Lavinia attempted a smile. “I said let’s return to London. I never should have come here to begin with.”
“But we can’t, my lady. Not until the morning, at any rate, and maybe not even then if the road isn’t clear. We might be snowed in here for a few days, even a week.”
“I’m sorry?” she said politely. “I believe I misheard you.”
The driver shuffled his feet. He was an older man, into his fifth decade if the white peppering his hair was any indication, with kind brown eyes and pock marks on his cheeks. “No, Lady Wilshire, you didn’t. It’s the wheels on the carriage, you see. They’re too thin. More than a few inches of snow and they start to slide. It wouldn’t be safe.”
“But…but we can’t stay here.” She pointed at the stairs. “There’smice, Bartholomew!”
“Better a few mice than freezing to death in the cold, my lady.”
When he put it that way….
“I’ll take my chances with the cold,” she said, only half-jesting.
The corners of the driver’s eyes crinkled. “I will prepare a fire, then put the horses away so they’re fresh and ready to depart in the morning if the snow allows.”
Lavinia sighed. From attending a lavish ball to sharing a cottage with rodents. If that wasn’t humbling, she didn’t know what was. “While you’re doing that, I’ll poke around the kitchen and try to find us something to eat.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”Glowering, Nicholas removed his hat and tucked it under his arm as a footman closed the front door behind him. His stomach growled, reminding him that it was already half past one and he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. His appetite had a habit of abandoning him right before important meetings and then returning with a vengeance once the meeting was over. “Gone where?”
The maid who had delivered news of his wife’s departure paled and took a step back. “To–to Woodridge, Lord Wilshire. Didn’t she…didn’t she tell you?”
“If you do not come with me to Woodridge, our marriage is over.”
Bloody hell.
He hadn’t known she wasserious.
All right, maybe he had. When his wife got an idea in her head, she was like a dog with a bone. But he hadn’t thought she’d actually go through with it! Which was why he hadn’t bothered to tell her that he’d closed Woodridge over the summer, choosing to send the already skeletal staff to Wilshire House, their 500-acre country estate, where they’d be more useful. All that remained at the hunting cottage was an old Scottish groundskeeper hired to keep the lights burning to prevent vagrants from moving in.
Nicholas spun around and glared out the window where a pristine layer of white covered the pavement. People walked by in cloaks and hats, laughing gaily as they gathered what little snow there was into tiny balls and threw them at each other.
Here, in London, where the coastal air sweeping in off the channel often turned snow to rain before it could hit the ground, snow was something to be celebrated. But further north, where Woodridge was, larger accumulations could easily prove dangerous if a household wasn’t ready to receive them.
“How long?” he snapped.
“How long what, my lord?”
“How long ago did my wife depart?”
“Right–right after you did, my lord,” the poor, confused maid stuttered. “Half an hour, maybe less. I wasn’t…I wasn’t keeping track.”
“Ready my carriage. Wait. No.” He looked out the window again, tracking the falling snow. “A horse. A single horse. I’ll take Dominion, he’s the sturdiest. And a sack of food. Candles. A spare tinderbox with an extra flint.”
“Yes, my lord. Right away, my lord.” Grateful to have something to do other than stand in front of the earl and bear the brunt of his ire, the maid scurried away while Nicholas began to think of all the ways he was going to punish Lavinia for actually leaving him…starting with a spanking.
Chapter Five
As darkness descendedover Woodridge in an inky cloak of black interlaced with flecks of white, Lavinia sat curled in front of the crackling fire in the drawing room, eating a stale piece of bread. She watched the flames leap hungrily across the dry logs that Bartholomew had managed to procure from a shed beside the cottage and was grateful for the warmth even as she scolded herself for her stupidity.
Honestly, what had she beenthinking, to come traipsing all the way out here in the middle of winter? To a cottage built for burly men hunting stag, not a delicate lady that squealed at the sound of mice scurrying about in the walls. The ultimatum she’d given Nicholas–for it was, at its heart, an ultimatum, no matter what she’d said to the contrary–had been a mission of madness.
And she was paying the price.
Taking another bite of bread before setting the loaf aside, she forced herself to chew the hard, brittle texture until it became palatable enough to swallow and then rose to her feet to browse the bookshelves on either side of the hearth, searching for something to keep her mind busy while she waited for the snow to stop and sleep to claim her. Bartholomew had chosen to remain outside with the horses which left Lavinia inside by herself. She’d thought she was used to being lonely. But there was a marked difference between being alone in a house attended by servants and being alone in a house attended by no one.
The silence was deafening. Everypopof the fire made her pulse leap. Every blast of wind against the windowpanes made her heart jump. Trailing her fingers across a row of leather spines, she struggled to maintain a sense of calm even as all the nerve endings in her body demanded that she flee. But flee where? The sky was dark. The road was covered in snow. She was as trapped in this cottage as she was in her marriage. Because despite her threats to the contrary, she couldn’treallyend their union. She hadn’t the power. A marriage was just another contract. A contract that viewed her as nothing more than property.
