The Marriage Act (17 page)

“Which brings me to your third explanation, the one you’ve been repeating ever since, that I was too old and you were certain you could never love me and you hated the notion of spending another minute in my presence.” He spoke the words matter-of-factly, almost lightly, but the tense set of his shoulders made her wonder if the worst of her sins hadn’t been running away to Lawrence, but rather saying such a thing to John.

She hesitated a moment, weighing her words. She had to get this right. “An element of that was true—I did see you as much older,” she answered carefully, “but mostly that reply seemed the only way to explain myself when ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly’ sounded beyond foolish, even to me. Besides, I was upset, and by that time you’d turned unreasonable and you refused to believe anything but the worst of me.”

He’d remained composed up to that point, but as she finished speaking, he swore under his breath. “I can’t think what I did that night that was so unreasonable.” He went to the fire and, taking up the poker, prodded the logs on the grate. When he turned back toward her, the look on his face was more troubled than angry. “Tell me, Caro. What should I have done instead? Left you at that inn, unprotected and alone? Allowed you to turn your name into a byword, chasing after a boy who didn’t want you? Stood idly by when only hours before I’d vowed before God ‘for better, for worse’? Tell me what it was I should have done.”

“You should have tried harder to forgive me,” she said, a lump rising in her throat. “You should have listened more patiently when I tried to explain.”

“I’m listening now.”

“Yes.” She drew a deep breath. “Perhaps the truth was somewhere between the second and the third explanation. I
was
confused, and you
did
seem much older to me. But then you went to Vienna and left me behind, not troubling to mend matters first or even to bid me a civil goodbye, and the third explanation became the only one that mattered to me.”

“And is it still the one that matters?” He searched her face. “Do you still think I’m too old, and do you still hate the notion of spending another minute with me?”

She sprang to her feet. “No. Don’t you see? You were never too old, I was simply too young. You were already an adult, while I still had one foot in my childhood.”

“I’m beginning to realize that,” he said softly.

“And if I thought I could never love you, it was because I didn’t
know
you. I wish I could take back everything I said and did in the hours after our wedding, but the best I can hope for is that we can find a way to put it behind us and start over.” She gulped. “And when you asked me a moment ago what you should have done on our wedding night—John, you did me a great service, stopping me before I could get on the stagecoach to Chelmsford. Even assuming I could’ve talked Lawrence Howe into taking me in, I’d have quickly come to regret it. I would never have been able to see my father again, for a start. Papa couldn’t possibly have received me, at least not without having to choose between me or his position. And now he’s—he’s dying—”

Her voice cracked.

John’s brows drew together. “Caro...”

The next thing she knew he’d crossed to her and taken her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps now
was
the wrong time to talk about this.”

She nestled her head against his shoulder. It felt good to be comforted by him, good to lean into him and feel how much bigger and stronger he was, good to sense he was willing to help. “I want us to stop fighting, John. Not just for my father’s sake, but for our own. I’m sorry about what happened in the hunting box. I was an idiot. No, worse than an idiot. I was purposely horrid to you.”

“Don’t worry about that now.”

God in heaven, he was actually being kind. She drew back and gazed up at his face. “Can’t we be friends at least? Really and truly, I mean, not just putting on a show for my father’s sake? I regret all the time we’ve wasted.”

Despite her heartfelt admission, there was something guarded about the way he held her, a trace of lingering reserve. “Friends?”

“Yes. I don’t expect you to forget all the mistakes I’ve made, but could we stop trying to hurt each other? Could we do our best to be civil and treat each other with respect?”

“I’m willing to try.”

She sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder again. “That’s all I can ask.”

Chapter Sixteen

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea
,
and that is a wrong one
.

—Samuel Johnson

The next day was Sunday, and the entire Fleetwood household rose early to attend church. It was the family custom to walk to and from church on Sunday, a custom John’s own father had likewise observed, since it spared the coachman and grooms from having to work on the Sabbath. Only Caro’s father stayed behind, being too infirm to make the walk.

“Besides, it would be bad form for me to attend a church in another bishop’s diocese without first receiving an invitation,” he pointed out. “One has to be careful of treading on toes, even in holy orders.” He chuckled. “
Especially
in holy orders.”

As John walked from Stanling Priory to the church, Caro at his side, he wondered what to make of the talk he’d had with her the night before. Parts of her story rang true. He
had
offered her champagne to take the edge off her nerves on their wedding night. He could even remember her saying she might become tipsy, an objection he’d brushed aside on the theory it was better for her to be a trifle tipsy than to be terrified.

Was that night his fault, then? He’d never viewed himself as the sort of man who plied innocent girls with drink until they were in no fit state to know right from wrong, but it appeared he’d done exactly that. And he could hardly deny he’d been furious when he’d tracked her down at The King’s Head. If she’d really been the worse for drink, it was little wonder she’d been unable to explain herself satisfactorily, given the temper he’d been in.

Then again, he wasn’t sure whether he believed everything she’d told him. After all, she’d said,
If I thought I could never love you
,
it was because I didn’t know you
—as if five years of acrimony and recriminations had never happened. She’d even claimed she’d enjoyed it when he’d bedded her on their wedding night, though she’d never since given any sign of longing for his touch or desiring him in that way. Quite the contrary. Just thinking about their encounter in the hunting box made him wince.

Could he really credit that she’d been swept away by his kisses on their wedding night, decided to leave him while in a state of drunken confusion, and wanted now to reconcile? Taken all in all, she’d told him exactly what he wanted to hear.

That was the problem with Caro—he wasn’t even sure the catch in her voice when she’d mentioned her father had been real. For as long as he’d known her, she’d played fast and loose with the truth, saying and doing whatever it took to further her own ends. For all he knew, the things she’d told him the night before had simply been her way of making sure she could count on his continued help in hoodwinking her father.

They reached St. Andrew’s, a church of approximately the same age and style as Mr. Edge’s church in Strelley. Filing into the Fleetwoods’ pew behind them, John looked about him at the pointed Gothic arches and clustered stone columns.

Old churches always made him feel a bit lost, though it had little to do with the fear of God. No, it was rather that a hundred years before him, someone else must have sat in this same pew, likely a figure in a long powdered wig and a skirted coat—and so had some other person two hundred years ago, perhaps a gentleman in a slashed doublet and a wide lace collar, a short cape thrown over one shoulder—and so had someone else three hundred years ago...and a hundred years in the future, very likely someone much like him would be sitting where he sat now, wearing God knew what, staring up at the carved wooden beams and the light streaming in the clerestory windows, as temporary and out of place as he was.

The church bells tolled three times, and when they had fallen silent, the rector led them in the Lord’s Prayer, then began, “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, and all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit...”

The service inched along, through the Ten Commandments, the Epistle and the Gospel. John wished Bishop Fleetwood were delivering the sermon, and not the ascetic, rather humorless cleric who stood in the pulpit. John had heard his father-in-law preach on a number of occasions, and the bishop’s homilies were always the kind of warm, wise, witty meditations that charmed away the melancholy lurking in hushed old buildings. They made everyone feel cherished and special, if not important in the march of time then certainly important in the sight of God. And
loved
. That was the gift Bishop Fleetwood possessed, the gift John supposed he’d been searching for when he’d asked Caro to marry him.

During Communion, as they sat waiting for the rest of the congregation to finish taking the Sacrament, Caro leaned in toward him. “If you look closely,” she whispered, “you can see where Anne and I carved our initials in the back of the next pew.”

Sure enough, there was Caro’s girlhood cipher, the letters
C.F.
scratched into the varnish. John could remember beginning to carve his own initials into the end of his family pew at Halewick as a boy, though in his case his stepmother had caught him and insisted his father ring a peal over his head after church. Caro’s looping script made him smile.

She saw him smiling and her lips curved in an answering smile. With a gloved finger, she traced a third letter after the two she’d carved long ago, a
W
. She shot him a playful look that suggested their marriage was the reason for the third letter.
Caroline Fleetwood Welford.

After church John spoke at length with the rector while all of the Fleetwoods, Caro included, chatted with their neighbors. When they rejoined him and their party started toward the Priory together, Lady Fleetwood remarked, “You’ve made quite an impression here, Lord Welford.”

“Have I?” John said in surprise. “I hope that doesn’t mean I’ve done something to embarrass myself.”

She laughed. “No, quite the contrary. Kegworth isn’t the kind of bustling metropolis you’re used to, and when newcomers appear in the neighborhood, it’s bound to be remarked upon. Everyone was wondering about the identity of the two gentlemen who were squiring my daughter about the village yesterday, especially the unexceptionable-looking one who had such an impressive voice during the hymns this morning.”

“We were the talk of the high street,” Miss Fleetwood remarked with obvious satisfaction.

“The general consensus is that you and Caro make a handsome couple.”

Caro linked her arm through John’s and smiled at him. Miss Fleetwood, on the other hand, looked distinctly disappointed the conversation had shifted in Caro’s direction.

“I’m glad to hear I passed muster,” John said, more pleased by Caro’s smile and the naturalness with which she’d taken his arm than by anything the neighbors could have said.

“I confess, it was a great relief to me when I met you,” Sir Geoffrey said. “To be honest, I used to worry about Caro’s romantic prospects. For such a prettily behaved girl, she had a regrettable taste for rakes and rogues.”

“Uncle Geoffrey!” Caro objected in a tone of humorous outrage. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Oh, I don’t know...It may have something to do with all the mooning you used to do over Lord Byron.”

“I can’t have been more than fifteen at the time, and every young lady in England was mooning over him then.”

“Perhaps,” her uncle agreed, “but there was also the way you and Anne quarreled over which of you Sidney Bainbridge had a greater regard for, even as he was nearly ruining his father with his wagering. Then there was the flirting you did with that Hughes boy who had to marry his employer’s daughter.”

“And the
tendre
she developed for young Nicholas Ryland,” her aunt added.

“I wasn’t even out yet, at least not officially, when I admired Mr. Bainbridge and Alistair Hughes,” Caro said. “And Mr. Ryland isn’t nearly as wild as you seem to think he is, Aunt Ella.”

“No, your aunt has the right of it,” her uncle said. “Last year Ryland knocked down a number of headstones, riding neck or nothing through the churchyard, and he’s more than once been brought before me for brawling in the village. We tried to steer you toward that earnest young Mr. Ball who hoped to do missionary work in South America, but you seemed more interested in gentlemen with a reckless streak.”

“Perhaps we just have different notions of reckless,” Caro said. “Mine has always included contracting yellow fever in the Amazon.”

Slanting a look at her, John said in his best loving-but-prepared-to-be-jealous voice, “How is it I’ve never heard of these gentlemen before?”

“Never fear, Lord Welford,” Sir Geoffrey said. “They were all country bucks, and Caro’s interest in them nothing more than schoolgirl fancies. Not one showed the least interest in her, with the possible exception of Nicholas Ryland.”

“And we know for a fact he never kissed her,” Lady Fleetwood put in.

“What makes you so sure?” Caro asked, though she didn’t deny it.

“Because when Mr. Ryland walked you home from the assembly, Papa asked me and Mary Wallace and Alethea Hodgekiss to keep an eye on the two of you,” Miss Fleetwood said. “We followed you and watched from behind the garden gate, and Mr. Ryland only said good-night and kept walking.”

Caro gaped at her uncle. “You had them follow me?”

Sir Geoffrey looked not the least bit abashed. “For your own good. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, my dear, but you were barely sixteen, and I knew what a rascal Nicholas Ryland could be.”

“At least that’s one fewer rival I’ll have to call out,” John said lightly.

“You won’t have to call out Sidney Bainbridge either. Despite blushing sighs from both Caro and my daughter Anne, Mr. Bainbridge was more interested in the young widow from the neighboring parish than in a pair of green girls, one of them the daughter of a bishop.”

“I can’t say I approve of his taste.”

“I’m not sure it was his taste,” Sir Geoffrey said, “so much as that the dashing widow had an equally dashing reputation.”

Lady Fleetwood threw a knowing glance in her husband’s direction. “And I wonder where he heard that particular piece of information?”

“Certainly not from me,” Sir Geoffrey said, holding up his hands in disavowal. “Though I may have let it drop over an ale at The Flying Horse that she also possessed a respectable fortune—purely by way of conversation, of course.”

“What a devious lot you Fleetwoods are.” Though John was more than half-serious, he was careful to say it as if he really meant,
You’re all refreshing and I find your stories delightful.

Caro sighed. “So that’s why Mr. Bainbridge grew so cool to me at the end of the summer. That wasn’t very sporting of you, Uncle Geoffrey.”

“For which I make no apologies. That fellow will end in the poorhouse or on the gallows, mark my words.”

Sophia Fleetwood rolled her eyes. “Oh, Papa. No man is ever good enough in your estimation.”

“Utter gammon. For instance, I can see that Caro outgrew her taste for unreliable gentlemen. I’d say she did quite well for herself, marrying Lord Welford here.”

“Yes, John is nothing if not steady,” Caro agreed, though John couldn’t help feeling she’d just damned him with faint praise.

“And we approve wholeheartedly of Anne’s choice,” Lady Fleetwood said. “Mr. Edge treats her like a queen.”

“Not to mention that he’s likely to inherit Strelley Hall, since his brother shows no interest in matrimony...”

John was only half listening as the conversation continued around him. So Caro was attracted to men with an air of recklessness, was she? Even their Christian names bore a whiff of danger—Alistair, Nicholas, Sidney. Lawrence. Meanwhile, he was plain John, named after the one disciple who wasn’t even interesting enough to die a martyr’s death, but had outlived all the others.

He’d never been wild or unpredictable. He’d prided himself on his self-discipline, but now he realized that must be the very trait Caroline viewed as irritating rectitude. What had she said on the journey here?
I
think you were born middle-aged.
Even the people of Kegworth had described him as
unexceptionable-looking
.

Strolling beside Caro, Sophia Fleetwood caught his eye. She was smiling at him.

His thoughts still on his wife, John smiled absently back.

He was going to change Caro’s impression of him. He wasn’t sure how, and he rather feared it was going to require him to do something outlandish and regrettable, but he was determined to find a way.

* * *

John hadn’t had a chance to talk privately with his brother the day before, but when the gentlemen filed out of the dining room to join the ladies after dinner that evening, Bishop Fleetwood leaning on a Priory footman, John pulled Ronnie aside. “I’d like a quick word with you, if you don’t mind,” he said quietly.

“Of course.” Despite the ready agreement, Ronnie looked wary.

“I was talking about you with Caro yesterday. She said something that’s been troubling me...”

A strange look crossed Ronnie’s face, one that combined guilt with belligerence. “She tattled on me, did she? Dash it, I never would’ve thought it of her.”

John had harbored a nagging worry that Ronnie and Caro might be in some kind of petty conspiracy against him, but
She tattled on me
put matters in a different light. His brows came together in a puzzled frown. “What do you mean?”

From the flash of awareness in Ronnie’s eyes, he must have realized he’d spoken too precipitously. “Nothing. I thought...” He fumbled for a satisfactory explanation, then gave up with a sigh. “I thought she told you I’d been drinking when we spent the night in the hunting box.”

“You were drinking again?” John had meant to remain patient and understanding, but the news brought a disapproving edge to his voice.

Ronnie nodded. “She was afraid to tell you. She knew you’d be angry, and she’d taken my side when you didn’t want me to leave Halewick.”

“No, she didn’t tattle on you,” John said, feeling disappointed with himself. Once again, he’d thought the worst of Caro—that the whispering he’d witnessed on the hunting box stairs must mean she’d been saying something critical of him to his brother at best, or carrying on a flirtation with Ronnie at worst. Instead she’d been trying to shield Ronnie from his anger, while fearing he was liable to lose his temper with her, as well. “I told her I hoped you might join the diplomatic service yourself one day, and she urged me to ask you about your ambitions.”