “I was beyond foolish.” His face blurred, and she realized she was laughing and tearing up at the same time. “I’ll write you a better letter. I’ll write you a hundred of them, every one telling you how wonderful you are and how I’ll never leave you again. I’ll write you so many love letters you’ll need a wheelbarrow to carry them about with you.”

  “I hope not.” At her look of confusion, he said, “People only write when they can’t be together in person. Wherever I go from now on—whether it’s to my next diplomatic posting or simply back to Halewick—I want you with me.”

  She wiped away happy tears. “Oh, thank you, John! I’m so glad you said that about your next diplomatic posting. I wasn’t sure whether you would want me along, and I wish so very much to go with you.”

  “I wanted you with me in Vienna. We just got off to such a disastrous start...”

  “I understand that now. You were taking up a new post in a foreign country, appointed to do the most serious and important sort of work, and in the three days before you left, I’d run away to another man, lied repeatedly and lashed out at you with insults. You must have been afraid to imagine what I might do next. But I’m not a girl of seventeen anymore, and I mean to be worthy of your trust. I’m even willing to grovel if that’s what it takes.”

  “No groveling necessary. For a man who believes in diplomacy, I did a poor job these past five years of settling our differences. I’d be proud to have you beside me.”

  “Proud,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment and smiling. “I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that word. I think that was the moment I first began to fall in love with you—that night we were lying in bed together, and as I was dropping off to sleep you said ‘I was proud of you tonight.’ It made me so ridiculously thankful and happy, I knew there had to be more to my feelings for you than mere pretending.”
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  “I’ve always been proud of you, Caro, even at our lowest moments.”

  She threw herself into his arms. “Oh, I do love you.”

  Smiling, he gathered her close. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly. I love that you’re so good at building fires and bouncing children on your knee and singing sad songs and making the bed creak. And I love that you’re older but not too old, and that you’re handsome and kind and principled. I even love your rectitude. I especially love your rectitude.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I wish I’d realized five years ago that I was going to fall in love with my own husband, so I might have saved myself a good deal of heartache.” She raised her face for his kiss.

  His lips came down to meet hers. It was a tender kiss, and it made her want to cry for all the time she’d wasted, and laugh for all the years they had still ahead of them.

  He broke off the kiss and looked down into her eyes. “I know you said you’re done with telling lies, Caro, but if you’re ever tempted, you should know there’s no need to lie to me for fear I might stop loving you. There’s not much you can tell a man that’s worse than ‘I married you under false pretenses and I’d rather be with someone else,’ but when you wrote that confession in a moment of champagne-soaked candor, I didn’t stop loving you. I was angry, and I often wished I could stop, but I never did.”

  She leaned her head on his chest. “Do you remember when you said perhaps someday I would embroider slippers for you? I did—two pairs, in fact, one the first week after you left for Vienna and the other that Christmas.” She looked up. “I simply never had the courage to send them. I was so sorry about everything I’d done, and so miserable that you’d left me behind. I knew it was my fault.”

  “And I suppose if I’d relented even the slightest bit, at least that first year, we could’ve put the entire business behind us that much sooner.” At her nod, he said, “That was my fault.”

  “They were fine slippers too.”

  “I’m sure they were.” He stroked her hair. “So what happened to them?”

  “I gave them to Ronnie.”

  “Ah,” he said with playful wistfulness. “The women in my life always prefer him.”

  “Not in all things.” She had her arms around his waist, but she let her hands drop, and was actually daring enough to give his backside a squeeze.

  He laughed.

  “John...”

  “Yes?”

  She gazed up at him. “You really must be angry with me, after all the lies I told and the horrid things I said to you over the years.”

  “Not at all,” he said in surprise. “I thought we’d just cleared that up. All is forgiven. Forgotten!”

  “I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I suspect you’re very angry indeed. Furious.”

  His brows drew down in confusion. “I’m not, my darling, truly—”

  “No, John.” Pitching her voice lower, she gave him a significant look. “I’m certain you’re livid. Quite on fire to show me how very much I’ve displeased you.”

  “Displeased me? But I—” Her tone finally registered. “Ah! Yes, I see.”

  She took his hand and tugged him in the direction of the door. “You look as though you’re seething with rage. Barely able to contain yourself.”

  “I think you may be right. I’m definitely seething with something.”

  “You look quite dangerous.”

  “I feel dangerous.”

  Still holding on to his hand, she led him toward the stairs. “Well, then, what are you going to do about it?”

  He stopped, yanked her back toward him so abruptly that she bumped against his chest, and swung her up into his arms. “I’m going to throw you on the bed,” he said, eyeing her with impressive sternness, “and have my way with you. Furiously.”

  * * * * *

  To purchase and read more books by Alyssa Everett, please visit the author’s website here or at http://alyssaeverett.com/bookshelf/.

  Available now from Carina Press and Alyssa Everett,

  An Heir of Uncertainty.

  Yorkshire, 1820

  Lina, Lady Radbourne, thought being a countess would rescue her from poverty. Unfortunately, her young groom failed to plan for the future, and his drunken accident left her widowed and pregnant. Now Colonel Winstead Vaughan—Win—will inherit her late husband’s fortune...unless she gives birth to a boy. Win is her natural enemy, so why can’t she stop thinking about him?

  Win is stunned to learn he stands to inherit a vast fortune. He’s even more surprised to find himself falling for the beautiful, spirited Lady Radbourne, who is the one woman who stands in the way of a life he’d only imagined.

  When someone tries to poison Lady Radbourne, suspicion falls on Win. There’s a clever killer in their midst, and if Win doesn’t solve the mystery fast, Lina may perish. He needs to win her trust, but how can he prove it’s she he wants, and not the fortune?

  Read on for an excerpt from Alyssa Everett’s AN HEIR OF UNCERTAINTY.

  Chapter One

  We inherit nothing truly, but what our actions make us worthy of.

  —George Chapman

  Yorkshire, Early December 1820

  Lina had been married three months and two days when her young husband drank one pint too many at the inn, climbed the church belfry on a dare, and lost his grip in the December cold. The sexton might have buried him in the very spot where he landed, except that the Earls of Radbourne were traditionally interred in the family vault.

  Lord Radbourne fell to his death at one o’clock in the morning. At three o’clock, a pounding on Lina’s bedroom door woke her from a deep sleep.

  “My lady!” The voice belonged to Mrs. Phelps, the housekeeper. “Forgive me, but you’re wanted downstairs.”

  Half-asleep and befuddled, Lina sat up. Edward’s side of the bed was still empty. “Downstairs?”

  “Yes, my lady. At once.”

  With a sigh, Lina climbed out of bed. What had Edward done now? She’d have to ring another peal over his head. If you’re going to insist on getting into scrapes, you might at least choose a more convenient time, or Really, Neddy, I’d take you over my knee if I weren’t convinced you’d enjoy it. Though perhaps this time the disturbance wasn’t Edward’s doing at all, but rather an emergency below stairs. Sliding her feet into her carpet slippers, Lina groped in the dark for her wrapper. What if Cassandra was having another attack?

  Lina emerged into the passage to find Mrs. Phelps waiting with a branch of candles. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Mr. Channing is here to see you, my lady.”

  Mr. Channing? What was the magistrate doing at the abbey at this hour?

  Mrs. Phelps turned to lead the way, and Lina followed, the candles flickering before them. How silent and strange the house felt in the dead of the night. They turned the corner and started down the stairs. In the front hall, Mr. Channing was pacing, still in his greatcoat. His eyes swept over Lina as she descended the last few steps.

  A flutter of anxiety drove away any last vestiges of sleepiness. She steeled herself for the look she was used to receiving from half the citizenry of Malton—as if he were the king, and she were a bit of dung he was scraping off his boot. She expected it would be especially pronounced this time, since in her haste she’d thrown on the peignoir Edward had bought her on their honeymoon trip, the one that made her look more like a fille de joie than a peer’s wife.

  But the look never came.

  She greeted him with a
nod. “Mr. Channing.”

  His brows came together in a somber frown. “I won’t mince words, Lady Radbourne. Your husband is dead.”

  “What?” It was as if the slate floor had dropped out from under her.

  “Dead, in the churchyard,” Mr. Channing said, and then she scarcely heard him at all, though he went on talking—something about the Radbourne Arms and young Ralph Whitacre and a dare. A dare. Edward never could resist that sort of thing...

  Mr. Channing was still speaking, but Mrs. Phelps took her by the arm. “Really, sir, can’t you see she needs to sit down?”

  He trailed after Lina as the housekeeper drew her toward the parlor. “I’ll inform the other trustees. Shall I contact Mr. Niven for you as well?”

  Too stunned to pull her thoughts together, Lina allowed herself to be helped along. Not a single fire had been lit yet. Every room in the house seemed unfamiliar in the darkness. “Mr. Niven?”

  “Your husband’s solicitor. If you wish, I’ll send word to him as soon as the sun comes up.”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you.”

  “Do you know who’s next in line?”

  “In line?” They’d reached the parlor. Lina sat down heavily on the sofa. Dead. Edward, who was always so full of life.

  “Yes, in line to inherit the title and property.”

  “Oh, of course.” How stupid Mr. Channing must think her, the way she kept repeating everything he said as if she were a trained parrot at the fair. “I can’t say. It used to be my husband’s brother, but now...Their father was an only child, and their grandfather the only boy. It would have to be some distant cousin, if such a person even exists. Perhaps Mr. Niven will know.”

  Mr. Channing planted himself before her, leaning over her in a posture that was half solicitous, half badgering. “Forgive the indelicacy, ma’am, but the question must be asked. I assume there’s the possibility of a child?”