Accusing him of being mercenary, indeed. Accusing him of wanting to marry her off just because she would be a burden on him. All he wanted was to see her happily and respectably married. That was all he had ever wanted. It had fairly broken his heart nine years before when she had insisted on marrying Hunter, a baronet who had been close to fifty at the time and who had looked ten years older. And even that time she had done it because she had felt herself a burden on him and Lana and Anna.
Ridiculous woman. It would serve her right if he left her to freeze out on the road. Had they traveled two miles yet? It must be pretty close, perhaps even a little more. It was far enough, anyway. She must be chilled through to the bone, and sure enough, it was starting to snow in earnest. By the time he picked her up, turned around, and found the nearest inn, there was like to be snow on the road. He hoped it was just a passing shower.
Yes, this was far enough. He leaned forward to tap on the front panel. But before he could do so, the coach lurched alarmingly to one side and he was thrown forward and sideways to land painfully nose-first against the opposite seat.
The carriage had lost a wheel.
It was snowing—not just sleet but fluffy white flakes, the kind that stuck. And they were coming down faster and thicker every moment.
Well, the Earl of Wetherby thought, relaxing back against the comfortable cushions of his traveling carriage, he must be almost there now—therebeing Price’s hunting box in Northamptonshire. He had been watching the clouds with an apprehensive eye ever since noon, afraid that they would empty their load before he could reach his destination. The very last thing he wanted to do was be forced to spend a day or two snowbound at a country inn.
But he must be almost there. The house could be no more than a few miles distant.
It would be entirely in keeping with this whole fiasco, of course, if he were forced to put up at an inn. Indeed, it was amazing that the snow had not come down a few hours before. Even now, he noticed, sitting forward in his seat and looking out into the late-afternoon twilight, the snow had settled in a thin film on the road and hedgerows.
And what the devil was he doing in the middle of Northamptonshire headed toward a hunting box he had never seen before, quite alone? He might have been comfortable in his town house in London or in the reading room at White’s or in Jude’s boudoir.
No. He frowned. Not at Jude’s—not with her sneezing and wheezing and barking all over him. Confound it, he had planned things so carefully. He was to be officially betrothed to Annabelle in one month’s time—if she accepted him, that was, and there seemed to be no reason why she would not. Certainly there was no way he could now avoid it, even though no public announcement had been made yet and even though his official offer had not been made to her yet. But he had finally bowed to the persuasions of his mother and his own sense of responsibility and spoken to the girl’s father. And his mother was delighted, and his sisters.
Who was he, then, to be undelighted? No one had held a pistol to his temple and forced him to this turning point in his life. And there was no point in getting cold feet now when his decision had been made and voiced.
He was to be thirty years old in three months’ time—a dangerous age for a man, it seemed, especially when that man happened to be a wealthy and landed member of the British aristocracy. It was perfectly acceptable to be twenty-nine and single. One was merely still sowing one’s wild oats. It was not acceptable to be thirty and single. One was being selfish and endangering one’s succession. It was time to set up one’s nursery. And he had come to accept the inevitable, however reluctantly.
Lord Wetherby sighed and crossed his booted ankles on the seat opposite the one on which he sat. If the deed must be done, Annabelle was a perfectly good choice. She was rather lovely and seemed sensible enough. And he had known for several years that when he did get around to marrying, he would be expected to choose her as his bride. His mother had had her heart set on it for years. He had not fought her wishes, since he had no real objection to them and knew no other lady whom he preferred.
He would not think about it anymore. He would marry the girl and get on with the next phase of his life. He would be reasonably contented once he got used to it, he supposed, but he did resent the way things had turned out for this particular week. He resented it bitterly. He had one month of freedom left, and look what had happened to it.
He had an annoying belief in marital fidelity. Annoying, because it was not a belief shared by many of his peers. Many men of his acquaintance seemed to have perfectly satisfactory marriages and yet a cozy little love nest set up somewhere, too. And annoying because he was satisfied with Jude. She had been his mistress for almost a year, and she knew just how to please him. It was a comfortable relationship, and the thought of having to end it irritated him. The thing was that he could not even extend the liaison until the day of his wedding, whenever that was to be—doubtless he would find out soon enough. Oh, no, he knew that he would feel obliged to see the last of Jude as soon as his betrothal was an accomplished fact.
They were to have had a week together at Price’s hunting box, with Price and his latest ladybird—a last hurrah to freedom. And then Price’s aunt had decided to leave this world at a most untimely moment, the day before their planned departure, with the result that Price had had to stay for the funeral. He had been very decent about the whole thing, though. Wetherby and Jude must still go into Northamptonshire, he had insisted. He would send word to the two servants he kept there.
But on the morning of their departure, when he had driven up to the house where he kept Jude, a trunk full of new clothes and finery for her strapped to the back of his carriage, he had found her in bed with watering eyes and a hacking cough and a running nose and a raging fever. He had sent a servant to summon a physician, accepted her offer not to feel obliged to kiss her, and climbed back into his carriage.
To return home, defeated? No. Inexplicably, he had given his coachman the signal to begin the journey that had been planned for four passengers but instead had only one.
What was he doing? How was he to enjoy a final week of freedom all alone in the middle of nowhere? And doubtless he was going to be very much alone. He put his face close to the window and gazed along the road. It was all whiteness. And there seemed to be plenty more snow ready to fall. He was going to be incarcerated in that house for days. By the time he got out of there, he would probably be screaming for company—any company—to ease his loneliness.
He saw the figure by the roadside at the same moment as his coachman. Certainly the carriage lurched to a stop as Lord Wetherby was raising his hand to knock on the front panel. Whoever it was was hunched up, head down, trudging in the opposite direction from that being taken by the carriage. Making for some cottage? But he had noticed no habitation for the last several miles.
It was a woman, he saw as his coachman hailed her and she looked up. And no country girl, either. Her bonnet was fashionable and her cloak of good fabric, though both were liberally covered with snow. He opened the door and vaulted out into snow that was already ankle-deep.
“It is quite all right,” she was telling the coachman. “My brother will be along for me in just a moment.” Her teeth were chattering.
“Has your carriage met with some accident, ma’am?” the earl asked her.
Dark eyes were directed his way from a heart-shaped face with bright red cheeks, chin, and nose. “Oh, no,” she said. “It is quite all right, I do assure you. I just got down to walk for a while, but Dennis will be back for me soon.”
The earl peered ahead through the snow, but there was neither sight nor sound of an approaching carriage. She had got down to walk? In a snowstorm?
“We quarreled, actually,” she said in a rush by way of explanation. Her teeth chattered again.
“It looks as if you have been walking for some time, ma’am,” the earl said. “And it is beginning to get dark. Do, please, allow me to take you up.”
She looked somewhat wistfully up into the interior of the carriage. “Dennis will have a heart seizure if he does not find me,” she said. “I had better keep walking, sir. But I thank you.”
She tried to smile, but it seemed that her facial muscles would not quite obey her will.
“May I present myself?” he said. “Justin Halliday at your service, ma’am.”
