Now, he looked down on her, a handsome and disapproving guardian.
She broke the silence stretching between them first. “You always seem to catch me at my worst.” Her throat hurt to speak.
“I need to know that I have not married a drunkard.”
What a terrible word. Drunkard?
“You haven’t,” she answered, matching his clipped tone.
It had been the wine. She vowed never to touch wine again.
Trying to recover some dignity, she glanced around the room.Herroom. “What are we doing here?”
“Instead of at the Pulteney?”
Leonie nodded, hazily remembering that he had said something about hiring a room at the fashionable hotel the night of their wedding. And then what were they to do?
She either couldn’t remember or didn’t know—and that bothered her. “What are we doing tomorrow? And the next day?” She glanced up at him. “Did we discuss this?”
Her line of questioning seemed to catch him off guard, and she rather liked that. She was feeling such a shambles it pleased her to at least pinch one of his nerves.
“We are going to Bonhomie,” he answered.
“Bonhomie?” She tasted the word and didn’t like it, although she would not have liked anything in this moment. And then she remembered—oh, yes, he was taking her to be buried alive in the country.
She realized her skirts were halfway up her legs, offering him an indecent display. She pulled them down. She’d probably embarrassed herself to no end while she slept. “Have you been here the whole time?”
“It seemed the only thing I could do. In case you haven’t noticed, or perhaps can’t recall”—disdain dripped from each syllable—“there is a wedding party going on downstairs.”
Leonie listened a moment and realized he was right. She caught the faintest hints of boisterous voices and the plunking of the harpist her mother had insisted upon.
“I knew there was a wedding party,” she answered. See? She wasn’t completely ignorant. “I don’t feel up to joining it.”
“I didn’t believe you would.”
She ignored his tartness. He was out of sorts with her. Well, she was out of sorts with him. Welcome to married life. Her parents were always that way to each other.
And then she asked the question that puzzled her the most. “So, what happened?”
If he was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. “You arrived at the church foxed.”
The brandy.She’d consumed far more than she normally would have. And very quickly, she recalled. It hadn’t seemed to bother her until, well, she couldn’t remember when she wasn’t all right—but she could not confess as much to him.
“Foxed?” she challenged, ready to brazen it out. “That is an outrageous charge. I obviously fell ill.”
“Yes,” he agreed, moving from his stance at the door to a table with covered dishes. “You fell ill with a sickness called being cup-shot.” He picked up a teapot. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”
Her stomach rebelled at the sight of the offending vessel of her intoxication. He knew what she’d done. Guilt led to panic, especially when the memory of draining the teapot threatened her fragile stomach. In a panic, lest she disgrace herself more, she looked around for something to use and didn’t see anything. He rightly interpreted her distress and, reaching down to the floor beside a chair pulled close to the bed, picked up a chamber pot to offer her—from a number, she noticed, that he had stacked there.
But there was nothing in her body for her to lose. She’d already given it all up. At best, she gave a heave or two and then sat back.
Seeing that she was going to leave him standing with a chamber pot in his hand, Roman set it down with distaste, a distaste he obviously felt for her, and that bit her pride.
She found her energy. She kicked aside her skirts and sheets and clambered out the other side of the bed. Standing was almost as difficult as sitting upright. She weaved for the briefest second. Shoving her hair, which was a wild mess, back over her shoulder, she announced in her proudest voice, “I can see that I disgust you. I am thankful, then, that the wedding never took place.”
Roman’s brow lifted in a quizzing way. “There was a wedding. Didn’t I just say there was a wedding party taking place?”
That bit of knowledge took the wind out of her. “There was? I don’t remember saying vows.”
